Tan collapsed onto the bedside chair. “He wasn’t so old really, only seventy-four, he told me last week. He said he knew a place where we could go fishing, up in the hills.” He looked up with despair. “Find those damned thieves!”

“It wasn’t thieves,” Shan said, still feeling the shock of those beseeching eyes. “Somehow the killers found out that he had delivered the message from Metok. They had to silence him. What else did he know?”

“He never said anything more to me. I only saw him once since the day he delivered Metok’s message. He was terrified. He said he had stopped sleeping so he could spend his free time praying.”

“Lieutenant Huan,” Shan said. “You need to find out if he was in Lhadrung last night.”

Tan cursed, then nodded. He lifted the dead man’s gnarled, withered hand and clasped it between his own hands. After several breaths he turned away to summon an army doctor, who bent over Jampa for a moment, glanced at his watch, and made a note on the dead man’s chart. “Dr. Anwei,” Tan muttered in introduction to Shan, then threw an unwelcoming glance at Xun, who had followed the doctor into the room.

“The other one has to go now,” Anwei declared.

“Other one?” Shan asked.

The doctor gestured with his pen toward the door adjoining the room. “The old man in the bathroom. He said he could make any place an altar.” The doctor suddenly saw Colonel Tan’s withering glance. “They were friends. It seemed to calm the patient,” he added.

The scent of incense wafted from the darkened bathroom as Shan opened the door. He could hear a whispered mantra and the rattle of rosary beads. Major Xun pushed past Shan and switched on the light. Suddenly the painful visit to the hospital became a nightmare.

Sitting on the floor before a smoky cone of incense was Shan’s old friend Lokesh. The aged Tibetan looked up, blinking from the harsh, sudden light. “You can join me!” he said as he recognized Shan. Lokesh, who had once worked in the Dalai Lama’s government, had spent most of his life behind the wire of prison camps. Shan had been nearly dead, in body and soul, when he had first collapsed onto a bunk in the 404th People’s Construction Brigade. More than anyone else, Lokesh had been responsible for reviving him, first nursing him to health and then nurturing his spirit. The gentle old Tibetan, long suffering from guilt over being a citizen of the government that had destroyed Tibet, had absolved it by destroying his identity card and now lived in a secret outpost helping the resistance preserve old manuscripts.

“Whatever are you doing here?” Shan demanded. Tan’s anger was visibly rising. Xun pushed forward to see Lokesh.