Mrs. Pollifax on the China Station

say.”
    ”I’m sure you don’t,” he said, standing up.
    ”Except to thank you,” she told him, rising with him. ”Thank you for
the—the courtesies you’ve extended me, Mr. Chang. Shown me.”
    He chuckled and with a slight bow said, ”You will be taken to the
airport, all of you, within the hour. I would like to say in return that it has
been a pleasure to know you, however briefly, and it must be hoped,” he added
with a twinkle, ”that we do not meet again. Brown or black?”
    She did not pretend to misunderstand him. ”Brown.”
    He nodded. ”I myself practice Tai Chi now, but once I too had a brown
belt in the martial art of karate.” He bowed again, graciously. ”Good-bye, Mrs.
Pollifax, and I wish you a safe return to your own country.”

Epilogue
     
    F or her wedding Mrs. Pollifax had found a dress that Cyrus pronounced
stunning. And so it was, but it was several days before she realized that its
colors were a beige and dusty jade-green so that when she looked at it now she
saw the cliffs of Jiaohe, the desert of Taklamakan and the
clay walls of Xian. And her heart ached for Peter. Not even Cyrus, huge and
twinkly and affectionate, could quite dispell her awareness of the weeks
passing by and her thoughts of Peter, Sheng, and X struggling to reach safety.
     
    The news that she’d brought Carstairs and Bishop had shaken a number of
departments at the CIA. When she had reached Tokyo she had placed phone calls to both
Cyrus and Bishop and then had sat wearily on her bed waiting for one of them to
come through.
    It was Cyrus who reached her first. ”Emily?” he shouted. ”Damn it,
Emily, where are you? My God, Emily, I’ve worried—”
    ”Oh Cyrus, how wonderful to hear your voice,” she’d said, and had burst
into tears. ”I’m in Tokyo ,
how was your trip?”
    ”My trip be damned, Emily. Are you all right? All in one piece?”
    ”Only a broken wrist,” she’d told him.
    ” ‘Only!’ ”
    ”Cyrus, if you haven’t changed your mind about us—”
    He’d said gruffly, ”Don’t be ridiculous, m’dear. Nobody like you. Why?”
    ”I’ve missed you tremendously,” she’d told him with a catch in her
voice. ”Russian roulette can be quite exhilarating when a person has nothing to
lose, but oh Cyrus I discovered how much I could have lost—so easily—and almost
did.”
    ”When does your plane get in?” he asked, and his voice was thick with
emotion.
    ”I don’t know, I don’t know, I’ve put in a call to Bishop—”
    ”I’ll fly to San Francisco tonight,” he
told her, ”and I’ll meet every plane from Tokyo until you get there. Don’t leave San
Francisco without me,” he said flatly, and hung up.
    Almost at once the phone had rung a second time and the operator was
saying, ”Your call to Virginia has been put through... Go ahead, please...”
    Abruptly Bishop came on the line saying, ”Mrs. Pollifax, where are you?”
    ” Tokyo ,”
she told him. ”We’re all in Tokyo but, Bishop— two people haven’t returned from this tour.”
    ”Two?” he’d said. ”I don’t understand, did you—”
    ”Have you a list of the people on the tour, Bishop?”
    ”Yes, but—”
    ”Please look, it’s important, it’s why I’m calling.”
    ”Half a minute,” he’d said, and she’d heard the rustling of paper and
then Bishop’s voice again. ”I have the list but what do you mean, twol And Peter, what about—”
    ”You find the name Joseph Forbes there?”
    ”Let’s see... yes, Forbes... history professor, Chicago.”
    ”The important thing just now is to look into his background, Bishop.
How much can I say on the phone?”
    ”As little as possible.”
    ”There were complications, Bishop, and it very nearly ended badly. The
problem has to have begun with the source who gave you the information that
took us to China .
Do you remember explaining to me how you learned about—er—X? Those boundaries?”
    ”Good God,” he’d said.
    ”This person on the tour came from the other side of them, if I’m not
being too abstract?”
    ”I’m following you,” Bishop told her grimly. ”Good Lord, you mean this
Forbes—”
    ”Yes, he’s the one.”
    ”Where is he now?”
    ”Dead,” she’d told him, and being nearly exhausted after countless hours
without sleep her voice trembled. ”It had to be done, Bishop—for the sake of
the others. I had no choice.”
    ”Steady there,” he’d said softly. ”You’re telling me that you...