A Death in China - Carl Hiaasen [74]
“Only two jumps. Do you remember how as boys we would skim stones in the river? Five jumps, six jumps. Anything seemed possible then.”
“I remember,” David’s voice came from behind.
“Things are more complicated now.”
“Yes, they are. Neither of us is as strong as we were once in Shanghai.”
“It is true.”
They fell silent, watching tiny wavelets lapping at the beach stones.
It was David who spoke at last. A voice of infinite sadness.
“I have thought it through. I understand why you invited me to China, why you held me captive. And why you have brought me here. I know now what it is that only a brother can do for you, no one else. I understand your plan for him.”
“Tell me.”
“He is to be your essential victim. You must murder him.”
Wang Bin never turned. Unseeing, he spoke to the waters.
“Yes. I must murder him.”
With a tremendous shove, David Wang pushed his brother into the shallow water. Then, clumsily, he began running along the beach toward a workman’s shack that beckoned from the distance. David had not run far when he lost his footing on the loose stones and pitched forward with a groan.
It was then his brother caught him from behind.
STRATTON’S FOREARMS ached from steering the hard-sprung truck over what seemed an endless series of unseen hills. The pitted road twisted, like a snake. In the tepid glint of light from the dashboard, the gauge that Stratton had decided was for gas rested on its bottom mark. The one next to it—temperature?—seemed to be rising. He nudged the girl at his side.
“Wake up, Kangmei. It will be dawn soon and the truck will not go much farther.”
“I was not sleeping, Thom-as, just resting.” She stretched and ran her hands through the mass of tangled black hair. “Have we passed a river?”
“On a very shaky bridge, about ten minutes ago.”
“Good. We are almost there.”
“Where is there, Kangmei?” She had been coy about that since their escape. A safe place where they would be with friends, she had said.
“It is a commune, Thom-as. We call it Bright Star. It is the home of my mother’s family. I lived there during the Cultural Revolution when my father was being punished. My uncles are among the commune leaders. They will protect us.”
Stratton nodded. It had to have been something like that. He riffled through the possibilities. A commune in a backward province more than a thousand miles from Peking, and probably a century in terms of control. Once they had taught him a great deal about communes, the central fact of life for eight hundred million Chinese. The instructor’s voice came back to Stratton. He had been a Spec/6, dragged from a Ph.D. program to the war. Shared reward for shared work, a Marxist replacement for rural villages dominated by landlords. Now there were no more landlords, only work brigades and production teams tilling common land.
What had resisted revolution was the social makeup of the communes. Almost all who lived on a commune in China were descendants of people who had lived there centuries ago. Nearly all the children born there would also die there in toothless old age. The continuity of families remained stronger than the caprice of a distant state.
Kangmei would be safe. The family would close around her, shutting out inquiries from cadres who, knowing the system, would not press too hard. She would be safe, but also empty. What kind of life would it be for an intelligent, vivacious young woman, calf-deep in paddy muck, courted by half-literate bumpkins? Whom would she talk to? Whom would she love? Kangmei deserved better than that. Stratton made himself a private promise: She would have it. Somehow. One day.
But would the commune shelter him as well? Probably, for a time, anyway.
“Kangmei, we’re in Guangdong Province, right? How far from the coast?”
“No, this is Guangxi. And we are many hours from the sea, many hills and many people.”
Guangxi. Memories worse than the cobra.
“Look, I think it would be better if—”
She had outthought him.