They sat in silence, watching a ball of dried weeds blow down the square.

“You didn’t come all the way from Lhasa to philosophize about Tibet,” Shan said.

“I came because I know not to trust email or cell phones in this country,” the American stated, and produced a thick envelope from inside his sweatshirt and handed it to Shan. It contained copies of emails from the Five Claws.

Pike provided a commentary as Shan leafed through them. “The deputy director demands that the director put a halt to a visit by the Bureau of Religious Affairs, stating that they have no jurisdiction in the valley. Next the director is urgently requesting the public works office in Sichuan Province to send more Chinese workers but is told none would be available for several months.” Pike pointed to another message Shan was scanning. “The director asks Jiao where he is and Jiao says he had important meetings of his working group in Lhasa. The director asks what working group and Jiao just replies the one engaged in vital work for the motherland, that’s all you need to know. Then comes a series of messages about shifting funds from bridge and highway sites all over Tibet to the Five Claws project, which were odd enough to make me pause but probably just typical bureaucratic exchanges in China.”

Finally came a long exchange that Shan had to read in detail to fully grasp. Jiao was asking Huan to check on known associates of a troublemaking professor from Larung Gar, suggesting that Public Security review his colleagues at the university in Tientsen where he had once taught. Jiao reminded Huan that the professor had demanded a halt to the construction at the Five Claws pending further study, claiming the site might be too unstable geologically to support the dam. Jiao was worried that the professor may have sewn dissident seeds at his old university and that other associates might try to oppose the Five Claws.

Shan asked if Pike could search the name he had heard from Ko.

Pike laughed when he heard the name. “That’s the very man, Shan, the professor Jiao was complaining about! Professor Lin Fochow. Jiao told Huan to remind his colleagues in Tientsen that the professor had been such a problem at Larung Gar that he and five other hotheads had been sent directly to the 404th hard labor prison, on the grounds that they were a threat to national security.”