“Not suggesting. It is a fact. Tara had told people that whenever possible we should record all interchanges with the government, because there might be a chance of getting the recording to the outside world, so all the world could then witness the atrocities at Larung Gar. So our visitor had her phone out and had started recording from our vantage point. She thought they might try to beat Tara.”

“Visitor?”

“Metok’s American friend. A strong woman who smiled a lot, very interested in history.”

Shan’s head seemed to spin. How could he have missed this? She had written to her father that she had seen something terrible but that she was learning Tibetan ways to fix things. “You mean Natalie Pike.”

Lhakpa nodded. “It was her idea, after we convinced the others to hold the video back. There had been an announcement the next day that Jiao was leaving to become deputy director at the Five Claws, based on his success at Larung Gar. She said we might be able to use the video to stop the project somehow. But the six of us were arrested by Huan.”

“I had just arrived, with friends from the mountains,” Jaya inserted. “I found horses for Natalie and Metok and we fled.”

“So where is the video now?”

“Everyone is too frightened to transmit it,” Lhakpa explained, “because Public Security monitors most transmissions in Tibet. When we saw her again she said it was safe, in the hands of a nameless friend in Lhasa. She said before they began pouring the foundations for the dam we would confront Jiao with it.”

“So Jiao didn’t know about it.”

“He must know now,” Jaya said. “After Metok’s arrest they searched his room. Metok wouldn’t have willingly given up the information but they use drugs in interrogation.”

“They use drugs that wring the last drop of truth from a prisoner,” Shan confirmed. “So they must know that the American woman took the video, and that it is in Lhasa somewhere. How long did Metok know Natalie?”

“A few weeks. Before arriving in Larung Gar he had been assigned to that bridge project that was stopped when they found the remains of that Green Standard Army camp she was working on. That’s how they met. Metok invited Natalie to Larung Gar so she could see a Buddhist teaching institution, to show her that Buddhism still thrived among Tibetans. Natalie and Professor Gangfen even visited his home in Lhasa.”

As the words sank in, a terrible realization struck Shan. An image of the frightened woman with the teenage daughter he had met in Lhasa flashed through his mind. “Then someone has to warn her!” he exclaimed. “The secret Tibetan in Lhasa has to be Metok’s wife!”

Lhakpa turned to Shan, then to Jaya, who cocked her head in confusion. “But Metok never had a wife, Shan,” she said.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN