"Road signs. They taught me road signs."

"That night," Shan said. "Where were you driving?"

"The airport. Gonggar. The airport for Lhasa. Mr. Jao trusts me. I'm a safe driver. Five years no accidents."

"But you took a detour. Before the airport."

"Sure. Supposed to go to airport. After dinner he told me different. All excited. Go to the South Claw bridge. The new one over the Dragon Throat built by Tan's engineers. Big meeting. Short meeting. Won't miss the plane, he said."

"Who did he meet?"

"Balti just the driver. Number one driver. That's all."

"Did he take his briefcase?"

Balti thought a moment. "No. In the back seat. I got out when he got out of the car. It was cold. I found a jacket in the back. Prosecutor Jao gives me clothes sometimes. We're same size."

"So what happened when Jao got out of the car?"

"Someone called out to him from the shadows. He walked away. So I sat and smoked. On the hood of the car I smoked. Half a pack almost. We're going to be late. I honk the horn. Then he comes out. He's plenty mad. He's going to eat me like a pack of wolves. I never meant it. Maybe it was the horn. He was plenty angry."

They weren't talking about the prosecutor anymore, Shan realized.

"You saw him?"

"Sure I saw him. Like a yak stampede I saw him."

"How close?"

"At first I thought it was Comrade Jao. Just a shadow. Then the moon came out of the cloud. He was golden. Beautiful. At first that's all I could think, like a trance. So beautiful, and big like two men. Then I see he is angry. Holding his big blade. Snorting like a bull. My heart stops. He did that. He stopped my heart. I kept telling it to beat but it wouldn't. Then I'm down in the heather. Running. I'm wetting myself, I'm crying. In the morning I found the eastern road again. Truck drivers stop for me. Between rides I run, always running."

"Tamdin," Shan said. "Did he chase you?"

"One angry son of a bitch, Tamdin. He wants me. I hear him in the night. If I stop the mantras he will have me. He will bite my head off like a sweet apple."

"What was in the car?"

"Nothing. Suitcase. Briefcase."

"Where's the car now?"

"Who knows? No driver, no more. Never again."

"It wasn't found at the bridge."

"That Tamdin," Balti croaked, "he probably picked it up and threw it over two mountains."

When they left at dawn Balti was back in the tent, casting fearful glances outside, rocking back and forth with a new chant. Tears streaked his face. A bundle of clothing had appeared on Shan's blanket.

"Move your camp," Shan said quietly to Harkog after Pemu had led Sergeant Feng down the slope. "So it cannot be seen from the road. In shadows where it can't be seen from the air."

As Harkog nodded grimly, Yeshe extended a slip of paper. "Here. A charm," he said, "to be fastened to the tent. Let him chant. But he must follow my prescription. All day today. Half a day tomorrow. And only one hour a day afterward. For the next month. After tomorrow he must come out. He must walk the hills. The ghost is gone from him. He must become what he is."

Harkog replied with a big three-toothed grin. "We'll be khampa."

Back in the truck, Shan examined the clothing. They were caked with mud. Cheap work clothes, barely better than those issued to prisoners. But the battered shoes were wrapped in a jacket, a suit jacket. It was torn and soiled but of a very different quality, the product of a tailor's shop. In one pocket was a handkerchief and a bundle of business cards in a rubber band. Jao Xengding, they said, Prosecutor for Lhadrung County. Balti had been wearing Jao's jacket. It was cold that night, he said. He had put on Jao's jacket and sat on the hood of the car.

In the second pocket were folded slips of paper in a clip. Shan unfolded the papers. Several were receipts, the top one from the Mongolian restaurant with "American mine" scrawled across the top. Beneath it was a small square of paper on which was written two words. Bamboo Bridge. A square of yellow paper said You don't need the X-ray machine. Below the words was a symbol like an inverted Y with two bars across the stem. It could have been the ideogram for sky, or heaven. It could have been careless doodling. Another slip listed cities. Lhadrung, Lhasa, Beijing, and Hong Kong it said, followed by the words Bei Da Union. Where had he heard that? The lama at Khartok, he remembered, the one who was the business manager, had said they were rebuilding with the help of the Bei Da Union. Bei Da was Beijing University.

A fourth note may have been a shopping list. Scarf, incense, and gold, it said. One of the notes, he realized, was probably the one that lured Jao to his death.

Shan was still trying to make sense of the references as they drove through the narrow pass that took them out of the plateau, having left Pemu near her herds after she had placed Yeshe's hand on her head and uttered a prayer of gratitude. A bolt of lightning erupted in front of them, igniting a bush on the side of the road. The bush roared into flame. No one spoke. They waited until the bush crumbled into ashes, then drove on.

The front gate at the Jade Spring barracks had been attacked. Boards were split, wire hanging loose. The heather was crushed for twenty yards on either side of the gate. In the light from the guard's shed Shan saw shreds of clothing hanging from the barbed wire. A somber, angry-looking squad was replacing the hinges on one of the two huge gates. Shan stared, blinking with exhaustion. He and Sergeant Feng had shared the driving for sixteen grueling hours. During his turn for rest he had been unable to close his eyes for more than a few minutes before being haunted by the vision of Balti as they had left him, rocking back and forth in the darkness of his tent.

Shan stumbled out of the truck in confusion, his eyes reflexively searching for stains of blood on the soil.

As he approached the guard's shed, floodlights were switched on, blinding him momentarily.

When his vision cleared a PLA officer was standing beside him. "We missed you," the officer said with icy sarcasm. "They paid us a visit. You could have been guest of honor."

"They?"

The officer snarled out orders to the squad as he explained. "The cultists. There was a riot. Or nearly one. Just after dawn. A logging truck stopped. Dropped off an old man, wearing a robe. He just sat down. Not a word. We let him do his beads. A peasant rode by on a bicycle and stopped. We should have kicked them both down the road. But Colonel Tan, he said no trouble. No incidents. Beijing is about to arrive. Americans are about to arrive. Just keep it quiet." The officer opened the driver's door and glared at Sergeant Feng, as if he somehow shared responsibility for the incident.

He signaled for the gate to open, then turned back to Shan. "In another hour there were six of them. Then ten. By noon maybe forty. The man in the robe, he was something special to them, I guess." Shan looked at the rags more closely. They weren't remnants of clothing from people thrown against the wire. They were tied to the wire. They were prayer flags.

"So I go out to talk. Mediate. Discuss the socialist imperative of coexistence. You must move, I said. There's an army convoy coming soon. Heavy equipment. Someone could get hurt. But they say they want your man Sungpo released. They say he's no criminal." The officer's eyes flared. "Big secret. Everyone was ordered to strict secrecy. No one to know your monk is locked up here. I know no one here talked," he said with an accusing stare.