It was a slow, silent procession. Four men carried Thomas’s body tied to the makeshift stretcher, Shan and Yangke alternately bearing Lokesh on their backs. Even Chodron was pale and subdued when he met them at the top of the fields. He ignored Shan who was walking beside the stretcher. He had arranged a plank table by one of the stone granaries and covered it with a piece of black felt.

The headman did not object when Shan and Lokesh headed toward the stall where Gendun remained under guard. The lama appeared to be reading the unbound sheets of a text propped before him on a milking stool. But he was not reading, only staring at them, unfocused, one hand trembling uncontrollably. He was propped up with rolled blankets, as Hostene had been when Shan first saw him. Shan had never seen Gendun look so frail. After an earlier dose of tamzing torture this sometimes happened. It had taken time for the damage to manifest itself.

Lokesh touched the lama on the knee. Gendun slowly came to his senses, raising his head with what seemed great effort. “Dolma visits me,” he reported, his voice thin but steady. “Yesterday we polished the prayer wheels in the temple.” Shan and Lokesh exchanged an alarmed glance.

“Rinpoche!” Shan cried, using the term for a revered teacher as he touched Gendun’s hand. The lama did not respond, did not even seem to take notice when Shan pushed up his sleeve. Shan’s heart lurched as he saw the marks-new bruises and electrical burns. He had thrown away the battery but Chodron still had his generator.

Lokesh fell into the quiet rhythm of a mantra to the Compassionate Buddha. Gendun’s lips moved but his eyes were empty. Shan found his own lips mouthing the words as he fought to control the flood of emotion, first anger then deep helplessness. He could do nothing. The more he protested, the worse it would be for Gendun. He heard a dull, staccato rumble overhead. By the time he reached the landing circle the helicopter was on the ground and Gao stood before the makeshift bier. He examined his dead nephew without expression, then somberly studied those who had gathered around the table.

Shan did not move when Gao reached him, did not react when Gao, his face like a gray mask, raised his hand and slapped him. He stood still as a post when the scientist slapped him again harder, a third time still harder. Finally, Gao broke away and disappeared behind the granary. Chodron dispersed the crowd as Shan helped two soldiers wrap Thomas’s body in the black cloth and carry it into the still-whining helicopter. When Shan descended another soldier was there, holding a set of manacles. Shan silently extended his hands and watched without expression as the soldier locked them around his wrists and walked away. The villagers stared at him, stepping fearfully aside when, like a dutiful prisoner, he followed the soldier with the key. No one met his eyes. He had been claimed by the government and, with the final snap of the steel bracelets, had become nobody. He was a number again, nothing more.

The soldier led him to Gao, now seated on the same flat rock Lokesh had been perched on when Shan first arrived in the village. Gao’s face was gaunt, no expression, not even sadness in his eyes.

“When Public Security comes,” Shan said, “they will sweep the slopes and arrest everyone. There will be forced confessions. A heavy price will be exacted.”

“Listen to you.” Though Gao’s face seemed numb, his voice overflowed with bitterness. “Suddenly, the careful politician.”

“Leave the village alone. These people suffer enough.”

“But you told me before, they tortured your lama, they were going to kill Hostene. Why should you care?”

“Even so. .” Shan didn’t finish the sentence. He lowered himself onto the rock beside Gao. It was a quiet season for Public Security, and their Ax to Root campaign still needed to gain momentum. There was not a shadow of doubt that once senior officials outside Chodron’s sphere caught scent of Drango, the village would be obliterated. There would be photographers, perhaps even a film crew, certainly speeches about progress and the twenty-first century. The inhabitants would be herded out, perhaps on two hours’ notice, then a reconstruction brigade would arrive, possibly prisoners who were themselves Tibetan. Shan had seen it before, had been in such a brigade when it was ordered to such duty in the hills above their compound, had watched Lokesh and the other old Tibetan prisoners weep as the prison guards started the process by throwing torches into centuries-old wooden homes.

“Don’t you realize that the man who did this is too clever to be caught by a sweep?” Gao said after a long silence.

“Criminal justice in China is an approximate thing. I didn’t say he would be caught, I said a heavy price would be paid.” Shan gazed out over the distant ranges. “If Thomas is looking down on us,” he ventured at last, “there would be something more important to him than finding his killer.”

“You mean the Navajo woman.”

“She is up on the mountain. I think she is still alive. She crossed paths with the killer before and was spared. But this time I think he took her with him.”

“Why would he do that?”

“I don’t know exactly. He needs her for something.”

“What are you trying to say?” Gao asked after another long silence.

“Hostene and I can find her. When we find her we will know who the killer is.”

“If I let you go, I will never see you again. That’s what convicts do in Tibet. Disappear.”

Shan lowered his head into his hands. His body was fatigued. But his spirit was beyond exhaustion. “How many years did it take,” he asked, “to find the old dzong you live in?”

Gao did not reply.

“When they come,” Shan continued, “they will also find out about the gold. Not even the army will be able to stop what will happen then. Maybe it could have twenty or thirty years ago, but not today. Economic development is Beijing’s new mantra. The first year or two they will just send survey teams. There will be helicopters coming and going overhead. Geologists will drill and blast. After that, they will build roads, with bulldozers and more dynamite. They’ll assign a gulag crew to do the work for a year or two, maybe three or four hundred prisoners, so they’ll probably build a prison camp right here at the village site. A new town will go up, built of metal and concrete. A depot, a garage, dormitories. Then the real work will begin. Scores of miners. More dormitories. Huge trucks to move the material as it is blasted loose. After they deplete the seams and have sluiced the dust in the streams, they’ll pick a small valley in which to heap the soil they strip from the slopes, then spray it with sodium cyanide to leach out the ore. They won’t stop until there is nothing left but bare, sterile rock. Once they start, a Tibetan mountain lasts about a dozen years.”

Shan never heard the angry words forming on Gao’s lips. Chodron had appeared, accompanied by two of his men. The headman pointed at Shan. “He’s mine. He has already been arrested by the civil authority. I released him on his parole, to assist me.”

“Already arrested?” Gao asked, suppressing his rage. “On what charges?”

Chodron swallowed hard and pressed on. “Interfering with municipal government. Violations of the Ax to Root directive.”

“Ax to Root is a campaign,” Gao pointed out, “not a criminal law. A campaign against Tibetans. Shan is not Tibetan.”

“He has no government registration. He is nothing, an escaped convict. Leave him with me and we will find the bastard who did this to your nephew. I have already started an investigation. I know what to do with men like Shan.” Gao’s silence was making Chodron nervous. “Do not blind yourself to the truth, sir.”

“What particular truth am I missing, Comrade Chodron?” Gao asked.