A Death in China (11 page)

The inventory of his belongings provided by the American Embassy listed three unexposed rolls of film. To Stratton, the explanation was simple: Wang Bin had confiscated all the film his brother had shot during his homecoming.

A shrill chorus of military music exploded from a scratchy speaker in Stratton’s compartment. He groped for the dial and tried to turn it off; the marching song faded, but it would not die. He glanced at his wristwatch and noticed that the train was already ten minutes late for departure.

Stratton was uneasy. Next time, he knew, Wang Bin’s methods would be less diabolical, but more dependable than a killer snake. Once back in Peking, Stratton would make a beeline for the embassy and enlist Linda’s help.

A waiter knocked lightly on the door of the compartment. He brought Stratton a hand towel and a small lumpy pillow. Stratton thanked him and said, “Are we leaving soon?”

“Soon,” the waiter answered politely. He stared at Stratton’s swollen nose as he backed out.

“Is there some kind of mechanical problem?”

“Soon,” the waiter repeated, disappearing.

Through the window Stratton scanned the empty station ramp. The train was loaded. Any minute now … he sighed, and stretched his legs on the long seat.

Stratton toyed with his newfound scenario. Wang Bin had invited his brother to China, hoping to recruit David into a smuggling scheme. As a courier, perhaps, for ancient artifacts. Or maybe Wang Bin simply needed a trusted person to act as a broker for the priceless contraband back in the States.

Together they visited the Qin tombs. Wang Bin gave David the grand tour—maybe more. David took some pictures. Wang Bin made his pitch, but David rebuffed him. The deputy minister was enraged, panic-stricken. Stratton could easily imagine Wang Bin’s reaction if David had threatened—as he probably did—to report his greedy brother to the authorities in Peking.

Stratton recalled Kangmei’s conversation with her uncle on the night of his death: He said that Wang Bin was doing something very wrong … He was horrified that his brother would attempt such a thing. Yes, the old professor’s indignation would have been volcanic. And what if, Stratton wondered, David had learned something so scandalous that it could have sent the deputy minister to prison?

Wouldn’t that be enough to make one brother murder another?

Stratton finished his tea and set the empty cup on the table. The train still had not moved, but in his ruminations Stratton had forgotten his impatience.

He was sure now. He had figured it out.

To Wang Bin, it must have seemed a simple scheme, wonderfully pragmatic. Faithful brother David returns home from his China trip, a sword or vase or delicate clay mask packed in his personal luggage. The proper-looking receipts would be provided, of course—and where would one ever encounter a customs officer expert enough, or bold enough, to challenge such artifacts?

Once safely in the United States, any large museum would pay magnificently and ask precious few questions. David would be delighted for his cut, however small. After all, who can retire comfortably on a meager university pension?

As for the rest of the money, Wang Bin’s share: a bank draft to a numbered account in Zurich, and from there, a transfer to Hong Kong. There were a few creative ways to get it actually back into Peking, but Stratton figured that Hong Kong would have been close enough for the deputy minister.

A neat scheme, Stratton thought, until David Wang balked. Then there was only one thing his fearful brother could do.

Stratton stood up and stretched. Powell would never believe it. With Linda Greer, he had a better chance. By now, she would have learned of his escapade with the cadres in the Red Flag limousine. Her feelers would be out on the street; friendly eyes would be looking for him. Stratton figured that Wang Bin was not the only person who now wanted him out of China.

He was not frightened for himself, but he worried for Kangmei. Because of who she was, she probably would not be killed. Still, her life could be ruined. There was no telling what her penance would be. In Kangmei’s case, Stratton reflected sadly, there would be no one to intervene.

Someone tapped on the door.

“More tea?”

“No, thank you,” Stratton said, surprised at the sound of hard-learned English. “Can you tell me when we’re leaving?”

The door opened. “Now,” said the man in the Mao cap. He pointed a Russian-made pistol at Stratton’s face. The American raised his arms. Liao followed Deng through the door.

The three men stood awkwardly together in the small compartment, Stratton awaiting directions. He could not believe they would shoot him on a crowded morning train.

“Where to?” he asked after a few moments.

“Off train,” Deng said, but he didn’t move.

“Nose broke,” Liao said with a perceptive sneer. He pointed at Stratton’s face.

“Yeah, well, I’m sorry about your pet snake,” Stratton muttered.

Deng lowered the pistol from Stratton’s head and held it at waist level, trained on the American’s midsection.

“I’ll go quietly, don’t worry,” Stratton said. The Chinese traded glances. “How long are we going to stand here?” Stratton asked.

“Go now,” said Deng, pulling the trigger.

The bullet lifted Tom Stratton and propelled him backward into the wall of the compartment. His head cracked against a steel bunk and he rag-dolled forward into a heap on the floor. Day became night. The Chinese demons screamed in Stratton’s ears until his mind went limp and cold in a terrible sleep.

“We’ve got a pair of nasty little problems on our hands, don’t we?” The station chief drummed his pudgy gray fingers on the desk. He let out a sigh of disgust. “Wang Bin and Stratton.”

Linda Greer was reading a file. She wore glasses, forcing herself to fix on the words. She fought off despair.

“Why did the deputy minister want your friend out of the country so badly? Think of it: We tell him quite politely that Mr. Stratton will not be accompanying his brother’s body back to the United States—and what does he do? He sends a couple of goons to the hotel. Why?” The station chief did not wait to hear any theories. “Because he knows. Linda, somehow Wang Bin got hold of Stratton’s service record. He knows about Man-ling.”

Linda shook her head slowly and set the file on the desk. “It’s more than that. It’s got to be.”

“Damn, the coffee’s cold already. Why does it have to be more than that?”

“Suppose Wang Bin knows about Stratton’s brief incursion back in 1971,” Linda began. “Wouldn’t it be easier, and more effective, to make a formal request: ‘This man is an undesirable and we would like him to leave China at once’? A sticky little deportation problem, nothing more. We’ve handled stuff like that in the past. Now this,” she said, motioning toward the file, “is pretty clumsy, sir. Chasing Stratton all over the city with a goddamn Red Flag, then trying to run him over in the street … that’s not the style of this bureaucracy, sir. It’s too messy. Reckless. Something like that might happen in Moscow—”

“In a blue moon!” the station chief huffed.

“—but never in Peking. The police or the PLA could have captured Stratton in a matter of minutes.”

The phone rang once. The station chief spoke briefly and hung up. “So what are you saying, Linda? That this was a private matter between Wang and Stratton? An informal abduction?”

“Something’s going on, and it’s damn sure not just a matter of honor. My guess is that Wang Bin sent those two clowns to grab Stratton, not to kill him. But when it looked as if he would get away, they panicked and tried to run him down.”

“Now one is dead and the other’s a cabbage. Jesus!” The station chief grunted as he flipped through his copy of the file. “And our Mr. Stratton is missing in action. What a fiasco!”

Linda Greer said nothing. The possibilities were too depressing.

The station chief looked up and asked, “Think they caught up with him at Xian?”

“Yes.”

“Me, too. Think he’s dead?”

“Probably. We had someone interview some of the other Americans on that tour. They saw Stratton at the hotel yesterday morning, but he didn’t stay with the group.”

“Naturally.”

“He left with two Chinese, a young woman and a man.”

“And?”

Linda took off her glasses and folded them. “This morning, when one of the Americans went to Stratton’s hotel room, he was gone. Gone without a trace. The woman who discovered him missing is the same one who gave us the story about the snake.”

The station chief smiled slightly, remembering the bland entry in the file, rated “very reliable.”

“Ah, that would be the busybody Mrs. Dempsey. She also found the Chinese in Stratton’s room. Just tidying up, I suppose. What kind of snake?

“She didn’t know,” Linda said. “By the time our people got there, the room was clean. There was a little blood on the floor, though. Most of it had been scrubbed away—”

“Was there enough to—”

“Yes. O positive. Same as Tom’s.” Linda Greer felt very tired. She wanted to go back to her apartment and soak in the bathtub. She wanted to cry.

“Oh dear,” the station chief muttered. He gazed out the window; the setting sun painted the tiled roofs of Peking a burned yellow and turned the haze into a pale lemon curtain.

“I took the liberty of filing formal inquiries with China Travel, the tourism bureau, and the others … I don’t expect to hear anything, but at least we’re on the record as far as procedure goes.”

“Yes,” the station chief said. “Good thinking. Let’s meet again tomorrow. Noonish. In the meantime, say nothing to Powell. I’m sure he’s picked up whispers about that insane goddamn bicycle chase, so just tell him we’re checking it out.”

Linda Greer collected her purse and briefcase, and headed for the door.

The station chief cleared his throat. “Linda,” he called in a softer voice. “I’m sorry about Stratton.”

“Thanks.”

“What do you suppose he was after?”

“I haven’t the slightest idea,” she replied truthfully.

For three days the freight train creaked south through plains and farmland, skirting the rugged mountain ranges that rule China’s interior. The trip was hot, the train old and plodding, led by a spanking new steam locomotive.

Tom Stratton lay in a boxcar that smelled of ammonia and cow manure. His arms and legs were trussed, and a burlap sack had been tied loosely over his head and upper torso. A dirty wad of gauze had been tightly taped over the nearly circular wound in his thigh. Deng’s aim had been perfect; the small-caliber bullet had missed Stratton’s hip bone and passed harmlessly through the fat of his upper leg. The blow on the head that had come with the fall had been a bonus for Deng and his partner; it had then been a simple matter to explain the unconscious American tourist being carried off the train in Xian. He had fallen in the compartment and badly cut his leg. He needed medical attention immediately.

Tom Stratton woke hours later to the clanging of rails, the lurching of the boxcar, and the tickle of a small animal scampering across the sack that cloaked his head. It was night. His thigh ached painfully. Stratton guessed that his bunkmate was probably a rat, and he rolled over to frighten it away. His head twirled and his ears rang as he moved; undoubtedly he had been sedated. He lay still and inhaled vigorously, the burlap puckering at his mouth with each breath. The stale air was heavy with musk, but in it there was a sweet tinge of wheat and maize. Stratton’s stomach growled in recognition.

Eventually, he squirmed into a sitting position, propped up against a sack of what smelled like potatoes.

It was a small moral victory. Sitting up, Stratton felt a little less helpless. He wondered why they hadn’t just killed him. No esoteric stuff—cobras and the like—just a good old-fashioned bullet in the brain. He felt slightly nauseous but resolved not to throw up in the sack. As the hours passed and his body cried for water, Stratton began to pray that they would not leave him there to die in a vegetable car with a horde of hungry goddamn rats.

The panel door of the boxcar clattered open and daylight exploded in Stratton’s face. He had managed to work himself out of the burlap, in the darkness, but could see nothing. Now the sudden brightness blinded him. Rough hands yanked him upright by the hair. A terse command in Mandarin, and then in English: “Drink!” Stratton gulped strange-tasting water from a wooden mug. Within minutes, he grew dizzy and passed out.

Deng and Liao were in a foul mood; neither had relished a trip to the south. Peking, with its fine restaurants and all its cadre privileges, was infinitely preferable to a muggy peasant farm village. Down here the lines of authority were less clearly drawn, Deng grumbled; respect seemed to diminish with each kilometer away from the Imperial City. At every stop there had been questions: Where are your papers? What are you doing here? Where is your dan-wei! In his agitation, Deng handled the sleeping form of Tom Stratton with something less than gentleness.

“I thought we would be finished with this in Xian,” Liao said as they heaved Stratton onto a flatbed truck. “The orders changed. I wonder why.”

“A good question for the deputy minister,” Deng said. “He will be here soon.”

Wang Bin leaned back and blew a smoke ring toward the ceiling. “Tell me about the American.”

“I will not,” his daughter said hotly.

“You will! You are too old to spank, Wang Kangmei, but you are of an age where other punishment can be more terrible. You still have a future today, but there is no guarantee. Tomorrow, who knows? I would not be the first senior Party official to forsake an errant child.”

Kangmei folded her arms across her breasts and stared at the floor.

“Did you sleep with him?”

“He told me all about Uncle David. He wished to see the tombs at Xian, the dig you are so proud of. What harm was there in showing him?”

“He asked many questions, did he not?”

“Not as many as I asked him. Father, I was merely curious. About Xian, about my uncle. I was distraught because he died only days after we first met. Can you understand that?”

“Did you—”

“No! I did not sleep with Stratton.”

“Deng and Liao told me you were in his room.” Wang Bin’s eyes dropped. “Naked in his bed.”

“They are vicious liars, Father. They came to my room, and dragged me from my own bed. They took me to Stratton and began to interrogate us. They hit me, Father, and said terrible things. Stratton tried to stop them and they beat him up, and locked him in a closet—”

Wang Bin raised a hand. “You are a foolish girl, and a bad liar. For that, I suppose, I should be grateful. Your eyes confess everything, Kangmei. Now I ask you: What of the family honor? Whoring with a foreigner—such behavior aggrieves me, and insults the entire Wang family. I shall not mention what it would do to your mother.”

“I told you—”

“It probably will not be possible to keep this quiet for very long. Today the loyalties of Liao and Deng belong to me; tomorrow, who can say?” Wang Bin watched his daughter’s eyes grow moist. Her posture remained erect, and her face defiant. “Kangmei, this fascination you nurture for America has become a dangerous and disturbing thing. You are in serious trouble. This Thomas Stratton is no simple tourist. He is a cunning man, a former soldier. He has been to China before, and he has killed Chinese. He is a spy, Kangmei, and you, his tool. The shame you have brought to our family … it saddens me.”

“No!” Kangmei cried. “You are wrong, Father. Stratton was a friend of my uncle, that it all. He mourns David Wang as a friend mourns, deeply and sincerely. This I know. I’ve done nothing shameful—”

“That is enough,” Wang Bin said coldly.

“No!” Kangmei was on her feet, shouting and crying at once. “How can you treat a daughter like this? The thugs who beat me, attacked me in my bed—they should be in jail, not me. Yet I am dragged from my room, tied up, gagged, and thrown in a dirty cell with dangerous criminals. Why, Father?”

Wang Bin laughed shortly and stubbed out his cigarette. “Your pitiful cellmates hardly qualify as dangerous criminals. They are petty thieves, my daughter, that’s all. They’re being punished for pilfering from the archaeological sites—nothing valuable: trinkets, really. But it is important to set an example for the others. Stealing cannot be tolerated at such historic places. However, these people are not truly dangerous, so stop the tears.”

Kangmei asked, “Must I go back to the cell?”

Wang Bin circled the small desk and slipped an arm around his daughter’s trembling shoulders. “No,” he said. “We’re going on a trip.”

Kangmei pulled away and faced her father. “Where?”

“South,” he replied, “to a small village. Kangmei, there is something you must do for me—and for yourself. To erase what has happened is impossible. But it is still possible for you to repent, to have a future, and perhaps even a good position in China. You must do as I say.”

“And if I refuse?”

Wang Bin raised his hands in a gesture of feigned indifference. “Then I will not hesitate to put you on the first train to Tibet, where you can grub potatoes for the next five years.”

Torn Stratton awoke to the hum of flies circling his head. His cheek pressed against an earthen floor, and the cool smell of clay filled his nostrils.

As he righted himself, the bleak room spun briefly. His arms and legs were free. His thigh throbbed, and by the dismal condition of the bandage, Stratton knew that his captors had not changed the dressing.

His cell was spartan: a single wooden chair, straight-backed, handmade, with a crude hemp seat; a solitary bare light bulb, fixed in the rafters; a large ceramic bowl, crusted with stale rice and scum, buzzing with insects; and a single window, at eye level, crisscrossed in a loose pattern with barbed wire.

Tom Stratton was alone. He paced the dimensions of the room at eight feet by twelve. The heavy door was made of intransigent timber. Stratton knew it would never yield to his shoulder.

Peering through the window, which measured about a foot square, Stratton expected to see a military compound with marching squads of People’s Liberation Army soldiers, or at least some uniformed police. Instead he saw a newly paved road and a large parking lot half-filled with trucks and bicycles; beyond that, a banana grove carpeted an entire hillside. A lorry painted dark PLA green trundled down the two-lane road and stopped in the parking lot no more than fifty yards from Stratton’s cell. He watched a quiet but affable procession of Chinese jump down and form an orderly group. The men wore sturdy gray or brown slacks, starched shirts open at the neck, while the pigtailed women wore loose-fitting pants and white cotton blouses. Their clothing was too fancy for work. Stratton assumed that the visitors were local tourists.

The truck rattled off, and the Chinese marched dutifully toward the building in which Stratton was being held. They crossed only a few feet from his cell, talking in pleasant tones, until they finally passed out of Stratton’s sight.

He decided that his dungeon definitely was not part of a regular Chinese jail.

Stratton moved to the corner of the room that garnered the most light from the small window. There he peeled off the soiled bandage and examined the bullet hole in his right thigh. The dime-sized wound was black and scabbed, but the vermilion halo around it announced that infection had set in. Stratton’s only piece of clothing, a short-sleeved sports shirt, was rancid from the long train ride, and of no use as a sponge. Reluctantly, he rewrapped his injured leg with the same dirty gauze, and sat down to wait for his keepers.

They arrived without pleasantries, an hour before dusk; three men, lean, unremarkable, impassive at first. They wore no uniforms, which surprised Stratton. One of them, who carried a rifle with a bayonet, motioned Stratton out of the cell.