“Look at you, like you just came back from a funeral. I’ve seen it before. The investigator syndrome, the psychiatrists call it. My Irish grandmother had another name for it: ‘sin eating.’ But there’s so much sin here you’ll choke to death.”

Shan could not push the forlorn tone from his voice. “They were laughing together, you said. Then she gave him a soda knowing it would kill him. I should have known the first time I met her. I should have known before, when I saw that the front data sheet on the file about Metok had been replaced. I blinded myself. I saw her as a victim and only wanted to protect her. She helped kill Lhakpa’s niece. She single-handedly killed Sun.”

“They were both already dead when you met her,” Pike pointed out.

“But not Jampa, the old janitor. I told her, Pike. I told her Metok had got a message out from the jail. I was trying to comfort a grieving widow. Instead I gave the Amban Council the information it needed to find and kill Jampa. I should have known right away because all the framed photos in his apartment only showed Metok, no family shots. I was blinded by her grief. I responded with my heart and not my brain and it got Jampa killed. And I pushed my son under their boots. He could have been killed. Then they nearly killed Amah Jiejie.”

“You astound me, Shan. You have lived all your life in this fucked-up country, even survived a gulag prison camp, but you still have such naivete. It might be charming elsewhere, but here it is poison. Is it because you don’t see the evil or because you just don’t want to believe it?”

“You don’t understand, Pike. They don’t sense evil in anything they do. They tell themselves they are just doing their job, serving the motherland.”

Pike frowned in disappointment. “Then you are becoming one of them.”

“No. After all these years, I am finally becoming one of their victims.”

The American did not reply but withdrew several index cards from his pocket. They had small punctures in the top corners, as if they had been pinned to the wall. “The members of the Amban Council. Jiao is in charge. He spent his first ten years in Public Security, then went to a job with the Party. A troubleshooter. A fixer. He did a term as special assistant to some retired Party kingmaker here then was sent to Larung Gar, but not to construct new housing. He created a palatable plan to eliminate the politically unreliable crowds gathering there and snare a few of the more vocal dissidents in the process.”