Sung looked at him with alarm. "Prosecutor Li forwarded the order," she explained in a worried tone.

"Prosecutor? There is no new prosecutor. Not yet."

"What was I supposed to do? Wire the chairman's office for confirmation?"

"Who signed it?"

"A major in the Bureau."

Shan wrung his hands in frustration. "Doesn't this major have a name? Doesn't anyone ever ask him why?"

"Comrade, the one thing you never do with Public Security is ask questions."

Shan took a step toward the door and turned. "I need to borrow a phone," he said. "Long distance lines."

She asked no questions, but escorted him to an empty office in the rear of the building. As she left, a figure appeared at the door. Yeshe's anguish was still evident but there was a glint of determination in his eyes.

"When they sent me back from university," he announced as he stepped into the room, "I knew who put the Dalai Lama's photo on the wall. It wasn't even a Tibetan, it was a Chinese friend of mine who did it. For a joke, a prank." He dropped into a chair. "They sent me back to labor camp because I was supposed to have been capable of it. But I wasn't. Never would I have had the courage."

Shan put his hand on Yeshe's shoulder. "It is a mistake to think of courage as something you show to others. True courage is only something you show to yourself."

"You have to know who you are to be able to recognize that kind of courage," Yeshe said into his hands.

"I think you know."

"I don't."

"I think the man who stood up to the major and saved Balti's life knew who he was."

"Now, back here, it feels like I was just performing. I don't know if it was me."

"Performing for whom?"

"I don't know." Yeshe looked up and met Shan's eyes. "Maybe for you," he said quietly.

Shan shut his eyes. Strangely, the words made him think of his son, the son who was so remote that he was never an image in Shan's mind, only a concept. The son who probably assumed Shan was dead. The son who would always despise him, dead or alive, as a failure. The son who would never utter such words to him.

"No," he said, returning Yeshe's stare. Not me, he wanted to say. There is no room on my back for another burden. "You did it because you want to find the truth. You did it because you want to become a Tibetan again."

Yeshe's eyes did not flicker. He gave no sign of having heard Shan's words.

Shan transcribed the numbers from Jao's secret file. "If these are phone numbers I need to know where," he said and extended the slip.

Yeshe sighed, and studied the paper. "We could do this at the 404th. Or the barracks."

"No. We couldn't," Shan said curtly. The Bureau would not be listening to the lines from some forgotten office of a forgotten clinic. "As far as the operator knows, you're just a clerk in the clinic. Trying to track someone due to a sudden death. Try Lhasa. Try Shigatse, Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou. New York. Just find out." He pulled out the American business card found with Jao's body. "Then find out about this."

As Yeshe raised the receiver Shan left the room and moved to a window in the corridor. He could see Sergeant Feng in the truck outside, sleeping. He turned. The Tibetan orderly was nearby again, at an open door now, watching Shan as he mopped. Another orderly appeared at the opposite end of the corridor, pushing a wheelchair. The first one stopped and caught Shan's eye, then motioned urgently toward the open door. As Shan moved hesitantly toward him, he heard a metallic rattle behind him. The second orderly was approaching at a trot.

"Inside," the first orderly instructed.

It was a darkened closet. In the dim light he saw a broom and cleaning supplies. An arm suddenly wrapped around Shan's chest and a cloth stinking of a strong chemical was clamped over his mouth. Something hard struck him behind the knees. The wheelchair. The last thing he remembered was the sound of bells.

He woke on the floor of a cavern, a bitter taste in his mouth. Chloroform. The cavern was crammed with small gold and bronze statues of Buddha and hundreds of manuscripts stacked on shelves. By the dim light of butter lamps he saw two figures with hair cropped to the scalp. One of them stooped and began wiping Shan's face with a damp cloth. It was one of the orderlies. On his wrist hung a rosary with tiny bells tied to it. A match flared. The cave brightened as he straightened and the other one uncovered a kerosene lantern.

There was a low rumble, as of thunder. In the rising light Shan saw a door in a wooden frame. It wasn't a cave. It was a room carved out of the living rock, and the thunder was the sound of traffic passing overhead.

"Why are you so concerned about the costume of Tamdin?" the figure with the lantern asked abruptly. It was the illegal monk from the marketplace, the purba with the scarred face. "You asked Director Wen of the Religious Affairs Bureau about the costumes in the museum."

"Because the murderer wanted to be seen as Tamdin," Shan said, rubbing away a pain in his temple. "Maybe he felt he was carrying out the wishes of Tamdin."

The man frowned. "And you think that someone has the costume?"

"I know someone has it."

"Or did someone plant artifacts to make you think that?"

Shan weighed the possibility. "No, he has been seen. Someone wearing the costume was seen by Prosecutor Jao's driver. He wasn't lying. And not just at Jao's murder. At some of the other murders, too. Maybe all of them."

The purba held the light near Shan's face. "Are you saying there has been only one murderer all along?"

"Two, I think, but acting together."

"But showing that one of them was dressed in a religious costume will just make them think it was Buddhists."

"Unless we prove otherwise."

The purba gave an incredulous grunt. "Any minute the knobs could open fire on the 404th, and you spend your time on demons."

"If you know of a better way to save them, please tell me."

"If it continues, Lhadrung will be lost. It will become a militarized zone."

Shan's mouth went dry. "What are you going to do?"

"Maybe," the purba suggested, "we give them the fifth one."

"The fifth one?"

"The last of the Lhadrung Five. Put him in prison again. Maybe then their conspiracy has to be over. There will be no one else to blame."

It was a very Tibetan solution. Shan saw something new in the purba's eyes. Sadness. "Just like that," Shan said, "the last of the Five asks to go to prison."

"I've been thinking. He could go to the mountain and conduct Bardo rites, get rid of the jungpo. The 404th could stop its strike and return to work."

"Public Security would be furious," Shan acknowledged. "Whoever conducted the rites would be sentenced to the 404th."

"Exactly." The purba shrugged. "There are other solutions. The people are angry."

The words frightened Shan. "Choje, at the 404th, he said once that those who try too hard to commit perfect goodness are in the greatest danger of creating perfect badness."

"I don't know what that means."

"It means that much evil can be done in the name of virtue. Because to many virtue is a relative thing."