A guttural sound that might have been a laugh came from the foreman’s throat. “I guess you haven’t crossed Jiao yet. He’s the one with the real power. One step out of line and he becomes like a scolding schoolmaster. ‘Would you defy the Chairman?’ he’ll demand. That’s his response to anyone who even hints at not agreeing with him. ‘Why would you add another reinforcing rod to that new wall, would you defy the Chairman? Why are you digging that foundation so deep, would you defy the Chairman?’” The foreman lit a cigarette. “Never knew the Chairman had an engineering degree,” he muttered, then walked toward the gate that led into the pen of Tibetan workers.

Shan was about to follow, to talk with the Tibetans, when he saw someone darting toward the white utility vehicle. It was the driver, coming from a side door in the administration building, who now climbed back behind the wheel as several men emerged from the main entrance. Snippets of loud conversation came from the group. The director was using his public voice, boasting proudly of his project to a Westerner in a business suit, who was replying in perfect Mandarin. Shan froze as the man turned toward him. It was Cato Pike.

He watched from the shadow of a truck as the director helped Pike into his own car, driven by Deputy Director Jiao, and they pulled away, apparently on the same tour Shan had received the week before. The white utility vehicle followed. The driver was Natalie Pike’s friend Cao.

As they disappeared down the valley, Shan moved toward the administrative complex, casting nervous glances toward the twisting road on the slope above that connected the project to the outside world. Public Security was coming, and soon there would be jackbooted guards stationed in the complex. He paced along the long message board outside the mess hall, reading notices about work shift schedules, meal hours, meetings of a Patriotic Workers Alliance, and sun-bleached photos of the ceremony that had launched construction months earlier. On October 1, the first caption read, the provincial Party chairman had come with a small brass band to celebrate the glorious event. The photos showed the first few modular units of the administrative compound, the first busload of joyful workers who would work on site preparation during the winter, and included a staged image of the provincial chairman at the controls of a bulldozer. The first step in the historic event happily coincided with the destruction of the feudal remnants that blighted the valley, boasted the caption. The bulldozer was plowing down the ancient standing stones. Shan paused, trying to understand several tiny tear-shaped blue objects in the photo, then realized that someone had deposited a line of blue paint along the top that had dripped below. Blue was the color of Gekho’s blood.