"Are you ill?" Jakli called out for the second time that day, and he realized he had flattened himself against the sacks. Prisoner instincts died hard. "We must move," she explained as he rose and shook his head. She stretched out an arm to help him down from the truck.

Back in the cab of the truck Shan's fingers wove themselves into a mudra, his hands clasped together with the middle fingers pointing upward. Diamond of the Mind. Clarity of purpose. Remember your goal. Preserve mindfulness. He looked up from his hands just as the truck passed through the inner wire.

"I thought you meant we would leave!" he gasped.

"The loading dock is closed today," Jakli said as she looked back at the dock with a puzzled expression. "We have to unload half directly at the kitchens, then the other half tomorrow morning at the dock. We'll find Wangtu," she assured him, "one place or the other."

But in that moment Shan was not worried about finding Lau's driver. His tongue was so dry that he couldn't speak, or he might have shouted in protest. He was being taken back into prison after all. Had it all been some dreadful trick of his former jailers, to ensnare him behind government wire for a few more years?

Jakli placed her hand over his forearm again. "What were we to do? It would be more suspicious if we refused. You will be safe, I promise."

He realized he was sliding down in the seat, as if his body had willed itself to hide. He was being taken back into prison, and this time there would be no Buddhist monks to heal him when the jailers had finished with him.

A squeeze from Jakli's hand brought him back to reality. "It's only when you act like a prisoner that you become one," she observed in a calm, sober voice.

Her wisdom struck him like a fresh, cool wind, and it shamed him. He slowly sat up in the seat and said no more until they approached the long building at the base of the compound that served as kitchen and mess hall.

"I'm sorry," he said, fighting the temptation to again hold his tattoo.

Saying the words out loud somehow gave him strength but also heightened his shame. There is nothing to fear behind the wires. The words came back to him as starkly as when they had been spoken to him years earlier by a serene old monk serving his thirty-fifth year in the gulag. For no jailer who ever lived can imprison the truth.

He stepped out and stared at the first of the barracks, the special detention barracks, two hundred yards away. "Do they bring those prisoners out for exercise?" he asked Jakli.

"No. People here call them the invisibles," she said with a sigh. "Special cases. Usually nothing to do with Yoktian."

Shan stared intensely at the building, as though willing himself to see inside its walls.

"Your lama," Jakli said with sudden realization. "You think he's inside." She stared with him for a moment, then pulled his sleeve. "It's dangerous to appear too curious," she warned.

Shan fought a new urge, a compulsion to run to the sealed barracks and pound on the door, calling for Gendun. For a moment nothing seemed more important than hearing the sound of the lama's voice.

A door opened at the side of the mess hall and several men wearing loose-fitting grey tunics emerged. Jakli leapt out and disappeared into the building. Shan looked around the compound, nearly empty again now that the prisoners had joined their classes, then climbed down and joined the line of men forming to carry sacks of rice into the kitchen. He gazed at the barracks with the wire windows, futilely looking for any sign of who might be inside, then accepted one of the heavy bags and followed the line through the door, dropping it onto a stack under the supervision of a cackling woman in a brown dress who waved a wooden spoon with an air of authority. A tall man with a scar on his cheek stood at a sink, washing pots. He was doing so with only one hand. Shan stepped closer and discovered the reason. The man was chanting under his breath. His second hand was at his belt, counting a string of yellow plastic rosary beads. Another man, older than the first, stood beside him, drying the pots, though he seemed to be having trouble handling them. He was balancing each one on his palm to dry them, then placing them on a wall shelf by clamping them with his middle fingers. His thumbs were missing. Another Tibetan. Shan had seen it before. Not a week had gone by during his imprisonment when he had not heard guards cruelly joke about Tibetans being pruned. For several years it had been one of the favorite forms of punishment by certain knob officers, who used tree pruners to clip off the thumbs of monks to keep them from their rosaries.

Shan looked out through a set of double doors over the long rows of empty plank tables. One of the political classes had convened at the far end of the mess hall. A large Han woman in another brown dress was pacing inside the seated circle of prisoners, her hands clasped behind her. For one brief moment she faced the double door and Shan heard her call out, so loudly that for a chilling moment Shan thought she was addressing him.

"Who is the great provider of the people?" she asked in a shrill voice.

"The Party is the great provider of the people," the prisoners responded in chorus. It had a familiar, singsong ring to it. A mantra for the Chairman.

Shan looked from the hall back to the Tibetan at the sink, who seemed unaware of the activity around him as he offered up his own silent chant. A mantra for the Compassionate Buddha.

Outside, as Shan accepted another sack off the truck and moved back toward the building, a voice from behind him repeated the slogan the instructor had chanted. But then Shan realized the words were changing each time the man repeated the chant.

"Who is the great shoemaker of the people?" the man sang. "The Party is the great shoemaker of the people." His voice was soft, but loud enough for the men around him to enjoy his performance. "Who is the great barber of the people? The Party is the great barber of the people." Some of the men laughed. Others looked about nervously to see who else might hear.

Shan had to pause at the small flight of stairs leading to the door to wait for the older man in front of him, who seemed to be having difficulty carrying the bag up the stairs. He looked back at the man who was mocking the political instruction. A tall, large-boned man with a thick, well-groomed moustache and a sour smile returned Shan's stare. "Who is the great zookeeper of the people?" the man asked, nodding toward Shan. Shan said nothing. The man repeated the question.

Shan nodded back without shifting his gaze from the man's taunting eyes. "The Party is the great zookeeper of the people," Shan replied quietly.

The man's smile broadened and Shan saw that he was looking past Shan's shoulder to Jakli, who had appeared at the top of the short flight of stairs. "Allah be praised," he gasped under his breath. Jakli nodded and gestured them toward the shadow on the far side of the truck.

"So you've met," she said as she joined them.

"Not exactly," Shan said.

"Wangtu," Jakli said, touching the man on the arm as she spoke. "This is Shan. He came about Lau and the children."

But Wangtu seemed to have forgotten Shan. He looked at Jakli's fingers, still resting on his arm. "I thought you were gone," he said, the self-assurance suddenly gone from his voice. "They said the Jade Bitch had it in for you." He glanced at the supply truck. "You're free? You're out?"

"Mostly," she said and explained why Shan was there.