“Did the other name mean anything to you?” Shan asked the janitor. He pulled out the second business card he had taken from the body on the train, then decided not to ask the old Tibetan about the exotic bar in Lhasa. He had examined the card on the helicopter ride to Lhadrung. On its back was scrawled 75 curry 2 above the word gymnast. He looked up and saw Jampa was staring at him. “Sun Lunshi. Did that mean anything to you?”

“Nothing. But I thought you would find him and give him the warning. Perhaps he is in danger too.” Tan and Shan exchanged a troubled glance. Sun Lunshi was beyond warning.

Tan took out a cigarette and pushed the pack to the old man, who gratefully extracted one and accepted a light from Tan. They sat in silence, drinking and smoking, until Jampa drained his bottle and rose.

Ten minutes after the distraught janitor left, Shan found the article and printed a copy for Tan to read. An American graduate student from Maryland named Natalie Pike had been driving in the mountains with Professor Gangfen when their car had encountered an unexpected patch of ice and went off a cliff-face road. Pike had been on a special research project, assisting the professor with an excavation of a Chinese army camp dating back to a campaign in the early eighteenth century which, the government-owned paper emphasized, was demonstrating the lengthy and historic presence of the Chinese government in Tibet.

When Shan finally spoke, it was in a whisper. “Metok witnessed their deaths. He was at the hydro project.”

Tan replied in the same low, tight voice. “Why would they be at the Five Claws? Their archaeology work was over a hundred miles away.”

Amah Jiejie, sensing Tan’s dark mood, said nothing as she laid a sheet of paper on the table. It was the list of passengers from the train. Shan ran a finger along the column of nationalities. There had been six Westerners on board. Three were German women traveling together. The other three had been a Canadian couple and a solitary American. He stared at the American’s name, then circled it and pushed the paper to Tan.

“There was an American who traveled on the train but stayed in the station and took a great interest in that body,” Shan declared.

Tan’s eyes narrowed as he stared at the name. He cursed under his breath.

“I saw him,” Shan said. “He had a bloody bruise on his head. He is the one who fought in the cargo car with Sun Lunshi. Cato Pike is his name. He has to be the father of the dead American woman.”

CHAPTER FOUR