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was found with tools stored near the front gate that is consistent with the weapon that severed Nan’s head. No blood on it. Liang took the bullet we dug out of the wall. We’re pretty certain the victims are two males and a female. That, Comrade, is the extent of our forensic investigation.”
    “But Liang has resources, access to labs. You said he brought that doctor.”
    “As far as I can tell what the major is doing is reviewing the files on every inhabitant of Baiyun.”
    The incision was deep, all the way to the femur. Except there was almost no femur. The bone had been shattered long ago, replaced with a prosthetic. As he stared at it Shan felt his chest tighten.
    “I don’t understand,” Meng said as she bent to the incision, prying the flesh apart with her hands.
    “Titanium,” Shan explained. “This was not done in China.” He quickly moved to the man’s mouth and pried it open. At least half a dozen teeth had been extracted. “Bodies will speak of their home if you look close enough.”
    “A foreigner!” Meng gasped.
    It changed everything. Her curiosity was gone, replaced by fear. She grabbed the sheet and covered the body, her movements suddenly frantic. “We must leave! Now!”
    “No,” Shan replied. “You must leave. Go outside. Forget we were here.” He stepped to the other man, Nan, the Chinese whose head had nearly been severed.
    “Not him!” Meng said. “No point.”
    He began to pull away the sheet. The second man’s head had been crudely sewn back in place. Even so the man was short, Shan realized. Short and stocky and dark-complected.
    Meng paused as she reached the door. “Major Liang is expected today. It won’t matter whom you work for if Liang finds you with a murdered foreigner.”
    “All the more reason for you to leave.”
    She eyed him coolly, then turned and left without another word. Shan quickly pulled away the rest of the sheet from Nan. The holster on the man’s ankle had been removed, like everything else. He looked at the black bird tattooed on Nan’s forearm. With his expensive clothes the man had seemed like an affluent businessman, perhaps even a senior official. Now, as he returned the sheet, Shan was not so sure. Meng had known him, had seemed oddly dismissive of the man, and of his death. But Jamyang too had known him, and given him a paper with a list of Tibetan towns. He paced slowly along the man, lifting his appendages, even examining his long black hair and scalp, then sniffed at the black deposits under his fingernails. Motor oil.
    Meng was nowhere to be seen as he stepped outside. The sleepy little town of Baiyun was coming to life in the late afternoon. Trucks were pulling off the valley’s only paved road into the gas station. The smell of steamed rice and onions wafted from the little tea shop. In the square, two pairs of Chinese men, all older than Shan, were playing checkers. He pulled a newspaper from a waste barrel and sat on a bench, pretending to read as he studied the checker players and the buildings beyond.
    Baiyun, in the remote mountains of central Tibet, had nothing of Tibet. It was a Chinese town, or some distant bureaucrat’s notion of what a Chinese town in Tibet should look like. White Cloud town. A pretend Chinese town in a pretend province of China. Someone had tried to plant gingko and plane trees along the edge of the park but the plants were nearly all dead or dying. The park benches that had been placed along the square were falling apart. Some of their planks were missing. The fiberglass statue of Mao, meant to be the focal point of the town square, was already being corroded by the harsh, dusty winds that often roared up the valley. Scores of such statues had been assembled in government warehouses, destined to replace the centuries-old stone chorten shrines that had once been fixtures in Tibetan villages. There was a new political slogan favored by the Party head in Tibet: The Communist Party Is Your New Buddha. When he