CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Shan had learned from the lamas how to confront the lies that had once ruled his life, and how to abandon both the lies and the comfort they had given him. The lie that for twenty years as an investigator in Beijing he had made a difference. The lie that he and his wife, or at least he and his son, would someday be reconciled and reunited. And the lie that his release from the gulag meant he could live the rest of his life in freedom. He had come to accept that he would be returned to a hard labor camp eventually. For Shan, in the life he had chosen it was as inevitable as death, and perhaps above all else, the Tibetans had taught him not only to stop fearing, but to embrace the inevitable.

Yet somehow he always clung to the illusion that Lokesh could not be touched, that thirty years of his life had been enough to give to Beijing. It was an illusion that fed Shan’s twisted view of the world, the view that said everything else was worth it, all the suffering could be endured, because a few wise, joyful creatures like Lokesh survived and walked the remote corners of Tibet.

But Lokesh would not survive. He had been taken by the soldiers and howlers, who had been told that the abbot of Sangchi was in the hands of purbas. The two would be kept together, for that was the way their handlers would prefer it. They would use Lokesh, make him suffer to extract whatever it was they wanted from Tenzin. With only one prisoner to interrogate they would eventually resort to chemicals, as they had with Shan in his early days of capture. But chemicals gave unpredictable results, and though few Tibetans would give information under torture, they would often surrender it when a companion was tortured because of them.

He let himself drift down with the crowd that had assembled around the new prisoners as they were conveyed into the camp. No one questioned him. No one came to put manacles on him. Tuan did not even seem to have noticed Shan. The excitement over the discovery of the famous abbot of Sangchi seemed to distract everyone.

He had been so blind. Gendun had known, and Shopo. Someone had died, Gendun had said. He had meant the abbot had somehow died, and Tenzin was trying to find a new life. He recalled Tenzin’s first words to him, that day overlooking the red river. It was possible to start a new incarnation in the same body, because Shan had done so. Images flashed through Shan’s mind: of Tenzin’s anguish over Drakte’s death, of the bitter way he had heaved a rock into the lake when Shan had suggested a pebble might capture his guilt, of the days and weeks he had watched the tall Tibetan carry dung. Shan had suspected Tenzin was the infamous Tiger, trying to reform after a life of violence. But some other dark weight had hung around the soul of the abbot of Sangchi, and he had decided to start again. And now they were dragging him back in chains, back to the particular prison he had fled.

As the soldiers led their prisoners past the army tents a loud argument broke out. A beefy soldier whom Shan remembered as Lin’s sergeant shouted that the prisoners belonged to the 54th Mountain Combat Brigade. But the howlers kept pushing the two men toward one of the white utility vehicles. Tuan hovered close to Tenzin and stood with four of his men behind him as the sergeant railed, then one of the men in white shirts stepped to the soldier’s side, spoke quietly, and handed the man a business card. As Shan stepped closer, trying to hear, a hand closed around his shoulder.

“You must have a death wish,” Winslow growled, and pulled Shan away. “Jenkins told me what he knows. Mostly it’s that you are number one on the list for the 54th Combat Brigade. They have your name. They think you may be a criminal escapee, that you kidnapped Lin. They’re sending more troops in. Looking for Lin, looking for you.”

Shan let himself be pulled by Winslow as he watched numbly. Lokesh and Tenzin were being photographed again, standing by the white trucks, wearing leg manacles now, their hands unfettered. For appearances, for the photographs, because the howlers would not want to show the abbot in chains. Shan stared, still perplexed, and did not protest when Winslow pushed him into the bay of a cargo truck and followed him over the tailgate. Shan hardly noticed when the truck began to move. He opened his mouth to call out for Lokesh but his tongue was too dry to speak. The truck passed quickly through the gap in the low saddle of land and the camp was gone.

Shan gazed out the rear of the truck for a long time, half expecting to see the white trucks speeding behind them. Lokesh and Tenzin would go to a Public Security lockup, which would most likely be in the nearest large town. He pulled out the map he had taken from Jenkins’s conference room. Wenquan, or maybe Yanshiping. He would get out of the truck at whatever town they passed through. But maybe the soldiers would take their prisoners south, directly to Lhasa. In which case he should jump out at the first crossroads. And do what? Throw stones when the soldiers raced by?

“Best thing we can do is get some sleep,” Winslow said as the truck began a steep descent through the long narrow gorge that led out of the mountains.

“Sleep?” Shan asked in confusion.

Winslow gestured at the map in his hand. “It’ll be late by the time we arrive. At least seven hours’ drive, if the roads are clear.”

Shan looked about the cargo bay. It was mostly empty, a few cardboard cartons were stacked against the cab and secured with twine to the slats of the bay. There were ropes and a pile of what appeared to be dirty coveralls, and several empty shipping pallets with the oil company’s name stenciled on them.

“Golmud?” he asked in disbelief.

Winslow nodded. “Venture headquarters. Center of operations. Where we can find out about Zhus crew. Where Jenkins said somebody accessed Larkin’s electronic mail account.”

“When?”

“Two weeks ago.”

“But that was before she died,” Shan said in confusion.

“Right. Except she was supposed to be in the mountains on field work at the time. Someone used her pass code at Golmud two weeks ago.”

Shan stared at the American and shook his head. “I can’t,” he protested, and put his hand on the side of the truck to lift himself up. “Lokesh—”

“Lokesh will get little help from you if you are arrested,” a woman’s voice interjected.

Shan and Winslow both spun about to see a shape rising out of the pile of clothing. Shan stared at the lean, sinewy woman, the only person in the oil camp who had known Lokesh.

“This is Somo,” he heard himself say to the American.

“You know her?” Winslow asked in a skeptical tone.

“We met once. We have mutual friends. You saw her, too, handing us jackets and hats.”

Winslow nodded with a grin at the purba. “We owe you for that,” he said, then looked back at Shan. “So you’re saying she’s a—”

“A friend.”

Winslow nodded again.

Somo stepped forward and sat beside Shan. “We will find out where he is taken. I know he was in lao gai for many years. He will know how to survive.”

“Not if they consider him one of those who helped Tenzin hide. The abbot of Sangchi,” he said, trying to get used to the thought of the lanky silent man, the gatherer of yak dung, as one of the most prominent lamas in all Tibet.

“Why would you go to Golmud?” Shan asked her.

“I am on the rolls of the venture as an administrative assistant. I have been reassigned,” she said with a narrow smile, eyeing the American uneasily.

“Winslow has helped us,” Shan said, and explained how the American had stopped Colonel Lin from arresting them earlier.

The woman nodded slowly, as if she had realized Shan was inviting her to share her secrets. “I asked for the reassignment. It was part of the plan. I am supposed to … I was supposed to get access to the central computer at the base camp to create a personnel file that showed Tenzin to be a worker in the venture. Then arrange for him to be assigned to a camp in the far north, near Mongolia. From there it would have been simple to get him out. Mongolia, then Russia, then Europe and America. He was supposed to meet important people in the West who can help Tibet.”

“But the government was looking on the Indian border,” Shan said, and fixed the woman with a pointed stare. “It’s where Drakte went, isn’t it, during those weeks after he took us to the hermitage. He disappeared. He went south to lay a false trail.”

Somo looked into her hands a moment, biting her lip as though Shan’s words caused her pain. “The one who planned all this, our leader, he said Drakte was the best for such a job. Drakte went to towns in the south with stories of seeing the abbot on the road at night, always farther south. He even had things of the abbot’s, and said Tenzin had traded them for food. So the knobs would find a trail of evidence.”

“What kind of things?” Shan asked.

“Personal things, objects which anyone investigating would know belonged to him: A pen case. An old book given to the abbot by his mother. A prayer amulet he had been photographed wearing. Tenzin was told nothing from his former life could stay with him, for even though we might disguise him, its possession would betray him.”

Shan fingered the ivory rosary in his pocket. Had Drakte kept one thing, perhaps the most precious thing, to return to Tenzin when he left China?

“Then we changed Tenzin,” Somo continued. “The way he walked. We had his hair grow long. We taught him mannerisms of the dropka.”

“Should have been foolproof,” Winslow said.

“Should have,” Somo agreed. “But someone found out. Perhaps someone saw him who we didn’t think would recognize him. We thought all the searchers would be in the south. We thought he would be safe at that hermitage, and on the caravan.”

“Who?” Shan asked. “Who would have seen him in Lhasa, then again while he was fleeing in the changtang? When did he leave Lhasa? Was there a meeting, a conference where someone from the north would have seen him?”

“That Serenity Campaign. There was a big meeting to launch it. The abbot of Sangchi gave a speech, and two days later he disappeared, before the conference had even concluded.”

“Colonel Lin,” Winslow suggested. “He came to Yapchi, from Lhasa.”

Somo gave her head a slight shake, and frowned. “Most of his troops are in the south still, watching out for purbas taking Tenzin across the border. As if Lin wanted to keep our sham alive. He must have come north because of that stone, because he knew it would be returned to the valley. Because he is obsessed with that stone perhaps.”

“No,” Shan said. “Not because of the stone. No matter what the Tibetans may think of the chenyi deity, to Lin it is only a stone. Drakte took the stone,” Shan said, looking at Somo again. “And he had someone else with him.” He unfolded the photograph he had taken from Lin’s pocket. “This is why Lin was so interested in the stone—because it would lead him to Tenzin.”

Somo stared at him with a hard glint, not of surprise, but of assessment, as if trying to decide how many more secrets she dare divulge. “All right. Tenzin took something, something secret about the soldiers, about the 54th Mountain Combat soldiers. Military intelligence.”

“Tenzin?” Shan asked. “He’s no spy.”

“No,” Somo agreed. “I don’t know what it was. I don’t think they planned it, from the way Drakte talked about it. He was angry at Tenzin for increasing the danger to them. Probably Tenzin wanted to help the purbas with something, because the purbas were making possible his escape.”

But to Lin, Shan knew, it would still mean the abbot was a spy. It made it personal. Tenzin had shamed Lin, or even worse, might have information that could harm the entire army. “Lin’s trying to cover himself,” Shan said, the thought reaching his tongue as it crossed his mind. “He never told his superiors. He’s trying to recover the missing papers before the damage is done. If the army command suspected military secrets were in the hands of the fugitive abbot, they would be scouring the countryside, erecting roadblocks everywhere.”

“But why would Tenzin think it was safe to come to Yapchi today?” Winslow asked.

“He didn’t, not necessarily,” Shan said. “Jokar said herbs must be gathered in Yapchi Valley for the healing. I should have known. It was a thing the man Tenzin wants to become would do, a thing Lokesh would do without a second thought.”

Winslow fixed Shan with a sad gaze. The fugitive abbot had been captured because an ancient medicine lama had asked for herbs to heal an ailing Chinese colonel. The thought somehow reminded Shan of someone else. “Did you go to that durtro like you said, with Gendun and Drakte?” he asked Somo.

Her face tightened, and she nodded. “Herders came, many herders, and said prayers, and talked about what a brave man Drakte was. Gendun stayed afterwards. He said Drakte was having a bad time of things, and he was going back with Shopo to continue the rites. I think they meant for the full ritual.” The traditional death rite period was forty-nine days. Somo watched a range of mountains recede in the distance. “There was something … I don’t think it meant anything really. But when I was leaving Gendun sought me out. He said we must all learn to understand the dead better. He said to give Shan something, that he had learned something about Drakte.” She reached into her pocket and extended a chakpa, one of the bronze sand funnels.

Shan stared at the funnel, struck dumb for a moment by the memory of Gendun teaching him how to use it, then slowly he lifted it from Somo’s palm. He examined it carefully, perplexed, then looked inside to see a small slip of paper resting against the inner wall. He slipped the paper out with his finger and read it. He looked up at Somo. “Drakte carried the deity in a blanket,” Shan read to his two companions, “but he was learning to unwrap it.”

Somo looked at Shan with apology in her eyes, as if she felt she had troubled him with a meaningless message.

“The eye was kept in a little felt blanket,” Winslow suggested.

Shan said nothing, but read the paper again, and again. Somo offered an uncertain nod to the American and looked back at the retreating mountains.

“So now what do you do?” Shan asked the woman after several minutes.

Somo did not shift her gaze from the mountains. “When I started from Lhasa three weeks ago, Drakte told me we were doing this to help a Chinese who was going north to help Tibetans. I didn’t know about the abbot then, just the stone.” She paused and looked at Shan with puzzled eyes. “The abbot and the eye of the deity, in a way they were the same thing.”

Shan nodded. “The purbas’ help with the eye was just a cover, a way to get Tenzin north in secret. Who would have looked for him on a salt caravan?” He looked up into the woman’s face and somehow knew they were sharing the same thought. Drakte had died to warn them, to make sure Tenzin stayed free. Somo was not giving up on Tenzin.

“I am going to the computer as soon as we arrive in Golmud,” Somo stated, “in the middle of the night. I will still make Tenzin an employee, under the false name we devised.”

“But he’s gone,” Winslow said.

“It’s still my assignment,” Somo said in a voice that had grown distant. “And after it’s over, whatever happens, I am going to find out about Drakte’s killer.”

“I think,” Winslow said, studying first Shan, then Somo, “it’s not over until you find the killer.”

They watched the landscape in silence again.

“You can get into the electronic records?” Winslow asked after a long time.

“At university, they made sure I had advanced computer training before returning to teach Tibetan children. With chalk and slate.”

Winslow explained about Melissa Larkin, and they spoke together for an hour about the mysteries that had been woven together at Yapchi.

“Did Drakte know that man Chao who was murdered?” Shan asked. Somehow he already knew the answer.

“Yes,” Somo said readily. “He was a Tibetan. Many people don’t know that, because of the name he took.”

“And you knew him also?”

“A month ago Drakte and I were planning to spend two days together by Lamtso. We had been talking about making a family together,” she announced in a matter-of-fact tone that caused Shan to turn away, embarrassed, then she paused and looked out the rear of the truck. “But instead, he asked me to go with him to Amdo town, because he had discovered an old friend there we had to meet. He said there would always be time for us to go to Lamtso,” she said in a tight voice. “We met at an old stable being used as a garage, and we sat on a bench and ate cold dumplings with his friend, whose name was different when Drakte knew him as a boy. They had me sit in the middle, like a referee.”

“What did Chao do? How did he act?” Had it all been a trap to capture Drakte? Shan wondered.

“He was scared. He asked if Drakte knew Director Tuan, like he was warning Drakte. But Drakte just laughed about Tuan. They did not discuss things that were dangerous. Just talk about life on the changtang and things from when they were young. It was just old friends meeting again, that’s all. That Chao, he embraced Drakte when we parted and said he was sorry.”

“About what?”

“Just that he was sorry. About everything I guess.”

“Did Drakte have that ledger with him?” Shan asked.

Somo shook her head. “But afterwards he worked on it all night, because he said he was going to meet with Chao again. I thought at first it was something he was doing for the Lotus Book, to record how the district is so stricken by poverty. It includes every village, every farm, every herding family in Norbu district. Signed by the head of each family.”

“The district,” Shan said. “Not the township.”

Somo nodded. “The Religious Affairs district. The Norbu district that Tuan heads for Religious Affairs.”

From a pocket Somo produced a slip of yellow paper and handed it to Shan. “I nearly forgot. Drakte had this in his boot. I keep trying to understand it. I think it came from Chao, but not when I was with them.”

It appeared to be a payroll record, with one word handwritten at the top. Dorje, it said, followed by a dash, like it was an address, or person. The dorje was a Buddhist symbol, the small scepter-like object that was sometimes called the thunderbolt to symbolize the teachings of Buddha. Below the name were two columns of handwritten numbers, the first a list of twelve identification numbers, the second a group of twenty. Bureau of Religious Affairs, Amdo, someone had written under the first column, with a check by each identification number in the column. Beside the two top sets of numbers of the first column was written Director Tuan, and below it the single Chinese word wo. It meant I or me. It could mean, Shan realized, Deputy Director Chao. Under the second column was written Public Security.

“It’s not his writing,” Somo said. “Not Drakte’s. It must be Chao’s. I asked some questions,” she said pointedly. “The head of Public Security in Amdo town was reassigned months ago. No replacement was named. Since Director Tuan used to be the head of Public Security here, he offered to be the interim supervisor. He began to consolidate things. Including payroll.”

“You mean the knobs here are being paid by Director Tuan of Religious Affairs?”

Somo bit her lower lip as she nodded.

Gyalo had warned about knobs who did not look like knobs. It explained why the howlers in white, military-style shirts all looked like Public Security.

“And one more thing: it looks like payroll data for the knobs in the district. But only fifteen knobs are known.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean the purbas watch the knobs in Amdo town. There have been fifteen stationed out of there for years. We checked with those who clean the barracks. Fifteen based in Amdo, traveling with Tuan sometimes. So there’s another five somewhere else. Working in secret.”

In secret. The five could be anywhere. They could be wearing robes at Norbu. He remembered the camp Dremu had found above the Plain of Flowers, after the meadow had been burned. Had it been knobs? Shan extended the paper back toward Somo, but she raised her palm to decline, as if the paper frightened her now.

The truck bounced and slid along the rough track until it finally reached the north-south highway and picked up speed, then climbed and descended, and climbed again, through rough, barren terrain, along what Shan knew was one of the highest roadways in the world. He slept, and when he woke they were traveling through a snowbound landscape. After dark, past the snow, the truck stopped at a cluster of rundown mudbrick buildings for gas. The driver filled a thermos with hot water, threw in a handful of tea, and left it in the rear of the truck with two tin mugs and a bag of apples.

Shan slept fitfully, starting awake each time a faster vehicle overtook them. Heavy trucks and buses frequented the road. Twice they passed army convoys which had halted on the shoulder.

Several hours after sunset the air became thick and acrid. Dim sulfur-colored streetlights appeared and the truck began weaving around men and women on bicycles, its horn blaring. They passed blocks of dingy grey buildings and factories belching thick smoke. Shan watched out the back of the truck, standing now, holding onto the frame of the cargo bay. It was China, or at least the China that hundreds of millions of Chinese knew.

“God-forsaken place, Golmud,” Winslow observed.

Shan said nothing. God-forsaken perhaps, but it was the closest he had been to China in over five years. There were other smells he noticed mixed with the factory smog. Sesame oil, chili peppers, coriander, fried pork, ginger. A woman rode past on a bicycle, holding a bamboo pole on which were skewered four roasted ducks. A man rode by in the opposite direction, balancing a long rolled carpet on his handlebars. An aged woman on a bench tended a brazier with little spits of roasted crab apples. For a moment Shan fought an urge to just go sit with her, and smell the intermingled diesel and spices, the scent of modern China.

Thirty minutes after leaving the city, under a brilliant floodlight mounted on a tall metal pole they turned onto a broad gravel road wide enough for four trucks. Idled vehicles began to appear on the right side, dozens of vehicles: dumptrucks, bulldozers, towing trucks, truck trailers, cement mixers. It was a huge parking lot for heavy equipment. More floodlights on poles appeared every hundred feet, and they entered what appeared to be a parking lot for trailers identical to those used at Yapchi. Dozens of trailers, over a hundred, Shan estimated, in orderly rows, a city of trailers. As the truck slowed he swung his head out and looked forward. There was nothing else except four enormous cinderblock buildings facing each other, creating a huge square of gravel perhaps two hundred yards on each side.

The truck stopped at the edge of the empty, open square and the driver, after rapping hard on the rear window of the cab, walked away, stretching his arms over his head, without a word to them. They climbed out cautiously, peering about the empty compound. Shan took a few hesitant steps toward the only building whose windows were lit, gravel crunching loudly under his boots. It was one o’clock in the morning.

In the dim orange glow of the sulfur lamps, with a gibbous moon rising over it, the huge yard had the air of a stark, sturdy temple compound in repose. There was a strange vibration in the air, a beating, as of a distant drum. Then suddenly one of the doors of the building he was facing opened and loud rock-and-roll music poured into the yard. Two men staggered into the night, holding onto each other to stay upright, waving energetically at the new arrivals then turning toward the huge complex of trailers.

Shan stood, exploring the strange, unexpected feeling that rose within. He had entered a different world, or at least a world he had not known for years. He had last seen drunken men, had last heard such music, had last walked in the night under such lights, in Beijing, in his prior incarnation.

Winslow tapped him on the shoulder as though he suspected Shan of napping on his feet, then pulled him toward the door the men had exited. They entered a short hallway, lined in unpainted plywood, illuminated by a single naked, intensely bright bulb. The walls on both sides held long bulletin boards which overflowed with papers of many shapes, sizes, and colors, and in several languages. Shan glanced at them in confusion. Monday Night, one said in English, African Queen, Bring your own Leeches. Another said, in Chinese, All Dogs Found in Trailers Will Be Donated to the Kitchen. Lost, One Monkey, the top of another said in English and French. A poster for the Foreign Affairs Branch of the Public Security Bureau reminded foreigners to strictly observe the terms of their entry visas. An announcement in the style of a banner stated that all unassigned workers would be expected to assist in assembling platforms for the upcoming May Day celebration. There was even a bulletin from the Bureau of Religious Affairs reminding venture workers that any religious artifacts found in the field were to be surrendered to the people’s government.

The corridor led to a darkened hall that ran the length of the long building, with many doors on either side. Directly across from them was a door marked Infirmary, in Chinese and English. Twenty feet away on the opposite side was a set of open double doors, through which red light flooded out, flickering in time to the music. The sound was almost unbearably loud to Shan, but no other door, no other place in the compound seemed to show any sign of activity. With a mock bow, Winslow gestured them through the doors. Somo stared at her feet self-consciously, and Shan saw her clutch at a piece of turquoise that had appeared in her hand, her remembrance from Drakte, then she swallowed hard and followed Winslow into the bar.

The room, nearly sixty feet long and perhaps twenty-five wide, was jammed with people. No one gave them more than a glance as they worked their way toward an empty table at the rear. At one end was a bar, constructed of unpainted timber, with two men standing in front of shelves stacked with bottles of beer and hard liquor—not just the Chinese mainstays, but Western whiskeys, Russian vodka, French brandy, British gin, and, conspicuously displayed under a small spotlight, a bottle of hejie jiu, lizard wine from Guangxi, complete with a dead lizard suspended in the bottle. Men and women, many in green jackets, were raucously ordering drinks at the bar. On a stage at one corner a huge machine with a television screen displayed video images of women in fields of flowers and English words scrolling across the bottom of the screen, with a small ball bouncing over the words. A stout Han man wearing a purple silk shirt sang into a microphone, standing close to the screen, swaying, staring intensely, expectantly, as if he were about to jump into the field to join the women. A small crowd milled about the stage, some jeering, some calling words of encouragement to the man.

Two of the walls were plastered with posters, most of them of handsome men and women with images of martial arts, beautiful mountains, sleek cars, or other handsome people in negligible bathing suits behind them. Each had captions of what Shan assumed were movies, in English, Chinese, or French. He stared at them a moment, vaguely remembering that once he had attended movies, but he couldn’t recall where, or when.

At the opposite end of the room where the light was dimmer, there were two tattered sofas and a dozen high stools. Several young women were perched on the stools, as though on display, all wearing heavy makeup, tight low-cut dresses, elaborately styled hair and high boots of brightly colored vinyl. Half a dozen Westerners sat at a table near the stage, burly men with big hands, four of them smoking cigars, one with his head resting in his palms, elbows on the table, as if asleep. With the Westerners was a well-groomed middle-aged Han man wearing a blue dress shirt, who watched the man on the stage with an uneasy smile.

“Mai xiao nu,” Winslow announced with a sense of wonder as they sat down, staring back at the overdressed women. It meant women selling smiles. “Mai xiao nu,” he repeated with a grin, as if he found the words amusing. When Somo blushed he shrugged apologetically, then declared that he would get them soft drinks and strode toward the bar. Somo looked at Shan, biting her lower lip. She stood and stepped purposefully toward the Chinese man sitting with the Westerners. She leaned over him a moment; he looked up with what Shan thought was relief, offered a gesture of farewell to his companions, and walked with Somo to the door. They stood and spoke for less than a minute until, with a worried glance toward Shan, she followed the man down the corridor.

Shan studied the strange collection of people in the room. His eyes began to sting from the tobacco smoke. A man nearby began belching repeatedly as his companions applauded. Shan could not shake the feeling he was being watched. What had Jenkins called the headquarters camp? Hell on wheels.

Winslow appeared a moment later with three red cans of American soda with a Chinese label, and the two sat uneasily for ten minutes before Somo reappeared with the man in the blue shirt, who distributed key rings with plastic tags like hotel keys to Shan and Somo. Each tag held a letter of the English alphabet and a number. The man introduced himself to Winslow as the administrative manager, and explained that Winslow would be accommodated in the special housing for distinguished visitors. Shan and Winslow exchanged a nervous glance. They were being split up. The American frowned but, as the manager turned and gestured him toward the door, he rose to follow the man. “In the morning,” he said uneasily, and soon disappeared out the door with the manager.

“There are separate quarters for female workers,” Somo announced unhappily as she downed her drink and pocketed her key.

“I will sleep in that truck,” Shan suggested.

“No,” Somo said nervously. “It could be moved, even driven to some other camp. And I saw a security patrol in the hallway. Not police or soldiers, just men in brown jackets. But if you’re found without a worker’s card you’ll be taken into Golmud, or worse. They have trouble with thieves infiltrating the camp.”

Five minutes later he was wandering along the dark rows of trailers. At the end of each row was a dimly lit sign with a letter. Each trailer had a huge number painted over its center door. He found his assigned trailer, unlocked the door, stepped inside, and found himself standing between two long rows of metal bunkbeds, halt of which were occupied with sleeping figures. Two men sat on a cot at one end playing mah jhong by the light of a flashlight. Shan moved in the opposite direction and found an empty bunk at the end of the trailer. He was asleep seconds after his head touched the pillow.

It seemed only moments later when someone began pushing one of his feet. He woke with a start, remembering Somo’s warning about the security patrols. Sunlight poured through the small metal-framed windows of the trailer.

“Breakfast stops in ten minutes, buddy,” declared a young Han Chinese man at his bedside. “Sorry,” he said as he saw Shan’s nervous reaction. “If you wind up waiting in line most of the day for a job assignment you won’t be able to eat until tonight.” The man studied Shan uncertainly, wiped his thin, wispy moustache, and shrugged.

Shan mumbled his thanks and followed the man outside, warily studying the long alley between the rows of trailers before stepping beside the young Chinese.

“I saw a truck by the ops center,” the Han said. “You must have come in late. From Tsaidam?” he asked, referring to the huge oil field in western Qinghai, one of the most famous in all China.

“Yapchi,” Shan said.

The man glanced at him in surprise. “You asked to rotate out of Yapchi? Are you crazy? I hear there’s going to be big bonuses there. American,” he added. “I love Americans. Hamburgers. Las Vegas.”

They arrived at the same big building Shan and his friends had been in the night before, but entered now at the opposite end, stepping directly into a huge messhall. A gust of humid air poured over him as the door closed, carrying with it a mélange of scents: Pickled cabbage. Bacon. Cheese. Black pepper. Cigarette smoke. Eggs. Strong black tea. Fried rice. Coffee. Marinated fish.

Shan wandered around the room until he spotted Winslow sitting at a long table with over a dozen Western men and women, most of them younger than Winslow. A large black box on the table blared loud music. A young blond man with a ponytail pounded out the rhythm with two spoons on his plastic plate. Beside him a thick-set, square-jawed woman with short brunette hair played solitaire. Three others, including two of the men Shan had seen by the stage the night before, were studying a map, unrolled on the table. One was nursing a mug of coffee, the other a thick cigar.

Shan sat beside Winslow, who quietly reported that Somo had not yet appeared. The American gestured toward a line of workers at the side of the hall where attendants in white aprons hovered over steaming metal trays of food. Shan shook his head, and the American handed him a piece of cold toast from his own plate. Shan accepted the toast and reached for a Chinese newspaper near the end of the table. It was published in Golmud, dated just the day before. He quickly scanned the headlines. The authorities were closing in on the reviled Tiger, the reactionary wanted for murdering a Religious Affairs official in Amdo town. Large rewards were offered to citizens who assisted in his capture. A companion article explained that the effort to take the Tiger was a two-pronged campaign against such reactionaries, the second element being the separate search for the abbot of Sangchi, whom reactionaries working for the Tiger had kidnapped to steal him away to the Dalai Cult.

“Mostly Europeans,” Winslow reported in a low voice, in Tibetan. “None of them has been here longer than a week. All in from other assignments. Most of them about to rotate out from home base.”

Shan surveyed the men and women at the table. They seemed to be studiously ignoring Winslow.

“They have pointed out that of all the foreign countries represented in the venture, the only embassy that has ever challenged the venture on anything is the American.”

“You mean your questions about Miss Larkin?”

“No. Environmental studies. Somebody else from the embassy came a month ago, saying the venture was not properly assessing environmental impacts. These engineers say the venture could block further investment by the American partners if we’re not careful. There’s lots of capital available elsewhere with no strings attached.”

The man nearest Winslow pushed his chair back and lifted his tray. “I’ll be sure to brush off my tuxedo for next time we dine, Mr. Ambassador,” the man said in English, with an exaggerated bow of his head. He studied Shan a moment and turned back to Winslow. “Don’t take any shit off of them,” he added in a tone that was almost apologetic. “Give one of them an ear and you’ll have a hundred hounding you. Every damned one expects us to help with a visa to move to the States.”

“I have never expected to depart the worker’s paradise,” Shan said slowly, in English, fixing the man with a steady stare.

The man returned his gaze uncertainly, then broke into a grin. He looked from Shan to a table at the far corner of the room before grinning at Winslow. “Glad Comrade Zhu has his team on the case,” he said, then hurried away.

Winslow and Shan exchanged a worried glance, and Shan found himself slowly surveying the messhall. Workers were rapidly filing out of the chamber. Several of the aproned staff wheeled food carts through a set of double doors while others began wiping tables with rags from buckets that reeked of ammonia. But near a door that opened to the interior of the operations center a slender man with hooded eyes, wearing a stylish brown nylon jacket, leaned against the wall, repeatedly glancing at them as he spoke into a portable radio. Shan rose, slowly, without fully standing, to look toward the corner where the American had glanced. The entire table was occupied by men and women in brown jackets. With a pang of fear he recognized the sleek man sitting at the head of the table, gesturing emphatically as the others listened, as if he were holding court. Special Projects Director Zhu.

Shan ducked down and stared at the table, evoking a quiet curse from Winslow as he explained what he had seen.

“I was wondering,” Shan said as he calmed himself. “Why Larkin would come here just to access the computer? Why not do it from Yapchi?”

Winslow shrugged, watching in the direction of the distant table. “Secrecy. Maybe a better internet connection. They just have that little satellite phone there. Or maybe that’s not why she came. Maybe she just happened to check her e-mail while she was here.”

“But she came in secret, when she was supposed to be in the field. A two-day journey, here and back. It was important to her. What else is here? What else does this base do?” As if in reply a heavy truck laden with supplies tied under canvas covers pulled past the windows of the messhall.

A quarter hour later they stood at the back of the long building opposite the operations center. Much of the rear of the structure was open, consisting of ten oversized garage bays, several holding heavy trucks undergoing repair. A long loading dock lined the remainder of the building, at which several cargo trucks of varying sizes were being loaded. They climbed the dock, but as Winslow took a step toward the warehouse, Shan put a hand on his arm. “Perhaps we should just watch a moment,” he suggested.

“What for?” Winslow asked, casting nervous glances about the facility.

“For the one thing,” Shan said.

“One thing?”

Shan gazed intently at the warehouse workers who were supervising the loading. “When I was starting my career in Beijing I worked with an old investigator who said that despite what I had been told in my training at the university the easiest part of the job was knowing who to ask, and where. He said the hard part was inviting those you questioned to give you more than you ask, for if you know what to ask you already have most of the answer. He said there was always one thing in any situation that would open a person up, one thing that was the essence, not the one truth but the one lever to the truth.”

“Sort of like the zen of interrogation,” Winslow quipped, anxiously watching the workers. Shan asked the American to wait near the door and he slipped into the shadows behind one of the high stacks of crates that lined the warehouse floor.

A few minutes later they entered the warehouse together, Shan holding a clipboard stuffed with papers, Winslow wearing a worn green cap with the symbol of an oil derrick on it.

They stood near the center of the huge open warehouse space, Winslow with his hands on his hips, wearing an impatient expression, an unlit cigar hanging from his lips, Shan looking forlorn. In less than a minute a balding Han man wearing the blue shirt that seemed to indicate senior administrative personnel hurried to their side. Shan had watched the man from the shadows, had seen the way he had obsequiously watched three Westerners who entered the warehouse and darted to assist them, ignoring all else, even the man who had helped Somo the night before, the Chinese administrative manager.

“The accounts for the field teams at Yapchi are out of order,” Shan sighed, with a long, exasperated glance at Winslow. Winslow’s task, Shan had told the American, was to say nothing, look irritated, and give no clue of understanding Mandarin.

“Surely not,” the man in the coveralls stated, nervously looking at the American. He wore an American-style baseball cap, black, with an orange bird on its front. Shan felt guilty about playing to such an obvious, even sad, weakness, but the one thing that most of the venture workers seemed to be obsessed with was making contact with foreigners, for help with immigration.

“I told him,” Shan said, “these things are very complex. Multiple deliveries. Sensitive equipment that may be shipped directly to the camp. Sometimes boxes with food supplies and field equipment get confused.”

The warehouse manager examined Winslow carefully. The American offered a forced, impatient grin, then glared at Shan.

Shan retreated a step, as if expecting to be hit. “Please,” he said in a plaintive tone. “He’s been to Yapchi already. He has their records for verification. He’s American.”

The man nervously motioned them toward a computer terminal on a table in a corner of the warehouse. Moments later he had a screen displayed that read Yapchi: Supply Balances. Shan looked at the screen with a satisfied smile. Running the petroleum venture was as bureaucratic and disorganized as running the army.

The man tapped a few more keys and a subheading appeared: Field Teams. “They all have the same equipment,” the man said, pointing at a column on the left side. “Team One,” it said. Metallic water bottles, twelve, the listing began. Tent, four man, one. Sleeping bags, four. Butane cooking stoves, one. Fuel cylinders, eight. Rations, sixty meals. Shan quickly scanned the rest of the list. Ropes, axes, mineral hammers, seismic explosive charges. The four-member teams were equipped for five days in the field. “Tell him I know baseball,” the manager urged Shan. “They play tapes of baseball games one night a week. Baltimore Orioles,” he added in a hopeful tone.

Shan gave an impatient nod in reply. “But one of these field teams left behind some of their equipment.”

“Which team number?”

Shan gestured toward Winslow. “What team do you think? The one headed by the American.”

Strangely, the man seemed to deflate. “Ah,” he said slowly, “Melissa.” His eyes clouded.

“You knew Miss Larkin?”

“Sure. I mean—” the man searched their faces warily as if trying to assess how slippery the ground had become. “She brings things for us when she visits. Fossils sometimes. Pretty pink quartz. Once some American sweet biscuits. She is…” he studied their faces again, then fixed his gaze on the computer, “easy to remember.” When he felt Shan’s inquisitive stare, he sighed and continued in a more distant voice. “Once when she was here there was a big storm and the electricity was gone. No one could work. Most people went to the operations center and drank all day. But Miss Larkin, she made a fire here, in a big iron bucket,” he explained, pointing to the center of the concrete floor. “Some of us sat around it and told stories. She taught us American songs that day. Row, Row, Row Your Boat,” he said in English, having difficulty with the r’s. “Jingle Bells. Oh Susannah.”

“But that last time she was here, she wanted something special, didn’t she?” Shan suggested. “She left food supplies at Yapchi because she had to carry something else.”

The man tapped a few more keys at the computer, then sat down heavily on a nearby stool. A new screen appeared, showing resupply orders for the Yapchi camp. “She said she didn’t have time to do all the paperwork.” He looked around the warehouse, suddenly wary not of Shan and Winslow but of the shadows beyond them. “Said no one would miss them, that months would go by before anyone would ask for them and I could reorder by then. I said only six, but she insisted on taking all twelve.”

“Twelve what?”

The man winced. “It didn’t make sense. I still think about it sometimes. I still don’t understand.” He looked into Shan’s face with a pleading expression. “I’ll have replacements by next month.”

“Twelve what?” Shan repeated.

“Dye markers,” the man whispered. “Used to mark currents, or measure the flow of water. Where we usually work, in the new fields, it’s almost like a desert. The markers were all covered with dust. I reported that they had all expired,” he said, as if once he had decided to confide in Shan, as a fellow Han who shared the burden of dealing with Americans, he had to tell it all, “too old to use. I didn’t check. Probably true,” he added quickly.

“You just did your job. She was a team leader, after all,” Shan said and looked at the screen. There was a line blinking at the bottom of the screen, the last entry under Larkin’s name. Replenish, it said, and referenced a date. The date was tomorrow. He pointed at the line of text.

“Resupply,” the man said hesitantly. Shan leaned over and moved the cursor to the line and clicked the mouse. A new list appeared, with the same date, and map coordinates. Butane fuel cylinders. Blankets. Five hundred feet of rope, and seismic charges. Four cases of seismic charges.

As Shan studied the screen a chill crept down his spine.

“Why, if it’s for Larkin’s team,” he asked slowly, “would you keep this in the system?”

The color drained from the man’s face and he stared at the screen a long time before answering. “I don’t put the supply assignments in the system, just assemble the supplies for the orders that appear on the screen. That team may still be working. I hear they haven’t found her body,” the man said in a subdued, worried voice. Then, as he saw Shan’s intense interest in the screen, he stood in front of the monitor.

“She asked you to keep the replenish order in the system when she was here,” Shan stated. The man had mixed his tenses in speaking of Larkin, using the present tense sometimes even though he had obviously heard of her death.

“No, it’s a mistake,” he groaned, “just a mistake for this to be in this system. It doesn’t mean anything.”

“You mean she asked for a special resupply and later someone asked you to take it off?”

The man looked at Winslow with a pleading expression now. “A good woman,” he said in broken English. “Row, row, row your boat,” he said with a forced smile. “Baltimore Orioles.”

“You mean the Office of Special Projects,” Shan said.

The words brought a cloud to the manager’s face. “He said take her listings off our screens. I must have forgotten this piece.”

“Special Director Zhu said take off the resupply request?” Shan asked. “Cancel it?”

The man in the blue shirt hunched his shoulders forward, and seemed to draw into himself, getting smaller. “Not cancel it,” the man whispered to his feet, looking more frightened than ever. “Just take it off our screens.” He stepped in front of the computer and turned to face the entrance to the warehouse, as though guarding the screen. Or hiding it.

“You mean Zhu found out the replenishment order was still in the system,” Shan said slowly, glancing at Winslow, who was busily writing down the map coordinates, “and he said continue with it. But he is taking over the resupply assignment?”

The man’s voice had grown hoarse. “Like the rest of us, I guess. He hopes she still lives.”

But no, Shan realized as he hurried Winslow out of the building, it was because Zhu hoped to make sure she didn’t.

“How could—” Winslow began when Shan had explained his suspicion.

“The dye markers,” Shan explained. “We saw the dye markers being used the day before we saw Zhu in the mountains. He told us she had been killed a week before. He filed reports stating as much. But he was lying. She was in the mountains, near us, just the day before. No one else was using the markers. No one else had any markers. Zhu reported her killed to make sure no one else would interfere.”

“Interfere with what?”

“I don’t know. I think Zhu is going to deliver those supplies. He reported her dead. What if he lied, what if he wanted everyone to give up on her so he could find her? Zhu, and maybe Public Security, had decided she’s dangerous. What if it was because he wanted to make her dead now that everyone had accepted the lie that she was dead? Make her dead now, or take her somewhere for interrogation. She’s a ghost now. Zhu can do anything and no one would know.”

Winslow stared at Shan. “Impossible,” he said, but Shan didn’t see disbelief in the American’s eyes. He saw cold fury, and fear, and a glimmer of helplessness.

Shan surveyed the compound as they walked around the perimeter of the square, stopping by the vehicles they passed to watch the reflections in the window glass. “We can’t leave Somo.” The man from the dining hall, the one in the brown jacket, now wearing sunglasses, was two hundred feet away, standing by a parked truck, speaking in low tones into his little radio. Across the compound Shan saw two more men in brown jackets, listening to radios, briskly walking toward them now. An open vehicle, a jeep, pulled up beside the men. Zhu was in the front passenger seat, wearing his sunglasses, slapping a knob’s truncheon against his palm.

“She has people who take care of her,” Winslow said. “Purbas.”

“She came with us,” Shan said. “We’re being watched. Her friends will pick her up eventually. With Tenzin arrested, she can do no more here.”

But Shan was wrong. Five minutes later a heavy dump truck moved slowly across the yard, raising a thick plume of dust. It turned so that its path took it between them and their followers. It slowed as it approached. Someone was standing on its wide running board.

“Christ, it’s her,” Winslow gasped, and instantly the two men darted through the dust cloud to the truck. Somo motioned them onto the board and they leapt, landing on either side of the woman, Shan holding onto the side mirror, Winslow the handle used for climbing into the high cab.

Moments later they were beside the huge lot of idled equipment they had passed the night before. The truck slowed and Somo motioned for them to jump, following them a moment later.

“Why not stay on, get in back?” Winslow asked, brushing the dust from his sleeves.

Somo pointed to the main gate, where the truck was coming to a halt. Two army trucks were parked there, a squad of soldiers deployed on either side of the gate beside several men in brown jackets.

“Checkpoint. Effective this morning, everyone in and out of the base has to be cleared by the army. The 54th Mountain Combat Brigade,” she added tersely, as she turned and led them into the maze of equipment, finding refuge behind the lowered blade of a huge bulldozer. They sat in the shadow as she quickly explained that Larkin had indeed been at the base in the past month, when she was supposed to be in the mountains above Yapchi, and she hadn’t used the computer just for a few electronic messages to her office in the United States. The American geologist had used the only terminal in the entire venture that had a link to her company’s mainframe computer, and for two hours, timed to be in the middle of the night at the company’s headquarters in America, she had fed geologic data into the computer.

“But why?” Winslow asked. “She can’t have a secret deposit of oil. The oil belongs to the venture. She knows that. What could be so secret? So urgent?”

“More importantly,” Shan said, “what could an American geologist lost in the mountains possibly be doing that would cause Zhu to want her dead?”

“Modeling,” Somo reported in a puzzled tone. “That’s all anyone knows. That’s what the big American computer is used for. Modeling geologic data.”

“But what the hell is so secret?” Winslow pressed. “She works for an oil company. And why the computer back home?”

“I asked,” Somo explained. “Seismic data from the field is inputed and the computer extrapolates mineral deposits, using thousands of calculations and data about known fields. Predicts underground geologic structures. Identifying patterns of mineral tracers to point to big ore or oil bodies.” Somo shrugged. “Some geologists use the computer more than others. Larkin had used it before, often. And oil companies are secretive. They don’t want others knowing what they’re finding,” she added.

Shan recalled Jenkins’s description of the American woman. Larkin was a perfectionist. “But she would have to get permission,” he suggested. “Someone would have had to approve it.”

Somo sighed. “Yes and no. There are access codes that have to be fed into the computer to start the program. Entering the codes means you have permission.”

“And Larkin had the codes.”

“Larkin used code numbers registered in Mr. Jenkins name. But he was at Yapchi at the time.”

“Maybe he had approved it,” Winslow said.

“Or maybe not,” Shan suggested. He looked at Somo. “Why would they speak so freely with you about the computer? You’re a stranger.”

Somo frowned. “Not to everyone.”

“Meaning other purbas?” Shan asked.

Somo did not reply.

The roar of an engine suddenly erupted through the stillness of the equipment yard. A grey utility truck sped by.

“They’re looking for us,” Shan said.

“We’re going,” Winslow said. “Back to Yapchi.”

“There’s no transportation arranged,” Somo said, searching the yard behind them with a worried expression. “No truck to Yapchi for two days. And even then, the army will be at the gate.”

“We have to,” Winslow insisted, and his voice dropped. “We have to keep Melissa from dying again.”

They sat behind the bulldozer blade for more than an hour, listening to the sound of the utility vehicle moving through the yard and up and down the access road to the highway. Winslow stared absently into the red clay soil beneath them. Shan pulled the ivory rosary from his pocket and rolled the beads between his fingers.

The truck sped by again.

“I asked people here about Tenzin,” Somo recalled suddenly. “No word of the abbot of Sangchi being captured or returned to Lhasa. A prominent lama like that, the Bureau of Religious Affairs had a lot invested in him. The head of my school walked out last year in a protest, tried to run away to India. They caught him but he wasn’t sent to prison. Sent to somewhere else. Two months later he was back at work, giving speeches about the dangers of reactionaries and leading criticism sessions against other teachers.”

Shan considered her words in silence. “You mean political officers might work with Tenzin.”

“The government had so much invested him already,” Somo said. “I think they will try to rehabilitate him. Reprogram him. Maybe with doctors. Maybe with special religious trainers from the howlers.”

Her matter-of-fact tone chilled Shan. He recalled Gendun’s words in the hermitage, when the lama had expressed concern over Tenzin. Tenzin was going north, because someone had died. It was the abbot of Sangchi who had died, Shan knew now. But no matter how hard the abbot tried to find a new Tenzin, the government would demand the old abbot back, the tame abbot who had helped so many of their political campaigns.

Shan looked at Somo. It was the slenderest of reeds, only a remote flicker of hope. But if they had not been imprisoned it was possible Lokesh and Tenzin could be found, and saved. He stood up and surveyed the equipment yard. “If no truck is scheduled then we have to find one that is not scheduled,” he said in a determined voice.

Winslow sighed, and stood. “First I have to get to that equipment drop site,” he said indicating the map in his pocket.

“In the mountains above Yapchi?” Somo asked skeptically. “By tomorrow? Impossible. It’s over two hundred miles.”

But Winslow was already jogging back toward the compound.

Minutes later they walked down one of the long alleys between the housing units, ducking into the shadows twice when they heard the sound of a truck nearby, then again when a helicopter flew low overhead. It was early afternoon, and the units appeared to be empty, the workers all engaged in jobs, or waiting for jobs in the buildings around the square.

When Shan opened the door to his assigned trailer the unit was lit only by the sunlight coming in the small high windows. But someone leapt up from a bunk at the back of the unit, hastily buttoning his shirt. It was the oily young Han who had taken Shan to the messhall. There was a movement on a bunk behind him and a sleepy face appeared above a sheet, a young woman, naked, with streaked makeup on her face. A single red boot lay on the floor beside the bed. One of the mai xiao nu who had been at the bar the night before. She sat up in the bed looking at them with a surprisingly cheerful expression, slowly raising the sheet to cover her breasts.

The youth looked at Shan nervously, then Somo stepped forward and he relaxed. “Plenty of room for everyone, brother,” he offered with a roguish grin. But as the door slammed shut and Winslow appeared, the man’s expression tightened. He stared uncertainly at Shan, and shrugged, shifting his gaze to the American.

“I was looking for some clothes,” Shan said.

“No one’s touched your stuff.” The man gestured toward the bunk Shan had slept in.

“I had nothing,” Shan said. For the first time he noticed a ring of keys hanging from the man’s belt. Perhaps he was the attendant for the unit.

“So see a supply officer,” the man said. “At the—” He was cut off by the shrill sing-song squeal of a siren. “Ambulance to Golmud,” he said knowingly.

“Who was hurt?” Shan asked.

“Manager in the warehouse. Bad fall. Broke both arms.” The man eyed them suspiciously. “Sometimes people have bad joss. They say something wrong and bad things happen. I tell them, don’t act like it’s different here because of all the foreigners. It’s just like the rest of the world.”

Shan considered the man’s words a moment, then exchanged a worried glance with Winslow. Someone in a brown jacket had caught up with the supply manager, and interrogated him. Probably, Shan thought with a shudder, Zhu himself.

“There’re clothes here,” the youth said in a new, tentative voice, the voice of one accustomed to bargaining. He gestured toward the other bunks and the lockers that stood between each. “But I’m in charge of the unit. I would get criticized if, say, thieves broke in when I wasn’t here.” It had the sound of an offer.

Shan looked at his companions. He had no money, and his meager belongings had been left behind in the mountains above Yapchi. Winslow lowered the small knapsack he still carried and looked inside. He frowned, looked up, then studied its contents again. He had given his stove and fuel to Dremu, his food to the children at Yapchi. He pulled out the sleek pair of binoculars. The young man’s eyes widened as he accepted the glasses from the American. With the air of a diligent shopkeeper, he hung them around his neck and began unlocking the lockers with his set of keys.

When they left ten minutes later all three wore hard hats, and Shan a pair of brown, oil-stained coveralls over his own clothes. Somo and Winslow wore the green venture jackets, Somo a bulky sweater under hers that gave her the appearance of a thick-shouldered man.

“We still have no plan,” the purba complained. “I should go back to the office. I can create some kind of distraction with the computer perhaps.”

“No,” Winslow said in a conspiratorial tone. “We’re doing it cowboy style this time.”

The American led them through the maze of trailers to the far side of the compound where two large helicopters sat in front of a small hanger. One of the machines was being loaded with crates of supplies. They had waited only five minutes before the machine was loaded and a trim figure wearing a tight red nylon jacket and an American-style cap over dark glasses strode out of the building, flicking a cigarette over his shoulder as he approached the aircraft. Winslow pointed to a stack of small cardboard boxes. Each of them picked up one and walked toward the helicopter as the man opened the cockpit door.

“They said all cargo was stowed,” the man protested, studying them with an impatient gaze as they lowered the boxes onto the tarmac.

“They were right,” Winslow replied, then quickly opened the cargo door behind the cockpit and climbed inside, pulling Shan and Somo in behind him before slamming it shut. The cowboy way, Shan thought uneasily.

The pilot sighed, as though he was used to such antics. “Sorry, no riders scheduled today. I get too many headaches from Personnel when I move people around without paperwork.” He closed the cockpit door and began flipping switches on an overhead control panel.

“Where you headed?” Winslow asked.

“Camp Nine. Southwest. The British team.”

“Perfect,” Winslow said good-naturedly. “We’re going southwest, too. Near Yapchi.”

“Not Yapchi. Not today. Yapchi field drop is tomorrow.” The pilot seemed unruffled by the strangers in his craft, but Shan saw that his hand was hovering over the microphone on his control panel. At the side of the hanger were two men in the brown jackets of venture security, their backs turned to the aircraft. The engine was beginning to whine as it warmed up.

“Change in plans,” Winslow announced.

The pilot looked back and sighed, lifting the microphone as he did so. “Sorry. I have to get in the air. You want Yapchi, check with Personnel to get the paperwork done. I’ll lift off after breakfast.” He touched a switch on the microphone and it hissed with static.

“But it’s an emergency,” Winslow said, still smiling at the man.

“I don’t think so,” the pilot shot back, impatient now, and raised the microphone to his lips.

“In the name of the U.S. government I requisition this aircraft,” Winslow announced in a new, sterner voice. He raised his passport out of his bag.

The pilot lowered the microphone. “Good joke,” he said with a shrug. “I like Americans. Just go now and no one knows anything. If I call security it will go badly. Reports have to get filed. Security,” he said slowly, examining them more carefully now, “is already really pissed about something.”

Winslow pulled out his map and pointed out the coordinates, holding his passport with his fingers against one corner of the map. “A fast chopper like this, wouldn’t take much longer for you to slightly change course.”

The pilot looked at the passport, frowned, and lifted the mike again.

Winslow pushed it down. “Listen to me,” he said in English. “Someone’s going to get killed.”

“That’s it,” the pilot said, and pulled away from the American, his hand now on the cockpit door handle.

Winslow sighed and looked at his backpack, sitting at his feet. With a chill Shan remembered that the American had Lin’s gun. He glanced at Shan, then extended his passport toward the pilot. “I am an American diplomat—look.” He opened the passport to the information page on the inside. “In Beijing, at the embassy, we get memos from security warning us to watch out for pickpockets, because American diplomatic passports are so valuable on the black market in China. Smugglers pay a fortune for them. A good embassy passport, one with five or six years left, can go for ten thousand U.S.”

The pilot’s hand drifted away from the door, and he accepted the passport for closer inspection. “Seven years left on mine,” Winslow said. “I just go back to the office, say it was stolen, and they give me a new one.”

“Then they invalidate this one,” the pilot rejoined.

“Doesn’t affect the value. Black market buyers know they can still use it anywhere that doesn’t have automated clearance systems, any border station without a computer uplink to the centralized files. Meaning eighty percent of the world.”

The pilot stared at each of them a moment, then grinned, put the passport in his pocket, and engaged the rotors.

*   *   *

You will sense a great rushing like a strong wind when you die, with a floating sensation, and the world will soar around you. The words of the death rite echoed in Shan’s mind as they shot over the rough, dry landscape. Wearing the earphones that hung on the back of the seat in front of him, leaning on the small window, Shan found a distant place within and simply experienced the rushing of the land beneath. Riding in a helicopter could be a meditation exercise, he mused, to understand how vast, and transitory, the world was.

The pilot did not argue when Winslow asked him to bypass Yapchi’s main camp, coming in low from the west so as not to be seen. He would not, Shan realized, want anyone to know he had departed from his assigned route, which would have been west of Yapchi in any event. As they approached the site Winslow had marked on the map the pilot guided the helicopter low over the mountains, hugging the contours of the ridge, until suddenly Shan realized they were hovering. Winslow and the pilot were pointing to a clearing near the top of the ridge and glancing at the map. Then abruptly, the machine tilted forward a hundred yards, straightened and sank. They touched down hard, Winslow flung open the door and they leapt out. The pilot offered a mock salute, hesitated, looking around the bleak terrain, then examined the three figures beside his machine. He unbuckled his harness and rummaged around the cargo compartment. Moments later he began tossing things out of the open door. Two blankets. A first aid kit. A down vest and, finally, a bag of American potato chips.

Seconds later the machine was gone and they stood alone in the wind on the high ridgetop clearing. Winslow handed the vest to Somo, as Shan gathered up the other items in one of the blankets and slung it over his shoulder, then trotted to the nearest outcropping. He felt strangely uneasy being in the clearing.

“You want to find Miss Larkin,” Shan said to the American when Winslow had caught up with him. Somo and I want to find the purbas. I think they may be at the same spot.”

“You don’t know that,” the American asserted. “Christ, everything is a conspiracy with you.”

Shan sighed. “In the helicopter I realized something. When Somo told me what Larkin had done with the computer I asked why would anyone speak with Somo about what Larkin did. That was the wrong question. I should have asked why would Somo’s contact know what Larkin did, if she had gone so far to preserve her secrecy. There can be only one answer. Because she was with purbas, because purbas are working with her for some reason. That explains why Zhu is so interested in her. A foreigner helping the resistance, the government would—” Shan stopped in mid-sentence. Winslow grinned back at him.

Somo gave a reluctant shrug, but nodded slowly as the two men studied her. “I don’t know any details. It’s a different project, a different team. Bad security, for everyone to know what the others are doing.”

Shan nodded agreement. “Rivers,” he said. “We know she is marking rivers. We know Tibetans are collecting water from rivers.” He asked Winslow for the map, and traced with his finger each of the blue lines that radiated out of the mountains. He climbed to the top of the outcropping. They could see two of the small rivers, emerging from narrow canyons to flow to the west and south.

“She’s expected to be here tomorrow,” Winslow said. “She’s not here now. And she wouldn’t be likely to travel all night in the mountains. So say she’s no more than half a day’s walk from here.” He made a wide circle with his finger on the map. “But to the west she would be out of the Yapchi oil concession,” he added.

“Sky birthing,” Winslow said. “That man taking the bottle to the Green Tara, he said something about going to the sky birthing.” He frowned and searched the horizon.

Suddenly Shan looked up and pointed to the main peak of Yapchi Mountain. “We know where the sky is born,” he declared with a grin.

*   *   *

They had been walking for three hours, feeling increasingly uncertain that they could find the place they sought, when suddenly a Tibetan youth appeared, jogging along a trail that ran laterally below them on the slope they were descending. He had no pack, not even a heavy coat, but he clutched something in his hands. Shan looked at Winslow, who was rubbing his temples with a grimace, then at Somo. She grinned, tightened the laces of her shoes, grabbed the bag of potato chips and leapt down the slope.

They watched, Winslow taking two more of his pills, as the purba runner advanced on the youth, but when Somo was still two hundred yards from him, the boy dropped out of sight below a ridge. When Shan and Winslow crested the ridge the American gave a shout of glee, one of his strange cowboy hoots. Somo was sitting with the boy three hundred yards away. As they approached they could see the boy was stuffing the chips into his mouth, speaking in a relaxed fashion with Somo. But before they were within earshot the youth stood, waved at the two men good-naturedly, and began running again.

“He had a bottle of water,” Somo said in a meaningful tone. “Only a small bottle of water, for the Green Tara.”

They followed the path the boy had taken until, with an hour of light left, Somo raised her hand in alarm. A noise like thunder was echoing off the mountain in front of them. Shan gestured her forward, and five minutes later they stepped onto an open ledge that revealed the source of the thunder far below. Shan pointed toward a tiny line of shadow on the towering rock monolith above them.

“That damned goat trail,” Winslow said. “The one Chemi led us on into Yapchi.” They stood at the edge of a broad U-shaped chasm filled with mist, the place Chemi had shown them the week before from far above, the place where clouds were born.

Somo pointed downward. On the other side of the gorge, far below, they could see the boy again, following a trail that spiraled down into the mist. Half an hour later, daylight almost gone, they were on the trail, at the edge of the mist, descending toward the thunder sound, warily hugging the wall as they sought footing on the slippery path. What had Chemi said of the place? Some people believed a demon lived there.

“We can’t climb back up in the dark,” Winslow warned, rubbing his temple again.

Shan eyed the treacherous path uncertainly. “The boy didn’t come back,” he said, and stepped forward into the mist.

In another few minutes the mist began to clear, and they looked out over a roiling mass of water, a narrow, powerful river that tumbled into the chasm and then, in a violent maelstrom, seemed to boil itself away. There was no outlet. Water was not leaving the gorge, except in the small clouds they had seen drifting skywards.

Somo stared at the strange sight with wide, frightened eyes. “It could be what they said,” she offered in a near whisper, meaning, Shan knew, that the strange, powerful place could indeed be home to a demon. He fought a temptation to step back into the mist, to hide in the clouds.

Suddenly a sharp cracking sound joined the thunder, and a piece of the rock wall beside him burst into fragments. An instant later a patch of wall on the other side, by Winslow, split open followed by the sharp whine of a ricochet. Someone was shooting at them.