Carl Hiaasen - A Death in China

"So what'd you tell 'em?"

"Said I was an East German, training with their Viet friends."

The colonel laughed at the idea.

"How'd you get away?"

"I got away."

"It was supposed to be a quiet recon."

"It wasn't quiet."

"Shit, you're telling me. Their radio is already screaming to high heaven. They say thirty-eight 'innocent peasants' are dead."

"Most of them were soldiers."

"They blame us; probably they'll get one of their pious friends to raise hell at the UN."

"Why shouldn't they blame us? We did it, didn't we?"

Stratton wrenched himself from a tangle of sodden sheets. His watch said 5:47.

It was still dark in Peking. His eyes felt gummy, his mouth wooden. He glanced at the bottle of whiskey he had bought the night before in the hotel lobby. Less than half full, and still open.

He had not drunk like that for a long time. And he had not hurt like that for a long time. David Wang's death had triggered reactions and dreaded memories he thought he had buried for good.

From the street below came the muted whir of cyclists, harbingers of the morning rush hour. Stratton rejected his body's urging for sleep. His mind would not sleep. Naked, he lurched to the bathroom and turned on the hand shower, hardly noticing that the water was stone cold.

A wrinkled woman with blue-rinse hair and stiff new Hong Kong sandals sat across from Stratton in an anteroom at the U.S. Embassy. Sitting next to her, but obviously on a separate mission, was a slender middle-aged man with a leathery face, a smoker's face. He carried a suede valise.

"How is your tour?" the old woman said to Stratton.

"Not too good," he said hoarsely. News of David Wang's death had left him numb.

Sadness itself was slow in coming. Another old friend dead and-as in Vietnam-Tom Stratton was a long way from tears. Instead he fought a deep, dull melancholy.

"We have a lovely guide," the wrinkled woman said. "Her name is Su Yee. Her great-grandfather helped to build the Great Wall."

Stratton managed a polite smile.

"Where are you from?"

"New York," volunteered the smoker. "I'm an art dealer."

"I'm from Tucson, retired there from Chicago," the woman reported. "My husband used to be a stockbroker."

Together they awaited Stratton's contribution. "I'm a teacher," he said finally.

"I teach art."

"Asian art?" asked the man with the leathery face.

Stratton did not reply.

The art dealer hunched forward, and Stratton shifted uncomfortably. There was something felonious about the man. He was dressed well enough, but the fine clothes didn't match the tiny brown rodent eyes that scoured Stratton from head to toe in quick appraisal.

"Do you know much about Sung Dynasty sculpture?" the art dealer asked. His voice dropped to a clubby whisper. "I'm trying to cut a deal with some government types down in the Sichuan Province. They've got a little gold mine of a museum down there, but I can't persuade them to part with any of their artifacts."

"This is our first trip to China," the old woman interjected.

"Mine, too," Stratton said, glancing at the door to the consular office. Surely it would not be much longer.

"Where's your hotel?" the art dealer pressed. "Maybe we can get together for a duck dinner." He laughed a Rotary Club laugh. "Look, I've done a lot of work in Western Europe, the Mideast, even Russia. But this is new territory, and I don't know whose back needs scratching. Maybe we could help each other out."

"I don't see how," Stratton said.

The man held out his hand. "My name's Harold Broom."

Stratton guessed that Broom was the sort of man who carried business cards in his top shirt pocket, and he was right.

"I'm always looking for experts. Especially free-lancers," Broom said. "The more I know, the more I can take home." The smile was as thin and hollow as the voice. "And the more I take home, the more I spread around."

"No thanks," Stratton said. "I'm here on pleasure, not business.

"Too bad."

"I have a passport problem," said the old woman with blue-rinse hair. "I can't find my passport. I may have left it at the opera. My husband said there should be no problem, but I told him this isn't Europe. A passport is probably more important here. This is a Communist country."

"Yes," Stratton said. He was miserable.

The door opened and an American secretary beckoned. Steve Powell sat at a small desk in a tall room with one narrow window.

A gray file cabinet stood in one corner. On a table, in front of a cracked leather sofa, was a stack of American magazines.

"I'm sorry for making you wait," Powell said. "I've spent the last two hours wrestling with the Chinese bureaucracy. It is intractable on the most routine matters. You can imagine the problems we face with something like this."

"Can't be much worse than ours," Stratton said.

"Oh, but it is," Powell said cheerily. "Infinitely worse. I could tell you some incredible stories… "

"What happened to David?" Stratton asked. "When I went to his hotel all the manager would say is, 'Mr. Wang not here.'"

Powell nodded. "When you ask a question of a Chinese, expect a very literal answer. The man was telling you as much of the truth as you requested. Professor Wang became ill Tuesday night and was taken from the hotel."

"But David told me he wouldn't even be back in Peking until Wednesday evening."

Powell shrugged. He slipped on a pair of tortoiseshell glasses and opened a file. Stratton noticed that it was the only item on the desk. Powell was a neat young man.

"Tell me what happened to David," Stratton said impatiently.

"Death by duck."

Stratton's face twisted.

"Sounds funny, I know," Powell went on, "but that's what we call it. It's a new China syndrome: Aging, out-of-shape American tourist comes to Peking, hikes and strolls through the Forbidden City and climbs the Great Wall until he's blue in the face. Then he gorges himself on-what else?-rich Peking duck, gulps liters of Lao Shan mineral water and promptly drops dead of a myocardial infarction."

"A heart attack, that's all," Stratton said.

"Sure," Powell said. "Death by duck. We're had dozens of cases. It has nothing to do with the duck, I assure you. Just too much food, too much exertion. Might as well be Coney Island franks."

"Just like that." Stratton's voice was tired and low.

"After dinner, Dr. Wang apparently felt sick to his stomach. Several guests apparently saw him go up to his room. Two hours later one of the cleaning boys went in and found him there in bed, unconscious but still alive. Two medical students came and took him to a clinic nearby. The doctors apparently worked very hard but it was too late."

"It's all apparently this and apparently that. Aren't you sure?"

"Of course. I use that word as a reflex," Powell said uneasily. "This information comes from the Chinese government. I can't vouch for it a hundred percent, but on a matter like this, I see no reason to challenge the facts. It is, as I said before, fairly routine. Tragic, to be sure, but still routine."

"This is a maddening place," Stratton said. "The people at the hotel might at least have told me which hospital he went to."

"They probably didn't know," Powell responded. "It took me five phone calls to find out. It was a small but very modern clinic on Wan Fu Jing Street. It has everything most hospitals in Peking don't have-the machines, I mean. I'm sorry for the confusion, but if you've spent much time in Asia, you come to expect it."

Stratton nodded. He knew something of Asian confusion.

"Why," he asked, "was there such a delay in reporting the death to the embassy?

Is that routine, too?"

The delay, Powell explained, was another matter. He opened a desk drawer and withdrew a new file; he put the first file away. Professor Wang's death was not treated as those of other American visitors, the consul continued, because of Wang's relation to a high-ranking Chinese official.