“Damned right,” Tan rejoined. Ren did not see the way the colonel’s jaw clenched. It wasn’t amusement he was suppressing now. It was anger.

“They even have a name for their group, derived from those old officials who used to enforce the emperor’s word out of Lhasa. They call it the Amban Council.”

“A clever name,” Shan said after a moment’s reflection. “Tell me something, Comrade Director. Who came up with the name for this project?”

“Believe it or not, it was Deputy Director Jiao. People in Beijing loved it. He wrote a note for our website that says Tibetans believed a mythological bird lived here, a garuda it was called. There is some rock formation on the mountain that the Tibetans call the claws.”

“The Talons,” Shan corrected.

“Yes, yes, the Talons. Jiao says the name pays homage to the Tibetan people.”

“A garuda has only four claws,” Tan observed, to Shan’s great surprise.

Ren shrugged. “Beijing loved it.”

The colonel exchanged a pointed glance with Shan. The name had nothing to do with Tibetans. The sign of the Five Claws was a symbol of the ambans, and of the imperial power in Beijing. In old China mortal punishment was imposed on anyone outside the government who used the sign, because, for centuries, five claws had been the symbol of the imperial five-clawed dragon.

The banquet the director threw for the colonel was surprisingly elegant. The modular buildings, arranged in rows behind the office and mess hall, looked identical from the outside, but the one closest to the mess hall had been transformed by Deputy Director Jiao into what he called his executive club, for his senior managers and visiting dignitaries. It had been divided into a lounge, furnished with thick Tibetan carpets and overstuffed chairs, and a dining room, with a small kitchen and bar in the rear. The lounge walls were hung with framed photographs of the director and deputy director with various officials. Next to the photographs hung another artist rendering of the completed dam and the lake behind it. Along the bottom of the painting were images of joyful Chinese children turning on light switches, electric railways, and spotlights sweeping across skyscrapers of eastern cities. The dining room was hung with portraits of Party chairmen and several framed vintage political posters.

Pinned to the bulletin board by the bar were three pages captioned Master Development Plan Summary. With a chill Shan read a paragraph on the second page explaining how his beloved Yangkar would become the administrative center for the project. The first office building would be constructed on what was a vacant lot currently used as the town square. Shan closed his eyes for a moment, fighting the agonizing vision of Yangkar as a modern Chinese town, then turned toward the dining room. His years in Tibet had taught him to fight one disaster at a time.