Beside the maps were sheets from old peche. From the words Shan could make out and the diagrams of plants they appeared to be directions for finding and using herbs. Six feet down the long table was another grouping of old writings, broader than peche leaves, arrayed around a tablet with the familiar caption decrying feudalism. The tablet had perhaps thirty names, in Chinese. Names were being transcribed from the old papers, which were records from an old gompa. They were names of lamas and monks, he suspected. The howlers were recording the names of the former inhabitants of Rapjung and Norbu to see if any of their families survived. Shan had been conscripted for similar tasks during his imprisonment. Refining the socialist context, a political officer had called it, when he had been forced to help cross-reference telephone directories with lists of old gompa members. The surviving families might not be punished, might never know they had been identified. But the party cherished such data, for future reference, for possible leverage when more information or intimidation might be needed. A white sheet was clipped to one peche page, bearing a Chinese translation. Jokar Rinpoche, a summary said, senior instructor at Rapjung and now a senior member of the Dalai Cult. At the top of the sheet someone had written an excited note. Guru Dorje, it said, this is the one, with the words underlined twice: he came from Rapjung. It was why the medical teams were staying. They had discovered Jokar's destination.

A chalkboard had been propped on an easel at the end of the table, on which a list of numbered rules had been inscribed, with a number of cross-outs and corrections, as if they were still being drafted and refined: No contributions shall be made by the people directly to monks or nuns. The managing committee of the gompa must receive and record all contributions. All those who contribute more than two percent of income shall pay a tax equal to one hundred percent of the contribution. Labor contributed to reconstruction of any religious shrine, cairn, or gompa must be reported, valued, and taxed accordingly. Religious Affairs will strictly enforce the requirement that all religious artifacts are the property of the people's government. Those with personal shrines must pay a rental to the government. Gompas will be encouraged to start economic enterprises and will eventually be required to report a profit to maintain their licenses.

It had the sound of a bizarre manifesto, the platform for a campaign that would truly mean the end of religious activity in Tibet.

Shan looked back uneasily at the note that bore Jokar's name. Guru Dorje, it said at the top. It was like an irreverent nickname. Guru was Sanskrit, another word for lama, and the dorje, the thunderbolt scepter, was one of the most important implements of Buddhist ritual.

Below the chalkboard at the end of the table lay a stack of reports with glossy covers. Each was nearly an inch thick and had a plastic spine along its left side. Prosperity Blooms in Norbu District, the title read. Shan stared grimly at the reports, then leafed through the top copy. Computer graphics had been heavily utilized, with graphs and tables and pie charts, most comparing current economic activity in the district with historic performance. The district was a powerhouse of development, the report explained. Barley production had soared four hundred percent. Sheep herds had increased threefold, goats almost fivefold. The severe health problems that had once debilitated the population were gone. Friction between the district's diverse populations had been eradicated.

Beside the reports was a facsimile of a brief letter from Religious Affairs headquarters, congratulating Khodrak and Tuan on their success in the Serenity Campaign and noting that their proposal had met with enthusiastic support in Lhasa and Beijing. Lhasa looked forward to announcing the new institute for Tibetan children that would be awarded to Norbu. An institute. It was why Tuan had referred to needing more teachers, why Drakte had been so upset about Khodrak's falsification of the data. Sign the ledger, Drakte had told the woman at the Lamtso Gar, or all your children will grow up to hate you.

Shan lingered at the door a moment, looking at the blackboard, then stepped back into the still-empty corridor. Drawing a deep breath, he walked into the office, staying in the shadows, away from the window. Over a hundred people sat outside, watching the speaker in the office window. No one, as he had hoped, had dared stay inside to work while homage was being paid to the Chairman. He quickly surveyed the room. Two photographs were taped over a filing cabinet. One was of Tenzin, taken in the conference room where Khodrak had confronted him less than two weeks earlier. Beside it was a photograph from a newspaper, showing Tenzin in a robe, his head shaven, greeting several important-looking Han, over a caption that said the Tibetan people welcome the Vice Premier. Over the door, invisible to those who looked in from the corridor, was a small banner, in Chinese only. Strike Hard. It was the name for one of Beijing's most aggressive campaigns against the Tibetans in recent years, in which the howlers and knobs had temporarily joined forces in another effort to pry Tibet's collective fingers from its rosary.

He glanced at the clock. By now Somo and another of the purbas were dropping down the back wall, wearing uniforms of the 54th Mountain Combat Brigade. Suddenly there was applause, both over the radio and from outside. Shan darted out of the rooms a large office occupying the entire end of the floor opposite the conference room, with windows overlooking the courtyard, just in time to see Tenzin being led around the corner by one of the knob guards. The radio was switched off. Standing in the shadows, he watched as Khodrak stood and introduced the important visitors form Lhasa, then stated that it was his great honor to make an announcement that would reverberate throughout the world. The famous abbot of Sangchi, lost for so many weeks, had come to Khodrak, and the abbot had chosen to honor Norbu by announcing to the world, on May Day, on the steps of their own gompa, that he had not been fleeing or kidnapped but had simply been on retreat to better understand the socialist imperative. The assembly stared in disbelief before breaking into enthusiastic applause. The Religious Affairs officials conferred excitedly, then stood and vigorously shook first Khodrak's, then Tenzin's hand. The abbot of Sangchi, Shan saw, wore one of the Norbu gilt-edge robes.

Shan watched, his heart racing, as Tenzin spoke, offering his gratitude to everyone at Norbu gompa. "If I have confused the people of Tibet," he said, "I apologize. Perhaps I myself was confused for a long time. But now, here at Norbu gompa, because of Chairman Khodrak, I have come to clearly understand my path," he said, and looked out toward the northern landscape. "I am a hermit who wanders the countryside," Tenzin said in a melodious tone, "a beggar who travels alone. I left behind the land of my birth and gave up my fertile fields."

Khodrak and Tuan glanced nervously at each other. Tenzin was reciting one of Milarepa's songs, one of the ancient songs Lokesh sometimes sang. The Closing Song some called it, because it was written when the famous teacher lay dying. A dropka ventured forward to the podium and handed Tenzin a khata. Khodrak smiled icily then inched forward as another, then a third Tibetan offered Tenzin prayer scarves. Khodrak looked uneasily at the Bureau officials, rose and stood at Tenzin's side. One of the monks stepped forward with a camera and snapped a photograph.

Shan's gaze drifted toward the wall by the window. Pinned there was another of the maps depicting the sterilization campaign. He turned to study the room. Along the wall by the door was a row of filing cabinets, above which hung a flag of the People's Republic. Past the cabinets, in the corner, sat a cardboard box, its contents covered with dust. They were photographs in uniform black frames, most of which were images taken in banquet halls or on the steps of important government buildings. Tuan was in all the photos. Tuan in a knob uniform, Tuan in a business suit, Tuan with Khodrak, raising glasses with army officers, even Tuan on the Great Wall. He looked up. In any other office these would be trophies, to be prominently displayed. But Tuan had no personal photographs on his walls, no mementos of his career.