Mrs. Pollifax on the China Station (26 page)

“Which you, of course, could not have known or seen,” he emphasized, “having fainted.”

“No,” she whispered.

He bowed politely. “Because you and I have been adversaries for these past two days, Mrs. Pollifax, and because you and I are of the same generation. I will tell you quite frankly of a small temptation that I have experienced.”

“Yes?” she said, feeling her throat grow increasingly dry.

His smile was ironic. “To move suddenly toward you with a front choke or a middle knuckle punch and see if you would meet my action with a countering karate stance before you had time to think.”

Yes, very definitely a dangerous man, she realized, and forced herself to say aloud, lightly, “How very interesting, except what is a counterstance, Mr. Chang?”

He chuckled. “I think you have cultivated an exquisite oriental inscrutability that I should not care to see damaged, Mrs. Pollifax, which is why I brought you here at this particular early hour, for the sake of privacy for us both. You see,” he added, “the facts of the autopsy bring a certain insoluble question to mind.”

“Oh?” she said.

“One must ask,” he said imperturbably, “how Mr. Forbes could have been killed by a strong karate blow when his opponent Peter Fox had already slipped over the edge of the canyon and dropped into the rapids below.”

Oh God
, thought Mrs. Pollifax, and caught off guard, against her will, she reacted with a start as she realized what had been overlooked during those frenzied moments. Her eyes widened and then dropped. Recovering quickly she forced herself to look at Mr. Chang.

He met her gaze serenely and said nothing.

She said, “Of course it’s possible that—” She stopped, realizing that what he said was unanswerable; there had
been no thought of autopsies when she’d arranged Forbes’s body and there was no longer any possible explanation that could divert this man.

He said gently, sympathetically, “I am not a cat playing with a mouse, Mrs. Pollifax, but I think we understand each other better now.”

She could only stare at him. “Maybe,” she said cautiously, “but what—how—” She stopped.

“I said that I am not a cat playing with a mouse,” he repeated, “which is why I brought you here at this hour, to say to you that you may go now.”

Go
, she thought wildly,
what does he mean by go
. “Back to the hotel?” she asked, scarcely daring to hope.

He said pleasantly, “Mr. Forbes’ body is being flown to Beijing today, to your embassy there, on the late morning plane. You will also be on that plane, land briefly in Beijing, and then be flown at once to Tokyo. All of you.”

She gaped at him in astonishment.

“I am in charge of these interrogations,” he told her calmly, “and I am taking the responsibility of ending them.” He looked at her and said harshly, “I do not know—I find that I do not
want
to know—what took place by the river. Two Americans are dead, and I am satisfied with my verdict of Causes Unknown. I feel—from my aforementioned study of character,” he added with a faint smile, “that whatever happened was done out of grave necessity. I therefore have no interest in pursuing this investigation further—or even,” he added, “the stomach for it.”

She had prepared herself for imprisonment at the very least; she had actually expected worse. She stammered, “I—I scarcely know what to say.”

“I’m sure you don’t,” he said, standing up.

“Except to thank you,” she told him, rising with him.

“Thank you for the—the courtesies you’ve extended me, Mr. Chang.
Shown
me.”

He chuckled and with a slight bow said, “You will be taken to the airport, all of you, within the hour. I would like to say in return that it has been a pleasure to know you, however briefly, and it must be hoped,” he added with a twinkle, “that we do not meet again. Brown or black?”

She did not pretend to misunderstand him. “Brown.”

He nodded. “I myself practice Tai Chi now, but once I too had a brown belt in the martial art of karate.” He bowed again, graciously. “Good-bye, Mrs. Pollifax, and I wish you a safe return to your own country.

F
or her wedding Mrs. Polifax had found a dress that Cyrus pronounced stunning. And so it was, but it was several days before she realized that its colors were a beige and dusty jade-green so that when she looked at it now she saw the cliffs of Jiaohe, the desert of Taklamakan and the clay walls of Xian. And her heart ached for Peter. Not even Cyrus, huge and twinkly and affectionate, could quite dispell her awareness of the weeks passing by and her thoughts of Peter, Sheng, and X struggling to reach safety.

The news that she’d brought Carstairs and Bishop had shaken a number of departments at the CIA. When she had reached Tokyo she had placed phone calls to both Cyrus
and Bishop and then had sat wearily on her bed waiting for one of them to come through.

It was Cyrus who reached her first. “Emily?” he shouted. “Damn it, Emily, where are you? My God, Emily, I’ve worried—”

“Oh Cyrus, how wonderful to hear your voice,” she’d said, and had burst into tears. “I’m in Tokyo, how was your trip?”

“My trip be damned, Emily. Are you all right? All in one piece?”

“Only a broken wrist,” she’d told him.

“ ‘Only!’ ”

“Cyrus, if you haven’t changed your mind about us—”

He’d said gruffly, “Don’t be ridiculous, m’dear. Nobody like you. Why?”

“I’ve missed you tremendously,” she’d told him with a catch in her voice. “Russian roulette can be quite exhilarating when a person has nothing to lose, but oh Cyrus I discovered how much I could have lost—so easily—and almost did.”

“When does your plane get in?” he asked, and his voice was thick with emotion.

“I don’t know, I don’t know, I’ve put in a call to Bishop—”

“I’ll fly to San Francisco tonight,” he told her, “and I’ll meet every plane from Tokyo until you get there. Don’t leave San Francisco without me,” he said flatly, and hung up.

Almost at once the phone had rung a second time and the operator was saying, “Your call to Virginia has been put through … Go ahead, please …”

Abruptly Bishop came on the line saying, “Mrs. Pollifax, where are you?”

“Tokyo,” she told him. “We’re all in Tokyo but, Bishop—
two
people haven’t returned from this tour.”

“Two?” he’d said. “I don’t understand, did you—”

“Have you a list of the people on the tour, Bishop?”

“Yes, but—”

“Please look, it’s important, it’s why I’m calling.”

“Half a minute,” he’d said, and she’d heard the rustling of paper and then Bishop’s voice again. “I have the list but what do you mean,
two
? And Peter, what about—”

“You find the name Joseph Forbes there?”

“Let’s see … yes, Forbes … history professor, Chicago.”

“The important thing just now is to look into his background, Bishop. How much can I say on the phone?”

“As little as possible.”

“There were complications, Bishop, and it very nearly ended badly. The problem has to have begun with the source who gave you the information that took us to China. Do you remember explaining to me how you learned about—er—X? Those boundaries?”

“Good God,” he’d said.

“This person on the tour came from the other side of them, if I’m not being too abstract?”

“I’m following you,” Bishop told her grimly. “Good Lord, you mean this Forbes—”

“Yes, he’s the one.”

“Where is he now?”

“Dead,” she’d told him, and being nearly exhausted after countless hours without sleep her voice trembled. “It had to be done, Bishop—for the sake of the others. I had no choice.”

“Steady there,” he’d said softly. “You’re telling me that
you
…?”

“Yes.”

“I see. All right,” he said. “Are you feeling better now?”

“I will soon,” she’d told him unsteadily. “I have a
broken wrist but—but the purpose of the trip was salvaged, and somewhere out there, heading for the mountains—I’m sorry, Bishop,” she’d said, her voice breaking again, “I’m just so
tired
. And those mountains—”

“It had to be the mountains?”

“He thought so, yes, but the most important message right now is Forbes, Bishop, and whoever—well, betrayed you.”

There had been a long pause and then Bishop said, “We’ve got to get you home as quickly as possible. I’ll immediately get in touch with the airlines and demand top priority passage for you. In the meantime, however, we’ll start things rolling at once on Forbes, with all the repercussions
that
will bring, for which our eternal thanks, Mrs. Pollifax. Obviously our man in you-know-where is no longer ours.”

“No,” she said, and then, “Could you, when you learn on what plane I’ll be returning, let Cyrus know in Connecticut?”

“Gladly,” he said and he, too, rang off.

Several hours later she had been on her way to the airport, and she had been deeply touched by the fact that Iris and Malcolm insisted on accompanying her to the air terminal. They had parted warmly, with promises to write, and before moving through the electronic gate she had turned to watch them go—both so tall and slim, Iris still pushing back her tempestuous hair—and she had seen that they were holding hands.

It had occurred to her at that moment—suddenly and with sadness—that Jenny would now feel that Iris had captured the last man on the tour: first George, then seemingly Peter and seemingly Joe Forbes, and now Malcolm, and she would never know the truth.

As so few of us ever do
, she thought, and walked through the gate to fly home to Cyrus.

*  *  *

It was a small and private wedding: Mrs. Pollifax’s son, Roger, and her daughter, Jane; Miss Hartshorne; a few members of her Garden Club, and a few members of Cyrus’ bird-watching club. Bishop had called to announce that wild horses and assassinations abroad wouldn’t keep him away. “Besides,” he’d added on the phone, “Carstairs is entrusting me with a wedding gift that he thinks you may like and it’s too fragile to mail.”

The day was very warm—it was late August, after all—but the chapel was cool. Cyrus, giving her an enormous hug, said, “It’s a promise—wander off any time you please, Emily, but damn it, m’dear, never again without me.”

“Never,” she vowed fervently.

There was a slight delay while the organist searched frantically for a missing sheet of music; they waited patiently in the small room near the rear of the chapel until it became apparent that a mild commotion was taking place outside the door.

Cyrus opened it and Mrs. Pollifax heard Bishop’s voice say, “Hello there, from the size of you I think you have to be Cyrus?”

Mrs. Pollifax spun around and cried, “Bishop! Oh do come in!”

He stuck his head inside the door. “It’s me, bringing your wedding present. Everybody decent and ready?”

And he walked in, followed by a young man on crutches, wearing jeans, a T-shirt, and a broad grin.

“Peter!
” cried Mrs. Pollifax.

“Yes,” he said, beaming at her.

His face was burned from overexposure, there was a clownlike white paste daubed on his nose, his jaw was peeling, and there was that crutch that he leaned on as he
moved toward her. But he was alive. He was well. He’d survived.

“Thank God,” she whispered. “Oh Cyrus—Cyrus, this is—”

“No need to say,” remarked Cyrus. “It’s Peter, of course. Hello young man.”

“Told her to marry you,” Peter said, with a grin.

Cyrus nodded. “She’ll be able to sleep nights now, young man … No more nightmares.”

So Cyrus had guessed, Cyrus had known. Hugging Peter, her eyes filled with tears, she reached out and groped for Cyrus’ hand and then with her other hand she reached for Bishop’s too.…

With special thanks to David Ownby, China guide, for sharing his knowledge of the country, and for his translations and advice.

By Dorothy Gilman

Published by Fawcett Books:

UNCERTAIN VOYAGE

A NUN IN THE CLOSET

THE CLAIRVOYANT COUNTESS

THE TIGHTROPE WALKER

INCIDENT AT BADAMYÂ

CARAVAN

THE BELLS OF FREEDOM

THE MAZE IN THE HEART OF THE CASTLE

GIRL IN BUCKSKIN

THALE’S FOLLY

KALEIDOSCOPE

The Mrs. Pollifax series

THE UNEXPECTED MRS. POLLIFAX

THE AMAZING MRS. POLLIFAX

THE ELUSIVE MRS. POLLIFAX

A PALM FOR MRS. POLLIFAX

MRS. POLLIFAX ON SAFARI

MRS. POLLIFAX ON THE CHINA STATION

MRS. POLLIFAX AND THE HONG KONG BUDDHA

MRS. POLLIFAX AND THE GOLDEN TRIANGLE

MRS. POLLIFAX AND THE WHIRLING DERVISH

MRS. POLLIFAX AND THE SECOND THIEF

MRS. POLLIFAX PURSUED

MRS. POLLIFAX AND THE LION KILLER

MRS. POLLIFAX, INNOCENT TOURIST

MRS. POLLIFAX UNVEILED

Nonfiction

A NEW KIND OF COUNTRY