In an energetic search of Shan’s truck, the Tibetan woman found an old drinking straw and an empty soda bottle left by the soldier who had followed Zhu in Shan’s vehicle the night they had driven to Lhadrung from Lhasa. Jaya cleansed both in the spring at the nearby pilgrims’ rest, then, clamping a thumb over one end of the straw, used it to suction up the water. She collected less than two inches in the bottle but pressed the sacred water to her breast for a quick prayer, then made Shan hold it while she carved a plug from a piece of the old pine. She carefully secured the bottle in the bag behind her saddle but hesitated before mounting. “Do you need that old newspaper on the seat?” she asked, then quickly snatched it up when Shan gestured to it with a nod. “Do you have any tape? String?”

Despite his confusion, Shan let her search the truck more thoroughly, and soon she added to her saddlebag a roll of adhesive tape from his small medical kit and a length of thin wire from his glove box. She looked longingly at Shan’s high boots, and with a grin he gave up his laces. Then she put her hand on the canvas medical kit, emitting a joyful cry when he nodded again. To his surprise she gave him a quick embrace before darting to the horses. He watched, amused and still confused, as she trotted up the slope, then he filled his water bottle at the pilgrim spring and climbed back into his truck.

He had driven almost an hour before he noticed that in searching the glove box Jaya had left his new satellite phone on the seat, under his maps. He switched it on. Five minutes later it rang.

Amah Jiejie spoke in a peeved tone. “The colonel gave you the phone for communication, not as a paperweight. He’s been trying to reach you since yesterday afternoon.”

“I’ve been in the mountains,” Shan said, before he realized it was no excuse for a satellite phone.

He could hear her sigh. “I’ll tell him you had battery problems. Hold on.”

Tan was never one for the niceties of conversation. “My janitor was attacked,” the colonel declared. “He’s in the hospital.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Jampa, the one who smuggled out the message from Metok. Thieves assaulted him. How soon can you get to the hospital?”

Lhadrung’s small infirmary had grown as the army had expanded its presence in the town, so that it now sat not at the edge of town but at the edge of the sprawling military compound that adjoined the town, with a new wing that provided a door for civilians at the front and one for military patients at the rear. The hospital’s handful of doctors were all army officers.