Westlake, Donald E - Novel 51 (8 page)

           
“Yes.”

           
“Sam Mortimer.” He put out his hand,
gave Kwan’s a firm and honest shake. “Too early for a drink?”

           
“Oh, yes,” Kwan said, smiling at the
idea. It was probably several years too early for a drink; Kwan saw nothing to
be gained from alcohol at this stage in his life.

           
“Tea, then,” Mortimer said,
gesturing toward the hotel’s interior cafe. “We can sit and be comfortable.”

           
The cafe was irregularly shaped, its
predominant color that of flamingos. Along one curving wall, windows looked out
at a rock garden and, beyond it, the swimming pool, in which one man windmilled
doggedly back and forth, back and forth, while a dozen swimsuited people lay on
chaise longues in the sun. Kwan and Mortimer took a table for two next to one
of these windows, and Mortimer opened one of his camera cases, which contained
a cassette recorder, a notepad, and several pencils. “Mind if I record this?”

           
“Not at all.”

           
It wasn’t Kwan’s first interview,
not by a long shot, and he had only the one subject of interest, so both the
questions and the answers were already determined, were already in fact several
times in print. But that was all right; the essence of
news,
as the news gatherers see it, is the recording of simple
objective reality. This conversation is actually taking place, here and now,
verifiably, and is therefore much more newsworthy than any other previous conversation,
no matter how identical.

           
They went over the usual ground in
the usual order, Mortimer checking off questions already written into his
notepad, occasionally making an additional note, or underlining some part of
the question. The background of Li Kwan: Father a teacher, mother a doctor,
himself a quick student, already a university graduate, continuing his studies
in history and English, planning to enter the diplomatic corps. The arrival in
China
of the American president, Bush, leaving a
confused sense of opportunity lost. Then, soon after, the arrival of the Soviet
premier, Gorbachev, and the sense that opportunity must be taken
now.
The demonstrations in favor of
Gorbachev leading somehow naturally to the demonstrations against corruption and
privilege among the Chinese ruling elite, leading to the hunger strike, leading
to the upsurge of popular support.

           
“Looking back now,” Kwan said,
smiling faintly at his former naivete,
^cc
what we did reminds me of
the American protestors of the nineteen sixties, who formed a circle around the
Pentagon, joined hands, and attempted to levitate the building with their
minds. They thought they would actually do it, you know, they expected to see
the building rise up from the ground.
We
thought
we would actually do it, too, and our conviction held the army back for more
than a week.”

           
Mortimer said, “Do you know a lot
about the
United States
? Not history, I mean, but things like
levitating the Pentagon.”

           
“That
is
history.”

           
Mortimer smiled, indulging him.
‘Those people were silly,” he said. “You don’t mean to say that the students in
Tiananmen Square
were silly.”

           
“Of course I do,” Kwan insisted.
“Anyone who follows his aspirations beyond common sense, beyond the bounds of
reality, is silly. But we have to be silly, some of us have to be silly, if the
human race is to get anywhere.”

           
Mortimer was troubled by that. It
showed in his friendly face, but he didn’t pursue it. Instead, he went on to
the next question in his notebook. And the next. And the next. Through the
past, and into the future: “What do you think will happen in
China
now?”

           
“Change,” Kwan said. “Some for the
good, some for the bad. But always slow. The habit of the people, for
centuries, is to obey.”

           
“If the
Hong Kong
authorities get hold of you, they’ll send
you back. There’ll be a trial, a public trial. You’ll get to speak. Would that
be good for your cause, or bad?”

           
A strange question. Kwan said, “It
would be bad, of course, because then I would not be able to have any more
interviews like this. There are not many voices right now. We can’t afford to
lose any of them.”

           
“How about a public statement at
your trial? Wouldn’t
that
have an
impact?”

           
^cc
The trial would last
one day,” Kwan told him. “I would get to say very little. The second day, I
would be taken outside and told to kneel. A pistol would be put to the back of
my head, and I would be killed. The third day, the government would send my
family a bill for the bullet.”

           
Mortimer’s eyes widened at that. “A
bill? You’re kidding me.” “No, I’m not.”

           
“But
why
? For God’s sakes...”

           
“That’s the family’s punishment,”
Kwan explained, “for having brought up a child without the proper discipline.”

           
“The family has to pay for the
bullet that kills you,” Mortimer said, musing, thoughtful. “Is that the usual
procedure in
China
?”

           
“Yes.”

           
“I didn’t know about that.” The
reporter fell into silence, brooding, seeming to lose interest in his next
question.

           
Kwan took the time to glance over at
the pool, which was now empty, and then the other way, at the interior of the
cafe. A westerner sat alone at the next table, drinking coffee and reading the
Hong
Kong
Times.
He looked up, his eyes meeting Kwan’s for just a second, and then he
went back to his paper, but in that second Kwan suddenly felt afraid.

           
Of the man? No. He wasn’t from the
Hong Kong
police. He was a European or American,
heavy-set, about forty, with yellow hair like a Scandinavian. He wore a
short-sleeved shirt, pale blue, and a dark red necktie, but no jacket. He had a
large gold ring with a red stone on the little finger of his right hand.

           
Click.

           
Kwan looked at the table, and
Mortimer’s cassette player had stopped. “You’ve run out of tape.”

           
Mortimer looked up, embarrassed, as
though he’d been asleep. “Time went by fast,” he said, laughing awkwardly, and
spent the next moment fumbling with the machine, turning the tape over,
starting it again.
^cc
Where were we?”

           
“My family would pay for the
bullet.”

           
“Oh, yes.” That fact still made
Mortimer uncomfortable.

           
“And you’re sure you wouldn’t have
an opportunity to make any sort of meaningful state—”

           
“Mr. Mortimer?”

           
It was the waiter, standing beside
their table, bowing in Mortimer’s direction. The reporter looked up, reluctant
and irritable. “Yes?”

           
“Telephone, sir. You can take it at
the cashier’s desk.”

           
Mortimer was torn, indecisive. He
rubbed the knuckles of his right hand against his bearded cheek. “I don’t
know,” he said, glancing at Kwan, at the cassette player, then back at the
waiter.

           
He made an aggravated mouth, as
though angry at the interruption, or angry at himself, or just angry. “Yes, of
course,” he said. “Here I come.” With a bright meaningless smile at Kwan, he
said, “Sorry about this. Be right back.”

           
“Yes, fine.”

           
Mortimer followed the waiter away toward
the door. Kwan saw that he’d left the cassette player on, and was about to
reach out and turn it off when the westerner from the next table stood up, came
smoothly and swiftly across, and said in a low voice, “Mortimer betrayed you,
that was the price of the interview. There’s no phone call. Get up and follow
me.”

           
Kwan immediately recognized the
truth. Mortimer’s strangeness at the end, his wanting to believe that Kwan
could turn capture and trial to his own advantage, his reluctance when the
“phone call” came. The end of the tape had been the signal; that was all the
interview Mortimer would be allowed. Another realist; Mortimer had believed
that Kwan’s betrayal was a fair trade for getting Kwan’s story into a magazine
read by millions of people all around the world.

           
Kwan rose. The stranger was already
walking away, striding away, around the curved glass wall toward the rear of
the cafe. Kwan followed him, to a door that said, in three languages:
EMERGENCY EXIT ONLY—
ALARM
WILL
SOUND
.
The Stranger pushed open the door. No alarm
sounded. He went down four metal steps, Kwan hurrying after, permitting the
door to close itself behind him, and then they crossed a corner of the rock
garden to a stone path and headed for the pool.

           
Looking to his right, Kwan saw
through the windows three chunky men in pale gray tight suits and dark neckties
standing indecisively at his former table. One of them looked up and saw Kwan,
and pointed, becoming excited. Kwan turned his eyes front, watching the broad
pale blue back of the tall westerner in front of him. Who was he? The accent
had seemed not quite American, but not at all British, nor Australian.
Canadian? Was English his second language? How had he known about Mortimer, and
about Li Kwan? Where were they going?

           
Around the pool, past the sunbathers
and a slighdy rancid smell of coconut oil. Then, beyond the attendant’s cabana,
full of towels, they came to a pale green wooden fence, eight feet high,
containing an unmarked and scarcely noticeable door. The stranger opened this,
and they both stepped through to an alleyway. Garbage cans were stacked below a
loading dock to the right. The street was to the left. As he closed the door,
Kwan looked back and saw the three policemen running this way, around the pool.
‘They’re chasing us,” he said.

           
“That door’s locked.”

           
It is? Kwan looked at the door, but
had no time to think any more about it, because the stranger was moving quickly
now toward the street; not quite running, but striding with very long legs.
Kwan had to trot to keep up with him, like a child.

           
Illegally parked at the curb just to
the right of the alley was a white
Toyota
; like a million others in
Hong Kong
. The stranger pointed to the passenger
door: “Get in .”

           
The door was unlocked. Kwan got in,
and the interior was stiflingly hot. He rolled down his window as the stranger
got behind the wheel. The key was already in the ignition. The stranger started
the motor and pulled away into traffic, and then at last Kwan could say, “How
did you know?”

           
The stranger smiled. He drove
patiently but professionally through the jammed streets. “You are not part of a
conspiracy,” he said. “Your government says you are, but you are not.”

           
“Of course Tm not.”

           
“Neither am I,” the stranger said.
“But if I tell you who I am, and how I found out what was going to happen to
you, and why I decided to help if I could, then we would both be parts of a
plan. And that’s a conspiracy.”

           
“That’s specious. What con—?”

           
The stranger laughed. “Of course
it’s specious,” he said. “But you wanted an answer, so that’s the answer I gave
you.”

           
“The only answer I’m going to get,
you mean.”

           
“Well, here’s another one, then,”
the stranger said. “Next time, you might not be so lucky. You might get caught.
And if you get caught, they’ll be sure to say,
^c
Who helped you
escape last time?’ It would be better for me if you didn’t have an answer.”

           
“Well, all right,” Kwan said. “That
isn’t
specious. It’s merely convenient.”