Feng was asleep against the rock cairn when he returned. Yeshe was sitting at the bridge, not five feet from where Shan had left him. The rancor had left his face.

"See any ghosts?" he asked Shan.

Shan looked back over the slope. "I don't know."

As Sergeant Feng cleared the last ridge and began to descend onto the plateau, he slowed the truck to consult the map. "Supposed to be a mine," he mumbled. "Nobody said anything about a fish farm."

Stretching below them were acres of manmade lakes, vast, neat rectangles arrayed across the high plain. Shan studied the scene in confusion. Three long, low buildings sat at the end of the road, arranged in a line in front of the lakes.

There was no activity at the mine, but a military truck was parked in front of the buildings. Tan had sent his engineers. A dozen men in green uniforms were clustered around the entrance to the center structure, listening to someone who sat on the step.

Shan and Yeshe were ignored as they ventured from the truck. But the moment Sergeant Feng emerged, the soldiers looked up. They quickly dispersed, studiously avoiding eye contact with their visitors. The figure sitting on the step was revealed, holding a clipboard. It was the American mine manager, Rebecca Fowler. Why, Shan suddenly wondered, would Tan send his engineers if the Ministry of Geology had suspended the mine's operating permit?

The American's only greeting was a frown. "The colonel's office called. Said you want to speak to us." She rose, holding the clipboard to her chest with folded arms as she spoke in slow, precise Mandarin. "But I don't know how to explain you to my team. He used the word unofficial."

"Theoretically this is an investigation for the Ministry of Justice."

"But you're not from the Ministry."

"In China," suggested Shan, "dealing with the government is something of an art form."

"He said it was about Jao. But he'd like to keep that secret. A theoretical investigation. Theoretical and secret," she said with challenge in her eyes.

"A monk has been arrested. It is no longer much of a secret."

"Then the matter is resolved."

"There is the matter of developing evidence."

"A monk was arrested without evidence? You mean he confessed?"

"Not exactly."

The American woman threw her arms up in exasperation. "Like getting my working papers. I applied from California. They said no working papers could be authorized because I wasn't here working. I said I would come here and apply. They said I couldn't travel here without working papers."

"You should have told them the capital for your project would not be transferred unless you were here to verify receipt."

Fowler flashed him a grimace that may have been part grin. "I did better. After sending faxes for three months I bought a ticket with a Japanese tour group to Lhasa. Hitched a ride to Jao's office in a truck and asked him to arrest me. Because I was about to start managing the county's only foreign investment without my working papers."

"That's how you met him?"

She nodded. "He thought about it for a few minutes and burst out laughing. Had the papers for me in two hours." She gestured toward the door and led them inside, into a large open room filled with desks arranged in two large squares. A few were occupied by Tibetans wearing white shirts. Most of them left the room as soon as they saw their visitors.

Fowler waited for them at the door to a conference room adjacent to the front door. But Shan moved to one of the desks. It was covered with strange maps of brilliant colors and no demarcation lines. He had never seen such a map before.

Fowler stepped to his side and threw a newspaper over the maps. An office worker called out that tea was ready in the conference room. Yeshe and Sergeant Feng followed him in.

Shan lingered at the desks. He spotted photographs of Buddhist artifacts, small statues of deities, prayer wheels, ceremonial horns, small thankga paintings on scrolled silk, all extended like trophies by anonymous arms. No faces were shown. "I am confused. Are you a geologist or an archaeologist?"

"The United Nations makes inventories of antiquities deserving preservation. They are part of the heritage of mankind. They do not belong to political parties."

"But you don't work for the United Nations."

"Don't you believe there are things that are common to all mankind?" she asked.

"I'm afraid so."

Rebecca Fowler stared at Shan uncertainly, then went for tea. Shan roamed around the square of desks. On the perimeter, behind walls of glass panels, there were two offices, labeled PROJECT MANAGER and CHIEF ENGINEER. Fowler's office was cluttered with files and more of the peculiar maps. The walls of the second office were hung with photos of Tibetans- candid, artful photos of children and ruined temples and windswept prayer flags. A shelf along one wall was filled with books about Tibet, in English.

A group photograph of a dozen exuberant men and women hung on the wall outside Fowler's office. Shan recognized Fowler, the blond American with wire-rimmed glasses, Assistant Prosecutor Li, and Chief Prosecutor Jao.

"The dedication of this building," Fowler explained as she handed him a mug of tea. "When we opened the facility officially."

Shan pointed to an attractive young Chinese woman with a brilliant smile. "Miss Lihua," Fowler said. "Jao's secretary."

"Why were Prosecutor Jao and the assistant prosecutor both involved in your operation?"

Fowler shrugged. "Jao was more the broad overseer. He delegated the supervisory committee issues to Li."

"You have telephones," Shan observed with a gesture toward the desks. "But I didn't see any wires."

"A satellite system," she explained. "We have to talk to our labs in Hong Kong. Twice a week we call our offices in California."

"And the UN office in Lhasa?"

"No. It's an internal system. Only authorized for designated receiving stations inside our company."

"Not even Lhadrung?"

Fowler shook her head. "I can contact California in sixty seconds. A message to Lhadrung means forty-five minutes' drive. Your country," she said without smiling. "It overflows with paradox."

"Like putting American saccharine in buttered tea," Shan said, watching a Tibetan woman in a white office smock pour pink packets into a bowl of the traditional milky brew.

There were bulletin boards with safety procedures in Chinese and English, and notices about staff meetings. At the back of the room a red door was closed, with a sign that restricted entry to authorized personnel.

"Has the American staff been here long, Miss Fowler?" Shan asked.

"It's only me and Tyler Kincaid. Eighteen months."

"Kincaid?"

"My chief engineer. Sort of second-in-command." She gave Shan a pregnant glance, which he took to mean that he had seen Kincaid with her at the cave. The lighthearted American who had played "Home on the Range" to spite Colonel Tan; the man in the building-dedication photo.

"No other Westerners? How about visitors from your company?"

"None. Too damned far. Only Jansen from the United Nations office in Lhasa. Week after next it all changes."

"You mean the American tourists."

"Right. Supposed to spend two hours here. After that, we're a regular stop on the tourist circuit. Guess we'll show them empty offices and empty tanks, give them a lecture on Chinese bureaucracy."