A Death in China

by Carl Hiaasen

  They visited the historical museum, a fourteenth-century temple, a thirteenth-century drum tower and Big Goose Pagoda south of the city, originally built early in the seventh century by the Tang, or was it the Sui? They walked the Ming city walls, and visited the neolithic site at Ban Po. Dynasties and centuries began to run together for Stratton. At each stop, Stratton and Mr. Xia would do a quick tourist round and Mr. Xia would ask to see the comrade in charge so that a distinguished American visitor could pay his respects. None of the comrades seemed overworked. To a man, they all poured gracious tea and exchanged compliments interminably. Three of them knew of Comrade Wang from Peking. None had ever met his distinguished brother. By midafternoon, Stratton wondered whether his patience or his bladder would burst first. Kangmei attended none of the interviews. Instead, she wandered around, "talking to the young people," as she put it. It was hard for Stratton to know whether she was devoted more to seeking information or to recruiting for her cause.

  "So much for the Taoist Temple of the Eight Immortals." Stratton sighed as he sank back into seat cushions already dank with his sweat. "Now what?"

  "The Qin ruins to the east of the city. It will take us about thirty minutes to get there, Thom-as." She ran light fingers across his cheek. "Do not be discouraged."

  They drove through an intensely cultivated valley, past communes that seemed rich by Chinese standards. Suddenly, the car turned sharply onto a narrow strip of asphalt that looked as if it had been laid as an afterthought. Through gaps in the fields of chest-high corn, Stratton could see a large cone-shaped hill off to the right.

  "That is Mount Qin, the tumulus," said Mr. Xia. "It was looted three years after the emperor's death, when the dynasty fell. It took an army three days and three nights to carry away treasure from the tomb. The new excavations have not reached it yet, so it is not known what the grave robbers may have left. The current excavations are all here, to the west of the tumulus."

  "What's that?" Stratton nodded toward a squat, two-story building with a big chimney about a quarter mile off to the left.

  "That is a factory belonging to the commune. They make Tiger Brand sewing machines." Mr. Xia smiled. "The factory wants to expand, but the local authorities will not allow it because it is not known what is buried around the factory, or even under it. The factory owners say they do not care about old things: It is the commune's land and the commune has an obligation to provide a good life for its people."

  "Sounds like the kind of squabble we have at home between environmentalists and developers," Stratton said. "What happened?"

  "The dispute went all the way to Peking. There is no decision yet," said Mr.

  Xia.

  Stratton turned to Kangmei. "By 'Peking' does he mean your father?"

  She nodded.

  To honor a cruel emperor reviled for two thousand years, but latterly proclaimed a hero, the Chinese had created an instant museum.

  Kangmei vanished in search of young co-conspirators. Mr. Xia led Stratton into a large building with a vaulted roof that looked like an airplane hangar. Once inside, the guide went off to look for an official with whom Stratton could drink tea. Alone, Stratton pushed through two polished doors and into the main chamber.

  It was like changing centuries.

  Stratton stood about fifteen feet above the dig in a skylight-lit hall the size of a football field. His first thought was that it was the cleverest and most awesome museum he had ever seen. To protect the excavation while simultaneously exploiting the discovery as a tourist attraction, the Chinese had simply erected the museum over the dig.

  Below Stratton, in roofless chambers that extended in four files, lay the Emperor Qin's celestial army. Stratton stood on a concrete platform, which was shaped like a square U with two wings stretched out parallel along the files. In the pit, a modern army of Chinese technicians worked with brushes, dust pans and hand shovels. Stratton stared into the chamber where three hundred clay soldiers stood.

  They were magnificent. He had seen pictures, of course-who had not?-but even that foretaste had left Stratton unprepared for their true majesty.

  The figures were life-sized, nearly six feet tall. They had been molded from gray river clay by master craftsmen, dead for twenty-two hundred years. Stratton stared with breathless fascination at the nearest warrior, a kneeling archer.

  The detail was extraordinary.

  The archer wore a topknot, pulled tightly to the left side of his head and held with a band. Stratton could count the hairs.

  The archer's ears clung close to his skull. The eyebrows were high and stylized, as though they had been plucked. The nose was broad, classically Chinese. The warrior had affected a finely combed mustache and a tuft of hair on his chin. On the face, mirthless and resolute, were flecks of blue and red paint mixed two centuries before Christ was born.

  The archer wore a studded jerkin that reached below his waist and ended high on the biceps. It afforded protection from sword slashes, while at the same time allowing mobility with which to wield a bow. Below the waist, the emperor's soldier wore a skirtlike loincloth, leggings and stout, square-toed sandals.

  Nearby, a second archer wore the same uniform, but his face was different-rounder, a trifle older, no mustache. Every soldier, Stratton noted with awe, had a different face-in eternity, as in life.

  Stratton paced the arms of the platform. Here lay a terracotta arm jutting out from the red clay. And there, a headless torso, being dusted by a young woman with intense concentration. Toward the back of the vast hall, new chambers had been carefully outlined in chalk, but had so far been unmolested. Working at their current painstaking pace, Stratton reckoned, it would take the Chinese technicians at least another ten or twenty years to exploit the dig completely.

  Stratton was fascinated. He could have stayed for hours. Too soon, Mr. Xia was at his side.

  "Director Ku will see you for a few moments, but you must hurry. It is nearly closing time."

  Reluctantly, Stratton followed him out of the chamber.

  "Mr. Xia, do you realize that this might be the most important archaeological discovery of this century?" Stratton asked.

  "Yes, so many American friends have told us. The soldiers excite them very much, but there are many other discoveries as well."

  "Can I see them?"

  "I am sorry, but only the soldiers are open to the public."

  Director Ku was a roly-poly individual with a ready smile and the callused hands of a worker. Stratton squatted on the inevitable overstuffed chair and tried not to drink the tea.

  The pleasantries went quickly enough. Ku, Stratton suspected, was not a man to keep his dinner waiting. Even the set speech that seemed to come with every Chinese official's job seemed to sail by: the discovery had been made in 1965 by peasants digging a well. During the Cultural Revolution, not much happened.

  Since then, the work had proceeded systematically, entirely in the hands of Chinese specialists; no foreigners were welcome. Test excavations were still being dug. So far, scientists had positively identified an armory, an imperial zoo, stables, other groups of warriors, the tombs of nobles sacrificed to mark the emperor's death, the underground entrance to the tumulus and exquisite bronze workings, including a chariot two-thirds life-size.

  "I did not know about the bronzes," said Stratton. "Can they be seen?"

  "They are in Peking," came back the translation. Stratton saw what he thought was a flash of annoyance on the director's lined face. Annoyance at the question? No, more likely at the thought that Xian's precious treasures had been preempted by the central government.

  "Explain about my friend and his brother, Xiao-Xia, but this time don't ask if they were here. Say that my friend told me he would always remember the hospitality he received here."

  At the translation, Ku's face lit. He reached into his breast pocket and extracted a silver ballpoint pen.

  "The director says he remembers your friend very well. He calls him the 'gentle professor' and sh
ows you the pen he was honored to receive as a gift," said Mr.

  Xia.

  Bingo. But now what?

  "Ask the comrade director if it would be possible for me to see the special excavation that my friend and his brother visited. Be sure and use Kangmei's father's name."

  That provoked a quick exchange in Mandarin before Mr. Xia finally said: "He asks if you have permission."

  A direct hit. "Tell him yes."

  Mr. Xia looked quizzically at Stratton.

  "Do you really have permission?"

  "Of course."

  Stratton barely concealed his impatience at the Mandarin that followed. If he could see what David had seen, he might understand why the brothers had quarreled. Ku, who obviously took no pains to hide his own distaste for Peking, might even tell him. For him, Peking probably meant Wang Bin.

  "The director regrets that the excavation is only opened when Peking advises him that an important visitor is coming. He regrets that the responsible officials in Peking did not inform him you were coming, but, he says, perhaps in a day or two it will be possible."

  Damn. What that meant was that the director would check with Peking.

  "I would be grateful," Stratton said. "Ask him if my friend-"

  "The director also apologizes, but explains that he now must supervise the closing and meet with the technicians to discuss tomorrow's work schedule," Mr.

  Xia interjected.

  "Shit," said Stratton. It escaped. Mr. Xia looked perplexed. Stratton flushed.

  "Say we are sorry for interrupting his work. Thank him for his hospitality and say we will return to look at the special excavation when the details have been arranged."

  Darkness was falling and large numbers of workers had already left the site on a wheezy bus by the time Kangmei returned to the car.

  "It happened here, Thom-as," she erupted. "My father and my uncle had an angry discussion, shouting. A young worker told me; he is a cousin of a friend of mine who also studied languages."

  "What was it about? Why did they argue?"

  "I do not know. My friend could not speak long. But later I will see him. He will tell me then."

  "Kangmei, that's terrific."

  Kangmei bubbled excitedly as the car returned to the old imperial city. After darkness had fallen, and she was sure Mr. Xia would not see from the front seat, she grasped Stratton's hand and clasped it tightly.

  Stratton ate alone in the restaurant of the sprawling hotel complex, careful to time his arrival and departure to miss the art historians. To his astonishment, the food was awful. He retired to his room with wizened tangerines and a bottle of mineral water. He was half asleep, near ten o'clock, when the phone rang.

  "Thom-as," she said without introduction. "In two minutes, you must walk to the end of the corridor with the vacuum bottle in your room and ask the floor attendant for more hot water."

  Stratton understood; he was to be a decoy. "Are you sure that's wise?"

  "Please."

  Stratton obeyed, remembering to empty the thermos. The attendant, drowsing over the color pictures in a back copy of Time that a tourist must have left, smiled and obligingly padded into a kitchen with the bottle, leaving the hall un-watched.

  When Stratton returned to the room, Kangmei was waiting. She embraced him. Her tongue played a sparrow's tattoo against his teeth. It was Stratton who broke the embrace.

  "Kangmei… " he said uncertainly.

  "It is so exciting," she said. "My friend told me everything, Thom-as, everything." She sat on the narrow iron-framed bed, leaving Stratton standing absurdly above her, thermos suspended.

  "Would you like some tea?" he asked weakly.

  "Yes, please."

  Stratton turned and busied himself elaborately with the tea leaves. He tried to ignore the rustlings behind him. Was she getting into bed?

  "Here is what happened," she began. "My friend saw it. There is a special place near the emperor's tomb, Thom-as. It is not controlled by the workers there, but by Peking directly-my father-and it makes all the Xian people very angry."

  "What kind of a place?" Stratton asked.

  "My friend called it a special place. No one may go there without permission.

  When my uncle came, my father took him there. My friend was there to help; it is covered with reeds and cloth most of the time. My father and my uncle went down into the hole on a ladder, into a long tunnel. They were gone a long time. When they came out again, they began to argue. My father tried to grab my uncle's camera. 'No, no!' my uncle kept saying. My father grew very angry. They shouted.

  Then my father ordered the hole covered and they drove away."

  Stratton was thinking furiously. If the chamber with the common soldiers was an international sensation, then Wang Bin's private dig could be a literal gold mine. Stratton had a vision of gold swords encrusted with jewels, of bronze and gold helmets, chests of gems: an emperor's legacy.

  "My father wanted my uncle to help him steal something, Thom-as, didn't he?" It was the voice of a little girl.

  "It's possible," Stratton said. He turned, a full teacup in each hand.

  Kangmei lay naked on the bed. The light from a single dim-watted bulb painted her the color of brushed ivory. She wriggled, and the shadowed V between her legs became a beckoning S. She reached for him, arching her back.

  "Kangmei, we can't… "

  "Thom-as," she whispered. "Do you know what Kangmei means in Chinese?"

  "Mmm?"

  "It means 'Resist America,' Thom-as. My father was very patriotic before he become a thieving old man. Shall I resist America, Thom-as?"

  Her little-girl laugh broke the spell.

  "Kangmei," Stratton said more sternly than he felt, "you are David's niece, and I'm nearly old enough-"

  "To what?"

  "To know better," he said. She was a spectacular woman, and certainly older than some of the students with whom he had dallied in his early years as a teacher.

  "You are very beautiful, and I want to," Stratton said lamely, "but it would be wrong. Do you understand why?"

  Kangmei seemed to wilt. Stratton, feeling a fool with a teacup in each hand, watched as tears sparked in her eyes. She clawed for the sheet and drew it up to her chin.

  "Oh, Thom-as, I meant nothing wrong, but you… there is so little time, and I am very excited. Also a little frightened."

  "So am I," Stratton said, and kissed her lightly on the forehead.

  She took the tea, and he sat primly by her on the bed, stroking her hair as an uncle might, or a lover-to-be. When at last Kangmei fell asleep, Stratton curled stiffly in a hard-bottomed chair, wondering if he yet knew enough to lay murder charges against her father.

  CHAPTER 10

  The men named Liao and Deng moved away from the streetlight and into the shadows. Their discussion was brief, disturbed.

  "You are sure it was her?" Teng asked. He was the older of the two; brawny, leather-faced, he wore his Mao cap pulled tight on his head, the brim snug on his eyebrows.

  "I am certain," Liao replied. "This changes everything." He lit a cheap cigarette and glanced across the street at the hotel. His eyes moved up the wall to an open window. A faint bulb gave a burnished light to the inside of the room; no shadows moved. Liao was hatless; his black hair was cropped extremely short. In a robe, he could have passed for a Buddhist monk. His round face was youthful, but humorless.

  "When she leaves… " he said.

  "And if she doesn't?" Deng asked. "Perhaps we should contact Peking."

  "I don't think we should wake the deputy minister." Liao shook his head.

  Deng scowled. "This foreigner is important."

  "That's why we're here."

  "But so is the daughter important. It is a grave matter," Deng insisted. The brim of his cap bobbed as his brow furrowed. "We can't wait all night. I say we grab the girl. As for the American, we have our instructions."

  Liao sighed. He had an intuition about complications, and this assig
nment troubled him. "We'll have to report this to her dan-wei."

  Deng said, "Why? Let Lao Wang handle it. He is her father." And then he thought for a moment and said, "You are right. We must report it. Even if the deputy minister tells us not to." Deng and Liao had heard the same rumors. Today the old man was a power broker, but he could just as easily be shoveling cowshit in Hunan tomorrow.

  "We do as we're told," Liao said finally, "and a little more. The deputy minister does not have to know whom we talk to. China comes first."

  Stratton drowsed, half-sleeping, in the hard chair. When he heard the doorknob jiggle, he figured it was one of the floor attendants. They all had passkeys, and no compunction about barging in on the slightest pretext.

  It would not be wise to be found in the same room with a Chinese woman. Stratton padded barefoot across the floor and reached for the door. Two men stood there in the darkness. One held a sack of some kind in his right hand, away from his body.

  "Yes?" Stratton said, stiffening.

  The young man bowed, then rammed the heel of his hand into the tip of Stratton's nose. The American fell in a heap, gurgling blood.

  From the bed, Kangmei yelped and sat up. The men stared silently at her naked figure before they closed the door behind them.

  Stratton awoke in darkness, heaving for air. His nostrils were clogged with blood, and his face was clammy and wet. Two strips of industrial tape had been pasted across his mouth, forming an X that nearly blocked his desperate breathing.

  He was in a closet. He smelled clothing-his own-and the canvas from his duffel.

  Through throbbing eyes, he noticed a weak sliver of light at the base of the door, near his feet.

  Stratton tried to move. His hands were free, but his legs were bound tightly at the ankles. Voices, male and female, seeped through the door. The conversation was singsongy Mandarin, and Stratton understood none of it. The male voices were cold and conspiratorial and the female voice was full of fear. Kangmei.

  He struggled to his knees, grunting, using his hands to feel in the blackness.