A Death in China

by Carl Hiaasen

Wang Bin had been right. Stu-pid, stu-pid, stu-pid, muttered the wind through the Arbor.

  The solution had been there all the time. In the grave of David Wang. It had been there from the beginning, and Stratton had not realized it.

  The puppet did not dig to satisfy Wang Bin's sadism, nor merely to create his own eternal shroud.

  He dug because there was something to recover from David's grave. Not an empty coffin, as Stratton had assumed, or even another carved soldier.

  It was to his brother's coffin that Wang Bin had consigned his real treasure.

  What was it?

  Stratton was too dazed even to speculate. He dug mindlessly, an ashen marionette.

  "Slack," he gagged. "More slack… I can't breathe."

  The rope eased a grudging fraction, and in the next aching instant Stratton's shovel struck the lid of the coffin. The clunk was unmistakable, and it brought Wang Bin bobbing forward to perch at the lip of the grave.

  "Careful!" he commanded excitedly. "Xiao xin, fool!"

  Gradually Stratton uncovered the coffin lid, the cheap Chinese metal streaked with moisture and freckled with incipient rust. Like a teacher bestowing reluctant favor on a backward child, Wang Bin paid out rope to allow Stratton more movement.

  Shovel plunging, the puppet dug his way around the coffin from corner to corner.

  "Huang di," Wang Bin said, a reverent whisper.

  "What is it?" gasped.Stratton.

  "Do not stop now, Professor. You are about to have the history lesson of your life."

  Wang Bin positioned himself at the foot of the grave. The barrel of the pistol poked from his shadow, an ominous telescope on Stratton's midsection.

  "Pull it out now," the deputy minister said. "Be careful."

  Stratton staggered to the gentle slope of soil at the peak of the grave. He squatted in the mud, wrapped both blistered hands around the head of the coffin and pulled it toward him. The metal was slick, and Stratton's purchase poor.

  The coffin edged a few inches from its bed and then slid back as Stratton's legs flew out from under him. The rope stopped his fall, but left him choking and scrambling in a tortuous pushup pose.

  Wang Bin played out the rope and Stratton collapsed, prying with nerveless fingers to loosen the noose.

  He lay there for what seemed like a long time, his lungs devouring draughts of fresh air. His brain teetered between blackness and reason.

  "Pull, you must pull again," came the thin, ice-pick voice of his captor. "Pull, donkey. Pull."

  Stratton levered himself to a sitting position, encouraged by a fresh jerk on the rope. "I can't," he cried. "I need air."

  Wang Bin fired once. The bullet slapped into the mud between Stratton's knees.

  The puppet lurched back into the grave. Moments later he had dragged the coffin out of the pit onto the muddy slope, bracing it there with a heavy rock.

  Wang Bin inched forward along the side of the open grave. "Now break the welds, Professor. Use the point of the shovel." The rope hung loosely from his left hand now. The time for donkeys was nearly over.

  Stratton found the welds soft and accommodating; a child could have fractured them. The lid of the coffin sprang open. Unbidden, Stratton stripped away a protective layer of gray quilts. Then he slumped against the grave wall to stare.

  Russian dolls, he thought dully, a game of Russian dolls-one inside the other.

  "What is it?" Stratton murmured again.

  The gleam of Wang Bin's smile was visible in the darkness. "It is beauty, Professor-or can you no longer recognize it? It is beauty. It is history. It is mine."

  Inside the coffin that was never meant for David Wang lay another coffin, cushioned by green quilts and chocked with fresh-cut wood.

  The smaller coffin was exquisite, a masterpiece of latticework gold studded with gems-diamonds, rubies, pearls-that sparkled even in the sallow lantern light. It was like nothing Stratton had ever seen. Beauty and majesty unsurpassed.

  "I know what it is," Stratton marveled. So this was the deputy minister's private excavation at Xian. No wonder David had raged. A crime against humanity, he had called it.

  Indeed, it was more than that.

  "Open it." The eyes of the old man flashed in triumph. The voice was placid, confident. "Open it, Stratton. There are latches on the side."

  Stratton opened it.

  He looked, then spun away and retched into the grave.

  "Huang di," Wang Bin said. "Son of Heaven. Ruler of the Middle Kingdom. Beloved ancestor."

  It was the Emperor Qin.

  He lay as serenely as when his vassals had placed him at the heart of his colossal tomb, protected by his army of ceramic soldiers. Twenty-two hundred years ago.

  The ultimate artifact.

  Thomas Stratton had never imagined anything so macabre. It was hideous, a loathsome caricature of life, a rotted monster that did not belong on this verdant hillside, David's place.

  No one would ever know what secrets the emperor's alchemists had employed to prepare him for eternal reign. But they had failed. They had not cheated time, but perverted it. A mummy can have dignity, like a man making his own grave.

  Wang Bin's emperor had none. It was a green-tinged parody of empty sockets, spore-covered bones, shreds of dusty silk and a rictus grin.

  For this abomination men had died. David had died. Stratton would die.

  Drenched, fatigued, bleary, Stratton looked up at Wang Bin. "Why?" he ask feebly.

  "Think, Professor. As a student of history, as an observer of mankind." He held the rope and the gun where Stratton could see them. "You know what this is, Professor. It is the most cherished archaeological treasure in all China. Its value is both symbolic and very real. It is-truly-priceless. My government-"

  Wang Bin caught himself, smiled self-consciously. "Excuse me, my former government will do anything to recover this artifact. It will do anything, in fact, to conceal the circumstances of the theft. You see, Stratton, in China the scandal would be more of a calamity than the actual crime. There is no limit to what my former colleagues might do to prevent such a thing."

  "So you're a blackmailer, too," Stratton said derisively.

  Wang Bin stiffened. "I am not familiar with that term," he replied, testing the rope with a sharp twitch. "However, I do intend to seek what is due to me after a lifetime of devotion."

  "The soldiers weren't enough?"

  "Think, Stratton. There are seven thousand celestial soldiers. There is only one imperial casket. There is only one… " His voice trailed off in the night. His eyes fell to the grave, gazing at the withered creature within.

  Stratton watched the gun and waited.

  "By now they know," Wang Bin said smugly. "The comrades know of my achievement.

  They know what they must do, for I left precise instructions. The men who would have purged me are the same men who will beseech me for this treasure. They will pay enormously for my future comfort, and for my silence. And, in return, I will give them back their precious little corpse."

  "And then you disappear?"

  Wang Bin nodded. "I disappear from history. My name will never again be mentioned in Peking. Those who worked with me… I cannot say what will become of them. The comrades who pursued me, however, will certainly suffer. They were too slow and much too stupid. Their defeat and humiliation is my vindication, Stratton. That much even you can understand."

  Stratton understood. He understood why the celestial soldiers were not enough.

  He understood the genius of the crime, the genius of the vengeance.

  And he knew why Wang Bin-so small and unimposing-frightened him so.

  "Close the coffin now," the deputy minister ordered. "Remove it from the grave."

  "I can't."

  The rope cracked. Stratton was on his toes, then peddling in the air, gulping for breath. Then he was on his knees, on all fours. Dizzy. Dying.

  David, help me.

  "Now," said the brother. "Remove the emperor's cof
fin!"

  "No."

  For this Thomas Stratton would not die.

  With all his strength he hurled a wet handful of dirt in Wang Bin's face and dove across the grave with a scream.

  Sometimes you have to take a shot. It was something you were taught but never spoke of. Sometimes the only remote chance is to give the enemy one shot and hope to survive it. Bobby Ho had remembered, there on the bloody stage at Man-ling.

  Diving low, Stratton survived because Wang Bin made a mistake. Logically, he should have jerked on the rope with all his weight; that would have snapped Stratton's neck.

  But Wang Bin chose the gun instead. He fired reflexively, and missed by a hair's breadth.

  The bullet scored the top of Stratton's shoulder and exploded in the grave behind him. When Stratton hit Wang Bin, the almond eyes were riveted in horror-not at his assailant, but at the coffins.

  Then they fought along the rim of the pit. They fought like the maniacs they were, with hands and feet and teeth: Stratton younger, heavier, but exhausted;

  Wang Bin possessed of unquenchable fury.

  Stratton finally saw it-a slow-motion frame-as they teetered on the lip, Wang Bin's hands like talons on his neck.

  The bullet meant for Stratton had found another target: the emperor's skull.

  After twenty-two centuries his warriors had failed him. A traitor's gunshot had reduced the legend to an anonymous pile of powdered bone.

  Not for that.

  I will not die for that.

  With power he had never known, Tom Stratton ripped free of Wang Bin's clinch.

  With the heel of his right hand he delivered a killing blow beneath the old man's chin, a blow that would paralyze the nervous system in the microsecond before it broke the neck.

  Stratton hurled Wang Bin into the grave and fell back in the mud.

  It was the rain that roused him-fresh rain, thunder and the wind that scoured his wounds, pierced his lethargy. Stratton was sick again. Then, as recognition returned, he cautiously crawled to the edge of the grave.

  Wang Bin had joined his emperor forever.

  He had crashed on his back into the coffin, smashing beneath him the delicate, lacework-gold bier. The impact had jarred the coffin off the rock and sent it sliding down the slope, back into the muddy tomb.

  With a grunt, Stratton reached down and slammed the lid of David's casket, sealing the two sleepers. Then, determinedly, ignoring throbbing limbs and a bloody shoulder, Stratton set to work.

  He had been digging for ten minutes when he heard the sounds. Stratton wiped the water from his eyes and paused to listen: branches chattering in the wind. What else could it be?

  Stratton had covered the entire coffin with a foot of wet red earth when he heard it again.

  Faint raps. Then a clawing, a muffled disturbance: the scuttle of rats in a barn.

  It came from the grave.

  Wang Bin was alive.

  His body quivering, the rain cascading off his back, Stratton bent for a long and horrible moment over the shovel.

  Rap. Rap.

  "No!" Stratton screamed. "No! No, you!"

  He shoveled relentlessly then, with black fear and desolate conviction. Dig.

  Lift. Throw. Dig. But don't think. Lift. Never think. Throw.

  Stratton had no memory of finishing. There was but an hour until dawn when he levered the headstone back into its silent place, tucked a shapeless old gardening hat in his back pocket, and left the rain to wash away his traces:

  David Wang

  1915-1983

  Teacher and Friend

  Rest in Peace

  EPILOGUE

  In late September, Thomas Stratton took his students to the Boston Museum to see a traveling exhibition of terracotta soldiers from the Qin Dynasty. They were impressed.

  In October, he read a story in the Boston Globe that amused him:

  China Won't Disturb Tomb of First Emperor By James X. McCarthy Special to the Globe Peking-Chinese officials have a message for the Emperor Qin Shi Huangdi, dead these 2,200 years.

  Rest in Peace, Emperor.

  The emperor is remembered by history as the man who first unified China. In his spare time he built the Great Wall and buried alive Confucian scholars who dared to suggest that he might be mortal.

  Since his death (natural causes) in 210 B.C., the emperor has lain under a gigantic man-made mountain near the central Chinese city of Xian. The area around the tomb has become one of the world's great archaeological digs, yielding more than 7,000 life-sized, priceless terracotta soldiers and horses who guarded the tomb as an imperial guard of honor.

  Scholars had hoped that the Chinese, who are anxious to capitalize on the find as a tourist attraction, would soon begin excavations of the tomb itself.

  Sorry, it won't happen any time this century, says scientist Gao Yibo.

  "We are reluctant to open the tomb itself," he said in an interview. "To dig faster does not mean to dig better. We must work slowly to evaluate what we already have, and to preserve a legacy for archaeologists of the future."

  Painstaking evaluation and reconstruction of the existing finds, which lie in three giant pits about two-thirds of a mile from the emperor's tomb itself, will take at least until the end of this century, said Gao.

  "We leave the emperor himself to our children. He will be safe in the ground until we are ready for him," said Gao, who this month became the new deputy minister in charge of all of China's archaeological discoveries and the museums that display them.

  Continued on page 16

  In November, Stratton won permission from a bemused college administration, which had regarded him as a popular underachiever, to teach a course in Asian history, literature and philosophy. Stratton's detailed prospectus outlined what he called the Wang Syllabus.

  In December, two visitors came. Stratton was expecting them.

  "I'm Tony Medici, this is Jerry Flanagan. We're from the Smithsonian," said the dark one, a rangy man with sharp, veteran's eyes who wore a button-down shirt.

  The young one had red hair and a scowl he probably practiced in the mirror.

  "I'm Mother Goose. Sit down."

  "That'll save a lot of pointless bullshit." Medici grinned.

  "We understand you have some information about Chinese artifacts… "

  "Three big ones, to be exact," said Flanagan.

  "That's what I said in my letter."

  "Yeah, I saw it. We'd like those items back."

  "How badly do you want them?"

  "Hey, if you even know we want them you're in deep trouble. National security.

  We can put your ass away for a long time."

  Stratton ignored the redhead. Medici was the pro.

  "How bad?" he asked again.

  "Well, it is a matter of some concern. We've searched, of course. Even got a hint that maybe one of our… uh, that a government employee might have been mixed up in it. You might even know the lady."

  Stratton gave him nothing.

  "How bad?"

  "All the way up to the White House, since you ask. You got 'em?"

  "I know where they are."

  "How much?" Flanagan snapped.

  "They're not for sale."

  "What then?"

  "A swap."

  "For what?"

  Stratton told him.

  Medici blew air between his teeth. "I don't know if we want the merchandise that much."

  "It's up to you."

  "I mean, that kind of thing… it's out of style, isn't it, Stratton? These days we don't just sneak in… "

  "You do it or I do it."

  "I don't believe this," said Flanagan.

  "Shut up, Jerry." Then to Stratton: "I'll have to check."

  "There's a pay phone down the hall."

  Stratton went back to marking papers. The redhead fidgeted.

  "You an art teacher?"

  "Something like that."

  "Never did much for me in college."

&nb
sp; "I know."

  "When Tony comes back we'll probably drag you out of here in handcuffs. I'd like that, Professor."

  Medici was back in twenty minutes.

  "You've got a deal," he said without preface, measuring Stratton with curiosity.

  "What!"

  "Shut up, Jerry. There are some conditions, though."

  Medici consulted a notebook. "First, we get our friends' merchandise back. Then we go lookin' for yours. It'll take some time."

  "I know."

  "There's something else." Medici read slowly from the notebook. "You must promise not to undertake, organize or direct any incursion into the People's Republic of China, or attempt in any way to enter the People's Republic under your own or any assumed identity, for any purpose."

  "Tony, who is this guy?" Flanagan whined. "What's going on?"

  "Anything else?" Stratton asked.

  Medici mumbled. Stratton barely caught the words.

  "They said to say please."

  Flanagan coughed.

  Stratton said, "Tell them I agree."

  He handed the agents two sheets of paper. The name of Sgt. Gil Beckley was written on the first.

  "Who's this?" Flanagan said, frowning.

  "A cop in West Virginia. Be nice to him. A piece of your merchandise is locked up in his property room. He's also got a list that you'll find very interesting."

  Broom's roster of stolen warriors and their buyers. It had been found in the trunk of the car with the last Chinese soldier, exactly as Wang Bin had planned.

  Stratton had phoned Gil Beckley to make sure; the next day, Stratton had written his letter to Washington.

  "What kind of list?" Flanagan demanded.

  "The best kind. Short and simple. It'll help you find what you're looking for."

  Not just the imperial artifacts, Stratton thought, but Linda Greer, too. She deserved much more than a pauper's grave.

  The second paper Stratton handed to the agents was as good as a map. Medici studied it briefly.

  "Okay, brother, you got it. We'll be in touch."

  Stratton walked them to the door. Flanagan left, shaking his head. Medici paused.

  "I was in Nam," he said. "Fourth Division Lurps. We heard stories… well, I'm proud to know you."