A Death in China - Carl Hiaasen [5]
“I keep hoping that if I put off everything long enough, the publisher will forget about the book contract,” Stratton had joked to explain his presence. “But how about you, David? Aren’t you the man who once told me never to look back, who persuaded me at a tough time in my life to lay the past aside and get on with life?”
“I would be distressed if I thought you were really as dogmatic as you sound, Thomas,” Wang had chided. “But of course you are teasing, and, yes, I was the one who always said that the United States was my country, China just the place I happened to be born. But then I changed my mind. It is an old man’s right, you know, to change his mind.”
“Why?”
“Two things, really. For one, I am retired, you know—”
“No, I didn’t. If I had known, I would have come to wish you well.”
“Well, it was just a quiet leave-taking, no ceremony. Of course, I expect to stay in Pittsville and keep my hand in now and then.” David Wang had smiled. Only death would ever take him from the college and the town where he had been an institution for nearly forty years.
“The second reason is that I have a brother. I had not thought much about him all these years and then suddenly there was a letter inviting me to China. In the end, I came. A good idea, I guess.”
Stratton had caught the uncertainty in the old man’s voice.
“Is something wrong? Anything I can help you with?”
“I’m just a bit bewildered is all. Call it culture shock. You know, when I got off the plane, I was nearly too nervous to speak Chinese.”
“I know the feeling.”
Wang had touched Stratton’s arm then, and they had both remembered the night by the fire in Wang’s farmhouse when an angry and confused young man had spilled the bitter dregs of senseless war.
“My problems are nothing compared to the dilemmas you once had, believe me,” said Wang. “But it would be nice to talk about them. I’ll tell you what: I’m going to Xian to see my brother tomorrow. He’s a deputy minister, you know. I’ll be back around dark on Wednesday. I’ll call you then. If you can break away from your tour, I’ll show you the real Peking and we can talk as we walk.”
“I wouldn’t miss it.”
WEDNESDAY NIGHT Stratton returned from his walk to Bombshelter Park about nine thirty. David Wang never called.
Chapter 2
ALICE SCOLDED. Little Miss Sun, the China Travel International Service guide, implored timidly. Walter Thomas—or was it Thomas Walters?—a foppish Egyptologist from the Midwest, spoke vaguely of “fraternal kinship,” whatever that meant. Stratton endured. When the atmosphere turned bitchy, he shrugged and walked away. The White Pagoda and a refurbished lamasery were not on his agenda that day. Stratton watched without expression while his colleagues, suitably armed with cameras in black leather cases and sensible shoes, obediently flocked onto their minibus under Miss Sun’s set-piece smile. Then he went up to his room and squeezed forty-five minutes of exercise from the cramped patch between the cracking wall and iron bedstead. When, near ten o’clock, David Wang still had not called, he prowled the gloomy hotel corridors until he found the room that Jim McCarthy used as an office.
Dust blanketed stacks of books and haphazard piles of newspapers that overburdened a loose-jawed table. It carpeted the dials of an expensive radio atop a gray filing cabinet. It lay like virgin snow on the bright yellow shade of a lamp meant more for Sweden than China.
McCarthy lolled in a swivel chair, desert boots comfortably atop the burnished top of a huge partners’ desk that Stratton identified instantly as a valuable antique.
Mechanically, McCarthy was ripping strips from a newspaper, laying them on a corner of the desk and tossing the discards in the general direction of the big straw basket.
“Hey, baby,” McCarthy lured Stratton from the doorway. “Make yourself a cup of coffee. Or there’s some Qingdao, if it’s not too early for