“Yes and no,” replied the American. “That’s not the woman I saw today. I saw the woman from the train. She was wearing a loose jacket today, but underneath were tight jeans, makeup, and manicured nails. She knows how to deliver the goods.”

“Goods?”

Pike rolled his eyes. “She’s trained to use her body, Shan. She was in Hong Kong, I am sure of it. She took that man to her hotel room, and in a few hours he was ready to give her anything she asked for.”

Shan looked with despair over the queue of eager passengers waiting for the next train. “Every time we think we have a lead, we slam into a stone wall. We don’t have the maps. We have no proof that this woman killed Sun. We have no proof that she was in Hong Kong. We don’t even know her real name or where she really lives.”

“Not for a couple more hours anyway,” Pike said with a dangerous grin. “Tink is tailing her.”

Shan was early for his rendezvous at the Jokhang Temple with Meng and so took advantage of the thinning crowds to get reacquainted with the thousand-year-old structure. He paused inside the entry to buy incense from a toothless old woman then walked slowly inside, letting his senses adjust to the dim light and the acrid scent of incense and butter lamps. A few pilgrims were still completing the interior circuit, pausing at each of the little low-doored chapels that lined the passageways. Shan ascended the nearly empty stairs to the second floor, where a more condensed ring of chapels encircled the hall. Shan sat on a bench near a shrine to a protector deity and closed his eyes, sensing the air of ancient devotion that seemed to permeate the temple. Here the afflicted and other seekers had come for centuries, lighting incense and lamps to converse with the gods. Lokesh said that if you tuned your soul just right, you could hear the echoes of the devout from across time. Shan looked down at a stick of incense in his hand and wondered if it would provide the cleansing he needed after spending two hours with the Commissar. The different mantras of the few pilgrims and monks still in the chapels flowed out into the hall and seemed to combine into one rhythmic prayer. He let the sound wash over him, let it become the salve he needed for his aching spirit.