"Comrade Shan," announced Tan, "meet Jao Xengding. The Prosecutor of Lhadrung County."

Chapter Four

The high-altitude sunlight exploded against his retinas as Shan left the cave. Stumbling forward, his hand covering his eyes, he heard rather than saw the argument. Someone was shouting at Tan with the unrestrained anger that could issue only from a Westerner. As he moved toward the sound Shan's vision cleared and he froze.

Tan had been ambushed. He had his back to a corner formed by the shed and one of the trucks. Like every other man in the compound, Tan seemed utterly paralyzed by the creature that had attacked him.

It was not just that his assailant was female, or even that she was speaking in English, but that she had porcelain skin, auburn hair, and stood taller than any of the Chinese in front of her. Tan looked up to the sky as though searching for the unlucky whirlwind that must have deposited her.

Shan, still numb from the discovery in the cave, took a step closer. The woman was wearing heavy hiking boots and American blue jeans. A small, expensive Japanese camera hung around her neck.

"I have a right to be furious," she shouted. "Where's the Religious Bureau? Where's your permit?"

Shan moved around the shed. A white four-wheel-drive truck was parked beside Tan's Red Flag limousine. He moved to the far side of the truck, where he was out of the colonel's sight but where he could still hear the woman plainly. He relished her words. In his Beijing incarnation he had read a Western newspaper once a week to maintain the language skills taught him in secret by his father. But it had been three years since he had heard or read an English word.

"The Commission was not notified!" she continued. "There is no Religious Bureau posting! I'm calling Wen Li! I'm calling Lhasa!" Her eyes flashed in anger. Even from twenty feet away Shan saw they were green.

Shan moved around the white truck. It was an American Jeep, a much newer version of the one Feng drove, fresh from the joint venture factory in Beijing. At the wheel was a nervous-looking Tibetan wearing spectacles with heavy black rims. On the driver's door was a symbol, a drawing of crossed American and Chinese flags, flanked top and bottom by the words Mine of the Sun, in Chinese and English.

"Ai yi, she's beautiful when she's angry," someone said over his shoulder. The words were spoken in perfect Mandarin but their rhythm was not Chinese.

Shan slipped to the side to get a look at the man. He was a lean, tall Westerner with long, straw-colored hair tied in a short tail at the nape of his neck. He wore gold wire-rimmed spectacles and a blue nylon down vest with an emblem that matched that on the truck. Throwing an amused sidelong glance at Shan, he turned back toward the woman, pulling an odd rectangular object from his pocket and raising it to his mouth. It was a mouth organ, Shan suddenly realized as the American began to play a song.

He played quite well, but loudly. Deliberately loudly. Many traditional American songs were popular in China, and Shan recognized his tune instantly. "Home on the Range."

Several of the soldiers laughed. The American woman cast a peeved glance at her companion. But Tan was not amused. As the woman raised her camera and aimed it at the cave, Tan snapped from his spell. He muttered a command and one of his men leapt forward to cover the lens with his hand. The American with the mouth organ kept playing, but his eyes hardened. He took several steps toward the woman, as though she might need his protection. Shan watched as two of Tan's officers quietly adjusted their position, so they remained between the American and the cave.

"Miss Fowler," Tan said in Mandarin, back in control, "defense installations of the People's Liberation Army are strictly classified. You have no right to be here. I could order your detainment." It was the most credible of bluffs. Tibet housed more of China's nuclear arsenal than any other region of the country.

The woman stared silently, defiance still in her eyes. The American man lowered the mouth organ and replied in English, though he had obviously understood Tan. "Great," he said, extending his wrists, "arrest us. That will guarantee the attention of the United Nations."

Colonel Tan threw a petulant glance at the American man, bent to the ear of one his aides, then offered a hollow smile to the woman. "This is no way for friends to behave. It's Rebecca, isn't it? Please, Rebecca, understand the problem you are creating for yourself and your company."

Someone grabbed Shan by the arm and pulled him toward the truck where Yeshe and Feng still sat. "Colonel Tan says you must go. Now," the soldier insisted.

Shan let himself be led to the truck, but at the door pulled away to stare once more at the strange woman. She gave him a fleeting glance, then turned again and locked gazes with him as she realized perhaps that Shan was the only Chinese there without a uniform. Her green eyes had a wild, restless intelligence. A question appeared on her face. Before he could tell if it was directed toward him, he was pushed into the truck.

A file was already on his desk at the prison administration office. It had been delivered personally by Madame Ko, and was captioned "Known Hooligans/Lhadrung County." It was an old file, dog-eared from use, and was separated into four categories. Drug cultists was the first. It was a quaint notion, abandoned by the police in China's large cities years earlier, that drug use was driven by fanatic rituals. Youth gangs. The fifteen individuals listed were all over thirty years of age. Criminal recividists. The list included everyone in Lhadrung who had previously served time in a lao gai prison, nearly three hundred names. Cultural agitators. It was by far the longest list. For every name either a gompa or the label "unregistered" was listed. They were all monks. Many had been detained during the Thumb Riots five years earlier. A dozen of the unregistered monks had an added notation. Suspected purba. He puzzled over the label. A purba was a ceremonial dagger used in Tibetan rituals. He scanned to the end. No list for homicidal protector demons.

He picked up the phone. Madame Ko answered on the third ring. "Tell the colonel there will need to be more autopsy work."

"Autopsy?"

"He'll need to tell Dr. Sung at the clinic about it."

"Wish I had known," she sighed. "I just got back from there."

"You went to the clinic?"

"He had me make a delivery. I just walked over there. All wrapped up in newspaper and plastic bags. Said he wanted her cabbage to stay fresh."

Shan stared at the receiver. "Thank you, Madame Ko," he mumbled.

"You're welcome, Xiao Shan," she said brightly, and hung up.

Xiao Shan. The words brought a sudden loneliness. He had not heard them for years. It was what his grandmother called him, the old-style form of address for a younger person. Little Shan.

He found himself staring out into the central office at a worker sharpening pencils. He had forgotten about sharpening pencils and the thousand other tiny acts that made up a day on the outside. He clenched his jaw, fighting back the question that no prisoner in the gulag dared ask: Was he capable of ever having a life on the outside again? Not would he be released, for every prisoner had to believe he would someday be released, but who would he be when he was released? Everyone knew stories of former prisoners who never adjusted, who were too scared to leave their beds, or who stayed bent forever as if chained, like the horse, which, once hobbled, never tries to run again. Why were there never stories of prisoners who succeeded after release? Perhaps because it was so hard to understand what success was for a survivor of the gulag. Shan remembered Choje's last words to Lokesh, after thirty years of sharing a prison hut. "You must teach yourself to be you again," Choje had said, as Lokesh cried on his shoulder.