He became aware of something new, a slight rustle of noise that became a chatter. It seemed to be coming from the skulls. Rebecca Fowler, fear now in her eyes, stepped closer to Kincaid. The two stood frozen, listening, then Kincaid abruptly turned and raised his camera toward Yeshe. He fired the strobe like a weapon and the noise stopped. Shan suddenly realized they had been hearing an echoing mantra, started by Yeshe.

The spell was broken.

"You could still help," Shan suggested as he recovered.

Fowler looked up with a haggard expression. "Anything."

"We need a record. If Mr. Kincaid could photograph all the shelves." The skulls knew, Shan told himself again. Maybe he could make them talk.

Kincaid nodded slowly. "I could get all three levels in one frame. Should have just about enough film."

"I need the inscriptions for each skull included. After I study the photos maybe we could turn them over to your UN Commission."

Fowler offered Shan a small, sad nod of gratitude, but lingered when Yeshe went to help Kincaid with the first row of skulls. She and Shan continued cautiously down the tunnel. The shelves ended, replaced by more images of demons painted on the walls.

"Is it true that you're being forced to do this, that you're a prisoner of some kind?" Fowler asked suddenly.

Shan kept walking. "Who told you that?"

"Nobody. Tyler just said that nobody knows who you are. You were some kind of outside official, we thought. But outside officials- I don't know, outside officials get lots of respect." She winced at her own words.

He was touched by her embarrassment.

"Tyler says it's funny, the way your sergeant watches you. He carries a gun, but he's not a bodyguard. A bodyguard would watch past you, around you. But your sergeant, he just watches you."

Shan stopped and turned his light toward the American's face. "When I am not investigating murders I build roads," he confessed. "In what they call a labor brigade."

Fowler's hand went to her mouth. "My God," she whispered, biting a knuckle. "In one of those awful prisons?" She looked away, toward the demons. Her eyes were bright and wet when she spoke again. "I don't understand anything. How are you- why would you-" She shook her head. "I'm so sorry. I'm such a fool."

"A very senior Party member told me once that there're only two types of people in my country," Shan observed. "Masters and slaves. I don't believe it, and I would be saddened if you did."

Fowler offered a weak smile. "But how could you be investigating?"

"It was my talent before being elevated to road laborer. I used to be an investigator in Beijing."

"But you defy Tan, I saw it. If he's your-"

Shan held up a hand, not wanting to hear the next word. Prisonkeeper, perhaps? Even slavemaster? "Maybe that's why- because he can inflict no further harm." It was the kind of half-truth an American would believe.

"Which is why you won't prove that monk is Jao's killer?"

"I can't. He's innocent."

Fowler stared at him. Maybe, Shan considered, she knew too much about China to accept such a bold statement.

"Then what's going on? You're here like a thief. Li is conducting an investigation, too, but he's not here. What is Tan so worried about?"

So she did understand China more than Shan expected. "I am confused about you, too, Miss Fowler," he countered. "You are the manager, but you said Mr. Kincaid's father owns the company."

The American woman gave an amused grunt. "Long story. Short version is that just because Tyler's father runs the company doesn't mean they get along."

"They are not close? You mean for him Tibet is a punishment?"

"You know what a dropout is? Tyler went to mining school like his family wanted, so he could take over the company someday. But after graduation he announced he wanted none of it. Said the company ruined the environment, said it impoverished local populations. Spent several hundred thousand of his trust funds on a ranch in California, where he lived a few years, then gave it to a wildlife conservation group that was blocking a new mine his father wanted to build. Took a few years for things to cool down to where they would speak to one another, a few more before Tyler agreed to take a job in the company. But his father was still distrustful enough that he wouldn't put him in charge. Still, they're talking now. Tyler is serious about making a new life for himself. He's a damned good engineer. Tyler will be chairman one day, and one of the richest men in America."

"And you? You're very young for such responsibilities."

"Young?" Fowler shook her head slowly and sighed. "I haven't felt young for a long time." She stopped, looking ahead. The tunnel opened into another chamber. "Guess I'm the opposite of Tyler. Never had two cents when I was growing up. Worked hard, saved, won scholarships. Worked like a dog for ten years to get here."

"And you choose Tibet?"

She shrugged as she stepped forward. "It's not what I expected."

The paintings inside the chamber presented a tableau of Tibetan geography, images of mountains and palaces and shrines. On the floor at one end were shards of bone and a dozen skulls arranged in a triangle shape. Fifteen feet away was a row of skulls, surrounded by bootprints and cigarette butts. The soldiers had been bowling.

Fowler picked up a skull and held it reverently in her palms, then began to retrieve the others as though to return them to the shelves. Shan touched her arm. "You can't," he warned. "They will know you were here."

She nodded silently and lowered the skull, then turned back down the tunnel wearing a desolate expression. They joined Yeshe and Kincaid, waiting in the main chamber, and the four moved quickly away. No one spoke until they were near the entrance.

"Wait a quarter of an hour," Shan suggested, "then return the same way you arrived." He did not ask how they knew a secret route. "I will come for the photos-"

He was interrupted by a gasp from Fowler. A figure had appeared in the entranceway, lit by the brilliant sunlight as though with a spotlight.

"It's him!" Fowler cried in a hoarse whisper, and she and Kincaid faded into the shadows. But Shan needed no explanation. The man in the entrance could only be Director Hu of the Ministry of Geology.

Shan stepped out into the light.

"Comrade Inspector!" the short, stocky man called out. "What a pleasure! I had hoped to find you still here." On his wide face his tiny black eyes looked like beetles.

"We have not been introduced," Shan observed slowly, surveying the compound as he spoke.

"No. But here I am, coming all this way to help you. And here you are, working so hard to help me." He ceremoniously handed Shan his card. It was made of vinyl. Director of Mines, Lhadrung County, it read. Hu Yaohong. Hu Who Wants to be Red.

A red truck was parked beside their own. Suddenly Shan remembered: The same truck had been parked at the worksite the day they had discovered Jao's body. He studied it more closely. It was a British Land Rover, the most expensive vehicle he had ever seen in Lhadrung.

"You came to help?" Shan asked.

"That, and for a security check."

There was a man talking to Feng. With a twitch of his gut Shan realized Hu wasn't referring to security at the entrance. The second visitor was Lieutenant Chang, from the 404th. Chang looked at him with an indolent eye, the gaze of a shopkeeper confirming his inventory.