Carl Hiaasen - A Death in China

He was too weak to resist when Kangmei and her uncles levered him to his feet and led him blindly down the gentle hillside into yesterday.

The general came late.

He had lunched too long-a farewell banquet for a retiring colleague: sea cucumbers, suckling pig, whitefish, pigeon, shark's fin soup, tree fungus for dessert, and torrents of mao tai. The colleague, eighty-four years old, a Party militant for nearly half a century, had never cracked a smile.

The general rebuffed chastising glances from the two civilian members of the tribunal with a short nod and settled noisily into his padded chair. He spared hardly a. glance for the gray-haired man disintegrating before the prosecutor's tongue-lashing. He thumbed briefly through the docket on the polished wood desk before him. The man was a musician of some sort.

The general did not know him. He ignored the stream of accusation and thought of his own son. The surveillance reports were quite concrete: The boy had been meeting foreign journalists, hanging out at the International Club, perfuming his hair, reading Western magazines. He had even, apparently, bedded a diplomat.

The general would not have minded that, but the omission of the diplomat's name, nationality and sex-certainly a calculated omission-could mean only the worst.

The young fool had been a mistake from the beginning, a winter child by the general's third wife when he was already fifty-seven. The boy had inherited his mother's looks, but not a scrap of common sense. He wanted to study in the United States. In the dawning Chinese political winter he might as well declare his intention of walking on the moon. The general dozed off, deciding that the boy would have to go into the army. If he let the Public Security Bureau have him, the boy's mother-another mistake, she cackled like a chicken-would make the general's life impossible.

"… compose and play unauthorized, bourgeois, decadent and immoral music."

"Twenty-six. You are accused, during the visit of foreign guests, to wit, the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, of playing foreigners' instruments without authorization and of demeaning the prestige and honor of the People's Republic by publicly suggesting that they were of a quality superior to those made in the People's Republic… "

The general roused himself for the climax. When the prosecutor asked for life imprisonment, the musician fainted. The general watched expressionless. He had seen that before, and stronger men wet their pants. When guards had roused the musician and the president offered to commute the sentence to self-criticism and twenty years at a state farm in Qinghai Province, the idiot actually seemed grateful.

Qinghai, on the unforgiving Tibetan plateau. One of the loneliest, coldest, most savage places on earth. If he was still alive in six months, it would be a miracle. Soft-handed wretch.

When the president intoned "Qinghai" he looked over at the general with arched eyebrow, as though inviting an objection, a local joke. The prosecutor smothered a smile.

Silently, the general assented. He had never liked musicians.

After the last of that afternoon's accused had been dismissed, the prosecutor summarized the results of the day before.

Normally, while the tribunal members smoked and sipped fresh tea, the prosecutor would report that all of the senior comrades given twenty-four hours to mull their fate had volunteered to accept lesser sentence rather than to contest the charges.

That afternoon was different. Head down, voice muted, almost embarrassed, the prosecutor began reading:

"The following comrades who appeared before the Tribunal yesterday have agreed to self-criticism and reform through labor: Wu Ping, Sun Liu… "

Surprised, the president riffled through the papers before him.

"Wait until I find the list, Comrade," he demanded with raised hand. "Very well, proceed."

When the prosecutor had finished-after repeating some of the names as many as three times to accommodate the president, whose hearing was not what it had once been-he remained standing.

Slowly, lips moving, the president read through the list of names he had checked.

"The list is complete except for Comrade Wang Bin," the president said at last.

"Yes, Comrade President."

"He demands a trial?" The president was incredulous.

"No, Comrade President."

"What then?"

"I do not know, Comrade President."

"What are you saying?"

"Comrade Wang Bin has not reported to the Tribunal within the time afforded him, Comrade President."

The prosecutor was frantic. Such a thing had never happened before.

"Why has he not reported?"

"I do not know, Comrade President."

"Where is Wang Bin, Comrade Prosecutor?"

"I do not know."

"It is your job to know."

"It is the job of the Public Security Bureau. I have asked them."

"What do they say, idiot? What do they say?"

"Comrade Wang Bin is missing. He has not been seen anywhere since last night.

There is no trace of him. The Public Security Bureau-"

The president surged to his feet with the sudden furious energy of a man fifty years younger. He slammed his fist on the desk, scattering papers and upsetting his tea.

"Find him!" the president roared. "Find him and bring him to me, Comrade Prosecutor. Do it now!"

The general belched.

They walked by the river, a nurse and her patient.

Stratton's confidence was returning with his strength. He had slept for nearly twenty-four hours, a half-life in which he had grayly drifted around reality without ever reaching it: sober-miened women scrubbing him; a middle-aged man probing gently at his leg; wondrous soup, piping hot, that tasted of the earth and scissored through the pain. And the beautiful woman who sat by him, whispering reassurance. That, he would never forget.

When Stratton had at last surfaced, tears of relief belied Kangmei's fixed smile.

He had reached out for her clenched fist and gently pried open the fingers.

"I'm all right. Really I am," he had comforted.

"I was afraid, Thom-as. So afraid."

Later, watching him wolf down a mound of rice with scraps of chicken, she had seemed like a little girl again.

"You must listen, Thom-as. To my mother's brothers I have said that you are a good man who is being pursued by evil men; nothing more. They are simple peasants, but good, and strong. They will not betray you. To the rest of the people in Bright Star my uncles are saying that you are a foreign expert from Peking who has come to show us new ways to grow better rice. I am your guide."

"I don't know anything about rice." Except what paddy mud feels like, wet, consuming.

"That is not important. When the people of Bright Star learn that you are our rice expert, they will not speak of you to members of the other production teams, or to the cadres at Man-ling. You will be safe then, do you not see?"

"I must not stay here, Kangmei," Stratton had insisted weakly. "I must try to help David."

"Yes, Thom-as. My uncles have cousins who work on the railroad. They think it would be possible to get you to Guangzhou."

Guangzhou in Chinese. In English, Canton, China's sprawling southern metropolis across the border from Hong Kong. Canton was still China, but from all he had read of it, the city was also a curious East-West hybrid infinitely more relaxed than Peking. In a teeming and sophisticated city where foreigners were no novelty, he had a fighting chance.

"Guangzhou would be fine."

He slept again, and when he awoke it was midafternoon. Kangmei laughed when he tried on clothes smelling of strong soap that had been neatly stacked alongside the bed. The trousers bottomed out four inches too soon. The shirt went across his shoulders, but only the bottom two buttons would fasten.