The Trail to Buddha's Mirror - Don Winslow [87]
Neal knew he was in a city because he could hear traffic noises, although it took him several days to recognize the late-afternoon cacophony as the jingling of thousands of bicycle bells. He heard few cars but more trucks, and occasionally the uniformed guard at the gate would swing it open for a delivery truck or an official-looking car.
So, as for where he was, he knew he was in a city somewhere in China.
Who was in charge? Who had him? He tried to put it together. If Li Lan was, as it seemed, a Chinese spy, then it must be the Chinese intelligence service. But why? Why dump him in the Walled City and then come back for him? Why all the TLC and the first-class treatment—silk pajamas, for Christ’s sake? Why did the door lock behind the waiter, the nurse, and the doctor? Why was he in this luxurious solitary confinement?
These musings led to the not-unrelated question of what would happen next. What the hell did they want from him? What did they want him to do? The pleasant thought that they were cleaning him up to send him home occurred to him, but he didn’t allow himself to dwell on it. Better to concentrate on getting well, and just see what happened. Besides, what choice did he have?
And there was still another question: Where was Li Lan?
He pushed that thought from his head and dug into his eggs. They really weren’t bad at all, almost as if the cook were used to making Western breakfasts, although they had been fried in some kind of oil he couldn’t identify. And he had grown quite fond of the mantou, the fist-sized steamed bun they served in place of toast. He was chewing on it when the first nonmaterial need he had felt since he could remember hit him: a newspaper.
God, how he suddenly yearned to have a newspaper. Hell, it was a natural. Newsprint went with breakfast like bacon with eggs, and he longed—longed—to find out what was happening in the world, and maybe read a little sports news. Sports. Was it still baseball season? Or football? Or that fantastic time of the American calendar when both were in full swing, so to speak?
I must be getting healthy, he thought.
The opium jones had been tough, but not that tough, he considered. Maybe it was because he didn’t do enough for long enough to get really addicted, or maybe it was because the Chinese know how to treat it, but he hadn’t felt the agonies of withdrawal he had observed in others, including his own sainted mother. Every once in a while, particularly as he recovered enough to feel actual boredom, a pang of need—no, it was more like want—struck him, and he would muse on how nice it would be to drift off on an opium cloud. But he was enjoying the real pleasures of real food and real comfort too much to become seriously obsessed with the smoke and mirrors of a dope high. He’d take a good cup of coffee any day, thank you. Now if he could just get a newspaper.
Of course, a newspaper couldn’t answer some of the other small questions that niggled at him during his wealth of spare time. Why did everyone call him Mr. Frazier? Why was the closet full of clothes for Mr. Frazier? Why did these clothes have labels from Montreal, Toronto, and New York? Why did they all fit him perfectly? Who was this Mr. Frazier, who had the same size shirts, the same size shoes, the same inseam as his? Neal was strictly an off-the-rack guy, but Mr. Frazier obviously had a close relationship with a pretty good tailor. Neal had never dressed so well in his life.
All dressed up and nowhere to go, Neal thought.
Silk pajamas.
He tried to work up a little indignation about the whole thing, but he was just too tired. He took another sip of coffee, pushed back his chair, and slipped back to bed. He needed more sleep, his head was getting fuzzy, and somewhere in the back of a still-muddled brain, he knew he would need more rest to handle … what? He let himself drop into sleep. The waiter would wake him with lunch.
It was a setting for