A Death in China - Carl Hiaasen [1]
“I am the Son of Heaven and I have set things right in this world as I will in the next. You have seen my preparations. They have taken more than thirty years.” The emperor cocked his head. “Did you not believe what you saw?”
“I believe in the majesty of the work I saw,” the old man said evasively.
“Majesty? Yes, my old friend.” The emperor nodded. “Majesty indeed. A mountain whose insides have been carved into the shape of the cosmos by hundreds of thousands of workers who have labored a lifetime. I have made a generation of peasants dig through subterranean streams and seal them off with bronze to create a burial chamber where I shall rule for eternity. Palaces, pavilions—with fine vessels, jewels, stones and rarities. With quicksilver I have created the waterways of the empire, the Yangtze and Yellow rivers, and even the great ocean itself, and made them flow mechanically. Perfect models. And above I have depicted the heavenly constellations, and below, the geography of the earth. All this you have seen?”
“Yes,” the old scholar answered.
“And the vaults?”
“Yes.”
“Majestic, would you say? Large vaults surrounding the mountain, filled with clay soldiers, thousands of them, infantry, archers, charioteers and generals. Each carrying a real weapon.” The emperor’s eyes flashed.
“Your celestial army,” the scholar said.
“It will protect my perpetual reign.” The emperor emptied his cup. “And having seen my tomb and my army, scholars, can you still deny my immortality?”
There was a long pause then. Every eye was riveted on the small group of scholars before the throne. After the pause, the eldest replied.
“Ideas, like Confucius, are immortal. Men die.”
“Fools!” the emperor screamed.
The next day, four hundred and sixty wise men, gathered from all corners of the empire to assay the emperor’s immortality, were made to watch as soldiers burned their books.
Then they were led to a deep pit not far from the emperor’s celestial kingdom. From atop the steep sides of the pit jeering peasants shoveled clods of thick red earth. Most of the scholars kept their dignity. A few cursed and one or two of the younger ones cried. Before noon, they were all buried and dead. But then, three years later, so was the emperor, laid to rest under the perpetual vigilance of his fierce clay soldiers.
Chapter 1
PEKING, AUGUST 1983
THE HIGH-CEILINGED LOBBY seemed carved in time, socialist testimony to yesterday’s barren promises. A wine-red carpet crawled like a stain toward the horizon. Improvident columns that were neither attractive nor altogether round highlighted bile-green walls. The furniture was of blond wood and indeterminate proportion. Waist-high counters cluttered every inch of wall space, each chock-ablock with white-coated workers. Some were accountants, some receptionists, some managers. Most were watchers.
Tom Stratton threaded through a knot of noisy Americans. He skirted a gaggle of Japanese clustered around a guide waving a flag. He neatly sidestepped a functionary listlessly pursuing a fifty-pound vacuum cleaner. Reaching the stand where an empty-eyed girl protected trays of almost fresh fruit, Stratton bought two apples. She weighed them on a digital scale and made change of his one-yuan note with an abacus.
“Ba lou,” Stratton told the elevator operator in phrase-book Mandarin. He was eventually deposited on the eighth floor.
The room was a monstrous little brother to the lobby, but already, after a week, it seemed like home. Stratton kicked off his shoes and padded into the bathroom. The hot water tap snuffled and growled, barked and hissed. On past experience, the chances that the water would be hot when it finally appeared were exactly one in two.
Stratton ate the apples and fingered leaves of tea into a thin-walled mug. Tenderly, he added water from a thermos on the night table, then threw back the red velvet drapes to let in the last rays of sunshine and sprawled