A Death in China - Carl Hiaasen [59]
The Disciplinary Commission had cited Wang Bin for 1 P.M.. It was a calculated insult, and he knew it. At noon, Wang Bin lunched with senior aides in a private room of the staff restaurant at the Peking museum that was his headquarters. Conversation was furtive. One or two of the men who had been with him the longest mentioned things that had occurred in the Deputy Minister’s absence in the south: The Qin exhibition had been dispatched to the United States on schedule. From Xinjiang, in China’s desert west, the museum was to receive the mummified corpses of two soldiers perfectly preserved in the dry air these six hundred years; they would require a special room with stringent humidity controls.
Mostly, though, the aides avoided meeting Wang Bin’s eyes. Their discomfort amused him. They knew. Deliberations of the Party are secrets closely held. But when the ax is about to fall, everybody knows. Peking becomes a village in those times. When the arrival of soup signaled the last course, Wang Bin pointedly looked around the table, studying his aides individually, making no secret of it. He was rewarded with the sight of six heads, bent uniformly, like acolytes, slurping their soup, seeing only one bowl. He wondered which of them had informed against him, and which would give testimony—if it came to that. The answer was obvious, and it saddened him: all of them. Poor China.
Rising, Wang Bin raised a tiny crystal glass of mao tai.
“To long life and happiness,” he proposed. “Ganbei.”
“Ganbei,” the aides responded, and each drained the fiery liquor in one swallow.
“Xiu xi,” said Wang Bin. He found savage delight in the uncertainty that caused. One of the aides even looked at his watch. It was precisely one o’clock. So they even knew the time. Spineless sons of a turtle.
Wang Bin slept deeply on a daybed next to his office for more than an hour. The train from the south had been crowded and slow, arriving in Peking just after dawn, and he had rested little. Again and again, he had replayed the climactic acts of the drama he had forged. It would work, as long as he could keep time on his side. He had not expected the Party’s summons so soon. Another day or two might have made all the difference. Wang Bin sighed with finality and prepared to meet his inquisitors.
Precisely at 3 P.M., Wang Bin presented himself at a side entrance of the Great Hall of the People. To those who knew it existed, it was the most dreaded doorway in Peking.
“You are late,” said a severe young receptionist without preamble.
“I was detained on the people’s business. Please tell the comrades that I have arrived.”
“You will wait,” the young man instructed. “The comrade will show you where.”
He gestured to an orderly who led Wang Bin to a high-ceilinged reception room big enough for fifty people. It was empty, except for one straight-backed wooden chair in the precise center of a beige carpet. Wang Bin nearly laughed aloud. It was so transparent.
“Bring tea,” he snarled to the orderly.
No tea came, nor any summons for nearly two hours. By the time Wang Bin was led into a red plush room usually reserved for Central Committee meetings, the two-wheeled afternoon rush hour gripped Peking.
Once more, intimidation. Another crude chair facing a long, highly polished table where three men sat: two wizened Party cadres and a PLA general, to lend authority. The army, after all, belonged not to the nation but to the Party, by decree of the same constitution that had enshrined the xiu xi.
Wang Bin knew all three men. The two Party ancients were willows, professional survivors who had devoted an empty lifetime to swaying back and forth with changing political winds. The general was something else again. Wang Bin had soldiered with him once, when they had both—like their cause—been young and strong.
The three old men comprised the Disciplinary Commission. To their right sat a younger man in his forties. His black hair leapt impulsively from his skull. His eyes burned with the