They left Stratton and Kangmei alone then, side by side on wooden chairs in a corner of the room.

"The train will be leaving soon," said Stratton.

"There is still a little time. Would you like some tea?"

"Yes, please."

She was back in a minute with gossip and two steaming mugs.

"The witness is a schoolteacher, a young man who is very bright, but is of poor family background."

"What does that mean?"

"His father, or perhaps his grandfather, was a landlord or a capitalist. That means he cannot go to the university or join the army or belong to the Party. So he is a schoolteacher."

A lovely system, Stratton mused. Convict a man for his ancestors' crimes. For how many generations? He sipped his tea and watched shadows from an overhead lamp play across Kangmei's lovely features.

And then Stratton knew who the witness would be. His cup fell, set free by stricken fingers.

"Thom-as, your tea!" Kangmei exclaimed in alarm. "You are shaking. What is wrong? Shall I get the doctor?"

"No, no," he said. And thought for the second time that night of Bobby Ho.

The young man entered the room with quiet poise. The policeman limped over and spoke urgently with him, gesturing at Stratton, the hatred unmasked. The president said something to the young man and so did one of the peasants.

Lobbying, Stratton supposed.

The young man dragged up a chair and sat directly in front of Stratton-mute reviewer of a one-man play. They stared at one another across three feet and eleven years.

The rag boy had added weight to the skin and bones, but not much. The face had filled, but still it spoke of suffering. The body had remained as insubstantial as it had looked the night Bobby Ho's quixotic, absurd, fatal gesture had spared one life and cost many more. The inborn pride had not changed, or the cold, calculating intelligence in the masked obsidian eyes.

Stratton knew he was finished.

There was eloquence in the poker gaze of the grown-up rag boy. His identification was as certain as Stratton's. He, too, like the tormented old policeman, like Stratton, still dwelt in the debris of horror.

Did he also weep, alone at night, for friends so brave? Did he dream terrible dreams of acrid tracers and bullet-stitched buildings that should have been white? Did he still gnaw at desolation? And what had he suffered for a peasant woman and her unborn child? He hadn't felt the knife go through her neck.

Stratton waited for the denouement. Captain Black riffled methodically through escape scenarios. The dice roll, man. Nobody lives forever.

But at least make him work for it.

You bastard. Stratton stared at the rag boy. You chicken-shit son of a bitch. We let you go. I could have ended your pitiful knitting-needle existence with a nod, but instead I let you go. In return you killed my friends.

"It was the kid… Sorry, Tom… "

Stratton plumbed the Chinese, seeking the man behind the intelligent eyes. He found nothing. And then he made a decision. We both of us should have been dead these eleven years, son of a bitch. Call in the cards. It was a simple decision.

It refreshed Stratton and gave him strength. The instant the rag boy raised his voice in accusation, Captain Black would kill him. One dead man kills another.

Justice in Man-ling. To finish what had been neglected that night in the rain.

I'm sorry, Bobby Ho.

Stratton was sizing the blow when he saw what he had not dared hope to see.

The Chinese eyes spoke plainly. I know you. I have you. You are mine.

And then, the final message:

A life for a life.

"Bushi," the man spat in an unexpectedly deep voice.

He stalked from the room.

"Thom-as, he says it was not you," Kangmei cried.

"Of course not."

Babbling peasants erased the tension. Minutes later, Stratton and Kangmei were alone in the back of a jeep. Stratton had departed without pity for the old policeman, agape, blubbering alone in a corner of the room.

Rest in peace, Bobby Ho. You were right and I was wrong, all this time, all these years.

CHAPTER 20

"Open your suitcase, please."

"It's locked."

"Find the key and open it," said U.S. Customs Inspector Lance P. Dooley, Jr. He strained to be polite. His boss was working the next aisle.

"But the key is in the suitcase," whined the young man in Dooley's line. "I packed it by accident. I'm sorry, officer." The man had just debarked from Pan American Airways Flight 7, Peking-to-Tokyo-to-San Francisco. He wore blue jeans and a Van Halen concert T-shirt, with Day-Glo lettering. His black hair was long and straight, tied in a ponytail. Dooley studied the face. Malaysian, he decided. The passport confirmed it.

"Sir, I want to take a look in your suitcase. Either you find a way to open it, or I will. We have special tools," Dooley said. "Hardly put a scratch on it, you watch."

"But it's a brand-new Samsonite," the young man objected.

"So it is."

Behind the young man a haggard procession of travelers stretched and sighed and muttered their annoyance at the delay. Second in line was a stocky, handsome Chinese man in his sixties. His hair was neatly combed, and he wore gold-rimmed eyeglasses that gave his features an intent, scholarly cast. His clothes fit somewhat loosely: beige slacks slightly wrinkled from the long flight, a knit canary-colored sports shirt buttoned all the way to the neck, and a dark brown sweater with a monogram on the left breast.

The Chinese man carried only one piece of luggage, a cumbersome old suitcase exhibiting thirty years' worth of scuffs and dents. The man did not hoist the suitcase to the conveyor belt, but kept it at his feet, one hand firmly on the grip, as if it were a Doberman on a leash. He seemed transfixed by the argument in front of him.

"You can't just break into my suitcase," the young Malaysian insisted.

"Sir," Dooley said, "if you decline to have your luggage searched here, we will escort you to a private inspection room where we will not only search the suitcase, we'll ask you to take off your clothes-and we'll search some more.

Which do you prefer?"

Dooley's supervisor glanced disapprovingly at the long line at Dooley's aisle.

Dooley got the message and tried to step it up.

"The key, sir?"

The young man fidgeted. Dooley nodded to a couple of other customs agents, who had been leaning against a square pillar. They stepped eagerly to the front of Dooley's line.

"Okay, okay. I'm not hiding anything. Let me see if I can get this open." The Malaysian played with the latches on the Samsonite and it popped open. "Go ahead, see for yourself. Just clothes and some junk I brought back from Singapore."

"Do you live in Singapore?" Dooley asked as he picked through underwear, socks, snapshots, toothpaste, a packet of condoms.

"No, I live here in Frisco," said the young man. "Lived here since I was ten. My father still lives in Singapore. I got two brothers there, too. I go back five or six times a year."

This was the talking phase. Dooley smiled to himself. He took his time. It was here somewhere.

"I'm a chef," the young man volunteered. His eyes were glued to Dooley's hands, sifting and exploring. "It's a Chinese joint off Market Street. Li-Siu's. Have you been there? I make good money. And I send half of it home every month-"

"What's this?"

"Film. Kodak film."

Dooley studied the two yellow packages. The end flaps of one were creased, and off square from the carton.

"I bought those here, before I left."

"Really?"

"I didn't take as many pictures as I thought I would." The Malaysian grinned nervously.

Dooley opened one of the film cartons and removed the black plastic containers.