Shan turned to Tink and Cao. “You don’t understand the dangers,” he said.

Tink replied with a peeved grin and rose to open a closet door. “When we went today I was a redhead, my friend a brunette.” The inside of the door held over a dozen hooks, on which wigs of various lengths, colors, and styles hung. “I learned a long time ago that if I dress the right way, no one looks at my face,” she quipped, and pushed out her chest.

Cao looked away, embarrassed.

“Why were you coming to town today?” Shan asked the student.

Cao nodded. “To see a friend of Professor Gangfen’s. He was helping us, the professor and me. And Natalie,” he added with an awkward glance at Pike.

“Helping?” Shan asked.

“There’s a place in the north where the professor and Natalie were when they went missing. His friend was helping us collect data we needed to stop the … to help preserve a vitally important archaeological site.”

Shan’s eyes found Pike’s. The American cursed and drained his cup of whiskey.

“You mean the Five Claws project,” Shan said. “And the friend was Metok Rentzig.”

Cao seemed bewildered. “I had something to leave at his apartment, from the professor’s records. I knew the professor would want our efforts to continue.”

“Metok is dead.”

Cao’s countenance went rigid. His hand shook so hard tea spilled from his cup, but he seemed not to notice the burning liquid on his fingers. “How?” he asked.

“A Public Security bullet in the head. Someone wanted him dead and they accused him of corruption.”

Pike leaned over and poured whiskey in Cao’s tea. The student took a long swallow. “Then I’m the only one left,” he murmured.

“The only one?” Shan asked.

“The only one who can make the case the professor and Natalie were trying to build with Metok’s help.”

“You were going to leave Metok something about the Five Claws?”

Cao nodded, and extracted an envelope from inside his shirt which he pushed across to Shan. It held a dozen square photographs taken with an instant camera. The lighting of the images was so bad Shan struggled to make sense of them. “Better to start with this,” Cao said as he extracted a folded paper from his wallet. It was a photocopy of six more photographs on the same page. Two of them showed a rectangular field filled with scores of upright stones, evenly spaced in over a dozen long rows. Judging by the horses grazing at one side, the field of raised stones must have been perhaps three hundred feet long and sixty or seventy wide. None of the stones were over five feet high.