A Death in China Read Online Free PDF Page A

impatient clatter of the helicopter, hovering, waiting, anxious to be gone. Fire. Run. Run to the chopper, its rope ladder slowly dangling, the only lifeline he would ever get. Drop. Fire. Run from a black night and a devil-scorched patch of earth, all memory and no meaning.
    Run, captain. Rope swaying. Lungs burning. Side burning as the black medic cut away the cloth and applied a salve. Eyes burning, exhaustion and shame, in the cramped cabin of a blacked-out aircraft carrier.
    “You’re sure there were no prisoners?” A man, a colonel, trying to be professional, sounding only disheartened.
    “No POWs.” A dirt-poor commune with a PLA company stationed on its fringes.
    “Intelligence was so damn sure about the prisoners. They said there were American prisoners.”
    “Not anymore.”
    “How did they get on to you?”
    “We made a mistake.”
    “Your team?”
    “Gone, all gone.”
    “How long did they have you?”
    “Not long.”
    “Bad?”
    “Real bad.”
    “So what’d you tell ‘em?”
    “Said I was an East German, training with their Viet friends.”
    The colonel laughed at the idea.
    “How’d you get away?”
    “I got away.”
    “It was supposed to be a quiet recon.”
    “It wasn’t quiet.”
    “Shit, you’re telling me. Their radio is already screaming to high heaven. They say thirty-eight ‘innocent peasants’ are dead.”
    “Most of them were soldiers.”
    “They blame us; probably they’ll get one of their pious friends to raise hell at the UN.”
    “Why shouldn’t they blame us? We did it, didn’t we?”
    Stratton wrenched himself from a tangle of sodden sheets. His watch said 5:47. It was still dark in Peking. His eyes felt gummy, his mouth wooden. He glanced at the bottle of whiskey he had bought the night before in the hotel lobby. Less than half full, and still open.
    He had not drunk like that for a long time. And he had not hurt like that for a long time. David Wang’s death had triggered reactions and dreaded memories he thought he had buried for good.
    From the street below came the muted whir of cyclists, harbingers of the morning rush hour. Stratton rejected his body’s urging for sleep. His mind would not sleep. Naked, he lurched to the bathroom and turned on the hand shower, hardly noticing that the water was stone cold.
     
    A wrinkled woman with blue-rinse hair and stiff new Hong Kong sandals sat across from Stratton in an anteroom at the U.S. Embassy. Sitting next to her, but obviously on a separate mission, was a slender middle-aged man with a leathery face, a smoker’s face. He carried a suede valise.
    “How is your tour?” the old woman said to Stratton.
    “Not too good,” he said hoarsely. News of David Wang’s death had left him numb. Sadness itself was slow in coming. Another old friend dead and—as in Vietnam—Tom Stratton was a long way from tears. Instead he fought a deep, dull melancholy.
    “We have a lovely guide,” the wrinkled woman said. “Her name is Su Yee. Her great-grandfather helped to build the Great Wall.”
    Stratton managed a polite smile.
    “Where are you from?”
    “New York,” volunteered the smoker. “I’m an art dealer.”
    “I’m from Tucson, retired there from Chicago,” the woman reported. “My husband used to be a stockbroker.”
    Together they awaited Stratton’s contribution. “I’m a teacher,” he said finally. “I teach art.”
    “Asian art?” asked the man with the leathery face.
    Stratton did not reply.
    The art dealer hunched forward, and Stratton shifted uncomfortably. There was something felonious about the man. He was dressed well enough, but the fine clothes didn’t match the tiny brown rodent eyes that scoured Stratton from head to toe in quick appraisal.
    “Do you know much about Sung Dynasty sculpture?” the art dealer asked. His voice dropped to a clubby whisper. “I’m trying to cut a deal with some government types down in the Sichuan Province. They’ve got a little gold mine of a