"I know the feeling."
Wang had touched Stratton's arm then, and they had both remembered the night by the fire in Wang's farmhouse when an angry and confused young man had spilled the bitter dregs of senseless war.
"My problems are nothing compared to the dilemmas you once had, believe me," said Wang. "But it would be nice to talk about them. I'll tell you what: I'm going to Xian to see my brother tomorrow. He's a deputy minister, you know. I'll be back around dark on Wednesday. I'll call you then. If you can break away from your tour, I'll show you the real Peking and we can talk as we walk."
"I wouldn't miss it."
Wednesday night Stratton returned from his walk to Bombshelter Park about nine thirty. David Wang never called.
CHAPTER 2
Alice scolded. Little Miss Sun, the China Travel International Service guide, implored timidly. Walter Thomas-or was it Thomas Walters?-a foppish Egyptologist from the Midwest, spoke vaguely of "fraternal kinship," whatever that meant.
Stratton endured. When the atmosphere turned bitchy, he shrugged and walked away. The White Pagoda and a refurbished lamasery were not on his agenda that day. Stratton watched without expression while his colleagues, suitably armed with cameras in black leather cases and sensible shoes, obediently flocked onto their minibus under Miss Sun's set-piece smile. Then he went up to his room and squeezed forty-five minutes of exercise from the cramped patch between the cracking wall and iron bedstead. When, near ten o'clock, David Wang still had not called, he prowled the gloomy hotel corridors until he found the room that Jim McCarthy used as an office.
Dust blanketed stacks of books and haphazard piles of newspapers that overburdened a loose-jawed table. It carpeted the dials of an expensive radio atop a gray filing cabinet. It lay like virgin snow on the bright yellow shade of a lamp meant more for Sweden than China.