A Death in China - Carl Hiaasen [43]
“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 became 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?” Deng 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.