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

"Qingdao beer."

"Qingdao mei you." She pronounced it "may-o."

"What kind do you have?"

"Peking."

"Okay."

"Hey, baby, that's a bad mistake," the bearded man called from his chaos. "Peking beer tastes like it was passed through a horse. Tell her you want Wu Xing." He wiggled a green bottle in front of him.

"Wu Xing," Stratton told the waitress.

Stratton abandoned the last hope of a quiet meal when something began gnawing his leg. He carried it, squirming and squealing, back to its tribe.

"An escapee, I think," Stratton said, handing it to the woman.

"Oh, Tracey! Again, I'm sorry."

"That's okay. I'm used to kids. My sister has four."

"Spend a lot of time with them?" the bearded man asked.

"Never go near the little bastards."

"Can't imagine why. Why don't you join us, since we've ruined your dinner anyway? I'm Jim McCarthy. This is my wife, Sheila. I've never seen the kids before."

McCarthy, it turned out, was one of about twenty American reporters resident in Peking, a correspondent for a big East Coast newspaper. He had an office in a hotel and an apartment in a compound on the eastern side of the city where foreigners lived in Western-style buildings behind high brick walls erected and patrolled by the Chinese government to keep Chinese out.

"You here for long?" McCarthy asked.

"Another couple of days."

McCarthy rolled his eyes.

"Jim is not a great China fan," his wife explained.

"Yeah, one day I'll write a book. 'Hold the May-o' it'll be called. It's the national sport. If you want something, they haven't got itЧbeer to interviews. Mei you."

After dinner, Stratton marveled at the texture of the city as he walked along a broad tree-lined avenue that ran past the Temple of Heaven. The dark summer streets bustled with life. Where puny street lamps cast wan patches of light, people gathered in loose, friendly groups to escape the heat. Almost all were men, in old-fashioned undershirts. They squatted to gossip or to play cards. The few cars rode with parking lights only, wary of the swirling stream of hard-to-see bicyclists, who used no lights at all. A young couple conducted public courtship on the stone steps of a government office building. From one alleyway, Stratton heard the muffled click of mah jongg tiles, and from a window, the beat of Western rock music from a cheap tape deck. Like headlights, mah jongg and rock music were forbidden in Peking that summer; the headlights so that bicyclists would not be blinded, the ancient game and the music because they were decadent. It pleased Stratton to realize that people still pursued their own muses on summer nights, and to hell with the Party and its rules.

The aim of Stratton's walk was a downtown park built on an artificial hill. The park itself was nothing special, but the circumstances of its construction were testimony to the siege mentality of Chinese communism. Perhaps forty feet high and a quarter mile around, the hill had been built entirely by hand, one bucket at a time, by volunteer workers who had scooped it from underneath the foundations of the city. In every shop, every factory, every school, Stratton had read, a well-oiled door led down to a network of tunnels. It was the most elaborate bomb shelter in the world, and it had taken more than thirty years to finish.

Bombshelter Park, as Stratton had silently dubbed it, was closed. As he strolled back toward the hotel, he thought of David Wang.

He owed much to the old professor. Wang had sensed the disillusion, no, the despair, that Stratton had brought with him to the tiny college in rural Ohio. Stratton had been running from Asia when he arrived at St. Edward's for graduate studies. Despite Wang's considerable reputation, Stratton had avoided his courses. Still, he had found himself attracted to the gentle and patient teacher. They had become friends, then confidants, and on the bright morning when a changed Stratton had strode forward to receive his Ph.D., no one could have missed the fatherly gleam in David Wang's eyes.

They had drifted apart, more by circumstance than design. With Stratton teaching in New England, rural Ohio had seemed increasingly remote. It had been two years since they had seen one another. Until Peking. Stratton, avoiding his brethren art historians for the first time and feeling particularly exultant at being alone, had stood, back arched, head up, to study the magnificent lakeside arcade of the Summer Palace.