Every Lost Country Page 12

  “But, lieutenant, that’s not a rare…Were those sympathies the point of the film?”

  “I have not yet succeeded in downloading it.”

  “I’ve never heard her mention the Dalai Lama. She doesn’t make political films—I’m sure of it—she told me that. She’s making one about a climber now.”

  “Yes, Wade John Lawson. Who has worked with Sherpas on several expeditions on our frontier. Who are ethnic Tibetans and who support the Splittist cause!”

  Book, breathing, eyes the man. “I need to go back, lieutenant. I have a patient in critical condition. Please just tell me—”

  “We shall finish here first.”

  “—have you talked to her? My daughter?”

  “In a moment, doctor. If you will only help me, I will see that you and the needy ones are taken to Drongpa in a moment, soon!”

  “It might be too late—we need blood, we need drugs.”

  “Of course, the longer you delay …”

  “So ride with me to the hospital.”

  “It’s impossible, doctor.”

  “I’ll talk to you at the hospital!”

  “I need your help now. And you will give it!”

  “Then there’s that woman—she could go into labour any time—is this how you always treat prisoners?”

  Zhao’s fist hammers the desk and he drills home his words like rivets in a wall: “Of course I cannot leave my post now! We must talk here! I need this information now!”

  He stops himself. Glances at the throbbing red light on his phone. His fist loosens—stumpy, orange-stained digits now tapping the desk. The hand drops out of sight. He resumes in a more composed tone: “Doctor…how can I help suspecting your own feelings about the Dalai Lama and the Splittist cause? Consider that when I insert your name into the, into the search engine, I discover that you were once posted in China, and perhaps understand more Mandarin than you pretend. Then I find that you are based most recently in Darjeeling, one of the chief centres of Tibetan exile activity! And then, there you are, present at the foot of a mountain where no expedition ever climbs, waiting for these Splittists to cross the border! You see why I deduce you to be a sympathizer?”

  Behind Zhao, a bookcase stuffed with Chinese volumes and a few dozen English paperbacks, literate thrillers, names like Le Carré and Ambler and Forsyth.

  “I sympathize with these ones,” Book says.

  “But with the Splittist cause …”

  “InterMed is a non-partisan NGO, lieutenant. We don’t care who our—”

  “With the Dalai Lama!”

  “Look, I just happened to be on the border when you started killing Tibetans! My daughter—”

  “You say you’re not on their side, then?”

  “Whoever’s bleeding—that’s whose side I’m on.”

  Beyond the door, a kettle’s whistle rises.

  “Doctor, I warn you, I have further proofs, all of them indicating deliberate intervention. Just as your people have always sought to do in our affairs—interfere!—force upon us opium, or treaties, or religion, or governments, as though we lack the right or the ability to arrange for ourselves!”

  Book looks down at his bloodied socks on the floor. A man without shoes is at a disadvantage. In fact, he agrees with Zhao’s last point; he nods slowly, strains to his feet. “Lieutenant—my patients.”

  “Sit down. You are hurting them by not confessing to me.”

  “If I had no family, I’d lie and tell you whatever you want, to get those people out of here. But my daughter is waiting at base camp.”

  “Ah. I’ve read also about your son, Pavlos.”

  “Read about him?” Book sinks back onto the chair, more in exhaustion than compliance. “What, on the Internet?”

  “In a moment.”

  Book’s eyes veer to that black-bound book. The kettle’s steady falsetto screaming.

  “What is that on your desk?”

  “I learned to speak your language while I was in prison, doctor. I had several years to dedicate to study. I was there as one of a group of junior officers purged”—his two-syllable phrasing makes it sound like perjured—“after the Tiananmen incident. For being too…too patient with the protestors. No, lenient, that’s the word.”

  “Lenient.”

  “At Tiananmen there were many different moments, doctor. Do not suppose your truthful news channels furnished you with all of them.”

  “But you weren’t lenient yesterday.”

  “Then why are almost all of the Splittists alive?”

  “Would they be alive if we hadn’t been there watching?”

  “Yes, of course, alive! We are not murderers—we are enacting the laws!”

  “Or if Amaris and I weren’t here now?”

  “This is not the first time that Splittists have tried to defect by your route—as you must know. As you must know, last occasion, not one was harmed!”

  “Did they promote you for that, or punish you?”

  Pondering Book with swollen eyes, Zhao looks almost bereaved. The kettle’s piercing scream finally dies.

  “After the prison sentence, I was inducted again into the PLA. In due course I became a sergeant, then a lieutenant, and for five years I am posted here. For us, Tibet is a, what is the term, a hardship posting. Very much. Such postings are an experience you know of, I understand …”

  Both phone lights are flashing now in a syncopated pattern.

  “I too have a family, Dr. Book. A wife and one son, twenty-two years old. They reside in Beijing. I see them once a year. I was once a tai chi instructor for our troops, in Beijing, but here…here, my few men would rather play the electronic games, and MP3. Yet I believe I may finally be transferred from Tibet, because of this work I have just done, especially if I can, if I may say, finish the job. The evidence plainly proves that you and Miss McRae are guilty of interfering and abetting the Splittists, but a confession is final proof. Without it, without such proof, my position here could become…awkward. In exchange, I would ensure that your daughter is kept perfectly safe.”

  “My daughter? What are you …”

  Zhao lifts the black book with both hands.

  “Half an hour ago Corporal Hua returned from the guard post with this. It seems to be your daughter’s diary. I have read only a few pages, but already I have found out so much.”

  Through the roar of hot blood in his ears Book hears the spine crack as Zhao opens the journal and turns it face out. The words, seen from where Book leans on the lip of his chair, are blurred, but the page’s pattern—blocks of tight cursive alternating with sketches and cartoons—is like a voiceprint. He makes out the sketch of the Chinese adjusting their border, simple line figures around a bright red flag—she showed him that one just days ago.

  Book extends a hand. It’s visibly trembling. Zhao closes the journal.

  “No, doctor.”

  “Where is she.”

  “Held at the guard post. We assume she infiltrated across the border soon after you were arrested. I am willing to have her brought here at once, if you will make a full confession. Her position there…she is not being harmed, of course, but her position there is somewhat awkward, as one of the guards was killed when they attempted to capture her, and his fellows are unhappy. I think it would be better to have her here.”

  “Killed?” Book says numbly. “No. What do you mean?”

  “An accident. His name was Li Bo. He was nineteen years old.” A silence, then Zhao puts on his horn-rims, flips pages and turns the journal back toward Book. “Now—in this diary, beside one of the most recent entries, I find this, what is the term, this small label which you will recognize …”

  FREE TIBET, a glossy decal, the Dalai Lama’s grinning face superimposed like a sun on the Tibetan flag. Above it, in pencil, Sophie has cross-hatched a mountain range.

  “Will you not respond at all, doctor?”

  “The Sherpas,” he gets out, “they gave her that. She’s just a kid and she was
hanging out with them. She takes on all sorts of causes, but she’s not…Give that back, it’s not yours to read!” Unconsciously he is rising and hears something and glances over his shoulder. The Tamagotchi player stands with a submachinegun in the widened opening of the door.

  “In the accompanying entry, she writes—although I cannot make out some words—that she likes to sit on the Chinese side of the border at the sunsets, but that she knows it’s not really China, it is Tibet.”

  No, he thinks. Something’s off here. He shakes his head—more a shudder. It’s as hard to think clearly when you’re shocked and tired and scared as when you’re breathless at 21,000 feet, the highest point he and Sophie hiked to from base camp.

  “And an entry from, ah, three days ago mentions that she has been in some trouble with authorities in Toronto. And that she has strong sympathies for ‘the persecuted.’ And where, I ask myself, where must she learn such ideas? My son is very much like myself.”

  “It’s not always like that in Canada.”

  … attempted to capture her …

  “No!” says Book, the cogs finally clinching. “Wait—you’d have brought her here if you had her, not made a driver go all the way up to the guard post and back for her journal.”

  Zhao’s eyes dart down and to the side.

  “You’d have wanted to question her yourself, now!”

  Zhao shakes the empty cigarette pack, tosses it back on the desk. The man is more than depleted. He too is addled, frightened.

  “Doctor—”

  “Why isn’t she here, though? Has something happened? How was the soldier—”

  “Enough, doctor!” he cries, raising his hand. “Yes. No, perhaps we have not captured her, not yet, but we will have her, very soon. The border security guards are tracking her down the River Khiong at this moment. She dropped the diary near to the guard post.”

  “I can help,” Book says—“help you find her. Let me join the search. I know her, I know the sort of places she’d hide in. I can get her to give herself up without…creating more trouble for you. Please! You don’t want a child hurt on your watch.”

  A Western child, he means. Book is playing the white card and is too helpless for shame. In bagh chal, the goats beat the tigers any way they can.

  “But doctor—you have the wounded here, and we shall catch her very soon.”

  “If I help you, will you go join those guards and see she isn’t hurt?”

  “Help me, doctor?”

  “Give you what you want. Your confession.”

  “Well…perhaps. Perhaps I could. Yes. I or Sergeant Jangbu.”

  “You. Right now.”

  “And you would make a full admission, on video?”

  “On video?”

  Zhao’s lips curve in a small, chilling smile. “I do own a digital camera, doctor, but I feel that using Miss McRae’s superior device would be a, a poetic justice.”

  Silence. Book finally says, “Palden would have to take me and the wounded ones and the pregnant woman to the hospital immediately.”

  “Very well, then. When we are done. You were all to be moved this evening anyway, tomorrow at the latest.” Zhao lifts one eyebrow slightly, drolly. “This is not some Guantanamo, doctor.”

  “And the second I’ve handed over their care, Palden will drive me to wherever Sophie is, and we’re not to be separated afterward, not till the embassy deals with this.”

  “I will do my utmost.”

  “You realize when I ‘confess,’ I’ll state clearly that my daughter and Ms. McRae are completely innocent?”

  Zhao’s right hand darts down and behind his chair back, as if he’s crossing fingers against his promises. “I must give this point more reflection.”

  “Not if you want your video.”

  For moments neither man blinks, then Zhao looks up at something behind Book—probably the soldier in the doorway. Finally, audibly, Zhao deflates. “Very well, doctor. But the world will draw its own deductions about such ‘innocence’—as it will do if you try to withdraw your confession when you are eventually released to your country, whenever that should be.”

  Book nods. “Then I’ll do it as soon as we’ve got them to hospital and you’ve taken me to her.”

  “What?” Zhao’s heavy eyebrows rise. The scrape of a drawer and he lifts Amaris’s camera into view. “Doctor, you mistake yourself. You will have to make this confession now, at once!”

  “Now? No, after.”

  “Or nothing happens.”

  Book is silent. He can feel the seconds, minutes, melting away.

  “You lied to me a minute ago,” he says. “How can I …”

  “I had not yet given my word. I now give my word.”

  Sophana’s feet leaving tracks on the earth, her light, coltish stride beginning to slow as she peers back over her shoulder. He meets her brown eyes and she seems to call out to him but there is no sound. Papa.

  Book bows his head. “Turn it on, then. You’ll have your fake confession.”

  “Nevertheless, doctor, I know you are guilty.”

  “Maybe,” he says under his breath, “but not in the way you think.”

  On the walk back to the cell with Palden and the Chinese giant, Book’s silence makes Palden even chattier. They pass Amaris’s cell. She sits up, trying to read Book’s face with her intensely homing eyes. He gives her a tight, coping smile. She won’t be fooled. He’s shattered, sick at heart. They pass on down the hallway and the giant unlocks the door of the main cell. “Ah!” Palden says, “I now remember—I made a Canadian friend when I worked at the Howard Johnson!”

  “I’ll check Lhundup first.”

  “Oh, sure.”

  “Then we bring him out to the truck.”

  “His name was René,” Palden says, “and in Montreal he works as a, a …” Distracted, trying to find the word, Palden follows Book a step or two inside the cell. It’s a fatal lapse. The assault comes without warning. Norbu and his gang friend spring out of the dim corner beside the door, the whites of their widened eyes identically fierce and clear. Book is between them and Palden so that he’s jostled backward, and something, the gun’s muzzle, jabs into his spine. He twists clear, regains balance. Old Dechen, who’d seemed asleep on the floor, has lunged with a weird reptilian litheness to lock her arms around Palden’s knees while Norbu and his friend tackle him. Palden’s last phrase—“as a clown!”—ends in a gasp as he falls. The child’s father, Sonam—till now a quiet, kind-faced older man—charges out through the cell door at the giant soldier, who drops the key ring and raises both hands, yelling in a deep, shocked voice as Sonam, and now one of the young monks, launch into him. The soldier is tall but he’s unarmed, thin, ungainly, and Tibetans, as Book saw in Darjeeling, are very strong. They buckle the giant back into the wall of the corridor, his cap flying off, head thunking. Norbu is up now, gripping Palden’s submachinegun and trying to wrench it off his body by the strap. His kneeling friend pins Palden’s arms. The strap jerks loose. Norbu has the gun. A second monk joins the attack, shedding his maroon parka to expose his robes, his right shoulder bare. The two other monks stand paralyzed as if in argument with themselves. Lhundup, despite his wound, has raised himself onto his elbow and is urging on the attackers in a hoarse whisper.

  “Lew!” Amaris calls, “what the hell’s going on down there?”

  Choden stands in the doorway above the figures grappling on the floor and chants some phrase with quiet intensity. She might be urging them to stop their attack or to escalate it—but now clearly she’s trying to block Norbu, to keep him from going out into the hallway with the gun. She raises her palms. Her magnified eyes plead. Norbu jabbers into her face in a strained, staccato voice, gripping the little gun across his belly.

  Book pulls back on the hood of the kid attacking Palden, who is on the floor, covering his face with his hands as his assailants strike down with short, clubbing blows. The monk’s bare shoulder flexes. Palden’s head bounces on the concrete, his
beret gone. Dechen, shrieking oaths in a cracked voice, slaps at Palden’s legs and crotch with the tin teapot. Norbu has shoved past Choden and now plants himself outside the cell, his shoes braced wide, his cap brim askew, aiming the little toy of a weapon up the hallway.

  “Norbu!” Book yells. “Amaris, down on the floor!”

  Book has dragged Norbu’s friend up and off Palden, but the kid pivots, his eyes raw and blind, and shoves Book, who reels backward, trying not to fall over Lasya and the child—though now he sees Lasya crouching in the back corner by the hole in the floor, hugging the sobbing child tight to her belly. Norbu’s friend turns and dives back onto Palden, who is no longer trying to parry the blows but just covering up, curled fetal. Book has to leave him there. He skids past Choden, out into the hall. He reaches for Norbu, who’s fumbling to cock the gun. The steel door at the head of the hall, some thirty steps off, opens and Zhao and the hard-faced man and the Tamagotchi player spill through. “Stop!” Book cries, but too late—the weapon juddering in Norbu’s hands shouts him down and the bangs echo, overlap in a shattering crash. Up the hallway the three figures vibrate and blur as if caught in a seismic tremor. A light bulb detonates. Sparks carom and incandesce off the heavy steel door. Shots come back in reply and one sizzles past Book’s ear. Norbu has moved away from him, out of reach. The monk crouching by the unconscious giant slams backward. The giant’s long torso jolts as a red gash appears in his arm. His eyes spring open and he’s staring at Book in the dazed, stricken manner of a child waking in a strange place. “Amaris, stay down!” Book yells, though the gunfire is stopping now, echoes waning, no one left at the head of the hallway to fire back at Norbu.

  “Lewis…please!” he hears Palden whisper from the cell behind him. He doesn’t know where to begin.

  Amaris looks up from the cot where she has been curled, her fingers meshed over her skull. Her ears still thunder. Three bodies sprawl on the concrete around the heavy steel door, which has closed itself on its pneumatic hinge. Zhao lies limply on his side, totally still except for his small eyes, which dart and swivel, for a moment meeting hers. The wound in the side of his chest looks like a Remembrance Day poppy. His pistol lies on the concrete a few steps from him and beside it his horn-rims sit, upright, undamaged, as if neatly set there. The handsome, muscular guy is slumped on the floor against the bloodied wall with his legs stretched out, his eyes staring blandly, his white T-shirt buttoned across the chest with a line of holes that look too small and neat to have killed him. A third soldier lies prone, his small machinegun half under his torso, his head not far from Amaris’s cell. Around his body the blood pools quickly, in appalling silence, a thin rill of it now flowing across the concrete toward Amaris.