A Death in China

by Carl Hiaasen

  The fields and earthen streets of the village swarmed with people. Stratton watched a double file of schoolchildren, hand-in-hand, parade in a swatch of color toward a dusty soccer field where some teenagers desultorily kicked a ball.

  Stratton counted two trucks and a handful of three-wheeled contraptions that looked like misshapen lawn mowers. "Walking tractors," Kangmei called them.

  The scene was peaceful and, by Chinese standards, an advertisement for rural prosperity. Stratton noted the slender cable on thin poles that dropped into the hamlet and spread ancillary arms toward a few of the nearest houses; by rule of thumb in China, if electricity has spilled down to individual production teams, a commune is well off.

  At the base of the hillside path there appeared a supple girl and two stocky men in peasants' garb. As they began to climb, the girl waved diffidently, a fleeting, offhand movement, like shooing flies. Kangmei had found refuge.

  Stratton decided to wait where he was. Idly, he began to trace the power line out from the settlement, across the fields and back toward its origin.

  It was a mistake.

  In almost the precise center of the valley, sheathed in trees, lay the administrative headquarters of the commune, the hub of which the four production teams were spokes. Stratton could see a dingy white water tower and, amid shadows, the perimeter walls of what once had been the landlord's house. He made out a strip of macadam and along it some shops, a vegetable market and a fair-sized building with a half-domed roof that might once have been a 1930s movie theater.

  Stratton saw without seeing the red-starred flag that hung limply from the building. He saw a chimney thrusting unnaturally from among the trees and knew without knowing that it belonged to a homespun woodworking factory that made grapefruit crates and slatted folding chairs. He saw a glint of water through the trees and knew that, except in the rainy season, the river that flowed there could be safely forded by men five feet ten or taller.

  Stratton groaned aloud. In an instant of black despair, he cursed the luck that had forsaken him in rags among Chinese pines.

  He rose to run.

  Before him stood Kangmei. Smiling at her side were two erect, honey-colored men of late middle age with the same subtle, alluring facial structure that Kangmei had inherited.

  "Thom-as," Kangmei said gravely, "these are my uncles. They will help us."

  They were Zhuang, members of a race more Thai than Chinese that had settled in the southern hills in the mists of time. The Zhuang survived in modern China as the country's largest minority. Kangmei's mother was Zhuang, her father, Wang Bin, a member of the majority Han. The combination was what made her so striking. Stratton should have realized it before.

  I know all about the Zhuang. They taught me that, too, Stratton wanted to yell, and wondered about his sanity.

  Kangmei stared in open-mouthed concern.

  "Thom-as! What is the matter? There is no danger. These are my uncles. They-"

  "What is the name of this fucking place?"

  "Thom-as!"

  "Goddamn it. Tell me." He took an involuntary step toward the girl and the two peasants closed around her.

  "I told you. We live in Bright Star."

  "That's not the right name. I know. Tell me in Chinese."

  The two peasants began talking angrily. Kangmei interrupted them with a stream of local dialect that seemed to mollify them.

  "Thom-as, I have told them that you are feverish and hungry and very tired. But you must be polite to them, please."

  "I'm sorry." Stratton grappled for composure. "Tell me the real name, please. I want to hear it."

  "We live in Bright Star," she said slowly, as though instructing a slow child.

  "Over there is Sweet Water, and there, Good Harvest, and there, Evergreen. Why is it so important?"

  "And the place in the middle? Where the factory is, and the water tower?"

  "That is where the cadres live, and some soldiers. It is not important. Our people go there only when they must-for Party discussions, to buy shoes and bicycle tires."

  "What is it called?"

  "It is called Man-ling."

  "Man-ling, yes, Man-ling. Oh, sweet Jesus."

  Stratton sank to his knees and buried his head in his hands. The peasants' hostility surrendered to concern. Kangmei sprang to his side.

  "Thom-as, do not weep. Come, you will be safe. My aunts will cook special food.

  There is a warm bed and a doctor for your leg. Yes, a doctor… you can trust him. He is a friend of my uncles'. Come, please. It is not far to walk."

  "I can't. I must not."

  "Please, Thom-as. Please. Soon there will be too many people. Already there are rumors about things that happened last night… Please."

  "No. No. No," Stratton muttered in an anguished litany that was a warrior's penance.

  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.

  CHAPTER 17

  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.

  "These are the biggest we could find, Thom-as. But you will never be a peasant.

  Come, let the people see their new rice expert."

  Along the river there was a kind of promenade, a path of beaten earth flanked by shade trees. Stratton smiled at the peasants they met and tried to look knowledgeable.

  "This is the end of Bright Star," said Kangmei. "Over there is Evergreen."

  She gestured to the far side of the brown river, flanked on both sides by steep banks. The water flowed swiftly and looked deep.

  "And beyond Evergreen is Man-ling, right?"

  "Yes." She led Stratton to a spot where the promenade had been widened to include a graceful copse of palms. He sat beside her.

  "This looks to me like Bright Star's lovers' lane," Stratton remarked.

  "I do not understand."

  When he had explained she smiled.

  "It is true that many young people come here at night and that they do not always discuss politics."

  They kissed.

  And then she asked the question that Stratton had dreaded.

  "Why are you afraid of Man-ling, Thom-as?"

  It was not so much that she deserved to know. To his surprise, Stratton discovered that he wanted to tell her.

  "I was there once. In a war. While you were a child."

  She sat quiet for a time, tracing circles in the dirt with a stick. Stratton stared down at the river.

  "Was it very sad, Thom-as?"

  "Yes."

  "I would like to know." She spoke to the stick.

  He told her.

  March 18, 1971 A black sergeant in plainclothes had brought the summons to the Saigon villa Stratton shared with Bobby Ho. An hour later, they were in a briefing room protected by concentric circles of invisible guards.

  A squat, sweat-stained colonel abandoned an uneven struggle with a balky room air conditioner.

  "Captain Black," the colonel said, shaking hands with Stratton.

  "Captain White. Congratulations." The colonel gave Bobby Ho's hand an extra pump. He had been a captain only for six days, but no one outside the room was even supposed to know that Bobby Ho was in the army. Deniability, they called it. Officially, Stratton and Ho were civilian psychologists on contract to the government: studying stress.

  "Rested up? Everybody's talkin' about it."

  On the last one they had been close enough to see the lights of Hanoi.

  "This one should be even more fun." He passed across aerial photos. "The Chinks are involved in this little old war, up to their slanty assholes."

  "Who is that, Colonel?" Bobby Ho asked quietly. Stratton stifled a grin. Bobby Ho's parents ran a pawnshop in San Francisco. They had raised their son to be an American, but there was no way you could tell by looking at him. Vietnam had intercepted Bobby Ho between Stanford and medical school. He wanted to be a pediatrician, and he spent a lot of his time and most of his money working with some French nuns who ran a clinic near the village. When the army made him White for missions that didn't exist to places that were never named, Bobby Ho hunted with uncommon skill.

  The colonel had the grace to color.

  "The Chinese. The Chinese are teachin' the Viets how to brainwash our boys.

  Remember what they did in Korea? I was there, man. The last thing you wanted to happen was to get captured by th
e Chin-Chinese. They turned people inside out; tell you Ike was a faggot and make you believe it."

  The colonel poked a pudgy finger at the aerial photos.

  "What we hear is that the Chinese are trainin' Viet interrogators in that building there in the middle of the picture. They got about a dozen of our POWs up there as guinea pigs."

  "Where is it-the village?" Stratton asked.

  "Jesus, I just told you. It's in China."

  "Shit," said Bobby Ho.

  "We supposed to go in and get them?" Stratton asked.

  The colonel nodded. "Yeah, go get 'em out and fuck Chairman Mao. Does that offend you, Captain White?"

  "Not a bit, Colonel," said Bobby Ho.

  "What's the name of this place?" Stratton asked.

  "Man-ling it's called. You guys see Joe and the boys. They got it all worked out, pictures, models, the whole shootin' match, just like usual." The colonel's eyes assumed a faraway cast. "If it was me, I'd take about four gunships and hit 'em so hard and so fast they wouldn't have time even to find their little red books. That's the only way to win this war, hard and fast. That's how I'd do it, if it was me."

  Hot air. Stratton would write the operational orders and the colonel knew it.

  "If it was you, I'd stay home," said Bobby Ho.

  They took one chopper off a quiet carrier high up in the Gulf of Tonkin.

  Stratton, Ho and four sergeants. Captain Black was traveling light. If he needed help, it was only minutes away in the air behind them.

  For a landing zone, Stratton had chosen a paddy about three miles east of the village. He had wanted the farmland and the village between the chopper and the PLA camp that lay a few miles to the west. Intelligence said a regular infantry company used the camp. Intelligence had not said why it believed the nowhere village called Man-ling had been chosen to brainwash POWs.