Carl Hiaasen - A Death in China

The panel door of the boxcar clattered open and daylight exploded in Stratton's face. He had managed to work himself out of the burlap, in the darkness, but could see nothing. Now the sudden brightness blinded him. Rough hands yanked him upright by the hair. A terse command in Mandarin, and then in English: "Drink!"

Stratton gulped strange-tasting water from a wooden mug. Within minutes, he grew dizzy and passed out.

Deng and Liao were in a foul mood; neither had relished a trip to the south.

Peking, with its fine restaurants and all its cadre privileges, was infinitely preferable to a muggy peasant farm village. Down here the lines of authority were less clearly drawn, Deng grumbled; respect seemed to diminish with each kilometer away from the Imperial City. At every stop there had been questions:

Where are your papers? What are you doing here? Where is your dan-wei! In his agitation, Deng handled the sleeping form of Tom Stratton with something less than gentleness.

"I thought we would be finished with this in Xian," Liao said as they heaved Stratton onto a flatbed truck. "The orders changed. I wonder why."

"A good question for the deputy minister," Deng said. "He will be here soon."

Wang Bin leaned back and blew a smoke ring toward the ceiling. "Tell me about the American."

"I will not," his daughter said hotly.

"You will! You are too old to spank, Wang Kangmei, but you are of an age where other punishment can be more terrible. You still have a future today, but there is no guarantee. Tomorrow, who knows? I would not be the first senior Party official to forsake an errant child."

Kangmei folded her arms across her breasts and stared at the floor.

"Did you sleep with him?"

"He told me all about Uncle David. He wished to see the tombs at Xian, the dig you are so proud of. What harm was there in showing him?"

"He asked many questions, did he not?"

"Not as many as I asked him. Father, I was merely curious. About Xian, about my uncle. I was distraught because he died only days after we first met. Can you understand that?"

"Did you-"

"No! I did not sleep with Stratton."

"Deng and Liao told me you were in his room." Wang Bin's eyes dropped. "Naked in his bed."

"They are vicious liars, Father. They came to my room, and dragged me from my own bed. They took me to Stratton and began to interrogate us. They hit me, Father, and said terrible things. Stratton tried to stop them and they beat him up, and locked him in a closet-"

Wang Bin raised a hand. "You are a foolish girl, and a bad liar. For that, I suppose, I should be grateful. Your eyes confess everything, Kangmei. Now I ask you: What of the family honor? Whoring with a foreigner-such behavior aggrieves me, and insults the entire Wang family. I shall not mention what it would do to your mother."

"I told you-"

"It probably will not be possible to keep this quiet for very long. Today the loyalties of Liao and Deng belong to me; tomorrow, who can say?" Wang Bin watched his daughter's eyes grow moist. Her posture remained erect, and her face defiant. "Kangmei, this fascination you nurture for America has become a dangerous and disturbing thing. You are in serious trouble. This Thomas Stratton is no simple tourist. He is a cunning man, a former soldier. He has been to China before, and he has killed Chinese. He is a spy, Kangmei, and you, his tool. The shame you have brought to our family… it saddens me."

"No!" Kangmei cried. "You are wrong, Father. Stratton was a friend of my uncle, that it all. He mourns David Wang as a friend mourns, deeply and sincerely. This I know. I've done nothing shameful-"

"That is enough," Wang Bin said coldly.

"No!" Kangmei was on her feet, shouting and crying at once. "How can you treat a daughter like this? The thugs who beat me, attacked me in my bed-they should be in jail, not me. Yet I am dragged from my room, tied up, gagged, and thrown in a dirty cell with dangerous criminals. Why, Father?"

Wang Bin laughed shortly and stubbed out his cigarette. "Your pitiful cellmates hardly qualify as dangerous criminals. They are petty thieves, my daughter, that's all. They're being punished for pilfering from the archaeological sites-nothing valuable: trinkets, really. But it is important to set an example for the others. Stealing cannot be tolerated at such historic places. However, these people are not truly dangerous, so stop the tears."

Kangmei asked, "Must I go back to the cell?"

Wang Bin circled the small desk and slipped an arm around his daughter's trembling shoulders. "No," he said. "We're going on a trip."

Kangmei pulled away and faced her father. "Where?"

"South," he replied, "to a small village. Kangmei, there is something you must do for me-and for yourself. To erase what has happened is impossible. But it is still possible for you to repent, to have a future, and perhaps even a good position in China. You must do as I say."

"And if I refuse?"

Wang Bin raised his hands in a gesture of feigned indifference. "Then I will not hesitate to put you on the first train to Tibet, where you can grub potatoes for the next five years."

Torn Stratton awoke to the hum of flies circling his head. His cheek pressed against an earthen floor, and the cool smell of clay filled his nostrils.

As he righted himself, the bleak room spun briefly. His arms and legs were free.

His thigh throbbed, and by the dismal condition of the bandage, Stratton knew that his captors had not changed the dressing.

His cell was spartan: a single wooden chair, straight-backed, handmade, with a crude hemp seat; a solitary bare light bulb, fixed in the rafters; a large ceramic bowl, crusted with stale rice and scum, buzzing with insects; and a single window, at eye level, crisscrossed in a loose pattern with barbed wire.

Tom Stratton was alone. He paced the dimensions of the room at eight feet by twelve. The heavy door was made of intransigent timber. Stratton knew it would never yield to his shoulder.

Peering through the window, which measured about a foot square, Stratton expected to see a military compound with marching squads of People's Liberation Army soldiers, or at least some uniformed police. Instead he saw a newly paved road and a large parking lot half-filled with trucks and bicycles; beyond that, a banana grove carpeted an entire hillside. A lorry painted dark PLA green trundled down the two-lane road and stopped in the parking lot no more than fifty yards from Stratton's cell. He watched a quiet but affable procession of Chinese jump down and form an orderly group. The men wore sturdy gray or brown slacks, starched shirts open at the neck, while the pigtailed women wore loose-fitting pants and white cotton blouses. Their clothing was too fancy for work. Stratton assumed that the visitors were local tourists.

The truck rattled off, and the Chinese marched dutifully toward the building in which Stratton was being held. They crossed only a few feet from his cell, talking in pleasant tones, until they finally passed out of Stratton's sight.

He decided that his dungeon definitely was not part of a regular Chinese jail.

Stratton moved to the corner of the room that garnered the most light from the small window. There he peeled off the soiled bandage and examined the bullet hole in his right thigh. The dime-sized wound was black and scabbed, but the vermilion halo around it announced that infection had set in. Stratton's only piece of clothing, a short-sleeved sports shirt, was rancid from the long train ride, and of no use as a sponge. Reluctantly, he rewrapped his injured leg with the same dirty gauze, and sat down to wait for his keepers.

They arrived without pleasantries, an hour before dusk; three men, lean, unremarkable, impassive at first. They wore no uniforms, which surprised Stratton. One of them, who carried a rifle with a bayonet, motioned Stratton out of the cell.