Prosecutor Xu offered no greeting to Shan when she took his call. "I don't usually speak with fugitives," she said in a voice tight with anger. "Fugitives are a matter for Public Security."
Shan had called the Ministry of Justice from the phone outside the highway station telling Miss Loshi that the prosecutor's friend from Beijing had to speak with her. "I told you I would return soon," he said. "That I would have more evidence."
"I never agreed," Xu shot back. "You made a suggestion. I suggested you should be in jail. Then you escaped from my custody."
"Three o'clock today," Shan said. He told her where the garage was.
"This is not a negotiation, comrade. You can surrender at my office. Or I can dispatch a truckload of uniforms to drag you to my office."
"Comrade Madame Prosecutor," Shan said patiently. "I told you children were being killed. You didn't believe me then. I thought perhaps you might have reconsidered the point by now."
After a moment Xu replied in a terse voice. "That particular message got through to me."
"Good. So perhaps you and I are working with a common goal."
"You and I have nothing in common. I have suspects in the boy's death."
"Meaning what?" Shan asked. Marco was ten feet away, pacing up and down the road like a sentinel. Jakli, who had been at the garage when they arrived, had found an orange soda for Batu, who kept looking toward the mountains. Malik had refused to leave the Kunlun and had ridden away to seek out more of the zheli. "That you and Major Bao struck a deal? Is that what justice is in Yoktian?"
There was a long silence on the receiver. Shan heard voices in the background. Perhaps the prosecutor was calling for her car. Perhaps she was calling for reinforcements.
"Fine," she said at last. "The highway. But not three. Three-thirty, perhaps. Four, maybe. You will wait."
Jakli frowned when he relayed the conversation. "It is what she would do, to spring a trap, buy some time to get others here first. Plant some enforcers. Get some in looking like truck drivers, maybe." She was obviously exhausted, having searched much of the night on horseback with the Maos. They had found another boy before dawn, cowering alone in a cave, and the Maos had taken him to the Red Stone Camp.
Shan shrugged. "Not so easy to do, this far from town."
Jakli gave him an impatient look that somehow seemed to fade into one of sympathy, the way a mother might look at a child. "Sometimes you make me think it's true what they say about Tibet."
"What's that?"
"That it makes people new, washes away all their prior experience. Sometimes I think you are so naive."
To be called naive was such a grand joke that Shan wanted to laugh. If someone wanted a word for all that was not naive, they could take his name.
Jakli stepped into the shadows between the garage and the smaller building that housed two old trucks, where Marco now stood with Sophie, Batu in her saddle. Jakli spoke hurriedly with the Eluosi and pointed to a large truck behind the buildings, where a man was laying long planks to form a ramp into the cargo bay. Marco gave a mock salute to Shan and turned toward the truck. In five minutes Sophie and the two camels they had ridden from his mountain home were loaded into the truck, and the truck pulled out, Batu waving from the window.
It occurred to Shan, as he surveyed the broken-down trucks, stacks of bald tires, the decrepit yellow tea shop and the cracked walls of the garage building, that all of Xinjiang seemed to be a series of ruins. Some were just newer than others. He stepped toward the wall of the garage, the largest building, feeling very tired. He had sat far into the night reading his notes and staring at the meager possessions of Khitai. They had mounted the camels before sunrise, taking a different trail out of the valley. Now he had over an hour to wait for Xu. He checked on Lokesh, who lay asleep on a blanket behind the garage, then sat down on a stack of tires by the wall and found them surprisingly comfortable. Leaning against the wall, he shut his eyes.
Images of the day's ride flashed through his mind. He and Batu had ridden beside Marco for hours and listened to long tales of Marco's youth, tales about vast gatherings of nomad clans, where scores of camels raced, and young girls shot arrows to win white horses. In the predawn light Marco had spoken about the stars, which he knew very well, a skill acquired over nearly thirty years of night caravans. Shan had been surprised to learn that Marco was his own age, and the Eluosi had mused how different their lives had been, living at opposite ends of the People's Republic. He drowsily remembered how Marco had taught them a song, a silly child's verse about camels flying like birds, and they had sung it until they reached the highway.
When he opened his eyes, it was after three. Somebody had been busy, rearranging the area between the buildings. Three tables, or a table and two upturned crates, had been brought out and two figures sat at each. Those at the table played chess, the other two, mahjong. Several more vehicles had appeared in the compound. They looked vaguely familiar. He studied them for a moment and realized they were the trucks he had seen in the motor pool. All of them, except the turtle truck that lay buried in the desert. He noticed the flash of gold teeth from one of the men playing mahjong. It was the Mao from town, who had brought him shoes. A woman in the long grey dress and cowl of one of the strict followers of Mohammed sat close to him, reading what might have been a prayer book. As he rose and stretched his arm, the woman also rose, then reached out and pulled his arm. It was Jakli.
"The prosecutor's car drove by fifteen minutes ago. She stopped and let someone out," Jakli reported, nodding toward the tea shop across the road.
Shan circled around the rear of the garage and crossed at the end of the compound to reach a small window in the side of the shop. A well-dressed woman sat at the table by the front window, the only one of the shop's tables which was occupied. In one corner an old man with a long thin beard and a black dopa cap sat by a small gas stove, leaning against the wall, asleep. Shan stepped inside and took the empty chair across from Loshi.
"It's Miss Loshi, I believe," he said. "My name is Shan. We spoke at the prosecutor's office."
The young woman, so engrossed in watching out the front window that she had not noticed him, gave a startled gasp. Instead of replying, she raised something from her lap, a small black oblong object with a two-inch stub extending from one end. A cellular telephone. She held it in both hands, her wrists on the edge of the table, extending it like a shield.
"In ten, maybe twenty years, they might get around to installing transmission towers for those phones in this region," Shan observed, attempting a good-natured tone. "Maybe longer. Public Security doesn't want them to become too popular in places like this."
Loshi looked at him, then glanced uneasily outside.
Shan studied the nervous young woman. She had heavy makeup on her eyelids, and an expensive gold chain hung over her bright red silk blouse. Prosecutor Xu's security.
Loshi moved forward on her seat. "I know that. It doesn't work in town either. But most people don't know. I was talking to a herder. It scared him. He said he thought it was just something that Han used to summon other Han. He said he's never seen anyone but a Han with one, except Americans on television," she explained with a satisfied air. "So, see. It works."
"You're the prosecutor's secretary," Shan said. "Did she have secretarial work for you on the drive here?"
But Loshi kept looking at her phone. "They work in Shanghai. And Hong Kong. Everyone has them in Hong Kong. In Hong Kong you can send a fax with one."
"Or is it because she trusts only you?" Shan wondered out loud.
"You're not supposed to talk to me. Talk to the prosecutor."
"You are here. The prosecutor is not here."
"I know people too. Just like the prosecutor. I work for the Ministry of Justice too."
"A big responsibility."
"I get special awards sometimes," she said, as if hoping to intimidate him. "Secret awards."
Shan remembered something else about Loshi. Ko Yonghong of the Brigade was taking her for rides in his car without a roof, like in American movies.
"Do you know about the dead boys, Miss Loshi?"
The girl seemed to be struggling. She put the telephone on the table and pushed the buttons, then put it to her ear in a strange pantomime, as if practicing for when she arrived in the real world. "I liked Auntie Lau," she said into the mouthpiece, as though speaking to someone on the phone. "I was sick once, when I went to a council meeting with the prosecutor. Auntie Lau gave me some herbs and cured me."
"Did you see her only that once?"
"Sometimes she came to town. She was always smiling. She gave me a book of poems written by retired soldiers." Loshi put the phone down. "I guess I never knew anyone who smiled so much. Like an old beggar, she smiled. You know."
Shan looked at her uncertainly. Like an old beggar. She meant like one of the old nuns and monks who used to roam Chinese streets seeking alms. Did her whole generation remember the monks that way, just as beggars? He watched the street. Jakli was speaking with the men at one of the tables. There was a horse-drawn wagon parked in front of the garage now, partially loaded with hay. A man was pumping air into one of its rubber tires.
"Were you born here, Miss Loshi?" Shan asked. "In Xinjiang?"
She shook her head absently. "We're from the coast. The ocean. North of Shanghai. Technically, I was born here, but we're from Shantung Province. My father was sent to manage a factory in Kashgar many years ago. Some day I'll go to Shantung. Prosecutor Xu says she could get me transferred, if we keep maintaining our quota of resolved cases."
"You'd rather be in the east?"
"Back home? Sure."
Home. Loshi had never been there, but Shantung was home. He should write to the Chairman. Dear Esteemed Comrade. After fifty years we now have conclusive proof that the experiment of absorbing the western territories has failed. Because Loshi wants to go home.
"What about the prosecutor? Does she want to get transferred too?"
Miss Loshi made a sly smile and opened a nylon case on the table beside her. She pulled out a pack of cigarettes and lit one. She hesitated, then offered one to Shan. He shook his head. "She's not going anywhere. I'm leaving soon. But Comrade Xu-" She shrugged and exhaled two sharp streams of smoke from her nostrils. "Longest serving prosecutor in all of Xinjiang, in one post. Twelve years. In Yoktian, of all places."
Shan wondered if the young woman understood what she was saying, or was it just because Yoktian, in Loshi's world, was not a fashionable place to be? Twelve years in her post meant Xu was in career trouble, that she had been sent here, or remained here, because she had fallen out of favor. He recalled Bao's tone when he had reminded Xu of political commentary made at a conference in Turpan. If you neglect your essential duties, Bao had said, no matter how hard you worked, you are a liability to the state. But Xu was a zealot, the Jade Bitch. She kept the rice camps full. She shot at prayer flags from helicopters. What essential duty had Bao been referring to?
Shan glanced at the cigarette package on the table. "They're expensive," he observed. They were American. Loto gai- Camels.
Loshi seemed pleased that he had noticed. "I got them from Ko yesterday. To apologize to me about the sports car. He had to give it to that Major Bao."
Shan almost asked her to repeat the words. "Major Bao? He gave his sports car to Bao?" he asked incredulously.
"You know." Loshi shrugged. "Public Security. Ko said he would get another one soon." Her breath tightened and she leaned toward the window. A black car, Xu's Red Flag sedan, was pulling to a stop in front of the garage.
Shan stared a moment longer, unable to comprehend why Ko would give his expensive car to a man who was not even a friend, who was a rival in many ways. "I'll go around the back," he said in a conspiratorial tone, and stood. "I won't tell her we spoke."
Loshi gave him a nervous, uncertain smile, cupped her hands over the cell phone, and looked back out the window.
Shan watched from the side of the tea house as the chess players at the table scattered the instant the prosecutor stepped out of the driver's seat. She stood and surveyed the compound, hands on her hips, then sat at the abandoned table, putting a small canvas bag on the table beside her. Moments later Shan stepped around the corner of the garage and joined her.
"He came back that day and asked about you." Xu said immediately, venom already in her voice. "Major Bao. He was still angry. Not just angry. Enraged. Said he should have arrested you. I asked him why. Said you could jeopardize a confidential investigation. He demanded more information about you."
"What did you tell him?" Shan asked.
"That you were one of my informers," Xu said, and paused, as if for effect. "But he wanted your name, your work unit." The prosecutor lit a cigarette, a thick unfiltered kind, the sort factory workers smoked. "I told him it might jeopardize a confidential investigation," she said with a sour smile. She stared smugly at Shan as she let the smoke drift out of her mouth. "But I have a friend in the Ministry in Beijing. Nearly ready to retire. I called her. There was an Inspector Shan once, she said, Inspector General of the Ministry of Economy. A fighting dog sort of investigator. The kind everyone hates." She inhaled on the cigarette again and examined him. "You know. Impractical. Incapable of prioritizing for the socialist order."
It was a familiar phrase. One of the idioms of tamzing, the struggle sessions where individuals were confronted with their shortcomings as citizens and their remedies beaten into them, figuratively and otherwise.
Shan saw that his hands had done it again, unconsciously made a mudra, as if trying to tell him something. The fingers were clasped, the middle fingers raised upward. Diamond of the Mind. "Prioritization for the Party, prioritization for the state, prioritization for the workplace," he recited the equally familiar refrain that had been shouted at him more than once from political verse books. "I saw an advertisement for a book once in a Western magazine," he said. "Getting your office organized in ten easy lessons." He looked at her with a stony expression. "Kind of the same thing."
She offered an icy smile. "This Inspector Shan, he's said to have taken on Party bosses, maybe even investigated them. Said to have been made to disappear." She opened her mouth and let the smoke curl around her lips.
"The advantage of disappearing," Shan said, "is that afterward expectations are so much lower." He stared at his hands. "All the zheli boys are in jeopardy," he said. "More could be killed."
"This Shan. My friend called the Ministry of Economy. The main thing people say about this Shan is good riddance. He made everyone's life difficult. As hard as a senior Party member. But when he was offered Party membership he turned it down."
"The killer is after the boys. Only the boys." He looked back at the tea house, where Loshi sat watching through the window. Ko had given his expensive car to Major Bao. It made no sense.
"An investigator is supposed to find answers, supposed to make life easier for people," she continued, as if she had not heard any of his words.
Shan focused on the end of her cigarette. "Sometimes an investigator can do no more than remind people of their conscience."
Xu's lips curled, as if she found the comment amusing. "Your killer," she observed. "He may have been looking for that one particular boy. Kublai. Maybe it's over."
"Or maybe he wants them all dead," Shan said.
Xu winced. "Don't be ridiculous. No one could get away with eliminating entire…" Her words drifted off, as her eyes drifted toward the horizon. She shook her head.
"What are you saying, Comrade Prosecutor? One or two boys, and who cares? But ten or fifteen, that would be what? Unacceptable casualty levels? Politically embarrassing? How about five or six? Maybe up to ten, and no one would really notice?" He kept his eyes on her as he spoke. "Just orphans, after all, just Kazakhs and Uighurs at that."
"Some people see conspiracies everywhere."
"This is the People's Republic, Prosecutor. Its lifeblood is conspiracy."
Her eyes flared, and she looked about at the other tables. No one seemed to be listening. "Be careful, comrade. I know my responsibilities to the state."
"Wonderful news," Shan snapped.
Her brow wrinkled in question.
"That you take your job seriously. The prosecution of crime, isn't that what it is?"
She frowned again and pulled on her cigarette.
"Maybe this investigator from Beijing," Shan said, "maybe he discovered the most important thing of all. That working for the government is not always the same as working for the people."
She surveyed the compound. Shan followed her gaze and saw another familiar face among the men at the mahjong table, despite the oversized Chinese army hat pulled low over his head. Fat Mao.
The horse cart pulled slowly away from the garage bay.
"I checked with all the Ministry offices from here to Kashgar and a hundred miles east. There have been no other reports of children being killed."
He stared at her. She did not blink, she did not look away. "Another boy was killed since the one brought to Yoktian," Shan announced. "The fourth boy."
"No." Xu glared at him resentfully. "I don't believe it."
"You said no once before, Comrade Prosecutor, when I told you boys were dying."
Xu frowned and said nothing.
"A boy named Khitai was killed near the giant prayer flag in the mountains. You know that flag."
"I know it," she replied stiffly.
Shan nodded. "You were seen there." A thought occurred to Shan. Batu had believed Xu had gone to find boys and kill them. But maybe she was following someone. She had left the camera for surveillance. He had thought it was to watch for Buddhists and dissidents. But maybe it was to watch for the killer.
Her eyes smoldered.
"Perhaps it means you are close to an arrest," Shan suggested, returning her angry gaze.
"A small group of herders had been seen there three days ago. We went to investigate. They may have been with one of Lau's zheli. Or perhaps they needed to be registered for the Poverty Scheme."
"Two days," Shan said. "The herders were there two days ago. The day the boy died."
Xu shook her head. "Three."
If she was right, Shan thought, then Batu had also been right. More than one zheli boy had gone to the lama field to complete his project for the dead teacher.
"Show me the body," Xu said tersely.
He shook his head. "Khitai is buried. He has been violated enough."
"Then only one boy died," Xu said. "That's all we know. One boy killed, that could be anything. We have an official investigation. Forensic exams shows a small-caliber bullet. Could have been a hunting accident. The clans are allowed to have small-caliber firearms for hunting."
"A hunting accident?" Prosecutor Xu, Shan decided, was a very complicated woman. "I thought it was feudalism, you said."
"Fine. Without question it demonstrates the corrosive influence of the old clan structures. Irresponsibility. Lawlessness in the mountains. This is the twenty-first century, comrade. It has to stop. I am always willing to throw the full weight of my office to assist victims of crime. But first they have to ask. Let them file reports if others died. I will not accept rumors. Not about Lau. Not about other boys. The resources of a great nation are theirs if they ask."
"Speaking statistically, Comrade Prosecutor, how many reports of serious crime do you receive from the nomads?"
"A few every year."
"How many from Han living in the district?"
"More than ninety percent of my reports are from Han."
"And the Han represent how much of the population?"
"Resettlement has been slow this far away." She shrugged. "Thirty-two percent is the official number."
"And you resent the Tibetans and Kazkahs and Uighurs for not reporting crimes."
"It's difficult enough, keeping such a vast country together. We all have to cooperate. A citizen who does not participate is not a complete citizen. People must be taught to come to us."
"Perhaps a giant tamzing. Bring all the herders in. And their sheep. Can't forget their sheep. The herds are so disorganized. Prioritization for the Party."
As Xu looked at the ember of her cigarette an expression of bitterness seemed to pass over her face. Could it indeed be true that she took her job seriously?
"There are some investigations," he ventured, "where you reach the end and wish no complaint had ever been filed. Because of what you have to report."
"Don't tell me my job. I've been prosecutor a long time, Comrade Shan."
"I know," Shan shot back. "Twelve years in Yoktian."
She fixed him with a frigid stare. "I meant, I know how to write reports."
He stared at her and saw the admission in her eyes. They both knew that in the People's Republic writing reports on criminal investigations was one of the highest forms of art. "Most times," he said very slowly, "you just have to write about who the criminals are. But sometimes there are cases where you have to write about who you are."
Xu didn't reply. She lit another cigarette from the first and stared at the makeshift tabletop, a piece of rough plywood, as though suddenly interested in its patterns of wood grain. "We have a file on the dead boy. Director Ko has suggested several suspects. I have been trying to find others who may have information. Apparently the children, the zheli, were very secretive. Lau didn't record their whereabouts. No one seems to know much."
"Director Ko?"
"The Brigade knows the clans better than any organization. They are at the forefront in implementing many social policies." She worked her tongue against her cheek, as if chewing on something. "It makes them a target sometimes. For resisters."
"Resisters?"
"Clan members who oppose the Poverty Scheme, for example. Someone sabotaged a Brigade truck yesterday."
"A truck?"
"A transport for livestock was stolen. A Brigade driver in a car gave chase into the mountains. On a curve, the truck rolled over and burned. Kazahks or Uighurs did it. We're investigating."
Shan stared around the compound again. Had the Maos stolen the truck, hoping to set up some kind of ambush?
"The Brigade is our engine of social change in Xinjiang. We all have to keep that engine running," Xu stated. It had the tone of a political mantra, preapproved by Party headquarters.
Shan recalled his last conversation with Kaju. "What," he asked, "is the Brigade doing with infants at the local clinic?"
Xu frowned again. "Now you're suspicious when someone helps babies? You're paranoid. Delusional. Maybe you feel so guilty about being a Han that you hate all Han. I can find-" She searched for a word, "therapists who could help with that. Everyone knows the newborn survival rate among the minorities is low. Ko wants to help."
Shan watched as the horse wagon stopped in front of the prosecutor's car. The driver unhitched the horse and led it away. He looked closer. There was no room at the front. The wagon blocked the car. He surveyed the compound. Jakli had said Xu might bring others, disguised as truck drivers.
"That's a Buddhist thing," she said suddenly, taking notice of his mudra.
Shan collapsed his fingers self-consciously, without answering. "Lieutenant Sui," he said. "Are they investigating his murder?"
"Bao's office said he is transferred out, a new assignment in Manchuria."
"But you didn't believe it."
She drew deeply on her cigarette. "It's not that simple."
"Of course it is. Sui is dead, or Sui is transferred. Did you try to verify his transfer?"
She frowned, as if she found the subject distasteful.
"There are two possibilities," Shan suggested. "Public Security is covering up, not telling the Ministry of Justice. Or Bao is covering up, not telling even Public Security." There was another possibility, which he would not give voice to. The killing was known to all, to Bao, to Xu, to Beijing, but not yet politically resolved.
"That day at the motor pool," he added. "Sui was with you, Kaju was with Ko. Kaju said he was looking for the boys, Lau's boys. Maybe Sui was too."
This time when she exhaled she blew the smoke directly into his face. "We were using the roadblocks for the missing person investigation. Public Security was cooperating. The Ministry and Public Security work hand in hand."
"Last time I was with you," Shan returned matter-of-factly, "Public Security was throwing a mug at you." For a second, and only a second, Shan thought he saw something that might have been amusement in the prosecutor's eyes.
"I have another idea about Sui," Xu said. "If he is dead, maybe Tibetans killed him."
Shan felt his throat go dry. He returned her stare and shrugged. "This is Xinjiang."
"This is borderland. This is everywhere and nowhere. When you drove away that day at the motor pool, Sui got on the radio with the roadblocks. He said to detain you. Not you, actually. He gave orders to stop the truck and arrest the old Tibetan with you."
Shan stared into his hands. Sui was looking for Tibetans. Was he the one who had found Lau? Out of the corner of his eye he saw a grey figure rise and slowly walk around the back corner of the garage. Jakli, going to where Lokesh slept.
"A harmless old man," Shan said.
Xu looked toward the Kunlun with a pained expression. "The one word I would never use for Tibetans," she said with a strangely distant tone, "is harmless." She gazed around the compound. "Everyone else we can talk with, we can negotiate with, we can educate, we can teach the wisdom of becoming something else." Her mouth twisted, as if she had tasted something sour. "But the Tibetans," she said slowly, "they just stay Tibetans."
"Which is why you attack prayer flags?" Shan asked quietly.
She silently stared at him for a long time, then looked down at the table. "I know at least one boy died," she said, just as quietly. "Sui implied that Tibetans were involved in some new conspiracy. I asked my investigator to watch, and listen, to find where in the mountains the zheli children might meet Tibetans. We heard about a small family at that place. We went to look. Now you say a boy died at the place," she added, as if it proved her point.
You went to blind the deities, Shan almost said. "You went with Public Security?"
"No."
"Meaning what? That Public Security doesn't care about boys but you do?"
She stared at him coolly without answering.
He pulled the black compass from his pocket, opened it, and placed it on the table. "Do you recognize this? Was it your investigator's? Bao's?"
"Not mine," she shot back resentfully, as if he had accused her of something. Then she stared at the device. "You found it there? My investigator wasn't there, before he went with me. He had just been asking questions, talked to helicopter pilots. It's not his. As for Bao, you'd have to ask him. I can arrange a meeting," she offered with a cool, thin smile.
Shan folded the compass but left it on the table between them.
"What if you had found a boy out there, what would you have done?"
"Take him into protective custody for a few days. Then give him back to the school program."
Shan was silent for a moment, considering her words. "Tell me, Comrade Prosecutor," he said as he pocketed the compass, "do you think Tibetans are guilty, just because Sui was looking for them?"
"Sui. And now Bao. He's erecting random checkpoints throughout the county. Anyone with Tibetan papers is to be held for questioning, even anyone with a Tibetan birthplace. He's rounded up a few old men who couldn't explain their origin to his satisfaction."
The waterkeeper. She had not mentioned the waterkeeper. Because, he hoped, the lama had not been discovered. Maybe he was better off at Glory Camp, maybe he was invisible to Bao at Glory Camp. Though not if he continued to interfere with political officers.
"Because of a poem?" Shan asked. "Does poetry scare Bao so much?"
She frowned again. "Because he is a major in Public Security," she said, meaning Bao could do whatever he wanted. He owned an explanation to no one, including the prosecutor.
She stared at him and seemed to detect the pain in his eyes. "Your friend," she pressed, clearly enjoying his discomfort, "an old Tibetan traveling with a known fugitive. Think of the stories he will have when Bao picks him up."
Just an old man, Shan was about to repeat, but a question overtook his tongue. "Why did he radio the others? Why didn't Sui just take him there, at the motor pool?"
Xu opened her mouth as though to reply, but she had no words. She just looked back toward the Kunlun.
"Because," Shan ventured, "he didn't want Ko to know."
"Sui was angry when the patrols didn't find your friend. Issued a description to them, so he could be picked up later."
"There is another Tibetan," Shan said. "What do you know about Kaju Drogme?"
"I interviewed him before he started. He's different. A model for all the minorities. One of the few Tibetans who has recognized the challenges of balancing the needs of our society. There was a meeting about him, to decide on bringing him here. Ministry of Education. Bureau of Religious Affairs. Public Security. The Brigade."
"Why the Brigade?"
"Of course the Brigade. In this district, the government decides and the Brigade implements. They have a special office in Urumqi for this program, administering fifty or sixty teachers all over Xinjiang, all minorities trained in cultural assimilation. Got the attention of Beijing and of the top managers of the Brigade. The Brigade," she reminded Shan, "is one of the largest companies in China." She thought for a moment and shrugged. "Still, the program's only an experiment."
"You're not convinced."
"He goes too far sometimes. Lau, she was balanced. But this Kaju- I went to one of his classes. He was showing everyone how Buddhist prayer beads work, asking if anyone had beads when they were young. I called the Brigade office to complain. They said it was part of the program. Validate the ethnic roots. Make Tibetan children know it's all right to have beads, make the Muslims know it's all right to bow toward their Mecca sometimes. Then gradually make them see how old-fashioned it is, just a subtle form of mind control."
Shan looked at her without replying. Validating ethnic roots was also one way to identify hidden Tibetans. Mao tse-Tung had launched a campaign over thirty years earlier known as the One Hundred Flowers program. Let one hundred flowers bloom, the chairman had said, as a way of encouraging people to express diverse views, to criticize the government in public. It had been staged as a way of flushing out dissidents. After a few months the campaign was ended and those who had spoken out against the Chairman were arrested.
Shan saw that another vehicle, a heavy diesel truck, had arrived at the station. It was parking directly behind the Red Flag, so close the car was blocked between it and the horse cart. The engine did not stop as the air brakes hissed and the truck halted. The driver stayed at his wheel, watching someone, the mahjong player closest to the prosecutor. Fat Mao. What had Marco said of the Maos? He had called them predators, always waiting for an easy kill.
Shan unfolded the paper he had taken from the school and pushed it in front of her. "Are they so eager to get the children to confess religion that they must offer bribes?"
Xu didn't touch the memo but read it where it lay. A lip curled up, and he began to realize that the sour expression was a fixture, that perhaps she had been sour so long that it was the natural position of her face when it relaxed. Shan watched her eyes drift over the names of those who had received copies of the memorandum from Ko announcing the gift of music machines. There were two names familiar to him- Bao Kangmei, Kaju Drogme- and a third unknown to him. Rongqi, Urumqi, it said.
Xu sighed and put the paper in her canvas bag. She held it by the edges as she did so, as if it were fragile.
"Thank you," she said. "I have you on videotape at my office. Now I have your fingerprints." A look of great satisfaction rose on her face. "Outside agitators always make good candidates."
"Candidates?"
"For anything. Murder. Even treason. Good for tying up loose ends in files. Maybe just breach of public security. That memo was for government workers only. You don't work for the government."
"Not for the government," Shan said. "It was for the Brigade."
She shrugged, as if it made no difference.
Shan stared at her. "Fine. Arrest me. The only thing I'm really good at, Comrade Prosecutor, is surviving. I'll go to prison. I'll survive. But they would have won."
"Who?
"I don't know yet. Bao, maybe. Kaju. This Rongqi in Urumqi, maybe."
Xu lit another cigarette before replying. "I don't have to implicate you in anything. You're a weed. You don't belong here. By definition, weeds are guilty. I have a weed control program. One call and you're in Glory Camp for a year."
Shan ignored her. "Rongqi," he said again. Was she trying to avoid the name? "Did he know Lau?"
Xu hesitated. "A general. Former general. Now one of the top leaders of the Brigade. Second in command. He met Lau with me in Urumqi."
"She went to the capital with you?"
"Rongqi was the one to approve the new program for assimilation. I thought she was a model of the kind of person we need. The Ministry of Justice decided to support the program, to offer up its databases. I asked her to go, at our expense, to be recognized." There was something new in Xu's voice. An uncertainty, a hesitancy.
"But something happened."
"I don't know. Rongqi was cordial. They were talking, then she went cold. Said she was sick and excused herself. All the way home, she was quiet."
"This was before she was eased out of the council position?" The day before she had died, Hu had said at the school, Ko had tried to persuade her to go back to Urumqi with him.
"Maybe two or three weeks before." Her face hardened. "There's no connection. I know your type, Shan. The higher up someone is, the more guilty they are." She twisted the butt of her cigarette into the makeshift tabletop. "I have a riddle for you. When you're made to disappear once, they call it the gulag. But when you're made to disappear twice, what do they call it?"
Shan sighed and looked up at the sky. "I'll go to your office, in two days. Your territory. Arrest me then if you still want to."
Xu frowned but didn't say no.
"I don't believe Sui was with you that day just because of your missing person inquiry," Shan said. "Not if he was looking for Tibetans."
"He was working roadblocks for me, and for a Bureau case on smugglers. Jade thieves."
"Jade?"
"He asked me that day if I seen any interesting jade. I knew what he was asking. This region is the source of all Chinese jade. Special licenses are given to those who extract it and process it. Special certifications are made by inspectors to assure its quality. Special fees are assessed. Sometimes people try to avoid the procedures and sell it cheap on the black market. It's one of the regular assignments for junior officers. He heard I was going to sweep roads, he thought he would take advantage to check for illegal jade. Tibetans with black market jade, apparently."
No, Shan was about to say. He was looking for the boys. He looked toward the rear of the garage, where Lokesh had been sleeping. Sui had been looking for the Jade Basket. He had been killed. Then Ko had given Major Bao his expensive car. Not out of friendship. Because Ko was obligated to Bao somehow. Or out of mutual interest.
Xu was watching the compound. She looked from the horse cart to the heavy truck that blocked her car. She seemed to sense something. There was a flicker of nervousness, then she swept the smoldering butt of her cigarette onto the ground and rose with a glare that caused all around her to turn away. Shan saw Fat Mao make a motion and the diesel truck began to back up, to make room for the Red Flag to move.
"One last thing," Shan said. "Miss Loshi. Did you ask her to come?"
"What do you mean?"
"I mean, her boyfriend is Director Ko. Did she ask you?"
Xu thought a moment. "My chief investigator is in the mountains. She knew that. She offered to ride with me."
"And watch."
"And watch," Xu agreed with a sneer, then waved toward the tea shop. Loshi emerged a moment later, the cell phone extended in front of her. Xu's protector.
Shan nervously watched as Xu placed her canvas bag on the hood of her car. He saw a flicker of movement at the corner of his eye. Fat Mao darted into the garage. A moment later the Uighur reappeared, holding a folded piece of white paper. Suddenly someone shouted from the far end of the compound. An animal burst out from between two trucks, a large ram, bleating, running wildly, butting its head into the air every few steps as if battling some invisible rival. Several men shouted and ran toward the animal. Others ducked into the buildings.
In the center of the road Miss Loshi stopped and made a sound, not a scream, but a high pitched yelp. She did not run from the animal charging toward her, but stood still and covered her eyes.
The ram seemed to take the motion of her hands as a signal. It lunged straight at her, veering at the last moment so that its heavy shoulder slammed into her knees, knocking her legs out from under her. She collapsed onto the road and sat with an expression of shock on her face as several men closed around the animal. Prosecutor Xu darted around the limousine to help Loshi to her feet. In the same instant Fat Mao ran to the limousine. Shan looked back to Xu as she led Loshi to the car.
The compound burst into activity as the Red Flag disappeared down the highway. The men at the tables stood. The driver in the heavy rig shut off his engine and climbed out. The man with the horse brought the animal back to its wagon.
Jakli reappeared, pulling off her cowl and shaking her hair free, Lokesh following a step behind, wearing a wide grin.
"It makes no sense," Jakli said, looking down the highway, where the car had gone. "What is she doing? She brought no one but her worthless secretary."
"She never expected to arrest him," Fat Mao said as he sat at the table beside Shan. "She wants to use him, and take him later." The Mao studied Shan uncertainly, then extended a piece of paper toward him. The memorandum Shan had given to Xu. "I replaced it with a blank page," he said with a thin smile. "Making her mad on purpose," he added, shaking his head at Shan. "You have no idea how dangerous that is."
Shan took the paper from him and folded it for his pocket. "The only thing I do on purpose," Shan said, "is to find the truth."
Fat Mao stared at him, displeasure on his face. "What if finding your truth puts all of us at greater risk?"
"The only ones at greater risk," Shan said as he looked with alarm at Lokesh, "are children and Tibetans."