A Death in China (13 page)

“How?” Stratton was too nonplussed to invent a denial.

“How did we ever know the name of the dashing captain of intelligence in Saigon who always undertook the most dangerous infiltration missions? The hero of many medals who led raids into North Vietnam and, once, even into China?

“How simple Americans are! Heroes are never truly anonymous, Captain, and soldiers can never be trusted with secrets. Can they? Think back to Saigon. Many Americans knew the true identity of the secret ‘Captain Black.’ Can you believe they never talked? To their girls, to friends when they were drunk. It took some time, the file says as much. But within a few months, North Vietnamese intelligence knew you were Captain Black. After your raid into China, they shared their information—we were allies then, remember. The Vietnamese wanted you very badly, and after your slaughter of innocent peasants, so did we. Too bad you left Saigon before the assassination teams could find you.”

“You got the wrong guy,” Stratton said without conviction.

“I think not. Your death, at least, is something for which the Revolution will thank me. Goodbye, Captain. I hope you will find hell even less hospitable than China.”

Wang Bin stormed from the makeshift cell. Stratton heard the heavy wooden bar fall against the door. He lay for a long time on the fetid ground, thinking, listening.

Then, painfully but surely, he pulled himself to his feet. He hurt, but not as badly as he had led Wang Bin to believe. Teeth clenched, moving with the jerky uncertainty of an old man, Stratton began a series of painful limbering exercises. As he bent and swayed, Stratton replayed the conversation with Wang Bin. If the mind is too occupied to register pain, then there is no pain.

The man was angry, and he would be merciless. That was the bottom line. Yet there had been bits of information within the conversation that Stratton might use. He began to gnaw at them.

He was in the south of China. What he had seen of the vegetation Wang Bin had confirmed. Guangxi Province. Stratton tried to superimpose the train ride on a map of China. South for three days. He couldn’t be far from the coast. If he could get to the sea and steal a boat …

There had been puzzling things, too. David’s unwitting role had been to bring something, Wang Bin had said. That was an obvious lie. The brothers had argued in Xian only after David had learned that Wang Bin wanted him to smuggle.

“My brother is not dead,” he had said. A second lie, even more senseless than the first. Of course David was dead—he had been murdered.

There was a third riddle. Stratton’s death was to be “my last gesture” to the Revolution. What could account for that strange phrase?

Gingerly, he began a series of knee bends. Down-two-three-four. His leg howled in protest. Why tell lies to a condemned man? Senseless. Unless …

“Oh, Jesus.”

Stratton spoke aloud to the emptiness of his cell, the words forced from him by sudden realization. What if Wang Bin had been telling the truth?

Stratton saw it then. Not entirely clear, but in terrifying outline. Solid, diabolical, imminent.

On one point, Wang Bin had been right.

Stratton was a fool.

In frustration, he hammered at the walls of the cell. Then he snapped a leg from the wooden chair and with its point began to scrape at the crude mortar between the bricks. It was irrational, and he knew it. Still, it was not a time for reason. It was a time for fury. Stratton scraped like a man demented.

Wang Bin sat with his legs crossed in an overstuffed armchair, waiting for his tea to cool. On the table before him sat four vases, each exquisite, each more than five hundred years old.

An aide in bottle-bottom glasses came silently into the room. He sprang forward to light the deputy minister’s cigarette.

“Will we be needing our guest any longer, Comrade?” the aide asked quietly.

“One more day, I’m afraid, Lao Zhou.” Wang Bin was perturbed. “I wish it could have been done on the train. If only his embassy had not started asking questions. I must know what he told his people, if he told them anything. One more day … then he must vanish completely, do you understand? No trace.”

“It will be done. He is a dangerous enemy of the state.” The frail-looking young translator with weak eyes was the most sadistic killer Wang Bin had ever encountered.

“You will tell me everything he says. It is vital … to the Revolution,” Wang Bin said. “I would like to be there myself, but I must return immediately to Peking. Go make the arrangements.”

When the aide had gone, Wang Bin extracted a green and white envelope from the breast pocket of his Mao jacket. The telegram had arrived with breakfast and he knew its contents by heart.

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO APPEAR BEFORE THE DISCIPLINARY COMMISSION OF THE PARTY.

It gave a time and a date: tomorrow.

He had been expecting it. And it might have come sooner. Once again, it seemed, those idiots in Peking were determined to wrestle long-suffering China back into the Middle Ages. A few months before, such a summons would have paralyzed Wang Bin with terror—as it was intended to do. But he had foreseen it this time, and he was ready. Now there was just fleeting irritation at the dreadful cost to the nation and his own comfort. Let them writhe, he thought. Let them devour their own entrails if they wish. Comrade Deputy Minister Wang Bin would never again collect night soil.

This new peace of mind had its price, of course: an odious alliance with the American art dealer Harold Broom. His name had come to Wang Bin from an underground buyer in Hong Kong. Broom had been highly recommended, not for his taste—he had none—but for his resourcefulness. It was a trait that Wang Bin had come to appreciate, though he could not help but despise Broom for his crude arrogance.

Their short relationship had been curt, clandestine and efficient. So far. A visa problem smoothed over. A travel permit expedited. Quiet favors.

Yet there were watchers everywhere, Wang Bin well knew. He doubted that the Disciplinary Commission had learned the truth about Harold Broom, but such news would not shock him. He was ready for anything.

By the time the aide returned to confirm the travel arrangements, Wang Bin had already decided.

“We will take the first one and the fourth one,” he said, pointing to the smallest of the four vases.

“Yes, Comrade Deputy Minister. But the comrade director of the museum will be very upset. They are among the best pieces.”

“Tell him they are for permanent display in a place of honor in Peking.”

“Still, he will not like it.”

“Tell him it is for the good of the people. The Revolution demands it.”

“Very well, Comrade Deputy Minister. But he is a hard man. He will want a receipt.”

A hard man who thinks a receipt will protect him.

“A receipt,” said Wang Bin. “By all means. Have the director prepare a receipt and I will sign it.”

Harold Broom arrived ten minutes early at the gleaming white mansion in the River Oaks section of Houston. He leaned against his rented Lincoln for five minutes, admiring the tall pillars and polished marble steps. At the door he was met by a Mexican houseboy in a stiff high-collared waiter’s jacket, who motioned him inside. He led the art dealer up a spiral oaken staircase to a second-floor office where the customer waited.

“Well, hi there!” the Texan said. Even by Houston standards he was young for a millionaire. He wore a flannel shirt, pressed Levi’s, lizardskin boots and the obligatory cowboy hat with a plume. When he shook Broom’s hand, he gave a disconcerting little squeeze before he let go.

Broom sat down and said, “This is a helluva homestead.”

The Texan grinned. “You like it?”

“Oh yeah.” Broom noticed three king-sized television screens mounted on one wall, each flashing a different program. The corners of the office were occupied by stand-up stereo speakers. The Texan kept a video display terminal on his desk to watch the Dow Jones; behind his chair, Broom noticed, stood an arcade-sized Pac Man machine.

The Texan jerked a thumb at it. “Bored with it already,” he said. “I’ve got an order in for an Astral Laser.”

“Swell,” Broom said. It was sickening: all this money and no brains. “Could I have a drink?”

“I don’t see why not.” The Texan poked an intercom button near the phone and shouted, “Paco! Two bourbons pronto.”

“It’s Pablo,” a teenaged voice replied with unmasked annoyance.

The bourbon was excellent. Broom savored it, while the Texan sucked it down loudly. “Nectar,” he said. “Pure nectar!”

Broom reached into the suede valise on his lap and extracted a glossy black-and-white photograph. He glanced at it before handing it across the desk to his host.

“There it is,” Broom said with parental pride. “The real McCoy.”

The Texan was radiant. “Broom, you’ve outdone yourself, I swear to God. I know better than to ask how you did it.”

Broom took this as a compliment, and he forced a modest smile.

“If it arrives in this condition, it will be … awesome.” The Texan clicked his teeth, as if leering at a centerfold.

Broom said, “The photograph was made moments before we packed it. I took the picture myself. That’s the genuine item, and it’s all yours. Guaranteed.”

Pablo poured more bourbon. Broom drank up, basking in luxury and triumph. He was elated to be out of China.

“Harold,” the Texan said, “I’ve gotta be sure. This is the only one?”

“Absolutely,” Broom lied. If the Texan only knew.

“The price is—”

“Two hundred and fifty thousand now. Another two fifty on delivery. And don’t worry. I’ll be delivering it myself.”

“You damn well better,” the Texan growled, reaching for his checkbook. “For the kind of commission you’re getting, Broom, you damn well ought to show up pulling a ricksha.”

The xiu xi is China’s most revered institution. Indeed, a worker’s right to rest is enshrined in China’s constitution. Nowhere does it say that all China shall sleep between noon and 2 p.m., but that is how it seems. If the Russians ever come, it will be at 1 p.m., when only the rawest Chinese recruits will be awake to oppose them. In Peking, office workers sleep on their desks. In the countryside, peasants sleep in the fields. If airplane crews find themselves on the ground at noon, they will not fly again until after lunch and a xiu xi. The more senior a cadre, the better-appointed and more private the place of his xiu xi, and the longer he sleeps.

The Disciplinary Commission had cited Wang Bin for 1 p.m. It was a calculated insult, and he knew it. At noon, Wang Bin lunched with senior aides in a private room of the staff restaurant at the Peking museum that was his headquarters. Conversation was furtive. One or two of the men who had been with him the longest mentioned things that had occurred in the Deputy Minister’s absence in the south: The Qin exhibition had been dispatched to the United States on schedule. From Xinjiang in China’s desert west, the museum was to receive the mummified corpses of two soldiers perfectly preserved in the dry air these six hundred years; they would require a special room with stringent humidity controls.

Mostly, though, the aides avoided meeting Wang Bin’s eyes. Their discomfort amused him. They knew. Deliberations of the Party are secrets closely held. But when the ax is about to fall, everybody knows. Peking becomes a village in those times. When the arrival of soup signaled the last course, Wang Bin pointedly looked around the table, studying his aides individually, making no secret of it. He was rewarded with the sight of six heads, bent uniformly, like acolytes, slurping their soup, seeing only the bowl. He wondered which of them had informed against him, and which would give testimony—if it came to that. The answer was obvious, and it saddened him: all of them. Poor China.

Rising, Wang Bin raised a tiny crystal glass of tnao tai.

“To long life and happiness,” he proposed. “Ganbei.”

“Ganbei,” the aides responded, and each drained the fiery liquor in one swallow.

“Xiu xi,” said Wang Bin. He found savage delight in the uncertainty that caused. One of the aides even looked at his watch. It was precisely one o’clock. So they even knew the time. Spineless sons of a turtle.

Wang Bin slept deeply on a daybed next to his office for more than an hour. The train from the south had been crowded and slow, arriving in Peking just after dawn, and he had rested little. Again and again, he had replayed the climactic acts of the drama he had forged. It would work, as long as he could keep time on his side. He had not expected the Party’s summons so soon. Another day or two might have made all the difference. Wang Bin sighed with finality and prepared to meet his inquisitors.

Precisely at 3 p.m., Wang Bin presented himself at a side entrance of the Great Hall of the People. To those who knew it existed, it was the most dreaded doorway in Peking.

“You are late,” said a severe young receptionist without preamble.

“I was detained on the people’s business. Please tell the comrades that I have arrived.”

“You will wait,” the young man instructed. “The comrade will show you where.”

He gestured to an orderly who led Wang Bin to a high-ceilinged reception room big enough for fifty people. It was empty, except for one straight-backed wooden chair in the precise center of a beige carpet. Wang Bin nearly laughed aloud. It was so transparent.

“Bring tea,” he snarled to the orderly.

No tea came, nor any summons for nearly two hours. By the time Wang Bin was led into a red plush room usually reserved for Central Committee meetings, the two-wheeled afternoon rush hour gripped Peking.

Once more, intimidation. Another crude chair facing a long, highly polished table where three men sat: two wizened Party cadres and a PLA general, to lend authority. The army, after all, belonged not to the nation but to the Party, by decree of the same constitution that had enshrined the xiu xi.

Wang Bin knew all three men. The two Party ancients were willows, professional survivors who had devoted an empty lifetime to swaying back and forth with changing political winds. The general was something else again. Wang Bin had soldiered with him once, when they had both—like their cause—been young and strong.

The three old men comprised the Disciplinary Commission. To their right sat a younger man in his forties. His black hair leapt impulsively from his skull. His eyes burned with the unmistakable fire of a zealot. The prosecutor. At a desk of their own sat two sexless women stenographers.

“You may sit,” said the elder of the two Party hacks. That made him the president of what was technically a commission of inquiry, but only by euphemism. It was as close to a trial as Wang Bin would see, if he was smart. Everybody in the room knew it. Everybody also knew that Wang Bin had already been found guilty of whatever it was they were about to charge him with. All that remained was the sentence.

“I prefer to stand, Comrade,” said Wang Bin.

“You will sit,” snapped the prosecutor.

“Oh, let him stand if he wants to. What difference does it make?” The general sighed from a mouth half-hidden by a hand that supported his face.

“Proceed,” said the president.

“This is an inquiry by the Disciplinary Commission of the Communist Party of the People’s Republic of China against Wang Bin, Party member since 1937, expelled in 1966 and rehabilitated blameless in 1976.”

The prosecutor read like an automaton in a high, singsong voice.

“Based on information received, and from direct observation, the Party accuses Wang Bin of conduct inimical to the best interests of the Party and the state.”

Wang Bin tensed. How much did they know? Everything hinged on the innate stupidity of the bureaucracy. They would list the charges chronologically, with the most recent first, Wang Bin knew, to shake the confidence of the accused by showing how vigilant and up-to-date the watchers could be.

“One. You are accused of meeting secretly, privately and without authorization with a foreigner for purposes inconsistent with the best interests of the Party: namely, Harold Broom, an American citizen; five counts.

“Two. The same accusation applies to another American, one Thomas Stratton, with whom you met secretly in your office in Peking in violation of the Party code of correct conduct.

“Three. You are accused of misuse of Party property, namely one Red Flag limousine, damaged severely while assigned to you.

“Four. You are accused of the misuse of Party funds in paying for a decadent art exhibition attended by foreigners in state property, namely a museum, under your custody.

“Five. You are accused of conspiring against the best interests of the state and the Party in personally securing an entry visa for an American citizen, namely David Wang, without authorization, and of abandoning your post to travel and to meet secretly with David Wang.

“Six. You are accused of receiving unauthorized gifts from a foreigner, namely propaganda materials from the Embassy of France … “

Wang Bin stared at a streak of grease on a chunky window behind the commission table. He tried to remain detached. He tried to keep from laughing. The “propaganda materials” had been a set of art books for the museum library.

And how typical. The Party, in a frenzy of self-consuming self-righteousness, could not see fire, but invented smoke. What he was accused of was making his ministry fairly open, semi-efficient and less backward than most in the Chinese government. His true guilt was unmentioned, unknown, invisible to zealot cadres who found termites in healthy trees, but never noticed that the forest was burning. Wang Bin fought back a sneer. If you really knew my crimes, comrades, my friend the general would end this charade with a single shot—and I wouldn’t blame him.

It was amazing. The prosecutor seemed immune to breathing. He read without pause, increasing shrillness his only concession to an indictment of forty-seven different crimes over seven years.

“Forty-seven. You are accused of meeting privately with a foreigner, namely Gerta Hofsted, in the dining room of the Peking Hotel and charging your ministry for the meal when in fact it was paid for by the foreigner.”

My, my, how thorough. A lunch seven years before with a West German anthropologist. She had never noticed when he pocketed the receipt, but obviously a waiter had.

The prosecutor shut up as suddenly as he had begun. Wang Bin remembered a joke a Russian had told him back in the days when Russia and China were allies. About the factory worker who left every night carrying a heavy load of sand in a wheelbarrow. The KGB knew he was stealing something. They tasted the sand. They sifted it. They sent it away for analysis. The results were conclusive: plain old ordinary worthless sand. It took them months to realize the worker was stealing wheelbarrows. Marxist myopia.

“One other matter has come to the attention of this commission,” said the moribund cadre who sat next to the president. “It is not within the province of this investigation since the accused is not a Party member, but it does reflect on the failure of Comrade Wang Bin to inspire his own family to live according to Party principles.” The cadre sucked, hollow-cheeked, at his tea.

“The commission has evidence that Wang Kangmei, daughter of Comrade Wang Bin, left her unit without permission, that she traveled without permission to the city of Xian, and that there she engaged in sexual relations with a foreigner.”

“She was abducted,” Wang Bin blurted, and instantly regretted it.

“This commission is forwarding the relevant testimony to the Public Security Bureau for action,” the cadre intoned without expression.

That was the cue for the prosecutor. He jerked back to his feet.

“In view of the seriousness of the charges, I call for a full trial and a sentence of life imprisonment at hard labor.”

It was a formality. Still, in the calculated silence that followed the prosecutor’s demand, Wang Bin began to sweat.

“The commission agrees with the prosecutor’s request,” said the president.

Again, the old men allowed a cruel silence to build. Wang Bin braced for the sound of the door opening, the rush of air, the footsteps of the guards summoned by a buzzer beneath the table.

“However,” the president began.

At last! Wang Bin felt a sudden release.

“In view of Comrade Wang’s long service to the Party, this commission will waive a trial in exchange for Comrade Wang’s admission of guilt, a self-criticism, his removal from all state and Party posts and his reeducation through labor in … “—he consulted a printed list in front of him—”Jilin Province.”

It was a sentence of slow death. Manchuria. Backward and cold, so bitterly cold and primitive he would not survive two years there.

“Jilin,” said the second cadre.

That left the general.

“Hunan,” said the general. “And as an office worker. He is an educated man.”

Hunan was backward, too, but warmer. To work there as a bookkeeper on a commune would be dull, but not dangerous, almost like retiring. Such were the fruits of a fifty-year friendship between men who had once fought together.