The officer snapped out a single sharp syllable and the man tumbled out of the chair with a disoriented salute. "The corporal can attend to your needs," the officer said, and wheeled about. "If you need more men, my guards are available."

Shan stared after him in confusion. More men? The corporal ceremoniously produced a key from his belt and opened a deep drawer in the desk. He gestured in invitation. "Do you have a favored technology?"

"Technology?" Shan asked distractedly.

The drawer contained six items resting on a pile of dirty rags. A pair of handcuffs. Several four-inch splinters of bamboo. A large C-clamp, big enough to go around a man's ankle or hand. A length of rubber hose. A ball peen hammer. A pair of needle-nose pliers, made of stainless steel. And the Bureau's favorite import from the West, an electric cattle prod.

Shan fought the nausea that swept through him. "What we need is to have the cell open." He slammed the drawer shut. The color had drained from Yeshe's face.

The corporal and Feng exchanged amused glances. "First visit, right? You'll see," the corporal said confidently, and opened the door. Feng sat on the desk and asked the guard for a cigarette as Shan and Yeshe stepped inside.

The cell was designed for high occupancy. Six straw pallets lay on the floor. A row of buckets lay along the left wall, one holding a few inches of water. Another, turned upside down, served as a table. On it were two small tin cups of rice. The rice was cold, apparently untouched.

The far wall of the cell was in deep shadow. Shan tried to discern the face of the man who sat there, then realized he was facing the wall. Shan called for more light. The guard produced a battery-powered lantern which Shan laid on an upturned bucket.

The prisoner Sungpo was in the lotus position. He had torn the sleeves from his prisoner's tunic to fashion a gomthag strap, which he had tied behind his knees and around his back. It was a traditional device for lengthy meditation, to prevent the body from tumbling over in exhaustion while its spirit was elsewhere. His eyes seemed focused somewhere beyond the wall. His palms pressed together at his chest.

Shan sat by the wall facing the man, folding his legs under him, and gestured for Yeshe to join him. He did not speak for several minutes, hoping the man would acknowledge him first.

"I am called Shan Tao Yun," he said at last. "I have been asked to assemble the evidence in your case."

"He can't hear you," Yeshe said.

Shan moved to within inches of the man. "I am sorry. We must talk. You have been accused of murder." He touched Sungpo, who blinked and turned to look around the cell. His eyes, deep and intelligent, showed no trace of fear. He shifted his body to face the adjoining wall, the way a sleeping person might roll over in bed.

"You are from the Saskya gompa," Shan began, moving to face him again. "Is that where you were arrested?"

Sungpo clasped his hands together in front of his abdomen, interlocking the fingers, then raised his middle fingers together. Shan recognized the symbol. Diamond of the Mind.

"Ai yi!" gasped Yeshe.

"What is he trying to say?"

"He isn't. He won't. They arrested this man? It makes no sense. He is a tsampsa," Yeshe said with resignation. He rose and moved to the door.

"He is under a vow?"

"He is on hermitage. He must have seclusion. He will not allow himself to be disturbed."

Shan turned to Yeshe in confusion. It had to be some kind of very bad joke. "But we must speak to him."

Yeshe faced the corridor. There was something new on his face. Was it embarrassment, Shan wondered, or even fear? "Impossible," he said nervously. "It is a violation."

"Of his vows?"

"Of everyone's." Yeshe spoke in a whisper.

Suddenly Shan understood. "You mean yours." It was the first time Shan had heard Yeshe acknowledge the religious obligations he learned as a youth.

Shan placed his hand on Sungpo's leg. "Do you hear me? You are charged with murder. You will be sent to a tribunal in ten days. You must talk with me."

Suddenly Yeshe was back at his side, pulling him away. "You don't understand. It is his vow."

Shan thought he had been prepared for anything. "Because of his arrest? As a protest?"

"Of course not. It has nothing to do with that. Look at his file. He would not have been taken from the gompa itself."

"No," Shan confirmed from his memory of the report. "It was a small hut a mile above the gompa."

"A tsam khan. A special sort of shelter. Two rooms. For Sungpo and an attendant. They seized him out of his tsam khan. I don't know how far he is."

"How far?"

"Into his cycle. Saskya gompa is orthodox. They would follow the old rules. Three, three, three is the usual cycle."

Shan let himself be pulled to the cell door. "Three?"

"The canonic cycle. Complete silence for three years, three months, three days."

"He speaks to no one?"

Yeshe shrugged. "The gompa would have its own protocol. Sometimes it is arranged that the abbot, or another esteemed lama, may communicate with a tsampsa."

Sungpo was looking beyond the wall again. Shan was not sure the accused murderer had even seen them.

While the southern claws of the Dragon had not yet been tamed, their northern counterparts had been contained by a rough gravel road along their perimeter. Sergeant Feng drove along it fretfully, cursing the rocks that occasionally blocked the road, pausing to puzzle over the map despite the fact that before embarking he had laid out their route in red ink as if he were conducting a military convoy. At first he had ordered Yeshe to sit beside him with the map, with Shan at the door, then after ten miles stopped and ordered them out. He considered the seats as though they offered many confusing alternatives, then brightened. With a victorious grunt he moved his holster to his left hip and ordered Shan into the middle.

Shan ravenously consumed the map. The few times he had left the valley during the past three years had been in closed prison transports, exposing him to parts of the neighboring geography in a disjointed fashion, as if they were pieces of an unexplained puzzle. Quickly he tied the pieces together, finding the worksite on the South Claw where Jao had been killed, then the cave where his head had been deposited. Finally he traced their route through the mountains, circuiting one ridge until they nearly intersected the deep gorge that separated the North and South Claws, then looping west to circuit another ridge before dumping onto a small, high plateau labeled by hand in black ink. Mei guo ren, was all it said. Americans.

As Feng eased the truck to a stop to clear more rocks, Shan discovered they were beside the central gorge, known by the Tibetans as the Dragon's Throat. Centuries earlier a rock slide had tumbled into the Throat from this spot, leaving a small gap that dipped down toward the gorge, exposing an open view of the South Claw. There was a small annotation on the map- three dots arranged in a triangle. Ruins. It was an all-encompassing term. It could mean a cemetery, a gompa, a shrine, a college. A path rose up the short slope of the rock-fall and disappeared toward the chasm. Shan began to help Feng with the rocks, then paused and jogged up the path.

The ruin was a bridge, one of the spectacular rope suspension bridges that been constructed in a prior century by monk engineers who laid out civil works according to pilgrimage paths. It was battered but not destroyed. The path that led to the bridge, and away from it on the far side, appeared to be well traveled. Nearly a mile away Shan spotted a small patch of red, conspicuous in the dried heather of the steep slope.