Mrs. Pollifax on the China Station

important indeed, she was thinking, and here, too, she decided there must
be a great deal that Carstairs had not told her.
    And then there was Peter himself... She still marveled at his being the
agent sent in with her, and she was not at all displeased, but she wished that
he’d not forgotten that drinking glass. It was a trivial omission, but it
reminded her of his youth and the fact that this was probably his first job,
and if so, a massive one. He was certainly a good actor, and he was
intelligent. From her impressions of him she guessed there was a natural
exuberance in him about what lay ahead, and that this would have been the
quality that captured Carstairs’ attention, for if she trembled for Peter, she
was absolutely certain that Peter did not tremble for himself. Behind the
impassive face that had softened only slightly last night she had glimpsed that
sort of loner who had to climb mountains because they were there, as the saying
went, and for whom danger was addicting, and ordinary life puzzling. It was the
stuff of which the T. E. Lawrences and Richard Halliburtons were made, she mused,
embryonic now in a cool twenty-two-year-old, and obviously invaluable for this
particular job.
    But as an agent, she thought, he should never have forgotten that water
glass.
    And this, she mused, was perhaps another reason why she’d been chosen to
accompany Peter: to keep an eye on him and to steady him. It amused her to
remember that this was precisely what she’d done by instinct last evening when
he’d looked so alarmed about her suitcase being searched: she had reassured and
distracted him, hiding her own alarm. Carstairs, she thought, must have done
some rare chuckling when he tossed the two of them into this maelstrom—he was
no fool about people—but at the moment she wished she might have a few
indignant words with him. Obviously, her job in China was not to end in Xian, after
all. It might even be just beginning.
    She glanced toward the front of the minibus at Peter, who was seated
next to Malcolm this morning, as if he’d decided to divest himself of Jenny for
the day, and she wondered idly what they were talking about. The two guides sat
in front of them, with Miss Bai occasionally interrupting her conversation with
Mr. Li to pick up the microphone and point out a field of workers, a commune,
or a factory. And then—abruptly —they were pulling into the parking lot of the
archaeological site, and ahead lay a broad courtyard framed by low-lying
buildings, the largest of which resembled an airplane hangar.
    ”No cameras allowed,” called out Mr. Li.
    ”No—no pictures,” echoed Miss Bai. ”We meet here again in one hour, the
Friendship Store on the left, a film theater next it showing history of this
remarkable discovery, and soda pop to be found in souvenir building.”
    It was Joe Forbes with whom Mrs. Pollifax strolled toward the hangarlike
building that had been erected over the remarkable discoveries. ”But this isn’t
the tomb itself?” he asked pleasantly.
    ”I don’t believe they’ve even started on the tomb yet,” she told him.
”These are the burial figures found on the periphery. He took an entire army to
the grave with him, but mercifully not a live one, which I do think was kind of
him, and very enlightened.”
    ”Another discovery,” he quipped, ”when a factory was planned?”
    ”According to the guidebook, this time it was commune workers digging a
well.” Pleasantries from behind plexiglass, she thought, darting a
glance at his pleasant, smiling, never-changing face, but knowing now that he
wasn’t Carstairs’ man she felt little need to probe the mystery behind his lack
of personality; there probably was no mystery at all, she decided; some people
were simply born bland.
    They walked together into the building, where Mrs. Pollifax promptly
moved to the railing that separated them from the digging site, and here she
caught her breath. She had been certain that she knew what to expect; she had
studiously looked up photographs but now she realized that they’d been taken
out of context, mere pictures in a magazine lacking environment and reality.
The sheer impact of what she saw stunned her: hundreds of life-sized men
standing below her in the broad trenches that honeycombed the earth floor, men
like gray ghosts waiting patiently at attention, hundreds of them in battle
formation lined up in rows as far as the eye could see, each face different and
individual with