"Isn't it a breach of the monastic rules not to wear your robe?" Shan asked.

The man gave him a sour look. "When you do not hold a license you are not so fastidious," he said with a distracted tone. He was studying Yeshe. "What was your gompa?" he demanded.

Yeshe tried to push away. The man at his arm responded by squeezing the top of his shoulder. The motion seemed to take Yeshe's breath away. He bent over, gasping. It was a traditional martial arts pincer movement against a pressure point.

"What kind of monks-" Shan began, then recognized the scars. They were the kind left by Public Security batons, from a beating so savage it ripped open long gutters of skin. Sometimes Public Security glued sandpaper to their batons.

The man's companion held Yeshe by the upper arm.

"Purba!" Yeshe warned.

"Some say you are among the zung mag protected by Choje Rinpoche," the scarred-face man said. Zung mag was a Tibetan term. It meant prisoners of war. It was not a term Choje ever used. "Others say you are protected by Colonel Tan. It cannot be both. It is a dangerous game you play." He silently pulled up Shan's arm, unbuttoned the cuff and rolled up his sleeve. He pushed the flesh around the tattoo. It was a test used in the prisons for infiltrators. Recent tattoos would not lose their color because of the bruising underneath.

The man nodded at his companion, who relaxed his grip on Yeshe. "Do you have any idea of what will happen if you execute another of the Five?" Inside his sleeve another garment was visible. He was wearing a robe after all, Shan realized, under the herdsmen's clothes.

For some reason the man made Shan angry. "Murder is a capital offense."

"We know about capital offenses in Tibet," the purba snapped. "My uncle was executed for throwing your chairman's quotations into a chamber pot. My brother was killed for conducting rites at a mass grave."

"You are talking about history."

"That makes it better?"

"Not at all," Shan said. "But what does it mean for you and me?"

The purba glared at Shan. "They killed my lama," he said.

"They killed my father," Shan shot back.

"But you are going to prosecute Sungpo."

"No. I am making an investigation file."

"Why?"

"I am a lao gai prisoner. It is the labor assigned to me."

"Why would they use a prisoner? It makes no sense."

"Because I had a life before the 404th. I was an investigator in Beijing. That is why Tan chose me. Why he decided to do an investigation outside the prosecutor's office I do not yet know."

The rancor began to fade from the man's voice. "There were riots before, the last time the knobs came to this valley. Many were killed. It was never reported."

Shan nodded sadly.

"It seemed that they were beginning to move on. But then they started persecuting the Five."

"Prosecution. There was a murder in each case." As much as he disliked the man's violence, Shan desperately wanted to find common grounds with the purbas. "At least accept that murderers must be punished. This is not some pogrom against the Buddhists."

"Do you know that?"

No, Shan realized wearily, he didn't know that. "But each started with a murder."

"Strange words, for someone from Beijing. I know your kind. Murder isn't a crime. It's a political phenomenon."

Shan felt an unfamiliar fire as he stared back at the young monk. "What is it you seek? To warn me? To scare me away from a job I am forced to do?"

"There must be payment in kind. When you take one of ours."

"Revenge is not the Buddhist way."

When the monk frowned, the long gouts of scar tissue contorted his face into a gruesome mask. "The story of my country's destruction. Peaceful coexistence. Let virtue prevail over force. It doesn't work when virtue has no voice left." He grabbed Shan's chin and forced Shan to look as he turned his head slowly, to be certain Shan could see the ruin of his face. "In this country, when you turn the other cheek they just destroy both of them."

Shan pushed the purba's hand away and looked into his smoldering eyes. "Then help me. There is nothing that can stop this, except the truth."

"We do not care who murdered the prosecutor."

"The only reason they will release a suspect is because they have a better one."

The purba stared at Shan, still suspicious. "In the hut of Choje Rinpoche, there is a Chinese prisoner who prays with Rinpoche. They call him the Chinese Stone, because he is so hard. He has never broken. He tricked them into releasing an old man."

"The old man's name was Lokesh," Shan acknowledged. "He sang the old songs."

The man nodded slowly. "What are you asking of us?"

"I don't know." Shan's eyes wandered toward Khorda's hut. "I would like to know who has suddenly been asking for charms for forgiveness from Tamdin. A young girl. And I need to find Balti, Prosecutor Jao's khampa driver. No one has seen him or the car since the murder."

"You think we would collaborate?"

"On the truth, yes."

The monk did not reply. Sergeant Feng's voice could be heard now, calling for Shan and Yeshe above the bleat of the goats.

"Here-" The purba in front spun about and dropped a small goat into Yeshe's arms. His disguise.

Feng was raising the whistle to his lips as Shan and Yeshe stepped out of the doorway.

Shan glanced back. The purbas were gone.

Yeshe was silent as they returned to the truck. He sat in the back and stared at a piece of heather, like those worn by the people in the market. "A girl gave it to me," he said in a desolate tone. "She said to wear it for them. I asked who she meant. She said the souls of the 404th. She said the sorcerer announced they were all going to be martyred."

The lampposts leading out of town were being painted silver, no doubt for the honored guests soon to arrive from Beijing and America. But a high wind was blowing, so that sand particles adhered to the poles as quickly as the workers applied the paint, making the poles appear even shabbier than before. Shan envied the proletariat its ability to embrace the most important lesson of their society, that the goal of any worker was not to do a good job, but to do a correct job.

The kiosks that housed public phones were being painted, too, although Sergeant Feng could not find a single phone that worked. He followed a wire to a musty tea shop at the edge of town and commandeered a phone.

"No one will stop you," Colonel Tan replied when Shan told him he needed to inspect the skull cave. "I closed it down the day we found the head. What took you so long? Surely you're not frightened of a few bones."

As the truck climbed the low gravel foothills that led out of the valley, Yeshe seemed more restless than usual. "You should not have done it," he burst out at last. "You shouldn't meddle."

Shan turned in his seat. Yeshe's gaze moved unsteadily across the skyline as they headed toward the huge mass of the Dragon Claws. Giant cumulus clouds, almost blindingly white against the cobalt sky, had snagged on the peaks in the distance.

"Meddle with what?"

"What you did. The skull mantra. You had no right to summon the demon."

"So you believe that's what I did?"