“Do you think Madame Zheng is here for the mountain air? Have you even bothered to ask what her role is?”

“An observer.”

“No. She is from the Ministry of Justice. I don’t know her but I know her type. She is credentialed as a judge prosecutor, I wager. And for you that makes her the most dangerous person in the county right now.”

“Ridiculous. She just sits in meetings and takes notes.”

“She will ask for your file. That’s when you know they are beginning to doubt your ability, beginning to consider their own version of the crime.”

There was just enough moonlight for Shan to see the wince on Cao’s face.

“A Public Security bus is ambushed and a state minister killed a stone’s throw away. She knows these events must be related, and every hour you lose pretending otherwise puts you that much closer to disgrace.” Cao seemed to stop breathing for a moment. Shan’s guess about Madame Zheng was right. “You have a few more days at most. Then new reports will be written, your name will go into the file.”

“You are delusional. I have fifteen years with the Bureau. That would never happen.”

“You have all the proof you need that it does.”

Cao’s head moved toward Shan.

“I am that proof. Read my file again.”

Cao was silent for a long moment. “For all I know, you were Tan’s partner in the killing.”

“The other element you don’t appreciate is that there are foreigners here.” As Shan spoke, the right side of the vehicle began to sag. As Shan had instructed, Kypo’s men were releasing air from the tires. It was the subtlest act of resistance but enough to cause Cao to hesitate. He had no way of knowing how many of the shadowy figures lurked in the darkness around his car.

“There’s nowhere you can hide, Shan,” he snarled. “When you attack a Public Security officer your life is forfeit.”

“Pay attention to the subtleties, Major,” Shan replied in a level voice. “At this point in your career they make all the difference. This is just an informal conversation. Let’s call it career counseling. What you are doing tonight will make headlines in the Western press. Climbers and trekkers from America and Europe are all over this area, most with cameras. By noon tomorrow they will be giving interviews by satellite telephone to reporters in their home countries. The jackbooted oppressor attacks a hamlet of peaceful Tibetans, practically in the shadow of Everest, as a pretext so a Public Security bureaucrat can divert attention from his failed investigation. You may be under tremendous pressure now, yet you still have a chance to come out victorious. But your career is over with the first phone call from an embassy to the Minister of Public Security. They will find you a latrine on the Vietnamese border that needs cleaning for the next ten years.”

“My case is finished. I have the murderer. The trial will be next week.”

“No. You and I know you wouldn’t be here tonight if you were finished. You never had to deal with a prisoner who wouldn’t speak. You have to have evidence from some other source. You have to dirty your hands. That’s why you’re here, to test the market for new witnesses.”

“We’ll just include you in the sweep,” Cao spat. “You’ll be lost in the confusion. When you have no papers no one needs to account for you. A nobody can become nothing in an instant.”

Shan gave an exaggerated sigh as he lifted the door handle. “I leave you to your witticisms. I think I told you before you are overeducated for your job. Too much wit, not enough judgment. You fail to grasp the most fundamental truth of those you work for. The higher you aspire, the lower must be the denominator on which you base your actions. I fear for you, Major. You may not survive as long as I do.”

“I promise I will survive long enough to destroy you.”

“You will have to choose. You can destroy me or you can find out the truth of what happened that day on the road to the Base Camp.”

As Shan began to open the door Cao spoke again. “I didn’t come just looking for hooligans tonight. There is a matter of a body that mysteriously vanished from the experimental hospital. Breach of a highly classified facility, that is an attack on the state. Theft of evidence in a capital case. Now this attack on me. I have enough to shoot you several times over.”

“I might understand losing a hand here, a leg there, but a whole body,” Shan replied evenly. “That sounds like negligence.”

“Imagine my surprise when I found out that you were responsible for taking that same body down from Everest, back to this village. I have learned to study my enemies, before I dissect them. You are a man, like me, of fanatical devotion to his responsibilities.”

Shan put one foot out the door, silently surveying the surrounding shadows, for a fleeting, desperate moment telling himself that there were men in the night who, with one word from Shan, would be eager to make a man like Cao disappear. “You are a victim of your own techniques, Major Cao. You need to speak with the doctor who performed the autopsy on that sherpa. Forget the report sent to you for the file. Make him understand that you need the truth. If you had bothered to look at the body even you could have seen that those two bullets were shot into him after he was dead, bullets with a much larger caliber bullet. But he was murdered, killed in his sleep on the slopes above the base camp. The foreign expedition leaders have photographs, have the evidence that proves it.

“When those foreigners release the photos of a leading sherpa murdered on Everest and tell how the government hid the body, it will be like an atom bomb detonating in the climbing community. No one will pay to climb on the Chinese side of the mountain, not for years. How many millions was the minister projecting for her new economic model? Fifty million? A hundred? You will be the man who lost it all. You will be the one who shamed China on the global stage. Your star will not fade. It will be extinguished overnight.”

These were were terms Cao understood. The major had no reply.

Shan studied his shadowed face, creased with worry now. “I will make you a deal, Major Cao, one that may yet save you.”

“You have nothing to offer me,” Cao snarled.

“Go to Sarma gompa tonight. Discover the next murder victim.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Director Xie is dead.”

“Impossible! I saw him a few hours ago.”

“You have a satellite phone I believe, as does Xie. Call him.”

Cao’s eyes seemed to glow as he glared at Shan, but after a long moment he opened the console, pulled out his phone and punched in a number. Shan could hear it ring, five times, ten times, before Cao shut it off and stared at it.

“I found his body at sunset,” Shan continued. “No one will have reported it. Seal the site. Call Lhasa. Tell them you believe it should be kept quiet to avoid rumors of civil disorder. Say it to them before they have a chance to say it to you. Tell them you need time to resolve it quietly, for the good of the state. Tell them you are following leads to discover why Xie was alone at the gompa. Then decide what to say to Madame Zheng when she asks about it. Lhasa will call Beijing. Beijing will call her. When you see her next, your head better touch the floor.”

The anger on Cao’s face was slowly replaced with worry. “Are you certain Xie is dead?”

“He is extremely dead, as you will see.”

“Why would you ask for a deal? You just gave me everything.”

“Find the body at the back of the gompa ruins. Call your headquarters. Arrange for an ambulance from the yeti factory to secretly take away what’s left of the body. All I ask is that you cancel the removal order on Colonel Tan.”

“Why would I do that?”

“To save yourself the embarrassment of having to recall him from prison when the real killer is found. To pay for the favor I am doing you.”