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 so 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 seen 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."

"Tell me."

"He is to be your essential victim. You must murder him."

Wang Bin never turned. Unseeing, he spoke to the waters.

"Yes. I must murder him."

With a tremendous shove, David Wang pushed his brother into the shallow water.

Then, clumsily, he began running along the beach toward a workman's shack that beckoned from the distance. David had not run far when he lost his footing on the loose stones and pitched forward with a groan.

It was then his brother caught him from behind.

Stratton's forearms ached from steering the hard-sprung truck over what seemed an endless series of unseen hills. The pitted road twisted, like a snake. In the tepid glint of light from the dashboard, the gauge that Stratton had decided was for gas rested on its bottom mark. The one next to it-temperature?-seemed to be rising. He nudged the girl at his side.

"Wake up, Kangmei. It will be dawn soon and the truck will not go much farther."

"I was not sleeping, Thom-as, just resting." She stretched and ran her hands through the mass of tangled black hair. "Have we passed a river?"

"On a very shaky bridge, about ten minutes ago."

"Good. We are almost there."