The truck rattled off, and the Chinese marched dutifully toward the building in which Stratton was being held. They crossed only a few feet from his cell, talking in pleasant tones, until they finally passed out of Stratton's sight.

He decided that his dungeon definitely was not part of a regular Chinese jail.

Stratton moved to the corner of the room that garnered the most light from the small window. There he peeled off the soiled bandage and examined the bullet hole in his right thigh. The dime-sized wound was black and scabbed, but the vermilion halo around it announced that infection had set in. Stratton's only piece of clothing, a short-sleeved sports shirt, was rancid from the long train ride, and of no use as a sponge. Reluctantly, he rewrapped his injured leg with the same dirty gauze, and sat down to wait for his keepers.

They arrived without pleasantries, an hour before dusk; three men, lean, unremarkable, impassive at first. They wore no uniforms, which surprised Stratton. One of them, who carried a rifle with a bayonet, motioned Stratton out of the cell.

He was led to a small courtyard whose boundaries were marked by tangled hedges.

Red bougainvillea plants radiantly climbed the walls of the otherwise drab buildings that formed the complex. The place reminded Stratton of a monastery.

The men stopped in the middle of the courtyard. Stratton faced them. He was naked from the waist down, and filthy. His mustache was flecked with clay, and it smelled.

"Could I have a pair of trousers?" Stratton asked.

His escorts glanced at each other. They spoke no English. The one with the rifle suddenly raised it to his shoulder and aimed at Stratton's dangling genitals.

"Pah! Pah!" he barked, pretending to pull the trigger. "Pah! Pah! Pah!"

His comrades sniggered. The rifleman lowered the gun and his face grew stoic once again.

Stratton lifted his arms from his sides. "You missed," he said, pointing. "See?"

Self-consciously, the escorts averted their eyes. From across the plaza came the sound of many voices. Stratton realized that the workers at the compound had been summoned to witness a public humiliation-his own.

As the Chinese filed through the courtyard, they bunched into a confused knot at the side of the half-naked American, standing at attention in the day's final shadows. A few jeered. Others laughed and pointed. Then, some of the women became upset and began to leave. The men also soon wearied of the spectacle.

Stratton was too exhausted to be embarrassed, but the three guards wore satisfied smiles.

After the workers had gone, the men took Stratton outside the compound to an alley. One of them twisted the handle on a water faucet, and a stream of cold water shot out. The man with the bayonet pointed at the swelling puddle.

Stratton obligingly stripped out of his shirt and removed the bandage from his thigh. He squatted beneath the faucet and closed his eyes. The frigid water was invigorating, but his injured leg stiffened in protest. While his feet and his buttocks rested in the murky puddle, Stratton was careful to keep the wound clean. He pressed his scalp to the mouth of the faucet, and let the hard water rinse the grime from his hair.

"Gow!" commanded one of the watchers. Enough.

Stratton stood up and smoothed his hair back. Then he slipped into his shirt.

One of the escorts held out the rag that had served as his bandage.

"But it's too dirty," Stratton objected.

The man with the gun stared back blankly. Stratton wrapped the fetid gauze around his upper leg and tied it with a small knot.

With a sharp shove to the small of his back, Stratton was directed to his cell.

One of the jailers followed him inside just long enough to ladle two scoops of rice into the food dish, and to replace a rusty tin can full of water on the earthen floor.

The door closed heavily, and night swallowed Stratton's room with a humid gulp.

Outside, in the tropical orchards, birds whistled. The hills were dotted sparsely with yellow lights from distant communes.

Stratton waved the flies off the bowl of rice, and put a cold lumpy handful in his mouth.

He decided that the march to the water faucet had been a good sign. Certainly the bath had not been meant for his benefit, so it could mean only one thing.

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."