As Jaya reluctantly stepped aside, Lhakpa opened a flap in the back wall of the shelter and Shan discovered it was an entry into a wide, dry cavity created by a huge overhanging ledge that was obscured by the juniper trees. Crude shelves had been constructed of long flat slabs of slate set on smaller, squarish rocks. The entire hundred-foot stone wall at the back of the chamber was lined with the shelves and two-thirds of the shelves were full of artifacts.

“The local herders say that Gekho’s cavern was used since the first man met the gods,” Lhakpa explained as he guided an awestruck Shan along the shelves. “There were many small chapels off the main tunnel of the cavern, and each chapel’s contents were kept together here, as the professor recovered them, with the more modern images, probably one or two hundred years old, at the shelf to the right, progressing to the oldest at the other end.” Among those more recent images Shan recognized exquisitely carved and cast representations of the Buddhas of the Three Times, the five peaceful meditational Buddhas sitting astride golden lotus flowers, then many of the twenty-one aspects of Mother Tara. He lingered for a moment at a particularly fierce-looking Red Tara, painfully recalling how Metok had invoked the protectress with his last breath. As they progressed along the shelves the images grew less familiar, many of them appearing to be angry demons and protector gods. The last images left on the shelves were a group of primitive figures that looked more like tigers than gods, frightening in aspect. Lhakpa pulled away a large piece of dark cloth. Under it were two intricately crafted figures, one of the blue mountain god and one of Yamantaka, the Lord of Death. Propped between the small statues were photographs of Professor Gangfen and a blond Western woman who had to be Natalie Pike.

The grainy photos were from an instant camera, close-ups taking in only their subjects’ upper bodies, but Shan saw the joy in both their eyes as they held the same two figurines. There was sadness there too, for the only reason they had been collecting the treasures was because they knew the sacred cavern would be sacrificed in the building of Beijing’s dam.

The woman who gazed out of the photo had Cato Pike’s intelligent-but-defiant blue eyes. She was in her mid-twenties, and her high cheekbones would have given most women an elegant beauty, but he could see from her smudged face, tangled hair, and dirt-stained clothing that she was not one much concerned about outward appearances.