Sand blew down the streets of Yoktian, obscuring their broken curbs and other imperfections, blurring the cracks in the walls. It was as if the entire town had been airbrushed for a cleaner, more wholesome image. Perhaps on the general's orders. But Shan was not fooled. There were still holes in the street that would break your ankle and fissures in the walls where rats waited.
A cargo truck was at the rear of the restaurant when Shan arrived. Gendun and Lokesh were asleep in the front room under two tables that had been pushed together, as if the Maos expected an earthquake. Jowa sat beside them, lotus fashion, watching them. As the stout woman extended a mug of tea and a bowl of noodles toward him, the truck's engine started.
"Rice camp," she said in response to his look of query, and he bolted out the door, jumping into the cargo bay so quickly that he did not realize until he sat down that the tea was still in his hand.
Fat Mao, sitting in the shadows behind the cab, was not happy to see him. A quick trip, he said, to pick up the order for the next week's food delivery, although Shan knew better. They were going because of Red Stone clan, because the next afternoon the clan would be disbanded, because Akzu and Fat Mao had a plan they would not explain. But Shan did not care. He was going for the waterkeeper. There was nothing else to do except wait for the dawn, wait for the meeting at Stone Lake, for the final confrontation where the killers would come to collect their last prize, where Shan had to be before the knobs, to whisk the boy away if he and the herders guarding him eluded the Maos, who would be trying to intercept the boy on the roads leading to Stone Lake.
The adminstrative compound at Glory Camp was deserted. The gatehouse itself was empty and the gate locked. But Ox Mao climbed out of the driver's seat and quickly unlocked the padlock. They parked by the warehouse and a woman followed the big Kazakh out of the front seat- Swallow Mao, wearing a severe-looking business suit. The woman carried a large envelope and marched toward the administrative building with an air of authority.
Shan stood by the inner wire, studying the barracks with the holding cells, inside the prisoner compound. He had no plan, no idea, no confirmation even that the lama was in the barracks. Even if Swallow Mao could find his hut assignment the Maos could not risk entering the second wire, which was where the real security started. He bent to a small clump of dried asters that had managed to survive in the sandy soil at the base of the inner wire. Plucking one of the stems, Shan tied it to the wire at the closest point to the holding cells. Maybe, he thought sadly, he had come just to say goodbye. The old Tibetan would not last long once Bao, or Rongqi, discovered he was a lama. He looked back at the administrative building and slowly, reluctantly, turned his head toward the small shed where he had found Nikki, then the boilerhouse.
He started walking, without conscious effort, and found himself under the boilerhouse roof. From twenty feet away he could feel the heat of the furnace and he stood there, the image of the spirited blond youth by the boiler door burning through his mind. Not much older than his own son. He walked out the far side of the building and stopped at the edge of the cemetery. In the dim light of the cloud-covered moon the graves seemed endless. With small, uncertain steps he started toward the far end, where the freshest mounds of earth had been.
Then he saw the animal. A low shadowy hulk, it moved along the graves as though following a scent. Shan looked down for a spade, a stick, anything he might use as a weapon. The creature lingered at one of the freshly dug piles of earth. With a pang of fear Shan wondered what he would do if it began to dig for the dead. Scavengers preferred rotten meat. Feebly, he stepped forward. The beast paid him no attention. It pawed idly at the earth in long motions that gave the impression of a great and reckless power.
After a moment the animal leaned back and sat up on its rear haunches. As the moon appeared from behind a cloud Shan gave a half-choked cry. The animal was Marco Myagov.
He stood in silence for a long time before venturing a step forward. Marco tensed and seemed about to pounce on him, then eased back as he recognized Shan. Shan spoke no word of greeting but instead began to range among the graves himself, surveying the mounds, trying to remember how they had looked on his first visit. After a few minutes he stopped at a group of three fresh graves. "Here," he said. "This is where he would be."
Marco seemed to require great effort to rise. He wiped his hands, caked with soot and the dirt of the cemetery, and joined Shan.
"He is-" Shan struggled to find words. "He is with many good men." Despite their miserable deaths in a forgotten wasteland, many of those laid to rest before them were men who defied the dictators, who had been true to their beliefs.
Marco gave no sign he had heard Shan's words.
"I thought you were-" Shan offered tentatively. "I saw the flames, I thought you had died." What if this was not Marco, he thought with alarm, what if it was some frail shadow of Marco, some wraith left after he had lost his soul that night?
But then the man spoke, and Shan sighed with relief. "She burned," Marco said in a hoarse voice. "God's breath, how she burned."
"But why are you-"
"I have had talking to do with my Nikki."
"Then what?" Shan asked after a moment.
"I told you before. I get bastards. It's what I do."
The words somehow made Shan sad. "They need you. The Americans still have to get out. They're in great danger."
Marco looked at Shan, with an expression of confusion, as if he had not thought of it before.
"They'll kill you here. There're soldiers. You won't have a chance."
Marco did not reply. He selected the middle of the two graves and sat on the earth by it, then patted the soil beside him as though gesturing for Shan to join him. Shan knelt by the end of the mound.
"I would not fear to stay here with Nikki," the Eluosi said, almost brightly. "I have nothing left. I have no country. I have no family. I have no home."
"But what would Sophie do without you?"
Marco's eyes rested on a patch in the darkness, in the shadows of the knoll by the camp. He sighed heavily and pulled something out of his pocket. In the moonlight Shan recognized it. The Russian medal he had seen in Nikki's room. The medal from the Czar.
Marco scooped loose soil from the head of the grave and buried the medal, then spoke in Russian for a long time, looking first at the grave, then at the sky.
When he finished Marco shifted his gaze toward the compound. His eyes had a new, sharp glint, a warrior's eyes. Suddenly he rose and began jogging toward the boilerhouse.
By the time Shan caught up, he was at the open boiler, rapidly shoveling in coal. He motioned toward the loaded barrow at the front of the shed, and Shan pushed it toward him. Soon the boiler was packed with fuel, almost overflowing with coal. The heat was nearly unbearable before Marco closed the door. The Eluosi darted to the tool bench and returned with a long spike and a pair of pliers. He jammed the spike through the holes designed to hold a padlock on the door when not in use, and bent both ends so the door could not be opened. He quickly studied the simple controls above the door, then shut off the relief valve, opened the air intake to maximum, and smashed the temperature warning gauge. He turned away, then paused and turned back, pulling something out of his pocket and placing it on the top of the door. Shan recognized it. The plain steel ring that Nikki had worn.
There was no point in protesting, no way to stop what Marco had set into motion, no possibility of asking the Maos to stay and find the waterkeeper in the chaos that was to follow. If any of them were found near the camp they would probably be held, even summarily shot, for committing sabotage.
The Maos were waiting at the truck. Shan stared into the inner wire once more, and sighed.
"I'm sorry, Johnny, Marco said. It's what I do. Now go. Go quickly."
The Maos were ready when he returned. He said nothing about the boiler until several minutes after they had left the gate. Fat Mao listened, then rapped on the window and Ox Mao slowed the truck. Just as he rolled down his window to speak, an explosion shook the valley. The truck rocked. A boulder on the slope above dislodged and rolled past them. Ox Mao accelerated up the hill at the end of the valley and stopped the truck. They could see the camp clearly, no more than three miles away. Huge flames reached into the night sky. The boilerhouse and warehouse were engulfed in flames. Burning debris could be seen blowing across the compound. Moments later the administration building began to burn.
Thirty minutes later the Maos were pacing anxiously around their cellar, arguing among themselves, offering plans and rejecting them, suggesting what the knobs and Brigade might do next, seeming to make themselves more nervous with each suggestion. Fat Mao kept reminding them that the Red Stone clan was being processed for dispersion within hours and now their plan was impossible. Ox Mao said they should be celebrating. Swallow Mao sat at the table, staring at the blank computer screen.
Shan watched for a quarter hour from his seat on the stairs, then took a stool at the table. "Your plan. If it is impossible now, then you can tell me what it was. I know it had to do with trucks, like the one Red Stone tried to steal."
Fat Mao frowned but shrugged and explained. The herds were being shipped to the north, in four big livestock trucks. All of the personnel assignments were finalized- the Kazakhs were to go to towns, to Brigade factories, mostly. Swallow had obtained all the details from the Brigade computers. Mao drivers had been arranged for the four trucks. "But the trick was this," the Uighur said. "Truckloads of livestock are sold by the Brigade to Kazakhstan all the time. A dozen trucks are booked to go across the Kazakh border this week, west on the highway to Alma Ata. Swallow got the shipment numbers, the travel permit numbers, which have all been approved and processed. The border guards have the numbers, for verification. Jowa helped us plan everything. Tonight Swallow put in a new disc, for when the office opens tomorrow. Swallow's name will not be attached to any file. Some other clerk will get the file and transmit the travel confirmations to the Brigade headquarters. The four Red Stone trucks will be cleared by the computers to go to Kazakhstan. Those four will arrive at the depot that is receiving the Red Stone sheep, because Mao drivers will take them."
"And when the trucks leave with the sheep, the clan will be with them."
Fat Mao shrugged. "It's a small clan. There's land in Kazakhstan for those displaced from China. They will get new pastures, with other Kazakhs."
"But trucks get inspected. First the papers are checked, then the cargo is checked."
"Which is why timing was so important. Border guards get bribed all the time. At a certain time two days from now a certain guard sergeant was going to be in charge of inspecting four trucks. He would handle the clearances himself. The papers would be fine, he just won't look at the cargo. He's used to black market goods. Marco recommended him."
"Except now the data won't get sent because the disc burned in the fire," Shan said.
"All they can do now is take their factory jobs and hope we can find some other way later."
Shan studied the faces of the Maos. The excitement that had been there when they first saw the flames of Glory Camp had been replaced with expressions of defeat.
"The copies of records from Glory Camp," Shan said to Swallow Mao. "Do you have the cemetery records?"
She nodded slowly.
He turned to Fat Mao. "Can you get money? Maybe four Panda coins."
The Uighur nodded. "We use them with people across the border. They all prefer to deal in gold."
Shan quickly outlined his plan. "The only problem," he concluded with a sober tone, "is that Akzu and the others, they all have to die." Marco would take the Kazakhs out with the Americans, with four more gold Pandas for four more boats. The difficulty was that the Brigade couldn't know, Rongqi couldn't allow anyone to think the Kazahks could defy the Poverty Eradication Scheme. So the names and identity numbers for the Red Stone members would be switched with the names and identity numbers of long-dead prisoners. Recordkeeping would be chaotic in the aftermath of the fire, Swallow Mao confirmed. An emergency operations center would be created, and she would be assigned there, giving her a chance to replace the cemetery records with the new disc. The Kazakhs would have officially disappeared. And the records would be changed to show that the correct number of names were transported with the others as part of Rongqi's program, transferred onto Brigade factory headcounts. In his Beijing career Shan had investigated more than one government factory system where favors were distributed in the form of payroll identity numbers for nonexistent employees, since managers could keep the wages and no one would complain. It took no stretch of imagination to believe that Rongqi already distributed patronage in the form of such profitable ghosts.
The Maos debated the risks for nearly an hour, then Swallow chided them all. "The biggest risk is mine," she announced and sat at the computer with a new set of discs. A moment later the Glory Camp cemetery list was on the screen, then the list of Red Stone clan members assigned to the Poverty Scheme. They watched as she began tapping the keys, and one by one the members of Red Stone clan were buried at Glory Camp.
When they arrived at Stone Lake just after dawn, a silver camel stood in the shadow of the long dune that ran along the western edge of the bowl, beside a large shape under a blanket. They let Marco sleep and sat thirty feet away, near the top of the dune, three hundred yards from where the road led into the camp. Fat Mao had brought them and offered to stay, looking toward a toolbox in back of the truck. Shan had seen the cold anger that had settled over him and suspected the box contained weapons. He asked the Uighur to leave.
"You need a plan, in case the boy makes it here and the knobs come," Fat Mao protested.
Shan stared at him for a moment. "The boy won't come here because the Maos will find him first."
"There's been no sign of him. Those dropka he's with, they're like wild animals. Stealthy. We may not intercept them."
Shan sighed. "Then everyone will flee with the boy and the Jade Basket," he said quietly, so only the Uighur could hear. "I will distract any knobs who come."
"Distract?"
"There is something else Bao wants in addition to the gau or the Americans."
Fat Mao studied him a moment. "You."
Shan shrugged.
"Not everyone has to be a victim," the Uighur said with a frown. "Not every time." There was frustration in his voice and, oddly, a tone of apology.
"Look for the boy for another hour," Shan said, "then go to Red Stone clan. They need you today too."
Fat Mao frowned again, then turned and left.
The last day had arrived, the day Rongqi and Ko had dreamed of, the final implementation of the Poverty Eradication Scheme. Akzu had to be found and told of the new plan. The Red Stone herds had to be surrendered, with their tents and everything else being taken over by the Brigade. For the only way for the clan to be free, and together, was to give up everything in life they had valued, except life itself.
Gendun laid back on the sand and exclaimed over the shapes of the clouds. Lokesh, as he had countless times before, laid out the possessions of the Yakde Lama and studied each one. They had all their bags, ready to leave for Tibet. Shan pulled out their old pair of binoculars and cleaned the lenses on his shirt, then handed them to Jowa, who crawled to the top of the dune and began to watch.
After an hour Jowa whistled. Kaju had appeared, walking alone down the road. They lay on the sand behind the crest of the dune and watched as he stopped at the building skeleton that swayed in the wind, tied something to one corner post, then tightened it and secured it to another post. A string of Buddhist prayer flags, the flags, Shan suspected, from Lau's office.
The Tibetan stopped and stared at the flags after he had fastened them, as if seeing prayer flags for the first time in his life, then turned and walked slowly toward the garage building. Shan stood and waved and in a few moments Kaju had joined them.
He greeted them in Tibetan, not Mandarin, and for the first time since Shan had known him continued the conversation in his native tongue. There had been no contact from Micah, he reported, no chance to warn him away. But in the night, Kaju said hopefully, there had been many sirens and many knobs had rushed out of town. Maybe they were gone, or at least distracted. Maybe Bao would forget one small boy in the face of whatever Public Security emergency had arisen.
They were sitting in a circle, listening to Kaju explain how he planned to one day return with all the zheli and truly see the fossils, when someone threw a plastic bag of raisins into their midst. They looked up to see Marco's broad face, looking grim but determined.
He squatted by Shan with a handful of raisins. "Took an hour for them to decide to let the prisoners out to fight the fires," he reported without emotion. "Fools. By then all they could do was throw sand on the embers. Nothing left but smoldering bags of rice where the warehouse was. No administration building. The little house at the gate, even that." There was no victory in his voice, but when he looked at Shan an odd glint rose in his eyes. "Nikki approved," he said in a low tone, and nodded as though to acknowledge that although it might not feel like victory, it did feel like completion.
As Kaju stood and walked along the top of the dune, watching for Micah, Lokesh lifted the raisin bag and passed it around. Breakfast. "You'll see," Kaju called out to Shan. "It's only Bao. If he comes and tries to take the boy it will be the proof I need. I'll go to Ko," he said as he stepped nearly out of earshot. "Ko will know what to do." Shan and Jowa exchanged a glance. Kaju still refused to accept the truth.
As Marco ate his raisins Shan explained the new plan for the Red Stone clan. The Eluosi didn't argue. "That old Tibetan hunter at the border, the one with the coracles, only way he'll do it now is if he sees I'm with them," the Eluosi said and looked at Shan. "I'll need help."
Shan didn't understand at first. The words weren't spontaneous. They had been chewed over by Marco and he meant them.
"Come with me, Johnny," Marco said in English. "I'm leaving this forsaken land. You should too. I've got buckets of money in banks outside. We'll go to Alaska. Catch big fish. Build a cabin by the ocean."
Shan's mouth opened and closed again. He looked at Gendun and Lokesh, and explained to them in Tibetan, but they offered only small serene smiles and nodded.
"It isn't over," Shan said. "There's no time-"
As if Shan's words were a cue, Kaju shouted. Two riders on horseback had appeared from the desert, leading a heavily loaded packhorse and an empty saddle horse along the back of the dune they sat on. "The Americans," Kaju announced brightly, as if somehow the arrival of Deacon and his wife assured their success.
But Shan just looked at the sand by his feet. He realized that unconsciously he had hoped they would not come.
Deacon's wife seemed to overflow with energy and excitement. She had brought a large jar of peanut butter, which Kaju explained to Gendun and Lokesh, offering samples to them as they examined it with schoolboy curiosity. She spoke to Marco, to make sure the bags on the horse were not too big, then flattened an area of sand and laid a towel on it, then arranged things on it. One of the leather gloves used for baseball. A small green toy truck. A pack of chewing gum. And a red can, battered and dented from heavy travels, an unopened can of American soda. Then, with a puzzled glance from her husband, who just stood and stared down into the bowl, she untied a narrow wooden box from the top of the packhorse, digging a recess for it so that it was shaded. She pulled away the cloth that covered the top of the box and Shan saw that it was perforated with holes. Deacon's insect singers.
Marco took over like an officer instructing his troops, moving them all down into the shadow of the dune, on the opposite side from the bowl. No one was to go on top, in plain sight, except Kaju. He sent Jowa with Gendun and Lokesh even further, to a place two hundred yards to the north where a small outcropping provided some cover. If anyone came for the boy, the Eluosi announced, he and Sophie would grab the boy and take him into the soft desert sand where trucks could not follow.
Twenty minutes later, at the far end of the bowl, where it flattened and opened into the desert, three figures came into view, riding horses, less than a mile away. Lying flat at the crest of the dune with the binoculars Shan could see that it was two men in the garb of herders and between them, on a pony, a boy. Two large mastiffs ran on either side of the horses.
"Micah!" the American woman called out, and stood as though to run toward the distant figures.
"Warp- no!" her husband yelled, and pulled his wife back behind the dune.
In the same moment, over the dune on the opposite side of the wide, sandy bowl, a vehicle appeared. Not a red Brigade truck as Shan had expected but one of the sleek black utility vehicles of the boot squads. It inched to the top of the dune and stopped. A figure in a red nylon jacket climbed out of the driver's seat. Even without the binoculars Shan knew it was Ko Yonghong.
"The bastards," Marco spat at his side as the remaining doors opened. Two men in grey uniforms, carrying submachine guns, darted half a dozen paces in opposite directions to flank the vehicle, then each dropped to one knee, guns raised, as if prepared for combat. A third man, a barrel-chested figure who walked with a swagger, moved to Ko's side. Major Bao.
A gasp escaped from Kaju, standing halfway down the dune below Shan. The Tibetan stared in disbelief, glanced at Shan with an anguished expression, then looked back as one more figure emerged, a tall, thin, older man with an imperious bearing. Ko solicitiously handed him a pair of binoculars and the man studied the approaching riders, then patted Ko on the shoulder. Shan studied the stranger with his lenses. He had seen him before, in the photograph at Ko's office. "Rongqi," he heard Kaju gasp. It was the general himself, come to witness his ultimate triumph over the Tibetans.
"Dammit, No!" he heard Deacon's urgent whisper from behind, and he turned to see Lokesh and Gendun walking toward the end of the dune, as if to intercept the riders, waving them toward the outcropping as though it might hide them from the men in the truck. Shan felt a hand on his arm. Marco pointed silently toward the entrance to the oil camp, where another car had appeared, a Red Flag. It stopped and backed up, out of sight, then Prosecutor Xu appeared, alone, aiming a pair of binoculars toward the black truck.
Bao's attention was fixed on the riders. He raised his hand and seemed to snap out a command. The two knob soldiers sprang back to the truck.
"No!" Kaju moaned. He stumbled forward, his face twisted with pain. His eyes moved from the riders to the truck and then drifted back into the center of the bowl, where the single shrub grew between him and the truck. He stared at it curiously for a moment, then he began tearing at the neck of his shirt. He pulled a chain from his neck, a chain holding a large silver gau.
Raising the gau over his head, he leapt forward, bounding down the side of the dune, calling out, shouting Ko's name, then shouting for Major Bao, running hard toward the center of the bowl as if trying to meet the truck there. The men at the black truck stared at him for a moment, then jumped into the vehicle, the soldiers leaping on the sideboards, guns still at the ready, as Ko drove over the crest of the dune.
As he ran Kaju kept gesturing with an emphatic energy, as if he urgently needed them, dangling the gau as if they should recognize it. As if it were the Jade Basket. His pace slackened as he approached the bush, stopping for a moment thirty feet away from it, then starting again with a much slower movement, still waving the truck toward him.
Suddenly Shan understood. "No!" he gasped and began to rise. But a beefy hand settled over his shoulder. Marco pushed him down.
"You don't understand-" Shan protested. "He remembers the shrub. He saw the roots before! Deacon!" he called out desperately. The American would know.
Kaju had arrived at the bush and stopped, in the center of the bowl, still waving desperately as the truck sped forward. For a moment he turned, and looked back, as though seeking Shan, then he lowered himself into the lotus position, the gau now clutched at his chest, his head raised not toward the truck but toward the sky.
Deacon appeared at Shan's side. "Jesus!" he bellowed. "No! The cistern!"
The truck lurched to a stop beside the Tibetan and the soldiers jumped off. As the doors opened the truck began to sink and the soldiers shouted frantically at the men inside, one stumbling toward the door where the general had climbed in. Then the soldiers themselves began to drop as if being consumed by the sand itself.
It seemed to happen not in slow motion, but in fast motion, in a blurring sequence, as the desert opened up and swallowed the vehicle into the depths of the ancient cistern, then the sand of the bowl and the adjacent dunes swept inward in a great violent surge. A deep crater appeared for an instant where the huge cistern had been built centuries before, and Shan thought he saw arms and legs swimming in the sand and rock rubble. Then the desert filled the crater, the dunes shifting and sliding with a dreadful hissing and swirling as the tons of sand moved in.
Then, abruptly, there was stillness.
Deacon stood beside him. Shan had not had time to rise from his knees. At the road Xu stood staring, the binoculars at her side, then slowly she disappeared from view, walking backward, still facing the empty bowl. A moment later Shan heard the engine of the car as she drove away.
They walked silently, in shock, toward the shallow depression that marked where the cistern had been.
"We have to dig!" Abigail Deacon shouted repeatedly as she leapt down the dune and began scooping the sand with her hands.
"It's forty feet at least, Warp," her husband said quietly, as he and Shan reached her. "Thousands of tons of sand. Not a chance."
They stood, paralyzed, for a moment as the American woman, still kneeling, pounded the sand forlornly. The desert had claimed more dead. The karez had become a tomb after all. Ko who worshipped money. Rongqi who worshipped power. Bao who worshipped force. And one Tibetan who, however wasted in life, had been steadfast in his death.
A horse whinnied and they looked up to see the riders standing beside their horses now, with Lokesh and Gendun. They did not advance, but stood two hundred yards away, as if frightened.
"Micah!" the American woman called out, and jumped up to move toward the figures. Deacon started after her but stopped and looked back uncertainly as Shan called his name. Shamed by his weakness, Shan handed the American the gau he had taken from Malik, the gau from the grave at the lama field. The American's face went stiff, and his arm drooped when he reached for it, as if it had lost its strength. Shan pushed the gau into Deacon's hand and stepped away. He remembered the stab of pain in his heart when he had opened it the first time, the only time, the day after Malik had given it to him. For inside there had been no Jade Basket, no secret prayer. There had only been the shriveled remains of a small brown cricket.
The American woman kept stumbling in the soft sand, calling her son's name even as she fell. Deacon stood a moment staring at Shan, then at the short, slender figure with the two herders, his face growing dim, as if a veil were descending over it. Then he made a gasping sound as though he were back in the suffocating karez and stepped forward, calling his wife in a voice no one could hear at first, then louder, until as she stumbled to her knees again he caught up with her.
There was no need to explain, Shan saw, for Jacob Deacon understood. The American had been glimpsing another of the nightmares that had shadowed Shan since the nadam. Two mischevious boys had fooled their foster parents, their shadow clan guardians, because one had wanted to move to the lower pastures to be with the horses, while the other had been trying to reach the high Kunlun, the land of the lama field. Khitai had already played the same innocent game by trading places with Suwan at the Red Stone camp. Only for a few days, Khitai and Micah would have said, for everyone would meet at Stone Lake on the full moon. Malik had been certain Khitai died at the lama field but Malik had seen only a battered boy with dark hair already in his shroud, in possession of Khitai's belongings, at the place he expected Khitai to be.
"Micah!" the American woman called again, when her husband pulled her up from the sand. "Our boy!" she cried to her husband, as if Deacon did not understand. But Deacon held her from the back, his arms locked around her, as she faced the riders, keeping her there as Shan and Marco passed by, their pace slower and slower as they approached. The two herders, holding the horses, looked at the Americans with wild, confused expressions.
When they reached the horses Lokesh was sitting on the sand with a slim Tibetan boy, chanting a mantra with him, pointing out the possessions that he had recovered for him at the lama field. Tears ran down the old Tibetan's cheeks.
Gendun stood, his eyes wide and sad, looking from Shan to Khitai and back to the Americans. "Thank you, friend Shan," he said, his voice cracking. "For raising our Yakde Lama from the dead."