Lord of Death: A Shan Tao Yun Investigation by Eliot Pattison Page A

seen Yates with a woman at the base camp, though he could not be certain since Public Security worked hard to discourage the support staff from mingling with the Westerners. But Kypo had confirmed that the American had a partner who was a famous climber, a woman named Ross.
    He had planned to find her photo, tear it out and rush out of the office. But it took much longer than he had expected, as he futilely leafed through every newspaper from the past three months then started over, reminding himself to look for different hairstyles, different apparel, as he studied each of the many group photos. When he finally found her, her hair was much longer, shadowing part of her face, under an American style visored cap.
    She stood in the center of the front row of a group of two dozen, described in the caption simply as the American guest speaker at a luncheon of the local climbing industry, celebrating the launch of the season, announcing American funding of a new environmental campaign to clean litter off the upper slopes of Everest.
    He ripped the page out of the paper, folded it, and stuffed it into a pocket, then resumed his search. Westerners were conspicuous and popular subjects during the season. Within five minutes he had found her again, a clearer image showing an athletic woman with a gentle, self-conscious smile shaking hands with a representative of the Ministry of Education in front of a new one-room schoolhouse donated by an American climbing club. He was scanning the second article, about to extract it, when the overhead light switched on.
    Tsipon stood in the doorway, his face smoldering.
    “Who is she?” Shan demanded before the Tibetan could speak. Shan held the photo in front of him, advancing toward the door.
    The image of the woman seemed to jar Tsipon. He stared at it, his anger fading, as Shan repeated his question, then he pulled it from Shan’s grip.
    “Megan Ross, it says,” Tsipon read. “Citizen of the United States.”
    “You knew her. You must have known her.”
    Tsipon glanced expectantly toward the entry to the building, then frowned. “Known her? I know her. A troublemaker. An agitator from the outside who has no notion of the delicate balance of politics in our world. Last year she started a petition demanding that Beijing send the climbing fees it collects to the mountain villages, abruptly announcing it at the climbing society banquet at the end of the season. She said every cent should be given to rebuild the temples leveled by Beijing so the mountain would be content again and stop taking so many lives. I told her if she wanted people to listen to her speak about temples she was going to have to die and come back as a Buddhist nun.”
    “She did die, in my arms, beside Minister Wu.”
    Tsipon rolled his eyes. “I read about a particular form of paranoid delusion, imagining that celebrities die in your presence. I know of a hospital near here that could deal with all that ails you,” the Tibetan added with a meaningful gaze, then saw Shan’s insistent expression and shrugged. “You can’t possibly think the death of an American could be kept quiet.”
    “Cao has somehow managed to do so. Find someone who has seen her since that day. Anyone.”
    “She is secretive. She has people who grant her confidential favors. She doesn’t like the spotlight.”
    “You seem to know her well. If she is alive, contact her,” Shan pressed.
    Tsipon glanced out the door again before taking another step inside. “I have to get along with all the foreign climbers. They are our lifeblood. Megan Ross has a list of the peaks she wants to climb. A life list she calls it. Did you know there are over twenty peaks of more than twenty thousand feet in this region alone? Lhotse, Makalu, Cho Oyu, Sishapangma. And nearly all of them officially closed to foreigners. Sometimes she goes off for a few days and when she returns another mountain is crossed off her list.”
    Shan considered the challenge in