Carl Hiaasen & William D. Montalbano Page 17

  “There is no one else on the road at this time of night,” Kangmei remarked. “The police certainly will ask questions.”

  “I’ll be hiding in the back. There’s a bundle of wood and some old vegetable crates back there—”

  “Thom-as, I don’t have any identification papers. They might arrest me.”

  Stratton got out of the cab. Kangmei moved into the driver’s seat.

  “Make up a story,” Stratton said, scouting the foggy highway. In both directions it was quiet, deserted. “Tell them you’re on the way to get medicine for the commune. The regular driver is sick.”

  Kangmei’s hands explored the steering wheel. “What if they don’t believe me?”

  “How many policemen will there be?”

  “One, perhaps two at the most. It is so late …”

  Stratton was thinking. He removed the dusty driver’s cap and placed it on Kangmei’s head. Gently he tucked her silken pigtails underneath it. “There! You look like a teenage boy.”

  She glanced down at her chest.

  “Well, almost,” Stratton said. He climbed into the flatbed and concealed himself in the rummage and lumber. “Okay,” he called from the back. “Let’s go.”

  The truck lunged forward, then coughed into a stall. Kangmei tried again with the same results. The third time the clutch engaged perfectly and the truck found the pavement. Stratton smiled to himself.

  Kangmei drove slowly, eternally grateful that the stretch of road was straight so she could devote all concentration to mastering the transmission.

  As the truck crested a small hill, Kangmei noticed a swatch of yellow light below. Half in panic, she mashed both feet on the clutch and let the truck coast. Gradually the details of the small police station became clear: a white booth, with a Chinese flag posted on the tin roof. Three bulbs hung from a slender wire; one lit the building and the other two a zebra-striped gate that blocked the road. Inside the booth stood a man in a blue-and-white uniform. He seemed not to notice how the truck stuttered downhill, Kangmei fighting for the brakes.

  She brought it to a stop with a brief screech of the tires. The policeman, who had been dozing on his feet, glanced up sharply and peered out the window of the booth.

  As he approached, Kangmei shook her hair out from under the cap.

  “Ni nar?” the policeman demanded—the universal inquiry of Marxist China.

  Kangmei gave the name of a commune not far from her own birthplace. She told the policeman she was a barefoot doctor there.

  “Are you a driver too?” The policeman eyed her. He did not have a flashlight so he stood very close, sticking his head through the window of the cab. In the flatbed, Tom Stratton held his breath.

  “No, Comrade, I am not a driver. This truck is assigned to the commune.” Kangmei made up a common name. “Children are sick, and so is the regular driver,” she went on. “We have run out of medicine and I am going to get some more at the clinic in Chungzho.” She fumbled in her blues for an imaginary piece of paper.

  The policeman shrugged and waved her on.

  “Xie, xie, ni,” Kangmei called in the earnest tones of a heroic worker. She pressed the accelerator, lifted her foot off the clutch—and promptly stalled the truck. Heart pounding, she wrestled with the stick shift. First gear. She could not find first gear. Again she tried to move the truck and again the engine died. Don’t flood it, Stratton prayed from beneath the lumber and crates.

  The policeman laughed and ambled back to the truck. “I hope you are a better doctor than you are a driver,” he said. “Let me try.”

  “No, Comrade, I can do this,” Kangmei said defiantly. “I must do this myself—for my commune.” She turned the key, and from under the hood came a dying whine.

  “Too much fuel in the carburetor,” the policeman diagnosed. “Wait a few minutes and it will be fine.” He opened the door to the cab. “Would you care to come in for a drink of tea?”

  Kangmei reached for the door and slammed it. “No,” she said sternly. “I must hurry, Comrade. I told you, the children are very sick.”

  Stratton had no idea what was being said. The slamming of the truck door alarmed him. Through the slats of the crate above his head, Stratton could see nothing but stars and wispy clouds. Gradually he levered himself up, turning his head slightly to gain a view of Kangmei. Suddenly the woodpile shifted and one of the vegetable crates fell, banging on the steel flatbed.

  The policeman jumped at the noise. “What!” he said. “What was that?” He walked to the back of the truck and peered into the rubble of cargo. “Are you alone, driver?”

  Kangmei twisted the key and jerked on the stick shift with all her strength. This time the engine responded, and the truck surged forward.

  “There, I did it!” she exclaimed.

  The flustered policeman dashed ahead of the truck to lift the zebra-striped gate before it could be demolished.

  “Xie xie, ni,” Kangmei sang out as she drove past.

  Stratton waited several miles before sitting up in the flatbed. Then he tapped on the rear window of the cab and signaled for Kangmei to pull over. She surrendered the driver’s seat with a sigh of relief.

  “Your father must be a very skilled man, to drive a truck like this,” she said. “I am sure it is a most important job.”

  “Well, it doesn’t exactly put you at the top of the social ladder in America,” Stratton said. “I’m not sure what you told that cop, but you must be a wonderful actress. And your driving isn’t bad for a beginner. My old man would approve.”

  Kangmei shyly turned away. Stratton tenderly stroked the back of her neck; her skin was warm velvet.

  “Are there more road checks?”

  “I don’t think so,” she replied distractedly. “None that I remember.”

  “Are you tired?”

  “Just a little, Thom-as. You are the one who needs to sleep.”

  Stratton cruised slowly through the hillsides until he found what he was looking for. He drove the truck off the asphalt and steered it down a washboard track until it was out of sight from the road. He parked and turned off the lights. Tall trees swallowed them into shadows.

  “We can nap here for an hour, but no more. We must not be on the road after the sun comes up.”

  “Yes, we must finish the journey tonight.” Kangmei took Stratum’s hand and led him through the trees until they found a clearing. They lay down together on a natural mat of pine needles, ivy and crisp cedar leaves. Stratton closed his eyes; his mind fell, spinning through the clouds toward sleep. He barely felt Kangmei’s hands, gently pulling his shirt off. He heard her soft footsteps fade into the forest.

  He quivered out of sleep when the cold water drenched his thigh.

  “Ssshh. Lie still, Thom-as.” She sponged his face with a rag and kissed him on the forehead.

  “There is a brook nearby, with clean water.” Kangmei washed the bullet wound in Stratton’s leg. She had pulled his trousers off. In the grayness of deep night, he lay pale and limp.

  “We will see a doctor tomorrow,” she whispered. “He will treat the leg properly.”

  Stratton smiled and reached up to capture her hand. Tenderly he kissed it. She looked down at him for a long moment, a young woman of timeless wisdom.

  “Yes,” Stratton said at last. “Please.”

  In silence, Kangmei stripped. Suddenly she was astride him, a velvet presence. She moved gently at first, back and forth, until she found his lips, and then his neck. Stratton closed his eyes and held her fiercely as she sank down on him again and again.

  LATER, WHEN THEY were in the truck again, Kangmei revealed her secret. It was as if she had saved it for Stratton, saved it for the end. “After they dragged me from your room in Xian, I was delivered to the police,” she began. “They were told I had been caught pilfering at a market. I was thrown into a cell with three other women. Each had been accused of stealing items from the Qin burial vaults.

  They were not mere peasants, but trus
ted workers on the site. Petty thieves, my father called them. Their arrests were part of a new campaign—banners, leaflets, announcements on the loudspeakers—all arranged by my father to show the ministry that he was cracking down against pilfering. It was a charade, Thom-as.”

  “But I saw a big article in the People’s Daily,” Stratton broke in.

  Kangmei said, “Certainly there is a problem with stealing, but only a minor problem. The artifacts are worth a fortune by Chinese standards. One of the women in my cell admitted that she had stolen a bridle from one of the bronze horses. The bridle was made only of stone beads, not gold or silver. Still, she was able to sell it to a street peddler for a hundred yuan. The peddler probably sold it to a tourist for three or four times as much. Such things do happen.”

  “In our country, too.”

  “But, Thom-as, something bigger is happening at Xian. If these prisoners were telling the truth, then I know why Uncle David quarreled with my father. I know what he had found out. During the past several months, the Qin site has suffered three major thefts—the crimes are so enormous that they would create a terrible scandal in Peking. There would be a large investigation by the Ke Ge Bo. People would go to jail, or worse.”

  “What was stolen, Kangmei?”

  “Soldiers. Three soldiers, Thom-as, on three different occasions. A spear carrier, an archer and a charioteer. They are among the most priceless treasures in Chinese history, buried with the Emperor Qin—and now missing.”

  “My God.” Stratton’s mind juggled the pieces of the puzzle. “David found out!”

  “I think so,” Kangmei said sadly. “That is why I do not think he is still alive, Thom-as, no matter what my father told you.”

  “No, don’t you see? Wang Bin needs David more than ever now. He needs him to get out. It’s only a matter of time before Peking discovers this theft, and your father knows this. There is nothing left for him to do but run.”

  Stratton coaxed more speed from the recalcitrant truck. Once Wang Bin learned that Stratton had escaped, he would act quickly. Quickly enough, and there was a good chance he would never be caught.

  “Kangmei, what could your father have done with the clay soldiers?”

  “You assume that it was he who stole them.”

  “I am certain,” Stratton said.

  Kangmei swallowed to keep back the tears. “The women prisoners said the same thing. The rumor is that he smuggled them out of the country. To America.”

  “How?”

  “I do not know,” she said wearily. “Something so large and so delicate as a statue—it would be very difficult, Thom-as, even for Wang Bin. Every box or parcel destined for your country would be subject to automatic inspection, especially if it came from a government office. The Party has been watching my father closely. Some of the old men do not approve of the way he has handled the Qin project. I’m sure they are jealous of the publicity.”

  “Wang Bin would never ship the artifacts directly to the United States,” Stratton agreed. “The risk would be too great. Boxes like that would never clear U.S. Customs without a search.” Then it struck him. “Unless …”

  “What?” Kangmei asked.

  “Oh, God.” Stratton could not bring himself to say it aloud, a theory so horrible with black irony, so devious that it could be the only explanation of how a Chinese deputy minister could actually steal the storied Celestial Army, one soldier at a time.

  Chapter 16

  THE CAR WAS A SHANGHAI, requisitioned without explanation from the ministry motor pool, and it veered without grace through empty streets, a whining gray shadow. Decades before, in the army, Wang Bin had briefly driven a truck. Since then, it had been beneath him to drive at all. David Wang slumped against the passenger door with the empty gaze of a vexed old man.

  “Why?” he asked again.

  “I have tried to explain. It was for your own protection, brother, I promise you.” The strain of driving overwhelmed Wang Bin’s English. He had lapsed into the Shanghai dialect of their childhood. ‘The radicals … the madmen, they are coming back, grabbing for power. I am one of their victims.”

  “You caged me like an animal.”

  “Only to save you … from the madmen.”

  David Wang shook himself like a dog awakening. He squinted at his brother in the pale reflection of the windshield. Like watching a mirror. A mirror of lies.

  “It was not the ‘madmen’ who drugged me and jailed me. Not the Party, or any radicals. Just you, brother. Only you.”

  “It was not my choice or my liking, I promise you. I had to make you disappear. They … they were going to arrest you.”

  “Nonsense. You invited me to China as a pretext. Somehow my presence was important to your conspiracy. But I still do not see—”

  “A wish to see the brother that was robbed from me. That was the only conspiracy, I swear it.”

  “And I was glad to see you, at first. Like seeing myself again, seeing what I might have been like, living another life in another country; the product of a totally different society, a revolution. It moved me to see you, my brother, more than I can explain.”

  “And I, too.”

  Ahead, the road wound darkly toward the northern hills.

  “But how fragile are our illusions, how quickly dispelled. It was in Xian. One single day of joy, discovery. And then disillusion when I saw what you had done.”

  “Forget Xian,” Wang Bin hissed. “It is not important. It has nothing to do with you.”

  “At first I imagined you wanted me to help you steal. I photographed what you did not want me to see and you took my camera away. Your carefully sculpted mask slipped then and I realized that you are my brother only in name. It is well that our father is dead.”

  “You do not understand.”

  “Oh, yes, brother. I have seen it, and touched it, and tasted its majesty. What you are doing is a crime against China, against all of us. I will not allow it.”

  Wang Bin spared a glance from the road, expecting to see his brother’s hand on the door handle, ready to bolt. It was what he feared most. But David sat with his arms folded, staring straight ahead, a self-righteous plodder chewing on a puzzle. Wang Bin despised him.

  “Where are you taking me?” David Wang demanded.

  “This road goes to the Great Wall and to the Ming Tombs. I am taking you somewhere you will be safe.”

  “I would be safe in Peking, except for you.”

  “You must understand,” Wang Bin exclaimed with all the conviction he could muster. “They were going to arrest you … as a spy.”

  “I? A spy? Can you not invent something less transparent?”

  “It’s true, I swear it. Hundreds of Chinese return here each year and disappear. The government believes that once a Chinese always a Chinese. You may carry some other passport, but it doesn’t matter. I heard from friends in the Public Security Bureau that you were to be arrested. Perhaps it was only their way of getting at me. But when I heard about it, I became desperate. I could not tell you. Since you have not lived in China, you cannot understand how things are. In desperation, the only thing I could think to do quickly was to hide you; to keep you safe until I could find a way to help you leave the country.”

  “And that is where we are going now? On an empty road to nowhere in the middle of the night? To keep me safe? To get me out of the country?”

  “Yes.”

  “My brother, we are both old men, but neither of us is stupid. If you tell me the truth, I will try to help you. We can go to the embassy. I have important friends at home. It is not too late. Look, it is nearly dawn. Let it be the first dawn of a new life for you, my brother. I implore you. I will help.”

  Wang Bin never faltered. Cautiously, he directed the car across a long causeway that breasted a dry river. They entered an avenue lined with giant stone animals in pairs: camels, lions, elephants.

  “This is the entrance to the Ming Tombs,” Wang Bin said.

  “I have see
n the pictures.”

  “Very well, we will talk as brothers. Tell me what you think. Perhaps you are right. Perhaps it is not too late.”

  They were near now. Wang Bin needed only another few minutes. Of the thirteen tombs, one had been excavated and was open to tourists. The other twelve were in disrepair, their dusty grounds impromptu picnic sites for bored foreign residents of the capital. Wang Bin turned onto a narrow strip of asphalt running to a modern reservoir built in a gentle valley beneath the hillside tombs.

  David Wang rambled on, but the words had become irrelevant now, like the memorial chants in the aftermath of battle. Wang Bin stopped the car on a rocky beach at the shore of the reservoir. The half light of false dawn shadowed a half-dozen wooden rowboats lying face down above the high-water mark. There was no sign of life.

  Wang Bin shut off the engine. Carefully, he set the hand brake.

  “Your words have great impact on me, brother,” he said. “I am beginning to see my mistake, an excess of pride. Let us talk further in the fresh air. It is quite beautiful here. It is not often in China that a man can be alone like this.”

  Wang Bin stood with his back to the car, facing the dark, still water. He fished among the larger rocks for a flat stone and sent it skimming.

  “Only two jumps. Do you remember how as boys we would skim stones in the river? Five jumps, six jumps. Anything seemed possible then.”

  “I remember,” David’s voice came from behind.

  “Things are more complicated now.”

  “Yes, they are. Neither of us is as strong as we were once in Shanghai.”

  “It is true.”

  They fell silent, watching tiny wavelets lapping at the beach stones.

  It was David who spoke at last. A voice of infinite sadness.

  “I have thought it through. I understand why you invited me to China, why you held me captive. And why you have brought me here. I know now what it is that only a brother can do for you, no one else. I understand your plan for him.”