A Death in China

CHAPTER 23

The cab ride from La Guardia was no more harrowing than a spin through downtown Peking, and Wang Bin rode in unperturbed silence. He grunted once when a sleek black limousine cut sharply in front of the taxi, and jumped slightly in his seat at the sudden blast of a trucker's horn. But it was the vista of Manhattan, seen from the Triborough Bridge, that left him breathless. At first glimpse Wang Bin leaned close to the window and stared at the vast skyline marching along the river, molten in the pink light of the late afternoon. The city was like nothing the deputy minister had ever seen.

Harold Broom glanced over and smiled with a superior air. "Hey, Pop, the cabbie is Russian. How about that?"

Broom had taken to calling Wang Bin "Pop," an annoying term that the deputy minister did not understand.

"Didya ever think you'd be riding with a Russian through the streets of America?" Broom roared at some dim irony while Wang Bin watched out the window in fascination as the skyline swallowed them.

The two men checked into a small, comfortable hotel on Central Park South. Broom did all the talking-to the cabbie, to the doormen, to the desk clerk, to the rental car agent. Wang Bin had nothing to say; New York was richer and more bewildering than he had ever imagined. Compared to that of Peking, even the air was a tonic. The crowds of walkers were garish, and certainly less orderly than the Chinese, but the Americans were equally hurried and wore the same expressions of determination. And the automobiles were boggling-more cars than Wang Bin believed existed in all of China, stacked on every street, inching forward with horns blaring. The noise jarred his nerves.

Wang Bin stood at the window of the fifth-floor hotel room and watched a hansom cab clop down the street toward the Plaza Hotel. On the sidewalk at Columbus Circle, a ragged group of men and women waved placards and shook their fists.

Two policemen stood at the corner, chatting calmly. Wang Bin could not understand why they did not hurry to arrest the demonstrators. He decided that the officers must be waiting for reinforcements.

Broom groomed himself in the mirror. "So what's it gonna be tonight, Pop? Studio