“So, this is how it’s going to be,” Pike said, his anger thinly veiled. “Just when I was thinking you might be the real deal, you turn into another sniveling, backstabbing bureaucrat.”

Shan unfolded the paper and read it. “From Public Security. Beijing Headquarters, Counterintelligence Unit.” He raised his eyebrows. “You were getting attention in very high places.” He turned back to the report Amah Jiejie had obtained through back channels in Beijing. “The surveillance of the embassy attaché Cato Pike is hereby transferred to the Great Wall Team,” Shan read, then turned again to Pike. “An elite team. You got upgraded.”

“Is there a point to this?”

Shan refolded the paper and summarized the remainder. “A case was being assembled against you for espionage so you could be deported. Then suddenly the deportation file was closed and you were transferred to a team that evaluates candidates for service as double agents. They thought you might be turned and willing to work for the People’s Republic. Why?”

“Because I broke my ambassador’s nose. He didn’t take it well.”

“You mean you were involved in some sort of accident.”

“Not at all. I struck him. If I ever see the bastard again, I’ll break it a second time.”

Shan gazed at his companion in surprise. “Could you possibly explain why?”

“Public Security had it right. I was running a couple agents in my job in FBI counterintelligence. One of them was supplying low-level stuff, some codes and warnings on where Chinese hackers would strike next. He was arrested. The ambassador could easily have arranged a deal, exchanged him for one of the two dozen Chinese spies we were holding, but he refused. My man was executed. Damn right I hit the ambassador. Wish I had done worse.”

“That was the end of your FBI career?”

“I got shipped home. Just say the FBI and I mutually parted ways.”

Shan reached into the console and fished out a lighter. He lit a corner of the report, waited for the flames to catch and dropped it out the window.

Pike gave a bitter grunt. “I don’t work with partners,” he said.

“Good. Me neither,” Shan replied. He motioned to the inn. “Shall we?”

A café occupied most of the cramped lobby, in a corner of which sat the registration desk.

Shan showed his badge to the plump Chinese woman at the desk and asked if any of the students from the university project were there.

“One of ’em took the day off, gonna catch the bus to Lhasa, he says,” she reported, nodding toward a scholarly looking, bespectacled Chinese man in his twenties who sat reading at a table with a pot of tea.

“Excuse me,” Shan said as he approached. “Are you with the university project?”

The man slowly nodded.

“I was hoping to speak with you about the accident.”