The long, winding trail glowed silver in the moonlight as the horses galloped down the mountain. Shan, swallowing his fear that his mount would stumble, pushed the horse harder and harder into the darkness. Zhu crouched low in his saddle at Shan’s side. Jaya sang a song to her horse and their khampa guide laughed with joy.

Shan had struggled to sleep when they had returned to the camp, then had suddenly bolted upright. “Amah Jiejie,” he gasped, then desperately shook Zhu awake. “We have to go, now!”

“It’s the middle of the night,” Zhu had protested.

“Amah Jiejie has to be warned! The satellite phone is in the truck!”

“Constable?” Zhu rubbed sleep from his eyes.

“Metok never had a wife! The woman pretending to be his wife is a spy! Metok’s wife is a spy. An imposter nun led Tara to be killed. It must be the same woman. The spy is taking Amah Jiejie into the mountains to kill her!”

Lhakpa too had awakened. “You are not making sense,” he said.

“Metok’s wife asked the colonel’s assistant to go with her to a remote shrine. I thought Tan was invulnerable. But there is a way to destroy him. They want to kill Amah Jiejie.”

Zhu cursed as he grasped Shan’s meaning, and began pulling on his boots. Jaya rose and began poking the embers of the fire.

“You’ll never find the trail in the dark,” Lhakpa warned.

“The moon is rising,” Shan said.

“No, wait,” Jaya said. “Get packed and wait here.” The Tibetan woman darted up the slope. Ten minutes later she appeared with the khampa and four horses.

They had not reached Amah Jiejie before she had left but the helicopter sent by Tan intercepted her before she met Metok’s widow, allowing her to call in with her apology for being ordered to a last-minute meeting and promising to set a date soon for their trek.

Twenty-four hours later Shan paused at the little shrine on the stone ramp he was climbing to once more give thanks that Amah Jiejie had been saved. He always entered the Potala Palace in the traditional manner, the way it had been done for centuries, up the long steep ramp that rose up to the south entrance. As he climbed he considered why Pike had insisted he tell Metok’s wife to meet him in the Potala. Halfway up, pausing to catch his breath, he recalled the photograph Pike’s daughter had sent to her father. She had visited the Potala with Professor Gangfen, and in the photo she had been smiling with great contentment as she looked out over the huge Buddhist palace. It meant that the Potala wasn’t so much a place of beauty for Cato Pike, it was a place of his daughter, perhaps one of the last places on earth where she had been happy.