Xu sat at her table and folded her hands in front of her. "Not even an inspector from Beijing has the right to use my office without my permission," she growled.

"Your office, Comrade Prosecutor, belongs to the Ministry of Justice," Shan said, surprised again at how easily the words rolled off his tongue. Not surprised, he thought after a moment, but frightened, that the old Shan, the one-time Inspector General of the Ministry of Economy, lurked so close. He clenched his jaw and tapped the envelope. "Ministry representatives are always entitled to access if they are looking for corruption, say, or abuse of office."

The words had the desired effect, silencing Xu for a moment. Shan had little hope of defusing her anger, but he might deflect it, might at least stall it on the chance, however improbable, that an escape presented itself. And if he could not escape, he might use her arrogance to at least get her to admit what she knew about the killings.

Xu's lip curled up as if she was about to snarl, but she looked into her hands, not at Shan. "I have nothing to hide. I have nothing to fear from-" Her words were cut off as the door was flung open and a thick bull of a man burst into her office.

"Call them off!" the man shouted at Xu. "Order your damned whelps off or I'll call Beijing! You are endangering my investigation!" His heavy cheeks were flushed with color. Drops of saliva shot from his mouth as he shouted.

Shan didn't need to see the grey uniform to know what the man was. The Public Security Bureau had arrived, and if he had had a slim chance of escape a moment earlier, he had none now. He rose slowly, fighting the knot that was tying itself in his abdomen, and silently pulled a chair from the side of the desk and sat again, facing the knob officer, as if he were with Xu. The prosecutor did not seem to notice. The action took Shan out of the line of fire between the two and gave him a clear view of the furious stranger.

His hair was close-cropped and speckled with grey, like Shan's. His face had the broad, flat features of the southeastern coast, a region known for its fishermen and pirates and the difficulty of distinguishing between the two. As his barrel chest heaved up and down, Shan saw a bulge on the left side of his uniform, below the armpit. A pistol, strapped under his tunic.

"You will have to be more specific, Major Bao," Xu said icily.

Major Bao. It was the knob officer who had demanded all reports on Americans be sent to him, the one mentioned at Glory Camp. Lieutenant Sui's commanding officer. Shan remembered what Fat Mao had said. The two people in the county to stay away from were Prosecutor Xu and Major Bao.

"Specific, hell!"

"Major, you're overwrought." Xu seemed accustomed to his fury. "Sit down."

Shan studied the two in confusion. They should have started their feeding frenzy by now. They should have begun the process of dissecting and digesting Shan. But Xu and Bao appeared to be little interested in cooperation. Lieutenant Sui, who must have reported to Bao, had been with Xu at the motor pool. Bao Kangmei had also been the name copied on Xu's memo about Lau. Shan looked at the knob again. His hands were like cabbages, his eyes like dirty ice. Bao Kangmei. Resist America Bao. It had been a popular name during the struggle with the Americans in Korea.

Bao made a sound like a growl and dropped into the center chair just vacated by Shan. "Your damned investigators are spooking everyone," he said in an icy tone. "Everyone's running to cover. The caravans will stop moving. If you ruin my operation, I'll ruin you."

Shan studied the knob. Bao didn't want to stop the caravans, he wanted them to keep moving. Shan remembered the black market goods at Glory Camp, in the shed guarded by the knob guard. In the shed with the dead American. Was that all it was? Was Bao just a black market businessman? Perhaps the American had simply been an unlucky merchant, in Xinjiang to buy carpets on the black market, perhaps even to trade for electronic goods.

Xu sighed as if she were sympathetic to Bao. But her face showed no warmth. "My team has never been closer to a breakthrough. The Poverty Scheme is what we have waited for all these years. I will not call them off a real case so you can chase phantoms."

"Not phantoms, Comrade Prosecutor. Enemies of the state. Enemies of Beijing."

"It's your crutch, isn't it, Major?" Shan looked up in surprise at Xu's words. Never had he heard anyone speak in such a tone to a knob. "You're the only one who speaks of Beijing so often. But I am the one who catches criminals. Beijing knows that."

Bao glared at her.

Xu's face seemed to soften, now that she had scored against him. "Surely a few minor inquiries in the mountains can't upset an important Public Security operation, Comrade Major."

But Bao did not seem to have heard. His oxlike head was turning to the side, looking onto a huge table, bigger even than that used as Xu's desk, which was pushed against the wall. It seemed conspicuously oversized, as though ready at any time to receive a banquet or a body, at Xu's convenience.

A single cardboard box sat in the center of the table. On it, written with a broad black marker, was a name. Lau.

Bao exchanged a silent, meaningful look with Xu, then rose and stepped to the table. Xu stared after him with an icy expression. By the time she had joined him Bao had dumped the contents of the box on the table. Shan stood to see better, then glanced at the door. He might make it if he walked quietly away, without attracting those in the outer office. But he turned back to look at what Xu had collected from Lau. Three books. A short, narrow knife, like a dagger. A wooden box, the size of a shoe box, though half as high. Several notebooks. A small jade statue of a horse. A simple white metal box, dented from long use, inlaid with a row of pink coral squares on its top- a pen case, of a type often seen in Tibetan instruction halls.

Oddly, the discovery seemed to have subdued Bao. He stared at the evidence, then at Xu. "You have been sharing the results of your investigation with my office, no doubt."

"We have no official investigation results yet comrade. Just a missing persons review, after all. These are simply personal effects. In case we ever identify her family. Things from her room in the teacher's dormitory. Space is in short supply. Her room was cleared out for another teacher."

"But still," Bao said in a taunting tone, "here they are, on your evidence table."

Shan quietly inched his way toward the table. He stood back, out of Bao's reach, but close enough to see the objects clearly. The books were poetry. The top one Shan readily recognized, the works of Su Tung-po, a broken Sung dynasty official who had written beautiful poems about living in exile.

"Even in death you are too kind to her," Bao said as he picked up the knife and waved it in the air, as if it proved a point.

"A letter opener," Xu shot back, not bothering to hide her impatience.

As the major clamped his huge hand over the wooden box, Shan saw that it was of rosewood, a superbly crafted container carved with delicate flowers along its rim. Bao raised the box and shook it. Something rattled inside. He turned the box over, looking for a latch.

"A puzzle box," Xu said tersely. "Ching dynasty."

Shan saw that she was right and realized with pleasure that it was a very old piece, one of the wooden puzzle boxes that had been popular in China two centuries earlier. No two would be alike, and each would be opened by pressing a certain point or sliding a series of pieces out in the right order. He realized with surprise that Xu might have been saving it, as Shan would have, to discover the right combination of pressure and pushing which would unlock its secrets.