What astonished him most, though, was the chaos into which he had plunged. Bicycles, he decided, as a pert young thing nonchalantly cut him off and he swerved to avoid a three-horse cart, were the ultimate bastion of Chinese individualism. To outsiders, the cyclists might look like an army of blue ants. To somebody who pedaled among them, the Chinese all had fangs. They veered without warning. They knifed through lanes of cross traffic with terrifying, expressionless elan. Chinese flirted as they rode. They hawked and spat. They sang and cursed.

The left turns were worst of all. The first time Stratton tried to make one he found he could not maneuver into the left segment of the bike lane in time. The second time he saw no way of getting across the oncoming flux of trucks and bikes. The third time he tensely negotiated the turn in the protective shadow of an old man who looked only straight ahead and miraculously emerged unscathed.

Twenty-five minutes later, Stratton pedaled past the iron gates of the International Club. He locked McCarthy's bike near a willow tree and walked to the tennis courts. Two players volleyed steadily on a pocked asphalt surface that looked as if it had not been repaved since Peking's last earthquake.

Stratton leaned on a chain-link fence and waited for a break in the game. It came on a gorgeous drop shot that brought one of the players, a stocky blond, lunging fruitlessly to the net. His opponent, a sandy-haired man in his early thirties, shouted in a southern accent: "Good try!"

"Mr. Powell?" Stratton called.

The sandy-haired player ambled to the fence. Stratton introduced himself. He told the American consul about David Wang.

"Mr. Stratton, I usually don't hear about American citizens in China unless they get in some sort of trouble. Professor Wang is a man of some distinction, however, and I'll bet the culture folks have his itinerary."