A Death in China (21 page)

Stratton laid aside his reverie and the sauna precisely at seven thirty-five. Dressed again in the strange-fitting commune clothes, he took the elevator to the seventh floor and padded the carpeted hallway until he found room 718. He knocked sharply. No one answered.

Stratton found one of the floor attendants sorting cakes of soap.

“Excuse me, but I seem to have locked myself out of our suite. Seven-one-eight. The name is Bodine. My wife is down at the hairdresser.”

“I help,” the attendant said. The master key hung from a chain on his cloth belt. The attendant unlocked the door to the darkened suite and Stratton went to work.

He shed his clothes and concealed them beneath a mattress on one of the beds. From Danny Bodine’s closet he selected a navy blue necktie, a pin-striped business shirt and a pair of dark trousers. The clothes fit almost perfectly; Stratton had guessed as much when he had first noticed the American oilman in the hotel lobby. Even Bodine’s black wingtips felt snug.

Stratton removed a blue suitcase from the closet and opened it on the bed. Haphazardly, he tossed in a suit, a couple of shirts, another pair of slacks. One could not very well leave China without some luggage.

In the bathroom he borrowed Bodine’s cordless Remington.

Danny Bodine was a second-drawer man—that is, the kind of traveler who hides his most precious valuables in the second drawer of the bureau, instead of the top, in the belief that this will outfox the burglars of the world. A jet-setter’s illusion.

Stratton triumphantly located Bodine’s passport under a stack of jockey shorts. Next he guessed that the oilman’s emergency cash would be either carefully taped on the underside of the drawer, rolled into his socks, or divided in equal sums between the two hiding places.

Again, Stratton silently congratulated himself. A pair of black nylon knee socks yielded three hundred dollars and two hundred yuan. Stratton took only the dollars. Traveling expenses—he had lost everything in Xian.

Before he left Bodine’s room, Stratton checked his watch. It was barely eight o’clock. He picked up the telephone and asked the switchboard operator to ring the Ban Xi restaurant. It took five full minutes for a waiter to locate “the American woman named Pam” and lead her to the phone.

“Hi,” said Stratton. “I’ve got some bad news: I don’t think I’m going to make it to dinner. I’m sorry for all of the trouble.”

Pam was disappointed and curious.

“Did you get your cable?”

“Yes, and that’s the bad news. I’ve got to go back to the States tomorrow,” Stratton said. “For a funeral.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“I’m the one who’s sorry—for all the inconvenience. Could I have your address? I’d like to write after we get back.” This time he was telling the truth. Stratton wrote down her address in Denver.

“I’m going to send you something,” he said. Something the size of a man’s suitcase, he thought. Bodine would be thrilled to get his wingtips back, not to mention the three hundred bucks.

“You’re missing a great dinner,” Pam said. “I skipped the quail eggs and ordered something called ‘fragrant meat.’ It’s very tasty, Tom.”

“Dog meat,” Stratton muttered.

“What did you say?”

“Never mind. Good night, Pam.”

The rain had stopped. Stratton left the Dong Fang Hotel by foot, carrying Bodine’s suitcase as nonchalantly as if it were a briefcase. He strolled past a city park, lushly landscaped, its circular ponds ringed by orchids. A young Chinese couple sat together on a bench, whispering in the twilight, touching each other’s hands. On a downhill sidewalk, slick from the rain, Stratton was startled by a throng of teenagers who flew by on roller skates, giddy with speed.

At the Guangzhou Railway Station he had only an hour to wait for the train to Hong Kong. Bored immigration inspectors barely glanced at the passport.

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.