A Death in China - Carl Hiaasen [39]
“…successive dynasties built successive capitals in and around present-day Xian. At the beginning of the Tang Dynasty, Changan was a metropolis of over one million people, six miles square and girded by stout walls breached by eight gates. The Tang palace was nearly a mile square inside the city and protected by a wall nearly sixty feet thick at its base. Enough remains to keep us more than busy for the two days we have.” An avuncular smile.
Stratton knew exactly what he wanted to accomplish in Xian. It had been his reason for not flying home with David’s body: He wanted to know what happened between the two brothers and if, by any means, it could have led to David’s death.
Stratton must have sighed aloud, for it drew J. Paul Prudoe’s ire.
“…forest of steles, pagodas, pottery and a celestial army. Professor Stratton?”
Stratton stood up. “May I be excused, please, Mr. Prudoe? I have to go to the bathroom.”
He left the art historians to mutter at his insolence and walked out into the early morning sunshine. In the courtyard of the hotel, draped around the open door of a gray Shanghai saloon, stood Kangmei.
“Are you Professor Stratton?” The smile was dazzling. “Good morning, and welcome to Xian. I am Miss Wang and this is Mr. Xia. We are your guides. Please get in.”
The rail-thin Mr. Xia, it turned out, was a legitimate China Travel Service guide. That he was one of Kangmei’s young allies went without saying, for she too wore the same guide’s red identification pin on her white cotton blouse. Kangmei’s friend smiled a lot and spoke little, although his English proved to be quite good. Xiao-Xia, she called him.
Leaving the hotel, they drove through handsome, wide streets with little traffic. At one clutter of shops, Stratton did a double take. There on the sidewalk, in English, was a sandwich board announcing “Xian’s First Exhibition of Abstract Art.”
“I never saw anything like that in Peking,” Stratton said. Kangmei and the guide laughed. The third Chinese, the driver, was a lugubrious soul with sharp features. He gave no sign of understanding, no English.
“And you never will,” chirped Kangmei, radiant with excitement. “Abstract art—what would the old men say to that? That it was counterrevolutionary, of course. Here it is different. Remember, Thom-as, that the farther you get from Peking, the more relaxed are the people and the easier the rules. I would like to show you the south someday, where my mother’s family lives. You would think Peking was in another country.”
“There are fewer police here,” confirmed Mr. Xia, the guide.
They drove toward what seemed to be the center of the city, a giant tower that stood as a high-hatted civic sentinel.
“Where are we going?” Stratton asked.
“That is for you to decide,” Kangmei replied. “But you must see the Bell Tower. It is very old, very famous.” She gestured ahead.
“Once it was the center of the Tang imperial city, in about the ninth century,” said Mr. Xia in reflexive patter-for-tourists. “It was restored again after Liberation. From the second story, there is a fine view of the city—”
Stratton cut him off. “Kangmei, what I really want to know is what your father and your uncle fought about. I want to go to some of the places they might have gone together; someone might have heard something. I will see the sites of Xian some other time.”
“I see,” she said doubtfully, and lapsed into a lengthy exchange of Chinese with Mr. Xia.
“It will be difficult, Thom-as. There are so many places. And what do we say?”
“We say that I am a friend of the distinguished American brother of Deputy Minister Wang. Anything like that will do, and there can’t be all that many places. What exactly is your father’s responsibility here?”
She thought about that one.
“He is everything and he is nothing. There