Mandarin Gate by Eliot Pattison

to be a nun. She watches over them.”
    “Where were they staying?”
    “They always came from the direction of the hermitage, with that girl acting like their guide.”
    “What did you sell them?”
    “Some ropes and food. Some blankets.”
    “Where would you get such things?”
    “Mostly from the Jade Crows. I do odd jobs for them. They deliver supplies to the pacification camps. Sometimes I drive or do repair work for them.”
    Shan looked at him in surprise. “But the camps are run by the People’s Armed Police. You mean they have a contract with the police?”
    “Sure. The green apes. They run the camps, they provide the trucks.”
    He considered the shepherd’s words. “The Chinese men who disturb the farms in the hills. It’s the Jade Crows, doing the work of the police.”
    Jigten shrugged. “Like I said, they have some kind of arrangement. The police prefer not to go up into the hills. They get bitten by dogs. They hear the phantom horns. They get hounded by ghosts.”
    “An arrangement with the Armed Police,” Shan said, thinking out loud. “But not with local Public Security.”
    Jigten offered no reply. Shan needed none. Those who had attacked Meng in town held Public Security in contempt. Meng had not only been attacked, she had lied about it as if she feared reporting it. He hesitated a moment, puzzling again over why she had been attacked. Not even the most arrogant gangs would risk assaulting a knob without a good reason.
    “Our headman Rapeche made a protection charm for the manager,” Jigten said abruptly, speaking toward the shadows at the back of the room. “That fat one at the gate. He gets frightened sleeping alone in that concrete building. Old Tibetan ghosts rise up in the night to haunt the Chinese in this valley,” he added with an air of satisfaction. “He confided in Rapeche after that, said we won’t stay here forever. More trucks will arrive. They will break us up and take us away to Chinese cities. They say there are entire blocks where nothing green grows, where the wind is full of grease and chemicals. Then we’ll look back at this place as a happy time. At least here we still have most of the clan together.”
    He cast a worried glance at Shan, as if remembering who his visitor was.
    “ Lha gyal lo, ” Shan whispered in a pained voice.
    “You don’t know what’s happening in Tibet. Before long, Tibet will be nothing but camps and the keepers of camps.” Jigten’s voice grew hollow. “They converted an old army base to a pacification camp on the other side of the mountain. The police bring in another truckload of Tibetans almost every week. That don’t call it a prison but that place has razor wire and guards with guns. It’s a cage with no way out. Last month they started a graveyard there.”
    As he spoke voices were raised in alarm outside. Jigten shot up and ran out the door, Shan a step behind.
    A man on the low ridge above the camp was shouting frantically, pointing down the valley. The Chinese manager was at the front gate now, crying out in his high-pitched voice, ordering everyone to return to their huts. The shepherds ignored him and ran up the ridge.
    Shan arrived at the top of the ridge panting, his gaze following the arm of a nearby shepherd as the man pointed first to the line of dense, black clouds rolling off the sacred mountain and then to the red and blue flashes in Baiyun. The town was more than a mile away but the blinking lights of police cars were plainly visible. A line of shadow was moving across the fields. Half the population of the town seemed to be fleeing their homes.
    Shan ran to his truck.
    He saw more than a dozen police cars as he reached the town, and half a dozen big trucks, all troop carriers of the People’s Armed Police, the green apes who did the heavy lifting for Public Security. He didn’t have to look for Meng. She stepped in front of his truck, then climbed into the passenger seat, as if for protection. Police were