"South of here. Border security zone. Under Major Yang."

So he had a name after all, Shan thought. "What do you know about this Major Yang?"

Tan shrugged. "Hard as a rock. Famous for stopping smugglers. Takes no prisoners. Be a general some day."

"Why, Colonel, would such an esteemed officer bother to personally make the arrest of Sungpo?"

Tan's brows furrowed. "You know this?"

Shan nodded.

"A man like that goes anywhere he wants," Tan said, sounding unconvinced. "He doesn't report to me, he's Public Security. If he wants to help the Ministry of Justice, I can't stop it."

"If I were conducting a Bureau investigation I don't think I would parade around the county in a brilliant red truck or buzz the countryside in a helicopter."

"Maybe you're just bitter. I seem to recall that your warrant for imprisonment was signed by Bureau headquarters. Qin ordered it, but the Bureau made it happen."

"Maybe," Shan admitted. "But still, Lieutenant Chang tried to kill us. And Chang was probably working for the major."

Tan shook his head in uncertainty. "Chang's dead, and you still have a job to get done." He rose as though to leave.

"Have you heard of the Lotus Book?" Shan asked, stopping Tan at the door. "It's a work of the Buddhists."

"The luxury of religious studies is not available to me," Tan said impatiently.

"It is more of a catalog," Shan said in a hollow tone. "They started writing it twenty years ago. A catalog of names. With places and…"- he searched for a word-"events."

"Events?"

"In one section the names are nearly all Han Chinese. Under each name is a description. Of his or her role in destroying a gompa. Of participating in executions. Or looting shrines. Rapes. Murders. Torture. It is very explicit. As it is circulated it is expanded and updated. It has become something of a badge of honor, to add your name to its list of authors."

Tan had stiffened. "Impossible!" he flared. "It would be an act against the state. Treason."

"Prosecutor Jao was in the book. For directing the destruction of the five biggest gompas in Lhadrung County. Three hundred twenty monks disappeared. Another two hundred were shipped to prisons."

Tan slipped into a chair, a new excitement on his face. "But that would be proof. Proof that he was targeted by the radicals."

"Lin Ziang of the Religious Bureau is in the book," Shan continued. "Twenty-five gompas and chortens destroyed at his command in western Tibet. Directed the transportation of an estimated ten million dollars' worth of antiquities to Beijing where they were melted down for gold. Came up with the idea of alloting nuns to military installations for entertainment. Xong De of the Ministry of Geology was in there. Commanded a prison when he was younger. He had a prediliction for thumbs."

"I want it!" Tan bellowed. "I want those who wrote it."

"It does not exist in one volume. It is passed along. Copies are transcribed by hand. It is all over the country. Even outside."

"I want those who wrote it," Tan repeated, more calmly. "What it says is unimportant. Just history. But the act of writing it-"

"I would have thought," Shan interrupted, "that just the one investigation was more than we could handle."

Tan pulled out a cigarette and tapped it nervously on the table, as if conceding the point.

"I know prisoners in the 404th," Shan continued, "who can recite the details of atrocities committed in the sixteenth century by the pagan armies which attacked Buddhism, as if it happened yesterday. It is a way of keeping the honor of those who suffered, and keeping the shame of those who committed the acts."

Tan's anger began to burn away. He did not, Shan suspected, have the strength for more than one battle at a time. "This is your proof that the killings were connected," he observed.

"I have no doubt of it."

"But it just proves my point about the destablizing force of the minority hooligans."

"No. The purbas wanted me to know about it to protect themselves."

"What do you mean?"

"They want us to solve the murders, too. They realized that if the Bureau found out about the book and thought it was connected to the killings, it would be used to destroy them. There's still one more of the Lhadrung Five left. One more murder to frame him for. And if someone in the top rank is assassinated, the knobs will move in permanently. Martial law. It would set Lhadrung back thirty years."

"Top rank?"

"There was another name in the book," Shan said. "Listed for elimination of eighty gompas. Destruction of ten chortens to construct a missile base. Responsible for the disappearance of a truckload of khampa rebels being transported to lao gai. In April 1963."

"It's the only other Lotus Book name in Lhadrung. The only one still alive. A man who supervised the burning of another fifteen gompas. Two hundred monks died inside as the buildings burned," Shan reported with a chill. He tore the entry he had transcribed from his notebook and dropped it onto the table in front of Tan. "It's your name."

Chapter Fourteen

Outside, Sergeant Feng stood uneasily between two knobs.

"Comrade Shan!" Li Aidang called from a dark gray sedan parked across from the restaurant. The assistant prosecutor opened the door and gestured for Shan to climb inside. "I thought we might chat. You know. Colleagues on the same case."

"So you returned safely. Kham is such an unpredictable place," Shan said dryly. He hesitated, seeing the uncertainty in Feng's eyes, then slid into the back seat beside Li.

"We found him, you know," Li announced.

Shan willed himself not to take the bait.

"That is to say, we persuaded a clan in the valley to tell us where his camp was."

"Persuaded?"

"Doesn't take much," the assistant prosecutor said smugly. "A helicopter, a uniform. Some of the old ones just whimpered. We found out where to look, but when we arrived they had gone. Fire ashes still warm. Not a trace." Li studied Shan. "As if they had been warned."

Shan shrugged. "Something I've noticed about nomads. They tend to move about."

The door was slammed shut by one of the knobs, who climbed behind the wheel and started the engine. As they drove away Shan turned to see the remaining soldier step in front of the driver's door of their own truck, blocking Sergeant Feng's way.

A shadowy figure in the front seat turned and looked at Shan without speaking.

"You remember the major," Li said.

"Major Yang, I believe," Shan observed. "Minder of Public Security."

"Exactly," Li confirmed tersely.

One side of the officer's face curled up in acknowledgment of Shan, then he turned away.

They moved out of town quickly, the horn blaring intermittently to scatter pedestrians and any vehicles that dared to get close.

Ten minutes later they entered an evergreen forest, in a small valley three miles from the main road. As they passed through the ruins of an ancient mani shrine wall, the trees began to assume an orderly appearance. They had been groomed. Spring flowers bloomed along the road, beside raked gravel.

They passed another wall, taller than the first, and entered the courtyard of a very old gompa. It had one tower of stone and gray brick and a small chorten, twice the height of a man, on the opposite side of the courtyard. Newly laid flagstone lined the courtyard. The walls had been replastered and were being painted. Along the far wall was a collection of statues of Buddha and other religious figures, several plated with gold. They were in a disorganized row, some facing the wall, some listing sharply, some propped against each other. Shan had the sense of visiting a wealthy, neglected villa. A faint aroma of peonies wafted through the courtyard as they climbed out of the car.