Cao shrugged. “At first only me, Natalie, the professor, and Metok. Later Metok included a friend of his, another engineer named Sun Lunshi.” Cao seemed not to notice the glance exchanged by Shan and Pike. He was the only one of the five still alive. “We wanted to work up a more scientific profile at the site before we introduced it to others. It was remarkable for the way it showed the evolution of religious dialogue, from the very early animists to the Bon, the Buddhist, and Christian, all existing harmoniously in the same place. I remember the professor saying it was like a convergence of different paths of the human spirit. He called it the Rosetta stone of the soul.”

Shan disposed of his hat on the first block after crossing the Jamalinka bridge, his sweatshirt on the second. The news of the cavern had excited him and saddened him, and now scared him. He had warned Cao to hide all evidence of the cave, and stop all discussion of it, even offered to drive him back to his dig site, but the quiet scholar had not replied, simply gazed at him defiantly.

Shan longed for the peace of Yangkar and realized he might at least make it back in time for one of his treasured breakfasts with Marpa. The anticipation put a new energy in his pace and he had eagerly pulled out his keys as he approached his car. But as he reached for the driver’s door a voice spoke over his shoulder.

“Not just yet, Comrade Constable.”

He turned to face Lieutenant Huan in a well-pressed Public Security uniform, fixing him with a smug smile. Two knob soldiers appeared out of the shadows, flanking Shan. One held a pistol on Shan as another frisked him.

Shan fought to keep his voice level. “Am I under arrest?” he asked.

“Of course not,” Huan said. “Nothing so formal. I am just inviting you to what they used to call a struggle session. You know, where the wayward receive an overdue socialist recalibration.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

“You are adrift in a treacherous sea, Constable,” Huan proclaimed as he closed the interrogation room door behind him. “You are so far over your head you might drown at any moment. You have one chance, and that is to go back to Yangkar and resume counting your piles of yak dung or whatever it is you do there.”

Shan pulled the pad of paper from the center of the table and wrote down a phone number then pushed it toward the arrogant knob officer.

“What’s that?” Huan asked with a sneer.

“Colonel Tan’s private phone in Lhadrung. Just clear it with him and I’d be happy to go home.”

Huan looked like he had bitten something sour. He ripped the paper in half. “Tan’s a dinosaur. He’s already extinct, just doesn’t know it. His friends in Beijing are gone, already turned to fossils.”