"The madness?"

"They're opening an espionage case. Someone in Lhadrung has stolen computer disks containing secrets of the Public Security border defenses."

Shan watched Dr. Sung march past Yeshe sitting on the bench in the corridor and into her dimly lit office. She threw her clipboard on a chair, switching on a small desk lamp, and pushed aside a plate of old, half-eaten vegetables. She hit a button on a small cassette player and turned to a chessboard. It was in the middle of a game. Opera music began to play. She moved a pawn, then spun the board about. She was playing against herself.

After two moves she stopped and looked out at the bench. Muttering angrily, she twisted the lamp upward, illuminating Shan's chair in the corner.

"The most fascinating thing about investigations," Shan observed with great fatigue, "is discovering how subjective truth really is. It has so many dimensions. Political. Professional. But those are easy to discern. What is hardest is understanding the personal dimension. We find so many ways to believe in the lies and ignore the reality."

The doctor switched off the music and stared absently at the chessboard. "The Buddhists would say we each have our own ways of honoring our inner god," she observed, with a choke in her voice.

The words shook Shan. Suddenly he did not know what to say. He wanted most of all to let her go, to leave the woman to her peculiar misery, but he could not. "When did you stop honoring yours?"

He yearned for one of her sharp, angry comebacks, but all he got was silence.

Unfolding Sung's letter to the American firm, he dropped it in front of her. "Did you feel you were lying to me when you pretended to know nothing about Jao's interest in an X-ray machine? Or did you really believe yourself because only your name was on the official record?"

"All I said was that it was too expensive."

"Good. So you didn't mean to lie."

Sung absently moved a castle. "Jao asked me to write a letter. No one would suspect such a request from a clinic."

"Why would he need to hide it? Why not just ask himself?"

She picked up a knight and stared at it. "An investigation."

"He would have wanted your help to operate it. He didn't say where he would need it?"

She still stared at the chess piece. "Sometimes he would come, not very often, and we would sit here and play chess. Talk about things at home. Drink tea. It felt like, I don't know. Civilized." She put both hands on the knight and twisted it as though to break it.

"So you wrote the letter to help in an investigation. To find something that was hidden."

"It would be so easy to be like you, Comrade Shan, just to ask questions. But I told you before, there are questions that may not be asked. All you have to do is ask about other people's truth. Some of us have to live it."

"A murder investigation?" Shan pressed. "Corruption? Espionage?"

Sung laughed weakly. "Espionage in Lhadrung? I don't think so."

"What was he going to use the machine for?"

Sung shook her head slowly. "He wanted to know if it would fit in one of his four-wheel-drive trucks. He wanted to know the power source it would require. That's all I know."

"Why wouldn't you ask? He was your chess partner."

"That's why." Sung opened her hand and stared forlornly at the knight. "I assumed he wanted it to open one of their tombs. And if I knew that I could not let him sit here again."

The 404th was like a cemetery. The faces of prisoners, gaunt and expressionless, peered out of the barracks. The patrols which kept them confined to quarters marched stiffly through the compound. The soldiers kept looking over their shoulders.

The stable was in use. Shan could tell- not because there were screams. There were never screams from the Tibetans. Nor because of greater activity in the infirmary. He could tell because an officer walked by carrying rubber gloves.

A cloud seemed to have settled over Sergeant Feng as he moved through the gates with Shan. He did not speak to the knobs on guard at the dead zone but looked straight ahead until they reached the hut, then opened the door for Shan and stood to the side gesturing him awkwardly inside.

The scene was much as it had been when he left the hut six days earlier. Trinle lay in bed, prostrated by fatigue, a blanket covering his head and most of his body. The others sat on the floor in a circle, taking instruction from one of the older monks.

Choje Rinpoche had braced his knees and back with a gomthag strap torn from his blanket, so he would not fall while meditating. One of the novices held a rag to the back of Rinpoche's skull. It came away pink with blood.

It took several minutes for him to acknowledge Shan's inquiries. His eyes fluttered, then opened wide and brightened. He surveyed the hut with an intense, curious gaze, as though to confirm which world he was in. "You are still with us," he said, not as a question but as a declaration of welcome.

"I need to know something about Tamdin," Shan said, fighting the knot that was tying in his gut. It seemed he felt the lama's pain more than Rinpoche himself. "Rinpoche," he asked, "what if Tamdin had to choose between protecting the truth and protecting the old ways?"

Of all the paradoxes that riddled his case, the one that troubled him most was that of the killer's motives. Tamdin was protector of the faith, and his victims defiled the faith. But how could such a killer then let innocent monks die for his crimes? That was defiling the faith, too.

"I don't think Tamdin chooses. Tamdin acts. He is conscience with legs."

And flaying knife, thought Shan.

"Like conscience with legs," the lama repeated.

Shan considered the words in silence.

"When I was young," Choje offered, "they said there was a man in a nearby village who prayed for Tamdin's help and never received it. He renounced Tamdin. He said Tamdin was a tale created for the dancers in the festival."

"I haven't met many recently who would call Tamdin a fiction."

"No. Fiction is not the word to describe him." Choje held his clenched fingers before Shan's face. "This is my fist," he said, then threw his fingers out. "Now my fist does not exist. Does that make it a fiction?"

"You're saying in certain moments anyone can become Tamdin?"

"Not anyone. I'm saying the essence of Tamdin may exist in something that is not always Tamdin."

Shan recalled the last time they had spoken about the demon protector. Just as some are destined to achieve Buddhahood, Choje had said, perhaps some are destined to achieve Tamdinhood.

"Like the mountain," Shan said quietly.

"The mountain?"

"The South Claw. It is a mountain but it hides something else. A holy place."

"It is such a small piece of the world we have," Choje said, speaking so low Shan was forced to lean toward his mouth.

"There are other mountains, Rinpoche."

"No. It's not that. This-" he said, gesturing around the hut. "The world does not take notice of us. There is so much time before, and after. So many places. We are a mote of dust. No one outside should care about us. Only we should care about us. Our particular being occupies this place for now. That is all. It is not much, really."