A Death in China

CHAPTER 21

The taxi climbed haltingly toward Victoria Peak through the morning rush-hour snarl. On all sides, Hong Kong howled at Tom Stratton; a glitzy, avaricious, sequined city, a century from Peking, light-years from Kangmei's bucolic Bright Star. It seemed impossible that they shared the same continent, let alone the same blood. Below, the famous harbor, tickled by the prows of a thousand boats, glinted gold in the early light.

The driver braked to a stop at the foot of a steep hill. Behind the taxi, a long line of cars bunched up, honking-gleaming Subarus, BMWs and Jaguar sedans, all seemingly driven by serious, thin-lipped businessmen. Stratton scrambled out of the cab, dutifully toting Bodine's suitcase. On the hillside sat the United States Consulate, square-windowed, flat and uninviting. It reminded Stratton of a cut-down version of the Boston City Hall except for the forest of antennae prickling from the roof.

Stratton lugged the suitcase up a winding flight of steps. By the time he reached the black iron gate, his injured leg throbbed in misery. He was intercepted by a young Marine in a white hat and a starched blue-and-khaki uniform. Stratton asked to meet the station chief.

"Sir?"

"The head spook, Sergeant. It's an emergency."

"Wait here, please, sir."

Stratton sat down in a waiting room, paneled with fine honey-colored wood. The sound of typing chattered from behind a closed door. Stratton's shirt clung to his back, and the cool breath of the air conditioner brought goose bumps. With one foot Stratton slid the suitcase across the waxed floor into an empty corner.

"Sir!" The Marine was back. "Mr. Darymple."

Mr. Darymple was a young man with perfectly sculpted black hair that looked to Stratton like it had been parted with a laser beam. Stratton pegged him as an idle subordinate.

Darymple held out a slender hand and introduced himself as the assistant administrative officer.

Stratton said, "I need to see the CIA station chief."

"I'm not really sure whom you mean." Darymple smiled officiously. "Perhaps I could help."

"Very doubtful," Stratton said. "I've just spent the last week or so getting the shit kicked out of me in China."

Darymple expressed concern. "You'd like to report an incident?"

Stratton sighed. "An incident, yes. Go get your boss and I'll tell him about it."

"Could I have your name?"

"Stratton, Thomas. Tell him I was classified Phoenix."

Darymple stiffened. "Here?"

"No, Saigon. 1971. Go ahead and check, but hurry. Then go tell your boss I need a line out, right away."

Darymple said, "He'll want to see your passport."

"It was taken from me in Xian."

"Then how did you… excuse me, Mr. Stratton." Darymple walked out of the office in long, hurried strides.

The trick was to give them enough to chew on so that they would help, but not too much. Stratton knew what it meant to get the agency involved; he also remembered the not-so-friendly competition between stations. The boys in Hong Kong would want to claim him as their own. Peking could tag along for the ride, of course. Hong Kong probably would want to make an actual case of the whole thing. This, Stratton knew, he could not afford, nor could David Wang. There was no time for tedious little filemakers like Mr. Darymple.

When Darymple returned, he was accompanied by a beet-faced man in his early forties. "This is our chief political officer."

"Whatever you say."

The beet-faced man turned to Darymple and said, "That'll be all, Clay."

When they were alone, the CIA man said, "Tell me what's going on."

"I need to speak with your counterparts in Peking," Stratton said. "An American citizen is about to be murdered."

Linda Greer was clipping an article about rice production from the People's Daily when the buzzer went off. She snatched a notebook from the top of her desk and hurried to the station chief's private office. He was on the phone. He motioned her to a chair.

"She's here now," the station chief was saying. "I'm going to put you on the speaker box."

"Linda?" Stratton's voice cracked and fuzzed on the Hong Kong line. "Linda, can you hear me?"

"Tom!" She could not mask her elation or astonishment. When Stratton had vanished without explanation, Linda was certain he had been killed. She had blamed herself; after all, Wang Bin had been her target. The station chief had sent a curt note: No record to be kept of your contact with Stratton.

Yes, Linda had agreed, no record. But now Stratton had surfaced, and for the moment she didn't give a damn about her precious case file or all the cables to Langley.

"Are you all right?" she asked.

"Torn and frayed," he said. "Nothing serious."

"We had people out looking," Linda Greer said. The station chief shook his head disapprovingly. The message was: Don't say too much.

"Well, I appreciate the concern," Stratton said drily, "but I imagine the trail got pretty cold at Xian. You've probably figured out that this wasn't a government operation."

"What do you mean?" asked the station chief.

"It was Wang Bin's personal project. No army, no Ke Ge Bo, just his own private goons. He did it that way for good reason, the same reason he wanted me out of the picture."

"Tom, haven't you heard-"

"Let him finish!" the station chief barked. Linda Greer opened the notebook on her lap, mocking the pose of an obedient secretary. The station chief scowled.

"Start with what happened to you at Xian," he instructed Stratton.

"Forget what happened to me," Stratton said impatiently. "You need to get to Wang Bin as soon as possible. Call the ministry and leave a message. Tell him I'm alive. Tell him I know about David-"

"What about David?" the station chief asked.

"If you folks have any decent sources at all, you probably know what's been happening at the Qin tombs in Xian. During the past few months several large artifacts have been stolen."

"What kind of artifacts?" Linda said.

"Soldiers."

"The soldiers?"

"The emperor's death army," Stratton said. "Didn't you know?"

The pause on the Peking end gave Stratton his answer.

"How many did you say, Tom?"

"I didn't say how many. I said several."

"The ministry mentioned pilfering," the station chief said. "Pottery, jewelry, trinkets-small stuff. Didn't say anything about the soldiers. How would you do it, Stratton? And what in the world would you do with them?"

Stratton laughed harshly. "You guys ought to try to get out of Peking once in a while. It'd open your eyes."

Linda Greer was thinking ahead of her boss. "For money," she said. "Wang Bin was getting out."

"Exactly," Stratton said excitedly. "He's a smart man, like his brother, and the future was plain: all his old comrades dropping like ducks in a shooting gallery. Wang Bin knew it wouldn't be long before they took away his limousine and made him the number-three tractor mechanic at some commune in the sticks.

That's a long fall from deputy minister, and Bin didn't want to take it. Linda, he's your pet project. It fits, doesn't it?"

"There were rumors," she acknowledged, "rumors that he was in trouble."

"But were there rumors of defection?" the station chief asked.

"I'm not talking about defection," Stratton snapped. "I'm talking about disappearance. Remember that Wang Bin is a wealthy man from his smuggling enterprise. The clay soldiers are worth… who knows? A fortune, certainly. The best market is the United States, and I'll bet that's where the bank accounts are-a fabulous nest egg. But how does Bin get to it? How does such a well-known official escape from China? By boat, or plane… or scaling the fence at Kowloon?

No. All too risky. And think of all the noise and hoopla if the spooks this side of the border get hold of him." Stratton winked amiably at the beet-faced man across the rosewood table.

"No, Wang Bin would want to go quietly. Wouldn't you, if you had a couple hundred thousand U.S. dollars squirreled away?"

"Getting out would be nearly impossible," Linda Greer said.

"Suppose he had a passport," Stratton ventured. "A legitimate U.S. passport-with a photograph that seemed to match."

"How?" the station chief demanded.

"Oh, God," Linda sighed. "His own brother."

"I've heard enough," the station chief said. "Stratton, you're out of your mind."

"Tom, go on," Linda said.

"Check your files. I had Steve Powell try to run down David's passport a few days after he supposedly died. Oddly enough, no one could find it-but it was Wang Bin who provided the explanation, remember? He said David's passport was destroyed accidentally at the hospital."

Linda Greer recalled Powell's memo about the incident, a two-paragraph brush-off.

Stratton said, "What happened to David's belongings, the stuff in the vault at the embassy?"

"I assumed it went home with the body," Linda replied.

"Who picked it up?"

"A driver. From the Ministry of Art and Culture."

"Don't you see?" Stratton exclaimed.

"It was simple protocol, Tom. Wang Bin was David's brother and he wanted to handle things. We could hardly argue, especially after you welched out of the funeral flight. We aren't in the business of insulting foreign governments."

"I understand, Linda, but think… think! Instant wardrobe, instant identity, a ticket to the States-it adds up. Picture the deputy minister in David's eyeglasses-could you tell them apart? Would immigration ever question the passport photo? No. It's one goddamn perfect plan." Stratton's voice cracked.

Yes, perfect, thought Linda Greer, except for one thing. She spoke soothingly.

"It's a good theory, Tom."

Stratton was in a fury. She was patronizing him.

The station chief said, "I think it's a crazy goddamn theory and it's time to cut the shit. Whatever Wang Bin was up to, it doesn't matter anymore."

"Listen to me," Stratton insisted. "David Wang is alive! His brother intends to murder him any day, any second."

"No, Tom," Linda said, shooting a glance at the station chief. "Maybe the deputy minister was planning something big… but it doesn't really matter anymore-"

"You keep saying that… "

"-because Wang Bin is dead."

From Hong Kong came only static. Linda Greer glanced anxiously at her boss. She leaned closer to the phone speaker. "Tom? Did you hear what I said?"

Stratton battled waves of nausea. His head sagged to the rosewood table; sweat beaded on the back of his neck. He raged silently, the private agony of a terrible failure. Now he knew; it was too late.

"Tom?"

"How?" came a hoarse voice from Hong Kong.

"Drowned," the station chief reported. "An old fisherman snagged the body in the Ming reservoir. The Public Security Bureau found a capsized rowboat near the shore. We got wind of it yesterday afternoon. Today the government newspapers say it was an accident. We hear differently."

"Oh." Head bowed, Stratton mumbled through clenched hands.

"We hear it was a suicide."

Stratton laughed sadly. "What?"

"Suicide," the station chief repeated, with emphasis. "Wang Bin was due to appear before the Disciplinary Commission earlier this week. Obviously his number was up, and he knew it. So he cashed all his chips. No fancy stuff-phony passports, secret Swiss accounts, all that Hollywood bullshit-just good old-fashioned Chinese honor. In this country, anything beats total disgrace, and that's what Wang Bin was facing. So he chose to die an honorable man. That way, at least, all the brass show up at your funeral."

"Will there be a state service?" Stratton wondered.

"Yeah, and you're not invited. Party types only, mid-level flag wavers, we're told. Courtesy, but no fanfare. And, Stratton, no flowers."

"Have you seen the body?" Stratton demanded.

"The coffin is closed. For God's sake, he'd been in the water a couple of days.

Do I have to spell it out to you, Stratton? The man looked like a bloated carp."

"Please, that's enough," Linda Greer implored. "Tom, are you all right? I know you've been through hell-maybe I ought to fly down."

"No, thanks, I'm fine. If the nice folks here will just get me a new passport, I'll be on my way."

The beet-faced man at the oblong table nodded helpfully; it would be a relief to book this yo-yo on the next Pan Am. "Phoenix" indeed.

Sitting in Peking with the station chief, talking into a squawk box to an unseen face across the continent, Linda Greer could say none of the things she wanted to say, and none of the things that mattered now. Stratton was safe, somehow returned from the files of the dead, and for that she could be happy. But there was something else, something troubling about his theory…

"It's over now, Tom," she said softly. "Whatever happened between your friend and his brother is finished. I'm sorry about everything."

It was only after Stratton hung up that Linda Greer realized what the loose end was: the soldiers. Stratton had never explained about the clay soldiers. He'd never told her how Deputy Minister Wang Bin had done it.

As night shrouded Victoria Peak, a galaxy of bare-bulb lights sprinkled the hillsides of Hong Kong. Jim McCarthy sat in the Foreign Correspondents' Club, sipping gin, imagining a shanty-porch view of the ravenous blast furnace of a city. The poor looking up on the rich; the rich too busy to look down. Once McCarthy had written a feature story about three Hong Kong families who shared a tiny attic in the heart of the city-ten adults, six children, no running water, not even a ceiling fan to stir the air. After he filed the piece, an editor called to ask how many Hong Kong Chinese actually lived like that. Hundreds of thousands, McCarthy had told him; it was right there in the story. The editor told him they were looking for something a little more offbeat, a little sexier.

And so the next day the newspaper sent McCarthy off to do a feature on the manufacture of counterfeit Rubik's cubes. That story made the front page.

McCarthy ordered up another gin-and-tonic. Cursing the idiots-that's what R-and-R is for. Get it out of your system, Jimbo.

The club was bustling and noisy with journalists hell-bent on a night of sloppy decadence-British, Australians, New Zealanders, a Frenchman, even two American network guys. Behind the huge padded bar, stone-faced Cantonese bartenders poured quickly and expertly. As the night wore on, McCarthy knew, the ratio of water to booze would escalate in proportion to the patron's inability to tell the difference. McCarthy, who could hold his liquor and appear to when he couldn't, kept a close eye on the Tanqueray bottle behind the counter. The instant the bartender made a secret move for an off brand, McCarthy would lunge for his throat.

At the big table in the center of the club, one of the American network guys was screaming at the French magazine freelancer. Vietnam again, McCarthy thought.

Every time he was in the place there was a fight about Nam. Almost everybody in the club had covered the war, some of them with a fanaticism otherwise reserved for the World Series or slot machines. Everybody had a story, everybody had a theory, everybody had a pain. The walls of the club had become a Nam shrine: headlines, photographs, tributes to fallen colleagues like Larry Burroughs and Sean Flynn. When Nam had been hot, Hong Kong had been the jump-off point for journalists. The club had been electric then, swirling with stories of war; the war had been the story, and even besotted Fleet Street could focus on it. Now the story was China, McCarthy reflected, huge, ungainly, enigmatic, unsexy China. There was only so much you could write, so many telescopic shots of the Great Wall, before the guys on the desk started hollering for more Rubik's cubes.

McCarthy guided himself to the men's room. Standing at a urinal, he observed that in the eight months since his last visit, there had been only one addition to the wall graffiti: a strikingly accurate likeness of Lady Diana, reclining languorously. The Aussies, McCarthy decided, it had to be. As he was admiring the steady hand of the artist, the door swung open and McCarthy was joined by another man.

"Remember me?"

McCarthy studied the face in the mirror. "Stratton, baby! Gimme a second here and I'll be right with you."

"Take your time," Stratton said.

"Hey," McCarthy said, zipping up, "you don't suppose the princess is really double-jointed?"

"Not like that, Jim."

To make room for Stratton at the bar, McCarthy gently shooed a buxom prostitute who had costumed herself like Marilyn Monroe in Some Like It Hot. Stratton immediately claimed the barstool and ordered a Budweiser.

"Heresy!" McCarthy exclaimed. "Every time I see you you're ordering the wrong beer. What brings you to this seedy place?"

"You do," Stratton said. "I need your help."

After leaving the consulate, he had walked for hours through Hong Kong, dazzled and disoriented, distracted from the city's raucous vitality by his own despair.

Stratton mourned for David, and for Kangmei. Once, in an alley market where old crones cooled their feet in vats of live shrimp, he had spotted her, swaying through the crush of people, an ebony trail of silken hair. He had run, hurdling racks and sidestepping vendors, until he had caught her, taken her by the elbows, turned her and seen a stranger's face. The young woman had smiled shyly and backed away, but Stratton had been too sad to apologize.

He had taken a tram to the Peak, and from a windy platform imagined China unfolding beyond Kowloon. Somewhere, David's body. Somewhere, Kangmei. As the sun set, the grand harbor had shimmered and then in darkness evaporated to a vast black hole. The famous floating restaurants sparkled like stars, bobbing on a windy night. For an hour Stratton had clung to the solitude of the Peak until ghosts had caught up with him, and he had gone looking for Jim McCarthy.

"I called the bureau in Peking. They said you'd be here for a couple of weeks."

"Sheila and the kids fly in tomorrow," McCarthy said. "I can't wait to see 'em.

Hell, another night or two alone in this town and a hard-drinking Irishman might buy himself some serious trouble. Like Peroxide Lucy over there. You ever see a Chinese with a wig like that? This club is a regular Mardi Gras, just what you need when you're fresh out of China."

"Your clerk had a pretty good idea you'd be here."

"She's a doll. I'd trust her with my life." McCarthy suspiciously eyed the bartender, who was pouring another gin. "Tom, I was just thinking about you yesterday. Your friend, the old professor who died, wasn't his name Wang? Well, his brother, the honcho deputy minister of whatever, died this week, too. Did you hear about it?"

"Yes. Supposedly drowned."

"Dressed in full uniform, resplendent Mao gray, according to some of our embassy boys. Ironic, isn't it? The old guy had a black mourning band pinned to his sleeve. The big whisper is suicide."

Stratton started to say something, but reined himself. "Are you doing a story about it?" he asked McCarthy.

"Naw, I don't think so." McCarthy looked up from his drink. "You think it's worth a story? I dunno, you might be right. The death of two brothers-one American, one Chinese. The ultimate reunion! The desk might go for it. They're slobbering for human interest stuff."

A screech came from the big table in the middle of the club. McCarthy and Stratton looked over just in time to see one of the American network correspondents punch the French freelancer in the nose.

"Bravo, baby!" McCarthy called out. "Hoist the flag right up his ass!" He turned back to Stratton. "I'm not so sure about this Wang story after all… maybe I'm just not in the mood to write." McCarthy sighed. "I'll feel a hell of a lot better when Sheila's here."

They drank together for half an hour, eavesdropping on the slurred debates and laconic come-ons, watching the fog turn to cotton over the harbor. Finally McCarthy said, "What was it you needed from me?"

"A list."

"Of what?"

"Remember the story you wrote on 'Death by Duck'? You told me about it-about all the American tourists who die over here… "

"I did the story two years ago, Tom. You want a list of all of them?" McCarthy could not mask his curiosity.

"Not all of them. I want a list from the last four months, a list of every American who died in China. Can you get it?"

McCarthy shrugged. "No sweat. All it takes is a phone call."

"What else is available?"

"Ages, hometowns, occupations. That's about it."

Stratton leaned forward. "Hometowns are all I need. How big a list are we talking about?"

McCarthy shifted on the barstool. He was not accustomed to being grilled. "A small list, Tom. A half-dozen names, at the most. I'm just guessing. I really haven't been following the death-by-duck box score since I wrote that one story."

"But you can get the list?"

"Sure, Tom." McCarthy fingered his fiery beard. "But I've got to ask why. I'm not too drunk to listen."

Stratton stood up. "I can't tell you, not now."

McCarthy smiled. "Someday?"

"Maybe," Stratton said. "It's possible."

"That's good enough for me."

Stratton slapped a Bodine twenty-dollar bill on the counter and motioned to the flinty-eyed bartender. "Good God, don't be a fool and leave the whole thing,"

McCarthy hissed. "He's been pissin' in the drinks all night."

Stratton laughed and shook the newsman's hand. "I'm at the Hilton. My flight leaves at about noon tomorrow."

"Hey, you're talking to an ace foreign correspondent," McCarthy roared. "You'll have your list by ten sharp."

Stratton walked back to the hotel room and stood under a steaming shower for twenty minutes. The melancholy and bitterness gradually receded to a remote corner of his mind; he began to feel galvanized, perversely exhilarated by what lay ahead. One race was finished, and he had lost. Another was beginning. This time the track was his.