The purba looked into the flame of the lantern. "I don't believe virtue is a relative thing."

"No. I don't suppose you do."

The man sighed. "I didn't say we would use violence. I said the people are angry." He picked up one of the small bronze Buddhas and pressed his hands around it. "The night the prosecutor died," he announced, "a messenger came to the restaurant where he ate. A young man. Well-dressed. Chinese. Wearing a hat. He had a piece of paper for Jao. One of the waiters spoke to the prosecutor, who immediately rose and spoke with this man. And the man gave something to Jao. A flower. An old red flower, all dried up. Jao became very excited. He took the paper and flower, then gave money to the man. The man left. The prosecutor talked with his driver then returned to dinner with the American."

"How do you know this?"

"You said you needed to know about what Prosecutor Jao did that night. Workers in the restaurant remembered."

Shan recalled the Tibetan staff at the restaurant, cowering in the corner, afraid of him. "I must know who sent the message."

"We do not know. But there was something about the messenger's eyes. One of them wasn't straight. One of the waiters recognized the man, he was a witness at the murder trial of the monk Dilgo."

"Dilgo of the Lhadrung Five?"

The scar-faced man nodded.

"Would he recognize him again?"

"Certainly. But perhaps we could just give you his name."

Shan's head jerked up. "You know his name?"

"As soon as I heard the description I knew. I was at the trial. It was a man named Meng Lau. A soldier."

"The same man who now claims to have seen Sungpo," Shan gasped. He stood excitedly, as if to go. The purba moved back to reveal a new figure in the shadows, who stepped in front of him to block his exit. "Not yet, please," the figure said. It was a woman. A nun.

"You don't understand. If I am not back-"

The nun just smiled, then took his hand and led him down a short corridor to a second chamber. It must have been a gompa, Shan realized, the subterranean shrine of an ancient, forgotten gompa. It made sense. Once every Tibetan town had been built around a central gompa. The second room was brightly lit with four lanterns hanging from beams.

A small man was bent over a rough-hewn table, writing in a large book. He looked up, removed a pair of frail wire-rimmed glasses, and blinked several times. "My friend!" he squealed with delight, leaping off his stool to embrace Shan.

"Lokesh? Is it you?" Shan's heart leapt as he held the man at arm's length and studied him.

"My spirit soared when they said you might come," the old man said with a huge smile.

Shan had never seen Lokesh in anything but prison garb. He gazed at him with a flood of emotion. It was like finding a long-lost uncle. "You've put on weight."

The old man laughed and embraced Shan again. "Tsampa," he said. "All the tsampa I want." Shan saw a familiar tin mug on the table, half-filled with roasted barley. It was one of the mugs used at the 404th. Old habits died hard.

"But your wife. I thought you went to Shigatse with her."

The old man smiled. "I did. Funny thing, two days after I got home, my wife's time came."

Shan stared at him in disbelief. "I am-" I am what, he considered. Heartbroken? Furious? Paralyzed by the helplessness of it all? "I am sorry," he said.

Lokesh shrugged. "A priest told me that when a soul gets ripe, it will just pop off the tree like an apple. I was able to be with her at her time. Thanks to you." He put his arms around Shan again, stepped back and pulled a small ornamental box from around his neck. It was an old gau, the container for Lokesh's charms. He placed its strap over Shan's head.

"I can't."

Lokesh put his finger to his lips. "Of course you can." He looked at the nun. "There is no time to argue."

The nun was looking back into the shadows, where they had left the scar-faced purba. Her eyes were wet when she turned to Shan. "You have to help, you have to stop him."

Shan was confused. "He said he would not commit violence."

The nun bit her lip. "Only on himself."

"Himself?"

"He wants to go to the mountain, to do the prohibited rites and turn himself over to the knobs." Her hand clamped around his arm as he stared back into the shadows of the underground labyrinth, comprehending at last. The scar-faced purba was the fifth, the last of the Lhadrung Five, and the next to be accused of murder if the conspiracy continued.

Lokesh gently pulled the nun's hand away and moved Shan toward the table. "The 404th is troubled again. We need your wisdom once more, Xiao Shan."

Shan followed Lokesh's gaze to the book on the table. It had the dimensions of an oversized dictionary, and was bound with wood and cloth. It was a manuscript, with entries in several hands, even several languages. Tibetan mostly, but also Mandarin, English, and French.

The nun looked up with deep, sad eyes. "There are eleven copies of this in Tibet," she said quietly. "Several more in Nepal and India. Even one in Beijing." She moved to the side and gestured for Shan to sit at the table. "It is called the Lotus Book."

"Here, my friend," Lokesh said excitedly as he turned to the front pages of the book. "It was such a wonderful time to be alive in those days. I have read these pages fifty times and still sometimes I weep with joy at the memories they preserve."

The pages were not uniform. Some were lists, some were like encyclopedia entries. The very first word in the book was a date. 1949, the year before the Communists began to liberate Tibet.

"It is a catalog of what was here before the destruction," Shan spoke in awe. It wasn't just lists of gompas and other holy places, it also held descriptions of the numbers and names of monks and nuns, even the dimensions of buildings. For many sites, first-hand narratives by survivors had been transcribed, telling of life at the place. Lokesh had been writing when Shan entered the room.

"The first half, yes," the nun said, then opened the pages to a silk marker where another list began.

It was an inventory of people, a list of individual names. Shan felt a choking sensation as he read. "These are all Chinese names."

"Yes," Lokesh said, suddenly more sober. "Chinese," he whispered, then his arms slackened and he fell still as if he had suddenly lost his strength.

The nun bent over the book and turned to the back, where the most recent transcriptions had been made. One by one, she pointed out names to Shan as he stared in a mixture of horror and disbelief. Lin Ziang was there, the murdered Director of Religious Affairs, as was Xong De, the deceased Director of Mines, and Jin San, the former head of the Long Wall collective. All victims of the Lhadrung Five.

Forty minutes later they returned him in the wheelchair, blindfolded, creaking down corridors hewn from the stone, then onto the smooth floors of the clinic, turning so many times he could not possibly have retraced the route. Suddenly, with the sound of the bells again, the scarf that had covered his eyes was untied and he was in the front corridor, alone.

Yeshe was still on the phone, arguing with someone. He hung up when he saw Shan. "I tried every combination. Nothing seems to work." He handed the paper back to Shan. "I wrote down other possiblities. Page numbers. Coordinates. Specimen numbers. Product numbers. Then I thought to call about his travel plans. There's a travel office for government officials in Lhasa. I called to confirm what they said about his trip."