Mrs. Pollifax on the China Station (18 page)

They each found it to be fifty-two feet.

“You drive while I make notes,” he told her, handing her the reins. “Or at least what notes I can manage without a light. I don’t understand you, why not a light?”

“Not yet—later, but not here,” she told him, surprised by the depth of her unease. With some difficulty she turned the donkey around on the road and they began their return into town. She noticed that Peter worked over his notes like an artist, glancing up, holding out his arm to measure and to squint, writing and drawing sketches into his notebook until at last he lighted a match inside cupped hands and checked his compass. “I hope you’re not implying that someone’s been watching us,” he said.

To cover the strange flash of alarm that she’d experienced she said lightly, “Let’s just say I’d hate to see you and X reach that cache and find nothing. You’ll be coming to it from where?”

“
Not
from Turfan,” he said and pointed over his shoulder. “We’ll start out from the cave in the mountains and head southwest, bypassing Turfan, and after rescuing our sheepskins we’ll move south toward the Bagrach Kol, or Lake Bosten,” he explained. “Then we’ll roughly follow the oases towns along the desert, keeping at a distance from them, naturally.”

“Yes,” she said, and was silent, feeling her dread for both him and X.

They returned to Turfan, driving down the same broad road, the cart intruding only lightly on the deep silence of the night. When they reached the corner of the Guesthouse wall Sheng Ti appeared suddenly out of the shadows, advanced toward them, put a finger to his lips counseling silence, and spoke directly to Peter in a low voice.

It needed a moment for Mrs. Pollifax to realize that
Sheng Ti was speaking to Peter in Chinese. She said in alarm, “What is this? Why does he speak to you in—”

“He heard me greet that damn cyclist in Chinese,” Peter said grimly, and swore. “What is it, Sheng, what’s the matter?”

Sheng no longer troubled to speak English, he was obviously agitated, his voice breathless, his gestures quick.

Peter turned to look at Mrs. Pollifax. “How did you know?”

“Know what?”

“Sheng says we were followed on foot by someone from the Guesthouse. Very stealthily, very secretly. And seeing this he followed that person, whoever it was, and thus trailed
all
of us into the desert.”

A
t the ramifications of what Sheng had said Mrs. Pollifax gasped, “One of the guides?”

Peter turned back to Sheng. “No—no, Sheng says
not
a native, he is sure of this. He says this person wore some kind of cloak, so it could have been a man, it could have been a woman—I asked him—but he is certain it was a foreigner, very definitely, because of the way this person walked and acted.”

She drew in her breath sharply, remembering her searched suitcase and realizing that it had never been far from her mind.
Something is wrong
, she thought.
Terribly wrong
.

She accepted Sheng’s judgment, acknowledging his shrewdness and his street wisdom. “Where is this person now?” she asked.

“Back in the Guesthouse.”

She turned her attention to Sheng Ti, realizing that he must be dealt with first of all. “What does he think or suspect about all this?” she asked. “Does he perhaps expect money to not speak of this to anyone?”

Peter spoke to Sheng in Chinese. “He says he wishes to talk with us alone somewhere about why we carry baggage out of the city and return without it. He feels that he alone saw the baggage we carried—which is probably reassuring if I ever find time to think about it. He also wishes to know why I concealed my speaking Chinese so well, and why suddenly you have two teeth missing and dress like a Chinese woman.”

“Yes,” she said. “Where can we talk?” But she was thinking,
Someone in this tour group knows about Peter and me. Someone among them knows why we’re here. How could this have happened? Who else would know about Wang? Who else would even be interested in Wang?

“Not far,” Peter was saying. “You think we can trust Sheng?”

“For the moment I think we have no choice,” she said dryly, but in examining her initial reactions to Sheng she added, “I believe we can trust him, yes, but in any case I have a brown belt in karate.”

Peter laughed. “Wouldn’t you know! Okay—he says we leave the cart and walk.”

She thought,
There is no one—absolutely no one—who could know about Wang or be interested in him
.

Except the Russians
, she remembered in horror.

Carstairs had said, “One of our agents who works for the Soviets—a double-agent, needless to say—has brought us information of X’s existence and of the Soviets’ interest in him.”

Had brought them information on X’s existence …

Information that came solely from the Russians, who
badly wanted Wang for themselves … The same Russians who supposedly had plans to abduct Wang later in the summer …

Supposedly …

But what if instead, knowing themselves persona non grata in China, they chose to leak their information to the CIA and let the Americans find Wang for them instead? Let an American agent enter China and find the labor camp, find and release Wang and then … and then … 
Oh God
, she thought in horror,
could Peter and I be walking into a trap?

They were following Sheng through narrow alleys, turning left and then right; he stopped now beside an abandoned irrigation ditch spanned by a crumbling bridge. Sheng led them under the bridge and gestured to them to sit down.

Peter said in surprise, “He says he sleeps here, this is his home.”

They squatted, knees touching. Sheng had been eating garlic which made for a powerful atmosphere; he was also anxious, and this too contributed an odor so that they hunched together in a cloud of garlic, sweat, and dusty earth. “But why is this his home?” asked Mrs. Pollifax. “Why doesn’t he have a unit like everyone else?”

Peter began to speak to Sheng, and Sheng replied at length, and while they talked Mrs. Pollifax’s mind flew back to Carstairs’ mysterious counteragent. If all the information came from the Russians and they were being followed … She shivered a little, exploring the idea of herself and Peter being mere pawns because if her theory was correct and if the Russians were masterminding this operation, then it would be a member of the KGB who had been planted in the tour group.

To watch them. To snatch Wang for the Soviets once he was free.

And Carstairs doesn’t know
, she thought, trembling at
the prospects should her suspicions be right.
He doesn’t even guess and there’s no way to communicate, to tell him that possibly … maybe …

Peter turned to her and said, “He tells me that he’s twenty-six years old and he’s
hei jen
—it translates as being one of the ‘black persons,’ living without registration and without a ration card or employment. He lives off friends or steals and sells things in the black market.”

“Good heavens,” she murmured with a glance at Sheng.

“He says that you and I must have very good identification papers to have dared to go out tonight dressed as natives. He wants either my ID papers or yours. He says he can pay. He wants to use them to escape to Hong Kong.”

Mrs. Pollifax considered this with interest. “So he won’t betray us then,” she said with some relief. “Not if he wants something from us.” The word
betray
struck her forcibly and she thought,
Carstairs has in effect been betrayed by his double-agent, his counterspy, hasn’t he? and doesn’t know this either
. Aloud she said, “But how did he come to live under a bridge and be
hei jen?
He looks very intelligent, I’m curious.”

She had to wait again for the reply, watching Peter’s gestures and the changes in expression on his face as he listened: surprise, thoughtfulness, a frown, a nod, until at last he resumed. “He says it began for him with
shang-shan xia-xiang
—what they call ‘up to the mountains and down to the villages’ … the many young people sent down to the country to learn hard physical labor. Sheng was
cheng-fen bu hao
—bad background, meaning his family used to be rich peasants, landlords. Because of this he had no hope of school or a job in the city. He was sent to a commune in central China where the farmers hated these city youngsters foisted on them … this was ten years ago, when he was sixteen; he felt lonely and ostracized. He
stood it for three years and then he ran away. For this he was given
shou-liu
—detention—and then he was sent to a commune near Urumchi where they work on the roads. Here he acquired more bad records—
tan
, or a dossier. What it amounts to—to sum up—is that he couldn’t conform.”

“I’m not sure I could have either,” commented Mrs. Pollifax thoughtfully. “But how on earth does he survive?”

Peter said in a level voice, “He steals. People sometimes give him food. Once he stole a cartload of melons and set up a stall in the bazaar and sold them. With the profits he bought pumpkin seeds and nuts and sold them, and then jars of honey …”

“Sounds a promising businessman,” said Mrs. Pollifax, giving him a smile.

“He saved up money for a Flying Pigeon bicycle—one of the best—but being without a unit and without coupons he had to go to the black market to buy it. The man took his money but never produced the bicycle and since then he says his anger has given him much despair, he sleeps too much and has gone back to stealing.”

Mrs. Pollifax said impulsively, “But there’s such sensitivity in his face, and look at those eyes. He shouldn’t be an outcast.”

Peter said, “I’ve told him his country is changing now that Mao’s dead, and that mistakes of the past are being corrected. If he just waits a little longer—”

“What does he say to that?”

“He asks how these changes can reach him. They are very slow, and even slower this far away from Peking. He says he has nobody to speak for him, nobody to say he is not bad, he says he is now an invisible person.” Peter shook his head. “We could never sell ID papers to someone like him, not with his background, he’s not reliable.”

Mrs. Pollifax looked at Sheng, an idea occurring to her
that she liked very much. He returned her glance, a sudden flash of anger illuminating those black eyes. “I do not beg,” he said, thrusting out his jaw.

“If you should leave your country,” she asked him gently, “what would you do, what would you want?”

He scowled at her. “To go to school. To work.”

She nodded and turned back to Peter. “Well?”

“What do you mean ‘well’?” he said indignantly. “As I just said, with a background like that he’s scarcely reliable, he’d blow it. He’d be picked up and he’d blow the whole thing.”

“Not if he left the country with you and Wang,” she told him.

“If he
what?
”

She said slowly, “It’s true there would be three of you if he joined you, and three are harder to hide in the countryside, but he’s a master of hiding, isn’t he?”
And if there is danger ahead
, she added silently,
three can fight better than two
.

Peter grinned. “Hearing you cracks me up, it really does.”

She conveniently ignored this. “In the mountains you’ll need help with X, who may not have your stamina. Sheng could turn out to be valuable to you, and how can he ‘blow it,’ as you say, if he’s with you all the time? Frankly I feel he’d be extremely reliable if it helps him to get out of the country.”

Sheng was looking at her intently; she could feel his tension as he comprehended what she was saying; she could hear the quickening of his breathing, as if he waited with an incredulous hope.

“You’d trust him?” Peter said.

“Yes,” she said simply.

Sheng sat very still; it was as if he’d not heard her but very slowly she saw his shoulders straighten, and when he
lifted his head it was to say with dignity, as one equal to another, “
Xiexie
. Thank you.” And then to Peter, “You sell me papers? I may go?”

Peter was silent and then he nodded. “Okay. But I give you papers, not sell them, and you go with me. To the south and over the high mountains.” He translated this into Chinese.

When Sheng understood what Peter was saying he visibly trembled with emotion. Impulsively Mrs. Pollifax reached out and touched his hand and saw the gleam of a smile: it was the first time she’d seen him smile, and it was a smile of incredulous joy. He said fervently, “I will not fail you, I can die for this.”

“It will be very hard going,” Peter reminded him.

She said gently, “Peter—”

“Yes?”

“He knows what hardship is. He can somehow make his way to Urumchi, can’t he? Give him papers and money and have him meet you somewhere near the hotel there.”

“Yes,” Peter said dazedly. “You don’t think he’ll—?”

“It’s a good way to find out, isn’t it?” She stood up. “Peter, I want to go back now, I feel very uneasy about our being followed. I want to think—to see—to check—”

He looked startled. “Oh—yes, of course,” he said, and then, “I ought to be thinking about that, too.”