Schoolchildren perform morning prayers. ROBERT NICKELSBERG FOR TIME

Only one murder has been committed this year in the Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan. The victim was just a hermit monk, but everyone from King Jigme Singye Wangchuck down to the humblest of his 600,000 subjects wants desperately to solve the mystery before this ill-omened Year of the Tiger ends.

The monk was a caretaker at the Tiger's Lair, a sacred cave shrine perched high on the cliff-face of a granite mountain. It was here, the Bhutanese believe, that Guru Padmasambava, the wizard-saint of Himalayan Buddhism, went to meditate after alighting on his flying tiger. One day last April, as darkness inked across the valley below, somebody climbed up to the Tiger's Lair, accessible by a narrow ledge cut into the sheer granite. The murderer killed the solitary caretaker and set off two explosions in the temple. The motive wasn't robbery: left untouched were stacks of banknotes and gold given by pilgrims. Then the assailant fled down into the forest, through the wispy tangles of moss that hang from the oaks like a dragon's goatee.

The Bhutanese read many evil portents into the Tiger's Lair attack. Not that they admit to being superstitious: Bhutanese prefer to think of themselves as being fine-tuned to the invisible forces of nature. Before an archery match, for example, they bless their arrows at a temple. This accommodation with the spirit world can even affect modern development projects. For example, when a bridge needs building, the river spirit has to be persuaded--or fooled--into swimming away with tempting offerings and prayers. Erecting a hydroelectric dam, which tends to put the river goddess into a vile mood, requires more elaborate trickery. After complaints from yak herders, the Bhutanese banned foreign climbers from crawling up the face of their sacred mountains. And when astrologers publish warnings in the kingdom's one newspaper, Kuensel, against travel, droves of people cancel their seats on Druk Air's two planes. A death in Guru Padmasambava's cave is as bad as an omen can get, especially when it was not the work of spirits but of a murderer.

In the search for answers to the mystery, King Jigme, 43, has applied his legendary grasp of detail to memorizing the forensic report. But there are precious few clues to work with. The entire country, roughly the size of Switzerland, employs just 2,000 policemen, and it's easy for a fugitive to disappear into the forest. For now, only one thing seems clear: in the modern world, this tiny, peaceful kingdom now has enemies. And they are closing in. A day before the King was to view a schoolchildren's parade in Thimphu last month, a bomb exploded in the Royal Pavilion.

Is the outside world to blame? On the one hand, Bhutan's decision to open itself up in the 1960s--prompted by China's annexation of Tibet--has brought prosperity. At $550, per-capita income is high for the region, and nobody dies of hunger. King Jigme's goal, he says, is to increase the "gross national happiness," and to that end he spends weeks traveling his Himalayan realm, in a Toyota Land Cruiser until the roads end and then on horseback or by foot, inquiring about what it would take to make people content. But openness has also attracted unwanted intruders. The biggest threat comes from illegal immigrants swarming in from overpopulated Nepal and India. These settlers gaze hungrily upon Bhutan's primeval land and see a forest of dollar signs: rare timber waiting to be logged and farmland cleared.

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