Carl Hiaasen & William D. Montalbano

by A Death in China

  “…successive dynasties built successive capitals in and around present-day Xian. At the beginning of the Tang Dynasty, Changan was a metropolis of over one million people, six miles square and girded by stout walls breached by eight gates. The Tang palace was nearly a mile square inside the city and protected by a wall nearly sixty feet thick at its base. Enough remains to keep us more than busy for the two days we have.” An avuncular smile.

  Stratton knew exactly what he wanted to accomplish in Xian. It had been his reason for not flying home with David’s body: He wanted to know what happened between the two brothers and if, by any means, it could have led to David’s death.

  Stratton must have sighed aloud, for it drew J. Paul Prudoe’s ire.

  “…forest of steles, pagodas, pottery and a celestial army. Professor Stratton?”

  Stratton stood up. “May I be excused, please, Mr. Prudoe? I have to go to the bathroom.”

  He left the art historians to mutter at his insolence and walked out into the early morning sunshine. In the courtyard of the hotel, draped around the open door of a gray Shanghai saloon, stood Kangmei.

  “Are you Professor Stratton?” The smile was dazzling. “Good morning, and welcome to Xian. I am Miss Wang and this is Mr. Xia. We are your guides. Please get in.”

  The rail-thin Mr. Xia, it turned out, was a legitimate China Travel Service guide. That he was one of Kangmei’s young allies went without saying, for she too wore the same guide’s red identification pin on her white cotton blouse. Kangmei’s friend smiled a lot and spoke little, although his English proved to be quite good. Xiao-Xia, she called him.

  Leaving the hotel, they drove through handsome, wide streets with little traffic. At one clutter of shops, Stratton did a double take. There on the sidewalk, in English, was a sandwich board announcing “Xian’s First Exhibition of Abstract Art.”

  “I never saw anything like that in Peking,” Stratton said. Kangmei and the guide laughed. The third Chinese, the driver, was a lugubrious soul with sharp features. He gave no sign of understanding, no English.

  “And you never will,” chirped Kangmei, radiant with excitement. “Abstract art—what would the old men say to that? That it was counterrevolutionary, of course. Here it is different. Remember, Thom-as, that the farther you get from Peking, the more relaxed are the people and the easier the rules. I would like to show you the south someday, where my mother’s family lives. You would think Peking was in another country.”

  “There are fewer police here,” confirmed Mr. Xia, the guide.

  They drove toward what seemed to be the center of the city, a giant tower that stood as a high-hatted civic sentinel.

  “Where are we going?” Stratton asked.

  “That is for you to decide,” Kangmei replied. “But you must see the Bell Tower. It is very old, very famous.” She gestured ahead.

  “Once it was the center of the Tang imperial city, in about the ninth century,” said Mr. Xia in reflexive patter-for-tourists. “It was restored again after Liberation. From the second story, there is a fine view of the city—”

  Stratton cut him off. “Kangmei, what I really want to know is what your father and your uncle fought about. I want to go to some of the places they might have gone together; someone might have heard something. I will see the sites of Xian some other time.”

  “I see,” she said doubtfully, and lapsed into a lengthy exchange of Chinese with Mr. Xia.

  “It will be difficult, Thom-as. There are so many places. And what do we say?”

  “We say that I am a friend of the distinguished American brother of Deputy Minister Wang. Anything like that will do, and there can’t be all that many places. What exactly is your father’s responsibility here?”

  She thought about that one.

  “He is everything and he is nothing. There are many cultural places in China, and they are usually controlled by local authorities. Until the old men in Peking get interested in one of them. Then it is my father’s job to carry out their wishes. At least, I think that is how it works. My father does not confide in young daughters.”

  “All right. Between you and Mr. Xia, you must be able to think of some things special here that have interested the old men in Peking. That is where we go.”

  “It is a good plan, Thom-as,” she said. There followed another Mandarin interlude. “There are five or six such places.”

  They visited the historical museum, a fourteenth-century temple, a thirteenth-century drum tower and Big Goose Pagoda south of the city, originally built early in the seventh century by the Tang, or was it the Sui? They walked the Ming city walls, and visited the neolithic site at Ban Po. Dynasties and centuries began to run together for Stratton. At each stop, Stratton and Mr. Xia would do a quick tourist round and Mr. Xia would ask to see the comrade in charge so that a distinguished American visitor could pay his respects. None of the comrades seemed overworked. To a man, they all poured gracious tea and exchanged compliments interminably. Three of them knew of Comrade Wang from Peking. None had ever met his distinguished brother. By midafternoon, Stratton wondered whether his patience or his bladder would burst first. Kangmei attended none of the interviews. Instead, she wandered around, “talking to the young people,” as she put it. It was hard for Stratton to know whether she was devoted more to seeking information or to recruiting for her cause.

  “So much for the Taoist Temple of the Eight Immortals.” Stratton sighed as he sank back into seat cushions already dank with his sweat. “Now what?”

  “The Qin ruins to the east of the city. It will take us about thirty minutes to get there, Thom-as.” She ran light fingers across his cheek. “Do not be discouraged.”

  They drove through an intensely cultivated valley, past communes that seemed rich by Chinese standards. Suddenly, the car turned sharply onto a narrow strip of asphalt that looked as if it had been laid as an afterthought. Through gaps in the fields of chest-high corn, Stratton could see a large cone-shaped hill off to the right.

  “That is Mount Qin, the tumulus,” said Mr. Xia. “It was looted three years after the emperor’s death, when the dynasty fell. It took an army three days and three nights to carry away treasure from the tomb. The new excavations have not reached it yet, so it is not known what the grave robbers may have left. The current excavations are all here, to the west of the tumulus.”

  “What’s that?” Stratton nodded toward a squat, two-story building with a big chimney about a quarter of a mile off to the left.

  “That is a factory belonging to the commune. They make Tiger Brand sewing machines.” Mr. Xia smiled. “The factory wants to expand, but the local authorities will not allow it because it is not known what is buried around the factory, or even under it. The factory owners say they do not care about old things: It is the commune’s land and the commune has an obligation to provide a good life for its people.”

  “Sounds like the kind of squabble we have at home between environmentalists and developers,” Stratton said. “What happened?”

  “The dispute went all the way to Peking. There is no decision yet,” said Mr. Xia.

  Stratton turned to Kangmei. “By ‘Peking’ does he mean your father?”

  She nodded.

  To honor a cruel emperor reviled for two thousand years, but latterly proclaimed a hero, the Chinese had created an instant museum.

  Kangmei vanished in search of young co-conspirators. Mr. Xia led Stratton into a large building with a vaulted roof that looked like an airplane hangar. Once inside, the guide went off to look for an official with whom Stratton could drink tea. Alone, Stratton pushed through two polished doors and into the main chamber.

  It was like changing centuries.

  Stratton stood about fifteen feet above the dig in a skylight-lit hall the size of a football field. His first thought was that it was the cleverest and most awesome museum he had ever seen. To protect the excavation while simultaneously exploiting the discovery as a tourist attraction, the Chinese had simply e
rected the museum over the dig.

  Below Stratton, in roofless chambers that extended in four files, lay the Emperor Qin’s celestial army. Stratton stood on a concrete platform, which was shaped like a square U with two wings stretched out parallel along the files. In the pit, a modern army of Chinese technicians worked with brushes, dust pans and hand shovels. Stratton stared into the chamber where three hundred clay soldiers stood.

  They were magnificent. He had seen pictures, of course—who had not?—but even that foretaste had left Stratton unprepared for their true majesty.

  The figures were life-sized, nearly six feet tall. They had been molded from gray river clay by master craftsmen, dead for twenty-two hundred years. Stratton stared with breathless fascination at the nearest warrior, a kneeling archer. The detail was extraordinary.

  The archer wore a topknot, pulled tightly to the left side of his head and held with a band. Stratton could count the hairs.

  The archer’s ears clung close to his skull. The eyebrows were high and stylized, as though they had been plucked. The nose was broad, classically Chinese. The warrior had affected a finely combed mustache and a tuft of hair on his chin. On the face, mirthless and resolute, were flecks of blue and red paint mixed two centuries before Christ was born.

  The archer wore a studded jerkin that reached below his waist and ended high on the biceps. It afforded protection from sword slashes, while at the same time allowing mobility with which to wield a bow. Below the waist, the emperor’s soldier wore a skirtlike loincloth, leggings and stout, square-toed sandals.

  Nearby, a second archer wore the same uniform, but his face was different—rounder, a trifle older, no mustache. Every soldier, Stratton noted with awe, had a different face—in eternity, as in life.

  Stratton paced the arms of the platform. Here lay a terracotta arm jutting out from the red clay. And there, a headless torso, being dusted by a young woman with intense concentration. Toward the back of the vast hall, new chambers had been carefully outlined in chalk, but had so far been unmolested. Working at their current painstaking pace, Stratton reckoned, it would take the Chinese technicians at least another ten or twenty years to exploit the dig completely. Stratton was fascinated. He could have stayed for hours. Too soon, Mr. Xia was at his side.

  “Director Ku will see you for a few moments, but you must hurry. It is nearly closing time.”

  Reluctantly, Stratton followed him out of the chamber.

  “Mr. Xia, do you realize that this might be the most important archaeological discovery of this century?” Stratton asked.

  “Yes, so many American friends have told us. The soldiers excite them very much, but there are many other discoveries as well.”

  “Can I see them?”

  “I am sorry, but only the soldiers are open to the public.”

  Director Ku was a roly-poly individual with a ready smile and the callused hands of a worker. Stratton squatted on the inevitable overstuffed chair and tried not to drink the tea.

  The pleasantries went quickly enough. Ku, Stratton suspected, was not a man to keep his dinner waiting. Even the set speech that seemed to come with every Chinese official’s job seemed to sail by: the discovery had been made in 1965 by peasants digging a well. During the Cultural Revolution, not much happened. Since then, the work had proceeded systematically, entirely in the hands of Chinese specialists; no foreigners were welcome. Test excavations were still being dug. So far, scientists had positively identified an armory, an imperial zoo, stables, other groups of warriors, the tombs of nobles sacrificed to mark the emperor’s death, the underground entrance to the tumulus and exquisite bronze workings, including a chariot two-thirds life-size.

  “I did not know about the bronzes,” said Stratton. “Can they be seen?”

  “They are in Peking,” came back the translation. Stratton saw what he thought was a flash of annoyance on the director’s lined face. Annoyance at the question? No, more likely at the thought that Xian’s precious treasures had been preempted by the central government.

  “Explain about my friend and his brother, Xiao-Xia, but this time don’t ask if they were here. Say that my friend told me he would always remember the hospitality he received here.”

  At the translation, Ku’s face lit. He reached into his breast pocket and extracted a silver ballpoint pen.

  “The director says he remembers your friend very well. He calls him the ‘gentle professor’ and shows you the pen he was honored to receive as a gift,” said Mr. Xia.

  Bingo. But now what?

  “Ask the comrade director if it would be possible for me to see the special excavation that my friend and his brother visited. Be sure and use Kangmei’s father’s name.”

  That provoked a quick exchange in Mandarin before Mr. Xia finally said: “He asks if you have permission.”

  A direct hit. “Tell him yes.”

  Mr. Xia looked quizzically at Stratton.

  “Do you really have permission?”

  “Of course.”

  Stratton barely concealed his impatience at the Mandarin that followed. If he could see what David had seen, he might understand why the brothers had quarreled. Ku, who obviously took no pains to hide his own distaste for Peking, might even tell him. For him, Peking probably meant Wang Bin.

  “The director regrets that the excavation is only opened when Peking advises him that an important visitor is coming. He regrets that the responsible officials in Peking did not inform him you were coming, but, he says, perhaps in a day or two it will be possible.”

  Damn. What that meant was that the director would check with Peking.

  “I would be grateful,” Stratton said. “Ask him if my friend—”

  “The director also apologizes, but explains that he now must supervise the closing and meet with the technicians to discuss tomorrow’s work schedule.” Mr. Xia interjected.

  “Shit,” said Stratton. It escaped. Mr. Xia looked perplexed. Stratton flushed. “Say we are sorry for interrupting his work. Thank him for his hospitality and say we will return to look at the special excavation when the details have been arranged.”

  Darkness was falling and large numbers of workers had already left the site on a wheezy bus by the time Kangmei returned to the car.

  “It happened here, Thom-as,” she erupted. “My father and my uncle had an angry discussion, shouting. A young worker told me; he is a cousin of a friend of mine who also studied languages.”

  “What was it about? Why did they argue?”

  “I do not know. My friend could not speak long. But later I will see him. He will tell me then.”

  “Kangmei, that’s terrific.”

  Kangmei bubbled excitedly as the car returned to the old imperial city. After darkness had fallen, and she was sure Mr. Xia would not see from the front seat, she grasped Stratton’s hand and clasped it tightly.

  Stratton ate alone in the restaurant of the sprawling hotel complex, careful to time his arrival and departure to miss the art historians. To his astonishment, the food was awful. He retired to his room with wizened tangerines and a bottle of mineral water. He was half asleep, near ten o’clock, when the phone rang.

  “Thom-as,” she said without introduction. “In two minutes, you must walk to the end of the corridor with the vacuum bottle in your room and ask the floor attendant for more hot water.”

  Stratton understood; he was to be a decoy. “Are you sure that’s wise?”

  “Please.”

  Stratton obeyed, remembering to empty the thermos. The attendant, drowsing over the color pictures in a back copy of Time that a tourist must have left, smiled and obligingly padded into a kitchen with the bottle, leaving the hall unwatched.

  When Stratton returned to the room, Kangmei was waiting. She embraced him. Her tongue played a sparrow’s tattoo against his teeth. It was Stratton who broke the embrace.

  “Kangmei …” he said uncertainly.

  “It is so exciting,” she said. “My friend told me everythin
g, Thom-as, everything.” She sat on the narrow iron-framed bed, leaving Stratton standing absurdly above her, thermos suspended.

  “Would you like some tea?” he asked weakly.

  “Yes, please.”

  Stratton turned and busied himself elaborately with the tea leaves. He tried to ignore the rustlings behind him. Was she getting into bed?

  “Here is what happened,” she began. “My friend saw it. There is a special place near the emperor’s tomb, Thom-as. It is not controlled by the workers there, but by Peking directly—my father—and it makes all the Xian people very angry.”

  “What kind of a place?” Stratton asked.

  “My friend called it a special place. No one may go there without permission. When my uncle came, my father took him there. My friend was there to help; it is covered with reeds and cloth most of the time. My father and my uncle went down into the hole on a ladder, into a long tunnel. They were gone a long time. When they came out again, they began to argue. My father tried to grab my uncle’s camera. ‘No, no!’ my uncle kept saying. My father grew very angry. They shouted. Then my father ordered the hole covered and they drove away.”

  Stratton was thinking furiously. If the chamber with the common soldiers was an international sensation, then Wang Bin’s private dig could be a literal gold mine. Stratton had a vision of gold swords encrusted with jewels, of bronze and gold helmets, chests of gems: an emperor’s legacy.

  “My father wanted my uncle to help him steal something, Thom-as, didn’t he?” It was the voice of a little girl.

  “It’s possible,” Stratton said. He turned, a full teacup in each hand.

  Kangmei lay naked on the bed. The light from a single dim-watted bulb painted her the color of brushed ivory. She wriggled, and the shadowed V between her legs became a beckoning S. She reached for him, arching her back.

  “Kangmei, we can’t …”

  “Thom-as,” she whispered. “Do you know what Kangmei means in Chinese?”

  “Mmm?”

  “It means ‘Resist America,’ Thom-as. My father was very patriotic before he became a thieving old man. Shall I resist America, Thom-as?”