“Why?” The question was unnecessary. They both knew the reasons why. Shan, the disgraced renegade investigator from Beijing, had been released years earlier from the gulag prison where he had been sent to die. His sentence had been indeterminate, which for those in disfavor with the State Council meant life in prison, preferably a sharply curtailed life. But five years into his sentence he had done Tan a favor and the colonel had released him, on his own authority, without the approval of any official in Beijing. Shan also had no permission to live outside Tan’s county, and no employment except that which Tan gave him. But the most important reason was his son Ko, who was an inmate in Shan’s former prison. The warden and guards had hated Shan, and Ko would be in grave danger without the protection of Tan and Amah Jiejie, who visited Ko so regularly the staff referred to her as Ko’s aunt.

But Tan surprised Shan. “I need you, Shan,” he said for the second time that day. Theirs had been a complex relationship through the years, starting as bitter enemies then slowly evolving toward a grudging mutual respect. Shan had saved Tan more than once from disgrace, and once from execution for a crime he had not committed. Tan had protected Shan from the merciless, often ruthless hand of Beijing. In the last year, after he had learned from Shan that a revered general, a godlike Hero of the People, was a corrupt murderer, Tan had begun showing signs that he, like Shan, no longer trusted his government. He had killed the general in front of Shan, creating a new bond between them.

“The Five Claws Dam is a national project, run by Beijing. Metok was prosecuted out of Lhasa,” Shan reminded Tan.

“It’s my county, damn it!” There was a reason why some people referred to Tan as the warlord of Lhadrung. He had been the governor of the huge county, larger than some eastern provinces, for so long, ruling with an iron fist, that it had become more like his personal kingdom.

They sat in silence. The clouds cleared over the distant mountains and the sun lit their white snowcaps. On the lower slopes of the nearest peaks Shan could make out several points of white, as brilliant as the snow above. They were chortens, structures consisting of a dome on a block with a spire on top, ancient shrines that the local Tibetans had been secretly restoring. The line of chortens stood like sentinels against the prison camps in the valley. There were still very old, very hidden secrets in the mountains.

Tan gestured toward the diminishing cloud of dust and spoke in the grim, knowing tone of an old warrior. “Metok’s execution was not an ending, it was a beginning. There’s a reason the hail chaser is riding toward the Five Claws.”