“Your husband had a friend named Sun Lunshi,” Shan said as the widow gave him her phone number in case he had follow-up questions. “He died on the sky train the day after your husband was executed.”

“It has been a season for sorrow,” Lekshay said. “I didn’t know Sun, except for what my husband spoke of him. A tragic accident. I saw it in the newspaper. That train is more dangerous than people think.”

“He was accompanying cargo for the Five Claws.”

“Then he died performing his duties. A hero.”

“A season of sorrow indeed. An American student and her Chinese professor died as well.”

Lekshay looked confused. “I think I read something in the paper about an American dying.”

“Natalie Pike and Professor Gangfen. Did your husband perhaps know them?”

“Of course not. I recall they died near their archaeology project, west of here. Far from the Five Claws. One of those terrible road accidents in the mountains, I recollect.”

“Your husband was arrested the day after they died.”

She shrugged. “Metok may not have shared all his secrets, to protect me, but he could not have possibly known them.”

“Sun died the day after your husband was executed,”Shan reminded her.

She shrugged again.

Shan himself did not think the deaths could all be related. But Metok had sent an urgent message while he waited for his execution, asking for Sun to be warned, as if those who wanted Metok dead would soon be pursuing Sun. Sun had died before he could be warned, with no other clue to his fate than the card of an exotic bar in Lhasa.

Jamalinka Island, though located within the traditional boundaries of old Lhasa, did not seem part of Tibet. Shan had seen it from afar several times but had always avoided it, for it was the center of the predominantly Chinese nightlife district. He had left his uniform tunic in his car and bought a cheap sweater to pull over his uniform shirt but still felt conspicuous as he walked across the bridge and reached the first strip of karaoke bars. Small groups of tourists, mostly Japanese and Western men, were wandering through what looked like a neon labyrinth. There was almost no sign of anything Tibetan except for a remarkably lifelike mannequin in the doorway of the bar he was seeking, made up to look like a naked dakini goddess.