Lord of Death: A Shan Tao Yun Investigation by Eliot Pattison Page A

were pushing something out, rejecting something. He bent and with his fingers probed the loosened dirt, quickly extracting three dirty pieces of black plastic and metal. He experimented with the pieces a moment, fitting them this way and that, until he had constructed most of what had been a cell phone. Someone had smashed it before burying it. He gazed at it in confusion. The only wireless phones that worked in the region were the larger satellite phones. Such a phone would have been useless. Why would someone—the murderer?—think it so dangerous it had to be destroyed?
    He rose and showed the fragments to Jomo, holding them together so they were clearly recognizable. “What was this phone in its prior life?” he queried absently.
    Jomo’s expression became very serious. He took the pieces, turning them over in his palm, then looked up. “A prayer wheel,” he declared.
    The words filled Shan with a strange, unexpected sadness, and he spoke no more as they climbed back into the truck.
    THE HIMALAYA S W E R E the great planetary train wreck. Here, at the high spine of the world Shan now gazed over, was where tectonic plates constantly crashed and ground, here the Eurasian plate was clawing its way over the Indian subcontinent. As he paced along a high knoll, waiting as Jomo scanned the slopes with binoculars, Shan watched a huge slab of ice and snow slough off the side of the nearest mountain, taking house-sized boulders with it. Here was a place where worlds were constantly changing, and Shan had a gnawing sense that he was caught up in one of the seismic shifts that would alter the region forever.
    After leaving Kypo at Rongphu gompa, the monastery nearest the base camp, Shan had directed Jomo to cruise slowly along the high mountain roads, pausing frequently to scan the slopes.
    “There!” Jomo now called, pointing to a white spot on the adjoining slope before handing Shan the glasses. He studied the familiar white land cruiser that was parked on a steep dirt track near a shepherd’s house, then motioned Jomo back into the truck. They reached the weather-beaten structure just as Constable Jin emerged around a corner.
    Looking as if he had bitten into something sour, the constable passed Shan and circled the truck once before speaking. “You can hear this old crate two miles away. You’re going to put the sheep off their grazing.”
    “It was the only one in Tsipon’s fleet he could spare.”
    “Bullshit,” Jin said, eyeing Jomo, who still sat inside, nervously gripping the wheel. “It’s his way of trying to bell his dog. He knows he can’t entirely trust you.”
    An adolescent boy, his face smeared with soot, peered around the corner of the house, wide-eyed, clearly fearful of Jin. The constable often let it be known that he carried enough authority to put any Tibetan away for a year, without a judge’s order, on what in China was called administrative detention.
    “Is Colonel Tan still in the town jail?” Shan asked.
    “He’s not going anywhere. That cell will be the last room he ever sees.”
    “I need to talk with him.”
    Jin’s raucous laugh shook a flight of sparrows from a nearby bush.
    Shan did not alter his steady gaze.
    Jin turned away, lighting a cigarette as he surveyed the slopes. “Those monks could be a hundred miles away by now. Religious Affairs thinks I can just knock on a few doors and they will run out, begging me to put manacles on them.”
    Shan glanced back at the shepherd boy, considering Jin’s words. A woman was pulling the boy backward now, tears staining the soot on her face. “Your assignment is for Religious Affairs? Not Cao? Not Public Security?”
    “The Bureau of Religious Affairs has jurisdiction over monks. After all the protests last year, the policy is for Public Security to keep a low profile with monks and lamas, especially in this area, so they loan men to the bureau and put them in neckties. And Religious Affairs is taking this personally. The fire,