"When I leave they move to the fence, begin chanting and rocking it. The poles begin to loosen. So I call out a riot squad. No guns. But they turn around and tie their hands together. Like a chain. With socks. Shoelaces. Whatever. They all get tied together. They're just showing their backs. Ignoring us. Chanting. What can we do? We have tourists coming. I'll be carrying night soil for recruits if some round-eye comes by and photographs us pounding on their backs."

"The old man," Shan said. "He came from the north?"

"Right. Ancient. As if he's going to collapse into dust."

Shan, suddenly alert, looked up. "Where is he now?"

"We finally let him through an hour ago. Only way to get them to leave. When the hell are you going to-"

Shan did not stay for the rest of the irate question. He darted through the gate and ran to the guardhouse.

Inside, the only lights were at the end of the corridor. Jigme sat at the cell door, watching Sungpo, exactly as Shan had left him three days earlier. Beside him was Je Rinpoche.

The old man did not acknowledge Shan. He was facing Sungpo, who sat in the middle of the cell. They were not talking, but their eyes seemed to be focused on the same invisible point in the distance.

As Shan opened the cell door, Yeshe placed a restraining hand on his arm. "You cannot interfere. We must wait for their return."

"No," Shan insisted. "It is too late for not interfering." He stepped inside and touched Sungpo on the shoulder. Something seemed to surge through his fingers as he did so, like electricity without the shock. He told himself it was his imagination. Sungpo moved his head from side to side, as though shaking off a deep slumber, then looked up and acknowledged Shan with a negligible blink of his eyes.

Je Rinpoche gave a deep exhalation and his head slowly slumped onto his chest. Yeshe glared at Shan with an unfamiliar vehemence.

"Does anybody understand what is happening here?" Shan asked, his voice breaking with emotion. No one replied.

Shan measured the look in Yeshe's eyes. "I need to speak to Dr. Sung. Go now. Call her. Tell her I must see her."

"This old lama is meditating," Yeshe warned. "You cannot interrupt him."

"Tell her I need to speak to her about the group called the Bei Da Union."

Yeshe registered his disapproval with a frown, then spun about and left the building.

Shan dropped to his knees between the two monks. "Do you understand what is happening?" he said again, more loudly, at a loss to find a way to stir the lama without such shameful rudeness.

"A man was killed," Je Rinpoche said suddenly, his head lifting. "The government considered him important."

Shan watched Sungpo. His eyes blinked.

"They will enforce their equation," the old lama said matter-of-factly.

"Equation?" Shan asked.

"They will take one of us."

"Is that what you want?"

"Want?" Je asked.

"What about justice?"

"Justice?"

Shan had used the Chinese word yi, the ideogram for which was a large human standing with a protecting sword over a smaller human. It was not a symbol favored by Tibetans.

"Do we believe in Beijing's justice?" Je asked in the same serene tone he had used to speak to the mysterious raven at Saskya. He was speaking to Sungpo.

Suddenly Sungpo spoke. He looked at Je, and only Je. "We believe in harmony," Sungpo said, in a voice that was barely audible. "We believe in peace."

Je turned to Shan. "We believe in harmony," he repeated. "We believe in peace."

"I was sent to a commune for reeducation," Shan said, looking at Je. "During the dark years." Everyone had their own name for the period of torment Mao had called the Cultural Revolution. "The first week we stood in a rice paddy. In the mud. In rows. They called us seedlings. No talking was allowed. The political officer said she had to have peace in the fields. If anyone spoke or laughed or cried they were beaten. We were quiet for a long time. But it never felt like peace."

Je only grinned in reply.

Sungpo seemed to be drifting off, back into his meditation.

"I have questions," Shan said to Je, urgently. "Ask about the arrest. What did they say? When did he last see Prosecutor Jao?"

Je leaned forward and spoke in a whisper to Sungpo.

"He was away," Je explained, referring to Sungpo's meditation. "A long distance. He knew nothing until he returned. He found himself in a car, with manacles on. There were two cars, filled with uniforms."

"Why did they find Prosecutor Jao's wallet there?"

Je conferred with Sungpo. "That is a curious thing," he announced with wonder in his eyes. "Sungpo did not have the wallet. He did not know they found it there. Something could have come. Something could have put it there."

"Someone or something?"

When the old man sighed his throat made a wet, wheezing sound. "Sometimes when lightning strikes it leaves things. It was meant to be there. It does not seem important how it came to be there."

"Lightning made a wallet materialize in Sungpo's cave?" Shan asked slowly, his spirits sinking.

"Lightning. Spirits. They work in inscrutable ways. Perhaps it is their way of calling him."

"And if the true killer is not found, if the death cannot be resolved, the 404th will continue their strike. They will be found guilty of mass treason."

"Perhaps that, too, is the destined path to their next incarnation."

Shan closed his eyes and breathed deeply. "Did Sungpo know Prosecutor Jao?"

Je conferred for a moment with Sungpo. "He remembers the name from some trial."

"Did he kill Jao?"

Je looked at Shan wearily. "He has no weight on his soul. Only the width of a hair separates him from the gates of Buddhahood."

"That is not a legal defense."

Je sighed. "To kill anyone would be a violation of his vows. He is a true believer. He would have told me immediately. He would have stripped off his robe. His cycle would have been broken."

"But he still will not say that he did not do it."

"It would be an act of ego. We are taught to avoid such acts."

"So the reason he is not protesting his innocence is because he is not guilty."

"Exactly." Je smiled. He seemed very pleased with Shan's logic.

"The head of the Religious Affairs Bureau visited the gompa recently. Did Sungpo see him?"

"Sungpo is a hermit. If he were in meditation he would not have seen such a visitor even if he walked in and kicked Sungpo."

Shan turned to Jigme. "Is there any other route to your hut, other than the trail we climbed?"

"Old game trails. Or up the rocks."

Sungpo drifted off. He seemed unable to hear any of them, even old Je. "To know that he dies for another's crime, isn't that a form of a lie?" Shan asked the old lama, fighting the desperation in his voice.

"No. To falsely confess, that would be the lie."

"The Bureau has been kept away for now. But before the trial, they will seek a confession. They seldom fail." He had seen a directive once in Beijing. "It is considered mismanagement of judicial resources, and an abuse of the socialist order, to proceed to trial without a confession. If he does not participate, one will be read for him."