35

NO MIDDLE WAY

Embassy of China, Hattisar Sadak, 615, Kathmandu, Nepal

October 17, 2014

“Detective Thanel is betraying us at every turn,” Zhang said to Yama as he pulled the headphones from his ears and lifted his eyes from the spiky audio waveforms on the computer screen. “He speaks often to an informant in Thamel, a barber called Pashi Bol, also to Temba Chering, the local businessman we identified as having helped the man who burned.”

“Is that the reason why the Nepali police didn’t bring Chering in? Also why the Englishman was not arrested at Richards’s apartment last night?” Yama replied. “We left him there bound and incapacitated when we heard the old lady was at the British ambassador’s instead. All those idiots had to do was go to the apartment and find him.”

“Possibly. They said the apartment was empty. Quinn didn’t return to his hotel room either. Perhaps the detective let him go.”

An assistant approached Yama to say, “You are wanted in meeting room five, Lieutenant. Alone.”

Yama entered the room to find himself before Jin Yui, the governor of the TAR, whose head and shoulders were filling a wall-mounted video screen.

“Update me on what is happening,” he demanded.

“The immolator was the ghost moth. I was tracking him following the information I received from the Lhasa splittist cell and my visit to Community Work Territory 57, Amling Zone, to interrogate the parents of that missing child Geshe Shep mentioned. We lost him at the border but then he reappeared here in Kathmandu,” Yama replied.

“How could you let him video you in the mountains?” Jin Yui asked angrily. “Beijing is furious, and Party Secretary Xiaopeng is advancing himself on the back of what he is presenting as my failure.”

“The ghost moth was using an old route into Nepal. It is a very difficult and forgotten way that passes an important mountain called Xixabangma Feng, well beyond the capabilities of normal travelers. It was another climber in that place who saw and filmed us after a minor earthquake complicated the situation. The ghost moth did contact the recipient of the video here in Kathmandu, but the events were not related.”

“Well, what was the reason for the contact?”

“I do not yet know but I am coming to suspect it may be related to that missing child. I believe he was smuggling it over the frontier.”

“Where is the child now?”

“We are looking but we don’t know. There has been no trace. I suspect that was the information he gave to the Englishwoman.”

“Well, I urge you to be fast and thorough in how you resolve this, Lieutenant. Whatever it takes, none of Zou’s middle-way shit.”