Shan looked back at the map. Why had Lhakpa gone to the trouble of marking the map then just left it? It had been a message of some kind, Shan realized, left for him. Why would the snow monk be frightened away from Yangkar by a visiting team of scientists? Why would the Chinese scientists seem to recognize the unassuming, contemplative Tibetan?

He went out to his car and returned with an army map he had found in the glove box and laid it beside Lhakpa’s map, locating the valley Lhakpa had marked to the northeast of Yangkar. The army map too had a recently penciled annotation, on the same valley. The army map identified the valley as simply Five Claws.

Shan left at dawn for the forty-mile drive to the hydro project and crested the slope leading down into the valley as the work crews were filing out of a large prefabricated building that he took to be a mess hall. He pulled over and trained his binoculars on distant figures as they climbed into dump trucks, tractors, pickups, and even bulldozers then dispersed toward work sites spread throughout the long valley. Before the mess hall, closer to the main road, was a building with a circular drive in front of it centered around a tall flagpole flying the red flag of the People’s Republic. Beyond the mess hall were rows of modular units, hauled in by truck, that he assumed were mostly dormitories. The project was massive. He counted the number of modular units. Even if some were used for storage or offices, there had to be scores of workers. Near the mess hall was a concrete mixing plant, where trucks were lined up to receive their loads. With his binoculars he studied the work at the southern end, the deep, narrow pass where huge forms were being constructed for the footers of the dam itself.

The ground shook beneath his feet as a heavy truck crested the ridge and roared past him. Its license plate explained why he had not seen more signs of the project. The truck was from Sichuan, meaning supplies and equipment were coming in on the road from the east, bypassing most of Lhadrung County.