A Death in China - Carl Hiaasen [62]
The flat horn of a truck jolted Stratton into daylight. He unfolded, stretched his arms, and watched through the window as the first morning visitors arrived at the small museum. It had been more than a day now since his keepers had brought fresh rice or water. Stratton was famished. He considered pounding on the door on the remote chance that he had been forgotten, but rejected the idea. He knew he was a VIP. Whatever awaited him had been carefully planned by Wang Bin.
The day passed slowly, and Stratton napped intermittently, using sleep as a substitute for food. Finally, late in the afternoon, he heard footsteps in the hall outside the cell. He sat up, and shrank into the shadow of the cleanest corner, his sleeping corner.
Two men entered the cell. Stratton recognized one of them as a jailer, one of the men who had paraded him to his public bath.
The other was a wan, slightly built Chinese who wore bottle-bottom eyeglasses. He squinted at Stratton until he became accustomed to the light.
Each man carried a large tin bucket.
“Stand,” ordered the man with the eyeglasses.
Stratton obeyed. The two men heaved the liquid contents of the buckets on the floor in a large puddle at Stratton’s feet. The odor assaulted him and he tried hard not to gag.
“Pig manure,” said the man, again in clear English. “Kneel.”
“Why?”
“You will not argue. You will not ask questions. You will do as I say. You are unfit to speak in this room. You are unfit to stand. So you will kneel, and you will be completely silent.”
Stratton did not move. The man with the bottle-bottom glasses circled him disdainfully, eyeing the American as if he were a roach.
“You have broken this chair!”
“No, it fell apart.”
“Liar!”
“Liar!” shouted the jailer, chiming in.
“An accident,” Stratton repeated.
“My name is Comrade Zhou,” said the man in the glasses. “We have met before.”
“Oh, yes. You were Wang Bin’s interpreter in Peking,” Stratton said.
Zhou lifted the mangled two-legged chair as if examining it. Then he swung it over his head and brought it crashing down on Tom Stratton’s shoulder. Stratton pitched forward, face down into the warm pig dung. A small hand seized his neck, and another clutched his hair. Roughly, he was jerked off the floor, and propped on his knees like a mannequin.
“I will repeat this one more time,” Zhou said. Now he was squatting in front of Stratton, glaring into the American’s dripping face. “You are unworthy to stand in the presence of any Chinese citizen, do you understand? You are worse than the shit on this floor. You are a murderer and a thief, a destroyer of Chinese property, a corrupter of young women, a spy … and, I think you should know, Stratton, that you have no secrets here. We know everything about you!”
Stratton made no response. He breathed through his mouth only. He closed his eyes. He fought to neutralize all his senses, one by one.
“We have come here to give you the opportunity to confess your crimes, Comrade Stratton. Do not be afraid, and do not be foolish. Many thousands of Chinese have profited from such expurgation. They lived to tell about it, however. I cannot promise the same for you.”
“What is this, a struggle session? You’re sick,” Stratton said.
Zhou nodded. “Ah, you’ve heard of this. You have read about it, I suppose, in some perverted imperialist book. China is the subject of many books in your country. China is a popular subject among American scholars. You came here posing as a scholar, did you not?”
“I am a tourist.”
“Liar!” It was the jailer again. He knew the script.
“Do not continue with these lies,” Zhou said. “I know your country very well, Stratton. I know the American people, I even know the language. I studied for two years at Yale University.” Zhou laughed.