"She wouldn't know," Shan said. "She wouldn't know if someone called."

"Jao was a stiff bastard. Never took calls himself. And everything had to be planned in advance or it could not happen. Every hour was logged by Miss Lihua. He was in the office all that day, she said. He was loading the car for the airport when she left. Religious Affairs called about a committee meeting. The Justice office in Lhasa called about a late report. He had her call to confirm his flights. Nothing else that day except the dinner."

"There are other places. Other ways to receive calls."

"This isn't Shanghai. He didn't have a damned pocket phone. He didn't have a radio transmitter. He didn't go anywhere that day anyway. And he wouldn't have changed his plans," Tan added, "wouldn't have chanced missing the flight for his annual leave just for a message from some monk."

"Exactly. Which is why it was someone he knew," Shan replied.

"No. It is why he must have been ambushed on the way to the airport, then driven back to the Claw."

"The road to the airport. It is a military road."

"Of course."

"So convoys drive down it into the valley. Do they travel at night?"

Tan nodded slowly. "When supplies or personnel are picked up at the airport. Flights arrive in the late afternoon."

"Then verify whether any military driver saw a limousine on his return drive. There aren't many limousines in Lhadrung. It would have been conspicuous."

Shan studied the folder with the faxes as he spoke. Madame Ko had added Prosecutor Jao's itinerary, obtained directly from the airline. "Why was he scheduled for a one-day layover in Beijing? Why not fly straight through?"

"Shopping. Family. Any number of reasons."

Shan sat down and stared into his hands. "I must go to Lhasa."

Tan's face soured. "There's no possible connection to Lhasa. If you think for a moment I'll drag in the outside authorities-"

"The prosecutor had planned an unaccounted-for day in Beijing. He received an unaccounted-for message from an unknown person who lured him to be killed by another unknown wearing an unaccounted-for costume."

"There's more than one killer?" Tan said, with a tone of warning in his voice.

Shan ignored the question. "We have to start answering questions, not raising more. In Lhasa," Shan explained, "there is the Museum of Cultural Antiquities. We need to account for all the costumes of Tamdin."

"Impossible. I can't protect you in Lhasa. It would be my head if you were discovered."

"Then you go. Check the museum records."

"Wen Li verified it. Said there are none missing. And I can't leave the district with the 404th on strike. It would be a sign of weakness." He looked up abruptly and cursed. "Listen to me. As if I'm apologizing. Nobody makes me-" The words choked in his throat.

There were few better lenses to the soul, Shan mused, than anger.

The colonel moved back to the window and picked up the binoculars.

Shan could see with his naked eye that the worksite was empty. "You are right, not to think of them as separate problems," he said very quietly.

Tan slowly lowered the glasses and turned to him.

"The murder and the strike," Shan said. "They are about the same thing."

"You mean the death of Jao."

"No. Not the death of Jao. The thing that caused the death of Jao."

As Tan stared at him the phone rang. He listened, uttered a single syllable of acknowledgment, and hung up. "Li Aidang," he announced with a frown, "is out collecting your evidence again."

Balti, the Ministry of Justice chauffeur, lived in a battered stucco and corrugated tin building that served as a government garage. Shan and the colonel followed voices up a steep stairway above the garage to a drafty, dim loft lined with shelves of auto parts. A long slab of plywood had been erected on cinder blocks to serve as a bed. On it were pieces of soiled canvas that appeared to have once served as drop cloths in the repair shop. On an upturned crate at the end of the bed was a butter lamp and a small ceramic Buddha, badly chipped.

Two men were at the end of the room, using hand lanterns to examine the shelves.

"We would not want the assistant prosecutor to surpass our own diligence," Tan said under his breath. Shan half expected him to push him toward the shelves.

One of the men in the shadows approached. It was Li. He was wearing rubber gloves and had a koujiao tied around his mouth. What was he afraid of? Buddhist contagion?

"Brilliant!" he said to Shan, lowering the mask. "I never thought of it until Colonel Tan asked about the prosecutor's car."

"Thought about what exactly?" asked Shan.

"The conspiracy. This khampa. He forced the prosecutor to the South Claw. Drove him there against his will. To be murdered by Sungpo. It explains how Sungpo traveled to the Claw and back. Why the car is missing. Why Balti is missing." Li kept searching as he spoke. He examined a cardboard box near the bed. It held neatly folded clothing. He dumped it onto the floor and picked up each piece with an extended finger as if it might be infested with vermin. He knelt and looked under the bed, producing two shoes which he carelessly tossed behind him.

Shan bent and ran his hand under the bedding. Hidden underneath was a wrinkled, faded photograph of three men, two women, and a dog standing before a herd of yaks. His hand closed around something sharp and metallic. It was a circular piece of chrome. He held it at arm's length in confusion.

Tan took it from him and studied it. "Jiefang," he announced. "Hood ornament." Battered Jiefang trucks, sent to Tibet after a lifetime of work elsewhere, were fixtures on the region's roads.

Li grabbed the ornament and snapped an order to the man behind him, who produced a small clear plastic bag. Li ceremoniously dropped the chrome piece into the bag and looked at Shan with a gloating expression.

"You should watch American movies," Li declared as he moved to the edge of the bed. "Very instructive. Integrity of the evidence is the key." Energized by the find, Li tore the bed clothing away. Finding nothing else, he overturned the plywood, then probed with his hand into the cavities of the cinder blocks. At the last one he looked up victoriously, producing a rosary of plastic beads.

"The limousine. It's obvious." Li dangled the beads in front of Shan. "He was given Prosecutor Jao's Red Flag limousine as his reward for abetting the murder." He dropped the beads into another bag.

Yeshe awkwardly moved to the shelves of auto parts and began to absently move the cartons. A tattered postcard fell on the floor as he did so, an image of the Dalai Lama taken decades earlier.

"Excellent!" Li exclaimed, snatching the photo and patting Yeshe on the back. "You are learning, Comrade."

Yeshe stared blankly at Li. "It is permitted to own such pictures now," he said, "as long as they are not displayed publicly." Not quite an argument, but still there was objection in Yeshe's voice, a tone which surprised Shan and perhaps surprised Yeshe even more.

Li seemed not to notice. He waved the photo like a flag. "No, but look how old it is. It was illegal when it was taken. This is how we build cases, Comrade." An assistant held out another plastic bag, into which Li dropped the postcard.