Carl Hiaasen - A Death in China

You know nothing."

"I know that you have been stealing artifacts from the dig at Xian. I know that you asked your brother to help you smuggle something out. He refused. You argued, and later you killed him in Peking. Poison, I would say. There will be evidence, you know. Poison stays in the bones; any pathologist can find it. It remains only to exhume the body."

Wang Bin laughed.

"Fool! You understand nothing. My brother was of great assistance to me, yes, although he did not know it. I did not need him to smuggle contraband, Professor, but to bring me something. Something perfectly legitimate. He did it willingly."

"I'll bet."

"There is one other thing you should know, fool: My brother is not dead." Wang Bin hurled the words with ferocity.

"He's dead and you killed him. You can lie to me, but I doubt if your own government will be impressed. I have written a letter-everything I know about David's death, including the fact that you killed him. It is somewhere safe. If something happens to me, then it will be opened and forwarded to the Chinese government."

Wang Bin paused to consider.

"A letter, perhaps, with one of the members of your tour group, given to him before leaving Xian."

Stratton said nothing. That is what he might have done-if the document really existed.

Then Wang Bin smiled and Stratton knew his desperate ploy had failed.

"I think the letter is your invention, but if it exists, it cannot trouble me.

For me, the time is ready. And your time is finished, Captain."

Stratton looked at the arrogant Chinese without expression.

"Does it surprise you to hear your old rank? It should not. We are thorough people, we Chinese, patient people with long memories. We have files for everything. There is a fat security file in Peking with your name on it, and a black ribbon across it. The ribbon is a special distinction. It means kill on sight. So, in addition to all your other crimes, you are a spy. It will be a great pleasure to kill you, a service to the Revolution-my last gesture."

"How?" Stratton was too nonplussed to invent a denial.

"How did we ever know the name of the dashing captain of intelligence in Saigon who always undertook the most dangerous infiltration missions? The hero of many medals who led raids into North Vietnam and, once, even into China?

"How simple Americans are! Heroes are never truly anonymous, Captain, and soldiers can never be trusted with secrets. Can they? Think back to Saigon. Many Americans knew the true identity of the secret 'Captain Black.' Can you believe they never talked? To their girls, to friends when they were drunk. It took some time, the file says as much. But within a few months, North Vietnamese intelligence knew you were Captain Black. After your raid into China, they shared their information-we were allies then, remember. The Vietnamese wanted you very badly, and after your slaughter of innocent peasants, so did we. Too bad you left Saigon before the assassination teams could find you."

"You got the wrong guy," Stratton said without conviction.

"I think not. Your death, at least, is something for which the Revolution will thank me. Goodbye, Captain. I hope you will find hell even less hospitable than China."

Wang Bin stormed from the makeshift cell. Stratton heard the heavy wooden bar fall against the door. He lay for a long time on the fetid ground, thinking, listening.

Then, painfully but surely, he pulled himself to his feet. He hurt, but not as badly as he had led Wang Bin to believe. Teeth clenched, moving with the jerky uncertainty of an old man, Stratton began a series of painful limbering exercises. As he bent and swayed, Stratton replayed the conversation with Wang Bin. If the mind is too occupied to register pain, then there is no pain.

The man was angry, and he would be merciless. That was the bottom line. Yet there had been bits of information within the conversation that Stratton might use. He began to gnaw at them.

He was in the south of China. What he had seen of the vegetation Wang Bin had confirmed. Guangxi Province. Stratton tried to superimpose the train ride on a map of China. South for three days. He couldn't be far from the coast. If he could get to the sea and steal a boat…

There had been puzzling things, too. David's unwitting role had been to bring something, Wang Bin had said. That was an obvious lie. The brothers had argued in Xian only after David had learned that Wang Bin wanted him to smuggle.

"My brother is not dead," he had said. A second lie, even more senseless than the first. Of course David was dead-he had been murdered.

There was a third riddle. Stratton's death was to be "my last gesture" to the Revolution. What could account for that strange phrase?

Gingerly, he began a series of knee bends. Down-two-three-four. His leg howled in protest. Why tell lies to a condemned man? Senseless. Unless…

"Oh, Jesus."

Stratton spoke aloud to the emptiness of his cell, the words forced from him by sudden realization. What if Wang Bin had been telling the truth?

Stratton saw it then. Not entirely clear, but in terrifying outline. Solid, diabolical, imminent.

On one point, Wang Bin had been right.

Stratton was a fool.

In frustration, he hammered at the walls of the cell. Then he snapped a leg from the wooden chair and with its point began to scrape at the crude mortar between the bricks. It was irrational, and he knew it. Still, it was not a time for reason. It was a time for fury. Stratton scraped like a man demented.

Wang Bin sat with his legs crossed in an overstuffed armchair, waiting for his tea to cool. On the table before him sat four vases, each exquisite, each more than five hundred years old.

An aide in bottle-bottom glasses came silently into the room. He sprang forward to light the deputy minister's cigarette.

"Will we be needing our guest any longer, Comrade?" the aide asked quietly.

"One more day, I'm afraid, Lao Zhou." Wang Bin was perturbed. "I wish it could have been done on the train. If only his embassy had not started asking questions. I must know what he told his people, if he told them anything. One more day… then he must vanish completely, do you understand? No trace."

"It will be done. He is a dangerous enemy of the state." The frail-looking young translator with weak eyes was the most sadistic killer Wang Bin had ever encountered.

"You will tell me everything he says. It is vital… to the Revolution," Wang Bin said. "I would like to be there myself, but I must return immediately to Peking.

Go make the arrangements."

When the aide had gone, Wang Bin extracted a green and white envelope from the breast pocket of his Mao jacket. The telegram had arrived with breakfast and he knew its contents by heart.

It gave a time and a date: tomorrow.

He had been expecting it. And it might have come sooner. Once again, it seemed, those idiots in Peking were determined to wrestle long-suffering China back into the Middle Ages. A few months before, such a summons would have paralyzed Wang Bin with terror-as it was intended to do. But he had foreseen it this time, and he was ready. Now there was just fleeting irritation at the dreadful cost to the nation and his own comfort. Let them writhe, he thought. Let them devour their own entrails if they wish. Comrade Deputy Minister Wang Bin would never again collect night soil.

This new peace of mind had its price, of course: an odious alliance with the American art dealer Harold Broom. His name had come to Wang Bin from an underground buyer in Hong Kong. Broom had been highly recommended, not for his taste-he had none-but for his resourcefulness. It was a trait that Wang Bin had come to appreciate, though he could not help but despise Broom for his crude arrogance.