“But what does my father. .” Yates began in confusion.

“Megan was at the library because of your father, she thought she might learn more about the resistance fighters in the region. She never expected to find that photo. But when she did, it changed everything for her. No doubt she was going to give it to you but first she was going to use it against Wu.”

They sat in silence a long time, Yates gazing at the altar, fingering his father’s cross, Shan at the outer edge of the clearing, by the cliff. He too had not fully digested the truth. He let the ice-scented wind scour him, peeling away his misconceptions about the murders. There was no mystery in events, his old friend Lokesh had once told him, only mysteries of the people involved. Like many Chinese, every Tibetan he knew had grown a hard, impenetrable shell around memories of the Cultural Revolution, around the years when the Chinese had cleansed the land of all resistance. But Shan knew now that it was in that black, inaccessible place where the truth would be found.

Chapter Thirteen

Yates would not leave the shrine without searching every inch of the ground, hoping for some further sign of his father. Shan helped for a few minutes then sat on the stone bench, extracting the notepad from his pocket, and began writing events and dates, one line at a time in English, starting with the Religious Affairs office burns down, Tenzin murdered at the advance camp, Tan loses pistol, murder of Minister Wu, Director Xie killed, Gyalo attacked in Shogo. When Yates appeared at his side, finished with his futile search, Shan extended the notebook.

“What’s this?” the American asked.

“A wise man once said that if the true face of a mountain cannot be known, it is because the one looking at it is standing in its midst. I want to trade, what I know for what you know. I want you to look at what I know, because I am standing in its midst.”

Yates cast a skeptical glance at Shan, shrugged, then went to his backpack and extracted a tattered nylon pouch. He accepted the pad from Shan then emptied the pouch onto the bench. Several old letters, the photos Shan had seen at the base camp, a map, copies of pages from a book, a printed form.

The two men sat in silence for several minutes, Yates flipping pages in Shan’s notepad, writing his own notes. Shan read the form, an official copy of the military service record for Captain Samuel Yates, then the letters, which were nothing more than what Yates had already explained. The copied pages contained a description of Camp Hale from some annal of the Cold War, recounting how a small group of elite intelligence operatives and military experts had created a miniature world for Tibetan trainees in the Colorado mountains, teaching them about Western history, introducing them to hot dogs and hamburgers. The pages from the book included photos, showing American men in uniforms without insignia, some with pipes or cigars in their mouths, others with white khata offering scarves around their necks, traditional Tibetan offerings of friendship. There were a few quotes from some of the participants, recorded years later, reflecting deep admiration for the Tibetans. Shan paused over one passage, reading it twice:

Love of their land and their Buddhist faith burned like an intense fire in many of the trainees. It so moved the American trainers that several requested, and were promptly refused, permission to parachute into Tibet with them when the training was concluded; others requested transfer to the advance base in northern India so they could participate in airdrops and radio support for the missions.

Shan felt a flutter of excitement as he unfolded the map. It was an intricate rendering of the Everest region, in English. He stretched it out with stones on each corner, examining it closely then, noticing Yates’s curious gaze, handed the American his own Chinese map.

“I have heard the term political map in English,” Shan said. “What does it mean?”

“It means cities and towns and highways, manmade features, are included,” Yates explained.

“In China all maps are political,” Shan said, and gestured to the map Yates was unfolding. “The government controls all maps. No military bases are shown but also terrain in sensitive areas is obscured.”

The American uttered a syllable of surprise and began pointing out discrepancies between the two maps. On the Chinese map large expanses along the border were just fields of white, indicating huge ice fields. Most of the border showed only general topographical lines and nothing else. Shan pointed to the American map. “It’s like a different land on your map,” he explained, and settled a fingertip on Tumkot. On the Chinese map the area above the settlement, the high plain that could not be seen from below, consisted entirely of an ice field, marked inaccessible, as the villagers insisted. But the American map showed a more narrow glacier above rough, steep, but open terrain.

With a pencil Shan made a mark on the road that led to the base camp. “The site of the murders,” he noted.

“What’s your point?”

“Ama Apte has admitted she helped Megan Ross with the avalanche that stopped the bus, but she will not explain how she managed such secrecy. No one could have gone up or down the road without being stopped. For someone from Tumkot to be involved they would have had to travel hours by road, and they would have been seen and stopped. But someone who knew these trails could have gone up and over the ridge. A difficult path, judging by the contours, but not impossible for a seasoned trekker.” He saw for the first time four different lightly drawn circles spread miles apart, three of them with X’s through the center. “You haven’t visited this drop zone?” he asked the American, pointing to a circle on the plateau above Tumkot.

“I must have made a mistake when the numbers were written down. There is no way up there. Megan said she tried, and it was impossible. All cliffs and ice along the only possible route.”

Shan studied the map again, and after a moment saw a dotted line that crossed into Nepal along a high altitude pass that was marked inaccessible on the Chinese map. He realized he was looking at the route the sherpas used to invisibly cross back and forth across the border. The border guards no doubt knew about it, but the weather would be so hostile at such an altitude that there would be no manned outpost.

“And you?” Shan asked at last, gesturing to his notebook. “What have I missed?”

“It’s all still a puzzle to me,” the American admitted. “We can ask the fortuneteller about the hidden meaning of twos when we see her again.”

“Twos?”

Yates turned to a page near the front of the pad and pointed to the words, written in English. “Religious Affairs office burns,” he read, and drew a line beneath it that extended past the words. “Tenzin killed” he said, and drew another line. “Minister Wu is killed.” Another line. “Director Xie is killed, on the same day Gyalo is attacked and left for dead,” he finished with another line. With the tip of the pencil he quickly wrote numbers in the spaces between the lines. “Two days, two days, four days. All twos or a combination of two. Ama Apte would probably say the mountain breathes in for a day, then breathes out.” He shrugged. “It’s nothing. I’m possessed by a math demon. Although,” he added in a curious tone, “it’s been two days since the last violence.”

Shan stood, strangely disturbed by Yates’s words, glancing back and forth from the map to the lines and numbers drawn by the American. He stepped to the edge of the cliff, letting the chill wind slam against his face, considering the pattern of life down in the world. Then abruptly he turned and darted over to Yates. “There is a place,” he announced as he urgently packed up the items on the bench, “that lives by a pulse of twos. If we hurry we can be there by sundown.”