The top pages were the missing audit report from Saskya gompa, completed fourteen months earlier and recording the discovery of the boxes in the quarters of an old lama who had once been the Tamdin dancer.

"But who took it?" Yeshe asked. "Who stole the costume and brought it here? Director Wen?"

"I think Wen knew, but it is only part of the puzzle. Wen didn't use the costume. Wen didn't take the prosecutor's head to the shrine." He didn't believe enough, is what Shan meant. Whoever had used the costume and severed Jao's head was a zealot.

"You mean you think now a monk did steal it?"

"I don't know," Shan said, feeling his frustration rise like a great lump in his chest. He had expected the end of his long search for Tamdin would have brought him the answers he needed. "Maybe only the lama they took it from knows."

Yeshe turned to the older pages. "A report," he announced after scanning the first page. "An anthropologist from Guangzhou. History of the costume. Details of the ceremony, as he witnessed it in 1958." He paused and looked up. "At Saskya gompa. Saskya was the only gompa in the county to perform the dance." He began reading out loud. "The knowledge of the ceremony was a sacred trust," he read, "passed from a single monk in one generation to one in the next. The Tamdin dancer in 1958 was considered the best in all of Tibet."

"But who," Shan thought out loud, "had the costume last year? The old dancer, if he were still alive. Or his student. He would know who took it. That's the proof we need. That's the link to the murder."

Yeshe read on silently for a few more paragraphs, then lowered the papers and stared at Shan in confusion. Shan pulled the page from his hand and read it. The dancer in 1958 was Je Rinpoche.

A tent had materialized in front of the barracks, a yurt-style structure of yak-hair felt. Four monks were quietly waiting at the gate. Feng pulled the truck to a stop as they watched.

Four knobs approached the gate, carrying a litter. The gate opened, and the monks took the litter, walking in tiny, painstaking steps, wary of their fragile burden. The tent flap opened and they were admitted. An ancient truck, its engine sputtering loudly, approached, brakes screeching, and parked beside the tent. Shan recognized some of the men who climbed out. Monks from Saskya gompa.

Inside, the tent was hazy with the smoke of incense. The old priest Shan had met in the temple at Saskya was bent over Je, washing Je for the ceremony. A second older monk with a brocaded sleeve- he must be the kenpo of Saskya, Shan realized- presided at the head of the litter, which was raised on bales of straw. As Shan and Yeshe approached, two younger priests stepped before them. Yeshe pushed forward, as though to protect Shan.

"We must speak with him," Shan protested.

They did not speak, but pointed to a space beside a group of monks who sat before the pallet, spinning prayer wheels and softly reciting mantras.

"One question," Yeshe said urgently. "Rinpoche would not begrudge one question."

The priest glared at Yeshe. "Where did you study?"

"Khartok gompa. I can explain," Yeshe pleaded. "It is about saving Sungpo. Maybe even saving the 404th."

The priest looked at Shan. "The Bardo ceremony has been started. The transition has already begun. His soul. Already it is lifting out. It requires all his concentration. He can see a small light now, in the far distance. If he breaks away, if he loses it for an instant he could be sent somewhere that was not intended. He may never find it. He may drift endlessly. This monk from Khartok knows that," he said with a scornful glance at Yeshe.

They sat and waited. Yeshe began saying his rosary, but as Shan watched he slowly lost count and began twisting his fingers, turning the knuckles white. Butter lamps were brought in and lit.

"You don't understand!" Yeshe suddenly blurted. "He could save Sungpo! We can protect the 404th!"

The kenpo turned and stared icily. One of the younger monks angrily stepped toward Yeshe as though to physically restrain him, but was interrupted by a sudden stirring at the door. Low, urgent protests could be heard. The flap was thrown open and Dr. Sung appeared. She glared at Shan and ignored everyone else, then stepped to the pallet. The moment she opened her bag the abbot called out and clamped his hand over her arm.

She did not speak. Their eyes locked. With her free hand she pulled a stethoscope from the bag, slung it around her neck and then, one finger at a time, peeled away the abbot's hand. He did not move but did not stop her examination.

"His heart isn't beating enough to keep a child alive," she said. "I suspect a blockage."

"Is it treatable?" Shan asked.

"Perhaps. But not here. Need to run tests at the clinic."

"Just one question," Yeshe pressed, looking at his watch. "We need to know. He is the only one who can tell us."

Sung shrugged and filled a syringe with a clear fluid. "This will wake him," she said. "At least briefly." She scrubbed Je's arm.

As she bent with needle the abbot placed his hand over the prepared patch of skin. "You have no idea of what you are doing," he said.

"He's an old man in need of help," Yeshe pleaded. "He doesn't have to die here. If he dies now, Sungpo may die, too."

"His entire life was dedicated to this moment of transition," the abbot warned. "It cannot be stopped. He has already begun to cross over. He is in a place none of us are allowed to disturb."

Dr. Sung looked at the priest as if for the first time, then slowly lowered the syringe and looked to Shan, who moved to the platform. "You're the one who asked me," she said. But her confused tone made it sound more like a question than an accusation.

"If he dies today, Sungpo will die tomorrow," Yeshe said in a desolate voice over Shan's shoulder. "It will all be for nothing. If we don't have the answer now, we will never have it."

Shan gestured toward the entrance. The doctor dropped her instruments on the pallet and followed him.

"If it is sickness we should take him back," Shan said quietly. "If it is just a natural passing-"

"What do you mean, natural?" Dr. Sung asked.

Shan looked outside, past the barbed wire to the long building where Sungpo sat. "I guess I don't know anymore."

"If I could do tests," Sung suggested, "maybe we could-"

She was interrupted by a horrified shout. They spun about. The priests were jumping to their feet. The old abbot was flogging Yeshe on the head with a ritual bell.

Yeshe stood over the pallet with tears running down his face. He had injected the syringe into Je.

Everyone was shouting. Someone demanded to know the name of Yeshe's abbot. Someone grabbed his red shirt and ripped it off his back. They were abruptly silenced by the rising of Je's arm.

The arm extended vertically, the hand rotating in a slow eerie motion, as if clutching for something just beyond its grasp.

Shan darted to Je's side and wiped his forehead with the wet rag. The old man's eyes fluttered opened and he stared at the felt roof above him. He brought the extended hand down to his face and studied it, moving the fingers with exquisite slowness, like that of a butterfly in the cold. He turned and put his fingers on Shan's face, squinting as if he could not see it well. "Which level is it, then?" he whispered in a dry croaking voice.