Mrs. Pollifax on the China Station

Peter,
but her rescue of Peter could just as easily be a diversionary tactic, a
deliberate attempt to confuse and disarm, for after all Iris had been up
and abroad that night, the only member of the group to be seen, and her
knowledge of Peter’s absence had been made obvious. She turned her gaze to
George Westrum, tight-lipped and flushed, half-boy, half-man in his baseball
cap; if he wore a mask it was surely to hide the truculent child that he’d so
brutally unleashed at Iris in Turfan. And then of course there was Jenny with
her bright smile and tart tongue, missing from the table tonight and presumed
to be asleep.
    When the soup arrived to complete their meal Mrs. Pollifax excused
herself, wanting very much to be alone. She told herself that following the
heat, dust, and tension of Turfan the only thing that mattered at the moment
was the gleaming white bathtub in her room. She did not want to speculate any
longer on who had followed them into the desert, she wanted to forget and to
rest, except that deep down she knew that what really caused her malaise was
the knowledge that tomorrow night, if Peter was successful, he would not be
with them anymore.
    Zero hour.

Chapter Thirteen
     
    A t breakfast the next morning a very wan Jenny came to the table to sip a
cup of tea; Malcolm’s experience at Jiaohe appeared to have left him tired;
George Westrum merely played with his food, eating almost nothing. Only Iris
and Joe Forbes and Peter ate heartily, but Mrs. Pollifax thought that in
general the group was approaching a nadir, as perhaps groups had to when moved
about with increasing speed, without a free day to assimilate.
    She herself had slept well, but on waking, and realizing that this was
Thursday and grasslands day, her appetite had completely vanished. They were to
spend the day in the mountains, with a picnic at midday, and under ordinary
circumstances this would have sounded delightful.
    Today, however, was not an ordinary circumstance. She ate three roasted
peanuts, nibbled at a hard-boiled egg, and then excused herself. Peter,
following her down the hall, caught up with her and said in a low voice, ”You
were right, Sheng’s really okay.”
    ”He’s with X?”
    He nodded. ”They hit it off right away—a pair of bloody nonconformists,
those two.”
    She said quickly, ”Peter—”
    ”Mmmm?”
    She stopped to face him, wanting him to know much more than she dared to
say to him in words just now. ”Peter, listen and hear me, it’s important. No
matter how successful today proves to be, don’t relax your guard. Be careful!”
    He said impatiently, ”Of course I’ll be careful.”
    She shook her head. ”You don’t understand, Peter, I don’t mean just
careful, I mean you must expect—I don’t know what—but assume—” She hesitated.
”Assume that something could be wrong, very wrong.”
    The amused skepticism in his eyes died away in the face of her urgency.
”All right,” he said quietly. ”I’ll accept that, I’m hearing you.”
    ”Good luck,” she told him and entered her room, realizing that her major
fear now was that Peter’s sleight-of-hand, whatever it might be, might backfire
and there be a corpse after all: Peter’s.
    ”Let go,” she told herself. ”This is his problem, not yours. Let go .
.
    Once again they climbed into the minibus following breakfast, but this
time they headed for the mountains surrounding Urumchi, climbing slowly,
exchanging terra-cotta and dust for the green of spruce and fir trees. They
passed a Red Army barracks, and Mrs. Pollifax wondered if this could be the one
that Guo Musu had checked on their map; if so they must be quite near the labor
camp from which X had been so surprisingly removed already. They turned right,
stopping at a checkpoint—a hut from which a man emerged to examine Mr. Li’s
credentials—and then they headed up the narrow dirt road, passing a scattering
of yurts on the hillside, surrounded by browsing sheep and goats. Already the
air had become cooler, and Mrs. Pollifax drew on a sweater. The meadows grew
more and more tilted and the trees moved in closer until after several miles of
climbing the forest hugged the road. The bus slowed, they passed a shadowy glen
lined with picnic tables and then came out upon a wild and forbidding area
dominated by a waterfall.
    Why it felt so forbidding Mrs. Pollifax didn’t know, but certainly it
did not strike her as hospitable. The waterfall was spectacular, as high as