The Tibetan seemed to relax as he saw the figure, and for a moment Shan thought he saw the lama of fifty years earlier. But then he began to sway, and he managed only a few words before passing out again. “Look at the old fool,” he said, speaking of the little god, “what does he know?”

Shan watched the forlorn lama a long time, working and reworking the puzzle in his mind, before gathering up several musty sacks for a pillow and draping the blanket over the sleeping Tibetan.

He did not seek the constable’s help this time before venturing to the rear of the jail. The cleaning crew arrived exactly on time, saying nothing as he joined them again. The invisible workers who kept Tibet functioning were often invisible to each other as well.

Cao had cancelled the order to transport his prisoner out of the county. Tan lay on the pallet, one filthy blanket covering his body, another rolled up for a pillow. His face was in shadow, but Shan saw Tan’s breath momentarily catch as he reached the cell door.

“I need to know how you knew the minister,” Shan said. “I need to know why you needed to see her.”

Tan stood up, retrieved the tin cup from the sink and, fixing Shan with a steady gaze, urinated in it. When he was finished he hobbled forward, dragging one foot.

“I am encouraged you still have your bodily functions,” Shan observed as he retreated several steps.

“Get the hell out of here!” Tan snarled. His face was directly in the light now. Shan could see the way it sagged, could see the bruises and lacerations. Although the eyes still burned with a cool fire, there was no arrogance left in them, only hatred.

“I had thought the killer had somehow stolen your gun. But then I discovered the minister had entertained someone in her room the night before her death. I have struggled to find some theory to explain how the killer got your gun. You would not have surrendered it without a struggle, and if it had been stolen you would have raised the shrillest of alarms with Public Security.

I have learned to be suspicious of complicated explanations. I find the simplest one is likely the truth. You were the one she entertained, and she took your gun. You were too embarrassed to report that you lost it to a minister of state. A female minister.”

Tan, apparently deciding he could not reach Shan, extended his arm through the bars and poured his urine in an arc across the front of the cell, as if casting a charm to ward off an evil spirit. Before he finished his hand started twitching, so that the contents of the cup splattered onto his hand. Tan dropped the cup and clamped the hand under his other arm.

Shan silently retrieved the mop and bucket he had left at the end of the corridor, mopped up the urine, then located another cup in an empty cell and tossed it onto Tan’s pallet. He then extracted a sack from his pocket and extended it through the bars. Tan slapped it away, launching it from Shan’s hand, spilling the contents onto Tan’s feet. Four momos, the last of the dumplings Jomo had left in the underground chapel.

With the reflex of a seasoned prisoner Tan bent and scooped up the momos. He had jammed one into his mouth and was gulping it down when he seemed to remember Shan. With a hint of shame in his eyes he glanced up, then hobbled to his cot and proceeded to eat the rest.

“Tell me about the gun,” Shan pressed. “If I can prove she had it Cao’s case against you is destroyed, because it is the only connection to you. A sherpa’s body was placed beside that of the minister’s, substituted for the American woman who died there. He was shot with a different gun. Not yours. A big one, a huge caliber. Not one issued by Public Security or the army.”

When Tan did not reply Shan retreated again, stepping into the first of the interrogation rooms that adjoined the corridor, opening drawers in its metal cabinet. When he arrived back at the cell he extended a small brown plastic bottle. Tan’s head snapped up. “Painkillers,” Shan announced. “Enough to get you through a couple more days.”

Tan extended his open palm. Shan tossed the bottle through the bars. Tan stared at the bottle, then clenched it so tightly his knuckles went white. “There was no dead American at the scene,” he announced in a thin voice. “Stealing that second body from the hospital was only a ploy to confuse the chief investigator.”

“How would you-” Shan began, his brow wrinkled in confusion. Then he understood. Tan was reciting the official version of events.

Tan replied with a bitter grin. “The monk said he saw the American woman running away after helping me commit the crime. The dead sherpa was patriotically trying to stop the murder and was shot.”

“What monk?” Shan asked, filled with new dread.

“That one,” he said, with a nod down the darkened cell corridor. “It was a busy morning in the interrogation rooms.”

Shan found himself halfway down the corridor before he was conscious of his own movement. He paused then followed the faint sound of breathing from a cell in the center of the corridor. He stepped hesitantly to the cell, discerning a small figure asleep on a pallet in the shadows at the rear. Scratched into the wall were several figures in a line about two feet above the floor, crudely drawn but still recognizable. A lotus blossom. A conch shell. The prisoner had been drawing the tashi targyel, the seven sacred symbols. Shan’s heart began rising into his throat. He knew before he spotted the shreds of a robe and a dirty prison shirt coat on the floor. Cao had brought back one of the captured monks.

When Shan returned to the colonel’s cell, Tan’s expression was oddly triumphant. “I don’t understand your obsession with rearranging facts, Shan,” he said. “When an artist is halfway through his masterwork you can’t just run and up and steal his paints. It’s unbecoming.”

“Cao is no artist. What exactly has he done?”

“He went away for half a day. When he returned he announced he had found the witness he needed to destroy me. He had the monk worked on for a few hours in the back rooms. When it came time for the climax he moved his little opera to this corridor, to the table there in the center so I could hear it all. The Tibetan has confessed to obstructing justice by not coming forward as a witness to the crimes. Cao promised him only a month’s imprisonment, and something for some other monk, a lama who will be released so long as he takes off his robe. So he signed a statement that he saw me with the pistol. Otherwise the lama was to get ten years’ hard labor.”

Shan felt his frail hopes slipping away. Cao had used the old lama from Sarma, the one who had been captured because he insisted on tending to the injured driver.

“Cao made him shout out his confession, like at one of the struggle sessions we used to have, just to be sure I could hear.”

Shan, suddenly feeling weak in the knees, gripped the bars in both hands.

Tan opened the bottle, dumped out several pills and swallowed them. “I think,” the colonel continued, “that Cao was considering a story of more texture, a more interesting tale for the audience back home. But he seems to have changed course. It is to be a simple trial. A forensic report says the victims died from shots from my gun, a witness says he saw me pull the trigger. He has spunk, that little Tibetan. They raised a baton to strike me when I started laughing and he leaped up to block it, and took the blow on his skull.” For a moment Tan hesitated and Shan saw confusion cloud his eyes before derision returned. “The fool.”

“He was apologizing for what he had done.”

Tan frowned. He had no reply.

“There was another death. Director Xie of Religious Affairs. How will such a report explain that killing?”

Tan shrugged. “The guards told me about it. No doubt it will be recorded as an industrial accident.”