"Carl Hiaasen & William Montalbano - A Death in China" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hiaasen Carl)

"It's a fine group, very nice folks," Stratton said with forced politeness. Alice Dempsey was ugly as sin and as annoying as a rash, but she did have wit and will enough to be a prized member of an excellent faculty in California.

"Fact is, I'd rather walk around than ride on a bus."

"Well, it's rude to our Chinese friends. The guide, little Miss Sun, is always asking about you: 'Where is Professor Stratton?' At least don't forget about the acrobatic show tonight."

"Sure, Alice."



Stratton's heart had not been with the tour since he had bumped into David Wang outside the Summer Palace, just as if they had been on Adams Street in Pittsville, Ohio, or at one of those ad hoc seminars Wang had loved to lead at St. Edward's, stockinged feet curled to the fire in the old library.

It was Stratton's first time in Asia in more than a decade, and he had still not worked out to his own satisfaction why he had come. Asia was a dead letter. Had he come because a two-week package tour of the People's Republic was cheap and exotic? Or because it would spare him dull hours of summer research at the small New England college where he taught? Not that, either. The research would have to be done, sooner or later, one way or the other; long nights followed by a slim volume only initiates would read. The job was waiting when he got back. Say he had come to escape the shards of a divorce that still hurt, a year later. Was that the real reason? Part of it, maybe, but only a lesser part, if Stratton was in the mood to be honest with himself. Carol was gone and he did not really miss her, although sometimes he ached to be with the boy.

Boredom. That was closer to the truth, wasn't it? His friends would know it intuitively. Stratton had worked hard to become a scholar. He was a legitimate historian, an able professor of emerging reputation. And Е so what? Passing years that dulled the senses, blank-faced students in vacuous procession. What next, Stratton? Mid-life crisis. Male menopause. Maybe there was no next.

So he had come to China. To throttle the boredom. No, there was something deeper. He was also testing the scar tissue, the way an athlete will gingerly measure the recovery of an injured limb. Something else, too. Thomas Stratton, as he alone knew, had come to weigh the man he had become against the one he had once been.

At Peking Airport, standing before the immigration officer in white jacket and red-starred cap, visions of yesterday had come flooding in with a gush he had battled to control. The man had fingered his passport without interest.

"Is this your first time in China?" the inspector had asked in slow, careful English.

"Yes," Stratton had lied. "Yes, it is."

"You are perspiring. Are you ill?"

"No. It is hot."

The man had stamped his passport and Stratton had sought the refuge of protective coloration in the gaggle of art historians.

Stratton shook his head at the memory and sipped his tea.

That night he skipped the acrobatic performance. Too bad about little Miss Sun. Once Stratton was sure his tour mates had left in the green-and-white Toyota minibus in which all tourists in China seemed to live, he went looking for dinner. On the way, he conducted prolonged negotiations with the white-jacketed floor attendants. If there was a telephone call for Professor Stratton, could they transfer it to the restaurant? It might work. Even if it didn't, it was not crucial. If punctilious David Wang called once unsuccessfully, he would either leave his number or call again.

The restaurantЧforeigners onlyЧwas a purely functional place of round tables, soiled tablecloths, spotted silverware and spicy food in the inevitable blue-and-white crockery. The tour group ate three meals a day there, Western for breakfast and Chinese for the other twoЧa procession of savory dishes that appeared unordered.

Stratton settled into a small table and began leafing through a purple-covered issue of the Peking Review. About two paragraphs into the cover story, a gob of wet white rice caromed off the red plastic sign that proclaimed his table 37. From two tables away, Stratton's assailant grinned evilly, gap-toothed and green-eyed. He was about seven years old and his chopstick catapult was poised for another round. A second child carefully probed the innards of the sugar bowl with a spoon. There were two, no, three, others in tenuous custody of a pretty woman in her thirties and a great bear of a man with a bushy red beard. Stratton intercepted the next gob with his menu.

"Kevin!" the woman jerked the missile commander around to face his dinner.

"I'm sorry," she told Stratton. It was something she had said before.

The bearded man looked up from a dam of napkins that encircled a lake of spilled soy sauce.

"Somehow it was easier at McDonald's. Sorry," he said.

"No problem. Actually, he's a pretty good shot."

From the waitress, Stratton ordered Sichuan chicken with peanuts, noodles, vegetables and a beer.