Alice’s eyes widened. She didn’t know much Cantonese, but every Chinese speaker who’d ever passed through Canton or Hong Kong had heard this phrase. It was the stock obscenity of the streetwise Cantonese-speaking male. The Cantonese were known for their earthiness, and this was one of their favorite knee-jerk vulgarities. She had already deduced that this lieutenant was southern-he spoke Mandarin with an accent-but this crudeness was still a surprise, for he was a man of considerable military rank. Clearly, he didn’t know she understood him. It was obvious he thought she was an archaeologist, not an interpreter. She had to keep this illusion going.
She forced out normal-sounding words in English. "Look, I don’t know what the problem is." She looked around nervously. Where were they? Some Army office, a cement block building on the outskirts of the city. Please don’t take away my life in China. "I’m just a tourist."
"If I may, sir," said a man she had heard called Zhao. He was a squat man with a broad face. His uniform was smartly cut, the belt around his thick waist real leather. He looked higher in rank than the others, though not as high as Lieutenant Shan, whose uniform was of the finest, softest tropical wool and whose pockets, collar, and shoulder seams were expertly detailed. "We’ve got the trace on the last call. It was to a private residence in Washington. Of course, there is nothing unlawful-"
"Do your mother," Shan hissed.
God, she thought, tracing my call. Is it about Horace?
But the lieutenant continued: "You should have let her talk on the phone. We were taping. Don’t any of you whores have brains? How can we know now whether she was going to make arrangements with her government to remove Peking Man? How can we even know how close they are to finding it!"
Jesus, she thought, it’s the expedition.
Shan was jabbing his brown finger at a sheaf of densely charactered pages in front of him. "The penalties for smuggling antiquities out of China are very-oh, very severe. We might have had a case that could turn into some true political currency. No. Oh, no. You dog bones have to bring her in before she even gets on the phone. Zao-le, Now it’s all exposed!"
Take Peking Man out of the country? she thought. They can’t be serious.
Shan, disgusted, was lighting another cigarette.
The men stood silent, watching him. Finally the one called Zhao spoke: "Sir, permit this lower man to speak, but what is exposed? She cannot understand a word we say."
"You brought her here, didn’t you? Does she think this is a tourist diversion? Look at her!"
They all shifted their gaze to her, not daring to speak.
"Look at her," Shan said, and suddenly his voice was slow, almost thoughtful. "Do you suppose her hair is red down below?"
"I personally wouldn’t want to find out," Zhao said primly.
"Actually, she’s not bad," Shan said. Smoke curled around his mouth.
Oh, God, not this, she thought desperately. It took all her self-control not to scrunch up, cross her legs, or do something else that showed she understood.
"You know, their women do it with everybody," Zhao remarked. "That’s what I’ve heard."
They all looked raptly at him, then at her.
Stop, she thought miserably. Out loud she spoke English: "I wish I’d brought my passport today. Sorry. I left it at the hotel. But I’m an American, you see-here-I have an idea. Give me a pencil and paper." And she made writing motions with her hands.
"See that!" said the emaciated underling named Wang. "She wants to write something."
Shan looked at him witheringly. "Wang, you little whore, I don’t know why I continue to expect intelligence from you. One can’t get ivory from a dog’s mouth, can one? Do your mother! Get her some paper and stop up your mouth!"
Little Wang yanked open the table drawer and shoved paper and a leaky-looking fountain pen in front of her.
"Thanks," she said, careful to stay in English, laboring to keep her voice steady. Quickly she sketched a creditable outline of the United States. Should she put a mark on Houston, Texas, her hometown? Hell, no. No mark. She pushed the paper back toward them.
"What fun," Shan said dryly. "The little oily mouth gives us a geography lesson. Zhao, Wang, listen. I’d like to lock this little west-ocean slut up and teach her a lesson, lock the other American up, too, but they haven’t done anything yet and it would bring too much bitterness down on my head. We’re all supposed to be friends with them now, can it be believed? The imperialist fucks. Eh? Who would have thought now I’d have one of their whores in my office and I’d have to play polite! Enough, I’m wasting too much time." He turned to Alice and stretched his mouth in a phony smile. "Mistake!" he shouted in English, the word barely comprehensible. He raised his palms. "Sorry! Mistake!"
She drew her brows together. Had he said "mistake"? Was he backing down? "Oh," she said in English. "Okay. No problem."
He glared at his men. "All right, you whores. Take this baggage back to downtown Yinchuan and let her off. Courteously. And then keep an eye on all of them. If they find the bones, I want to know it. Good and fast! Understood?"
"Sir!" Sharp salutes from Zhao and Wang.
"Diu neh loh moh, " Do your mothers. Shan waved them out.
When she finally stepped down from the back of the van on the back street behind the Number One, her knees were like water and she wasn’t sure where she was, what had just happened, or even what language she was thinking in. She tried to start walking. The pillared entrance to the guesthouse blurred in front of her.
Then there was a hand under her arm. "Xiao Mo."
She looked up. Dr. Lin.
"Are you all right?" He steadied her, eyes wide. "What happened?"
"I got picked up by the PLA."
"What!" His composure fractured. "Zenmo keneng!" Could this be? Meiyan had been picked up by the PLA too. But Meiyan was gone and this woman was alive, she was here, in front of him, unhurt. And they had taken her-questioned her-what? He felt the hammering of fear. Out of concern for her he made his voice soft. "Tell me all that happened."
"I went to the phone hall to call my father. My father’s office"-she looked half destroyed-"ah-perhaps you remember, it is a high government office. A soldier took me from the booth and into a van, but you see, he thought I couldn’t talk, and I let him think so. They drove me to some building, out of town, I think, and a man everyone called Lieutenant Shan talked. He was-very rude."
Lin tensed. "Rude how, exactly?"
"Just…" She paused. "Crude."
"What?"
"He was Cantonese. I’ve heard talk like that on the street before, in Hong Kong. You know."
"Of course," Lin said, exhaling hard. "But for him to speak that way in front of you-it’s unimaginable! You’re an outsider. Especially a man of authority-"
"Oh, no!" Alice cried. "He thought I couldn’t understand! He was complaining about not getting a briefing. He doesn’t know much about what we’re doing, just that it’s about archaeology and Peking Man. He didn’t know I was an interpreter. He thought I was another archaeologist. He’d never have talked that way if he thought I spoke Chinese."
Comprehension dawned in his chest as he looked down at her. "So they spoke freely in front of you?"
She rolled her eyes. "God, yes. Completely."
A sense of wonder started up in him, side by side with his fear. "You are brave! It takes courage to do such a thing." So she has more than intelligence, he thought, looking down at her-she has inner strength. "Now tell me. What did you learn?" He was still holding her arm. "Why did they take you in?"
"You won’t believe this."
His eyes notched into a more brilliant, deeper black.
"They think if we find Peking Man, we’re going to smuggle it out. They think that’s why I called Washington."
"But that’s-that’s…"