McCarthy lolled in a swivel chair, desert boots comfortably atop the burnished top of a huge partners' desk that Stratton identified instantly as a valuable antique.

Mechanically, McCarthy was ripping strips from a newspaper, laying them in a corner of the desk and tossing the discards in the general direction of a big straw basket.

"Hey, baby," McCarthy lured Stratton from the doorway. "Make yourself a cup of coffee. Or there's some Qingdao, if it's not too early for you." The massive head gestured toward a box-sized refrigerator on the floor.

"Thanks." Stratton spooned Brazilian instant into a hotel cup identical to the one in his room, then added hot water from an identical pitcher.

"You teach art history. And karate, right?" McCarthy called.

"Why karate?" Stratton laughed.

"Sheila was admiring your whipcord body. I had a whipcord body, too-until I came to China." McCarthy patted his belly. "Is it fun, teaching?"

"I like it, I really do. It's not as exciting as being a foreign correspondent, but you do get hooked into the research. You find one piece here and another there and pretty soon you don't know where the hours went. Then, too, the vacations are nice and long. Most summers I go out west and help a friend of mine run a wilderness company for tourists-Whitewater rafting, survival hikes, sissy climbing, that kind of thing. I should be out there now, instead of screwin' around here. But I really wanted to see China. Five cities, twenty-one days."

"Yeah, everybody ought to see it. Once. I wish I had-shh… "

McCarthy waved for silence and Stratton heard a familiar litany lancing through static.

"… off the wall into the corner… Remy is in and Evans is around third… throw is to second but Rice is safe with a stand-up double… That'll be all for… "