"Why here?" Shan asked. "What was it about Yapchi Mountain that got her so interested?"

"She was just a perfectionist," Jenkins said, "and the maps for this area were worthless, lots of holes to be filled in. When she worked a site she made a catalog of everything, wanted to know the surrounding geology for ten miles around and two miles deep. It's a compulsion for oil geologists. In our company they record it all, eventually feed the data into a big computer back home which models the data. Looking for new tracers, similar characteristics, indicators of the presence and type of oil. Geology repeats itself in strange ways. Information about a site in Pakistan might explain a site we're working in Alaska."

"What happened to the others on Miss Larkin's crew?" Shan asked.

"We change field crews all the time. Those who were with her that day, they were shipped back to the main base near Golmud, the operations center. Our hell on wheels."

"Sorry?" Shan said in confusion.

"An old railroad term. Temporary cities spring up around big construction projects. Attract all levels of the food chain, you might say. Booming for a few months, a year, then the whole thing packs up and moves on to be more central to the next set of big projects. We're in an exploration frenzy. Someone came from Beijing and gave a speech in Golmud to all the managers. We're opening China's west, we're the bringers of prosperity. Heroes of the proletariat and all," Jenkins said in a hollow tone. "First the exploration teams, then the drilling camps. Once we finish, pipe fitters move in and the camps move on." Jenkins pulled the cigar out of his pocket. "Mind?"

Winslow and Shan shook their heads, and Jenkins opened the wrapper and ran the cigar under his nose with a small sound of contentment.

"But Miss Larkin's crew," Shan suggested. "You could find them in Golmud, to speak with."

"Me? Hell no. Needle in a haystack. At any one time they have two to three hundred workers rotating through the base. Those men from her team, they could be in four different places now, hundreds of miles away, even shipped off to other provinces. Our Chinese partner has operations all over China."

"Do you have their names?" Shan pressed.

Jenkins lit the cigar, blowing smoke over his shoulder, out the door. He studied Winslow with a disbelieving frown. "You sure you didn't know her? A man might think you and she had-"

"I told you before," Winslow interjected peevishly. "Just doing my job."

Jenkins inhaled deeply on the cigar. "Okay. Some damned computer disc must have some names on it." He rose and stepped to the door, calling out in Chinese to the woman who had brought the tea. They conversed a moment, then he stepped back to the table. He wrinkled his brow and stared into his mug once more, then looked up at Winslow. "A lot of crazy shit goes on here. It's the wild west. It's the end of the world. Everyone is far from home. We're paid to go to some godforsaken place and pump money out of the ground, and we make it happen. Some things I don't totally understand. Not my business. Soldiers come and go. I hear things about people from Beijing coming in for midnight meetings. They tell me not to get involved in politics. So I don't get involved in politics. Nothing criminal about all this, just politics."

It was Winslow's turn to stare into his cup. "Why, Jenkins," he said at last, "would the word criminal come to mind?"

The manager's mouth twisted, as if he had bit something sour. "Just the way you talk. No other reason," he added emphatically.

"But how could you do this to the land when you have no connection to it?" Shan heard himself ask. The words leapt off his tongue before they crossed his mind. As though a deity was speaking through him. It is not your land, the Tibetans would say, and therefore you may ask nothing of it.

"Connection?" Jenkins asked, as if he didn't understand. But then he winced and his eyes drifted downward. "It's my job," he said in a voice that sounded suddenly weary, and Shan knew the American manager understood his question perfectly. "I heard that sound," Jenkins added, almost in a whisper. "It was like a heartbeat." He looked up at Winslow. "You heard it, too, right?"

They sat in silence for what seemed a long time.

"There are two people outside your camp," Shan said, "working on their knees in the earth."

Jenkins snorted and grinned at Shan, as though grateful for the change in subject. "One of the development banks is providing some big dollars for the project. Which means volumes of rules and criteria that have been dreamed up by bureaucrats. One is that we do an archaeological assessment. Someone kicked up an artifact and made the mistake of telling Golmud. Next thing we know two experts arrive with a letter saying we have to cooperate. They will catalog the site, write a report, and move on. Just more red tape."

"What kind of artifact?" Shan asked.

"An old piece of bronze with writing on it. Kind of thing any Tibetan farmer turns up twice a day." As he spoke his secretary appeared with a single sheet of paper with a short list of names. She looked at each of the three men in turn, and handed the paper to Winslow. Then she turned to Jenkins. "Don't tell that Zhu," she said and hurried away.

Jenkins took another puff and looked after the woman with worry in his eyes.

"If Public Security is here, why would you need the army too?" Winslow asked offhandedly.

"PLA often helps with relocations," Jenkins grunted. "They say it is good training for the soldiers."

A shiver ran down Shan's spine. Training for the soldiers. It was one thing the army did better than anyone else in Tibet. Relocate Tibetans. Rip apart the roots people had to their land, and to each other. Proclaim people to be refugees and move them to make room for soldiers or Han immigrants. Tibetans seldom complained. They remembered that the army had once relocated them with cannons and aerial bombs.

"You mean moving towns?"

"Sometimes. I heard about some village up in the mountains. Damned shame. No one said destroy it. Some hot dog in a tank started shooting it from half a mile away. Said he thought it was abandoned, said his crews practice that way."

"Practice?" Winslow snapped. "You mean find an old Tibetan building and blow it up?"

Jenkins inhaled on his cigar and studied Winslow closely, but made no reply.

A phone rang, with a sound more like a buzzer than a ring. A radio telephone, the manager had said. Jenkins's secretary called out his name. Jenkins stood and shrugged. "The venture will compensate," he said, and stepped out of the room.

Shan leapt to the metal table and lifted the top half of the newspaper stack.

"We have to go," Winslow said nervously.

Shan nodded, pulled out the paper dated the week after the stone eye was stolen, folded it, placed it inside his shirt, and returned the stack to the shelf.

As they approached the cleared patch of earth five minutes later the two figures in aprons kept at their work, one now lifting a plastic bucket to fill a round tray with dirt as the second slowly shook the tray. The dirt sifted out the bottom of the tray in fine grains, until there was a small mound under it. Then the man with the bucket shuffled back to the cleared patch and began refilling the bucket. He had nearly completed the task when he looked up and acknowledged Shan and Winslow. He was a Chinese, in his sixties, with thick black-rimmed spectacles and long thick snow-white hair under a broad-rimmed hat. His apron, apparently tailored for the task, had four rows of small pockets. From his belt hung a small nylon pouch, and a holster bearing a small hammer and two thick brushes. He cast what looked like a grimace toward them and returned to the bucket.