Stratton started to say something, but reined himself. "Are you doing a story about it?" he asked McCarthy.
"Naw, I don't think so." McCarthy looked up from his drink. "You think it's worth a story? I dunno, you might be right. The death of two brothers-one American, one Chinese. The ultimate reunion! The desk might go for it. They're slobbering for human interest stuff."
A screech came from the big table in the middle of the club. McCarthy and Stratton looked over just in time to see one of the American network correspondents punch the French freelancer in the nose.
"Bravo, baby!" McCarthy called out. "Hoist the flag right up his ass!" He turned back to Stratton. "I'm not so sure about this Wang story after all… maybe I'm just not in the mood to write." McCarthy sighed. "I'll feel a hell of a lot better when Sheila's here."
They drank together for half an hour, eavesdropping on the slurred debates and laconic come-ons, watching the fog turn to cotton over the harbor. Finally McCarthy said, "What was it you needed from me?"
"A list."
"Of what?"
"Remember the story you wrote on 'Death by Duck'? You told me about it-about all the American tourists who die over here… "
"I did the story two years ago, Tom. You want a list of all of them?" McCarthy could not mask his curiosity.
"Not all of them. I want a list from the last four months, a list of every American who died in China. Can you get it?"
McCarthy shrugged. "No sweat. All it takes is a phone call."
"What else is available?"
"Ages, hometowns, occupations. That's about it."
Stratton leaned forward. "Hometowns are all I need. How big a list are we talking about?"
McCarthy shifted on the barstool. He was not accustomed to being grilled. "A small list, Tom. A half-dozen names, at the most. I'm just guessing. I really haven't been following the death-by-duck box score since I wrote that one story."
"But you can get the list?"
"Sure, Tom." McCarthy fingered his fiery beard. "But I've got to ask why. I'm not too drunk to listen."
Stratton stood up. "I can't tell you, not now."
McCarthy smiled. "Someday?"
"Maybe," Stratton said. "It's possible."
"That's good enough for me."
Stratton slapped a Bodine twenty-dollar bill on the counter and motioned to the flinty-eyed bartender. "Good God, don't be a fool and leave the whole thing,"
McCarthy hissed. "He's been pissin' in the drinks all night."
Stratton laughed and shook the newsman's hand. "I'm at the Hilton. My flight leaves at about noon tomorrow."
"Hey, you're talking to an ace foreign correspondent," McCarthy roared. "You'll have your list by ten sharp."
Stratton walked back to the hotel room and stood under a steaming shower for twenty minutes. The melancholy and bitterness gradually receded to a remote corner of his mind; he began to feel galvanized, perversely exhilarated by what lay ahead. One race was finished, and he had lost. Another was beginning. This time the track was his.
CHAPTER 22
Steve Powell caught up with Linda Greer in the hall outside the embassy conference room.
"Did you win today?" she asked amiably.
His hair slick from an after-tennis shower, Powell nodded with an air that said no contest. "The dust was murder out there. Took some top spin off my serve." He propped his briefcase on one knee and opened it. The yellow cable was on top of a stack of files.
"Here," Powell said, handing it to Linda. "It arrived this morning from San Francisco."
Linda read the cable twice and went cold.
"Whatever it means," Powell said, "I don't think I ought to mention it at the staff meeting."
It means Tom Stratton was right, Linda thought.
Powell said, "Some guy with two Ming vases makes it past customs and immigration using David Wang's passport. Strange. Didn't the late, great deputy minister tell us that the passport was destroyed?" Powell snapped the briefcase shut.
"The question now is, Who was this guy? And how the hell did he get the passport?"
The passport. No, Linda told herself, it can't be true.
"Maybe the deputy minister swiped it, then turned around and sold it," Powell theorized, "like he was selling everything else. There's quite a few Chinese who'd give anything for a U.S. passport. Your old buddy Bin could have found himself a rich customer."
Powell watched Linda's expression carefully. She was ashen.
"I guess you'll have to cable customs," she said finally. "They'll want some kind of report."
"I've got to let them know the guy was illegal, and screw the damn vases."
Linda lowered her voice. "Steve, can you wait on it? Two or three days, tops. I need a little time, a head start."
"For what?"
Powell could never know, nor could anyone else at the embassy. It would remain her secret because it had been her mistake. Angrily she flashed back to that night at the foreigners' morgue. She had not recognized the welder who had bent over David Wang's coffin, nor had she protested when the odd Mr. Hu had declined to open it for the requisite inspection. I am required to see it first, she had said. You were late, he had replied.
Now she knew why Mr. Hu had sealed the coffin so swiftly: it must have been empty. David Wang had been alive. Then.
"Steve, I can't say much. Maybe when the boss gets back from Singapore. All I can tell you is that this"-Linda waved the cable-"is very serious. Extremely serious. Can I count on you?"
Powell smiled. " 'Course you can. Took customs three days to get us a wire from Frisco… might just take another three days for them to get an answer. Fair is fair."
Linda squeezed Powell's arm and whispered a thank-you.
The staff meeting was soporific and Powell droned through the agenda-new guidelines for visa requests, an upcoming visit by an undersecretary of state, still more travel restrictions for American tourists leaving Peking…
Linda drifted in a rough sea. Stratton was right: she had lost the deputy minister. Not merely lost him, but let him slip away like an eel. He was cunning, but was he the murderer that Stratton claimed? It added up, all right.
The mystery coffin at the foreigners' morgue, the "official" drowning at the Ming reservoir, the hasty Party cremation-and now San Francisco.
The sonofabitch had done it, bought his way out of China with the blood of his own brother.
Now Wang Bin was free. Stratton knew. And he would find out where to look. And when Stratton caught up with Wang Bin it would all explode. There was no avoiding it. My secret, Linda thought, my failure. "One case is all it takes, right?" Stratton had said at that long-ago dinner. Yes, one case was all it took for glory-or for demotion down to some backwater, shuffling papers for the rest of her life. All those years fighting those stupid patronizing male smiles just to get somewhere-and now this. There'd be nothing left to save.
"… and finally," Powell was saying, "I got a call yesterday from one of our friends in the fourth estate. He wanted another update on our deaths-by-duck, so I presume we'll be reading about it in the next week or so. I'm sure the travel agents back in the States will be thrilled to tears."
"Excuse me, Steve, who-" Linda began.
"Jesus, what else can they write?" piped one of the preppy junior officers.
"Didn't the Chicago Tribune and the Boston Globe do big take-outs year before last?"
"Yeah. So did AP," Powell grumbled. "But I had to give out the list, it's a public record."
"Steve!"
Powell was startled. "Yes, Linda."
"Excuse me, I was just wondering who it was who called." Her tongue was chalky; her heart pounded.
"McCarthy. Jim McCarthy from the Globe."
"He's the one who did the first story," interjected one of the junior officers, hoping that someone would remark on his keen memory.
But it was Linda Greer's memory that stabbed at her, jolted her back to the first day Tom Stratton had walked into the embassy. Jim McCarthy had been the one who had sent him; Stratton had said so.