She was good, and experienced with life in Chinese prisons. The little pairs of discolored spots on his hands and neck had faded. No one had noticed them for years. “Here, here, and there,” she said, pointing to three of the pairs. “From where a guard turns a cattle prod to maximum charge and presses it into your skin.” She pulled up the sleeve of her T-shirt and pointed to similar pairs of dots near her shoulder. “On women they usually apply it to places that don’t show.”

Shan shuddered as Pike produced a pocketknife and unfolded its long blade. He sliced the duct tape on his arm and turned it over. “Jesus bloody Christ,” he muttered as he saw the tattooed numbers, then pushed the blade close to Shan’s throat. “Recite that number,” he ordered Shan, then cursed again as Shan did so without hesitation. “What’s your game?” he asked. “You’re no cop.”

“I keep telling my boss that, but he won’t listen,” Shan said. “I’m from Lhadrung. Colonel Tan, the governor of Lhadrung, makes his own rules.”

Pike seemed to recognize the county name. “Not even in that gulag wilderness do convicts get badges.”

“I was an inspector in Beijing. I investigated the wrong people and they sent me to a prison in Lhadrung because the death rate is so high there. But the governor had a problem. I helped him, unofficially, and to show his gratitude he pulled me out of the hard labor camp. Some days I wish I were still in that prison.”

The American laughed. “If you think that I would believe that—”

The Chinese woman held up a hand to silence the American. She rose, stepped into the kitchen, and returned with a bottle of grain alcohol and a cloth. Shan watched in puzzlement as she soaked a corner of the cloth in the alcohol. Then she gazed at him in challenge and he understood. He extended his arm. First, she stretched his skin around the tattoo then rubbed the cloth vigorously over the numbers. If the tattoo were recently done, the skin would be reddened around the numbers. If, on the other hand, it was temporary, the numbers would smear.

“It’s real,” she announced in surprise.

The American studied Shan in silence for several breaths. “Which makes you the strangest Chinese I’ve ever met.”

“You have no idea.”

Pike hesitated, then pressed the blade to the squarish lump on Shan’s chest. “A gau?”

“It wasn’t really Colonel Tan who saved me. It was some old lamas. And I’m trying to avoid Public Security as much as you are.”

“Why?”

“Because they don’t want me looking into the deaths of Natalie Pike and Professor Gangfen.”