Mrs. Pollifax on the China Station

water—”
    ”Plus the chocolate I brought, the dried foods, and vitamins—”
    ”Yes. And now what’s needed is more of the big stuff. Blankets and
sheepskins—anything that can be cut into vests and coats. We’re heading
tomorrow into nomad country where there ought to be sheepskins in the bazaars
or Friendship Stores. Buy whatever you find, you can refuse to have it mailed
home for you until we get to Beijing, make up some sort of story, rope whatever
you find to the outside of your suitcase and keep it with you.”
    ”Right,” she said crisply, noting this down on paper.
    ”In the meantime,” he added with a crooked smile, ”I have my Mao cap and
jacket, and they were very nearly top priority, believe me, because I shall
have to become as Chinese as a native soon.”
    ”How on earth did you learn fluent Chinese at such an age?” she asked.
”It’s unexpected.”
    ”Very weirdly,” he told her. ”When I was into my freshman year at
Harvard—yeah, Harvard,” he admitted with a grin. ”I started out hanging around
bars in Chinatown in Boston .
Coincidence? I don’t know. And I began picking up the language bit by bit—with
an ease that staggered me. Coincidence? I don’t know. By the time I graduated
from Harvard I could read and write Mandarin, and was already into dialects,
and it’s not true, either, that I’ve just finished my senior year. I’m in
graduate school now—their Far Asian studies department—or was, until I took off
to get in shape for this.”
    ”And Carstairs?”
    He grinned. ”No, it was Bishop. I met him in a Chinatown bar in Boston , or perhaps—who
knows?—he arranged to meet me there because he’d heard of me. A setup maybe.”
    She smiled. ”Quite possibly. And here we are.”
    ”Yes. And now I have this,” he said, looking down at the atlas with
astonishment. ”I’ll take it along to my room and figure kilometers from the map
I brought, and do some calculations.”
    ”Did anyone see you come into my room?” asked Mrs. Pol-lifax,
remembering her searched suitcase, and still uneasy about it.
    He shook his head. ”The hall was empty.” He thought a minute. ”If
anyone’s in the hall when I make my exit I’ll say I came to borrow a drinking
glass. But tell me first—I’m curious —what was Guo Musu like?”
    She told him, describing the barbershop and their meeting, and as she
talked she became aware of several quick, perceptive glances directed at her,
as if he understood much more than she was saying, and for this she was
grateful.
    When she had finished he nodded. ”I wish I could have talked with him.
It’s been terribly frustrating,” he added, with a rush of boyish candor. ”The
opera tonight, for instance. I really hated Jenny’s running commentary when I
could understand every word for myself, and I came near to hating her for
demeaning it. I’ve also overheard and understood everything that Mr. Li and
Miss Bai talk about together, and I feel like a bloody eavesdropper. Mr. Li,”
he said ruefully, ”doesn’t think very highly of me either.” He stood up. ”I’ll
go along now and study this map more closely.”
    Rising too she said, ”It might be a good idea for us to become a shade
friendlier inside the group. In case we’re seen talking together, as we’ll
surely have to do from time to time.”
    ”Good,” he said, with a grin. ”I’ll begin sitting next to you at meals
occasionally, and show signs of thawing. And look,” he added almost shyly,
”you’ve been great. I’m awfully glad to have finally met you. Really met
you, I mean.”
    She smiled at him warmly. ”That goes for me, too.” As he moved to open
the door she said, ”Hold it a moment,” and ducked into her bathroom. ”Your
water glass,” she reminded him.
    He whistled. ”You really are a pro! I forgot, damn it.” And glass in
hand he made his exit.

Chapter Eight
     
    T hey drove the next morning to the tomb of China ’s first emperor Qin Shi
Huang, and if this had once promised to be the highlight of sightseeing for her,
Mrs. Pollifax now found it difficult to think of anything but Peter’s visit to
her room last night.
    For one thing, the very magnitude of the job that he’d been given nearly
overwhelmed her: to devise his own death, to rescue a stranger from a labor camp
and then travel what had to be hundreds of miles over desert and cruel mountain
passes seemed incredible. The man whom Peter had been sent to rescue had to be
very