"Then you check the party's central files. Class background. Find out that the suspect previously required reeducation or that his grandfather was an oppressor in the merchant class. Maybe his uncle was a Stinking Ninth." Shan's father had been in the Stinking Ninth, the lowest rank on Mao's list of bad elements. Intellectuals. "Or maybe the murderer is a model worker. If so, look at the victim," he continued. He realized with a shudder that he was repeating words he had last spoken to a seminar in Beijing. "It's the socialist context that's important. Find the reactionary thread and build from there. A murder investigation is pointless unless it can become a parable for the people."

Tan paced in front of the window. "But to get this behind us, all I really need is a head."

Something icy seemed to touch Shan's spine. "Not just any head. The head."

Tan laughed without smiling. "A saboteur. Zhong warned me." He sat and studied Shan in silence. "Why do you want so badly to return to the 404th?"

"It is where I belong. There's going to be trouble. Because of the body. Maybe I can help."

Tan's eyes narrowed. "What trouble?"

"The jungpo," Shan said very quietly.

"Jungpo?"

"It translates as hungry ghost. A soul released by a violent action, unprepared for death. Unless death rites can be conducted on the mountain, the ghost will haunt the scene of the death. It will be angry. It will bring bad luck. The devout will not go near the place."

"What trouble?" Tan repeated sharply.

"The 404th will not work at such a site. It is unholy now. They are praying for the release of the spirit. Prayers for cleansing."

Anger was building in Tan's eyes. "No strike was reported."

"The warden would never tell you so soon. He will try to end it on his own. There will have been stoppages by the crews at the top first. There will have been accidents. Guns have been issued."

Tan abruptly moved to his door and called for Madame Ko to dial Warden Zhong's office. He took the call in the conference room, watching Shan through the open door.

His eyes flared when he returned. "A man broke a leg. A wagon of supplies fell off the cliff. The brigade refused to move after the noon break."

"The priests must be permitted to perform the ceremonies."

"Impossible," Tan snapped, and strode back to the window. He pulled the binoculars from the sill, futilely looking through the gathering grayness for the worksite on the distant slope. When he turned, the hardness was back in his eyes. "You have a context now. What did you call it? A reactionary thread."

"I don't understand."

"Smells like class struggle to me. Capitalist egoism. Cultists. Acting to relieve their revisionist friends."

"The 404th?" Shan said, horrified. "The 404th was not involved."

"But you have convinced me. Class struggle has once again impeded socialist progress. They are on strike."

Shan's heart lurched at the words. "Not a strike. It's just a religious matter."

Tan sneered. "When prisoners refuse to work, it is a strike. The Public Security Bureau will have to be notified. It's out of my hands."

Shan stared helplessly. A death in the mountains might be overlooked by the Ministry. But never a strike at a labor camp. Suddenly the stakes were far higher.

"You will compile a new file," Tan explained. "Tell me about class struggle. How the 404th caused this death as an excuse to halt their work. Something worthy of an inspector general. The kind that the Ministry will not challenge." He scrawled something on a sheet of onion-skin paper, then studied Shan for a moment. With a slow, ceremonial motion, he fixed his seal to the paper. "You are officially on detail to my office. I'll give you a truck and the warden's Tibetan clerk. Feng will watch. Permission to go to the clinic for interviews. If asked, you are on trusty duties."

Shan felt as if someone was rolling a massive rock onto his back. He found himself bending, frantically looking toward the Dragon Claws. "My report would be worthless," he murmured, the words nearly choking in his throat. He had rushed his work to return to the 404th, to help Choje. Now Tan wanted to use him to inflict greater punishment on the monks. "I have been proven untrustworthy."

"The report will be in my name."

Shan stared at a dim, vaguely familar ghost, his reflection in the window. It was happening. He was being reincarnated into a lower life form. "Then one of our names will be dishonored," he said in croaking whisper.

The drab three-story building that housed the People's Health Collective proved far more sterile outside than inside. The odor of mildew wafted through the lobby. On the lobby wall, a collage of bulldozers and tractors mounted by beaming proletarians was cracked and peeling. The same bone-dry dust that filled the 404th barracks covered the furniture. Brown and green stains ran across the faded linoleum floor and up one wall. Nothing moved but a large beetle that scuttled toward the shadows as they entered.

Madame Ko had called. A short, nervous man in a threadbare smock appeared, and silently led Shan, Yeshe, and Feng down a dimly lit flight of stairs to a basement chamber with five metal examination tables. As he opened the swinging doors, the stench of ammonia and formaldahyde broke over them like a wave. The aroma of death.

Yeshe's hands shot to his mouth. Sergeant Feng cursed and fumbled for a cigarette. More of the dark stains Shan had seen upstairs mottled the walls. He followed one with his eyes, a spatter of brown spots that arced from floor to ceiling. On one wall was a poster, tattered from repeated folding, that announced a performance, years earlier, of the Beijing Opera. With a mixture of disgust and fear, their escort gestured toward the only occupied table, then backed out of the room and closed the door.

Yeshe turned to follow the orderly.

"Going somewhere?" Shan inquired.

"I'm going to be sick," Yeshe pleaded.

"We have an assignment. You won't get it done waiting in the hall."

Yeshe looked at his feet.

"Where do you want to be?" Shan asked.

"Be?"

"Afterward. You're young. You're ambitious. You have a destination. Everyone your age has a destination."

"Sichuan province," Yeshe said, distrust in his eyes. "Back to Chengdu. Warden Zhong told me he has my papers ready. Says he's arranged for me to have a job there. People can rent their own apartments now. You can even buy televisions."

Shan considered the announcement. "When did the warden say this?"

"Just last night. I still have friends back in Chengdu. Members of the Party."

"Fine." Shan shrugged. "You have a destination and I have a destination. The sooner we get done, the sooner we can move on."

Resentment still etched on his face, Yeshe found a wall switch and illuminated a row of naked lightbulbs hanging over the tables. The center table seemed to glow, its white sheet the only clean, bright object in the room. Sergeant Feng muttered a low curse toward the far side of the room. A body was slumped in a rusty wheelchair, covered with a soiled sheet, its head slung over the shoulder at an unnatural angle.

"They just leave you like that," Feng growled in contempt. "Give me an army hospital. At least they lay you out in your uniform."