"Your professional perspective."

"Professional?"

"As a murderer."

Jilin swelled with pride. His life, too, had its defining moments. He eased his grip.

"Why here?" Shan asked. "Why go so far from town but leave the body so conspicuous?"

An unsettling longing appeared in Jilin's eyes. "The audience."

"Audience?"

"Someone told me once about a tree falling down in the mountains. It don't make a sound if no one's there to hear. A killing with no one to appreciate it, what's the point? A good murder, that requires an audience."

"Most murderers I've known act in private."

"Not witnesses, but those who discover it. Without an audience there can be no forgiveness." He recited the words carefully, as if they had been taught to him in tamzing sessions.

It was true, Shan realized. The body had been discovered by the prisoners because that was what the murderer intended. He paused, looking into Jilin's wild eyes, then released the lighter and looked at the disc. It was convex, two inches in width. Small slots at the top and bottom indicated that it had been designed to slide onto a strap for ornamentation. Tibetan script, in an old style that was unintelligible to Shan, ran along the edge. In the center was the stylized image of a horse head. It had fangs.

As Shan approached Choje, the protecting circle parted. He was uncertain whether to wait until the lama finished his meditation. But the moment Shan sat beside him, Choje's eyes opened.

"They have procedures for strikes, Rinpoche," Shan said quietly. "From Beijing. It's written in a book. Strikers will be given the opportunity to repent and accept punishment. If not, they will try to starve everyone. They make examples of the leaders. After one week a strike by a lao gai prisoner may be declared a capital offense. If they feel generous, they could simply add ten years to every sentence."

"Beijing will do what it must do," came the expected reply. "And we will do what we must do."

Shan quietly studied the men. Their eyes held not fear, but pride. He swept his hand toward the guards below. "You know what the guards are waiting for." It was a statement, not a question. "They are probably already on the way. This close to the border, it won't take long."

Choje shrugged. "People like that, they are always waiting for something." Some of the monks closest to them laughed softly.

Shan sighed. "The man who died had this in his hand." He dropped the medallion in Choje's hand. "I think he pulled it from his murderer."

As Choje's eyes locked on the disc, they flashed with recognition, then hardened. He traced the writing with his finger, nodded, and passed it around the circle. There were several sharp cries of excitement. As the men passed it on, their eyes followed the disc with looks of wonder.

There had been no real struggle between the murderer and his victim, Shan knew. Dr. Sung had been right on that point. But there had been a moment, perhaps just an instant of realization, when the victim had seen, then touched his killer, had reached out and grabbed the disc as he was being knocked unconscious.

"Words have been spoken about him," Choje said. "From the high ranges. I wasn't sure. Some said he had given up on us."

"I don't understand."

"They were among us often in the old days." The lama's eyes stayed on the disc. "When the dark years came they went deep inside the mountains. But people said they would come back one day."

Choje looked back to Shan. "Tamdin. The medallion is from Tamdin. The Horse-Headed, they call him. One of the spirit protectors." Choje paused and recited several beads then looked up with an expression of wonder. "This man without a head. He was taken by one of our guardian demons."

As the words left Choje's mouth, Yeshe appeared at the edge of the circle. He studied the monks awkwardly, as though embarrassed or even fearful. He seemed unwilling, or unable, to cross into the circle. "They found something," he called out, strangely breathless. "The colonel is waiting at the crossroads."

One of the first roads built by the 404th had been the one that ringed the valley, connecting the old trails that dropped out of the mountains between the high ridges. The road the two vehicles now followed up the Dragon Claws had been one of those trails, and was still so rough a path that it became a streambed during the spring thaws. Twenty minutes after leaving the valley, Tan's car led them onto a dirt track that had been recently scoured by a bulldozer. They emerged onto a small, sheltered plateau. Shan studied the high, windblown bowl through the window. At its bottom was a small spring, with a solitary giant cedar. The plateau was closed to the north. It opened to the south, overlooking fifty miles of rugged ranges. To a Tibetan it would have been a place of power, the kind of place a demon might inhabit.

A long shed with an oversized chimney came into view as Feng eased the truck to a stop. It had been built recently, of plywood sheets torn from some other structure. The sections of wood displayed remnants of painted ideograms from their prior incarnation, giving the shed the appearance of a puzzle forced together from mismatched pieces. Several four-wheel drive vehicles were parked behind it. Beside them half a dozen PLA officers snapped to attention as Tan emerged from his car.

The colonel conferred briefly with the officers and gestured for Shan to join him as they walked behind the shed. Yeshe and Feng climbed out and began to follow. An officer looked up in alarm and ordered them back into the truck.

Twenty feet behind the shed was the entrance to a cave, riddled with fresh chisel marks. It had been recently widened. Several officers filed toward the cave. Tan barked an order and they halted, yielding to two grim-faced soldiers with electric lanterns who stepped forward at Tan's command. The others stood and watched, whispering nervously as Shan followed Tan and the two soldiers into the cave.

The first hundred feet was a cramped, tortuous tunnel, strewn with the litter of mountain predators, which had been kicked to the sides to make way for the barrows whose wheel tracks ran down the center. Then the shaft opened into a much larger chamber. Tan stopped so abruptly Shan nearly collided with him.

Centuries earlier, the walls had been plastered and covered with murals of huge creatures. Something clenched Shan's heart as he stared at the images. It wasn't the sense of violation because Tan and his hounds were there. Shan's entire life had been a series of such violations. It wasn't the fearsome image of the demons which, in the trembling lights held by the soldiers, seemed to dance before their eyes. Such fears were nothing compared to those Shan had been taught at the 404th.

No. It was the way the ancient paintings awed Shan, and shamed him, made him ache to be with Choje. They were so important, and he was so small. They were so beautiful, and he was so ugly. They were so perfectly Tibetan, and he was so perfectly nobody.

They moved closer, until fifty feet of the wall was awash in the soldiers' lights. As the deep, rich colors became apparent, Shan began to recognize the images. In the center, nearly life-size, were four seated Buddhas. There was the yellow-bodied Jewel Born Buddha, his left palm open in the gesture of giving. Then the red-bodied Buddha of Boundless Light, seated on a throne decorated with peacocks of extraordinary detail. Beside them, holding a sword and with his right hand raised, palm outward in the mudra of dispelling fear, was the Green Buddha. Finally there was a blue figure, the Unshakeable Buddha Choje called him, sitting on a throne painted with elephants, his right hand pointed down in the earth-touching mudra. It was a mudra Choje often taught to new prisoners, calling for the earth to witness their faith.