A Death in China - Carl Hiaasen [10]
“Bad?”
“Real bad.”
“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.