While confirming arrangements for the helicopter, Amah Jiejie reminded the colonel that she would be away the next day, for she had agreed to go up into the mountains with Metok’s widow. “She is convinced going up to her husband’s shrine will help her deal with her grief so she and her daughter can get on with their lives. She wants to leave offerings and said she would bring food so we can have lunch afterward.” Tan reluctantly agreed to loan her one of the cars in his pool, only after warning her of the dangerous roads in the mountains.

As they landed by the highway turnoff for Yangkar, Yara and her grandfather waited with Shan’s car. They cast nervous glances as Lieutenant Zhu climbed out, carrying two heavy backpacks, but accepted his help in loading Ko into the back and did not object when he joined them in the car. An hour later Ko was lying on a cot in the farmhouse compound, smiling weakly as Yara settled blankets over him and her grandmother pushed a cup of buttered tea into his hand. Shan had already explained that he would have to leave so he and Zhu could be in the mountains above the Five Claws before nightfall, but he made Yara promise she would bring their friend the old Tibetan doctor to examine Ko later that day.

“Meng?” he had asked Yara.

“She had to go to Lhasa,” Yara explained. “Seems like she has some sort of regular business there.”

“Tell her…” Once more Shan felt inadequate when speaking of his lover and mother of his child.

“Tell her when she’s back we’ll take Kami on a picnic up on a mountain meadow,” he said, and rushed away.

As Shan drove, Zhu examined his maps, quickly grasping the significance of the markings that Lhakpa and Shan had added. “So many pilgrim paths,” Zhu said. “All converging on the mountain. It must be like one of those sacred mountains.”

Shan took a moment to realize the army officer was speaking of sacred mountains in eastern China. Scores of thousands of Chinese still climbed them every year despite the government’s effort to discourage anything that hinted of religion.

“It smells like a horse blanket,” Zhu protested after Shan parked the car, holding out the tattered coat Shan gave him. The lieutenant looked back down the long gravel road they had just traversed as if thinking of bolting back down it.

“No doubt,” Shan said. “When I said come in civilian clothes, I didn’t mean your new wardrobe from Hong Kong. We’re going into Tibet.”

Zhu hesitated. “We’re already in Tibet, Inspector.”