A Death in China (18 page)

From above came the unmistakable sound of boots hammering the tired floorboards. Not furtive. Authoritative boots.

Stratton listened from the head of the stairs. Two men, speaking Chinese. Plus the student and his professor. At least four. He and Bobby Ho had played against worse odds than that.

From the back of the theater came Bobby Ho’s voice. Stratton understood none of the words. He understood too well what they meant. The tone was enough: arrogant, strong, with a touch of exasperation. An officer’s voice, informing more than explaining.

Bobby Ho was playing the cover story, singing loudly enough to alert Stratton.

The cover was pretty much what Bobby Ho had told the ragged boy: He was a PLA officer down from Peking on a training mission with East Germans en route to North Vietnam to help the heroic struggle there. It was not a bad story. There were plenty of Caucasian instructors with the Viets, even some Germans. In the jacket of his pocket, Bobby Ho had a set of orders that looked like the real thing.

It might have worked. But it didn’t. Three or four voices speaking at once drowned out Bobby Ho. The shouts grew louder. Wood smashed. Bodies fell. Stratton didn’t hear Bobby Ho again until he screamed.

Stratton rammed through the door with the pistol ready. The neatly ordered folding chairs lay in matchstick piles. In their chaos stood four Chinese, two uniformed, the other two in bureaucrats’ white short-sleeved shirts, their red books of quotations clutched protectively. As Stratton’s eye recorded, his brain raced to establish target priority. The student and his professor were unarmed. Shoot last. The other two both had pistols. One was pressed against the head of a kneeling Bobby Ho. Its owner was screaming at Stratton.

Stratton let his gun arm come down, slowly, with emphasis. He reversed his grip on the pistol. Holding it by the butt, he walked toward the Chinese.

“Vas is los?” Stratton demanded in his own officer’s voice.

The man with Bobby Ho barked something that brought the student and professor to life like wind-up dolls.

“Comrade Commissar Wu … ” they began together.

” … instructs you to put down the gun and to raise your hands,” concluded the professor.

Stratton forced a rictus grin.

“English. Nein. Deutsch.” He tapped his chest. “Kamerad.”

After a cursory search, they tossed Stratton into one of the rooms on the stage. He was alone for twenty-seven minutes by his watch. An important eternity. He listened to them working on Bobby Ho. The shouts became one-sided, the screams dwindled to pathetic groans.

When they came for Stratton, they brought Bobby Ho unconscious. Stratton tried not to look at him.

There were still four of them. No one had left, so without phones, they had made no attempt to spread the alarm. Stratton asked himself why. Were they swayed by the cover story? Or were they simply in a hurry, trying for good information before seeking help?

The commissar was a lean, gray-haired man in PLA green with red tabs and a four-pocket tunic reserved for officers. The other uniformed man, balding and pot-bellied, wore the blue and white of the police. Stratton marked him as a local.

The policeman did the heavy work. He jabbed Stratton in the belly with a truncheon. When Stratton involuntarily clammed forward, the policeman struck him on the head.

The professor screamed: “How many men in your unit? Where are they? What is your mission? Talk or die, imperialist running dog!”

“Deutsch.”

It lasted about ten minutes. The policeman enjoyed his work. An expert, a fat man with bad breath, who stung without maiming. Stratton rolled with the blows and calculated his chances. The student, nearest the door, held a Chinese carbine with familiarity. The professor was unarmed. The policeman had his club and a holstered pistol. The commissar held a heavy Chinese military pistol.

Stratton, fighting the pain, babbling in the few words of German he knew, realized that Captain Black was finished. Sooner or later they would alert the PLA garrison outside of town and that would be that.

Then the Chinese made their mistake.

From the night came the sound of small arms fire. Stratton heard the pop of Chinese weapons and the crack of the AK-47s. The PLA already knew. The shooting flustered the Chinese. The commissar spoke in English for the first time.

“There is no time for this. Pick up your friend.”

Stratton stared dumbly. Only when they all began to shout and wave did he allow himself to understand.

He picked up Bobby Ho the way a mother bundles an injured child. Blood from Bobby’s mouth ran off the shoulder of Stratton’s jacket. There was a jagged hole where his teeth had been. Stratton held his head gently and pressed him close. Bobby Ho rasped a final sentence into Stratton’s neck.

“It was the kid … sorry, Tom … “

Bobby Ho spun from Stratton’s arms and lunged for the student. The carbine, shockingly loud in the small room, cut him in half. Impelled by momentum that the bullets did not reverse, the corpse of Bobby Ho collided with his killer.

The commissar was too slow. A bullet from his pistol plucked at Stratton’s ribs. Stratton’s open palm drove the commissar’s nose into his brain.

Then Stratton had the pistol. He shot the policeman twice, and then the student as he writhed to free himself from Bobby Ho’s last embrace. The professor burst from the room, vaulted off the stage and darted among the chairs, a frenzied hurdler. Stratton shot him in the back.

Outside was a holocaust. Two trucks burned at the far end of the street, and along either side civilians spilled from single-story hutches whose thatched roofs burned with a hungry crackle. The PLA had arrived in force. Stratton counted eight or nine rag doll figures in army khaki sprawled around the trucks. Stratton saw Panofsky go down hurling a grenade. Bloomfield dove after him. He didn’t make it.

Screaming, waving his assault rifle to scatter peasants who seemed more curious than frightened, Stratton headed back up the street the way he had come. Two knock-kneed soldiers emerged from an alley. Stratton took them with a short burst. He ran back to where he had left Gomez and Harkness. An old man brandishing a cane appeared from nowhere. Stratton clubbed him with the rifle.

He found Harkness’s body propped against a tree, and then Gomez, firing methodically at dancing shadows from behind a low concrete wall.

Together they broke away from the village and into the black, beckoning fields. Stratton’s wound bled freely. Every step was a fresh souvenir of defeat. After about fifteen minutes he could go no farther. He huddled in an irrigation ditch, Gomez beside him. The Chinese had paused at the edge of the village. To regroup, to await orders, or simply to separate soldiers from civilians. It made no difference. They would come soon enough.

“What a fuck-up,” Gomez growled.

Stratton gasped for breath, wincing with pain.

“Did you call for help, for the chopper?”

“Bloomfield had the radio,” Stratton whispered.

“Shit. I got no ammo left.”

Stratton checked his own rifle. One magazine remained.

“They’re all around us, Captain. I can feel it. And the civilians are worse than the fucking soldiers. Crazy bastards. One guy came at us with a cleaver.”

Stratton knew what the next question would be, and he dreaded it.

“How are we gonna get out of here, Captain?”

“Pickup is in about thirty-five minutes,” Stratton gasped. “Do you think you can find where we left the beacon? It can’t be more than a mile or so.”

“I can find it.”

“Go. I’ll stay here and keep them busy till the last minute. When the chopper comes I’ll be right behind you.”

“Sure,” Gomez muttered in a way that meant it would never happen. “Adios.”

“Good luck,” Stratton called, and waited alone to die.

The bugs were bad. He ignored them. Every time he shifted, his jungle boots squished in the mud. He held perfectly still. The second hand crawled around the face of his watch like a turtle with palsy. He willed himself not to look at it.

The flames were dying now, but enough light remained to make the village a perfect target. The Chinese recognized that. They could not know how large was the force opposing them, and they were in no hurry to find out. Stratton blessed their fear.

Stratton heard officers hollering and the whine of new trucks arriving, but it was nearly twenty minutes before the first infantrymen burst from the closest buildings and dove for cover. They were in range, but Stratton did not fire. To fire was to die.

He waited another agonizing five minutes. Then he crouched and with all his strength hurled the last grenade as far as he could off to the left, away from the route of escape. The night ignited once more: the grenade, followed by Chinese carbines, firing blind. Tracer bullets streaked along the treeline like orange meteors.

Stratton slithered from the ditch and trotted for the landing zone.

He had nearly made it when he heard a grunt and the thrashing of a desperate struggle about thirty yards ahead. In the moonlight he saw a figure wielding a pole, a ghostly jouster.

A scream pierced the night, and then a terrible, expiring “Madre … “

Stratton crashed forward like a murderous boar, the Kalashnikov on full automatic. Before him, squat gray shapes rustled away. Peasant killers. Systematically, Stratton cut them down. One. Two. Three. Four.

It had not been a pole, but a pitchfork, and it had impaled Gomez as he lay on the moist earth beside the homing beacon that would bring the rescue helicopter. Gomez was dead when Stratton reached him, the pitchfork deep in his chest.

Mindlessly Stratton knelt by his friend’s body and activated the ultrasonic beacon. Already he could hear the invisible helicopter, waiting for the signal. From behind he heard whispers from approaching Chinese soldiers as they skittered between clumps of cover.

Stratton glanced down at Gomez and smothered a moan. He passed a grimy hand across parched lips. All he could do was wait; it would be a very near thing. Wait in silence for deliverance, for the sight of the rope ladder peeling out of the chopper’s belly. Pray that the chopper came before the Chinese found him.

Stratton heard a noise and knew instantly that the helicopter would come too late, an eternity too late.

It was a squelch in the mud, and he whirled to face it. Another gray shape, only a few yards away. It had been watching him; he should have sensed it.

Stratton sprang forward, his hand working on the Thai blade at his belt. The shape had no gun or he would already be dead. But it could scream, and if it screamed, he would be discovered.

In three frantic bounds he reached the peasant. It was a young woman. She cried out and backed away, her eyes wild. The distant throb of the chopper blades grew louder. A minute or two, maybe more.

The woman turned to flee.

Let her go?

But she would scream. He knew she would scream. She ran in awkward steps, her arms around her belly. Stratton swiftly caught her, sobbing. Not this time, Bobby Ho. Not again.

With his left hand Stratton jerked back the girl’s head, and the fire’s glow shone on the flesh of her neck. He killed her with a single savage thrust.

Still she screamed, a thin, piteous wail lost in the clatter of the descending helicopter and the confused shouts of the Chinese soldiers. She screamed for her life, and that of the child who lay heavy within her. Two senseless deaths.

Thomas Stratton did not care.

Stratton’s throat was dry, his voice rough. He felt himself winding down like a cheap clock.

“Like it was yesterday,” he said. “I still dream about it. It still hurts. I murdered them. The woman, the baby … “

Kangmei worried a deep furrow with her stick.

“It is a very sad story, Thom-as,” she murmured at last.

“I’m sorry.”

“Men should not fight, Thom-as. They should live in peace and build beautiful things. Man is for good, not for killing.”

“I wish I could believe that.”

“Oh, but it is true. For every evil old man like my father, there are hundreds—many thousand—who are true and loving. Leave your unlocked bicycle at their door and it will be there tomorrow, and the day after. Those are the Chinese people, Thom-as. Not my father, not commissars who play with people’s minds.”

“Your Uncle David is a good man.”

“Yes, I could see that.”

“Until today he was the only person who had ever heard my story.”

“Thank you.”

“I wanted you to know. It was important … “

“I understand. I am not a witch, like one of the old women in Bright Star, but I have seen the sadness inside of you.”

“Kangmei, I … “

Stratton let the thought drift away. He watched the swift river, as muddy as his own thoughts. He felt light-headed and empty. And yet purged, as though retelling the horror would at last allow him to file it in some dusty mind bin, where it belonged.

On the far side of the river a young woman led a file of nursery-school children toward an old wooden footbridge. A flock of pigeons alighted in the trees around them. The palm leaves glinted with fleeting gold in the brief tropical dusk. Soon it would be dark, and a few hours after that he would be gone. Kangmei’s family had found a friend of a friend who was a conductor on the overnight train to Canton. Tomorrow the vestige of Captain Black would take over. Canton would be no problem. It was tonight that hurt. Stratton wanted the ghost of Man-ling banished as quickly as the Chinese railroads would allow. He wanted to get to Hong Kong, and from there to save David Wang. But he did not want to leave the strong and idealistic woman at his side.

He was assembling the question when Kangmei spoke. Again, she had anticipated him.

“Have you ever loved, Thom-as?”

“Yes, sure,” he said, but he could not separate the images of a cliched decade: blondes and Titians, quiche and Perrier, trim-cut ski jackets, designer sheets. Carol, who had proved a more devoted doctor than wife, more brittle than beautiful, a better diagnostician than mother.

“No,” he said. Not like this.

“I loved once,” she said, so far away, so fragile he wanted to gather her into his arms, but dared not molest her privacy.

“A gentle boy, not tall and strong and handsome, but short and plain. One leg was shorter than the other and he limped. His face was so round you thought it was the moon, and he could not see well, so he wore heavy glasses that always slid off his nose and broke. There was no place he could hide: People would point and say, ‘Oh, how ugly.’ But when they saw what he wrote, no one laughed anymore. His poems were beautiful, like the morning sun creeping along an open field. His poems were as simple as the birds in these trees and as pure as those children across the river.

“He was a happy boy who did not mind being ugly. He laughed at his bad luck and lived for the hours when he could write his poetry. During the days he worked as an electrician in a big factory. At night he would compose in a workers’ dormitory. At first he showed his poems only to his friends. That was when he was happiest. He gave poems to his friends as gifts and then showed them to other friends until finally other writers saw them, writers who work without Party control. He gave poems in secret to his friends at the factory and finally the top cadres of the factories saw them, too. The writers went to him and said, ‘Write of life. Be freer.’ The cadres of his unit went to him and said, ‘You have great talent. You must write of the workers’ heroic struggle.’

“My friend was a happy man who wanted everyone to share his joy. So he wrote for the writers about larks and joy, and he wrote for the cadres about the beauties of blast furnaces and socialist progress. At first both were very pleased. ‘More,’ they said. ‘Write more.’ So my friend wrote more, and more, until he could hardly remember whether the next poem was supposed to be about the glorious fulfillment of factory quotas, or every man’s right to find his own truth.

“Then one day my friend said, ‘No more.’ He went to the writers and to the cadres and told them, ‘I must write for me, not for you. What I write for you is not me, and it is not good.’ They both became very angry, the writers and the cadres. They felt my friend had betrayed them. They yelled and screamed at him. The factory gave him the most dirty and dangerous jobs. The writers no longer invited him to tea or to walk in the park. My friend became very unhappy. Soon he could not write at all—not even for himself. He would limp around the city looking for inspiration, his great moon face empty, like a man whose father has died. He wrote nothing. All this happened the year that I loved him.”

Kangmei smiled through tears. “That is my sad story, Thom-as.”

“I’m sorry, Kangmei. Is your friend still in Peking?”

“He is beyond Peking.”

“What happened?”

“One day at the factory he picked up two heavy cables in his hands and rubbed them together. They were full of electricity. Perhaps it was an accident … “

“I’m sorry.” A temporizing banality.

“I love you, Thom-as.”

“I was trying to say the same thing. Come with me, please. We’ll find a way to Hong Kong. America is a strange country, I know, but you will like it. If you don’t, we can come back to Asia. Anywhere you want … “

“No, Thom-as, no. This is my country. China is where I belong.”

“But you will be hunted here. You have sacrificed everything for me. Your school, your family … “

“I have done what is right.”

“That will not protect you.”

“My relatives here will protect me now. Later, I will find my protection in the millions of young people who believe in China, and who believe as I do. I have talked to you about them and I have seen how you looked at me—like an uncle looks at a young girl who says she can walk to the moon. I am right. You will see.”

Damned if she wasn’t mad, twin points of color blazing from her cheeks.

Stratton tried not to sound patronizing.

“Kangmei, let’s not argue. I believe in your vision, but I want to be with you. If a man and a woman can find love—isn’t that enough?”

“I, too, have thought about that. I am … confused. A part of me wants to go with you, but another part insists that I stay. So I will stay and I will think. I—”

“Look!” Stratton was on his feet, pointing. On the far side of the river, bellowing in fear, blind with pain, ran a pig. In the failing light, Stratton could see the stream of blood that marked the pig’s passage and, in distant pursuit, a peasant with a knife. Running pig of Chinese commune-ism. A weak joke.

There was nothing funny about the running pig.

It veered onto the narrow dirt promenade that paralleled the one Stratton and Kangmei had walked on their side of the river. Striking from behind, the dying pig tore through the line of schoolchildren like a berserk bowling ball. The youngsters flew to the left and right. Most were simply shuffled. Stratton saw one trampled. A peasant woman in black dumped a load of laundry from her head and kicked viciously at the pig. It staggered off the path. The young teacher who had been leading the children screamed. Around her frightened, crying children needed immediate attention and reassurance. But that was not the worst of it. Two of the children—they could not have been more than three years old—tumbled down the steep bank and into the river. First the boy, then the girl. They made twin ripples.

“Aiyee!” Kangmei screamed.

Across the river, Stratton could see men running. Behind him, too, there came the sound of feet. They were all too far away. And in minutes, the rescuers would need flashlights if they were to be of any use at all.

Tom Stratton threw himself down the bank with a rush that left his leg yelping in protest. He entered the water in a long, flat dive.

The river tasted of mud. Stratton angled upstream, fighting the current. It was his only chance. Wait until the water brought the children to him.

Stratton had three enemies in the warm, pungent river. First was the current, stronger than it had seemed. It tugged and caressed, unyielding, eternal. Treading water, trying to ride as high as possible, Stratton knew he was barely holding his own. If he was pushed downstream he would travel roughly at the same speed as the children who even now should be, must be—God, where were they?—approaching him. They would certainly drown then.

Second was the light. Precious little remained. If he did not find the children while he could still see, he would never find them.

Third was his strength. His leg, he felt sure, was bleeding again. The bicycling motion in the water reminded him how badly his body had been abused by Wang Bin’s thugs. He hadn’t much stamina.

People dotted both banks now. He saw one man running up with a ladder and another setting a match to a kerosene lamp. On the Evergreen side a middle-aged man with a coil of rope was purposefully making his way down the embankment. Stratton wondered how long the rope was. He would know when the man reached the water’s edge.

But where were the children? He couldn’t see …

“Thom-as! Swim to the right.” A banshee’s command. Kangmei. Smart girl. She had stayed up on the embankment where the elevation expanded her vision. She had never taken her eyes off the children from the moment they hit the water. For the first time Stratton felt a surge of hope. Obediently, he swam right, challenging the current.

“Four meters … three meters … two meters … now! Now! Now!”

Still, he almost missed it, a bundle of color that was on him before he saw it. Stratton grabbed. Missed. Grabbed again. He pulled the child by the hair until its face came clear of the water. He could not tell if it was the girl or the boy, but it was alive, feebly fighting his grasp.

“Right again. Now! You must hurry!”

Stratton windmilled right with one arm, clutching the child tightly with the other. Within seconds the arm felt as though it would wrench from his socket. He seemed rooted.

“Faster! Faster!”

Stratton swallowed a mouthful of water. He gagged. He wanted to scream. I’m swimming as fast as I can. He wanted to rest. I never said I was Superman. He wanted to tell her, I love you. Stratton swallowed more water.

The little boy whimpered as he swept past, a chick peeping. Got ya, you little bastard. Gotcha. He grabbed the boy by the collar of his shirt. His strength failing, the children clutched to his chest. Stratton pumped his legs ruthlessly, fighting off extinction for three flickering candles. It was dark now. And he was so tired. He must rest. Tomorrow he would finish …

Talons that felt like steel yanked Stratton’s hair. He cried out.

The stocky man had not thrown the rope. He had tied one end to the trunk of a dead tree and the other around his waist. Mercilessly, the stocky man pulled again at Stratton’s hair, gasping in Chinese.

“All right, all right,” Stratton protested. “You win, take one.”

Clumsily, a splashing pas de deux for the blind, they transferred one of the children from Stratton to the man on the rope. His arm free, a fiery, tremendous, unbearable weight suddenly lifted, Stratton grasped the man’s shirt. Willing hands reeled them in. Tom Stratton felt as if he were flying.