“Nearly two hundred men here, ninety percent of them Tibetans. Like the deputy director says, the bad apples have to be sorted out to avoid spoiling the whole barrel.”

“Open this door,” Tan ordered. “Now!”

Cheng’s companion lifted his club a few inches off the ground. “Don’t know about that, sir. The deputy director said—” With a quick nod from Tan, his sergeant slammed a fist into the man’s belly. He doubled over, staggering away.

“Open the damned door!” Tan ordered Cheng.

Cheng threw a hasty salute and produced a key. As the door swung open, a fetid stench rushed out.

“Bring them outside, Sergeant,” Tan growled.

Each of the four Tibetans had been beaten, though none seemed severely injured.

Tan seemed to force himself to keep his voice level. “What were their offenses?” he demanded.

Corporal Cheng brightened, not realizing that Tan’s fury was aimed at the cleanup crew, not the prisoners. He pointed at the nearest man, a compact middle-aged Tibetan who cringed as Cheng moved closer. “This one we caught sneaking around the bulldozers in the middle of the night. The next day we found someone had dropped dirt into one of the fuel tanks. This one—” he indicated another of the frightened Tibetans, but then Tan held up a hand.

“Make notes,” Tan said to his sergeant, who produced a pad and began writing.

“This one,” Cheng continued, “was ordered to burn those prayer flags that keep dropping from the sky. We discovered that instead he hung them in an unused shed where these two”—he indicated the remaining Tibetans—“had made an illegal altar, complete with a photograph of the Dalai Lama. The deputy director said they should be sent for reeducation, but they are equipment operators and we need them. Said we would just do our own reeducation.”

Tan fixed the Tibetans with one of his frigid stares, then gestured Shan forward. “This is work for the civil authority,” he announced to Jiao’s men. “Inspector Shan will take them into custody.” Tan took the notepad from his sergeant and handed it to Shan, then ordered his team to escort the Tibetans to their truck.

The cleanup crew watched uncertainly as Shan assembled the Tibetans in a line, then relaxed when he asked the corporal for hand restraints. He nodded with approval as Cheng ordered the men to place their hands behind their backs and secured them with the plastic ties used by Public Security when making mass arrests. Shan marched his prisoners to the parking lot, where two of Tan’s men waited by a pickup truck, supporting Yeshe, the patient from the infirmary, between them.

“Silly cow of a nurse slept the whole time at her desk while her movie kept playing,” one of the soldiers reported. “We took his chart and made the bed. She’ll have no idea what happened to him.”