Carl Hiaasen - A Death in China

"At first I imagined you wanted me to help you steal. I photographed what you did not want me to see and you took my camera away. Your carefully sculpted mask slipped then and I realized that you are my brother only in name. It is well that our father is dead."

"You do not understand."

"Oh, yes, brother. I have seen it, and touched it, and tasted its majesty. What you are doing is a crime against China, against all of us. I will not allow it."

Wang Bin spared a glance from the road, expecting to see his brother's hand on the door handle, ready to bolt. It was what he feared most. But David sat with his arms folded, staring straight ahead, a self-righteous plodder chewing on a puzzle. Wang Bin despised him.

"Where are you taking me?" David Wang demanded.

"This road goes to the Great Wall and to the Ming Tombs. I am taking you somewhere you will be safe."

"I would be safe in Peking, except for you."

"You must understand," Wang Bin exclaimed with all the conviction he could muster. "They were going to arrest you… as a spy."

"I? A spy? Can you not invent something less transparent?"

"It's true, I swear it. Hundreds of Chinese return here each year and disappear.

The government believes that once a Chinese always a Chinese. You may carry some other passport, but it doesn't matter. I heard from friends in the Public Security Bureau that you were to be arrested. Perhaps it was only their way of getting at me. But when I heard about it, I became desperate. I could not tell you. Since you have not lived in China, you cannot understand how things are. In desperation, the only thing I could think to do quickly was to hide you; to keep you safe until I could find a way to help you leave the country."

"And that is where we are going now? On an empty road to nowhere in the middle of the night? To keep me safe? To get me out of the country?"

"Yes."

"My brother, we are both old men, but neither of us is stupid. If you tell me the truth, I will try to help you. We can go to the embassy. I have important friends at home. It is not too late. Look, it is nearly dawn. Let it be the first dawn of a new life for you, my brother. I implore you. I will help."

Wang Bin never faltered. Cautiously, he directed the car across a long causeway that breasted a dry river. They entered an avenue lined with giant stone animals in pairs: camels, lions, elephants.

"This is the entrance to the Ming Tombs," Wang Bin said.

"I have seen the pictures."

"Very well, we will talk as brothers. Tell me what you think. Perhaps you are right. Perhaps it is not too late."

They were near now. Wang Bin needed only another few minutes. Of the thirteen tombs, one had been excavated and was open to tourists. The other twelve were in disrepair, their dusty grounds impromptu picnic sites for bored foreign residents of the capital. Wang Bin turned onto a narrow strip of asphalt running to a modern reservoir built in a gentle valley beneath the hillside tombs.

David Wang rambled on, but the words had become irrelevant now, like the memorial chants in the aftermath of battle. Wang Bin stopped the car on a rocky beach at the shore of the reservoir. The half light of false dawn shadowed a half-dozen wooden rowboats lying face down above the high-water mark. There was no sign of life.

Wang Bin shut off the engine. Carefully, he set the hand brake.

"Your words have great impact on me, brother," he said. "I am beginning to see my mistake, an excess of pride. Let us talk further in the fresh air. It is quite beautiful here. It is not often in China that a man can be alone like this."

Wang Bin stood with his back to the car, facing the dark, still water. He fished among the larger rocks for a flat stone and sent it skimming.

"Only two jumps. Do you remember how as boys we would skim stones in the river?

Five jumps, six jumps. Anything seemed possible then."

"I remember," David's voice came from behind.

"Things are more complicated now."

"Yes, they are. Neither of us is as strong as we were once in Shanghai."

"It is true."

They fell silent, watching tiny wavelets lapping at the beach stones.

It was David who spoke at last. A voice of infinite sadness.

"I have thought it through. I understand why you invited me to China, why you held me captive. And why you have brought me here. I know now what it is that only a brother can do for you, no one else. I understand your plan for him."

"Tell me."

"He is to be your essential victim. You must murder him."

Wang Bin never turned. Unseeing, he spoke to the waters.

"Yes. I must murder him."

With a tremendous shove, David Wang pushed his brother into the shallow water.

Then, clumsily, he began running along the beach toward a workman's shack that beckoned from the distance. David had not run far when he lost his footing on the loose stones and pitched forward with a groan.

It was then his brother caught him from behind.

Stratton's forearms ached from steering the hard-sprung truck over what seemed an endless series of unseen hills. The pitted road twisted, like a snake. In the tepid glint of light from the dashboard, the gauge that Stratton had decided was for gas rested on its bottom mark. The one next to it-temperature?-seemed to be rising. He nudged the girl at his side.

"Wake up, Kangmei. It will be dawn soon and the truck will not go much farther."

"I was not sleeping, Thom-as, just resting." She stretched and ran her hands through the mass of tangled black hair. "Have we passed a river?"

"On a very shaky bridge, about ten minutes ago."

"Good. We are almost there."

"Where is there, Kangmei?" She had been coy about that since their escape. A safe place where they would be with friends, she had said.

"It is a commune, Thom-as. We call it Bright Star. It is the home of my mother's family. I lived there during the Cultural Revolution when my father was being punished. My uncles are among the commune leaders. They will protect us."

Stratton nodded. It had to have been something like that. He riffled through the possibilities. A commune in a backward province more than a thousand miles from Peking, and probably a century in terms of control. Once they had taught him a great deal about communes, the central fact of life for eight hundred million Chinese. The instructor's voice came back to Stratton. He had been a Spec/6, dragged from a Ph.D. program to war. Shared reward for shared work, a Marxist replacement for rural villages dominated by landlords. Now there were no more landlords, only work brigades and production teams tilling common land.

What had resisted revolution was the social makeup of the communes. Almost all who lived on a commune in China were descendants of people who had lived there centuries ago. Nearly all the children born there would also die there in toothless old age. The continuity of families remained stronger than the caprice of a distant state.

Kangmei would be safe. The family would close around her, shutting out inquiries from cadres who, knowing the system, would not press too hard. She would be safe, but also empty. What kind of life would it be for an intelligent, vivacious young woman, calf-deep in paddy muck, courted by half-literate bumpkins? Whom would she talk to? Whom would she love? Kangmei deserved better than that. Stratton made himself a private promise: She would have it. Somehow.

One day.

But would the commune shelter him as well? Probably, for a time, anyway.

"Kangmei, we're in Guangdong Province, right? How far from the coast?"

"No, this is Guangxi. And we are many hours from the sea, many hills and many people."

Guangxi. Memories worse than the cobra.

"Look, I think it would be better if-"

She had outthought him.