Rebecca Fowler was at her desk, her head propped up on one arm, a haggard expression on her face.
"You look like hell," she said, as Shan walked in.
"I have been on the South Claw," Shan replied, trying to fight the exhaustion of his day. "Exploring." Sergeant Feng was sharing cigarettes with workers outside. Yeshe was asleep in the truck. "I need to ask you something."
"Just like that," she said, the bitterness returning. "Something came up while you were strolling over the Dragon Claws." She ran her fingers through her mop of auburn hair and looked up, not waiting for an answer. "I took his hand up there. Your demon's hand. They wanted me to recite mantras with them. Something began howling up on the mountain."
"Something?"
She didn't seem to hear him. "The sun went down," she recounted with a haunted expression. "They lit torches and continued the mantra. The moon came out. The howling began. An animal. Not an animal. I don't know." She put her head in her hands. "I haven't slept much since. It was all so- I don't know. So real." She looked up apologetically. "I'm sorry. I can't describe it."
"There was a man from Shanghai in my hut last year," Shan said quietly. "He scoffed at the monks at first. But later he said sometimes at night when he heard the mantras he held his hand over his mouth for fear his soul would pop out."
The American responded with a small, grateful smile.
"I need to see maps. Satellite maps."
She winced. "When Public Security approved my satellite license they made us agree to a protocol for access. Only eight authorized people. Software generates a log for every printout. The major was quite insistent. So they can be sure we're not looking at something we're not supposed to see." She was growing distant, suddenly wary of Shan. His request seemed to have scared her.
"That's why I came to you."
She sighed but did not reply.
"I'll need the sections that cover the South Claw. More than one date. But including the date of Jao's murder and one month before."
"I was supposed to be at the back ponds an hour ago."
"I need your help."
"The tourists arrive in Lhadrung in three days. My monthly report is already a week overdue. Faxes came from California, demanding to know if I resolved the permit suspension. I have a job to do. My shareholders expect me to do it. The Ministry of Geology expects me to do it. Beijing expects me to do it. The ninety families that depend on this mine for survival expect me to do it." She stood and lifted the hard hat that sat on her desk. "You, Mr. Shan, are the only one who doesn't expect me to do it."
"I thought it was a simple request."
"It's not. I just told you. Somehow I think you never make simple requests."
"I think Jao was taken to the South Claw to be killed because of something seen on one of your maps."
"Seen by Jao?"
"Maybe. Or by the murderer. Or both."
"Ridiculous. We're the only ones who see the maps."
"You said eight people. With eight people secrets can be difficult to keep."
"If you think I'm going to invite half the Bureau to climb all over us for some security violation, you're crazy." She took a step toward the door. "I thought you and I, we were-" She shook her head and sighed. "When we first got the satellite license Kincaid said Colonel Tan might try to trick us into giving up the maps."
"Why would Colonel Tan do that?"
"To catch us in a security violation, then use it against us."
"Do you think I am trying to trick you?"
Fowler sighed. "Not you. But what if you are being used?" She took another step toward the door. "Get someone to put it in writing."
"No."
She looked back over her shoulder.
"Because then you would be caught in a security violation," he observed.
She shook her head slowly and moved toward the door again.
"I knew a priest once. When I lived in Beijing. He used to help me." Shan spoke to her back. "Once I had a similar dilemma. About whether to seek justice or to just do what the bureaucrats wanted. Do you know what he said? He told me that our life is the instrument we use to experiment with the truth."
Fowler stopped and slowly turned again. She looked at him in silence, then tore herself away to pour a cup of tepid tea from a thermos. She sat and studied the cup. "Damn you," she said. "Who the hell are you? Every time things are calming down, you…" She didn't finish the sentence.
"We want the same thing. An answer."
She rose, threw the tea in the sink, and stepped into the computer room. Unlocking a large cabinet with long narrow drawers, she quickly sifted through the top drawer and laid a sheet on the table. "We only print them once a week, sometimes only twice a month. This is two weeks ago. Twenty-mile grid. Best for our purposes. We also have a hundred miles and five miles."
"I need more detail. Perhaps the five-mile grid."
She searched through the drawer and looked up, confused, then opened a second drawer. "It's not there. None of them for the South Claw." She gazed at the empty drawer.
"But you can print more," Shan suggested.
"Kincaid would be furious. Comes out of his budget. He's responsible for the mapping system."
"You said you wanted this thing over."
"At this point I'd be satisfied just to know what over means," Fowler said, then stepped to the console and began typing instructions. Five minutes later the printer came to life.
As she laid the photo on the table she handed Shan a magnifying lens. He followed the slope of the ridge toward the bottom of the map. At its end, where the small valley to the south began, was a V-shaped blackness. "Are they all taken at the same time of day?" he asked. There was an hour written on the margin. 1630 hours. "Can we obtain something from earlier in the day? Noon, perhaps."
She printed one, dated two months earlier, taken at 1130 hours. The shadow at the south end of the ridge was gone. He could see them now, in the remote gorge, a smudge of brilliant color where none had been before. The big horse flags of Yerpa were visible to the satellite.
"That night with Jao," Rebecca Fowler said abruptly. She had been watching him, from across the table. "There was something else. I didn't tell you. It wasn't just because of the wager that we met. We could have done that later. I think he wanted to meet because he had asked some questions. He pressed for answers that night."
"Questions for you?"
"We talked about it. Kincaid and I. We didn't want to obstruct anything. But with all of our production problems we didn't need to become part of some investigation."
"But you changed your mind later."
"When the ponds were being laid out, before I arrived, the mine got its water permits. Rights to take water for the ponds and processing unit as needed. You have to be registered, so irrigation in the valley can be planned. When I got here I saw there was a mistake. The permit covered a stream that doesn't flow here. It's on the other side of the mountain, the far end of the North Claw and beyond, a different watershed. I told Director Hu. He said he would take care of it, that we wouldn't have to pay for the water. We didn't pay. But the permit was never changed."
"What does it mean, having the permit for that watershed?"
"Not much. Just keeps anyone else from using the water, I guess."
"So it was a bureaucratic oversight."
"It's what I assumed. But Jao, as soon as he sat down to dinner, wanted to know about it. He had found out about it somehow, and he was excited. He asked who issued the permit. How much water was available in that area. I couldn't tell him. He asked if I had a copy of the permit somewhere, with an official signature. When I said I did, he was very pleased. It seemed like he wanted to laugh. He said he would call from Beijing with a fax number, so I could send it to him. Then he dropped the subject. Ordered some wine."
Voices rose from outside. Workers were approaching the building. Fowler sprang up to close the red door. She leaned against it, as though bracing for intruders. "I forgot about it. Then Li came into my office. Trolling for information about the permit."
"Trolling?"
"He knew about it. He had questions but didn't seem sure of what he wanted to know. He asked me to explain what Jao had asked for."
"He's the assistant prosecutor," Shan said. "Probably Jao's replacement. There may have been a file he needed to follow up on."
"I don't know," Fowler said. She looked at the floor as she spoke. "What if they had to do with Jao's being killed? The water rights. That's not something a Tibetan would kill for. Why would that monk care?"
"I told you before, Sungpo did not kill him."
She fixed him with a forlorn stare. "Sometimes I wonder. If it got Jao killed, then what about me? That dinner. We talked a long time. Maybe the killer thinks I know what Jao knew. Someone may want to kill me and I don't even know why. Nothing makes sense. If it wasn't this monk Sungpo, then who is trying to frame him? Colonel Tan? Assistant Prosecutor Li? The major? They all seem in such a rush to get him to trial."
"They say they're just eager to get the file closed, because of all the visitors."
"Someone may be lying for personal reasons, not just political ones."
Shan offered a nod of respect. "You've learned fast, Miss Fowler."
"It scares me."
"Then help me."
"How?"
"I need more maps. The skull cave, perhaps."
"We don't have them. We only have maps of our watershed."
"But the computer can give you access."
"We have a contract for this area. Outside that, it's expensive. Fifty dollars an order. U.S. We type in the grid reference. Some computer back home processes the order, verifies our account number, processes it for download, and invoices us."
"A grid reference?"
"There's a catalog with map grids, identified by a code for the grid number."
Shan reached into his pocket and pulled out the numbers transcribed from Jao's secret file. "The catalog," Shan said with new urgency. "Is it here?"
The numbers fit the format perfectly. It took less than five minutes to find the reference. It was for the North Claw and farmland beyond. Jao had seen photos of the area where Fowler had mistakenly received water rights.
"But he didn't get these from us," Fowler protested. "They're unrelated to our operations. We would never order maps outside our operations area."
"Are you sure? Is there a record?"
"The invoices show all the orders. I'm about three months behind in checking the details." They moved into her office. Five minutes later she located the entries. Someone had ordered a three-month sequence of photos of the northern site two weeks before the prosecutor had been killed.
Shan put the invoice in his notebook. "Can you print them out, the same ones Jao saw?"
Fowler nodded weakly.
Shan stood in the doorway to verify that no one was in earshot. "Bring them to me tomorrow at Jade Spring. And I need to take the disks. The ones you took from the cave."
Fowler hesitated. "I need them, too."
"Have you looked at them?"
"Sure. Mostly files in Chinese that Kincaid and I can't read. Some in English, listing contents of the shrine. They sent the altar to a new restaurant in Lhasa. Jansen will want to know."
"Why would they put them in English?"
Fowler cocked her head at Shan. "I hadn't thought about it."
"Because," Shan suggested, "it is a trap."
She sat down heavily at her desk. "For us?"
"For you. For me. For Kincaid. Whoever might take them. I think the major put them there."
"I want to give them to the United Nations office."
"No."
"Why the major?"
Shan dropped into a chair by the wall. "Sort of an insurance policy." He leaned over, placing his head in his hands for a moment. He had an overwhelming temptation to just curl up on the floor and sleep. He looked up. "If you were forced out as manager, who would replace you?"
Fowler grimaced. "You're talking about the permit suspension," she said with a sigh. "There's a procedure in the contract. The company appoints the first manager. After that, the committee would have the choice."
"An American?"
"Not necessarily. Kincaid, maybe. But it could be Hu."
"If you want to keep your job, Miss Fowler, I need those disks."
She considered Shan for a moment, then with a quick, urgent movement pulled some books from a top shelf. Reaching behind the other volumes, she produced a thick envelope and dropped it into his hand.
"I need something else," Shan said apologetically. "I need you to take me to Lhasa."
Colonel Tan was waiting in their room at Jade Spring, sitting in the dark, smoking. Feng and Yeshe hesitated as they saw Tan's expression, then moved out to the front step as Shan turned on the light and sat across from him. Five cigarette butts stood end up in a row beside a folder on the table.
Tan's face was drawn and tense. He seemed worn out, as though he'd just returned from extended maneuvers. "You believed them, didn't you?" He spoke to the cigarette. "That I did those things in the Lotus Book."
"I only repeated what I read," Shan said. The air was so brittle it seemed about to shatter. "Is it so important what I believe?"
"Hell no," Tan snapped back.
"Then why should you be so offended by what is in the Lotus Book?"
"Because it is a lie."
"You mean because it is a lie about you."
"Sergeant Feng!" Tan bellowed.
Feng's head appeared at the door.
"Where was I in 1963?"
"We were at Border Security Camp 208. Inner Mongolia. Sir."
Tan pushed the folder toward Shan. "My service record. Everything. Postings. Commendations. Reprimands. Assignment orders. I didn't come to Tibet until 1985. If you want, talk to Madame Ko. I want the lies stopped."
"Do you want Sungpo executed or do you want the lies stopped?"
Tan glared across the table. In the dim light, as he exhaled the smoke through his nostrils, his bony face seemed to hover, disembodied, above the table. "I want the lies stopped," Tan repeated.
"That's not going to help the monk who was executed at the 404th."
"That's the knobs. They didn't consult me."
"Somehow I find it hard to believe, Colonel, that you couldn't stop the knobs if you wanted to."
There was a low, surprised curse by the door, and Shan caught a glimpse of Sergeant Feng as he retreated toward the parade ground. He did not want to be caught in the imminent explosion.
Tan's glare continued, hot and silent.
"I had an offer from Assistant Prosecutor Li. A way to resolve it all," Shan announced.
"An offer?" Tan repeated ominously.
"To tie it all up in a neat package. He said Prosecutor Jao was engaged in a corruption investigation against you. So you had him killed. Said if I testified against you, he could make me a hero."
Tan's eyes narrowed to two dangerous slits. His hand wrapped around the cigarette package on the table and began to slowly squeeze its contents. "And your intentions, Comrade?" Shreds of tobacco fell from the package.
Shan's gaze stayed steady. "Colonel, I could say you are insensitive, stubborn, short-tempered, manipulative, and quite dangerous."
Tan shifted in his seat. He seemed on the verge of leaping for Shan's throat.
"But you're not corrupt."
Tan gazed down at the ruined package of cigarettes. "So you didn't believe him."
Shan shook his head slowly. "You never trusted Li. That's why you found me. You thought he might try something like this. Why?"
"He's a sniveling Party pissant, that's why."
Shan considered the words and sighed. "No more lies, you said."
With an angry sweep of his hand Tan batted the mess he had made off the table. "Miss Lihua caught him a few months ago, about to send a secret report to Party headquarters in Lhasa. Complaining that Jao and I were incompetent, not in touch with modern governmental technique, petitioning for our forced retirement."
"You could have told me."
"It's hardly evidence for a murder case."
Shan clasped his hands and looked into them. "Li is in it, I know it. There is no direct evidence. But everything he says, everything he does, the smell is all over him."
"Smell?"
"Like why he went to Kham."
"He went because you went."
"Not because he was following me, but because he sensed I was getting too close, because Li realized that if I thought there might be a witness I would go in search of him. Back in Balti's tenement, Li tried to make us believe that Balti had stolen the car and left for a city to sell it. But Li knew differently. If I was getting close, then Li had to get to Kham urgently, because he knew for certain that Balti was still alive. Which meant he saw him running away that night. Or the murderer told him."
The colonel breathed heavily. "You're saying it's not only Li." He searched the crushed pack for an intact cigarette, then threw it down in disgust.
"There was something else, something he said when he made me the offer. That if I cooperated he would have the knobs pulled out of the 404th."
"Impossible. Li does not control the Public Security Bureau."
"Exactly." Shan let the words sink in. "But all he would need is the cooperation of a senior officer in the regional command. Maybe the same officer who brought Lieutenant Chang up from the border."
A different kind of fire began to burn in Tan's eyes. "What do you want me to do?"
"Send for Miss Lihua. We need her here, to interview face to face."
"Done. What else?"
"One of the gold skulls from the cave. I want one, a sample, as evidence."
Tan nodded. "Director Hu sent one to my office. My driver will drop it off tonight."
"And the prosecutor had an important meeting in Beijing. Something to do with water rights. Something about a Bamboo Bridge. We need to find out everything about it. It is not something I can do, not something you can do. But you have someone who can."
There was movement at the door. Feng had drifted back. Yeshe was standing in the shadows just outside the entrance.
"One more thing, Colonel. I need to know. In the Lhadrung uprising, did you have the thumbs of monks cut off?"
"No!" Tan spat. He stood up so fast his bench toppled over. He looked at Feng and back to Shan. The fire in his face did not stop Shan's steadfast stare. Slowly, the defiance in Tan's eyes faded and he seemed to swallow something hard. "The damned Buddhists," he said in a beseeching tone. "Why can't they give up?"
Tan dropped his eyes to the table. "Yes," he said in a much lower voice. "I knew the Bureau was cutting thumbs and I could have stopped them." He grimaced, straightened his tunic, and marched out of the barracks.
There was a heavy silence as Sergeant Feng and Yeshe stepped in. Feng righted the bench and began to sweep up the tobacco.
"How about you, Sergeant?" Shan asked. "Do you want it to stop this time?"
The sullen expression had not left Feng's face all day. "I don't understand anything anymore." He wrung his fingers together. "They shouldn't be killing my prisoners."
"Then help me."
"I am. It is my job."
"No. Help me." Shan glanced at Yeshe, who had moved toward his bunk. "Sungpo will be executed in three days. If he is, we will never know who the murderer is. And the 404th will be sacrificed."
"You're one crazy son of a bitch, thinking you can stop them," Feng muttered.
"Not just me. All of us." He gazed at his two exhausted companions. "In the morning, early, the Americans will come with maps. Photo maps. Yeshe will need to study them, and examine these disks." Shan pulled the envelope from his pocket and handed it to Yeshe. "It will take several hours."
He turned to Feng. "I want you to join Jigme in the mountains. Four eyes are better than two. I want you to stay until you find where the demon lives."
The sergeant seemed to shrink. Then his eyes turned up, sad but determined. "How?"
"Go to the shrine by the Americans. See if the hand of Tamdin is still there. If it is, follow it when it leaves. If it's gone, find who has been leaving prayers for protection against dogbite. And follow them."
Feng dropped into the bench. "You mean leave you. It's not in my orders." The words were spoken not in protest, but as a chagrined declaration. "I don't know how to read prayers," he muttered. "That Jigme, he won't either."
"No. You will take someone with you who does know. An old man. I will arrange for you to meet him in the market."
"How will I recognize him?"
"You already know him. His name is Lokesh."
Tyler Kincaid seemed highly amused. As they cleared the security checkpoint at the county border, he accelerated the truck and made a whooping sound, the kind Shan had only heard before from cowboys in American movies. Rebecca Fowler turned and pulled away the blanket that covered Shan. He climbed up from the floor and sat in the back seat.
"They never really check," she said in a taut voice. "Just a wave."
"Like some big MFC," Kincaid cracked. He tried to look at Shan, who was rubbing the circulation back into his legs. He had been lying on the floor for nearly two hours, since they had left Yeshe with a stack of photo maps at Jade Spring. "Someone said you were a big man in the Party once. Said you took on the chairman and lost."
"Nothing so dramatic."
"But that's why you're here, isn't it? You took on the MFCs. They're the ones who put you in prison, right?" Kincaid asked, in the same lighthearted tone.
"Someone must be living a very unfulfilled life, to waste time talking about me."
Fowler glanced back with a grin.
"And you, Mr. Kincaid, is your injury healing?"
The American held up his arm, still covered with a long bandage. "Sure. Good as new soon. High-altitude healing, it's great conditioning for the climb up Chomolungma."
"We should do Gonggar first," Fowler suggested. They were going to drop off brine samples at the airport for shipment to Hong Kong. Behind Shan sat two large square wooden crates, each holding twelve stainless-steel cylinders. The crates were their cover.
"There's a jacket," she explained. "With a mine logo. Put it on. At the airport just help with the crates like you work for us."
"But afterward," Shan asked, "do you have authority to go to Lhasa? I could find a ride with a truck driver."
"And how do you get back? How many truck drivers are going to risk hiding a stranger without papers at the checkpoint? We'll just go see Jansen at the UN office. I want to talk to him about the skull shrine."
"It's just that you shouldn't be involved, shouldn't be at further risk," Shan said. "You're risking too much already."
"I want this thing over," Fowler said with a new tone, almost pleading. "If you get caught it may never be over." She turned toward the back seat. The haunted countenance Shan had seen after she returned the demon's hand was there again. "They came last night. I guess that's what you were trying to warn me about."
"Who came?"
"Public Security. Not the major. Tyler called the major to complain. It was a squad of technicians, seemed like. All they did was search the computers. Looked at every hard drive and disk."
"Big MFC show," Kincaid observed with a small, sour smile. "Just to keep us scared. Routine. They know we help Jansen. We know they know. We know they want it to stop. They know if they push too hard the UN could get really interested, call out the watchdogs."
"The UN has watchdogs?"
"Human rights investigators."
Shan stumbled on the words. Human rights investigators, he repeated to himself. The Americans used the words so casually. They didn't come from another part of his world. Surely they came from a whole different planet. He looked out the window and sighed. "What did the major say when you called?" he asked.
"Couldn't get through," Kincaid replied. "Busy with preparations for the American tourists."
"One of them talked a lot," Fowler continued nervously. "He kept going at me, taunting me like he hated Americans. Asked if I knew the penalty for espionage. Said it was death, no matter who you were." She looked at Kincaid. "No one would stand up for us then. Not the UN. Nobody."
Kincaid felt her gaze and turned to her, strangely affected by her tone. "It's all right," he said uncertainly. "We'll be okay. You know there's no damned spies. Just their damned games." His hand moved across the console and rested on her leg.
"I don't know," she said, speaking to the window. "I've been so jumpy. I get scared for no reason. Premonitions."
"About what?" Kincaid asked.
"Nothing. I mean, nothing, exactly. Like smelling something rotten for a second, then it's gone, something in the wind." She pushed his hand away.
"Everyone's jumpy," Kincaid said. "Ever since the knobs arrived. They killed a man at the prison." Shan noticed that the American was wearing a piece of heather in his pocket.
"They can't do that, can they?" Fowler asked. There was a small tremble in her voice. "At the prison. Luntok said they're on strike, and the knobs have machine guns. He says it's like the old days. He's scared. Is that where you-?"
Why was it so hard for him to talk with Fowler about the 404th? He broke away from her green eyes and looked out the window. They were following a wide river lined with willows. "I'm scared, too," he said. Kincaid was right. Everyone was jumpy.
They passed fields lush with barley. Near the river there was enough water for irrigation. "Why do you do it?" Shan asked. "Why did you start helping them, looking for the artifacts? Just running the mine, wouldn't that be enough?"
"Because it has to be done," Fowler said without hesitation.
"There're others who could do it."
"But we're the ones who are here."
"It's one of the things that scares me," Shan said quietly. "I fear you don't understand the danger."
Fowler took offense. "You think we do it for a lark?" Her voice grew louder than Shan had ever heard it. "What, so we can brag about it when we get home? That's not it, dammit!" She looked down, as though taken aback by her own outburst. "I'm sorry," she said quietly. "It's just that Tibet gets inside you. It's real here. More real than anything back home."
She had used the word before, Shan remembered, to describe the moment when she had returned Tamdin's hand and the beast had howled. Real.
"It's important here," Fowler concluded.
"Important?" asked Shan.
She twisted in her seat and looked back at him, her eyes moving as though searching for the right words, but she did not speak.
"We make a difference here," Kincaid continued, as if he and Fowler had discussed the topic many times before. "Back home the world sits and watches MTV. Buys cars. Buys houses. Has one-point-eight kids."
"MTV?" Shan asked.
"Never mind. Life is wasted back there. There, they just live on the world. Here, you can live in the world. The Buddhists, they have eight hot and eight cold hells. But there's a whole new level in America. The worst one. The one where everyone's tricked into ignoring their souls by being told they're already in heaven."
"But you must have important things at home. Family."
"Not much," Kincaid quipped brightly, as though he were proud of it.
Not much, Shan considered. What was it Fowler had told him? That Kincaid would be running the company, that he would become one of the wealthiest men in America.
"My parents and I don't speak much."
"No brothers or sisters?"
"Had a dog," Kincaid said whimsically. Shan envied the American his ability to be so carefree. "The dog died," Kincaid concluded with a wide grin.
"But you're rich at home," Shan offered clumsily.
Kincaid shot Fowler an exaggerated frown, as though to chastise her for talking too much. "Not anymore. Gave it up. My father's rich. Guess I'll be rich again. I try not to let it upset me. Rich doesn't make a home. Rich doesn't give you peace of mind." He cast a sideways, hopeful glance toward Rebecca Fowler. "Hell, in Lhadrung, I feel more at home than I ever did in the United States."
Fowler gave him a weak smile. "The poor lost soul finally finds a roost."
"Don't make it sound like I'm the only one," Kincaid chided, still grinning.
Shan saw Fowler stiffen, then hesitantly turn toward him, as though she owed Shan an explanation. "My parents divorced fifteen years ago. I lived with my mother, who now has Alzheimer's disease. Destroys the memory. She hasn't recognized me for over four years. And I haven't seen or heard from my father in eight years." She looked out the window. "I guess I needed a new world, too."
It didn't explain anything for Shan. It just made him sad. Maybe in the spirit realm Lhadrung was another kind of catching place, where lost souls collected and were battered about until, worn and hard as old stones, they were safe in the world again.
Shan closed his eyes, and his mind drifted toward what he had seen in Colonel Tan's service record. Service in Manchuria, Inner Mongolia, and Fujian. But nothing in Tibet before 1985. He stared out the window at the desolate landscape. Everything was wrong. Everything he had assumed had been mistaken. He had thought the key had been Director Hu, but he had been wrong. He had thought it had been about the skull cave, but then he found Yerpa. He had hoped it had merely been a battle between looters, but a looter didn't kill over one shrine to protect another. He had thought perhaps it had been only Li, then Li and the major, but neither had any connection to Tamdin. He had thought it could never be Sungpo, yet who but a monk would have reverently arranged the dislocated skull in the cave? He had thought the Lotus Book provided the answers, the motives, but the Lotus Book was wrong. They were all pieces of the puzzle, but the shape of the puzzle eluded him, and he had no idea how many more pieces he needed before they began to make sense.
To know of not knowing is best, Tsomo had reminded him. He had to begin again, erasing it all, assuming he knew only of not knowing. There was so much he did not know. He did not know who had the Tamdin costume. He did not know who had given the ragyapa the stolen military supplies. He did not know why the purbas would have recorded lies in the Lotus Book. He did not know why Jao was interested in water rights on a remote mountainside. He felt no closer to an answer than he had the day they found Jao's head. If he did not find answers in Lhasa, he would have no hope of finding the true killer, no hope of saving Sungpo. No hope of saving himself, or the 404th, when he refused to write the report condemning an innocent monk.
They drove to a warehouse at the far end of the airport, where a sleepy customs officer waved them through and two freight handlers waited for Fowler to hand them each a ten renminbi note before unloading the crates and wheeling a dolly bearing a rack of empty cannisters to the truck. In less than fifteen minutes they were on the road to Lhasa.
An hour later they passed the familiar blocks of low, slate-colored barracks that Beijing built for urban workers all over China. The paths along the highway began to fill with figures in gray and brown clothing. Carts pulled by haggard ponies hauled plastic barrels of night soil out of the city. Farmers carried cabbages and onions in huge net bags. Chickens and small pigs were trussed on sticks balanced on bicycles. Grandparents walked to market with children. The streets seemed more Chinese than Tibetan, and with a pang of sorrow as sharp as a blade Shan remembered why. Beijing had "naturalized" the city by shipping in a hundred thousand Chinese to join the fifty thousand Tibetans already living there. As far as he could see, Lhasa, which in Tibetan meant the dwelling place of God, had been converted into one more of the gray, smokey urban tracts that comprised modern China.
"There should be something more we can do," Fowler said as Kincaid eased the truck to a stop in front of the drab two-story building that housed Jansen's office. "You want the water permit records. But they won't let you see them. Not without identification."
"I may find a way. I know how the bureacrats speak." Shan stepped out and turned away from the truck, facing the old city for the first time.
"No. Tyler will go. It's perfectly normal. They won't say no to him, asking to see his own permits."
But Shan could not reply. For there it was, on top of the small mountain that dominated the city. Or rather, it was the mountain that dominated the city. Its huge lower walls, brilliant white and sloping steeply upward, gave the main structure the appearance of a vast, golden-roofed temple floating above Himalayan snows. The precipice of existence, Trinle had once called the walls in a winter tale, so high, so rigid, so alluring that they recalled for him the path to Buddhahood.
Never before in his life had Shan been afraid to look at something. He felt unworthy to stare at the building. He had been wrong. Something did survive of the dwelling place of God. He gazed down at his feet a moment, wondering at his sudden flood of emotion, then, unable to stop himself, his gaze moved back to the Potala.
"What are you doing?" Kincaid asked suddenly, his hand reaching out as though to catch Shan.
Shan realized that he had unconsciously dropped to his knees. "I guess," he said, still in wonder, "I am doing this." And he touched the ground with his forehead, the way a pilgrim might on first seeing the holy building.
Most of the old yaks had their own names for it, or were fond of reciting the many appelations given the structure in Tibetan literature. The Seat of Supreme Being. The Jewel in the Crown. The Sublime Fortress. Buddha's Gate. One of the younger monks had proudly reported that in a Western magazine he had seen the Potala listed as one of the wonders of the world. The old yaks had all smiled politely at the news. Now Shan knew what they had all been thinking: The Potala wasn't of this world.
Maybe five years before he could have visited Lhasa and seen the structure as a tourist might, as a massive stone castle, impressive for its size and age and historic role as the Buddhist Vatican. But Shan had not seen it five years ago, and now he could see it only through the eyes of those who told the winter tales.
An ancient priest, the same who had gone out into the snow to die the year before, had first visited it in 1931, when the Thirteenth Dalai Lama was still in residence and again two years later when the salt-dried body of the old ruler was interred in a solid silver chorten in the Red Palace of the Potala. It had been the Thirteenth who warned on his deathbed that soon all Tibetans would be enslaved and would have to endure endless days of suffering. Later the same priest had been fortunate enough to be assigned to the library of the Potala. It contained the original plans of the Great Fifth Dalai Lama, who had started construction of the Potala in 1645 and asked that his death be concealed so that it would not interfere with the work. The old yak had described the plans in detail to his awed, shivering audience at the 404th. Richly worked walls of stone, cedar, and teak joined by hand without a single nail created a thousand rooms over thirteen floors that once held the hundredfold shrines. Only in the third retelling of the tale had Shan understood that the reference was not merely figurative. The Great Fifth's palace for Buddha contained a hundred times a hundred shrines, ten thousand altars, and on them sat two hundred thousand statues of deities. As he gazed on the huge walls Shan remembered the monk telling them they had been built for eternity. Maybe he was right- later Shan had learned that the exterior walls, in some places thirty feet thick, had been strengthened for the ages by pouring molten copper inside them.
Much later, in the Tibetan year of the Earth Mouse, 1949, Choje had visited the same library. Seven thousand volumes of scripture he had seen there, most of them one-of-a-kind manuscripts dating back centuries. Some, he explained in a childlike tone of awe, had been written on palm leaves brought from India a thousand years earlier. In a special collection of illuminated manuscripts, which Choje spent ten months studying, there were two thousand volumes in which the lines of scripture were written in alternating inks made of powdered gold, silver, copper, turquoise, coral, and conch shell. For the Red Guards who invaded the Potala during the Cultural Revolution, nothing had symbolized the Four Olds better than these manuscripts. They had made a public display of destroying the volumes on the temple grounds, ripping many into pieces which were sent for use in Red Guard latrines.
Rebecca Fowler's hand on his arm brought Shan back. "Tyler should go instead," she repeated.
"Piece of cake," Kincaid agreed with a gleam of mischief. "Been to the Ministry of Ag before. They'll probably recognize me. Kowtow to the big American investor."
Shan nodded reluctantly, then stood and handed Fowler the canvas bag he had brought with him. "Give this to your friend Jansen."
"What is it?"
"From the cave. One of the gold skulls. I asked for it as evidence."
Kincaid looked at him uncertainly.
"I didn't say for evidence of what," Shan continued.
Kincaid's eyes widened. "Son of a bitch," he said with a grin. "Son of a bitch." He accepted the bag eagerly and glanced inside.
Shan pulled out an envelope. "These are the resumes of Director Hu's geologic exploration staff. I thought it might be of interest."
"Resumes?" Kincaid asked.
"Hu has eight staff members assigned to find new mineral deposits. Six of them were transferred last year by Wen Li at the request of Hu."
"But Wen is Religious Affairs."
Shan nodded. "The six have no geology training. They are archaeologists and anthropologists."
Kincaid stared at the envelope in confusion, then comprehension lit his eyes. "Shit! His mineral exploration- it's all about looting. He's not looking for mines," Tyler exclaimed to Fowler, "he's looking for caves! Shrine caves. Wait till Jansen sees this!" With a huge grin he grabbed Shan's hand and shook it, hard. "Be careful, man," he said awkwardly, glancing up at Fowler's amused face and turning back to Shan. "Really. I mean it."
The American paused and solemnly reached into his shirt to pull out a white cloth that had been hidden there. It was a silk khata scarf, a prayer scarf, that the American had been wearing around his neck. "Here," Kincaid said. "It's my good luck charm. Keeps me alive when I climb."
"I can't," Shan said uncomfortably. "This is not for-"
"Please," Kincaid persisted. "I want you to have it. For protection. I don't want you getting caught. You're one of us."
Shan accepted the khata with a blush of embarrassment, then joined the flow of pedestrians, praying the faded army coat he had brought from Lhadrung would persuade any onlooker that he was nothing but a straggling soldier who had hitched a ride.
But as he rounded the corner toward the center of the city, the Sublime Fortress was there again. Lokesh had been there, too, Shan remembered, first as a young student who, by excelling at his exams, won the honor of scraping the candle grease from Potala altars. The memories of that first visit, spent in the darkness of the lower floors, had been almost entirely aural. Lokesh related that he had constantly heard the tingle of tsingha cymbals but never in a month's stay had he been able to locate its source among the maze of rooms. There had been the high-pitched jaling horns blown at the opening of special rituals and the melodious vajre bells rung to call monks to the services that seemed to begin every few minutes somewhere in the complex. Finally there had been the twelve-foot long dungchen horns, so deep they were like a groan of the earth, and so resonant that Lokesh insisted that their echoes rolled about the lower floors for hours after being blown.
As Shan approached the museum the hairs on the back of his neck stood, the skin tingled. He made two slow circuits around the building, lingering in a throng watching a chess game on the first circuit, moving to a bus stop queue after the second. It was a very small Tibetan man who was following him, wearing a blue worker's jacket and carrying a cabbage. His long, limber arms and sharp restless eyes belied his slow, feeble carriage. Shan tested the tail by rapidly walking down the street three blocks, then sitting on a bench. The man followed on the opposite side, lingering at a vegetable stall while Shan pretended to read a newspaper gleaned from a trash can. Shan watched until he was certain the stalker was alone. Public Security operated tails with teams of at least three.
Chiding himself for not considering that Jansen's office could be watched, he found a public washroom where he removed his coat. Outside, he climbed aboard a bus and got out at the first stop. He switched to a second bus, watching with his ears around his eyes, as a Beijing instructor had once described, meaning watching with every sense, sensing the rhythm of the crowd so he could see where the rhythm broke, watching the way every pedestrian watched the others. It was the ones who ignored the others who were the ones to fear.
After six blocks he emerged back into the sunlight and began walking not toward the street of the museum but parallel to the street, still testing the pavement.
Suddenly there was a loud crack behind him, as though from a pistol. Shan spun about and froze. There, not ten feet away from him amidst the throng of Chinese shoppers and rush of bicycles, was a ragged, unkempt Tibetan with a filthy leather apron over a felt coat. His hands were thrust into the straps of wooden clogs, which he was now clapping together over his head. Someone beside Shan, a plump Chinese woman carrying a jar of yogurt, hissed an expletive at the man. "Latseng!" she added. Garbage.
But the Tibetan seemed unaware of anyone on the busy street as he left the curb. He brought the clogs down in one liquid motion and stretched himself full-length on the pavement, his arms extended in front of him. With a murmured mantra he pulled himself forward, moved back to his knees, stood, and clapped the clogs in front of him twice before clapping them over his head and repeating the process. Traditionally, Shan remembered, pilgrims did three five-mile circuits around the Potala. But he also recalled that the government had obliterated most of the pilgrim's circuit, known as the Lingkhor, constructing apartment buildings and shops squarely to block the route after monks had invited Tibetans to protest their Chinese government by creating an endless chain of pilgrims around the circuit.
Emotion overtaking him again, Shan stared helplessly at the Tibetan, who gazed fixedly ahead. Trinle had laughed heartily about the route being blocked. "The government will never be able to see what the pilgrim sees," he had said with absolute conviction. He had repeated the phrase for Shan like a mantra again and again with his huge smile until, not knowing why, Shan had laughed, too.
An angry shout rose from the street. A youth on a motorcycle was yelling for the pilgrim to get out of his path. A car pulled up behind the man and began honking its horn. The pilgrim was entering an intersection, oblivious to the traffic light. A truck approaching down the cross street added its horn to the chorus.
Pilgrims were sometimes run over by vehicles. Shan had heard guards at the 404th joke about such roadkills. The pilgrim kept moving. But there was something new in the man's eyes. He was aware of the vehicles now. He was afraid, but he would not stop.
Shan looked back to the crowd. Was someone there? No. But did he still have the rhythm of the crowd? No. He took a long look at the Sublime Fortress and stepped into the street.
He moved past the angry drivers, still pounding their horns, to stand beside the solitary pilgrim. With tiny steps he escorted the Tibetan as the man struggled through the intersection. Up on his knees. Up to his feet. Arms in front. Clap the clogs. Arms overhead. Clap the clogs. Arms down. Stop. Kneel. Drop to his belly. Extend the arms. Recite the mantra to the Buddha of Compassion. Retract the arms. Up on his knees.
People were shouting louder, infuriated at Shan now. But he did not hear their words. He watched the pilgrim with great satisfaction, and in the pilgrim saw Choje, and Trinle, and all the old yaks. An odd thought flashed through his mind. Perhaps this was the most important thing he had done in three years. Choje might have suggested that everything that happened before was so Shan could be there in that moment to protect the pilgrim.
They reached the curb and the safety of the sidewalk. Without breaking stride or diverting his eyes, the pilgrim spoke in an emotional, uncertain voice. "Tujaychay," he whispered to Shan. Thank you.
Shan watched the pilgrim move on another thirty feet before the world crept back over him. He glanced up and realized he had no hope of regaining the rhythm of the crowd. Twenty faces were watching him now, most of them resentful. There was no time left to watch and elude. He moved straight to the museum.
He entered along with a tour group, then moved in the cover of the crowds through the exhibits, willing himself not to linger at the exquisite displays of skull drums, ceremonial jade swords, altar statues, rich thangka paintings, crested hats, and prayer wheels. He paused only once, in front of a display of rare rosaries. There in the center was one of pink coral beads carved like tiny pinecones, with lapis marker beads. He stared at it sadly, then wrote down the collection inventory number and moved on.
Suddenly he was at the exhibit of costumes for demon protectors. There was Yama, the Lord of the Dead, Yamantaka, Slayer of Death, Mahakala, Supreme Protector of the Faith, Lhamo, Goddess Protector of Lhasa. And in the last case, Tamdin the Horse-headed.
The magnificent costume was there, its face a savage bulging mask of red lacquered wood, four fangs in its mouth, a ring of skulls at its neck, a tiny, ferocious, green horse head rising above its golden hair. Shan shivered as he studied it, his hand clamped on the gau around his neck that now contained the Tamdin summoning spell. The arms of the demon lay beside the mask, ending in two grotesque clawed hands, identical to the smashed one found at the American mine.
It was small comfort to confirm that the hand was indeed that of Tamdin, for the costume in the museum was intact, and in Lhasa, not in Lhadrung. There was a second costume but if it did not belong to the museum Shan had no way to trace it, no way to link it to Jao's killers.
He stared at the exhibit in deep thought, waited for the room to empty, and opened a door. A janitor's closet. He began to shut it, then paused and pulled out the broom and a bucket. He moved slowly through the building, sweeping as he watched the interior doors. Suddenly, and with a wrench of his gut, he saw someone new, a Chinese with bullet-hole eyes trying quite futilely to look interested in the exhibits. The man surveyed the room, not noticing Shan, then gave a snort of impatience and moved with a military gait into the adjoining hall. Shan stayed in the shadows and watched, to his horror, as the man conferred with two others, a young woman and a man dressed as tourists. They left the room at a trot and Shan stepped inside the first door that was not locked.
He was in a short corridor that opened into a large office chamber divided into cubicles. Most of the desks were empty. On a bench in the hall was a white technician's coat. Abandoning the bucket and broom, he put on the coat, then picked up a clipboard and pencil from the first desk.
"I lost my way," he said to the woman at the first occupied desk. "The inventory."
"Inventory?"
"Exhibits. Artifacts in storage."
"It's usually the same," she said in a superior tone.
"The same?"
"You know. Two of each piece. One on display, one in storage. In the basement. Parallel collection, the curator calls it. Makes cleaning and examination easier. One upstairs. One downstairs, arranged by their inventory number sequence."
"Of course," Shan said, with renewed hope. "I meant the organization charts. The location of artifacts."
"In notebooks. On the library table."
In the small library at the back of the corridor he found a thick black binder, its vinyl covers worn through to the cardboard at the edges. He had already located a section entitled Costumes when an older woman appeared at the door.
"What is it?" she snapped.
Shan started, then settled back into the chair before looking at her. "I'm from Beijing."
The announcement bought him another thirty seconds. He kept searching as the woman lingered at the doorway. Ceremonial headdresses. Demon dancer costumes.
"No one informed me," the woman said with a suspicious tone.
"Comrade, certainly you realize audits are not nearly so effective when advance warning is given," Shan said curtly.
"Audits?" She paused, then slowly entered and walked around the table.
As she saw Shan's clothing a sharp hiss of air escaped her lips. "We will need identification, Comrade."
Shan kept studying the books. "They said to leave it at the front desk. We have much work here." He gestured to a chair. "Perhaps you would like to help."
The woman spun about and disappeared down the hall. Tamdin, the book said, Code 4989. Set One from Shigatse gompa, 1959. Set Two from Saskya gompa, dated only fourteen months earlier. He walked quickly to the corridor and began checking the doors again. The third one opened onto descending stairs.
The basement shelves rose from the dirt floor to the ceiling, crammed with boxes of wood, wicker, and cardboard. They were arranged by inventory number as the girl had explained. He darted down the rows, desperately scanning the numbers at the end of each shelf. Suddenly there was a new sound, the unmistakable sound of running feet on the floor above.
He found the 3000 series, and kept running. Then the 4000. Shan pulled a box from the shelves. It held an incense burner. He began to run, and stumbled onto his knees. There were shouts upstairs. He found a shelf marked 4900. A set of golden horns extended from a box. The mask of Yama. Frantically he checked the boxes. They were on the stairs now, shouting. Another row of lights was illuminated, much brighter. Then he had it. Tamdin, the box said. Tamdin, demon costume, Saskya gompa. It was empty.
Someone yelled nearby. There was a white index card taped to the top of the box. He tore it off and ran away from the sounds of the searchers. There was a door up a shorter flight of stairs, showing daylight at the bottom.
It was locked. He rammed it with his shoulder and old wood splintered. He fell outward onto the ground. As he lay blinking in the painful sunlight someone jammed a boot into his back, then reached down and placed handcuffs on his wrists.
The first syllable of weak protest was still on his lips when a truncheon slammed into his forehead, spattering blood. "Hooligan shit," his captor spat before he spoke into a hand radio.
The blood that trickled into his eyes prevented him from seeing how many there were. They were Public Security, he had no doubt, but they seemed confused. From behind him, as he was pushed into a gray van, there were arguments about whose prisoner he was, about his destination. The first two didn't use place names. "The long bed," one of them said. "Wires," argued another. But a third man joined them. "Drabchi," he said, in the tone of an order, referring to the notorious political prison northeast of Lhasa. Prison Number One, it was formally called, where the high-ranking officials of the Tibetan government had once been held.
It was over. Sungpo would die. Shan would have new wardens. Eventually, if Tan did not abandon him, he might be returned to the 404th, with five or ten years added, but only after a Public Security interrogation and the stay in the infirmary that would follow. Who, he wondered in some remote corner of his mind, would be recruited to express the people's disappointment in his socialist development? I'm a hero, Shan would tell his captors. I lasted twelve days on the outside.
The blood was in his mouth now, and the pain of the wound began to surge through his stupor. The van was moving. A siren erupted, painfully loud. They were on a fast road, accelerating. He blacked out. Suddenly there was a shout, and he heard the sound of breaking wood and chickens squawking in terror. He felt the van slam on its brakes and heard the men in front leap out.
There were furious shouts from the front of the van. Then someone climbed into the driver's seat and the van was moving in a Uturn. The siren was cut and the vehicle made a series of a rapid turns, then it pulled to an abrupt stop. The rear doors were flung open and four hands reached in for him. He was half carried, half dragged into the back seat of a car, which instantly pulled away.
Slowly, with dreamlike motions, he wiped the blood from his eyes and pulled himself up. It was a large car, an older American sedan. The driver wore a wool cap over his head. When they pulled into the broad thoroughfare that led out of town the man dangled a small key over his shoulder. As Shan unlocked the handcuffs the man removed the cap to reveal a head of thick blond hair.
"I didn't know-" Shan began, paralyzed by confusion. He pulled out his shirttail to wipe away the blood. "Thank you," he offered in English. "Are you Jansen?"
The man shook his head and muttered to himself in a Scandinavian tongue as he drove slowly through the traffic, careful not to attract attention. "No names," he replied in the same language. "Please. No names." On the floor beside him Shan recognized the bag he had carried to Lhasa. The skull from the cave shrine.
"How could you know?" Shan asked after five minutes.
Jansen had sunk into a depressed silence. "I'm just taking you to the highway somewhere. Your friends will be on the highway, they said."
"Why?"
"Why?" Jansen pounded the steering wheel in anger. "You think I would have done it if I had known? With the knobs as thick as flies? Nobody said anything about knobs. They said for me to be there, that's all. Need to help the gentleman who brought all the information from Lhadrung." He shook his head. "Nothing like this has happened before. Help with the records, no problem. Give an old man a ride from Shigatse, no problem. But this-" He threw up a hand in frustration.
"The purbas," Shan realized. Somehow it had been the purbas. The little man he had seen on the street had not been alone. He had been a purba, Shan now understood. "But how could they know?"
"How do they know anything? Like telepathy."
The knobs had somehow known. The purbas had somehow known. Everyone seemed to know everything. Except him.
"Like telepathy," Shan repeated in a hollow voice. He looked out the window for a fleeting glance of the Potala as it faded into the distance. The precipice of existence.
"Worst they do, they deport me," Jansen muttered to himself.
Shan lay back on the seat. He found a paper towel and held it to his forehead. "There was an obstruction pushed onto the highway," Shan said, as though to himself. "A farmer's cart, I think. The knobs got out to clear the path."
"They told me you need a ride. To wait with my car. Okay, I thought. A ride. I could ask you about the skull shrine. Suddenly one of them runs by. Tosses me a key. For you, he says. Then this Public Security van races down the alley and they throw you inside. Who are you? Why does everyone want you?"
"For me, he said. Did he use my name?"
"No. Not exactly. He said for the pilgrim."
"The pilgrim?"
"The name the purbas are using for you. Tan's pilgrim."
No, Shan was tempted to say. A pilgrim moves toward enlightenment. All I move toward is darkness and confusion. But suddenly a tiny flicker of light appeared. "You said you drove an old man from Shigatse? To Lhadrung?"
Jansen nodded distractedly. He was nervously watching the rearview mirror. "His wife had just died. He sang me some of the old mourning songs."
Rebecca Fowler and Tyler Kincaid were waiting fifteen miles out of the city, parked at a flat stretch of highway along the Lhasa River where truckers gathered to sleep. Jansen pulled in behind a decrepit Jiefang truck, from which four young men instantly emerged and escorted Shan to the Americans. Shan turned to thank Jansen, but the Finn just nodded nervously and sped back down the road.
The Jiefang pulled out in front of Kincaid and the driver motioned for the Americans to follow.
Fowler was silent in the front seat. At first he thought she was sleeping but then he saw her hands. They were twisting the road map, their knuckles white.
"It's like free-falling," Kincaid said, with unexpected excitement in his voice. "A hundred feet a second. Your heart's in your throat. The world's flying by." He glanced back at Shan. "It's them, right?" he asked with a huge grin.
"Them?"
"In the truck. The real thing. It's gotta be purbas."
"I'm sorry." Shan felt his forehead. The blood was clotting now.
"Sorry? For this day? The whole damn day, it's been like rappelling down a mountain. You just jump off the cliff and let it happen."
"I never meant for you to be in danger," Shan said. "You should have just left."
"Hell, we made it out alive, didn't we? No sweat. Wouldn't have missed it. We got 'em good, the MFCs. You sent me to search for what isn't there. Perfect. Playing games with their minds." He filled the truck with another of his cowboy whoops.
"Dammit, Tyler," Fowler said. "Get us out of here. It's not over until we're home."
"What do you mean, 'seeking what isn't there'?" Shan asked.
"At the Ministry of Ag. Water resources office moved away in a reorganization. All the files were shipped to Beijing five months ago."
Going to seek what wasn't there. Shan had forgotten the card from the archives. He pulled it from his pocket slowly, as if it would shatter if it moved too fast.
Tamdin, the card said. Saskya gompa. But there was more. On loan, with a date fourteen months earlier, the same date it had been discovered. On loan to Lhadrung town. There was a name, written hastily and smeared. But the chop at the bottom was clear. The personal chop of Jao Xengding. Below it was scrawled "Confirmed," followed by a final ideogram, the inverted, double-barred Y. The same one he had seen on the note from Jao's pocket. Sky, it meant, or heaven.
Twenty miles past the airport the Jiefang truck stopped on a sharp curve and Kincaid pulled in behind it. A man jumped out, ran to the Americans' vehicle, and whispered urgently with Kincaid, pointing to a side road ahead of the truck. The Jiefang turned around and the purba jumped on as it passed by.
Kincaid eased their vehicle into four-wheel-drive and moved onto the side road. "The knobs have road blocks on all roads out of Lhasa, at repeating intervals. They are steaming. They probably have a special reception committee waiting at the Lhadrung County checkpoint. So we have to detour."
He drove recklessly over the rough route, toward the setting sun, then abruptly stopped as the distant flickering lights of Lhadrung valley came into view. "We could go back, you know," Kincaid announced to Shan with a meaningful gaze.
"Back?"
"To Lhasa. The road blocks are checking vehicles leaving the area, not entering. We could do it. You're too valuable to go back to prison when this is over. You know so much. I can help you."
"Help me how?" Shan sensed the American's khata that still hung around his neck.
"Talk to Jansen. We'll calm him down. Hell, he'll want to pick your brain for weeks himself. He knows people who can get you out of the country."
"But Colonel Tan. And if Director Hu-" Fowler protested.
"Hell, Rebecca, they don't know Shan is with us. He just disappears. I could get that tattoo off. I've seen it done. You could be a free man."
A free man. They were such pale words to Shan. It was a concept that Americans always seemed infatuated with, but one which Shan never understood. Perhaps, he reflected, because he had never known a free man. His hand drifted to the khata and slid it off. "You are very kind. But I am needed in Lhadrung. Please, could you just return me to Jade Spring?"
Kincaid saw the scarf in Shan's hand and shook his head in disappointment.
"Keep it," he said admiringly, pushing the khata back. "If you're going back to Lhadrung, you're going to need it."