The second page was a printout of a scanned document that had been sent from a Lhasa office to Tan’s office. It was the official cover letter to a submission to the Party tribunal that had determined Metok’s fate, with the recommendation for punishment listed as Swift Resolution, one of the knob euphemisms for a death sentence. It was signed by Lieutenant Huan Yi, and the higher-level clearance for the execution had been signed by the provincial governor with the added seal, the chop, of the head of Party discipline for all of Tibet, the aged, treacherous man feared by many even in Beijing. His name was Yang Chouzi, but he was known simply as the Commissar. The Commissar’s chop had sealed Metok’s fate. In other jurisdictions, in other cases, a half dozen Party signatures would have been needed for the execution of a Party member, but the seal of the Commissar preempted all others.

The third sheet was from months earlier. It was the official instruction from the Party’s Disciplinary Board accepting Colonel’s Tan recommendation that Lieutenant Huan Yi be transferred from Lhadrung and suspended from the promotion lists for three years.

“Huan’s been busy,” Zhu observed. “Another man would have kept his head down after being disciplined so severely, probably would have asked for transfer back east to put it all behind him. But Tan gave him a break.”

“A break?”

Zhu pointed to the bottom of the last page. “Right there, over the colonel’s signature. It says that Huan should be transferred to the Lhasa regional headquarters to give him investigative experience. Awfully forgiving of the colonel.”

Shan heard the questioning tone in Zhu’s voice and stared at the typewritten words. Everything but the last sentence sounded like Tan’s heavy hand. But it was more likely that Tan would have recommended traffic duty in some smog-laden eastern city than a berth in Lhasa that would have given Huan more power than he would have had in the local district office.

“Funny thing about that death sentence for Metok,” Zhu added. “I saw a television show where a detective said you had to check every single fact. So I checked about the location of the provincial governor on the date that death order was signed. He wasn’t in Tibet, he was at a Party conference in Fujian Province, at some beach resort a couple thousand miles away.”

Shan offered an approving nod for Zhu’s diligence. “There’s a missing piece,” he said. “How did Huan go from prosecuting the weather wizard to targeting an engineer at the hydro project for corruption? Why would they have assigned him the lead on such a significant case so soon after being disciplined?”

“They wouldn’t,” Zhu said. “It would only be if he initiated the case, if he brought in the complaint and evidence.”

“Meaning he had a connection to the Five Claws project before he prosecuted Metok.”