“There is no time. The answers are all at the last drop zone, at the last hiding place of the rebels,” he said, and explained what he had learned from Tan and Gyalo.
When he had finished Yates studied the two-story building. “Is there a maintenance hatch on the roof?”
Shan had barely nodded before the American launched himself onto the wall in front of the building. He found a protruding nail, a narrow lintel, a tiny ledge for footholds as he climbed. He was up and over in less than two minutes, and took even less time to open the door from the inside.
They selected their equipment by the light of the lanterns, nearly filling two backpacks before Shan stopped and ran the beam of his light along the wall shelving. “Look for canvas ground cloths,” he said. “Two, with rope to lash them together.”
Yates began scanning the shelves then froze and looked at Shan as if reconsidering his words. “God, no. I can’t do that. Don’t ask me to bring her body back,” he said in a haunted voice.
“It’s the last chance we have,” Shan said. “A real exam, by a real scientist, will show that she died from bullets fired by the same gun as Wu, at the same time. The blood on the shirt I wore that day will match hers. They won’t be able to deny the truth.”
“I’ve seen the bodies on the upper slopes. I couldn’t look at her. I couldn’t touch her.”
Shan reached onto an upper shelf and pulled away two ground cloths.
“You’ll never find her,” Yates said, as if arguing with himself.
“I can’t do it alone, Yates,” Shan said. “If I don’t bring the truth out of the mountains, the monks in this region are finished. An innocent man will be executed.”
“And your son. .” the American whispered.
A tremor of fear shook Shan. He had fought for hours to keep the image of his son on a surgeon’s table from his consciousness and now as it returned it seemed to paralyze him. The American pulled the canvas sheets from his hands and began packing them.
A yellow-gray hint of dawn rimmed the eastern horizon by the time they began moving up the mountain road in the battered old Jiefang, starting the long steady climb toward the spine of the Himalayas. They passed the site of the minister’s murder, stopping more than once to consult the American map in the light of the rising sun.
“Forget the map,” Shan said at last. “Look for a small mound of rocks twenty feet off the road.”
“I thought you said the trail to Tumkot was hidden, not marked.”
“It isn’t. Not exactly.” Shan stopped the laboring truck, climbed out, and walked along the road, studying first the terrain to the west, where the massive flank of Tumkot’s mountain dominated the skyline, then the road behind them, where a cloud of dust ominously approached. He was about to ask for the American’s binoculars when with a low angry mutter Yates darted past him and sprang into the cargo bay of the truck. He leaped onto a pile of canvas cargo covers and cursed as half the pile unfolded itself, and stood.
“Jomo!” Shan called in surprise. The Tibetan mechanic met Shan’s gaze with an odd hint of defiance. “What are you-” Shan began then changed his question. “Why are you dressed like that?” Jomo was wearing a tattered ankle-length raincoat.
“They are coming, you know,” the Tibetan said. “The knobs. You thought you could make some kind of deal, but they can never be trusted.”
“I saw them.”
“No,” Jomo said. “That group below is all bounty hunters. The knobs are behind them.”
“Then they will stop the bounty hunters.”
“No. I was working on a truck in the military garage. Cao came in to give his orders personally. He didn’t know I was working in the back. They assume I don’t understand Chinese. That Cao, he is furious at you. He told them you would be with the monks somewhere high. He said you would help them escape, and that they all knew how to deal with traitors. I think,” Jomo added with an uneasy glance at Shan, “he cares more about destroying you than solving his case.”
“Surely they wouldn’t just shoot Shan,” Yates interjected.
“Of course they would,” Jomo said impatiently, gesturing them up the road. “They will shoot you both and rejoice to be rid of outsider pests.” He seemed eager for Shan and Yates to leave.
Shan let the America pull him away as he studied the Tibetan in confusion. After a long moment he grabbed Yates’s binoculars and studied the roadway ahead, spotting the fresh mound of rocks he had piled over the dog’s grave less than a hundred yards away. He was looking for a place to hide the truck when a frantic cry from Yates caused him to spin around. Jomo was standing on a ledge above the road. He had taken off his coat. Under it he was wearing a maroon robe, no doubt one of those Shan had found in the old underground chapel. Yates threw off his pack and ran.
Jomo was doing a little jig by the time Yates reached him, first toward the descending road, to get the attention of those below, then toward the American to evade Yates’s desperate efforts to pull him down. As Shan reached the Tibetan, shards of rock exploded from boulders at either side.
“The fool!” Yates shouted in English as he grabbed Jomo’s arm. “He wants them to think he’s one of the monks!” When Jomo squirmed out of the American’s grip Yates lowered his shoulder and slammed into the Tibetan, knocking him down, pinning him as Shan lifted the binoculars and ventured a glance over the ledge. Less than half a mile away two of the heavy highway trucks, shed of their trailers, blocked the road. At least two of the men beside them held rifles. Their attention was riveted on the rocks where Jomo had appeared. They had not noticed the second cloud of dust behind them. Even if the knobs had orders to find Shan, they could not ignore men with illegal firearms.
Shan looked back at Jomo’s beloved old Jiefang truck, then studied the straight stretch of roadway before the curve where the heavy trucks sat, above one of the many high cliffs along the road.
He gazed at Jomo, who sat on the ledge, his arms behind him, locked in the American’s grip. “They will kill you Jomo. They will kill you with as much thought as swatting a fly. And when they see you don’t have the right gau, they will kick your body and move on.”
“They’ll have to catch me,” Jomo shot back.
“Can you outrun a bullet?” Shan asked. He walked along the truck, his hand on its body, then considered the straight road below them, cut through the living rock so that much of it was flanked on both sides by stone. “I’ll need your help,” he said to Jomo.
Jomo gazed in confusion for a moment, then followed Shan’s gaze as he turned back to the truck. “Noooo-oooo!” he cried in a mournful tone. “Not her!”
“Do you want to help the monks?” Shan asked.
As the Tibetan nodded Yates released his grip and the two men listened to hear Shan’s plan. As Jomo stripped off his robe then turned the truck to face downhill, Shan and Yates frantically collected rags, cargo covers, even clumps of heather, then ripped Jomo’s robe in three pieces as Jomo began working with a rope around the steering wheel. They quickly produced three dummies seated in the cab, their shoulders wrapped in the maroon of monks’ robes, hats pulled low. If Shan’s scheme worked no one below would have time for more than a quick glance. They would see what they had come for, three monks making a desperate last stand. With a satisfied nod he turned to Jomo, who was scrubbing tears from his cheeks.
“You said she was a battle junk,” Shan reminded him. “This is what they did, ram their enemy to destroy their ships.”
“She never failed us,” Jomo said in a cracking voice, with a hand on the rusty fender.
“She never failed us,” Shan repeated. He rummaged in his pocket and found a cone of incense which he lit and placed on the dashboard. “The spirits will find her,” he observed as the smoke curled around the wheel and gearshift.