"Meaning what?" Shan asked. Marco was ten feet away, pacing up and down the road like a sentinel. Jakli, who had been at the garage when they arrived, had found an orange soda for Batu, who kept looking toward the mountains. Malik had refused to leave the Kunlun and had ridden away to seek out more of the zheli. "That you and Major Bao struck a deal? Is that what justice is in Yoktian?"

There was a long silence on the receiver. Shan heard voices in the background. Perhaps the prosecutor was calling for her car. Perhaps she was calling for reinforcements.

"Fine," she said at last. "The highway. But not three. Three-thirty, perhaps. Four, maybe. You will wait."

Jakli frowned when he relayed the conversation. "It is what she would do, to spring a trap, buy some time to get others here first. Plant some enforcers. Get some in looking like truck drivers, maybe." She was obviously exhausted, having searched much of the night on horseback with the Maos. They had found another boy before dawn, cowering alone in a cave, and the Maos had taken him to the Red Stone Camp.

Shan shrugged. "Not so easy to do, this far from town."

Jakli gave him an impatient look that somehow seemed to fade into one of sympathy, the way a mother might look at a child. "Sometimes you make me think it's true what they say about Tibet."

"What's that?"

"That it makes people new, washes away all their prior experience. Sometimes I think you are so naive."

To be called naive was such a grand joke that Shan wanted to laugh. If someone wanted a word for all that was not naive, they could take his name.

Jakli stepped into the shadows between the garage and the smaller building that housed two old trucks, where Marco now stood with Sophie, Batu in her saddle. Jakli spoke hurriedly with the Eluosi and pointed to a large truck behind the buildings, where a man was laying long planks to form a ramp into the cargo bay. Marco gave a mock salute to Shan and turned toward the truck. In five minutes Sophie and the two camels they had ridden from his mountain home were loaded into the truck, and the truck pulled out, Batu waving from the window.

It occurred to Shan, as he surveyed the broken-down trucks, stacks of bald tires, the decrepit yellow tea shop and the cracked walls of the garage building, that all of Xinjiang seemed to be a series of ruins. Some were just newer than others. He stepped toward the wall of the garage, the largest building, feeling very tired. He had sat far into the night reading his notes and staring at the meager possessions of Khitai. They had mounted the camels before sunrise, taking a different trail out of the valley. Now he had over an hour to wait for Xu. He checked on Lokesh, who lay asleep on a blanket behind the garage, then sat down on a stack of tires by the wall and found them surprisingly comfortable. Leaning against the wall, he shut his eyes.

Images of the day's ride flashed through his mind. He and Batu had ridden beside Marco for hours and listened to long tales of Marco's youth, tales about vast gatherings of nomad clans, where scores of camels raced, and young girls shot arrows to win white horses. In the predawn light Marco had spoken about the stars, which he knew very well, a skill acquired over nearly thirty years of night caravans. Shan had been surprised to learn that Marco was his own age, and the Eluosi had mused how different their lives had been, living at opposite ends of the People's Republic. He drowsily remembered how Marco had taught them a song, a silly child's verse about camels flying like birds, and they had sung it until they reached the highway.

When he opened his eyes, it was after three. Somebody had been busy, rearranging the area between the buildings. Three tables, or a table and two upturned crates, had been brought out and two figures sat at each. Those at the table played chess, the other two, mahjong. Several more vehicles had appeared in the compound. They looked vaguely familiar. He studied them for a moment and realized they were the trucks he had seen in the motor pool. All of them, except the turtle truck that lay buried in the desert. He noticed the flash of gold teeth from one of the men playing mahjong. It was the Mao from town, who had brought him shoes. A woman in the long grey dress and cowl of one of the strict followers of Mohammed sat close to him, reading what might have been a prayer book. As he rose and stretched his arm, the woman also rose, then reached out and pulled his arm. It was Jakli.

"The prosecutor's car drove by fifteen minutes ago. She stopped and let someone out," Jakli reported, nodding toward the tea shop across the road.

Shan circled around the rear of the garage and crossed at the end of the compound to reach a small window in the side of the shop. A well-dressed woman sat at the table by the front window, the only one of the shop's tables which was occupied. In one corner an old man with a long thin beard and a black dopa cap sat by a small gas stove, leaning against the wall, asleep. Shan stepped inside and took the empty chair across from Loshi.

"It's Miss Loshi, I believe," he said. "My name is Shan. We spoke at the prosecutor's office."

The young woman, so engrossed in watching out the front window that she had not noticed him, gave a startled gasp. Instead of replying, she raised something from her lap, a small black oblong object with a two-inch stub extending from one end. A cellular telephone. She held it in both hands, her wrists on the edge of the table, extending it like a shield.

"In ten, maybe twenty years, they might get around to installing transmission towers for those phones in this region," Shan observed, attempting a good-natured tone. "Maybe longer. Public Security doesn't want them to become too popular in places like this."

Loshi looked at him, then glanced uneasily outside.

Shan studied the nervous young woman. She had heavy makeup on her eyelids, and an expensive gold chain hung over her bright red silk blouse. Prosecutor Xu's security.

Loshi moved forward on her seat. "I know that. It doesn't work in town either. But most people don't know. I was talking to a herder. It scared him. He said he thought it was just something that Han used to summon other Han. He said he's never seen anyone but a Han with one, except Americans on television," she explained with a satisfied air. "So, see. It works."

"You're the prosecutor's secretary," Shan said. "Did she have secretarial work for you on the drive here?"

But Loshi kept looking at her phone. "They work in Shanghai. And Hong Kong. Everyone has them in Hong Kong. In Hong Kong you can send a fax with one."

"Or is it because she trusts only you?" Shan wondered out loud.

"You're not supposed to talk to me. Talk to the prosecutor."

"You are here. The prosecutor is not here."

"I know people too. Just like the prosecutor. I work for the Ministry of Justice too."

"A big responsibility."

"I get special awards sometimes," she said, as if hoping to intimidate him. "Secret awards."

Shan remembered something else about Loshi. Ko Yonghong of the Brigade was taking her for rides in his car without a roof, like in American movies.

"Do you know about the dead boys, Miss Loshi?"

The girl seemed to be struggling. She put the telephone on the table and pushed the buttons, then put it to her ear in a strange pantomime, as if practicing for when she arrived in the real world. "I liked Auntie Lau," she said into the mouthpiece, as though speaking to someone on the phone. "I was sick once, when I went to a council meeting with the prosecutor. Auntie Lau gave me some herbs and cured me."