A Death in China (16 page)

“But I saw a big article in the People’s Daily,” Stratton broke in.

Kangmei said, “Certainly there is a problem with stealing, but only a minor problem. The artifacts are worth a fortune by Chinese standards. One of the women in my cell admitted that she had stolen a bridle from one of the bronze horses. The bridle was made only of stone beads, not gold or silver. Still, she was able to sell it to a street peddler for a hundred yuan. The peddler probably sold it to a tourist for three or four times as much. Such things do happen.”

“In our country, too.”

“But, Thom-as, something bigger is happening at Xian. If these prisoners were telling the truth, then I know why Uncle David quarreled with my father. I know what he had found out. During the past several months, the Qin site has suffered three major thefts—the crimes are so enormous that they would create a terrible scandal in Peking. There would be a large investigation by the Ke Ge Bo. People would go to jail, or worse.”

“What was stolen, Kangmei?”

“Soldiers. Three soldiers, Thom-as, on three different occasions. A spear carrier, an archer and a charioteer. They are among the most priceless treasures in Chinese history, buried with the Emperor Qin—and now missing.”

“My God.” Stratton’s mind juggled the pieces of the puzzle. “David found out!”

“I think so,” Kangmei said sadly. “That is why I do not think he is still alive, Thom-as, no matter what my father told you.”

“No, don’t you see? Wang Bin needs David more than ever now. He needs him to get out. It’s only a matter of time before Peking discovers this theft, and your father knows this. There is nothing left for him to do but run.”

Stratton coaxed more speed from the recalcitrant truck. Once Wang Bin learned that Stratton had escaped, he would act quickly. Quickly enough, and there was a good chance he would never be caught.

“Kangmei, what could your father have done with the clay soldiers?”

“You assume that it was he who stole them.”

“I am certain,” Stratton said.

Kangmei swallowed to keep back the tears. “The women prisoners said the same thing. The rumor is that he smuggled them out of the country. To America.”

“How?”

“I do not know,” she said wearily. “Something so large and so delicate as a statue—it would be very difficult, Thom-as, even for Wang Bin. Every box or parcel destined for your country would be subject to automatic inspection, especially if it came from a government office. The Party has been watching my father closely. Some of the old men do not approve of the way he has handled the Qin project. I’m sure they are jealous of the publicity.”

“Wang Bin would never ship the artifacts directly to the United States,” Stratton agreed. “The risk would be too great. Boxes like that would never clear U.S. Customs without a search.” Then it struck him. “Unless … “

“What?” Kangmei asked.

“Oh, God.” Stratton could not bring himself to say it aloud, a theory so horrible with black irony, so devious that it could be the only explanation of how a Chinese deputy minister could actually steal the storied Celestial Army, one soldier at a time.

The car was a Shanghai, requisitioned without explanation from the ministry motor pool, and it veered without grace through empty streets, a whining gray shadow. Decades before, in the army, Wang Bin had briefly driven a truck. Since then, it had been beneath him to drive at all. David Wang slumped against the passenger door with the empty gaze of a vexed old man.

“Why?” he asked again.

“I have tried to explain. It was for your own protection, brother, I promise you.” The strain of driving overwhelmed Wang Bin’s English. He had lapsed into the Shanghai dialect of their childhood. “The radicals … the madmen, they are coming back, grabbing for power. I am one of their victims.”

“You caged me like an animal.”

“Only to save you … from the madmen.”

David Wang shook himself like a dog awakening. He squinted at his brother in the pale reflection of the windshield. Like watching a mirror. A mirror of lies.

“It was not the ‘madmen’ who drugged me and jailed me. Not the Party, or any radicals. Just you, brother. Only you.”

“It was not my choice or my liking, I promise you. I had to make you disappear. They … they were going to arrest you.”

“Nonsense. You invited me to China as a pretext. Somehow my presence was important to your conspiracy. But I still do not see—”

“A wish to see the brother that was robbed from me. That was the only conspiracy, I swear it.”

“And I was so glad to see you, at first. Like seeing myself again, seeing what I might have been like, living another life in another country; the product of a totally different society, a revolution. It moved me to see you, my brother, more than I can explain.”

“And I, too.”

Ahead, the road wound darkly toward the northern hills.

“But how fragile are our illusions, how quickly dispelled. It was in Xian. One single day of joy, discovery. And then, disillusion when I saw what you had done.”

“Forget Xian,” Wang Bin hissed. “It is not important. It has nothing to do with you.”

“At first I imagined you wanted me to help you steal. I photographed what you did not want me to see and you took my camera away. Your carefully sculpted mask slipped then and I realized that you are my brother only in name. It is well that our father is dead.”

“You do not understand.”

“Oh, yes, brother. I have seen it, and touched it, and tasted its majesty. What you are doing is a crime against China, against all of us. I will not allow it.”

Wang Bin spared a glance from the road, expecting to see his brother’s hand on the door handle, ready to bolt. It was what he feared most. But David sat with his arms folded, staring straight ahead, a self-righteous plodder chewing on a puzzle. Wang Bin despised him.

“Where are you taking me?” David Wang demanded.

“This road goes to the Great Wall and to the Ming Tombs. I am taking you somewhere you will be safe.”

“I would be safe in Peking, except for you.”

“You must understand,” Wang Bin exclaimed with all the conviction he could muster. “They were going to arrest you … as a spy.”

“I? A spy? Can you not invent something less transparent?”

“It’s true, I swear it. Hundreds of Chinese return here each year and disappear. The government believes that once a Chinese always a Chinese. You may carry some other passport, but it doesn’t matter. I heard from friends in the Public Security Bureau that you were to be arrested. Perhaps it was only their way of getting at me. But when I heard about it, I became desperate. I could not tell you. Since you have not lived in China, you cannot understand how things are. In desperation, the only thing I could think to do quickly was to hide you; to keep you safe until I could find a way to help you leave the country.”

“And that is where we are going now? On an empty road to nowhere in the middle of the night? To keep me safe? To get me out of the country?”

“Yes.”

“My brother, we are both old men, but neither of us is stupid. If you tell me the truth, I will try to help you. We can go to the embassy. I have important friends at home. It is not too late. Look, it is nearly dawn. Let it be the first dawn of a new life for you, my brother. I implore you. I will help.”

Wang Bin never faltered. Cautiously, he directed the car across a long causeway that breasted a dry river. They entered an avenue lined with giant stone animals in pairs: camels, lions, elephants.

“This is the entrance to the Ming Tombs,” Wang Bin said.

“I have seen the pictures.”

“Very well, we will talk as brothers. Tell me what you think. Perhaps you are right. Perhaps it is not too late.”

They were near now. Wang Bin needed only another few minutes. Of the thirteen tombs, one had been excavated and was open to tourists. The other twelve were in disrepair, their dusty grounds impromptu picnic sites for bored foreign residents of the capital. Wang Bin turned onto a narrow strip of asphalt running to a modern reservoir built in a gentle valley beneath the hillside tombs.

David Wang rambled on, but the words had become irrelevant now, like the memorial chants in the aftermath of battle. Wang Bin stopped the car on a rocky beach at the shore of the reservoir. The half light of false dawn shadowed a half-dozen wooden rowboats lying face down above the high-water mark. There was no sign of life.

Wang Bin shut off the engine. Carefully, he set the hand brake.

“Your words have great impact on me, brother,” he said. “I am beginning to see my mistake, an excess of pride. Let us talk further in the fresh air. It is quite beautiful here. It is not often in China that a man can be alone like this.”

Wang Bin stood with his back to the car, facing the dark, still water. He fished among the larger rocks for a flat stone and sent it skimming.

“Only two jumps. Do you remember how as boys we would skim stones in the river? Five jumps, six jumps. Anything seemed possible then.”

“I remember,” David’s voice came from behind.

“Things are more complicated now.”

“Yes, they are. Neither of us is as strong as we were once in Shanghai.”

“It is true.”

They fell silent, watching tiny wavelets lapping at the beach stones.

It was David who spoke at last. A voice of infinite sadness.

“I have thought it through. I understand why you invited me to China, why you held me captive. And why you have brought me here. I know now what it is that only a brother can do for you, no one else. I understand your plan for him.”

“Tell me.”

“He is to be your essential victim. You must murder him.”

Wang Bin never turned. Unseeing, he spoke to the waters.

“Yes. I must murder him.”

With a tremendous shove, David Wang pushed his brother into the shallow water. Then, clumsily, he began running along the beach toward a workman’s shack that beckoned from the distance. David had not run far when he lost his footing on the loose stones and pitched forward with a groan.

It was then his brother caught him from behind.

Stratton’s forearms ached from steering the hard-sprung truck over what seemed an endless series of unseen hills. The pitted road twisted, like a snake. In the tepid glint of light from the dashboard, the gauge that Stratton had decided was for gas rested on its bottom mark. The one next to it—temperature?—seemed to be rising. He nudged the girl at his side.

“Wake up, Kangmei. It will be dawn soon and the truck will not go much farther.”

“I was not sleeping, Thom-as, just resting.” She stretched and ran her hands through the mass of tangled black hair. “Have we passed a river?”

“On a very shaky bridge, about ten minutes ago.”

“Good. We are almost there.”

“Where is there, Kangmei?” She had been coy about that since their escape. A safe place where they would be with friends, she had said.

“It is a commune, Thom-as. We call it Bright Star. It is the home of my mother’s family. I lived there during the Cultural Revolution when my father was being punished. My uncles are among the commune leaders. They will protect us.”

Stratton nodded. It had to have been something like that. He riffled through the possibilities. A commune in a backward province more than a thousand miles from Peking, and probably a century in terms of control. Once they had taught him a great deal about communes, the central fact of life for eight hundred million Chinese. The instructor’s voice came back to Stratton. He had been a Spec/6, dragged from a Ph.D. program to war. Shared reward for shared work, a Marxist replacement for rural villages dominated by landlords. Now there were no more landlords, only work brigades and production teams tilling common land.

What had resisted revolution was the social makeup of the communes. Almost all who lived on a commune in China were descendants of people who had lived there centuries ago. Nearly all the children born there would also die there in toothless old age. The continuity of families remained stronger than the caprice of a distant state.

Kangmei would be safe. The family would close around her, shutting out inquiries from cadres who, knowing the system, would not press too hard. She would be safe, but also empty. What kind of life would it be for an intelligent, vivacious young woman, calf-deep in paddy muck, courted by half-literate bumpkins? Whom would she talk to? Whom would she love? Kangmei deserved better than that. Stratton made himself a private promise: She would have it. Somehow. One day.

But would the commune shelter him as well? Probably, for a time, anyway.

“Kangmei, we’re in Guangdong Province, right? How far from the coast?”

“No, this is Guangxi. And we are many hours from the sea, many hills and many people.”

Guangxi. Memories worse than the cobra.

“Look, I think it would be better if—”

She had outthought him.

“You would never make it to the sea without help, Thom-as. And my family will be very proud to hide you, and to help you escape, especially when they see the wonderful gift you are bringing them.”

“You?”

She laughed, a mountain stream.

“Oh, they will be glad to see me, too. But it is the truck they will prize most.”

“The truck.”

“But … how will they account for it?”

“They will hide it while they let all other production teams know that they have saved enough money to buy a used truck. Then one day it will appear. Imagine the celebration; the other teams will be so jealous.”

“I see,” Stratton said in quiet wonder.

“You will be a hero, Thom-as. My hero.” She slid across the seat and kissed him with flashing tongue.

They left the truck in a copse of trees on a hillside capped by an ancient pagoda. Kangmei, bubbling with the excitement of a little girl on Christmas, led him to the hilltop. It was nearly light by the time they reached the top.

“Down there,” she said, gesturing to a mist-shrouded valley.

“That is Bright Star. My family lives in the houses near the school. Soon you will see.”

With exaggerated care, she installed him on a bed of needles beneath some pine trees, about a hundred yards from the dirt path that wound into the valley.

“No one will see you here. Rest. My uncles and I will come back around lunchtime, when everyone is sleeping. It will be safe then for you to come down. It’s not far.” She looked at him through almond eyes without end. “You will wait for me, Thom-as. Please?”

“I will wait.” He hugged her. “Here, a gift for your family.” He handed her the leather-yoked keys of the truck.

When she had gone, Stratton lay with his head pillowed in his arms and watched the sky turn blue. As the tension drained from him, aches replaced adrenaline. It had been a long time since he had been this tired. Stratton surrendered to sleep.

When he awoke it was already late morning. The sun, approaching its zenith, oppressed the pine grove. It had brought sapping humidity and a winged holiday for insects of every stinging phylum. Stratton relieved himself against a tree and crawled onto an outcropping of rock that looked onto the valley, trying not to think how hungry he was.

A picturebook scene. The commune was comprised of what had apparently been four separate villages in the space of several square miles. Around each cluster of single-story wood homes well-trod dikes led to paddies of rice. In the northern quadrant lay a bright green field of what could only have been sugarcane. To the east was a well-kept citrus grove. A patchwork of small private plots lay on the fringes of the communal fields. The nearest settlement, the one to which Kangmei must have gone, was arranged around a carp pond. The only building of substance was a low, ramshackle structure with a thatched roof and a fresh coat of whitewash. Stratton decided it must be a combination school and office for the production team.

The fields and earthen streets of the village swarmed with people. Stratton watched a double file of schoolchildren, hand-in-hand, parade in a swatch of color toward a dusty soccer field where some teenagers desultorily kicked a ball.

Stratton counted two trucks and a handful of three-wheeled contraptions that looked like misshapen lawn mowers. “Walking tractors,” Kangmei called them.

The scene was peaceful and, by Chinese standards, an advertisement for rural prosperity. Stratton noted the slender cable on thin poles that dropped into the hamlet and spread ancillary arms toward a few of the nearest houses; by rule of thumb in China, if electricity has spilled down to individual production teams, a commune is well off.

At the base of the hillside path there appeared a supple girl and two stocky men in peasants’ garb. As they began to climb, the girl waved diffidently, a fleeting, offhand movement, like shooing flies. Kangmei had found refuge.

Stratton decided to wait where he was. Idly, he began to trace the power line out from the settlement, across the fields and back toward its origin.

It was a mistake.

In almost the precise center of the valley, sheathed in trees, lay the administrative headquarters of the commune, the hub of which the four production teams were spokes. Stratton could see a dingy white water tower and, amid shadows, the perimeter walls of what once had been the landlord’s house. He made out a strip of macadam and along it some shops, a vegetable market and a fair-sized building with a half-domed roof that might once have been a 1930s movie theater.