A Death in China (10 page)

Stratton stood about fifteen feet above the dig in a skylight-lit hall the size of a football field. His first thought was that it was the cleverest and most awesome museum he had ever seen. To protect the excavation while simultaneously exploiting the discovery as a tourist attraction, the Chinese had simply erected the museum over the dig.

Below Stratton, in roofless chambers that extended in four files, lay the Emperor Qin’s celestial army. Stratton stood on a concrete platform, which was shaped like a square U with two wings stretched out parallel along the files. In the pit, a modern army of Chinese technicians worked with brushes, dust pans and hand shovels. Stratton stared into the chamber where three hundred clay soldiers stood.

They were magnificent. He had seen pictures, of course—who had not?—but even that foretaste had left Stratton unprepared for their true majesty.

The figures were life-sized, nearly six feet tall. They had been molded from gray river clay by master craftsmen, dead for twenty-two hundred years. Stratton stared with breathless fascination at the nearest warrior, a kneeling archer. The detail was extraordinary.

The archer wore a topknot, pulled tightly to the left side of his head and held with a band. Stratton could count the hairs.

The archer’s ears clung close to his skull. The eyebrows were high and stylized, as though they had been plucked. The nose was broad, classically Chinese. The warrior had affected a finely combed mustache and a tuft of hair on his chin. On the face, mirthless and resolute, were flecks of blue and red paint mixed two centuries before Christ was born.

The archer wore a studded jerkin that reached below his waist and ended high on the biceps. It afforded protection from sword slashes, while at the same time allowing mobility with which to wield a bow. Below the waist, the emperor’s soldier wore a skirtlike loincloth, leggings and stout, square-toed sandals.

Nearby, a second archer wore the same uniform, but his face was different—rounder, a trifle older, no mustache. Every soldier, Stratton noted with awe, had a different face—in eternity, as in life.

Stratton paced the arms of the platform. Here lay a terracotta arm jutting out from the red clay. And there, a headless torso, being dusted by a young woman with intense concentration. Toward the back of the vast hall, new chambers had been carefully outlined in chalk, but had so far been unmolested. Working at their current painstaking pace, Stratton reckoned, it would take the Chinese technicians at least another ten or twenty years to exploit the dig completely. Stratton was fascinated. He could have stayed for hours. Too soon, Mr. Xia was at his side.

“Director Ku will see you for a few moments, but you must hurry. It is nearly closing time.”

Reluctantly, Stratton followed him out of the chamber.

“Mr. Xia, do you realize that this might be the most important archaeological discovery of this century?” Stratton asked.

“Yes, so many American friends have told us. The soldiers excite them very much, but there are many other discoveries as well.”

“Can I see them?”

“I am sorry, but only the soldiers are open to the public.”

Director Ku was a roly-poly individual with a ready smile and the callused hands of a worker. Stratton squatted on the inevitable overstuffed chair and tried not to drink the tea.

The pleasantries went quickly enough. Ku, Stratton suspected, was not a man to keep his dinner waiting. Even the set speech that seemed to come with every Chinese official’s job seemed to sail by: the discovery had been made in 1965 by peasants digging a well. During the Cultural Revolution, not much happened. Since then, the work had proceeded systematically, entirely in the hands of Chinese specialists; no foreigners were welcome. Test excavations were still being dug. So far, scientists had positively identified an armory, an imperial zoo, stables, other groups of warriors, the tombs of nobles sacrificed to mark the emperor’s death, the underground entrance to the tumulus and exquisite bronze workings, including a chariot two-thirds life-size.

“I did not know about the bronzes,” said Stratton. “Can they be seen?”

“They are in Peking,” came back the translation. Stratton saw what he thought was a flash of annoyance on the director’s lined face. Annoyance at the question? No, more likely at the thought that Xian’s precious treasures had been preempted by the central government.

“Explain about my friend and his brother, Xiao-Xia, but this time don’t ask if they were here. Say that my friend told me he would always remember the hospitality he received here.”

At the translation, Ku’s face lit. He reached into his breast pocket and extracted a silver ballpoint pen.

“The director says he remembers your friend very well. He calls him the ‘gentle professor’ and shows you the pen he was honored to receive as a gift,” said Mr. Xia.

Bingo. But now what?

“Ask the comrade director if it would be possible for me to see the special excavation that my friend and his brother visited. Be sure and use Kangmei’s father’s name.”

That provoked a quick exchange in Mandarin before Mr. Xia finally said: “He asks if you have permission.”

A direct hit. “Tell him yes.”

Mr. Xia looked quizzically at Stratton.

“Do you really have permission?”

“Of course.”

Stratton barely concealed his impatience at the Mandarin that followed. If he could see what David had seen, he might understand why the brothers had quarreled. Ku, who obviously took no pains to hide his own distaste for Peking, might even tell him. For him, Peking probably meant Wang Bin.

“The director regrets that the excavation is only opened when Peking advises him that an important visitor is coming. He regrets that the responsible officials in Peking did not inform him you were coming, but, he says, perhaps in a day or two it will be possible.”

Damn. What that meant was that the director would check with Peking.

“I would be grateful,” Stratton said. “Ask him if my friend—”

“The director also apologizes, but explains that he now must supervise the closing and meet with the technicians to discuss tomorrow’s work schedule,” Mr. Xia interjected.

“Shit,” said Stratton. It escaped. Mr. Xia looked perplexed. Stratton flushed. “Say we are sorry for interrupting his work. Thank him for his hospitality and say we will return to look at the special excavation when the details have been arranged.”

Darkness was falling and large numbers of workers had already left the site on a wheezy bus by the time Kangmei returned to the car.

“It happened here, Thom-as,” she erupted. “My father and my uncle had an angry discussion, shouting. A young worker told me; he is a cousin of a friend of mine who also studied languages.”

“What was it about? Why did they argue?”

“I do not know. My friend could not speak long. But later I will see him. He will tell me then.”

“Kangmei, that’s terrific.”

Kangmei bubbled excitedly as the car returned to the old imperial city. After darkness had fallen, and she was sure Mr. Xia would not see from the front seat, she grasped Stratton’s hand and clasped it tightly.

Stratton ate alone in the restaurant of the sprawling hotel complex, careful to time his arrival and departure to miss the art historians. To his astonishment, the food was awful. He retired to his room with wizened tangerines and a bottle of mineral water. He was half asleep, near ten o’clock, when the phone rang.

“Thom-as,” she said without introduction. “In two minutes, you must walk to the end of the corridor with the vacuum bottle in your room and ask the floor attendant for more hot water.”

Stratton understood; he was to be a decoy. “Are you sure that’s wise?”

“Please.”

Stratton obeyed, remembering to empty the thermos. The attendant, drowsing over the color pictures in a back copy of Time that a tourist must have left, smiled and obligingly padded into a kitchen with the bottle, leaving the hall un-watched.

When Stratton returned to the room, Kangmei was waiting. She embraced him. Her tongue played a sparrow’s tattoo against his teeth. It was Stratton who broke the embrace.

“Kangmei … ” he said uncertainly.

“It is so exciting,” she said. “My friend told me everything, Thom-as, everything.” She sat on the narrow iron-framed bed, leaving Stratton standing absurdly above her, thermos suspended.

“Would you like some tea?” he asked weakly.

“Yes, please.”

Stratton turned and busied himself elaborately with the tea leaves. He tried to ignore the rustlings behind him. Was she getting into bed?

“Here is what happened,” she began. “My friend saw it. There is a special place near the emperor’s tomb, Thom-as. It is not controlled by the workers there, but by Peking directly—my father—and it makes all the Xian people very angry.”

“What kind of a place?” Stratton asked.

“My friend called it a special place. No one may go there without permission. When my uncle came, my father took him there. My friend was there to help; it is covered with reeds and cloth most of the time. My father and my uncle went down into the hole on a ladder, into a long tunnel. They were gone a long time. When they came out again, they began to argue. My father tried to grab my uncle’s camera. ‘No, no!’ my uncle kept saying. My father grew very angry. They shouted. Then my father ordered the hole covered and they drove away.”

Stratton was thinking furiously. If the chamber with the common soldiers was an international sensation, then Wang Bin’s private dig could be a literal gold mine. Stratton had a vision of gold swords encrusted with jewels, of bronze and gold helmets, chests of gems: an emperor’s legacy.

“My father wanted my uncle to help him steal something, Thom-as, didn’t he?” It was the voice of a little girl.

“It’s possible,” Stratton said. He turned, a full teacup in each hand.

Kangmei lay naked on the bed. The light from a single dim-watted bulb painted her the color of brushed ivory. She wriggled, and the shadowed V between her legs became a beckoning S. She reached for him, arching her back.

“Kangmei, we can’t … “

“Thom-as,” she whispered. “Do you know what Kangmei means in Chinese?”

“Mmm?”

“It means ‘Resist America,’ Thom-as. My father was very patriotic before he become a thieving old man. Shall I resist America, Thom-as?”

Her little-girl laugh broke the spell.

“Kangmei,” Stratton said more sternly than he felt, “you are David’s niece, and I’m nearly old enough—”

“To what?”

“To know better,” he said. She was a spectacular woman, and certainly older than some of the students with whom he had dallied in his early years as a teacher. “You are very beautiful, and I want to,” Stratton said lamely, “but it would be wrong. Do you understand why?”

Kangmei seemed to wilt. Stratton, feeling a fool with a teacup in each hand, watched as tears sparked in her eyes. She clawed for the sheet and drew it up to her chin.

“Oh, Thom-as, I meant nothing wrong, but you … there is so little time, and I am very excited. Also a little frightened.”

“So am I,” Stratton said, and kissed her lightly on the forehead.

She took the tea, and he sat primly by her on the bed, stroking her hair as an uncle might, or a lover-to-be. When at last Kangmei fell asleep, Stratton curled stiffly in a hard-bottomed chair, wondering if he yet knew enough to lay murder charges against her father.

The men named Liao and Deng moved away from the streetlight and into the shadows. Their discussion was brief, disturbed.

“You are sure it was her?” Teng asked. He was the older of the two; brawny, leather-faced, he wore his Mao cap pulled tight on his head, the brim snug on his eyebrows.

“I am certain,” Liao replied. “This changes everything.” He lit a cheap cigarette and glanced across the street at the hotel. His eyes moved up the wall to an open window. A faint bulb gave a burnished light to the inside of the room; no shadows moved. Liao was hatless; his black hair was cropped extremely short. In a robe, he could have passed for a Buddhist monk. His round face was youthful, but humorless.

“When she leaves … ” he said.

“And if she doesn’t?” Deng asked. “Perhaps we should contact Peking.”

“I don’t think we should wake the deputy minister.” Liao shook his head.

Deng scowled. “This foreigner is important.”

“That’s why we’re here.”

“But so is the daughter important. It is a grave matter,” Deng insisted. The brim of his cap bobbed as his brow furrowed. “We can’t wait all night. I say we grab the girl. As for the American, we have our instructions.”

Liao sighed. He had an intuition about complications, and this assignment troubled him. “We’ll have to report this to her dan-wei.”

Deng said, “Why? Let Lao Wang handle it. He is her father.” And then he thought for a moment and said, “You are right. We must report it. Even if the deputy minister tells us not to.” Deng and Liao had heard the same rumors. Today the old man was a power broker, but he could just as easily be shoveling cowshit in Hunan tomorrow.

“We do as we’re told,” Liao said finally, “and a little more. The deputy minister does not have to know whom we talk to. China comes first.”

Stratton drowsed, half-sleeping, in the hard chair. When he heard the doorknob jiggle, he figured it was one of the floor attendants. They all had passkeys, and no compunction about barging in on the slightest pretext.

It would not be wise to be found in the same room with a Chinese woman. Stratton padded barefoot across the floor and reached for the door. Two men stood there in the darkness. One held a sack of some kind in his right hand, away from his body.

“Yes?” Stratton said, stiffening.

The young man bowed, then rammed the heel of his hand into the tip of Stratton’s nose. The American fell in a heap, gurgling blood.

From the bed, Kangmei yelped and sat up. The men stared silently at her naked figure before they closed the door behind them.

Stratton awoke in darkness, heaving for air. His nostrils were clogged with blood, and his face was clammy and wet. Two strips of industrial tape had been pasted across his mouth, forming an X that nearly blocked his desperate breathing.

He was in a closet. He smelled clothing—his own—and the canvas from his duffel. Through throbbing eyes, he noticed a weak sliver of light at the base of the door, near his feet.

Stratton tried to move. His hands were free, but his legs were bound tightly at the ankles. Voices, male and female, seeped through the door. The conversation was singsongy Mandarin, and Stratton understood none of it. The male voices were cold and conspiratorial and the female voice was full of fear. Kangmei.

He struggled to his knees, grunting, using his hands to feel in the blackness. If these thugs were so efficient, he wondered, why hadn’t they tied his hands as well? Why leave him free to explore the darkness for a way out—

And then one of Stratton’s hands found what it was supposed to. It was as big around as a baseball bat, yet taut and rippling. It was smooth to the touch, not oily, and it made a hushing sound as it glided across the floor of the dark closet.

Stratton froze, and the amplified beat of his heart filled his ears. The creature had stopped moving; it was not bothered at all by the darkness.

Stratton cowered. He felt that the thing could actually sense his pulse, and feel the heat of his terror.

“You are stupid men. Leave me alone!” Kangmei clutched the cotton sheet to her neck. Her knees were drawn protectively to her chest.

“Your father sent us,” Deng said from under his brim. “Not for you, Kangmei, but for your American friend. He is a dangerous man, an enemy of the state. He is trying to use you to obtain information that would harm the deputy minister.”

“Lies!”

“We did not know you were with him,” Liao said in a nervous whisper. “And you can be sure that we will not make a public matter of this … incident.”

Kangmei’s eyes flashed toward the closet, and the knot of hemp rope that secured the door.

“You know what would happen if this episode became known,” Liao continued. “You would lose your place at the language school. There might even be punishment at a labor camp for rehabilitation.”

“What do you want?”

Deng nodded toward the closet. “The foreigner is our only interest. If you need to know more, ask your father. We are here to do a job. I am sorry that you had to become involved in this, Comrade.”

“Think of the shame and embarrassment for the deputy minister,” Liao said.

“Thom-as was a friend of my uncle. He is an art teacher on tour,” Kangmei said. “That is all.”

“We see what we see, Comrade,” Liao said.

Kangmei flushed.

“Put on your clothes. You will come with us and say nothing of what happened here,” Liao said.

“And what is happening?” she demanded.

“Very unfortunate,” Deng said. “Mr. Stratton, the American tourist, purchased a rare poisonous snake from a street vendor. His plan was to smuggle it out of China to the United States. It was a king cobra, the most terrible snake in the world, Comrade. Zoos in America would pay handsomely for a specimen—and the one meiguoren wanted to smuggle was certainly large and healthy.”

“Unfortunately,” Liao broke in, “the American was careless. The snake bit him. He fell forward, shattering his nose on the floor—see here.” With a blue canvas shoe, Liao daubed at a blood smear on the wood.

“But the fall didn’t matter,” Deng said. “He probably was dead already. One drop of the king cobra’s venom can kill a horse.”

Kangmei stared at the empty sack in Deng’s hand and began to whimper. She dressed with her back to the cadres.

“Come now, we will take you away,” Deng said. “In the morning, we will notify the deputy minister. If you behave, my friend and I will leave the explanation of this up to you. It is not our place to tell the deputy minister that his daughter is a common whore.”

“A traitorous whore!” Liao barked, pushing her toward the door.

“But Thom-as!” Kangmei cried.

“We will come back in a little while,” Deng said, “to arrange things.”

“Yes,” Liao said with a satisfied smile. “The snake will require special attention.”

Tom Stratton inched into a corner of the closet and balled up like some gangly, naked autistic child. He ached and he itched, but he dared not stretch or scratch. Every motion was a clue, and every tiny noise a magnet for the huge killing machine that shared his darkness.

He knew a little about cobras: that their vision was excellent, their sensory reflexes keen, all filtered through a magical flicking tongue that could find a rat or a lizard or a camouflaged toad in the blackest of Asian jungle nights. Man was not prey; he was an enemy. The cobra, Stratton knew, would not attack unless cornered and threatened.

It was a small closet, but Stratton gladly surrendered most of it to the reptile. During the argument outside the door, it had moved back and forth, brushing silkily against his feet and legs. Occasionally, its shadow crossed the floor in such a way that it obliterated the crack of light beneath the door. In those moments of total darkness, Stratton would close his eyes, for he feared an unseen strike at his face, and strained to listen for the cobra’s breathing. He could hear nothing. In and out, the tongue was reading him, measuring him, taking his temperature … all in silence.

It was a superb creature, a mystical creature.

When the door to the hotel room closed, and Kangmei and her captors were gone, the snake seemed to settle down in a corner of its own. In his mind’s eye, Stratton could see its thick olive coils—and the hooded head, motionless and erect.

After an hour, Stratton decided that the snake was as relaxed as it was ever going to be. He edged on his buttocks across the dusty floor, inches at a time, pausing several moments between moves. From the corner where he imagined that the cobra slept there came no sound.

Stratton eased himself up to the door. His right hand spidered slowly across the wood until it found the knob. He twisted and pushed—but the door would not budge. Stratton tried again, this time with his shoulder as a buttress. The door held fast. The problem was breaking it down without arousing the cobra.

Stratton’s knees cracked loudly as he struggled to his feet. The ankle ropes had been a cinch, even in the darkness. If he could just get out of the goddamn closet, he would be free.

He was careful not to move his legs; instead, he pivoted from the waist up, ramming the door with his upper body. Stratton could feel the hinges weaken. He rammed again, a bayonet-thrust without the sword. And once more with all of his hundred ninety pounds.

On Stratton’s third try the snake struck. He heard the hiss and felt the passing breath. Stratton froze. The cobra struck again, biting air. Six inches to the left and the fangs would have pierced Stratton’s groin.

The cobra was angry. The sweat, the heat of human exertion, the blood racing through Stratton’s body as he pounded the door—all this had ignited the snake’s primal reflex.

Instinctively, Stratton jumped to his left, crashing into a suit of clothes that hung from a dowel. The snake followed. Once, ssshhhhhh, in the air. Again, closer, a deadly sibilance two inches from Stratton’s ear. And once more, higher and longer …

Stratton pressed his head against the wall; he held himself there to stay out of range. Now he heard a different sound. The cobra was struggling in front of him, thrashing wildly in the folds of clothing. Stratton knew instantly what had happened. Its fangs were hung in the fabric. The beast was stuck like a dart on cork.

He reached out and found the snake. He grabbed it like a rope, working upward, hand-over-hand toward the frantic lethal head. Stratton found the cobra’s hood. It seemed enormous, but it folded smoothly in his grip. Stratton kneaded his way to the head.

Both hands yanked the cobra down to the floor of the closet. Squeezing its neck with all of his strength, he threw his body on the writhing coils. The cobra took twelve and one-half minutes to die. Stratton knew. He counted every second.

“Thomas! I hear you in there.” Alice Dempsey paced the hallway outside the hotel room. Her voice dripped with annoyance. “You missed breakfast again, and you’re about to miss the bus.” Alice despised disorder; Stratton embodied it. In her mind, she had already composed a stern letter to his dean. The trip was a farce as far as Stratton went. He had disappeared for days at a time. He had openly taunted his colleagues. He had insulted the Chinese and even fought with them, for God’s sake. Stratton would live to regret his inexcusable behavior.

“Come on!”

Alice knocked again. This time the door swung open on its own. Two Chinese strangers stood there. One wore a Mao cap pulled down low over his eyes.

“Where’s Mr. Stratton?” Alice demanded. She sensed trouble.

The man with the cap shrugged and said nothing.

“Do you understand English?”

The other man, younger than the first, shook his head no. Alice took a step inside. The bed had been slept in, but the room held no sign of Stratton. The drawers in the bureau had been drawn half open. The closet door was ajar—it too was empty—but something caught Alice’s eye: a length of heavy rope hung from the outside doorknob. In one corner of the room appeared to be another length of rope, brownish green in color, and glossy, as if it were made of plastic. Curious, Alice stepped forward for a closer look.

She let out a hoarse scream when she saw that the coil of rope was actually a large dead snake.

The man with the Mao cap pointed to the reptile and then tapped his chest proudly.

“You killed it?” Alice gasped.

The man nodded excitedly and pointed at his friend. Then he performed a brief pantomime, clubbing at the floor with an imaginary truncheon. Then he pointed at the cobra again and grinned.

Alice returned a nervous smile. “Well, you both are very brave. But where has Mr. Stratton gone? Have you seen him?”

The men’s faces went blank.

“Weiguoren,” Alice said, laboring over each syllable.

“Wei,” answered the man in the Mao cap. It was as good as a shrug.

Alice bowed goodbye and left the room, grumbling. No one on the bus would believe this.

Stratton poured himself a large cup of hot tea and drank it quickly; the train would lurch to a start any second, and he didn’t want the steaming cup to spill in his lap. That the soft-class compartment was unoccupied was his second stroke of luck this morning. The first had been talking his way onto the Peking-bound train. His papers showed that he was not routed back to Peking, and the clerk at the station had noticed the discrepancy at first glance. She had called for an interpreter, who had explained that Stratton could not leave Xian until the date prescribed on his papers. Stratton had responded with a hideously graphic story about food poisoning from some bad snails; he even interrupted the discussion and run to the restroom, pretending to be sick. It was a good performance, and both the clerk and the translator had solemnly agreed that he should return to Peking at once for rest and medical treatment.

Now, alone on the train and seemingly safe, Stratton had time to think. David—dead at the hands of his own brother. Kangmei—arrested, maybe worse. Then there was the deputy minister, Wang Bin—frightened enough to order the murder of an American tourist. But why?

At the dig, Kangmei’s friend had observed Wang Bin struggling for David’s camera. This puzzled Stratton, for the site had been photographed extensively, and the pictures had been published throughout the world. Evidently David had found something extraordinary—something forbidden.