The table was brown plastic, with simulated wood grain, as were the chairs. On the wall hung maps, many kinds of maps. Shan pulled a chair out, then found himself being drawn toward the walls. The oil venture needed precision in its geography. Three maps clearly depicted Yapchi, in sharply different scales, including one large one with a highlighted yellow line that wandered along the base of the nearby mountains to connect Yapchi to a red circle just west of Golmud, the large city more than two hundred miles to the north, the nearest airport and railhead. On a small metal side table there was a stack of single-page sheets that bore a reduced map outlining the route from Golmud to Yapchi, with landmarks highlighted. Shan took one, quickly folded it and stuffed it into his pocket.

"She's dead, Winslow," a gruff voice suddenly announced. "I'm goddamned sorry, but she's dead." The Westerner who spoke filled the door-frame. His hair, though close-cropped, was speckled brown and grey, as was the stubble of whiskers on his face, untouched by a razor for several days. His blue denim pants were held up by bright red suspenders. A cigar in a plastic wrapper protruded from the pocket of his light blue workshirt. The steaming liquid in the mug he set on the table was black coffee.

"My name is Jenkins," he said to Shan, extending a beefy hand.

Shan took the hand and the man squeezed his own, hard. "I am called Shan."

"Shan is helping me," Winslow interjected quickly, as though Shan had already said too much. "Do you know for certain, Jenkins? A man in the mountains said she fell. Said he saw it."

"Right off the edge of the world," Jenkins said, touching the map behind him at the same spot Zhu had shown them. "A thousand feet, she could have fallen." He turned back with surprise in his deep set eyes. "You saw Zhu? Here?"

Shan looked at the American manager in surprise. Had the Special Projects Director not informed Jenkins of his presence?

Winslow stared at the map intensely. "Did anyone try to find the body?" he demanded in a new, sterner tone.

Jenkins sighed. "You have any idea of the work we have to deal with here? I have deadlines. The goddamned banks are coming for inspection. Thieves stole half my garage tools last night. And I've got a horde of bureaucrats ready to descend in less than two weeks to celebrate our oil, even though I haven't struck it yet."

"Did you try to find her?" Winslow repeated.

Jenkins sighed once more and sat down heavily as the woman arrived with two oversized mugs of black tea. "The supply helicopter from Golmud. I asked them to do a flyover as soon as I got the details from Zhu. They saw nothing, and got called back to base. I'll send a team in on foot. I will. I promise I will. But not in the next two weeks. She's not going anywhere. Unless she went into the river, in which case she's gone already."

The big American looked from Shan to Winslow. "I'm sorry, Winslow. But plain talk is the only kind I know. I knew her before. This was our second project together. She was a star. My mother said the brightest stars always burn out early. I've lain awake nights trying to think if I did something wrong. I've written three letters to her family and torn each up. What do I say? Your daughter the trained field geologist, who had led field teams in Siberia, the Andes, and Africa, took a wrong step and fell? One of my Tibetan foremen said maybe she was called by the deities in the mountains," he added in an exasperated tone, and for a moment his head cocked at an angle, looking toward the wall.

"But even before she fell, she was missing," Shan interjected. He studied the room again. On a low shelf in the metal table was a stack of newspapers, the weekly paper published in Lhasa.

Jenkins drank deeply from his mug. "Sort of," he said, addressing his coffee mug. "I learned early on to give her slack. A strong head requires a loose rein. And if she had an excuse to be out of a city and in a camp she'd take it in a second, and likewise for being out of the camp to stay out in exploration. She got close to the Tibetans, started giving them English lessons. Once in a staff meeting she said America needed Tibet, whatever the hell that meant. She loved what she did, said she felt like an early explorer. She loved it here especially, even skipped days off to go back up on the mountain. Making new maps. The Chinese maps are rotten. Deliberate misplacement of locations, for security reasons, they say. Entire regions have never been surveyed. Who the hell knows what's out there?" He drank again. "There's another joint venture camp, a British one, two ranges north of here, about fifty miles away. I thought maybe her radio went dead, and she set out for the other camp. Or maybe one of her team got hurt and it was easier to take him out on the other side of the mountains. Could be a hundred reasons for no contact, I kept telling myself. Trapped in a blind canyon by an avalanche, maybe. When she left here the last time she left a whole pack of food behind, half her rations. Maybe she went to a village for food.

"But there was no doubt after an eyewitness report. Zhu took over, called headquarters from here. Filled out the report, in triplicate. The venture has forms for deaths. With ten thousand workers, people have accidents. Never had an expatriate die though." Jenkins stared into his mug again. "He sent in the form. Got me to countersign and sent it in. Just a damned bureaucratic exercise for them," he grunted. "Only acknowledgment I got was a memo from the company that said they will pay for a memorial stone for her back home."

"Did you speak with Zhu about the details, like how far exactly he was when he saw her fall, what he did to try to recover the body?"

"By radiotelephone. I was in Golmud when he came in. Faxed his report to me. Lucky there was any witness at all. Otherwise her family would be worrying for years. Now they can move on."

"Only Zhu though?" Winslow asked. "I mean didn't others on his crew see something, weren't they listed as witnesses?"

A low rumble erupted from Jenkins's throat. "He's the Director for Special Projects, for chrissakes."

"How long has he been with the venture?" Shan asked.

Jenkins frowned and stared at Winslow before answering. "Not long. Only met him on this project."

"And what exactly do Special Projects consist of?" Winslow asked.

"Whatever the company says." Jenkins shrugged. "He works for someone two or three levels above my pay grade. Someone in the Ministry, I think. Maybe his main job is investor relations."

"Investor relations?" Winslow asked.

"Watching over the foreigners in the venture," Jenkins said in a contemplative tone as he rubbed his grizzled jaw. "Probably wears grey underwear," he observed in a matter-of-fact tone. Meaning, Shan realized, that Jenkins thought Zhu worked for Public Security.

"Zhu brought in these Public Security troops?" Shan asked abruptly, in English. "To look for her?"

The beefy American manager studied him a moment before answering, and shot a peeved glance at Winslow. "Those troops are from Golmud. Sure, maybe Zhu called them. Public Security helps the ventures sometimes, mostly to enforce discipline among the Chinese workers. They never helped us look for Larkin."

"At the other camp," Winslow said, "how many foreigners are there? Would there be other Americans at that second camp?"

Jenkins shook his head. "British. The venture is very regimented. My American employer holds a ten-percent interest in the venture, and the venture has ten exploration camps. So we get to manage one camp. Same for each of the other foreign investors."