In the morning a slip of paper lay on the stool beside his pallet. It was a notification on a printed form. Unless directed otherwise by a signed statement, witnessed by a magistrate, a prisoner’s organs would be harvested for medical purposes immediately after execution. Not a prisoner, he saw, the prisoner. The form was made out in his name.
He did not acknowledge the team when they arrived, he just stared at the symbolic circle, the mandala he had drawn on the wall with his blood. The day before he had had the strength to make a show of resistance. Today it was all he could do not to cry out in pain as they pulled him to his feet. He tried to withdraw, to remove himself from the prisoner who shuffled down the corridor, raging at the voice inside that kept recounting to him the dozen ways a clever prisoner could bring about his own death during interrogation. His body reacted involuntarily, wretching in dry, shuddering heaves as the doctor opened his bag.
He fell into a strange torpor, unaware of the activity around him, roused only by a new, shooting pain in his right arm. His gaze followed the needle in his vein toward the hose that led to an intravenous feed. A technician was injecting something into a valve in the tube. With effort he focused on the bottle of clear liquid the man left on the table. He would know in a moment, from the taste in his mouth, whether it was one of the knobs’ truth serums or one of the solutions designed to set the muscles on fire. He gazed at the bottle numbly, not comprehending at first as a soothing warmth oozed through his limbs. Then abruptly he was fully awake, searching the resentful faces of the team for an explanation. They were giving him a painkiller and a bottle of glucose. They were silently bandaging his wounds.
Ten minutes later the team was gone, the glucose tube still in his arm, nothing left on the table but a steaming mug of tea. Shan had barely taken his first sip when Cao materialized out of the shadows.
“I understand there are hundreds of miles of wilderness above here,” the major observed in a sour voice.
Shan’s answer came out in a hoarse croak. “Thousands.”
“Good. Get lost in them.” There was a cold vehemence in the major’s words. “If I ever see you again I will find a meat cleaver and a plane, and I will drop pieces of you over the mountains as you watch.”
Shan silently sipped his tea, calculating the ways Cao could be setting a trap for him, then recalled the gap of hours when the team should have been working on him. “You found the pistol,” he concluded.
Cao answered by stepping to his side, jerking the glucose needle from his arm and pointing to the door.
Shan stood blinking in the briliant morning sun as the door slammed shut behind him. Shogo town was still waking up. A small flock of sheep wandered along the cracked pavement of the street. A group of shiny sport utility vehicles sped by filled with tourists bound for the Himalayas after a side trip to see the center of commerce at the top of the world. Somewhere someone burned incense, an offering to the gods for the new day. He had taken two stumbling steps before he noticed the well-dressed Tibetan sitting at a table outside the tea shop across the street. He paused as two army trucks, packed with border commandos, sped past in a cloud of dust. Then he limped across the road.
Tsipon, the leading businessman in Shogo, preeminent local member of the Party, was the only man in the town who ever wore a tie. In his suit and white shirt he looked as if he were attending a business meeting.
“I am grateful that you tried to get me transferred to the hospital,” Shan offered as he dropped into the chair beside him.
“It’s the climbing season, damn it. I can’t afford to lose another worker. The fool knobs don’t have a clue about economics.”
Another man appeared, holding three mugs of black tea, which he placed on the table, sliding one toward Shan, before settling into a third chair. He was tall and athletic looking, his skin bearing the weathered patina of one who spent long days in the high altitudes. With his black hair Shan might have taken him for a Tibetan waiter at first glance. Except that his features were Western and his clothes and boots would have cost a year’s income for the average Tibetan.
“Look at him,” the man groused in English to Tsipon. “He’s in no shape. The deal’s off.”
Shan glanced back at Tsipon, who stared at him expectantly. Apparently they were at a business meeting after all.
Tsipon offered a sly smile, then motioned to a woman standing inside the open door. She leaned over him, listening as he whispered, then hurried away.
“What day is it?” Shan asked in Tibetan.
“I’m sorry. It’s Saturday.”
Shan shut his eyes. For a moment he lost his grip on his pain, every synapse seeming to scream in agony.
“The region leading to the climbing trails on the Nepal side of the mountains has been sealed off by the Nepali military,” Tsipon said, switching to English. “Problems with the rebels who want to take over Katmandu. No Westerners are allowed to climb the south slope this season. Mr. Yates here has three groups of climbers already signed on for the season, expecting to be taken to the summit in the next six weeks. He needs to put them up the north face instead.”
As the stranger drank his tea, Shan saw the discolored flesh on two of his fingers, one of them missing its top joint, the mark of frostbite at high altitudes.
“Impossible,” Shan said. “You know it is impossible.” Putting an expedition on the slopes meant weeks of planning, permits, surveying advance campsites, staging supplies.
The stranger pushed a small stack of napkins toward Shan, motioning to a wet spot of crimson on the table. Blood was dripping from the bandage on Shan’s temple.
“Damn it Shan,” Tsipon snapped, switching to Tibetan, “this American is fat with cash. His company has three expeditions already paid for. Do you have any idea how much money that means? He is going to charge them another twenty percent for coming to China, which I’m to get a quarter of.”
As Shan pressed a napkin to his head the woman reappeared, setting a plate of steaming momo, Tibetan dumplings, in front of him. His free hand seemed to act of its own accord, darting out, stuffing one into his mouth.
“I need sherpas,” Tsipon said, “mountain porters, mules, and horses. New camps have to be laid out, supplies staged, new safety lines rigged.”
Shan glanced back and forth from one man to the other. “Just go up to the villages,” he said as he gulped down another momo. “Enough cash can work miracles.” He was suddenly ravenous, and recalled he had eaten only a few mouthfuls of cold rice during the past three days.
“Not this time,” Tsipon explained. “There is a complication. The sherpas blame me. I blame you.”
Shan glanced at the American, who sipped at his tea with a confused, self-conscious expression, obviously not understanding their Tibetan words but not missing the tension between the two. “For what?”
“That sherpa you were carrying. Tenzin. He was well liked, came from a big family living on both sides of the border, famous for having reached the summit as a teenager years ago. They want his body.”
The momo in Shan’s hand stopped in midair. “Surely someone found the mule. It wouldn’t wander far.”
“No. Nothing.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Let me spell it out,” Tsipon said, still in Tibetan. “This fool American and his partner are offering the best opportunity I’ve ever had, the best this town has ever had. You agreed to work for me because I could get you into the yeti factory to see that worthless son of yours.”
Shan’s head snapped up, strangely fearful over the mention of his son, even more alarmed that someone might overhear and guess the secret that had brought him to the region. A wild hope had nurtured him through the dreadful hours in the jail and many dark nights before, a dream, a fantasy, that somehow he would not only reach his son in the knobs’ secret hospital, but discover some means to get him out, at least back to the gulag camps in Lhadrung where Shan and his friends could help him.