Stratton sat down in a waiting room, paneled with fine honey-colored wood. The sound of typing chattered from behind a closed door. Stratton's shirt clung to his back, and the cool breath of the air conditioner brought goose bumps. With one foot Stratton slid the suitcase across the waxed floor into an empty corner.

"Sir!" The Marine was back. "Mr. Darymple."

Mr. Darymple was a young man with perfectly sculpted black hair that looked to Stratton like it had been parted with a laser beam. Stratton pegged him as an idle subordinate.

Darymple held out a slender hand and introduced himself as the assistant administrative officer.

Stratton said, "I need to see the CIA station chief."

"I'm not really sure whom you mean." Darymple smiled officiously. "Perhaps I could help."

"Very doubtful," Stratton said. "I've just spent the last week or so getting the shit kicked out of me in China."

Darymple expressed concern. "You'd like to report an incident?"

Stratton sighed. "An incident, yes. Go get your boss and I'll tell him about it."

"Could I have your name?"

"Stratton, Thomas. Tell him I was classified Phoenix."

Darymple stiffened. "Here?"

"No, Saigon. 1971. Go ahead and check, but hurry. Then go tell your boss I need a line out, right away."

Darymple said, "He'll want to see your passport."

"It was taken from me in Xian."

"Then how did you… excuse me, Mr. Stratton." Darymple walked out of the office in long, hurried strides.

The trick was to give them enough to chew on so that they would help, but not too much. Stratton knew what it meant to get the agency involved; he also remembered the not-so-friendly competition between stations. The boys in Hong Kong would want to claim him as their own. Peking could tag along for the ride, of course. Hong Kong probably would want to make an actual case of the whole thing. This, Stratton knew, he could not afford, nor could David Wang. There was no time for tedious little filemakers like Mr. Darymple.

When Darymple returned, he was accompanied by a beet-faced man in his early forties. "This is our chief political officer."

"Whatever you say."

The beet-faced man turned to Darymple and said, "That'll be all, Clay."

When they were alone, the CIA man said, "Tell me what's going on."

"I need to speak with your counterparts in Peking," Stratton said. "An American citizen is about to be murdered."

Linda Greer was clipping an article about rice production from the People's Daily when the buzzer went off. She snatched a notebook from the top of her desk and hurried to the station chief's private office. He was on the phone. He motioned her to a chair.

"She's here now," the station chief was saying. "I'm going to put you on the speaker box."

"Linda?" Stratton's voice cracked and fuzzed on the Hong Kong line. "Linda, can you hear me?"

"Tom!" She could not mask her elation or astonishment. When Stratton had vanished without explanation, Linda was certain he had been killed. She had blamed herself; after all, Wang Bin had been her target. The station chief had sent a curt note: No record to be kept of your contact with Stratton.

Yes, Linda had agreed, no record. But now Stratton had surfaced, and for the moment she didn't give a damn about her precious case file or all the cables to Langley.

"Are you all right?" she asked.

"Torn and frayed," he said. "Nothing serious."

"We had people out looking," Linda Greer said. The station chief shook his head disapprovingly. The message was: Don't say too much.

"Well, I appreciate the concern," Stratton said drily, "but I imagine the trail got pretty cold at Xian. You've probably figured out that this wasn't a government operation."

"What do you mean?" asked the station chief.

"It was Wang Bin's personal project. No army, no Ke Ge Bo, just his own private goons. He did it that way for good reason, the same reason he wanted me out of the picture."

"Tom, haven't you heard-"

"Let him finish!" the station chief barked. Linda Greer opened the notebook on her lap, mocking the pose of an obedient secretary. The station chief scowled.

"Start with what happened to you at Xian," he instructed Stratton.

"Forget what happened to me," Stratton said impatiently. "You need to get to Wang Bin as soon as possible. Call the ministry and leave a message. Tell him I'm alive. Tell him I know about David-"

"What about David?" the station chief asked.

"If you folks have any decent sources at all, you probably know what's been happening at the Qin tombs in Xian. During the past few months several large artifacts have been stolen."

"What kind of artifacts?" Linda said.

"Soldiers."

"The soldiers?"

"The emperor's death army," Stratton said. "Didn't you know?"

The pause on the Peking end gave Stratton his answer.

"How many did you say, Tom?"

"I didn't say how many. I said several."

"The ministry mentioned pilfering," the station chief said. "Pottery, jewelry, trinkets-small stuff. Didn't say anything about the soldiers. How would you do it, Stratton? And what in the world would you do with them?"

Stratton laughed harshly. "You guys ought to try to get out of Peking once in a while. It'd open your eyes."

Linda Greer was thinking ahead of her boss. "For money," she said. "Wang Bin was getting out."

"Exactly," Stratton said excitedly. "He's a smart man, like his brother, and the future was plain: all his old comrades dropping like ducks in a shooting gallery. Wang Bin knew it wouldn't be long before they took away his limousine and made him the number-three tractor mechanic at some commune in the sticks.

That's a long fall from deputy minister, and Bin didn't want to take it. Linda, he's your pet project. It fits, doesn't it?"

"There were rumors," she acknowledged, "rumors that he was in trouble."

"But were there rumors of defection?" the station chief asked.

"I'm not talking about defection," Stratton snapped. "I'm talking about disappearance. Remember that Wang Bin is a wealthy man from his smuggling enterprise. The clay soldiers are worth… who knows? A fortune, certainly. The best market is the United States, and I'll bet that's where the bank accounts are-a fabulous nest egg. But how does Bin get to it? How does such a well-known official escape from China? By boat, or plane… or scaling the fence at Kowloon?

No. All too risky. And think of all the noise and hoopla if the spooks this side of the border get hold of him." Stratton winked amiably at the beet-faced man across the rosewood table.

"No, Wang Bin would want to go quietly. Wouldn't you, if you had a couple hundred thousand U.S. dollars squirreled away?"

"Getting out would be nearly impossible," Linda Greer said.

"Suppose he had a passport," Stratton ventured. "A legitimate U.S. passport-with a photograph that seemed to match."

"How?" the station chief demanded.

"Oh, God," Linda sighed. "His own brother."

"I've heard enough," the station chief said. "Stratton, you're out of your mind."

"Tom, go on," Linda said.

"Check your files. I had Steve Powell try to run down David's passport a few days after he supposedly died. Oddly enough, no one could find it-but it was Wang Bin who provided the explanation, remember? He said David's passport was destroyed accidentally at the hospital."

Linda Greer recalled Powell's memo about the incident, a two-paragraph brush-off.

Stratton said, "What happened to David's belongings, the stuff in the vault at the embassy?"

"I assumed it went home with the body," Linda replied.

"Who picked it up?"

"A driver. From the Ministry of Art and Culture."

"Don't you see?" Stratton exclaimed.

"It was simple protocol, Tom. Wang Bin was David's brother and he wanted to handle things. We could hardly argue, especially after you welched out of the funeral flight. We aren't in the business of insulting foreign governments."