Soon he would have a visitor.
Probably an important visitor.
CHAPTER 12
Jim McCarthy parked in a dark corner of the crowded lot at the Peking Hotel. His station wagon was fire-engine red-the journalist's mobile protest against the drab sameness of Peking. Every now and then, when China weighed too heavily, McCarthy would roll down the windows, plug in a Willie Nelson tape as loud as he could stand it and-gawkers be damned-cruise at high speed into the ancient hills around the city.
McCarthy made sure the driver's door was unlocked. He trudged up the circular driveway and through the automatic doors that admit foreigners only to Peking's best hotel. To the left of the lobby lay a broad marble passageway that had been converted with plastic tables and chairs into a brightly lit lounge. The Via Veneto, denizens called it sarcastically. The cafe, a grudging Chinese concession to the influx of foreigners that had accompanied the late '70s opening to the West, had, perforce, become the center of social life for transient foreigners in Peking. Sooner or later, everyone wound up drinking instant coffee at the ersatz cafe. McCarthy had interviewed a movie star there, an ice skater and a famous novelist, each one of them self-impressed and self-righteous-doing China.
That night there was only a middling crowd. McCarthy nodded to a pair of African diplomats. He chatted briefly with some members of a British lawyers' tour and watched in amusement while well-heeled businessmen of three nationalities sniffed around a lady banker from New York. She had lived in the hotel for two years and would die there on full expenses, if the Chinese allowed it, having long since discovered one of the secrets of revolutionary Peking: It is nirvana for ugly Western women. In New York, the lady banker would have trouble getting a tumble in the raunchiest singles bar. In puritan Peking, without local competition, she never slept alone. McCarthy ordered a cognac at the bar and watched the circus.
After about ten minutes, he walked back to the car and drove toward the poorly lit northern quarter of the city. On an empty side street, he pulled to the curb.
"Come out, come out, wherever you are," he called.
From the backseat, a passenger untangled himself from the folds of a car blanket and climbed into the front seat.
McCarthy lit a cigarette, watching in the rearview mirror as the side lights of another car appeared. Things they never teach you in journalism school, he reflected sourly.
As the other car approached, it slowed. Its headlights flashed, bathing the station wagon from behind. McCarthy reacted.
The station wagon surged from the curb with a peel of rubber, dumping McCarthy's passenger awkwardly between seat and door. McCarthy turned right. The other car followed. For ten tense and silent minutes, he played hide-and-seek until at last he found the main road that tourists took to the Great Wall. His foot went to the floor. The following car, Chinese-made, more for touring than sprinting, dwindled and finally disappeared. McCarthy relaxed.
"It's nice to see you, Little Joe. How're things?"
The passenger smiled, dangling a child's sandal from its strap. In the dashboard half-light, it looked like a dead white hamster.
"I found this in the blanket."
"Shit, I've been looking for that for two weeks. Thanks." McCarthy passed over the pack of cigarettes. "Sorry for the bumpy start, but we had friends."
The passenger dragged deeply, opening the window to let the smoke escape.
"It is no surprise."
He was a slender youth in his twenties with a tousled thatch of black hair and sharp cheek bones. He wore a cheap open-necked white shirt and baggy olive-green trousers. A schoolboy's satchel sat primly on his knees. Over the past year, since a casual meeting at an art exhibition arranged by the American Embassy, the shy youth had become McCarthy's best Chinese source.
"Shall we go to my place for a few drinks and some music? The kids are all asleep, Little Joe." It was a name the boy had assigned himself. McCarthy didn't know his real name, or where he lived. He knew only about the young man's dreams and that his information was good.
"Tonight is bad, Lao Jim. The army, the police, the watchers all have instructions to be particularly alert about contacts with foreigners."
Among foreigners who knew any Chinese willing to risk it, the procedure for getting a guest into the walled diplomatic compound was almost routine: bundle them down in the back and drive smiling through the gate. The PLA soldiers seldom did more than wave; in the winter, they simply peered out from their hut and wrote down the special license numbers reserved for weiguoren. Except for taxis with passengers, normally registered vehicles were forbidden to enter the compound.
At first, Little Joe had been reluctant, and then thrilled, at the prospect of cheating the security system. In recent months, he had become more cautious, resorting finally to hurried phone calls to arrange meetings at "the usual place"-the hotel parking lot.
"How are things, Little Joe? Are we hearing the same rumors?" McCarthy coaxed.
The youth lit a fresh cigarette from the butt of the old.
"Special security units are being assigned to the embassies-uniformed and plainclothes-beginning two days from now. I think they expect some attempts to defect."
"Why?"
"The old Maoists are winning control. They will purge several hundred officials in Peking in the next week. Did you hear that rumor?" Little Joe not only spoke good English, but also had a subtle sense of humor, rare in a Chinese. He was a friend to be treasured.
"Among others," McCarthy lied.
"Well, I have seen the list, and it is true."
"Any names I would recognize?"
"Possibly." He named two or three. "Most of them, though, are second- or third-rank people, administrators and-how do you call it?-technocrats."
"What have they done?"
"Just like the others who have already been purged. They are skilled at what they do and have great experience in dealing with foreigners. The Party thinks they are more loyal to their own jobs, or to their ministries, or to their foreign friends, than to the Party itself. The Party allows no other lovers, as you know, Lao Jim."
"Is it true? About their loyalties?"
Little Joe laughed. "What do you think?"
"I'd say yes. A lot of people dislike the dull old men."
"You are right. It is not their loyalty to China that is the problem, but their reliance on the Party. The people I am talking about run factories that are profitable or bureaus that are too modern. They make decisions without asking the Party each day if it is permitted to eat rice for lunch."
"I know the kind of people you mean."
Little Joe nodded. "Yes, they are the best of China and the young people who work for them are fantastically loyal-these men are seen as the true future of the New China."
"To purge them will have a great effect on morale, won't it?"
"Will you never understand China, Lao Jim?" The Chinese laughed at his own question. "They will be purged not because they are efficient, but because they are corrupt. That is what the accusations will say, and that is what many people will believe. That Manager Hu used his position to enrich himself; that he stole money, or the factory's car; that he accepted gifts or bribes from foreigners; that he had a foreign bank account; that he smuggled goods from China under false documents. The list of charges is endless. The Party can say anything it likes. No guilt is necessary. The accusation is enough-for the Party."
McCarthy saw what was coming.
"No good news for you, huh?"
"I have been denied permission to travel-no families of leading cadres may go abroad to study any longer. That is the ruling."
"I'm sorry."
Little Joe had worked three years to pass the exams and polish his English. When McCarthy had first met him, the young man had boasted of a scholarship offer from an American university. "I am going to study language and literature,"