

The Shadow Knows

A Novel

KENNETH ROSEN

The Shadow Knows

Kenneth Rosen

Copyright Kenneth Rosen 2010

Published by Coronado Entertainment LLC Publishing at Smashwords

While memory, however verifiable or unreliable it may have been, has played a role in this current endeavor, this is first and foremost a work of the imagination.

For Roz—

and for Mr. Ma Shiyi

Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?

The Shadow knows.
*Cambridge*

He had done work for them before, when he was very young and then again, twice, when he was not so young, so the offer was not a complete surprise when it finally arrived. It was brought to him by one of his students as he relaxed one evening in the Free Press, a dark and pleasant neighborhood pub he'd found only a few days after settling into their Cambridge house. They had come to England for a year to break the monotony of their stateside routines, to see a little of the country they had so assiduously avoided until now as being too similar to their own, and he was thinking rather vaguely about the half dozen lectures he was to give during the coming year when the young man – whose name he could not immediately recall and whose features he remembered only in a general way from his initial meeting with his seminar the previous week – suddenly appeared at his side.

"My apologies for the interruption, sir, but a gentleman was in earlier and asked me to give you this envelope when next you came by."

"Thank you -- sorry, I've forgotten your name -- but won't you sit down and have a pint?"

"Love to, but I'm due elsewhere in a few minutes, sir. Perhaps another time, if that suits? Cheers."

As he watched the retreating back some of the old habits began to dispel the evening's mood of relaxed rumination. A gentleman -- what gentleman? When next I came by -- who's interested enough to know I come here at all? Due elsewhere \-- perhaps another time -- anything in any of that? He was tall, about six one or two, blue eyes, dark hair, full lower lip with small scar on chin, walked with an athlete's pigeon-toed roll, well spoken -- the name Colin McCabe appears in the mind's eye as the seminar attendance sheet fades. Enough. Probably just a nice King's College chap who happens to frequent the same pub as one of his visiting professors.

As he opened the envelope he noted how good he felt, how alert and focused his mind seemed to have become from just this simple break in the daily round of his life. The envelope was plain, unmarked, the kind available in any inexpensive stationery store. The letter itself was typed on plain white paper, no letterhead and no concluding signature. He noted the details and his initial instinct was that the document was genuine, a legitimate offer of employment which would, if accepted, change his world precipitously. He re-read the letter slowly after glancing again at his name on the envelope, typed as neatly and precisely as the letter itself.

"Your previous part-time work for us on the Panamanian, Greek, and Chinese projects has been reviewed in detail. A permanent position with the same general responsibilities has recently become vacant and this is to inform you that the position is yours if you want it. Information concerning salary, employee benefit package (including, but not limited to, retirement, Blue Cross/Blue Shield, major medical and dental, with full participation and opportunities for all dependents), and specific responsibilities of the position may be obtained by telephoning the following number and identifying yourself to the switchboard operator who answers: 07-1-NEW YORK PRIVATE NET 33-212-8400. Please respond within ten days of this letter."

He finished his beer and settled back on the bench, thinking that the opportunity to make such a decision probably could not have come at a better time. He was, he knew, currently passing through those middle years of restlessness and reorganization so much in vogue as the subject of discussion these days, but he was more concerned with the fact that lately he had begun to feel that he was, in small ways, beginning to confuse reality and fantasy, truth and lies, what he actually did do in the past and what he fantasized or imagined he had done. His profession allowed him the luxury of reflection and contemplation, but in recent years he'd begun to wonder if such time for rumination was such an unalloyed benefit of his work. He found himself, as someone committed to the life of the mind, wondering about the ambiguous nature of such a life. With time to reflect on the past came an increasing realization of the elusiveness of whatever he defined as truth. Thinking back on those events of his earlier years was both pleasurable and disturbing; he could savor the unqualified successes, but the blurring of the line between fact and fiction, between reality and the imagination, led to questions he was having trouble answering these days.

The letter seemed to trigger the need to order his thoughts, to deal with those questions that had even, of late, begun to disturb his sleep. Is it murder if you change yourself, make yourself over, deny or disguise your past? Is a life of the mind incompatible, in any profound way, with a life of action; can one live the examined life and the active life simultaneously, keeping the debilitating effects of any moral ambiguity to a minimum?

He smiled inwardly at his thoughts. Give an American a single pint of real British beer and he'll -- he'll what? Bore you to tears with his newly fueled erudition? Perhaps, but sometimes what is real and what is not is of value and what is worthless can only be determined by concentrating on the details, the minutiae -- to look for the larger picture, the overall meaningful plan, is often to look in vain. Sometimes you're better off settling for the small.

"Half pint of bitter, please."

"Half of bitter it is, sir. Cheers."

*Panama*

It had been a few years since the cheers of the crowd had had any significant effect on me. By the time I'd stopped swimming competitively in my junior year at the university I'd figured out that my motivation for enduring any long-term pain had to come from within, so the yells of encouragement from the other members of the platoon were little more than an audible blur. The 3rd Battalion of the 7th Special Forces had been in Panama almost a year now and my weekly demonstration class on jungle river crossings, theoretically just another redundant exercise designed to keep us fit between Southeast Asian assignments, never failed to draw a small group of green berets who took bets on how long it would take me to make the crossing, how close I would come to the target take-out point on the opposite bank, or if I would get across at all. As I dragged myself out of the river this time, about fifty yards downstream from my intended point, Captain Lopez helped me up the steep incline.

"Ghoulish bastards, aren't they? Sometimes I think they'd like to see you buy the farm just to break the monotony."

"Yeh, I know. This stuff is getting a bit old for me too." I accepted the towel he held out and used it to dry my hair and face.

"Well, maybe your days with the Jungle Warfare Training Center are finally numbered. There's a civilian type up at the old man's who wants to see you. Says he's from the USARCARIB School over at Ft. Gulick. Maybe your flawless Spanish will get you a transfer to the spooks."

Lopez had come to the 3rd of the 7th only a month before, but we'd talked often enough for him to know my Spanish was just passable and we'd both spent enough sessions as guest instructors at the Ft. Gulick School -- known at various times as the Latin American Training Center, the School of the Americas, and the United States Army Caribbean School -- to be aware of the fact that the students there included both Latin American Officers as well as our own, both civilian intelligence people and U.S. military officers attached, at the time, to our own 8th Special Forces at Gulick. At 23 I knew I was over trained and I was sure I didn't want to be crossing jungle rivers for the rest of my life.

"Almost any change'll be welcome. Let me stop off, though, and get cleaned up first."

I was anxious to find out what the guy wanted, excited about the possibility of a new assignment just a few months before my time was up, and I'd had enough of rice paddies and rivers for a while.

He was a civilian who carried himself like a professional soldier. He took his time getting to the point of his interview after the old man had left us alone in his office.

"I see from your personnel file that you've been to Vientiane twice, for a brief period each time, as a member of an abbreviated reconnaissance team. How did you find Laos?"

"Quiet. Parts of it beautiful, like the gardens and the music; a great deal of it depressing, like the poverty and the cripples."

"Do you know much about Oriental music?"

"Not a thing. A Chinese girl in Saigon once tried to teach me how to play the pi-ba but it was a waste of time."

"Are you often impatient when you don't master something at once?"

He didn't sound like the usual disinterested army psychiatrist so I checked my instinct to be sarcastic or even insulting.

"I don't know if I'd call it impatience. I do like to do things well -- either that or not put myself in the way of doing them at all."

"But isn't it true that one often has no choice in what one must do?"

"I don't know about one -- I can only speak for myself."

Enough small talk, mister, and a bit too pompous for my taste.

"The Colonel told me that you were from Gulick and that you'd seen my file and wanted to talk to me. He didn't say if you were army or not, didn't say exactly why you wanted to see me."

"Probably because he didn't know why. Nothing mysterious in any of this, I assure you. Shall we go on?"

His voice was impressive, as resonant as a good T.V. anchorman's eleven o'clock voice, and his sincerity was almost palpable.

"Fine. Anything else I can tell you?"

"What kinds of things are you most interested in these days? What would you say were the things that gave you the most pleasure to think about -- aside from sex, of course?"

"I like to travel: the water -- oceans, rivers, lakes, small streams -- they all give me pleasure to be near, though I'm not so sure I like having to swim in them these days. Driving cars and boats, learning other languages, watching a good soccer match -- not a very heavyweight list, I guess, but mine own."

"Have you read much Shakespeare?"

"Some, but not yet for pleasure. Right now books are a means of escape for me rather than a source of pleasure \-- maybe it's just the tedium of the army. I sure hope so."

"Quite likely. Would you mind going through a little exercise for me? Just turn your chair so that you're facing away from me -- that's it -- and now, without looking at me, would you answer my questions as fully and accurately as possible?"

A series of questions about the details of his own features, dress, and manner followed. It came as a surprise, but I had at least a minimal response to make to most of the questions. No amount of brain-wracking, however, could help me recall the color of his eyes. He ended the series and as I turned back toward him he was smiling."

"Not bad at all. And no matter about that last one -- I wear various colored contact lenses anyway."

"Now it's my turn to answer some of your unasked questions, and I do appreciate your restraint thus far. You have about four months left to go on your tour of duty; if you agree, I can arrange for the army to transfer you on Temporary Duty to several training facilities back in the States for brief periods of time -- I would think two or three weeks in each would do -- and then you would return here, to Panama, but not to Special Forces, for the remainder of your tour. There is a catch, of course, a price to pay for this extra training, some of which I believe you will find quite interesting. If you agree to this temporary transfer we would expect you to extend your tour an additional twelve months -- just so we can get a return on our additional investment, of course."

He smiled again.

"We?"

"As you will be, in fact, in the U.S. Army for the next sixteen months or so -- assuming you agree to this arrangement -- let's just say, for now, the army. When you return to Panama for that extra year you will be assigned to Ft. Gulick, you may or may not have to wear a uniform, and various other government agencies may, on occasion, ask for your opinion on conditions both here in the Zone and in the country in general. You might, if you wish, consider our conversation here a contract for sixteen months of temporary employment."

"Why not think about it until tomorrow? At that time a handshake will suffice in lieu of a signature on that contract."

It was his broadest smile so far, intelligent and knowing, even more like the T.V. newsman than before. There was no doubt that the interview was over.

I spent the night alone, asking myself all the questions I'd kept inside that afternoon but knowing almost from the moment I stepped out of the old man's office what my response would be. I didn't relish another year tacked on to my tour, but I had no pressing plans for my civilian future, the proposal sounded vague and very carefully elusive but also potentially challenging and exciting, and I was tired of humping it through the bush and across rivers. The issues of legality and morality flitted in and out but both seemed, at the time, to be as amorphous and ill-defined as the proposal itself.

The next morning I shook hands with the man in civilian clothes -- he said goodbye with what I took to be some finality, as if he were sending a good friend off on a long journey, knowing they'd never see each other again -- and thereafter things happened rather rapidly. Within a week I received orders to report to Ft. Benning, Georgia, the site of some of my earlier military experiences, and for the next four months I was temporarily "attached to" (never directly "assigned to") various military, quasi-military, and non-military organizations. At the Army Security Agency in Massachusetts I was given a fancy-sounding security clearance, in spite of my father having been born in Warsaw, and I was made uneasy by the realization that both national and individual privacy is one of the great twentieth century fictions. A demonstration of one piece of highly sophisticated listening equipment so unnerved me that for several weeks afterward I attempted to completely alter the manner of my morning ablutions, embarrassed by the thought that some instructor I'd have that day might be smiling inwardly at the sensitive condition of my bowels. After three weeks with ASA I learned the value of facial expressions and silent body language and began the arduous process of reading lips.

Time spent with Inter-Mountain Aviation in the Arizona sun was relaxing and pleasant. Several pilots I'd known before were working for the airline when I first met them and as we swapped stories and talked of what it was like to be back in the States I was less than surprised to find out that they had been working for Inter-Mountain even when I first met them in places like Phnom Penh or Vientiane or Saigon. They had been flying Air America cargo planes then; what they were doing now for the Tucson company was never made very clear to me. My stay in the desert was brief; I spent a memorable weekend in Nogales, had some very basic instruction in flying single engine fixed wing aircraft, and learned about a complex network of ostensibly private airlines that could move people and materiel almost anywhere in the world and for which bills of lading and passenger manifests were often considered irrelevant.

In a rural camp not far from the nation's capital I attended lectures and demonstrations and participated in exercises for several weeks. One of the lectures, billed (in the handout we received) as the "Strychnine vs. Cyanide" lecture, was delivered by a dour-faced man dressed in a well-tailored tweed jacket and dark grey slacks who reminded me of an old chemistry teacher I once had.

"Strychnine, ladies and gentleman, is as powerful as cyanide. The poisons come from different sources, however, and they work in different ways. Each can be fatal in relatively small amounts within minutes."

"Strychnine, a nervous system stimulant, is a plant alkaloid found in the seeds of a plant called nux vomica. The poison can halt breathing and produce convulsions. As little as 15 milligrams could cause death in a small child. A fatal dose for an adult ranges from 50 to 100 milligrams."

"Early effects of the poison are restlessness, excitability of hearing and vision, and convulsions."

"Cyanide, on the other hand, is usually made as a synthetic chemical, although traces of it can be found in some seeds, including those of apples. The poison acts by preventing the body's tissues from using oxygen."

"Cyanide poisoning can produce nausea and vomiting, a fall in blood pressure and convulsions."

"Potassium cyanide, known to chemists as KCN, is usually white in color. It is used to extract gold and silver from ore, to facilitate electroplating, in photography and in the manufacture of certain fumigants and insecticides."

He hesitated slightly for the fist time in his rather pedantic presentation, but he regained his tone of objectivity as he continued.

"In slightly larger amounts potassium cyanide can be fatal in a dramatically brief period of time."

The rest of the presentation consisted of a film showing the effects of the two substances on various non-human mammals and a question-and-answer period that focused on which benign liquids and solids the poisons could be mixed with without the latter being immediately detectable.

It was about this time that my enthusiasm for my training began to diminish; it was precisely at this point that I was reassigned to Panama, there to remain until the end of my military service a year later, but this time I went near the water only when I felt so inclined.

*Cambridge*

Lightning over the water is the description given by the I-Ching of the conditions before transition. He tried to picture the image in his mind, frame it with the details of his own situation, and he wondered if his being born under the sign of Pisces, the fish that could move in two opposing directions simultaneously, made the image any more appropriate for him. Perhaps, but the notion alone of imminence, of the charged and beautiful and frightening nature of potential playing dramatically yet somehow symbiotically over the placid surface of the present -- this alone was enough to ponder as he sipped his beer reflectively, but there were other things to sort out as well.

Talya had brought up one of them only a few days earlier. His wife awoke the morning after her thirty-fifth birthday with a mild hangover and he made the domestic mistake of trying to engage her in conversation before she'd had her second cup of coffee. The previous evening's celebration had been very pleasant but he had his own after-effects to contend with and he was doing little more than testing the limits of noise his head could withstand when he asked her how it felt to be past the Biblical half-way mark.

"We've all crossed thresholds we don't care to brag about. And please -- not so loud." Her smile was friendly but somewhat pained.

In those early years he'd crossed his own thresholds and thought little about them, but that was to be expected. He'd gotten angry listening to a conservative Republican during the Eisenhower-Kennedy changeover who said that a little righteous anger really brings out the best in the American personality and that getting mad in a constructive way is good for the soul and the country; a few years later his anger had turned to cynical resignation. He'd once attended a university whose motto was Freedom With Responsibility and he'd decided that whatever his life's work would be, it would be honorable work; less than two years later he'd taken the life of another human being. For as long as he could remember thinking about it he had actively rejected the idea that most rebels are looking for a better conformity; somewhere, at some point he could hardly locate much less define precisely, he'd become a living example of its validity. He had always assumed that he understood what the responsibility of free will meant -- that you took responsibility for your actions, accepted the pain along with the pleasure, paid the price of being human -- but lately he wondered if somewhere along the way there hadn't been a dangerous and insidiously gradual failure of will on his part, a major sea change of the soul that had somehow gone unrecorded in the weather, the natural landscape, and the various external trappings of his life. He'd always intended to live as he felt he was meant to, actively, meaningfully, with principles; whether he'd left that behind as well was, at present, a matter of his serious and constant conjecture.

*Panama*

The bulletin board outside the mess hall had a new advertisement on it about a week after I arrived. It was one of many such notices directed at both students and staff at the school and after a while their appearance was so commonplace and innocuous that I didn't even pause to read them.

"Foreign Broadcast Information Service, P.O. Box 2604, Washington, D.C. 20013 - OFFICERS WANTED: this service of the Central Intelligence Agency has available foreign language officer openings for persons with strong reading ability in a foreign language. Principle duty is to scan foreign-language newspapers, journals, and monographs for information needed by analysts and policy makers in the foreign affairs community. (Actual translation is done off-premises by contractors.) Other duties include periodic review and evaluation of translation done by contractors; occasional translation; and miscellaneous language service. To apply, send brief resume to Personnel Office at above address.

Work is in Washington, D.C. area, with limited overseas work opportunities. U.S. citizenship required."

It didn't take me long to find out what miscellaneous language service might entail, at least as it was practiced in Panama. One night in a quiet bar in Colon, the only real town on the Atlantic side of the Isthmus, where I'd gone to unwind a little after a long afternoon spent lecturing to a group of senior Honduran officers on how to survive in the bush when your supply lines suddenly disappear, I met Raymond Torres. One minute the barstool to my left was empty and the next it was filled with a Sidney Poitier look-alike whose outstretched arm was so massively muscled my first instinct was to duck my chin to protect my windpipe as I tried to roll backwards with the anticipated blow. It never came and I felt silly; his laugh was friendly and I knew he'd sensed my response.

"Sgt. Ray Torres -- glad to finally meet you. Buy me a Bacardi straight-up and I'll tell you the story of my life."

We never got around to that that night -- there was time enough during the next year for me to put together the bits and pieces he dropped, time enough for me to get a fairly coherent picture of his growing up poor with his Panamanian parents working for the Canal Zone Company, of his joining the American army after they both died (he in an accident on the Gatun Locks and she by suicide) so he'd be sent to a good college in the States, trained and fed and clothed better than his heritage had led him to expect, and of his time in Asia and his recruitment and his eventual transfer back to his homeland -- but we bought each other a few rounds and at his suggestion we headed for Rainbow City, Colon's roughest and poorest section, to finish off the evening. As we walked he spoke quietly, being careful to talk slowly and enunciate clearly for me as he switched into Spanish whenever we passed other pedestrians, whether they were in uniform or in civilian clothes as we were.

"It's really quite simple. All we have to do is listen carefully and remember what we hear. From time to time we'll be asked to tell others what we've heard. Much of the time it's rather uninteresting, but we get to move around quite a bit and nobody hassles us with the routine stuff and every so often we'll get to go to some fancy affairs and meet some people we ordinarily wouldn't come across. The important thing is to be sharp, to pay attention, and to appear as if you're not if it ever gets awkward. We'll hit one of the bars here and then call it a night, okay? It's where some of Panama's finest, the Guardia Civil, come for their pleasure between bouts with the local revolutionaries."

We spent about an hour there, talking to each other and two Panamanian girls in English and listening in Spanish to several Guardia officers at a neighboring table. My listening comprehension would improve with practice but as we rode the old converted school bus back to Gulick I realized that just listening, under certain conditions, could be a matter of pleasurably restrained excitement. I went to bed that first night thinking that my last year in the army might not be too hard to take at all.

* * *

The rainy season had begun a little earlier than usual that year but no rain fell on us the day I first went up to David with Ray for one of the Inter-American conferences. The town is the antithesis of Panama City, clean and uncrowded and slow, aesthetically pleasing to the eye and as politically neutral as it is possible for any Central American town to be. Ray had arranged for us to meet a Costa Rican friend of his and her sister after the opening session adjourned in the early evening. He had explained that it was fairly common practice for Costa Ricans to cross the border and come down to David on weekends for a little change of social pace. As quiet as David first seemed to me, I wondered about the kind of social life available further north, but Ray was eloquent on the beauty of Costa Rican women and I was looking forward to the evening.

"Pues, que tal, Ramon? It is very pleasant to meet you again. And your young friend is ---?"

Ray was pointing out some of the delegates and saying hello to some of the observers when a Cuban captain in pressed fatigues greeted him. The officer was almost dapper with his polished jump-boots and neatly knotted yellow infantryman's scarf tucked carefully into his blouse; I noted the trimmed beard and the blue eyes and the complete absence of any unit insignias or medals as he introduced himself as Captain Carlos, a small smile and a steady observant gaze briefly sent my way before he moved on. Ray had introduced me as the new observer sent up by the school to see what new courses might be added to the curriculum to satisfy the needs of students from some of the smaller South and Central American armies. Carlos had listened to Ray politely, had undoubtedly made his own observations, and had gone on to a group of Panamanian Guardia staff officers who seemed to be waiting for his approach.

"That, my friend, is what we quaintly call some of the competition. I have no idea what his last name is -- maybe it's really Carlos -- but some people say he was with Fidel in the early days in the mountains and that he still has some special access. I don't know about that, but I do know that nothing moves across this northern border -- including people -- without his knowledge. Always felt he was a good person not to antagonize too much."

"Do you know him well?"

"No, not very. Met him a few times at meetings like this but he spends most of his time with much bigger fish than us. He's usually an observer at these affairs, officially, but the delegates from the less stable countries -- and sometimes even Mexico -- are usually in conference with him between the public speeches. My guess is he's the point man for the local distribution of some of his country's hardware and these are handy places to talk to most of his customers, to find out what they think they need and to get assurances in exchange for deliveries or promised deliveries. He must also find these events convenient for assessing the relative strengths and weaknesses of his Pan American neighbors in terms of their requests and their interest, or lack of interest, in specific training techniques and material."

"Just like us, isn't he -- in a way?" The hint of cynicism was part of the rapport that had begun to develop between us, but I didn't yet know him well enough to dispense with the tone of qualification. That would come later.

"In a way. The stuff he's peddling right now, though, is probably usable but outdated and Russian; it won't be long before he'll be able to supply his customers with state-of-the-art stuff of his own. When that time comes it'll take people who are a hell of a lot more sophisticated than thee and me to keep up with him."

For the rest of the afternoon we listened to the various speeches, sat in on a discussion between a general from Nicaragua and two Panamanian colonels about the need for more sophisticated assault rifles for their national police forces, and circulated as much as possible during the breaks for coffee, each of us going our own way and at our own speed. Ray knew many of the participants and he tended to move at regular intervals from group to group, but I found myself listening to one or two discussions for extended periods of time, unable to move away casually once I'd concluded there was little to be learned there, feeling as if my veil of interest in the various topics was transparent and my rushing from one group to another would be seen as insulting or disrespectful. Just before the adjournment for the day there was a brief cocktail hour in one of the largest of the conference rooms and Ray joined me at the makeshift bar.

"Relax a little, son, or you'll burn out at an early age. You act as if you're working without a net in the center ring, and it just ain't so. What we do here is of little interest to most of these people and the few who do care already know we're just trying to pick up the odd little tidbit for someone else to chew on; they're probably doing the same thing themselves."

"I know. Just have to get used to the rhythm of it all, I guess. No problem -- just a slight case of a new boy on the block."

"True, and speaking of which I think it's time to initiate you in the ways of Costa Rican charm and hospitality. If we leave now we can meet the girls at the ---."

We both noticed him looking our way as he turned from his conversation with one of the Costa Rican delegates and moved slowly toward us. The yellow scarf was as neatly adjusted now as it had been at the beginning of the day. He addressed us with a drink in his hand, almost as if we were fellow workers who had shared a long and difficult day at the office.

"A long session, wouldn't you agree? Shall we relax and share some wine tonight? I know of a place where the food is good and the entertainment interesting. Quite a few of your countrymen go there."

I could tell by a glance at Ray's expression that my planned initiation would have to wait for another trip up north. It wasn't that he appeared anxious to accept Carlos' invitation; it was more as if his professional curiosity were piqued, as if he welcomed the opportunity to see another side, the social side, of the man's world. Maybe I was just projecting my own interest, too, which was considerable, but Ray didn't hesitate at all.

"Sounds like a good idea. We'll have to cancel a few arrangements -- a phone call should be enough -- if you give us directions we'll meet you there whenever you wish."

"It's called El Relampago and it's in the barrio section. Any taxi driver will find it for you. Shall we say nine o'clock?"

We agreed and he nodded and walked off into the crowd. Ray and I returned to the nearby hotel in which we were billeted and he made the phone call to his friend, explaining that some pressing business had come up suddenly and that we would certainly try to contact them the next time we got to David. He hung up with a rather rueful look.

"That may have been a mistake. She said that she and her sister had even gotten their hair done this afternoon. I'm not sure if my credit with her is good enough to assure us dates with them the next time around. Oh, well -- wherever night overtakes me I will lay my head. Just another glaring example of a man being unable to have it both ways. I think our spending the evening with the good captain, though, is too fine a chance to pass up. I assume you concur."

"Definitely, but what sacrifices we make for our country."

"Come on, you know as well as I do that we couldn't justify tonight on any expense account even if we tried -- don't know about you, but I think old Carlos gives off enough of the danger and mystery stuff to be worth spending at least a little time with -- to keep the adrenaline flowing, if nothing else."

"Quite so. I doubt if we'll learn anything from him. He doesn't strike me as the careless type. But I've got to admit I'm not really as disappointed in the change of plans as I probably should be. Just for the hell of it, though, why not describe her sister for me one more time, in detail?"

When we arrived the place was already busy. The dining room wasn't so bad but the bar was elbow to elbow and the dance floor was crowded. It was a mixed group, some local Panamanians who seemed well dressed and somewhat out of their element in this part of town, some rather sleazy types who looked as if they got turned away from the fancy casinos down in the capital on a regular basis, and a great many gringos who looked like off-duty soldiers on three-day passes who had come from the Zone to let off some steam away from their home turf. We saw Carlos in the dining room, presiding over an otherwise empty table for four, and we joined him.

"Bienvenidos. Mi casa, su casa. It seemed as if soon there would be no more tables so I seated myself. A Bacardi light without ice, I believe, and ---?"

"Bacardi dark and coke, thanks. Ice if they have it."

I noticed the changes he'd made in his appearance since we'd last seen him. The uniform had been abandoned for civilian clothes much like our own, but the overall effect was almost a transformation. Instead of the pressed and well tailored fatigues of the afternoon that had complemented his slim and obviously powerful frame, he now wore a white Panamanian shirt that was slightly too big for him over a pair of wrinkled black polyester slacks. As he stood up to greet us and take our orders to relay to one of the waiters I tried to figure out what else was different; the appearance of a somewhat sloppy and shapeless ineptitude was the result of almost obsessive attention to detail. His hair, carefully combed and parted earlier, was now brushed straight back to give it the look of a partially grown-out crew-cut, not unlike those worn by many of the customers in the place; his slightly too-short slacks revealed white cotton socks and scuffed black U.S. Army dress shoes; his shirt, worn outside his slacks as is the custom, was long-sleeved and the top button was buttoned, as if the man was less than proud of revealing any part of his body. Before he sat down again I noticed his posture was slightly stooped, adding the perfect touch of undisciplined haphazardness to the picture.

My surprise must have been evident to both of them because Ray was chuckling quietly and Carlos, smiling and with a touch of pride, said, "I am a great believer in flying the flag of convenience. It allows a person, on certain occasions, to move safely through some otherwise dangerous waters. Don't you agree?"

We did and the meal was leisurely and pleasant, punctuated by regular refills of decent wine and easy conversation about non-controversial topics; we avoided Cuban-American relations and the build-up and support of the various militias and popular-front groups in the region and settled, instead, for swapping stories about our experiences before joining our respective armies. Carlos had an engaging and self-deprecating way of talking about himself as a young man growing up fast on the streets of some very tough Cuban towns and we paid our bill and moved to the lounge, I for one feeling rather euphorically that the evening was turning out well after all.

The floorshow had begun as we squeezed around a tiny table well back from the dance floor which now served as a stage. The entertainment was, as had been promised, interesting, and the other off-duty Americans were the most loudly appreciative members of the audience. After an excellent folk singing guitarist came two female strippers with a routine of competitively creative undressing that had male and female customers alike applauding for more. As one performer very affectionately helped the other off stage at the end of a contest that was obviously meant to end in a draw, the light dimmed and a purple spotlight came on, outlining an unusually tall San Blas Indian standing regally still at the very center of the stage, dressed in a black velveteen robe tied at the throat with a bright yellow cord. As the three-piece combo that had been backing the two strippers by simply banging out the rhythm now switched to a very slow and sultry jazz tune, the two now returned, naked, and proceeded to disrobe the man. As the yellow cord was finally pulled the black robe fell to the floor to reveal the Indian in all his unclothed and rampant glory, a moment of stunned silence was followed by audible gasps and then a burst of applause and wild cheering. The man grinned, nodded his head once in mock modesty, and then the three performers took turns in satisfying each other \-- or at least appearing to do so. At the height of what turned out to be the Indian's final orgasm of the night all hell broke loose in the audience.

An American, very drunk and confusedly trying to copy the latest position of intercourse on the stage, must have been helped onto a table by his friends and as he dropped his trousers and wildly flung wide his arms he screamed, "Look, Ma, no hands!"

One of his friends, clearly feeling no pain either, yelled his encouragement to one of the female performers.

"Pull train, baby! Oh, yes, that's beautiful." In his enthusiasm he fell against the table. The first soldier came crashing down on a group of locals, splintering their table and sending glasses and beer bottles everywhere. One of the Panamanians, knocked from his chair by the American's fall, came off the floor with a knife in his right hand.

"Gringo bastard, I'm gonna cut you three ways -- wide, deep, and often." From where I sat he sounded sober and people moved out of his way quickly.

I didn't even see Carlos leave his seat. The fallen soldier had managed to disentangle himself and get to his feet and as he swayed unsteadily, trying to pull up his trousers, the man with the knife moved in quickly. As he sprang out of the crouch he'd assumed, obviously going for the throat on the first lunge, a white-socked and slightly turned foot on a fully extended leg caught him on the side of his head and the blade sliced only air. Carlos' kick surprised him but it didn't knock him down; with the agility of the experienced street fighter he recovered his balance and went for Carlos in the same explosive movement. This time he came in low, aiming for the groin with the knife and feinting to the left for distraction. One of Carlos' hastily discarded shoes probably kept the blow from being fatal; the man stumbled on the shoe for only a fraction of a second but it was enough to allow the knife to cut harmlessly through a polyester trouser leg. He tried to recover from the miss quickly, but Carlos stepped in under his overextended knife arm and delivered a backhanded chop with the blade of his right hand that caught the man in the throat and crushed his windpipe. He went down slowly but I knew he was as good as dead when he started to fall.

A quick glance at Ray caused me to lose sight of Carlos as the shouting started and the crowd now surged forward. I thought I glimpsed him pushing his way out through a side door, but I couldn't be sure in all of the confusion and Ray and I had all we could do to make our way through the kitchen and out the rear delivery entrance. By the time we stopped running we were almost out of the barrio.

*Cambridge*

Could Kesey have been partially correct? Is it all really true even if it never happened? In a sense, of course, there's no doubt about it, but the drug generalization is often notoriously unreliable. He tried to concentrate for a moment on the present, on the worlds he was being asked to choose between, and he found it to be no simple task. The past was not always just baggage you dragged along with you into the present, hoping it wouldn't trip you up or give you a hernia; sometimes it was the very essence of that existence, the two as inseparable as the Siamese twins who share the same vital organs and who will cease to exist if torn asunder, and sometimes the past was all that was left with which you could determine the future. If you brought with you into the here and now only those things you found pleasant or at least bearable, wasn't it all a lie, an illusion, and weren't you just deceiving yourself? The past then would be a palatable fiction, a world wholly created in your own image and designed to ease you through the present and to give you a chance at having a future.

He felt uneasy at the thought, but he recognized how relevant it often was to his own situation. Perhaps he found himself where he was partly because he'd always remembered only the good things about those early student days on the hill, relegating, without apparent effort, the tedious and the unpleasant to the fuzzy realm of the subconscious. He could always recall sledding down the library slope in the bitter cold of winter on food trays taken from the Willard Straight cafeteria and watching the crew practice in the inlet of the lake in the warm days of spring; he never seemed to forget the Saturday morning folksong class called Romp and Stomp with Yarrow popping guitar strings as he accompanied several hundred out-of-tune voices, of the evenings at Johnny's Big Red Grill with Farina being nasty and charming simultaneously and Pynchon quietly eyeing the girl in the green knee socks who sat next to him for a whole semester in Rossiter's American Presidency class and always said hello, or the jazz sessions with Art Mack and Ziegman and the St. Patrick's Day dragon winding its green way from the architecture school to Goldwin Smith every year and the eerie blackness of Nabokov's wife as she sat impassively facing them at all of his classes and -- and so much more. Maybe, though, after all these years, he could finally put some of it in perspective. At least he now recalled that Farina and Nabokov were dead, as was Rossiter, who took his own life. Perhaps he'd come far enough for a more balanced assessment; at least he had a good reason now for making the attempt.

*Panama*

Lunch was a two-part affair in the main dining room of the Hilton in Panama City. When he had called with the invitation his voice had made me think of a bull-necked platoon sergeant I'd once known, but he turned out to be an older man with a little grey in his hair who spoke so softly during the first part of the meal that I frequently had to strain to hear his questions. He introduced himself by handing me a laminated card identifying him as a member of the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency and as we ate and I answered his questions, giving additional details I was often surprised I'd remembered about conversations and meetings he was particularly interested in, I realized he was a man who not only did his job very well but who also had an interest in putting his work into some kind of meaningful context, interested in understanding a larger portion of his world than I had assumed, naively, he might be. As we finished our dessert he closed the small pad he'd been taking notes in and put it and the ballpoint pen in his jacket pocket.

"Thank you. When all of this is processed with other information I am sure it will turn out to be of substantial value. Shall we have coffee?"

His eyes had dark half-circles of fatigue beneath them but now he seemed more relaxed, like someone on holiday from a worthwhile but very demanding business, and for the rest of the meal -- several coffees and a glass of wine each -- I had no trouble hearing him.

"I understand that you are due to be discharged in a few weeks. Do you have any plans?"

"Not at the moment. Some time to relax, probably, and get the army out of the forefront of my mind, and then I'll start thinking about what comes next. I'm in no great rush; feeling lately as if whatever's gonna be dished up has been on order from the beginning -- to some extent, anyway -- so I think I'll just wait and see what develops. Do you enjoy what you do for a living?"

He took the reversal of our roles in his stride, a touch of weariness in his tone but no condescension or defensiveness. "I've been doing it for a long time and sometimes it can get to seem pointless, but most of the time I believe in the importance of what I do and that gives me satisfaction. Being in the business of gathering information can be tiring now and then, even somewhat depressing, but I think it's a necessary business these days. I just wish it could stop for a while -- but I only worry about that when I haven't had much sleep, like now, or when my ulcer acts up."

"Isn't it more like being in the suspicion business rather than anything else? We suspect them -- whoever they are -- of having the most abominable motivations and performing the most horrendous deeds and they, in turn, suspect us of precisely the same thing. The basic assumption, that no one can trust anyone else is really what buys us this very nice meal at the Hilton, isn't it?"

"Of course, but we're really only talking about the obvious, aren't we? It seems to me that once we accept the reality of our world, the fact of our suspicions and distrustful natures, then we have to decide whether we want to do anything about it; whether indeed, anything at all can be done about it.

"What bothers me more, to get a little personal, is the absence of clarity these days. I miss the clarity of it all, the old clarity, the ease with which I could tell the valuable material from the pap, the information that was worth gathering from the data that was irrelevant. It's hard to make that determination these days." He wasn't looking for sympathy and I heard no whining in his voice; he seemed to be simply stating a fact, displaying a condition of life that he felt was somehow inevitable and, at least for him, unchangeable.

"I don't know, it all seems pretty clear to me. If you believe in something strongly enough you fight for it and support it or defend it -- work for it so that it'll survive and function and even flourish. If you don't believe in it, you just let it pass you by."

"The unfair advantage of youth." He was wistful rather than patronizing. "But what happens when this thing you believe in -- this 'it' -- changes color or shape, takes on attire you've never seen before, walks around so different or so disguised that you can hardly recognize it? What do you do then?"

"I'm not sure what you mean, but I think you just keep track of what you believe in and let the rest sort itself out without you."

He looked disappointed -- for a moment I thought it might even be anger -- but he continued in a friendly though somewhat subdued voice.

"The belief is often not in an ideal or a cause, not in any cause. Often it's not in either side, us or them, or in any side at all. Quite often it's not a belief in your own talents, your own precision, which is the driving force behind what you do." He seemed to be talking to himself even as he looked at me; I had the strong feeling that I'd somehow been dismissed, but I felt compelled to continue.

"I understand that. I'm pretty sure most of my volunteering these last few years was all about that. Don't you think that that kind of belief is really all you need to sustain you when all is said and done about right and wrong and good guys and bad guys and clarity and disguises? Don't you think so?"

He suddenly looked drained and very old. "It certainly is sufficient for some people, that's true."

He signaled for the bill and after he'd paid we walked out to the busy street together. The air was heavy with the afternoon's impending downpour, but it seemed to revive him a little and he shook my hand warmly as we parted.

"It was, for me, a very pleasant working lunch. Given the imminence of your departure from our fair jungle I doubt that we will meet again, but such things are not very predictable. I sincerely hope that you enjoy whatever it is you decide to do for your living." I hadn't noticed him motion for it but a taxi pulled to the curb and as he got in he seemed to avoid my eyes. The first drops began to fall as he was driven away.

When I returned to Gulick the next morning Ray handed me a copy of the orders for my final military assignment. With such a short time to go on my tour I had expected only my travel orders back to the States for my discharge; my initial reaction to the papers I now read was one of pained surprise.

"Are these bastards kidding? I'm so short right now I have to look up to tie my shoelaces and they're sending me to Cuba for seven days? Aren't we practically at war with those people? That's all I need -- survive all that crap in the bush and then get wasted ninety miles from Key West. Who are the geniuses who are running this show anyway?"

Ray laughed and agreed it was a strange assignment, but he also pointed out that I would be flown home afterwards on the once-a-week unofficial flight directly from Havana to Miami and wouldn't have to return to Panama at all. He had received the same assignment -- we were to be a two-man observation team at one of Cuba's week-long conferences on "Inter-American Cooperation", the usual euphemism for those regional meetings which mixed the buying and selling of arms with the dissemination of a lot of propaganda -- but he would return to Panama at the end of the conference. I assumed my debriefing about the affair would take place after I reached the States and before I became a civilian again; his would be conducted, as usual, upon his return to the Zone.

* * *

The flight from Panama City was on a commercial airline and because of overbooking we were given first class seats. With drinks in hand and our stomachs full we watched Castro's new world slide slowly beneath us, green and beautiful from that height, the mountains off to the north and south looking like the soft brown border of a lush and peaceful picture, dotted here and there with the blue-white gleam of mountain lakes. Just off the northwest corner of the main island I could see two smaller ones, but the plane eventually banked sharply for its final approach, turning away from them and toward Havana. As we came in over the harbor the early afternoon sunlight was reflected from the polished brass fittings of only one luxury yacht, moored in splendid isolation from the freighters which hugged the various docks. I counted three freighters and a large oil tanker, all flying the Russian colors alongside their Cuban port flags, before the plane dipped to the left and settled on the runway.

The airport was a bleak and barely used place and the immigration and customs people were giving the two of us a particularly bad time as the only Americans they'd seen in a long time -- and traveling, as well, on capitalistic military I.D. cards instead of passports -- when a Cuban colonel showed up with our names on a list of conference participants and put a stop to the harassment. The bus to our hotel passed along wide streets lined with magnificent palm trees and most of the people watching our progress were soldiers, dressed in combat fatigues and carrying automatic rifles, who looked proud and alert even when lounging at a street corner. A once-famous American-built hotel had had its name changed and all but the smallest of its bars dismantled and its main floor and huge lobby thrown open to all, the poorest peasant included, and we were given rooms that had had all the frills removed but which were still more than adequate. The conference would begin the next morning at the same hotel; we were free to explore the city until the midnight curfew; we were not to go beyond the city limits nor enter any restricted areas, all of which were very clearly marked with a red star on an olive drab background. We unpacked and cleaned up a little and went out to have our first close look at Havana.

Near the hotel there were a few tourist shops and a travel agent's office but the travel office was empty and a pair of dark-suited Russians trying to make themselves understood in slowly spoken but very loud Russian were the only customers in the tourist shops. A few blocks away the stores were smaller and more practical and the lines were intimidating; both men and women were lined up outside a bakery, each person holding what looked like a book of ration coupons, waiting to purchase one of the very few loaves of bread that seemed to be available on the store's counter; outside a grocery store the long line waiting for milk was made up mostly of patient old women and impatient young children, and it was obvious from the open racks of milk bottles that not even half the people in line would get any of them that day. As we walked past appliance or clothing stores we noted the meager amounts of merchandise and the general lack of customers; in the window of a shop selling new books there were only two items, a paperback edition of The Communist Manifesto and a hardcover copy of The Old Man and The Sea. Both seemed to have an undisturbed coating of dust on them.

We turned toward the harbor, Ray leading in our search for a bar he'd heard about in which the rum daiquiris were supposed to be so strong that anyone able to down more than two and still stand without assistance was allowed to drink without paying the rest of that day. We walked all the way to the docks and still couldn't find it so we finally stopped at a taxi stand and asked directions, only to be told that the place had been closed more than a year earlier when almost all of the old tourist places had been either shut down or dismantled by government decree. It was dark by this time and the few streetlights that were working came on as we walked back to the hotel along the promenade that faced the harbor entrance, making vaguely disparaging remarks to each other, in English, about the essentially puritanical nature of most twentieth century revolutions. The desk clerk handed us our keys and gave Ray a telephone message that had been taken just a few minutes before our return. Ray handed it to me as we went up to our rooms.

Mi Casa, su casa. It will be good to see old friends again.

Hasta manana, Carlos.

After the opening ceremonies the next day, he greeted us warmly as we stood in one of the hallways.

"I apologize for not saying goodbye the last time we met. I am afraid my exit was too hasty to allow me to show you my appreciation for such a pleasant evening. I hope you will allow me to do so here in my own country this week." He seemed to be looking directly at me as he spoke so I assured him that it would be our pleasure. Ray nodded his agreement as Carlos continued.

"A jeep has been placed at our disposal at the conclusion of each day's session. If you are not too tired at the time, I propose that we see as much of the island as possible while you are here. Shall we begin after today's meetings? I will find you in the lobby at six."

At my affirmative nod he smiled and moved off, looking as fit and self-contained in his tailored fatigues as he had the first time I'd met him. Ray seemed to be preoccupied.

"What's up sergeant? He's certainly being friendly enough, considering we hardly know him, and the offer to show us some of the country sounds good to me. What with El Jefe making all those anti-communist noises but actually moving closer to Moscow each day I doubt that we'll be welcome here very much longer -- should probably take advantage of it while we still can. See any problems?"

"No, no problems. Think I'm just a little tired. Didn't sleep very well last night. Unfamiliar bed, I guess. And a guided tour might be interesting."

At six we headed east out of the city, Carlos behind the wheel and Ray in back, having graciously allowed as how he'd bounce around less than I would back there because he was taller and heavier; the logic seemed rather tenuous but I appreciated the considerateness. It was a clear day, the sun getting lower behind us as we drove along the coast and the shadows lengthening ahead of us like darker markers on the dark macadam road, pointing us in the proper direction. Carlos drove fast but well, the old American army surplus vehicle obviously in good condition and he called our attention to things only occasionally, letting us ask questions when something interested us and then answering us in sufficient but not excessive detail. He was obviously proud of what the revolution was attempting to accomplish and he appreciated the natural beauty of his island home. He pointed to the long white beaches on our left which curved gradually and gracefully in a series of half-moons, a few serious sunbathers trying to catch the last of the late afternoon rays.

"Our most famous beach, of course. Before the revolution it was reserved almost exclusively for the tourists and the rich officials from Havana. The people themselves were very carefully kept away. The beach is still beautiful, but now it is open to all. Each workers' cooperative keeps a few cottages here and when a worker takes his mandatory vacation each year he can choose to come here with his family and use a cottage at no expense to him for the two or three or four weeks that he has earned. That big brick house in the pine trees over there used to be one of Batista's vacation homes; now it belongs to the people of the dairy cooperatives and it houses twenty vacationing workers at any one time."

As the road turned away from the coast for a few miles we saw a partially completed complex of two and three story buildings in a level field with men and women hauling bricks and cinderblocks up to other workers on scaffolding who were using trowels and mortar. Some worked with evident expertise but many seemed to be enthusiastic rather than knowledgeable about what they were doing.

"A cooperative being built by its members. It will have housing in apartments for one hundred and fifty families, a large food store, a dairy, a fully equipped clinic with doctors and nurses, and a comprehensive school for both children and adults. Already our literacy rate has doubled; in a few years almost every man, woman, and child in Cuba will be able to read and write. That was certainly not the situation before the revolution."

"Does everyone work at putting up the buildings, regardless of their training?" I asked.

"Yes, everyone who expects to get housing there has to put in a certain amount of time on the construction itself; the doctors get the necessary work credits by putting in fewer hours than the regular trained construction workers, of course, because the doctors have to continue to work in the hospitals in Havana until this project is finished, but most people want to be part of the actual construction. It has become a matter of pride since the revolution."

"Can people still live in their old houses if they wish, instead of moving into these new buildings?"

"The government is using all kinds of pressure, both direct and indirect, to encourage people to leave their old houses and move into the modern ones. Most of the pre-revolution housing in the villages is appalling; one or two tiny rooms, no running water, no real kitchen or bathroom, walls and roofs that are usually falling down. If a person absolutely refuses to move -- usually the very old people -- the government lets them stay, but they don't get the flour and dairy and grain coupons that they would if they agreed to move, and they don't get the free television set that the government is trying to supply to everyone."

The road wound back toward the coast and as the sun set behind us Carlos pulled up to a small restaurant set back about fifty yards from a cove with a rocky beach. Several fishing boats lay at anchor and small white stucco houses with red tiled roofs dotted the hillside that rimmed the cove.

"This village used to be very popular with your people. All the famous fishermen came here for the marlin tournaments. Maybe someday they will fish here again."

The restaurant was almost empty and the meal had been arranged in advance. It was delicious and we lingered over our coffees, Carlos talking quietly and earnestly about the revolution and the changes that were being planned. He was eloquent on the benefits of compulsory education coupled with everyone working in the fields for at least an hour each day, but his eloquence was tinged with barely suppressed anger when I asked him about the long-term effects on his country's economy of the lack of a profit motive.

"The incentive to make money is usually the belief that it will lead to a better way of life. Under Batista and those like him my country sold itself and made many fortunes in the process, but the people of my country lived in squalor. The privileged few always told us that the more money we made by catering to the needs of other nations -- and your country was the most influential, but still only one of the many -- the better off we would all be. In truth, Cuban capitalism before the revolution was not much more than an economic dictatorship. The hotels and casinos of Havana were very profitable, but disease and prostitution and abject poverty for the masses were the foundations upon which those profits were built.

"I know it probably sounds very idealistic to you as Americans, but what we have substituted for the profit motive is an absolute dedication to the principle of cooperation, a belief in the ultimate ability of cooperation to raise everyone's standard of living and everyone's quality of life. I know our critics on the other side of the Gulf Stream say this principle just as often leads to a leveling in society that reduces everyone's standard of living, but maybe our criteria for judging that standard is different over here. We made the revolution to return pride and dignity to our people; you will have to judge for yourselves how successful we have been."

On the drive back to Havana that night we took a road that curved inland just before we reached the city and Carlos pointed out a suburb almost ablaze with modern yellow streetlights, the houses all small but well painted and the lawns and streets well tended and uncharacteristically free of litter. Children played in front of some of the homes, laughing and waving at our jeep whenever we waved at them.

"In 1959 this area had no running water, a cantina on every corner, and every third teenager was for sale, boys and girls. Quite a difference now, isn't it?"

He left us at the hotel a few minutes later with the promise of more sightseeing the next day, adding that we might leave the meetings earlier in the days to come so that we could get to some of the more distant villages during daylight.

For the next five days I listened to the speeches and informal discussions at the sessions with less real interest and concern than I listened to Carlos as he guided Ray and me around the island. He spoke of a few of the revolution's failures up to that point -- they hadn't been able to get very many of Havana's sophisticated professionals to voluntarily move out to the rural cooperative complexes where their expertise was most sorely needed -- but he showed us examples of the successes. We'd seen some of Havana that first afternoon, but on a subsequent walk with Carlos he pointed out the absence of beggars and crippled people on the streets, attributing their disappearance to a return of personal pride and improved medical care and facilities. When I gently suggested that perhaps rigorously enforced new laws and overcrowded asylums and prisons might also have something to do with it, he sidestepped the issue by explaining that now there were very few vocational asylums for the mentally ill; now such people were not locked up but were allowed, with minimal supervision by trained personnel, to spend most of their days out in the fields, doing simple but necessary work for the benefit of the country and the improvement of their own health. To my query about the inherent problems of such a system when it involved the criminally insane he responded by admitting, without elaboration, that drug therapy was sometimes necessary.

In Cabanas we had coffee with an old sugarcane worker who still lived in his own two room house. He told us that he knew he could have a more modern place with an indoor toilet if he moved as most of his neighbors had done, but he liked his old house and his small garden and now that there was no longer any absentee landlord to worry about he was quite content with his situation -- although it would be nice if he could get more flour each month and if the pharmacy in town wouldn't always run out of the medicine he needed for the arthritis in his hands. As we stood in his doorway saying goodbye and shaking hands he noticed my glance back into the sparsely furnished house.

"Yes, it is not very elegant, but it is mine and I sleep much more peacefully now than I did before the revolution. And now I have food in my belly every night."

On one of our drives I asked Carlos if we could go to Guantanamo to see the U.S. base there and he looked inquiringly at Ray before he answered me, his voice flat and controlled.

"Guantanamo is strictly off-limits to me. You two might be able to get on with your military I.D. cards, but I doubt that we could get close enough in this vehicle to show them to anyone. Your base is, as you must be aware, an embarrassment to those of us who wish to give Cuba back her dignity. Some day, I believe, Guantanamo will become an embarrassment for your country as well."

The conference ended with a spate of propaganda speeches by several high-ranking Cubans on a Saturday afternoon and as Ray and I made our way back to our rooms to prepare for the evening -- Carlos had suggested a farewell celebration at what he called the last vestige of profitable colonialism in Havana, the Copacabana nightclub, adding that it was allowed to remain open only because its profits now were used to support the revolution -- we talked about the week's experiences and our departures the next day.

"What time does your Miami flight go?"

"Scheduled for one o'clock. Same plane as the morning flight in -- same pilots, one Cuban, one American -- just turns around and goes right back. When do you leave?"

"The noon flight, with a short stop in Kingston. Well, how did you like your last job for the army? That Carlos is quite impressive, ain't he?"

"Very. Seems like he really believes most of that stuff about the revolution, but sometimes I wonder, did you notice how careful he is to steer clear of the touchy areas and still carry on as if he's all open-minded and reasonable?"

"You have to admit, the dude's good at what he does."

"Maybe a little too good for my taste. So many perfect answers; direct, simple, and incontrovertibly true. Maybe these last twelve months have made me too cynical, but when I hear a perfect answer these days my first instinct is not to believe a word of it."

"Careful, son, where will you be without some faith in your fellow men?"

"Look who's talking. By the way how do you read his interest in us? Do you think he's just relaxing with ex-boonie rats with whom he feels he has some affinity or is there more to it? I can't see that we gave him anything that could be of much value."

"Me neither, but maybe he's not after information." We'd reached the doors to our rooms, one on each side of a wide and still thickly carpeted hallway, and Ray motioned to me to follow him as he opened his, made a quick visual check to see if anything had been added or disturbed in his absence, and closed the door behind us.

"Maybe he's trying to see if one of us can be turned around." He said it casually as he threw his jacket on the bed and walked into the bathroom. I watched him turn on the tap and begin washing his hands and face, but my mind was racing through the week now and through the partially open bathroom door his white-shirted back was little more than a vague blur. I tried to focus on what he'd just said and blot out the uneasy feeling that gnawed at the edges of my consciousness as the tone of his voice echoed in my mind. Casual but inquisitive? Too inquisitive? Just a touch too casual?

My astonishment was a mixed bag; surprise that anyone else might even consider me worth recruiting, disappointment and even depression that my naiveté might be so close to stupidity that I hadn't even realized a pitch had been made, and outrage at the assumptions about me that had to have been made in the first place. Beyond all this, however, was something more disturbing, something I couldn't quite see clearly as I reviewed Carlos' behavior of the past week toward me, toward us, toward Ray. By the time Ray turned back into the bedroom, drying his hands with a towel, the source of my unease was taking on some solid form. I tried to keep my voice as neutral as possible.

"Do you think he's interested in both of us or just me?"

Ray looked up from his towel and watched my reaction as he spoke. "Just you. I've worked for him, on and off, since 1960."

He must have seen the hurt because he turned back to the bathroom then and as I fumbled my way out of his room I had a fleeting vision of this pathetic kid waiting at the player's exit of the 1919 World Series as Shoeless Joe Jackson tried unsuccessfully to sneak by him. By the time I got back to my own room the vision had completely disappeared.

The Copacabana that night was filled with Russian technicians and several busloads of Bulgarian businessmen and their wives who arrived just as the show began. It was a garish affair, totally out of keeping with the austere principles of the revolution, but it was a performance imported almost whole from the casinos of Las Vegas and as such it hadn't changed very much since Havana first became a popular American playground; the costumes and sets were lavish, the dance numbers were sensual and expertly choreographed, the lighting was complicated and very colorful, and the women dancers outnumbered the men by ten to one and wore a lot less clothing. It was an island version of what evey well-heeled Western businessman on a vacation is supposed to want and the Russians loved it. Sitting in groups of five or six to a table in their black suits and white shirts they called loudly for more rum and more vodka and applauded with enthusiasm the athletic nakedness on the large and many-tiered stage in front of them. We sat just behind them at a table set on a slightly raised platform that supported about a dozen other tables as well and had a low metal railing around it to set the area off from the stage-side tables. Carlos had reserved one of the best spots in the club and if he and Ray had communicated since the three of us had last been together he gave no indication of it at first.

"A toast to begin the evening, my friends. To health, to wealth, and to love -- and to the betterment of mankind."

The Cuba Libres were weak but the extra wedges of lime that came with them were fresh and strong. Ray seemed to be absorbed in the show so I spoke to Carlos as the band moved smoothly into a loud rhumba."

"Do you come here often?" I tried to keep the sarcasm out of my voice but he sensed that I was baiting him.

"No, not very often. I enjoy watching the beautiful women but the rest of it is not to my liking. You should see this place at least once though, don't you agree, especially if you're only going to be in Cuba this one time? Or are you thinking of coming back here in the future?"

"I hadn't thought much about it. Would you say there's much chance of that happening?"

"Such things can always be arranged. My work allows me a great deal of flexibility and I meet a great many people. I'm sure someone would be happy to accommodate you if you were interested.

"By the way, Captain, just what kind of work do you actually do?"

He put down his drink and slowly turned in his chair so that he was looking straight at me, his stare hard and flat and unblinking.

"I could say I'm an officer in the Cuban army, and I'd be telling you the truth, but you already know that. What you don't seem to grasp is that what I do -- what we do, young man -- is not deal in sentimentality and vague notions of personal loyalty and childish petulance about imagined insults or deceptions. What I do is face the reality of an unfair world and try to do something practical about it. I use every trick I've ever been taught and then I make up some of my own, but I get the job done. What I do -- what we do -- is to make happen whatever needs to happen. It's not a child's game and the rules are not to be taken lightly and the goals are serious enough so that personal feelings are often an unaffordable luxury." His stare shifted to the stage and he picked up his drink. Ray had turned to listen when Carlos had begun his quiet outburst and now he too spoke up.

"Carlos is right, you know. It's another world but it's a hell of a lot more real than the one most people live in. The lies we tell are no worse than the lies others tell everyday and we can usually be more convincing. And we know why we tell them, we have a good reason for doing what we do."

"A good reason? You had a good reason for faking a friendship for a whole year, for fucking over a guy who trusted you? What kind of god damn logic is it that lets you treat people like some kind of disposable napkin -- use and toss out and forget it?" "Nobody's tossing anything out -- at least, it doesn't have to be that way." He said it but he looked away now as he spoke and his voice trailed off without conviction.

"Yes it does." Neither of them looked up as I stood and pushed back my chair and I didn't look back as I made my way out so I never knew what they said to each other, if anything. I tried a scalding shower back at the hotel but it didn't do much good and I still felt guilty and gritty the next day when I boarded my plane for the States.

*Greece*

Talya and I arrived in Greece in late August of 1975, not long after the United States and the rest of the other NATO countries began an extended period of doing nothing about Turkey's sudden and bloody take-over of most of the Greek portion of the island of Cyprus. As an American lecturing at the University of Thessaloniki for a year I spent the first few weeks trying to convince some very angry students that my position on the issue was not synonymous with my government's. Karamanlis was in power but most of those who took my courses were old enough to have personally experienced the rule of the Colonels and they understood the distinction between a people and their rulers; by October there were no pickets outside my classroom, but there were still a few pointed anti-American questions every so often just to keep me on my toes.

Theo Petrakis was the other American in the department and we shared the same office, but he had less of an adjustment to make. He spoke modern Greek fluently and he'd been to the university before, seven years earlier during his first sabbatical from Harvard. I'd read his early book on Melville and liked it. I could remember the sheer power of the writing better than I could remember the intricacies of his argument about Pierre, or the Ambiguities, but those were the hectic Berkeley days when I'd buy stacks of used paperbacks at the store on Telegraph Avenue and then go across the street to the Café Mediterranean and sit for hours drinking coffee and reading myself into a stupor, so my remembering the force of that book in particular seemed worth mentioning when we first met at the welcoming cocktail party given in our honor by the department chairman, Christos Vanidis.

"Your book on Melville's treatment of moral responsibility is an impressive piece of work. Do you still believe what you wrote about it then?"

"Didn't know anybody remembered the damn thing. You must be one of the ten people who bought it and read it besides my mother. Yeh, I still believe most of it. Haven't touched the subject since, though -- almost as Byzantine a thing as Herman's style or the church on the corner here. Melville a specialty of yours?"

"No, just liked your book. And I'm afraid I only bought it in paper -- and used at that."

"Ah, a truly wise man; do you, perchance, like sailing and retsina as well?"

"Enjoy the first though I'm no expert and I'm just beginning to acquire a taste for the second."

"Etsi bravo. And life's manifold possibilities are once more made manifest. I see a good year in our futures!"

"Excuse me, Theo, but there's someone over here I would like you to meet." He moved off with Vanidis, half-raising his glass in mock salute to me as he left.

Talya came up with two Greek women in tow and introduced them as graduate assistants and fraternal twins -- the only females working in the whole department as it turned out \-- who had offered to give her Greek lessons three times a week either at their home in the center of the city or at the apartment we'd found out in the Karabounaki section. Kiki was the shorter of the two and the more outgoing, but they were both strikingly attractive. When I shook hands with Cassandra I couldn't help staring at the thin streak of white that ran through her otherwise coal-black shoulder-length hair. She blushed a little but seemed to be used to the reaction.

"It is what you call a birthmark, I think. I surely would not dye it like this."

"I apologize for staring, but it's very attractive on you. I'd call it one of those lucky accidents of birth."

"Sometimes I wear a hat to hide it and sometimes I just forget about it and live with the attention it receives."

She began to look uncomfortable so I let Talya, who I knew had sensed the same thing, lead them away toward the group around Theo and Vanidis on the other side of the room. Kiki looked back with a small smile as they walked off, but Cassandra seemed either self-absorbed or just plain disinterested as she said goodbye. I figured it hadn't been one of my more successful social moments.

At the office the next day I asked Theo about the department and the university and what it was like, in general, to live in northern Greece for a year as an American.

"The last time I was here it was very exciting. My parents came from the south -- actually from Heraklion on Crete -- and they always talked of this part of Greece as the center of radical politics in the country. They meant the left, I imagine, and they were correct; Thessaloniki, and particularly the university, has often been a source of whatever socialist opposition the rightists would tolerate in this century. Sort of a training ground for the young politicians who would eventually try for the big brass power ring down in Athens. When I lived here in '68 it was right after the TET offensive in Nam and this place was zoosvile for an American -- one day they'd boycott my classes or threaten me as I came to work, the next I'd get rousing applause for the most uninspired lecture. You'll notice the students here are usually older than those at home – it's like that throughout the country -- so in those volatile days it wasn't unusual for me to socialize with them on a regular basis. I was invited for coffee and meals quite often and the political discussions were always heated ones. The university was closed because of riots for a while and so we'd gather at a café on the paralleia, those who were interested in hearing or jeering at this visiting napalming fascist pig, and we'd talk. Not much literature got discussed, but it sure as hell wasn't boring."

"Did you come here alone that first time too?" Vanidis had mentioned to me the previous night that Theo was divorced and had taken a small apartment in the student section of the city just north of the walled campus.

"Yes, all alone then as well. I'd been married for almost eight years -- ever since my last year in graduate school -- but we packed it in just before I took my first sabbatical. Probably lucky there were no kids." He didn't sound very convinced about the last item.

"What's the department like? Is Vanidis as friendly as he seems -- and why so few women?"

"Christos is okay most of the time, but I understand the department is due to get its first lucrative chair and he's only acting chairman right now so I imagine he and Pappas, the only other senior person, will be quite carefully lining up support -- both here and outside the department, in the higher halls of academe and the Ministry of Education itself, where it really counts -- and scrambling for the plum. Christos can be a pompous little tyrant if he feels pressured, I imagine, but Pappas was a tough bastard even seven years ago and I doubt that he's mellowed much since. He's certainly the better scholar, though -- his field is linguistic theory -- and his students fear him but insist that he's brilliant in class.

"Whoever gets the chair will automatically head the department and, while it's really none of our business in the long run, I guess someone up there will eventually ask for our opinion. Right now it looks like a classic case: Christos Vanidis, the competent administrator, in competition with Nicholas Pappas, the productive scholar, for control of the department. Hardly a world-shattering event, but it's the little things that mean a lot to some people.

"And speaking of women -- and why shouldn't we? -- the reason they are not visible in abundance around here is that this illustrious institution, for all its radical students, still rather accurately reflects the general society in the way it dispenses its rewards. Women may earn degrees and strive for the seats at high table these days in Greece, but the best seats are still reserved for those dark-eyed little boys, so pampered by their mamas and sisters, who will grow fingering gold chains around their necks instead of worry beads in their hands and will contrive to run the proverbial show until something drastic upsets the sexual imbalance. Maybe a page from their own feminine past is in order -- a national crossing of the legs, so to speak."

"I met Cassandra and Kiki last night. Any idea how they got their jobs here -- extra-bright grad students or some political pull?"

"I don't really know. They weren't around the first time I was here, of course -- I don't imagine those Levantine lovelies are more than twenty-three or twenty-four, and I think someone said they still live with their parents -- but I got the feeling last night that neither of them is just another pretty face. Vanidis actually asked for their opinions last night, in public, in front of some heavyweight people from the Ministry and that's hardly the standard chauvinistic operating procedure around here if you're trying to impress the current Greek establishment with your credentials for being chosen honcho of the largest department in Greece's largest university. Methinks the ladies bear watching, wouldn't you say?"

"Quite so. And what's the American community in this city like -- the business people, the American Consulate crowd -- worth making an effort?"

Theo hesitated a moment and gave an unguarded look of slight suspicion before he responded.

"If you mean worth the effort for you and Talya, I can't tell you. Some very sharp people at the consulate and the usual slew of self-serving bureaucrats, but I don't know you two well enough to know if their social whirl is to your liking. Can't hurt to give it a try, though. If you mean to include me, I can tell you that the last time 'round the State Department crowd had a hands-off policy when it came to visiting academics -- not one invitation to their modest manse on the waterfront all year \-- and the U.S. Information Agency's cultural affairs officer, who's supposed to be our helpful liaison with both the Greek government and the university payroll people, wasn't much better. Maybe things will be different this time; they certainly couldn't be any worse."

I was beginning to feel as if my forte was fast becoming the touching of raw nerves -- first Cassandra and now Theo. I changed the subject.

"Maybe together we can liven things up down there. At least there'll be a different group to deal with after all this time. How 'bout some lunch?"

Ours was one of the newer buildings on the campus, all concrete and glass with tasteless touches of some highly polished silver-colored metal added here and there to give it the look of post-modernist West at its worst, but as we stepped out of the elevator on the ground floor we stopped to read the faded inscription on a copper plaque attached to the base of a rectangular piece of beautifully striated marble that stood in the very center of the large slate-floored lobby. It explained that the school was at one time known as the Aristotelian University and that the piece of marble displayed here was a piece of the original building of that institution. The relevant dates were thick with green corrosion and impossible to read, but seeing that old rock in that new lobby made me think of faded glory and of a book that had just come out a few months earlier. It was a foreign idealist's very critical view of what modern Greece had become and it was not very popular with the Karamanlis government; I'd read it just before our arrival and hoped it was an overstatement of the case.

"Theo, have you read Greece Without Columns yet?"

We were walking down the cracked cement steps of the front entrance and about to pass through one of the gates in the university's old stone wall that gave access to one of the busiest sections of the city itself.

"I started it a few days ago. A bit jaundiced, I'd say, but as far as I've gotten he seems to know whereof he speaks. It'll be interesting to hear what our students think of it."

We chose a taverna that Theo remembered as having good pastitsio and we found a table for two in the rear, against a wall decorated with several brass and copper cooking utensils and close to the cooking area. After ordering something to drink we got up and picked out the dishes we wanted, both of us relying heavily on the advice of the friendly cook who also seemed to be the owner. There was only one waiter and by the time he'd brought us our taramasalata and fresh bread the room was filling up and we'd made a decent dent in the small bottle of retsina. Theo seemed relaxed and very pleased to be there.

"It's a nice place, isn't it? Some romantics even call these places one of the essential elements of modern Greek culture. Some of the tavernas are little more than greasy spoons, but most -- like this one -- make me feel good about my heritage. Part of the reason I came back again, I guess."

"Talya was the one who really wanted us to take this offer when it came. She and her sister had been here before -- not up here, but to Athens and around the Peloponnesus -- with their parents when Talya was very young and she had fond memories of small villages with goats and donkeys and bright sunny days and colored fishing boats and she wanted us to see if it was all as she remembered it. There's an old red Volkswagen bug for sale at a garage near us and I think we'll buy it this week. We want to see as much of the country as possible, the islands and Crete and the south, and we'd like to get up to Yugoslavia and maybe Bulgaria too if we have the time."

The food was as good as Theo had remembered and the retsina no longer reminded me of turpentine and I held the glass up to my lips and the pine scent rose into my nostrils. We decided to go home for a little traditional rest after lunch instead of returning to the office so we took our time with the meal and even treated ourselves to a little ouzo rather than have desert. I noticed that Theo took the clear liquorice-tasting fire straight while I had to add water and turn the drink milky-white before I could even sip it and I was about to comment on the advantage of his inheriting a caste-iron stomach from his Greek ancestors when I saw Kiki and Cassandra come in. They didn't really look alike but my first fleeting thought as Kiki recognized us and they started our way was that they seemed to travel as a pair and maybe that added to what I'd already decided was the erotic nature of their charm. They were upon us by the time Theo noticed them but his surprise was only momentary and he quickly suggested we all move to a now-empty table for four in a small alcove off to one side of the room. When we were seated he addressed the women.

"Dr. Vanidis tells me your family came from Crete originally, as mine did. Do you still have relatives there?"

"Yes, but only our grandfather -- our mother's father -- and one elderly aunt are still there. They live on a small farm a few miles east of Heraklion, not far from the U.S. air station. Our parents moved to the mainland and came to Thessaloniki many years ago so my father could find work. He works with leather and furs and all the jobs in that business have been up here in the north for a long time now. We go back to visit our grandfather quite often." Kiki then turned to me.

"Have you ever been to Crete?"

"No, not yet, but I have every intention of going there. I understand that the beaches are wild and beautiful on the south shore."

"And often very windy." Cassandra added. "The tides can sometimes be very dangerous at those beaches that seem to be the most peaceful and pretty. Most of the tourists -- that is, all those except the hippies who are still at Matala in the caves and the trailer camps -- use the northern beaches near Heraklion. The wind can get bad there too, but most of those beaches have restaurants and shelters and regular bus service to and from the town. Unfortunately they are getting to be very crowded during the summer and early autumn and those closest to town are often very dirty. It used to be very nice near our farm, but lately it is not very pretty."

"I stopped at the air station once," Theo said, "when I visited Heraklion back in 1968. It had no planes that I could see, just a lot of radar and communications equipment and a few very bored American airmen. I hear that it's been expanded quite a bit since then and now it's one of the sore points between your government and ours. Doesn't Karamanlis say he wants the U.S. to get out of there?"

"He says it," Cassandra replied, "but he and his party will never do anything about it. Some people think the station should be moved to another island; others think it should be moved out of Greece altogether. There have been some demonstrations against Karamanlis' government because of its inactivity regarding this issue, but not very big ones and they have not yet been violent ones. Some people think, however, that it is only a matter of time before the government will be forced to do something."

The women went to choose their food and Theo and I nursed our drinks.

"Do you get the feeling that our Hellenic beauties do not think exactly alike when it comes to Greco-American relations?" he asked as we and almost every other man in the room followed their progress to the counter. Kiki moved energetically, with an open and apparently innocent smile; Cassandra seem to cover the same distance with less effort, holding her self more erect and giving the impression of being more aloof from her surroundings, her gaze as often downward or toward some middle distance as directly at anything or anyone.

"Can't really tell. But I'm surprised that neither of them is married yet. I thought such women in this country were usually anxious to attach themselves to wealthy and much older men at an early age."

"How do you know they're not?"

"Don't they both still live with their parents?"

"True, but that doesn't mean much these days. Apartments for young couples are so expensive and hard to come by now, specially in a city like this one, that it's common practice for young people to move in with one set of parents until they can find a place of their own. The more well-to-do parents often buy the newly married pair an apartment as a wedding present, but many young people aren't so fortunate."

"They certainly dress as if they come from a great deal of money. That black skirt of Cassandra's must have cost at least twice what she earns as a graduate assistant each month."

"You'll get used to it." He smiled as the women started back to us. "Young Greeks in this town spend a disproportionate share of their income, whatever it happens to be, on clothes. You've got to admit it makes for great people-watching from the sidewalk cafes. And my guess is that either of them would probably look delectable even in a burlap sack."

"You were talking about us," Kiki said as she sat down, a good-natured pout directed at Theo and a conspiratorial smile at her sister. "What were you saying?"

"I asked Theo if either of you were married and he said both of you would look gorgeous in bikinis." I sensed that they would have been more comfortable if I'd said Dr. Petrakis, but I didn't want to perpetuate that kind of formality if we were going to work together for a year.

"Isn't that what you call a non sequitur?" Kiki asked with mock seriousness, but they were both actually blushing a little.

"No, Kiki and I are still unmarried. How long have you and your wife been married?"

"Almost ten years, but we've known each other much longer. Talya and I met when we were both students."

"Do you have any children?" Kiki asked.

"No, we don't." They both tried not to show their curiosity and Cassandra was more successful. She turned at once to Theo.

"You're not married, are you -- Theo?" She hesitated on his name but once she got it out she didn't seem to be self-conscious about it any longer. And a touch of the courageous as well, I thought.

"No, not anymore. I've been divorced for quite some time. And what about the others in the department -- are there eligible young men among the other graduate assistants or the teachers?"

Kiki looked questioningly at Cassandra for a second or two before answering and I hadn't been able to see if there'd been a responding glance; Cassandra's look seemed to be directed at the table top and the food they were now eating.

"Dr. Vanidis is married and he has two sons. Dr. Pappas is still a bachelor, but he is only forty -- such things are not unusual here. Men often wait until they are older and well-established before they marry and have a family.

She glanced at her sister before continuing.

"The other teachers are either married or not very interesting and there are many other graduate assistants who are still single. But we are in no hurry -- it is only our mother who sometimes gets a little worried." She smiled and bent to her food.

They insisted on paying their share of the bill and as we left the taverna they declined our invitation to take a walk to counteract the effects of the meal, saying they had to get back to the department to work and that it was only the lucky foreigners who were able to take off whenever they wished. We said goodbye and Theo and I strolled toward the waterfront. The avenue that ran in front of one side of the university campus was wide and tree-lined and the sidewalks were crowded with people heading home for their midday meal or doing some last-moment shopping before the stores closed for a few hours for the afternoon. By the time we reached the narrow streets of the older part of the city, the section where the old copper and furniture and clothes shops were, the traffic had thinned out and we were walking on some nearly deserted pavement. As we turned onto Tsimiski, one of the major shopping and banking streets, we caught the last of the crowds leaving the stores. Theo waved to a tall young man in the doorway of the Citibank building who was just looking up and who smiled at Theo and waved back.

"Iannis, my banker," he explained, "a man to whom I shall introduce you at your earliest convenience. He was once a student of mine; one of the more active ones, as a matter of fact."

We turned right off Tsimiski and left onto the paralleia along the waterfront, the large and impressive buildings on the shore side alternating with more modest ones of only three or four floors and all of them facing a half-moon shaped harbor with loading cranes and large fuel storage tanks at one tip and the headland that formed the Karabounaki section of the city at the other. Theo pointed out some of the sights as we moved along.

"That castle-looking thing on the edge of the park over there is called the White Tower. It's supposed to be the city's most notable landmark but it's never impressed me very much. I prefer that huge bronze of Bucephalus, Alexander's horse, standing on that white stone pedestal further along the paralleia. Set against the bay like that it sometimes looks like the noble beast is walking on water, if you get the right angle.

"After dinner in the evening this walk is the most popular one in town; up and down, old people, kids, and young couples, everybody taking the air and checking out everybody else. Sometimes it's so crowded you have to work just to make it a few blocks -- when the weather is good, that is. In the winter it gets very cold, particularly along here."

We passed a kaffeinion that was almost empty now, only a few older men bent over the plain wooden tables, small white coffee cups and white saucers to one side, the inevitable board for the Greek version of backgammon spread open in the center. No women, no decorations, just strong coffee and the game. Farther along we came to a beige building with no windows on the ground floor and a very inconspicuous unpolished brass plate with the words "Consulate of the United States of America" attached to the reinforced concrete at eye level just to the right of the door. There was a single black button above the plate.

"It's called the low profile approach to international relations. Many people around here remember us rather fondly from the post-World War II period, but some of the younger folk have no such nostalgia for the land of milk and honey. A few years ago our CIA Chief of Station disappeared from his Athens office and turned up dead out here in the Bay of Thessaloniki -- at that time still called Salonika by most of the natives -- and there were conflicting stories about who was responsible and what the guy was doing here that got him terminated in such a watery way. There were marches on the consulate organized by some of the university students; a few bricks were thrown and even a few shots fired, but no explanations about the presence of our intelligence people were ever offered -- at least none that convinced any of the organizers of the demonstrations. For a while the papers carried articles about possible American activity directed at Yugoslavia from here – we're only an hour from the closest border crossing, and the city of Skopje is just a straight run from there -- but it all vanished from the front pages after a few days."

Theo pointed to the flag flying atop the building and the black bars on the door.

"We still fly the flag, of course, although it's a smaller one than it used to be, but now there are bars at uncle's gate and if you want access after certain daylight hours you have to ring the bell and be recognized and admitted by the duty officer. It's a small post, our consulate up here, but rather a sensitive one at times. The embassy down in Athens is too far away to pick up any rumblings up here in time to use them to any advantage so the consulate gets the job, as far as I can tell."

We crossed over and walked back on the water side toward the commercial docks and the storage-tanks, the pavement warmed by the afternoon sun and the cargo ships at anchor serving as dark backdrops for the few white-sailed pleasure craft tacking close-in on the bay. As long as I didn't look too closely at the garbage washing up against the stone sea wall on our left I could imagine I was walking along the shore of one of Greece's fabled islands instead of along a major thoroughfare in the heart of one of her most populous cities. Theo indicated a restaurant across the street that was still crowded and which seemed to be making no preparations to close.

"Olympus Naoussa, probably one of the best \-- and most reasonable -- restaurants in the whole town. As popular with the rich tobacco and shipping people as with the less affluent university crowd. Waiters in clean white jackets who remember serving royalty and who know the lengthy menu by heart. Politicians on the make are careful to be seen there and the foreign diplomatic community is always well represented, as is the foreign press. It's not fancy inside, just comfortable chairs and white tablecloths and fast service, but many of Thessaloniki's important people make it a habit to have lunch here. Some of the rest of us like it because the wine is cheap and the moussaka goes light on the potatoes and melts in your mouth."

Beyond the restaurant the waterfront streets became shorter and the nicer shops gave way to small ship chandlers and hardware stores and hurry-up souvlakia stands that catered to the seamen and dockworkers who clustered about in knots of apparent idleness, their black wool watch caps or black Greek fishing caps looking somewhat somber and uncomfortable in the glare and heat of the afternoon sun. I noticed an American tanker, one of the Shell Oil fleet, tied up to one of the larger docks, her waterline markings high and dry, but she didn't have any steam up and nobody seemed interested in loading her. A small Yugoslavian trawler was tied up alongside a Greek ship at the next dock and the traditional afternoon break wasn't keeping them from being unloaded. As Theo and I passed one group of workers Theo was saying something about the recent refusal of a Greek union to allow its members to handle U.S. cargo and I got the distinct impression from the looks we received that our speaking English was not exactly endearing us to the local population. I feigned an interest in a shop up on one of the wider side streets and steered us away from the water and back toward Tsimiski Street.

After walking aimlessly for a few more blocks we paused at a taxi stand and finally convinced one of the off-duty drivers to take me to Karabounaki. Theo said he wanted to walk back to his place so I climbed in and said goodbye. As we pulled away Theo waved and headed in the direction of the university.

At our apartment Talya handed me a letter she'd already opened. It was an invitation for both of us from Jonathan Blackbridge, the American Consul General, to a reception in honor of the Greek Minister of Education who had recently been appointed by Karamanlis. I thought it was a nice friendly gesture on the consulate's part, but Talya had a different explanation.

"We'll definitely go, of course, even if it's only to see what those people are like, but I'm sure their guest lists are determined by more than general friendship extended to any Americans who happen to be residents here. With the junta leaders who ruled Greece between 1967 and last year now on trial or in jail and with this new government trying to stabilize things and steer a moderately right-of-center course, I imagine our striped-pants crowd will be out to make friends and influence people. You and Theo are in a good position to know what the university types think about all this and I'll bet you two get invited to these affairs quite regularly, both to help them keep tabs on which way the intellectual wind may be blowing in this part of the world and to impress the local powers that be with the charm and perspicacity of our visiting scholars. Just remember, whither thou goest ---."

"I know, and it'll be the perfect place for you to wear that new black dress you bought. It's not for another two weeks so I guess I have time to go out and buy a tie. Certainly wouldn't want to embarrass anyone considerate enough to invite us to a party without even having met us."

As it turned out the reception was thoroughly enjoyable. Talya was mistakenly greeted as a Greek by the handsome and debonair West German consul who tried to atone for his error by being very attentive to her the rest of the evening. The food and drink were excellent, although little concession had been made to the fact that we were in Greece. The barmen dispensed Kentucky bourbon and twelve-year-old scotch with something approaching abandon and the plates of rare roast beef and silver bowls of fresh cold shrimp were being replaced as fast as they were emptied. After introducing himself Blackbridge made sure I met the consulate's military assistance advisor, Dan Kubish, and the United States Information Agency's cultural affairs officer, Ronald Jackson. Kubish was a genial fat man who ate enormous quantities of shrimp and drank glass after glass of ice water and who eventually invited Talya and me to spend a day on a small boat he said he had docked at one of the Karabounaki marinas. Jackson was an ambitious class three Foreign Service information Officer who bluntly blamed his not being a class two on his being black in a predominately white agency. He was sarcastic and often bitter about his slow movement through the ranks of his profession, but he was careful to spend a good portion of the reception with either Theo or me, asking us about our impressions of the staff, the students, and even the administration of the university. After I introduced him to Talya I could tell she didn't trust him, but he was sharp enough to sense her feelings and when he rather graciously offered us his two season tickets to the Monday night performances of the Thessaloniki state orchestra -- he said he was given the box seats by virtue of his position as the cultural affairs officer but he very seldom had the time or inclination to use them -- Talya relented a little and smiled at him as I thanked him for his kindness and accepted the tickets.

Kubish seemed to know everyone there and it was he who introduced me to Bruce Meadows and his wife, the directors of the American Farm School which was located just north of the city. Kubish had mentioned that Meadows was an ex-OSS officer who had spent time in the nearby hills in the 1940's, had become a missionary of sorts after that war and had returned to Greece to found and run a school for deserving Greek children who were taught the latest in modern agricultural techniques in the supporting atmosphere of a private boarding school. Meadows was something of a local hero it seemed; he and his school had survived the many swings of the Greek political pendulum and Kubish thought Meadows' reputation among the people of the region, if he ever took out Greek citizenship and ran for office, would assure him of a political victory. His best students often got scholarships to study in the States after they left the Farm School and when they returned to their country they usually found important jobs in a nation that was still highly dependent on agriculture.

When we shook hands I noticed the scar on his neck, just below the left ear. It was from a very old wound, maybe even thirty years old, and the bullet must have come very close to tearing the artery and killing him. He was in his sixties, lean and trim and patrician-like with his Anglo-Saxon good looks and his corduroy Norfolk hunting jacket, well worn at the elbows. He looked directly at you when he spoke, with an insistence that must have been disturbing to many, and when I called Talya over and introduced her to him I watched him run his eyes over the black dress and settle without hesitation on her face. His Greek wife, Rodanthi, was smiling at his obvious pleasure in the appraisal and I was suddenly struck by the similarity of the two women's dark features; if Rodanthi could shed twenty years and twenty pounds she and Talya might, in dim light, pass for twins. Meadows shook Talya's hand but spoke to his wife.

"Salonika is now graced with another beautiful woman."

He then turned back to us. "I hope you two will come out to the Farm School for a visit one of these days. It's only a ten-minute ride from where you live and Rodanthi and I are very proud of the place. If you like to sail we could go out one day -- Theo has been out with us and he could come along again if he liked, and if you don't mind. You don't have to call ahead -- just come out whenever you feel like it. We can get away for a sail almost any time."

His wife seemed genuinely enthused about the idea. "Yes, please do come out. We'll pack a good lunch and maybe even sail as far as the closest finger of Halkidiki, the three pronged peninsula to the east of the bay. There are some fine beaches there and it might still be warm enough for a swim, if we're lucky."

Theo and I met at the roast beef and he, too, seemed to be enjoying himself even though the bar had no retsina to offer. He told me he was settling for Jack Daniels and he was beginning to wonder if it was the American brew that was bringing the whackos out of the woodwork.

"See that large blonde lady over there, the one talking to Kubish and the new Minister of Education? She's the wife of some visiting American congressman – said she and her husband got invited at the last minute – and a few minutes ago she came over and introduced herself and then pulled me into a corner, looked around in classic paranoid fashion, and whispered in my ear, 'Avoid the scary Langada Pass between Sparta and Kalamata in the winter.' Then she looked around again to see if anyone else might have heard her pithy whisper and then she scuttled away. Whacko, my friend, absolutely whacko!"

"Don't complain. At least this time around you're getting invited."

"Yes, but the price one has to pay just for some decent hooch and some superb roast beef."

As the reception was breaking up Jackson came over to where Talya and I were waiting to say goodbye to our host.

"They didn't find me a very fancy apartment when I started this assignment last year – a lot of people won't rent to blacks, I hear – but I'd like you to come up for drinks and dinner one of these days. I'll put together a small group and have my secretary send you an invitation. It's only a few doors down from here on the same street, fourth floor, with a rather boring view of the bay – ever notice how tedious it can be looking at water like this every day? – and the place is even smaller than the one I had in Chad five years ago, but I've got a good cook and I'll invite some interesting people for you to meet. I'll be in touch. Goodnight."

As we left I saw him talking earnestly to Theo, who was also waiting to thank Blackbridge and say goodbye.

*Cambridge*

The Chinese believe that you are most vulnerable during that brief moment of transition when you are leaving the bright world of internal awareness and re-entering the dark world of external stimuli. It is a time of momentary disorientation, a fleeting period of a kind of unawareness that has a tinge of loss or even fear about it. In the West we say we're "coming out of it" or "coming back to reality"; in the East it's often referred to as "losing the light." Mr. Ma had taught him how to make the change as smoothly and unobtrusively as possible, but it still always left him with a vague feeling of sadness. He resolved to work on eliminating or at least reducing that feeling the next time; absence, he knew, was not the same thing as loss and he didn't want to let the slightest sense of sadness mar even his recollections of those quiet times.

He glanced up slowly, raising the glass to drink and returning it to the table before he spoke.

"Anything the matter, Mr. McCabe?"

"No, sir. You just appeared to be busy with your own thoughts and I wasn't sure if I should disturb you or not."

"No problem. I was just slowing down my world a little and contemplating the consequences of stepping off. Not suicide, mind you, just the ramifications of a major change of pace. Care for that beer now?"

"Yes, thanks. My meeting was cancelled so I thought I would come back and have one before I go back to my rooms and prepare a history paper for tomorrow's tutorial."

"Fine. I'm glad you returned, sit down and I'll get it for you. Abbots ale or would you prefer something else?"

"Abbots will do nicely, thanks."

When he got up to place the order he thought he sensed nervousness in the man and when he sat down again and handed him his drink he was sure of it.

"Something on your mind, Colin, that you'd care to burden one of your long-suffering lecturers with?"

"As a matter of fact, sir, there is. I realize it's none of my business, but the man who gave me that letter to give to you was a strange sort and I can't figure out how he knew that I would know you; I've never seen him in here before and I'm sure I've never met him before. He wasn't British and he didn't sound like an American; looked like an Arab or a Turk and sounded as if he learned English by listening to a computer. I don't mean to be insulting one of your friends, but he very definitely made me feel uneasy. To be truthful, not the sort I would expect a don to be mates with, even given the democratic inclinations of you Yanks. Not to put too fine a point on it, sir, the man looked like a bloke who broke heads for a living."

He watched the young man carefully as he spoke, deciding it was the apparent general incongruity of the messenger and the visiting academic that bothered McCabe rather than anything more specific. He set aside, at least for the time being, his earlier suspicions and tried to put McCabe at ease.

"Not a friend of mine, Colin, so there's no insult. Just a courier employed by some people I once knew from the States who are not very particular about whom they hire."

He offered a reassuring smile and switched the conversation to his own seminar and the young man's imminent history paper until McCabe finished his ale and took his leave, probably wondering what kind of letter such a courier would be bringing to his American teacher but apparently satisfied that the latter was not involved with obvious criminal types in some conspiracy against the Crown.

*Greece*

By the middle of November within the department the surface certainly looked calm -- classes were held regularly, lectures were relatively well–attended, there were no student strikes, and the graduate assistants and the faculty usually greeted each other in a friendly manner when they passed in the corridors -- but I could feel the tension building as the term progressed. Vanidis stopped in our office more frequently after we'd had our third monthly department meeting, usually on the pretext of asking our advice on some minor departmental policy. At that last meeting a group of graduate assistants, Cassandra and Kiki among them, had complained that it was insulting to have the department meetings conducted in English just to accommodate the two visiting foreigners and they proposed that from now on all such affairs be conducted in Greek. Vanidis was embarrassed by the proposal, arguing that all but one of us (meaning me) was bilingual and that it was only common courtesy to see that that person was not excluded from the department's deliberations. As the assistants could make proposals and participate in the discussions but had no voting privileges, the proposal was defeated at the final vote. Theo and I abstained because of the awkwardness of our position; Pappas voted for the proposal without once speaking in support of it and Vanidis got just enough support from the other faculty to defeat it. As we filed out of the room after all the other business had been completed, Pappas stopped at my side long enough to offer some advice.

"Nothing in there to be taken personally, of course, but it would probably be better for all concerned if you could speed up your Greek lessons. A time of heightened national consciousness is not the best time to argue a case on the basis of courtesy."

In the weeks that followed it became clear that he was only partially correct. Some of the assistants did make it a personal thing and although it was never a matter of outright insult or even obvious impoliteness, there was a definite chill in the air when we met. Kiki was just as friendly as ever, even taking the time one day to tell me the proposal had been a matter of principle and certainly not directed at me as an individual, but Cassandra seemed to be less generous. She spent a few days ignoring me completely and then only gradually allowed herself to become friendly again, never actually bringing the subject up but giving me several opportunities – all of which I carefully ignored – to do so myself. She was Pappas' assistant in a large introductory linguistics course and I passed her quite often as she was going in or coming out of his office, usually carrying large stacks of student compositions and looking overworked. At one such encounter I asked her if she'd like to have a cup of coffee with me in the student cafeteria on the second floor and she somewhat hesitatingly agreed. When we were seated in the almost-empty room I asked her about the heavy load she and the other assistants seemed to carry in the department.

"Since you people do most of the grading in all the large classes and you invigilate all the exams, how is it you don't get to vote in the meetings?"

"We still use a very traditional system here \-- some of us would call it out-of-date -- and the hierarchy is very carefully maintained. Only full-time instructors have any influence in the department and there are simply no women among them, as you can see. As graduate assistants we are supposed to consider ourselves lucky just to have our jobs; it's very hard to get these positions and many qualified people apply who are never even considered. Unfortunately, like almost everything else in our country these days, a great deal depends on who you know or who your relatives know."

"Do you and Kiki have relatives who are influential in the university?"

"No, we are just two of the lucky ones. We graduated from here as the top students in our class and that particular year the Ministry was under some pressure to liberalize the system, to bring in some women -- of course, only at the bottom \-- and some young teachers who might have slightly less traditional views about both politics and their individual subjects. Kiki and I were the department's answer to that pressure and we've done our jobs well enough so that nobody has been too anxious to get rid of us, at least not yet. To be truthful, Kiki does all the work for two of the teachers, including their library research and most of their actual classroom teaching, and everybody just ignores the fact. Even the students accept the system -- that is, most of them used to. Lately some of them are getting disgusted with it all and are calling for some basic reforms."

"I had a feeling that that was going on, but not everyone in the department goes along with it, do they?"

"No, quite a few do their own work and don't take unfair advantage of us, but most of them just close their eyes to what is going on around them. Only a few are really interested in changing things, in making the whole system more equitable and less repressive. Only a few."

I wanted to ask who they were but she finished her coffee and hurried out, saying she had papers to mark before the next morning's classes.

Back in our office I asked Theo instead.

"I don't know much more about it than you do. Although I remember that back in the late sixties Pappas was publishing quite a few articles on the connection between society and language and the need for serious change in the university system as well as in the country's basic political structure. Socio-linguistic stuff, I guess it was, and at that time some of the more active student politicians around here tried to get him to become their guru."

"Did he do it?"

"Not that I know of. He wrote a great deal about the need for reform but he never seemed to join any organizations or give any public speeches or march in any of the rallies. He seemed to believe quite strongly in the issues but he confined himself to the printed page and only an occasional reference to his dissatisfaction with the system in his classroom lectures. Eventually the more aggressively political students found other leaders to follow -- faculty who no longer seem to be around, by the way -- and Pappas seemed content to retire back into relative obscurity. My sense of the place these days, however, is that he's still highly respected by what currently passes for the politically active portion of the student population, quiet though they may now be."

"If he gets the chairmanship over Vanidis do you think he'll try to improve the graduate assistants' lot?"

"I imagine he'd have a go at it, although I'm not sure how effective he'd be fighting the whole educational establishment. I'd guess that he'd at least make some worthwhile changes in his own department."

"Any others in the department who are secure enough or dissatisfied enough to openly support him?"

"A few who are fed up with the status quo but not many who are secure enough in their jobs; if he doesn't get the new chair I doubt that anyone will stick his neck out to support any meaningful changes."

"I just had coffee with Cassandra and I got the strong feeling that she and at least some of the other assistants are really tired of the way they're being treated. I think they'd support anyone who'd cut down their out-of-class workload – the unofficial one – and who'd hire a few women faculty."

"True, but right now they are almost powerless and they've got nobody to plead their case for them. Even Pappas, who probably sympathizes with them, is playing the whole thing close to the vest. I don't know if he's being cautious because he wants that chair or if he has something else on his mind. If nothing drastic happens between now and decision time – they say that should be in early spring, maybe March or April – I think Vanidis will probably get the nod. He's now had the experience of running the department and Kiki was telling me that he has a brother-in-law and two close friends who work in the divisional Dean's office and the Rector's office. Not necessarily my personal choice, of course, and I imagine we'll be able to voice our opinions one of these days, but I doubt that whatever the two of us have to say will have much influence on the eventual outcome. Probably shouldn't when you come to think about it."

"I think I'll try to talk to Pappas about some of this, see what he's really like if I can. We haven't done much more than pass the time of day so far – he seems to spend most of his time in his office or in the main library, and the few times I've gone to his office he's seemed either busy or distracted, or maybe both. Have you had a chance to get to know him any better since the term began?"

"No, not really. He's something of a loner and so far I've been too busy to make the effort. Now that things are settling down maybe I'll get around to it."

A few days later Theo and I were invited to join Dan Kubish and Bruce Meadows on Kubish's boat for a brief afternoon sail on the bay, just a warm-up, Kubish said on the phone, for the longer day on the water that Talya and I would be having with him at a later date. We took a taxi from the university to the marina where the boat was moored, both of us in good spirits, commenting on the unseasonably warm weather and bright sunshine as the car pulled up where Kubish and Meadows were waiting. The boat was named Gachoucha and she stood alone among the 40-foot and 50-foot racing sloops that rocked gently on either side of her; she was about 30 feet long and the only craft in sight that was not made of fiberglass. Her wooden hull was a beautiful blue with a freshly painted white water line and her teak deck looked newly scraped and restained, her wheel a scarred and dark mahogany with a rich coat of varnish. The brass fittings gleamed from what must have been a recent polishing and the lines and Dacron sails all looked new and were stowed with great care. As I stepped aboard I wondered if Kubish were the sailor or if someone else kept his fine old boat shipshape for him. As we motored out and then raised the mainsail he brought up four cold Amstel beers from the small cabin below and told us about the boat.

"At some point a Turk owned it and the name comes from him. I have no idea what it refers to but I'm superstitious so I kept it, I put in a new auxiliary engine and fixed up the head and galley and bunks down below, but the rest was in decent shape except for a new paint job inside and out and all new sails and lines. I liked the wood and the old brass fittings and the classic look of it – and the price was right. The Greeks confiscated it from some smugglers about two years ago, the Colonels gave it to our Consul General as a gift, and last year the consulate passed it on to me for a nominal amount because nobody had any real interest in it or knew what to do with it. Just a matter of being in the right place at the right time, I guess. A couple of the Marine guards are old sailors and they keep it in shape for me."

Kubish was unusually light on his feet for so heavy a man and he and Meadows handled the wheel and the sails (as the wind picked up they had added a small jib) while Theo and I relaxed and enjoyed the almost cloudless sky and the view of other pleasure boats on the bay who were also taking advantage of the pleasant day. Meadows cast a critical look up at the slight puffing in the mainsail and then back at Kubish who was at the wheel, one hand on the varnished wood and one hand holding his beer, a man who obviously valued his boat and the good life it seemed to signify and a man who seemed rather unconcerned about the smaller details of sailing. He spoke to me as he and Meadows exchanged knowing smiles.

"Bruce is a great believer in perfection. He thinks I should do everything as carefully and methodically as he runs the Farm School but I keep telling him that people of my size and girth are not given to nuances; we're more interested in the larger picture. When I was younger and much thinner I played football at West Point; as a defensive tackle my whole life was spent keeping track of details. I hardly ever even picked up my head to look around and see what was happening on the rest of the field. Well, now I like to look around and see what the rest of the world is doing."

"Don't let Dan mislead you, gentlemen," Meadows said as he came back to join us around the wheel well. "He still keeps track of things, only now he's developed this wonderful façade of genial disinterest that puts the unwary and the naïve at ease and allows him to have his way with them. Beware the friendly fat man who sells guns to the natives – he is a great believer in man's imperfection."

Their friendly banter continued for a while against the background of the rhythmic and gentle slapping of water against the hull and the occasional cry of a gull as we tacked away from the downtown harbor area and Theo came up from below with more Amstel. I was lying on my back with my eyes closed as I soaked up the sun, lazily wondering how the fluid in my inner ear -- or was it inner ears? -- was adjusting to the easy roll of the boat.

We were heading southwest, toward the mouth of the bay, and the sun was behind us so at least one of us should have seen the danger before it developed, but we were far from shore and the wind had been brisk but steady and there seemed no need for particular vigilance as we lounged and talked together in the stern. Theo yelled something to Kubish, who was still at the helm, just as a sudden gust of wind caught us and the boat leaped ahead, heeling sharply and throwing me against Meadows, whose beer bottle shattered on one of the deck's metal cleats. The blast from the freighter's foghorn was so loud I thought she'd already run over us, but as I grabbed at anything to steady myself I saw Kubish spin the wheel and Meadows ducking under the boom as it whizzed by and the Gachoucha came about with the black hull of the freighter looming above us, so close it seemed to have obliterated the sun and thrown us into instant night. I knew I could touch the huge scabs of rust on her side as she slid by if I reached out with either hand, but the enormity of her closeness held me rigid, as if my making any physical contact with the leviathan would ensure my being destroyed by it. The huge mass hung over us for what seemed like eternity and then her wash pushed us out and away, the sailboat rolling and pitching furiously for a few minutes and then settling almost calmly as the freighter's screws churned past and her wake fanned out evenly behind her.

As I had looked up stunned at the blackness above me I had flashed on Talya and regretted our decision not to have children; as the freighter continued north and we watched her recede my mind recorded the facts that she never seemed to slow down, several deckhands at her stern-rail appeared to be yelling at us and giving us the finger, and the ship was flying the United States flag.

The four of us were shaken but except for some glass to pick up and some water to bail out of the wheel well the Gachoucha was unharmed. We were all a little chagrined about our failure to see the freighter sooner and Theo voiced what all of us must have been thinking.

"I know the sonofabitch had the right-of-way but he must have seen us long before he used his fog horn; it was almost as if the bastard was trying to see how close he could come without actually wrecking us. Damn, I hate any kind of bully!"

"I'm not sure if he saw us at all before he used that horn," Kubish said, "and even if he did he might have figured we certainly could see him and we'd tack out of his way in time. What burns me a little is that he didn't even reduce speed to see if he'd sent us to the bottom or if anyone was in the water. I guess he thinks it's his ocean because he displaces more of it than we do."

"Did anyone catch the name on the bow or on the fantail?" Meadows asked,

"Certainly not on the bow," Theo said, and we all nodded agreement, "and all I could get from the stern was that she was out of Wilmington, Delaware. Too damn shook up to notice much more."

"Maybe I'll ask Blackbridge to write the DuPont's a note asking them to have their ships slow down a little and watch out for the little guys in this part of the world," Kubish quipped, but from the way he said it I got the distinct impression he might do just that.

We stayed out for another hour or so but by then the wind had died down and our collective enthusiasm for the afternoon's outing had gone along with it; as Theo pointed out when we all agreed to head in, even the beer was beginning to taste a little flat after our near collision. After docking the boat and hosing it down and securing the cabin we walked to the nearby taxi stand. Kubish drove off in his own car to the consulate and the three of us went our separate ways.

In December the current CIA station chief at the embassy, Richard Walsh, was shot and killed in Athens. We heard the news on the radio one afternoon and that night at dinner in Jackson's apartment overlooking the waterfront there was a great deal of speculation among the guests. No group had yet claimed to be responsible for the killing – as it turned out, no group would and the death would remain a mystery as far as the general public was concerned – and there were a few nervous Americans and a few embarrassed Greeks sharing the cultural affairs officer's fine wine and imported steaks that evening. Talya and I had decided to go even though we knew the meal might prove to be an uncomfortable affair; the news of the shooting had come too late for Jackson to cancel the dinner and, as Talya pointed out to me, maybe one of the other guests would have more information than the brief radio bulletin had offered.

The director of the Thessaloniki orchestra and his wife, the first violinist, tried to steer the conversation toward musical matters as we sat down to eat, but the rector of the university and his large and aggressive spouse would have none of it; they had obviously decided that it was their duty to explain to each American present that the shooting did not reflect the will of the majority of Greeks and that a nation should not be judged by the isolated actions of its lunatic fringe. Jackson had invited two other Greeks and they arrived, quite fashionably, an hour late. Alexi was in his mid-thirties, a tanned and handsome bachelor who ran one of the largest tobacco businesses in the country, and he was accompanied by Marika, a very stylish and beautiful woman in her late twenties whose family owned the city's most exclusive tennis club. Neither she nor Alexi seemed, at first, to have much interest in how Walsh had died or who might have killed him, but as the evening progressed it became apparent that they probably knew more about it than any of the others at the table.

Jackson had put Theo at one end and he himself sat at the other and the four couples were arranged along either side, nobody sitting next to the person with whom they had come. Marika was on my left and I had to make an effort to pay attention to anyone else; her long blonde hair framed a vaguely Eurasian face that had inherited the best of both worlds and her dark skin radiated the health of her youth and hinted at regular and strenuous exercise. I asked her if she played tennis at her own club.

"Yes, I'm the women's champion there, as a matter of fact. Alexi is the best player of all the men; we play as a team in all the mixed doubles tournaments at the club. When we met for the first time it was on a tennis court. Do you and your wife play?"

"As often as we can when we're at home. We haven't found a convenient place here yet."

"You should come and play at our club then. Alexi, you can sponsor them, can't you. It will give us another couple to play with."

"Of course," Alexi said, "It will be nice to have some new foreigners on the roster. Mr. Blackbridge and Mr. Meadows are members, but it's always good to add to the competition."

"I don't know how much competition we'll be," Talya said, "but it will be good to hit regularly again."

"As a matter of fact," Marika went on, "that man we were talking about before, Mr. Walsh, he used to play at our club whenever he was in town. I don't think he was a member, but he played as someone's guest quite often. Never in a tournament, just for exercise, I think. He was very nice, wasn't he, Alexi?"

"Very sincere and a very nice backhand. I played doubles with Bruce Meadows once against him and Jonathan Blackbridge. I believe it was Meadows who usually brought Walsh as a guest."

"The call I received from Athens just before the radio reported the shooting said that it happened without any real warning and that no suspects had yet been apprehended and no specific motives for the attack were yet clear. As you can image, the people down in our embassy are quite upset," Jackson said.

"I suppose one must be prepared for such violence if one is in charge of spies," the orchestra director added in what was almost an apologetic voice.

"To be shot in a public street in the capital of a country that is friendly to your own nation is little more than terrorism," the rector's wife added. "Only a madman would do such a thing."

"No, I think this is not the act of a madman," Alexi countered. A friend of mine at the club, one of the consuls from an Eastern bloc country, told me only a few days ago that some investigations by the CIA into some recent demonstrations against the presence of United States bases in our country had angered some very powerful Greeks who had until now been somewhat moderate. My friend thought some of the Americans might have gone too far in trying to pressure certain Greeks."

"Do you think, Alexi, that Walsh's death was part of an organized effort to get the Greek government to close the American bases?" I asked.

"I don't know. Perhaps Mr. Walsh and his people made enemies within the present government itself. Unless we catch the assailants or some radical group claims responsibility for the killing, I think it is very likely that we will never know what the real motive was."

"I don't agree at all," the rector said. "The shooting sounds like the desperate act of common criminals to me. If the press would not confuse the issue by writing all this nonsense about our country's anti-Americanism then the police would be fully supported by the people in their job of capturing the murderers."

"Were there more than one?" Theo asked.

"The radio report did not make it clear," Jackson said, "and our people at the embassy didn't seem to know for sure when they called me, but from what few details we have it sounds like a well planned and well executed attack."

"When they catch the murders they should simply shoot them and be done with it," the rector's wife declared with absolute conviction.

"Wouldn't that be just what the Colonels would have done?" the orchestra director asked. "Do we really want to go back to that kind of life?"

"Of course not," she responded, a little less convincingly and looking quickly across the table at her husband before going on, "but with such gangsterism I don't think we should be lenient. It only encourages the communists and the other troublemakers and it makes us look bad in the eyes of the other democracies of the world."

"Maybe we should be worried about the kind of country we are becoming rather than what other countries think of us," the violinist added in a quiet voice.

"Yes, I think you're right," her husband said. "If we dispense with the often lengthy process of the courts and just let the police punish people we are no better than a police state, and maybe Mr. Walsh's death is a more complicated matter than any of us knows and maybe his killers were even acting under orders from a foreign government -- we don't know, but I think it is best for us to have a thorough investigation and a fair trial before we decide the fate of anyone. Why else did we get rid of the Colonels and their regime?"

"Perhaps because the Americans no longer were as happy with them in power as they once were," Alexi responded. "Perhaps we are not as real a democracy as we like to believe."

By the time the dessert and coffee were served Jackson had turned the conversation to other matters and the tension in the room had substantially diminished, but most of the guests started leaving soon afterward and Jackson made no great effort to detain them. Talya and I were the last to go and we agreed on the way home that he had looked relieved to finally have that particular dinner party come to an end.

The next day he telephoned me at the office and asked if I would do him a favor. He said the embassy people in Athens had received several tips about the Walsh killing and one of them led very specifically to the University of Thessaloniki. He wanted me to keep my eyes and ears open and let him know if I found anything that might seem helpful. It was presented as a casual request and I saw no immediate conflict of interest with my lecturing responsibilities so I told him I'd do it. Then he asked if I'd like to go to Cyprus for a week.

"The American Center in Nicosia, on the Greek side of the Green Line of course, has been closed since the Turks took over the north. It's our educational and cultural office on the island -- we have a small library of American books and magazines and a few professional journals -- and we'd like to open it up again now that things have settled down a bit. Our ambassador there had requested an American to give a public lecture in the Center -- on a subject of his own choosing, of course, although our people there would like to be advised of the topic well enough in advance so that they can print up posters and get notices of the talk into the newspapers and on the radio beforehand -- and maybe even a lecture or two in some of the smaller cities if that can be arranged. I'm afraid Talya couldn't go with you -- it would be a testing of the waters, an attempt to see if Greek Cypriot public opinion toward us has calmed down enough for us to become a visible presence there again at this time, and our people there don't think it'd be a good idea for the lecturer to bring along any family. Want me to call the USIA people over there and set it up?"

I told him I was flattered and would very much like to go; I also knew Talya would be disappointed at being excluded from the trip, but his reasons seemed sound so I didn't press him on the matter. When I asked if Theo would be going to lecture there as well, he said no, Theo's area of expertise was not exactly what our people on Cyprus thought the Greek Cypriots would be interested in at this point. He said he'd get back to me in a few days with specific dates and times and I could give him my lecture topic then.

After he'd hung up I tried to call Talya to give her the news, but there was no answer so I told her about it that evening when I got home. She was disappointed for herself but quite happy that at least I would get to go. She said she would keep busy by playing tennis with Marika at the club and eating huge lunches at Olympus Naoussa while I was away. Two weeks later as I was about to land at the Larnica airport in Cyprus -- the Turks had taken over the Nicosia airport and it was not on their side of the U.N. - patrolled Green Line -- I remembered that I had forgotten to tell Talya that night about the favor Jackson had asked of me before he offered me the Cyprus trip.

As I stepped onto the tarmac I was greeted by the American Public Affairs Officer, another senior State Department person on the island, and two large young men with very short haircuts and very well-tailored dark suits. The five of us were ushered into a waiting black limousine by another young man with a crew-cut whose shoulder holster was just barely visible for a moment beneath his jacket as he adjusted himself behind the wheel and then drove us very rapidly and efficiently from Larnaca to the Sunset Hotel in Nicosia. Along the way the PAO pointed out a few of the sights and gave me a printed copy of my schedule for what appeared to be a hectic five day stay. The man from the State Department was pleasant but he seemed to be nervous about my being there. He kept checking a small map of the island that was open on his lap and then he'd glance at the two young Marines in civilian clothes who weren't driving to make sure they were watching both sides of the road as we moved toward the capital.

At the hotel the PAO helped me check in and then walked with me to the door of my room.

"I'm sorry about the need for the security. I know it can be disconcerting. We can't afford to have any incidents right now so we've decided to err on the side of caution with your visit. We've received no threats or anything, in case you were wondering, but we've picked up rumblings from some of the more influential Greeks here that they feel you're being invited at this time -- so soon after the Turkish invasion -- is insulting. They feel we did nothing to safeguard them from the Turks and now we have the nerve to expect them to come and listen to an American talk about something as currently irrelevant as literature when most of them are still recovering from having lost relatives and friends and, in many cases, their home and their livelihood. They've got a point of course, but our State Department people want to get back in business here again and it was decided that some very low-key educational or cultural event would be the best way to re-open the doors. I hope Ron Jackson told you most of this already."

"Well, he gave me a general idea of the situation. Who will be at the public lecture in the Center tomorrow night?"

"To be honest, we're not sure. We've put notices in the paper and we've put up posters around town, but I don't expect too many people will come in off the street. Printed invitations went out to all the leading artists, writers, and other intellectuals in the Greek Cypriot community and all the important politicians have received personal invitations from our State Department, but we just don't know how many will show up. Our own small diplomatic crowd will be here, of course, but aside from that it's all guesswork. You obviously shouldn't take it personally if the audience is rather sparse -- just your public presence at the Center will be an important breakthrough for us at this stage of events."

"No problem. My ego can handle it, but it would be nice if a few people came who were interested in the topic as well. Thanks for clarifying all this, though. I appreciate it."

"Just part of the job. I'll let you get some rest now. There'll be a car here for you at seven in the morning and you'll be having an early breakfast with some of the foreign press and then there's an interview to be taped for one of the radio shows -- it's all on your schedule. See you tomorrow morning."

The room was large and airy and the window afforded a view of some gently rolling hills off to the west. After unpacking my one suitcase and washing up a little I pulled the armchair close to the window and looked over the schedule and the accompanying road map I'd been given in the car, the map a thoughtful gesture on someone's part to help orient me to the island as a whole even though the schedule made it clear that I would be spending most of my time right in Nicosia. I traced our route from Larnaca to the capital and then moved my finger due east to the port of Famagusta, along a line that some enterprising soul in the USIA offices had marked with bright green indelible ink from a broad-tipped pen. Near the southernmost tip of the island, as far from the northern Turkish part as it was possible to get, I noted the British military base of Akrotiri. As I studied the map I realized how devastating the Turkish move had been to the Greeks; cutting Nicosia in two and taking important towns and ports and most of the high ground had left the Turks, both militarily and economically, a potentially advantageous position in the north. The Greeks, south of the U.N.'s Green Line, had enough land, but it was not the most usable land on the island and in a strategic sense they were not in very good shape. As I turned to my schedule I wondered if the British were considering the possibility of their Akrotiri ever becoming the vestigial appendage similar to our Guantanamo.

Breakfast the next morning turned out to be more than I had anticipated. The food was good and the coffee strong, but it was the antagonism of one of the reporters that surprised me and served to prepare me for the day. We sat at a large round table in the dining room of a nondescript house that served as the city's Press Club and we drank Bloody Mary's to get the heart started at that ungodly hour, as the Reuters man laughingly explained it to me. Most of the newspaper people were noncommittal or friendly, asking me innocuous questions about the talk I would be giving or what I thought of Cyprus so far, more interested in the free meal and the booze than in me or the lecture, but the Russian from the Novosti Press Agency, a large grey-bearded man named Karkov, was a different matter. He listened to the usual questions from his colleagues and then, in a deep and commanding voice edged with sarcasm, he began to ask his own questions and I was glad no State or USIA people had felt it necessary to be around for the breakfast.

"Do you really believe these people need an American civilian to tell them about violence in modern literature right now? Don't you think they have seen enough violence to last them several lifetimes?"

"I'm sure they have and I'm not here to play the expert about their recent suffering. I'm an academic and I'm here to give a talk on a specific academic subject. Me being invited here may have been lousy timing, but there may be a few people hereabouts who might be interested, from a literary point of view, in what I have to say. At least I hope there is."

"Do you agree with your government's reaction -- pardon me, I should have said lack of reaction -- to the recent hostilities here on Cyprus?"

"I don't know a great deal about the history of this place so my opinion can hardly be considered a well-informed one, but my personal response to the invasion was one of disgust and anger. I have no knowledge of what the political or military constraints on my government may have been or may still be, but my initial reaction was that NATO should have done more than it did at the time."

"Don't you think your country's inactivity reflects a serious failure to support her allies in time of trouble?"

"Perhaps, but when a nation finds itself caught between two of her allies her extrication is not a simple thing and mutually contradicting defense pacts and treaties are of little help."

"Some people on Cyprus are very angry at your government and they find your being here at this time to be a further insult to their previous faith in Washington as a reliable friend. How do you respond to such charges?"

"So far I have only heard them from you, sir, but my response, in any case, would be as follows: I am here as a private citizen of my country, free to say what I please even though my invitation comes from and my stay is paid for by an agency of my government, and I would hope that most people would be perceptive enough to be able to distinguish between a nation's government and her individual citizens."

"Do you really believe there are still important distinctions to be drawn between them any longer in your country?"

I was beginning to have serious doubts about one or two areas, but this was hardly the time to admit them.

"Yes, I most certainly do."

Karkov started to ask another question but the Reuters correspondent intervened, handing me a newspaper.

"Have you seen this morning's local paper? The editorial page is given over to an open letter addressed to you, signed by three of the island's most important writers, asking you how your government can be so insensitive to Greek Cypriot needs as to send you to Cyprus to talk about violence when only a short time ago they blatantly refused to send anyone to help stem the tide of Turkish violence that swept over the Greek community here."

There was silence around the table as I read the letter to myself. It wasn't very long, but it was passionate, well written, and to the point. It asked me not to take it as a personal insult that they would not be attending my talk that night; they could not, in good conscience, support any event sponsored by my government at this time of Greek Cypriot disaster. I recognized one of the three names, a poet whose work I greatly admired.

"That's quite a letter." It had been a long time since I had been ashamed of anything and now that was all mixed up with a growing anger, all of which I tried to hold in check for the moment. "I think it makes a valid point."

I wondered why I always seemed to be defending my country when I was in some foreign land, even with such insipid and obvious comments as that last, when at home I was always so quick to be cleverly critical.

"Don't you think the letter makes a good case for the ineptness of your country's foreign policy?" Karkov asked.

"I think the letter makes an excellent case for the need for intelligent differentiation between a nation's particular government and her people. I think only a blind ideologue or a very stupid propagandist would read it much differently."

Before anyone could ask anymore questions I gulped the last of my coffee and rose to leave, having decided that a hostile environment brought out the worst as well as the best in some people, but Karkov managed a parting shot that found its mark.

"Wouldn't you agree, sir, that your coming to Cyprus now is the act of a very naïve man?"

"Quite probably, sir, but this is one man who will never again be naïve about informal breakfast press conferences."

Even Karkov managed a small smile as I shook hands all around and left the room. Once in the car and on my way to the radio station I had a few minutes to think about how I might have handled the whole thing with more wit and style, but my strongest regret was that I'd taken Jackson up on his offer in the first place, never even considering the inappropriateness of the topic I'd so blithely proposed nor bothering to think about the truly pathetic nature of the timing of my visit. Most of my anger was directed inward, but I saved a little for Jackson and his agency. I'd jumped at the chance of a free trip to Cyprus, almost no questions asked -- blow in my professional ear and I'll follow you to any foreign country -- but the USIA knew the situation here and they'd conveniently left out the details when Jackson had made his pitch. I didn't think very highly of myself at the moment and I wasn't especially enamored of America's official overseas representatives either. Karkov may have been a nasty bastard, I decided, but he was definitely no dummy.

The taping for the radio station was conducted without incident, the interviewer a bright and very personable woman who was thoroughly conversant with the literature of both my country and her own and whose main purpose during our conversation was to reveal to her listeners my particular approach to that literature. The session lasted about two hours and it was as intellectually stimulating as any seminar I'd ever been in; I was sorry to have it end but at least I left the studio feeling a little better about myself than when I had gone in.

I had an early lunch at the hotel and, as the car would not be back to pick me up until it was time for dinner, I walked into the center of the city to see what downtown Nicosia was like. Traffic at that hour was light, most of the cars picking their way carefully through the large potholes of rubble left as witness to the recent fighting. Blue and white jeeps, each flying the United Nations flag and carrying two soldiers wearing the bright orange jump-suits of the peace-keeping force, patrolled the streets closest to the remains of one of the city's oldest walls. The supposedly neutral Green Line ran parallel to that wall as it wound through the city and the jeeps moved slowly and deliberately along it, stopping to cross over into the Turkish sector every so often at blasted stone buildings that served as checkpoints and re-emerging on the Greek side after a while, their hood-mounted machineguns covered with white tarpaulin sleeves looking dangerous even in repose. I watched the activity at one of the crossings from my seat at a nearby cafe as the sky darkened and a few drops spattered on the round metal table in front of me. In a short time the rain cloud passed and the afternoon sun returned, throwing the brightly painted jeeps and highly visible U.N. soldiers into stark relief against the dark and crumbling stone of the old wall whenever a patrol came into view. I had seen enough of the city to know it was, at least for the present, a depressing place to be. Many of the shops were still closed and those that were open appeared to be ill-stocked and doing a poor business, although a few of the cafes seemed to be the exception. I contented myself with a cold lager and the passing scene for the rest of the afternoon.

Dinner with the PAO and his family was a hurried affair; his wife had obviously been briefed on the need to get me back to town, about three miles away, in time for the eight o'clock lecture and their two sons cooperated by bolting the meal in a matter of minutes and retiring to another part of the house to watch a favorite television program. The three of us arrived at the American Center just ten minutes before the scheduled starting time, but as we walked into the semi-circular room with its banked rows of modern and comfortable-looking seats I could tell we needn't have rushed. We walked down the thickly carpeted aisle and one of the young men who had ridden with us from the airport showed us to seats in the front row. Directly in front of us on a temporary wooden platform was a lectern with a microphone and a small reading light attached and a pitcher of water and a glass set off to one side.

I walked up to the lectern to place on it the notes I would need and in the process I glanced up at the small auditorium with what I hoped would be taken for casual and unobtrusive curiosity. There were probably about three hundred seats in the room and no more than fifty were occupied at that point and that included the group of ten or fifteen well-dressed people who sat together in the center of the first few rows and who quite clearly represented the small diplomatic community the PAO had mentioned. Not exactly a sight to thrill and delight your average speaker, I thought, but as I shuffled a few sheets of paper and poured half a glass of water from the pitcher I saw people coming in, singly and in groups of three or four, through the two main street-level doors at the back of the room. Most of them moved slowly, as if they were hesitant about committing themselves, still not sure about whether they should be there or not, and I tried not to stare as they made up their minds and chose their seats.

I placed my watch on the lectern -- noting that it was already 8:10 -- and turned on the reading light, smiling faintly as I adjusted its metal shade, hoping my stalling was not too transparent. When I returned to my seat next to the PAO and his wife it looked as if a third of the seats were occupied; with my back to the audience for the next few minutes I couldn't tell what was happening so when the PAO had completed his introduction and I walked back to the lectern amidst the polite applause I was surprised to see that the room was at least two thirds filled. I had begun twenty minutes later than planned but maybe the extra time had allowed some of the undecided to give the evening a try.

As I warmed to my subject and began to get that wholly satisfying feeling that comes when you can sense that your audience is listening hard and you know you still have something worthwhile left to say, just at that point I had the eerie sensation that I was hemmed in, surrounded by something that put me at risk, something malignant and suffocating that only heightened what I'd always considered to be a mild and usually controllable claustrophobia in myself. A glance up at the audience revealed the source of the sensation. Between the last row of seats and the stark white rear wall, about six feet apart and dominating the auditorium from its highest point, stood a dozen black-suited young men. Each remained motionless except for an occasional turning of the head and each looked impassive yet vigilant, like a line of crows perched on a roadside telephone wire who are waiting and watching for the next road-kill before swooping down to feast. They stood at a modified kind of military attention, their arms held loosely at their sides, and when I looked up again I had the fleeting impression that it was all a bad 1940's western and I was facing twelve guys who were about to out-draw me and leave my bleeding body in the dusty street at high noon.

I managed to get through the rest of the lecture without any additional distractions and the final applause sounded enthusiastic enough -- at such times I invariably recalled a colleague who maintained that such displays of appreciation were as often motivated by relief as by enthusiasm for the presentation \-- but I couldn't help feeling that my sudden realization that the Marines had landed had taken the fine edge off an otherwise decent talk. Nobody who came up to me afterwards seemed to mind, however, least of all the PAO who was all smiles and relieved laughter as he pumped my hand vigorously.

"Well, I'd say you more than earned whatever honorarium we're paying you. That was a fine talk and I'd call it an unusually fine turnout. My sincere thanks."

It was after ten by the time we got out of the Center and past midnight by the time I finally got back to my hotel, feeling drained and vaguely uneasy about my role in bringing anything even marginally American to the people of Cyprus. I didn't sleep very well that second night on the island.

The next two days were spent giving after-luncheon or after-dinner talks to various civic groups in Larnaca and Nicosia and doing a little sightseeing in between, almost always in the company of either the PAO or one of the security men. On the final night of my stay there was nothing planned so I told my hosts I'd have dinner in the hotel, pack, and get to bed early in preparation for my flight the next morning back to Greece. The meal and the packing were finished sooner than I expected so I walked downtown in search of a nightcap and a last look at the city. I settled on the same café by the old wall that I had been to a few days earlier; the weather had turned cooler after dark so I sat at an inside table this time and ordered the same Danish lager I had had there before. I was just finishing it and about to get up and pay when two U.N. soldiers wearing sidearms and pale blue berets came in, looked around at all the other crowded tables, and then walked over to mine.

"Do you mind if we share your table? We are on patrol break and we have only fifteen minutes for some coffee," one of them said in carefully perfect English.

"Of course, please do."

They looked like brothers, both blonde and blue-eyed and about the same age, and the one who hadn't asked about the table now pointed to my beer bottle.

"Do you like such beer? We also are Danish, friends from the same street in Copenhagen, and now we do our service here for one more month and then we go back to Denmark. You do not live here, do you?"

"No, I'm just a visitor, an American living in Greece who came here only for a few days. I go back to Greece tomorrow morning." I introduced myself as a waiter came to the table. They ordered two extra-large containers of coffee and two pieces of baklava.

"My name is Hans and this is Peter. He is correct about our going home soon, but it is only twenty-eight days after tonight's patrol."

"You sound as though you'll be happy to leave here."

"We will be very happy to get home. Six months on patrol duty with the United Nations is very boring and nobody likes you very much. The Turks are angry at us because we came here at all. They would like us to go so they can take over the rest of Cyprus, I believe."

"I think so also," Peter added. "We always have more trouble from them. People back in Copenhagen will think we are liars when we tell them how the Turks are, how they live. It is a good thing that all soldiers in our group must leave and go to another assignment after six months. Even that amount of time is too much for some of us. We are not accustomed to such dirt and such brutality. The Greek girls are friendly to us sometimes, but we are not supposed to go with them in public and we are warned every week by our commanding officer not to be friendly to any Turkish woman. Last month a U.N. soldier -- he was not a Dane -- was found dead in the house of a Turkish woman he had been seeing very often. They had cut off his penis and his testicles and put them in his mouth. We must be so careful here that it is not much fun for us. I'll be glad to see my girlfriend at home again. I think we might get married."

"What is it you actually do here -- when you're working, I mean?" I asked.

"We go out on eight hour patrols, two men to a vehicle," Hans said, "and for every two hours on duty we get a fifteen minute break when we must be out of the vehicle. Peter and I can usually arrange to go on patrol together because we have been here so long and we know the sergeant who makes the patrol list. We have a sector given to us each time and the sectors are rotated among the different countries who make up the peace-keeping force. That is so we don't get too familiar with the people in one sector and start to relax the rules. We drive along the Green Line -- you know what that is? -- and make sure the terms of the cease-fire are being carried out by both sides. We make sure no weapons are being fired, no buildup of troops is taking place, no fortifications or other buildings are being put up within five hundred meters of the line."

"What do you do if you find that the rules are being broken?"

"Sometimes we talk to them, if it is a small matter. If it is a serious problem we call our headquarters and high-ranking officers come to settle the issue," Peter said.

"We have pistols and machine-gun and they are always loaded with live ammunition when we are on patrol," Hans said, "but we almost always use the radio. The jeeps are really complete communications vehicles -- we can contact our headquarters or any of the other nation's headquarters in just a few seconds. Once in a while a patrol is fired on, but it is usually because the Turks think it is a Greek vehicle or they are just so drunk or so bored they decide to try to scare us. Sometimes it is more serious and several U.N. soldiers have been killed."

"To die on this island is a stupid thing," Peter said. "Hans and I know some of the Turks at the major crossings and we try to be as friendly as possible, but sometimes it is very difficult. We are really like policemen and nobody here likes policemen very much, especially the Turks. Have you ever been to one of the checkpoints?"

"No," I said, "I didn't know foreigners were allowed to cross the line."

"They are not," Hans said, "but if you were with us I do not believe there would be any problem, at least not with the Greeks, and we could arrange something on the Turkish side. Would you like to try it?"

I had been anticipating a quiet night's sleep and the suggestion took some getting used to.

"It sounds interesting, but wouldn't you get into trouble? I'm sure you're not allowed to transport foreign civilians across the cease-fire zone. And it might be complicated for me, as well, if I got caught by either side. You see, I'm just a guest of the American government and my government is just a guest of the Greeks on this island. Any incident might be embarrassing, to say the least."

"We could always say you needed our help for some reason and we gave you a ride. We are free to do such things in the name of keeping the peace. No, we would not get into any trouble," Hans said. "I do not know about your own government, however."

I considered some of the possibilities and they all seemed to indicate that I'd be better off going straight back to the Sunset Hotel, but then I remembered how casually -- albeit graciously -- I'd been used on this little island excursion and how upset I'd been at not being told beforehand about that ominous line of bodyguards at the lecture. I decided the Danes looked competent enough to pull it off.

"How much longer do you have on this patrol?" I asked Hans as I indicated to a passing waiter that I wanted the check for the pastry and coffee as well as my beer.

"Four more hours with one more break. We can take the rest period at a place on the Turkish side that is really something to see. I think you should come along. These patrols are usually very boring for us -- getting you across and back would break the monotony for us and you would see a part of Cyprus most people do not see these days, even if it is in the dark. We should have you back before two in the morning."

"Okay, I'd like to go with you. Let's have a look at your jeep and figure out how I can fit in." I paid the bill and we walked out to the curb.

It was a modified version of the vehicles I'd been watching that first afternoon at the café. The white canvas top was up to keep out the evening chill and the rear seat had been removed and replaced by a modern radio and loudspeaker system that took up all but a few feet of the available space. There were canvas tarps thrown over the machinery to protect it and two green raincoats and some rags on the floor space that was left; there were the usual two seats in front of the standard machinegun mounted on the hood and I couldn't see where I was going to ride. I looked quizzically at the two Danes.

"You will have to ride in front if you are to see anything so you must stay between the seats," Hans said, "with your knees up so that Peter can shift. It will be crowded but we will always drive very slowly and the distances are very short. When we cross the line and have to talk to the Turkish guards I think it will be better if you are in the back, hiding under the raincoats and canvas covers. That way we will not have to do any explaining. Once we get by the guards, going over and coming back, you can get into the front again with us. I do not believe the Turks on the other side will ask any questions about you once we clear the checkpoints, as long as you are with us."

I squatted with my back pressed tightly against the metal transmitter and we drove toward the wall as the nearly full moon came out from behind a passing cloud. Both Peter and Hans had their side windows down so I could get a good view of the Greek checkpoint as we approached it. A stone house with one of its walls missing served as the official guardhouse, but the soldiers on duty lounged in front of it, leaning on a blue and white striped wooden pole that could be raised and lowered manually to control the automobile traffic along the narrow road that ran north into the Turkish sector. Peter stopped and Hans greeted one of the guards in Greek as he ambled over, rifle slung on his shoulder and a lighted cigarette in the hand he used to casually wave us through. As we moved slowly past the raised barrier one of the other guards looked at me with what I thought was something more than mild curiosity, but Hans and Peter both waved their thanks and there were no cries to halt. Just out of sight of the Greek guardhouse, at a slight bend in the road, we stopped again and I got in the back, Hans covering me as best he could with the tarps and raincoats and rags. I huddled beneath my oily-smelling protection, having some second thoughts about the wisdom of the whole thing, as the jeep started to move again. A few minutes later we slowed for what I assumed was the Turkish checkpoint.

"Be very quiet," I heard Hans whisper, "and very still. They may look in the back if there is an officer on duty."

I felt the instant indigestion and breathlessness that I recognized as my initial symptoms of sudden fear. The scrotum-tightening that always accompanied outright panic didn't materialize, however, and my mind was able to fashion at least one coherent thought: neither Hans nor Peter had bothered to mention this possibility.

We stopped and I heard Peter talking to someone in English and Hans talking to someone else on the other side of the car in what sounded like halting Turkish. I couldn't concentrate on either conversation because someone else seemed to be tapping on the body of the jeep with something made of metal, an irregular probing sound that seemed to move toward the rear of the vehicle. My head was covered with one of the raincoats, pressed up against the communications equipment, and a slant of bright light suddenly pierced my darkness. I fought to keep the panic at bay, to remain motionless, and I knew from my dizziness that I must have been holding my breath ever since Hans' whispered warning. I felt something stabbing at the pile under which I lay and, then, as suddenly as it had come, the light was gone and the probing ceased. I had to urinate so badly I thought my bladder would burst. There was a babble of voices from the front of the jeep and then we started moving again. I let myself start to shake as I threw off my covering and gulped for air.

The jeep halted a few minutes later and Hans came back and helped me out, still less than steady on my feet as I inhaled the cool night air.

"That was more difficult than we expected." he said in a sincerely apologetic voice. "The guards we know had been replaced by new ones and a young lieutenant was with them. He knew he was allowed to inspect any vehicle that came through this checkpoint, even one of ours, and he had one of his men look in the back with a flashlight and a bayonet. I do not know what he was looking for but I think we were lucky he didn't find you. He looked a very unpleasant person."

"Can we cross at a different point on the way back?"

"Yes, I believe that would be the best thing to do. Are you ready to go on?"

"Okay, but I can do without any more surprises."

Sitting up front now felt like a form of liberation. The temperature had dropped but the sky was clear and in the moonlight I could make out the stucco and stone houses and the wooden shepherds' huts we passed as we drove slowly north for about a kilometer and then turned east to follow the U.N.-established line toward Famagusta on the coast. The road was little more than a dirt track and after passing through several small villages Peter suggested we stop for a break at a place they knew that was popular with the Turkish checkpoint guards.

It was a large house just off the track and it seemed to be in the middle of nowhere, not another light to be seen in any direction. It looked like it had once been the home of someone wealthy; there were mature trees that protected the house from the weather on three sides, the spacious front porch had four stone columns rising to support what appeared to be a large wooden balcony on the second floor that opened onto several wide-windowed bedrooms, and the roof was slanted in the European style rather than flat as were the roofs of most of the other Cypriot dwellings I'd seen.

We parked directly in front and Hans led the way into the house. The Turks had obviously taken over the place after the invasion and, without doing a thing on the outside to indicate what was going on in the inside, had turned it into their version of a battlefield bar-cum-dance hall-cum-brothel. The high ceilinged front room was a mess; the wall-papered walls were spattered with blood and beer and the smell of urine and vomit was almost intolerable, the wooden furniture was broken and splintered and the overstuffed pieces were ripped open and the wool and coiled springs were scattered haphazardly over the floor, and the long wooden dining room table that served as the bar had as many broken beer and whisky bottles on it as whole ones. The floor was tiled but so covered with dirt and debris that moving across it was an effort and the ten or fifteen solders and male civilians in sight who were drinking or dancing with the five or six women who were visible in the meager light from two large table lamps seemed to be oblivious to the chaos as they stumbled about.

I watched that scene as our eyes became accustomed to the dimness. Men would lurch off into another room with one of the women or with each other and small arguments or fistfights would erupt and then die down in what appeared to be a wave-like sequence, the sour smell of sweat and violence washing over the room and then slowly receding, only to return again a few moments later. Several Turks were passed out against the walls, broken or spilled bottles at their feet, their clothes in disarray and soaked with booze or their own sickness. Bazouki music came from a portable radio on the marble mantelpiece of a large fireplace. Peter and Hans moved toward the makeshift bar and I followed.

The smell was slightly less overwhelming -- and the light even dimmer -- in a corner near the unused fireplace so we moved there after Hans had paid for the ouzo. One or two soldiers seemed interested enough to stare our way every so often, but nobody seemed sober enough to focus for very long and whenever a particularly aggressive Turk would stagger over, either Hans or Peter would say something I couldn't understand and then smile or laugh out loud and the man would eventually stagger way. There were no chairs to sit on so people simply used the littered floor, leaning their backs against a wall or a broken piece of furniture as they stood, many of them resting on their rifles, their free hands wrapped around a glass or dangling from the shoulder of one of the women. When shouting would break out or a scuffle develop, most people would move toward the disturbance, like moths seeking the heat and light of the flame that would consume them, but the three of us would edge away from the action as inconspicuously as possible. Someone turned up the radio even louder and one of the dancing couples fell against a sergeant with an impressive handle-bar moustache and several yellow hash-marks on the right sleeve of his fatigue jacket. He swung his left arm in an attempt to retain his balance and it caught the woman on the side of the head, knocking her down but certainly not hurting her very much. From where I stood it was simply a reflex action with no malice intended, but her partner saw it differently. As the woman went down and the sergeant regained his balance the man awkwardly pulled a .45 from an already opened leather holster at his side and, yelling something loud enough to be heard above the din of the music, drew down on the sergeant. Before he could fire someone else brought a broken chair leg down on the man's head from behind. He crumpled instantly, blood gushing from his scalp and covering his face in a matter of seconds. The woman stood up, looked down at her partner without any recognition, and wandered away to another soldier on the other side of the room. The sergeant looked at the man who had wielded the chair leg, didn't seem to be able to place him, and turned back to his previous conversation with no sign that he'd been disturbed in the slightest by the incident. Nobody bothered with the man on the floor and the other dancers went on dancing, stepping around him as the frenzied music continued unabated.

After a while Peter handed me another ouzo and pointed to a doorway leading to the interior of the house. We made our way in that direction, the Danes smiling and nodding in a friendly way and me doing my best to emulate them. We passed through the doorway and along a dark corridor and as we came to one of the rooms off the hallway its door opened and a soldier stumbled out, fumbling with the buttons on his fatigue pants, and brushed past us on his way to the front room. He'd left the door partly open and the three of us bunched together to look in when Peter stopped and indicated we should do so. There was a single bare bulb hanging from a cord in what at one time must have been a small pantry. Spread-eagled across a waist-high butcher-block table, face-down with his buttocks at the table edge and his feet planted firmly on the floor, his fatigues and green underpants down around his ankles, a soldier was being sodomized by one of his colleagues as two others waited their turn; I could see that one of those waiting was the sergeant with the impressive moustache and just as Hans indicated with silent gestures that we'd better move on I realized that nobody in the room was physically forcing the soldier on the table to remain in that position.

The hallway ended at two large wooden doors that opened into a modern kitchen. As we stepped inside we saw why there were only about half a dozen women in the front room. There were blankets and army sleeping bags scattered all over the kitchen floor and at least a dozen women in various stages of undress were ministering to the needs of twice that many men, most of whom seemed barely able to stand. The music from the front hardly reached this back part of the house, but the stench here was even worse. The woman who'd been knocked down by the sergeant was sitting, naked and looking very dazed, under one of the stainless steel sinks against one wall, a faint trickle of blood running down the calf of one bent leg. The three of us backed out of the kitchen and made our way back to the front room, Peter pointing out the closed pantry door as we passed it. At the bar there were two people facing each other, one a soldier and one a civilian, with drawn knives and a crowd was forming around them. I decided that I'd seen enough of the Turkish side of the line and motioned to Peter and Hans that I wanted to leave. As we stepped off the porch into our jeep somebody turned the radio up even louder and there was the crashing sound of breaking glass to be heard above the manic bazouki.

I squatted in the front, feeling almost no discomfort thanks to the ouzos and my relief at getting out of there with all parts intact and in relatively good working order. Peter and Hans were very happy that I'd seen the place and they laughed a lot as Peter drove back toward Nicosia. Hans said we would cross at a checkpoint where there was usually only one guard, but he still thought it best that I hide in the back until we got through. I did so and we passed into Greek territory again without any problems. They dropped me at my hotel and we exchanged home addresses before I thanked them and they drove off, my thirst for excitement quite slaked for the evening.

On my flight back to Greece the next morning I looked down on the divided island as the plane lifted off the runway and banked to the north, climbing slowly as it passed over the length of Cyprus and headed northwest toward the mainland. There was nothing to indicate the manmade Green Line from that height; off to the south I could make out the town of Limassol and the base at Akrotiri in the morning haze, two places I had vague regrets about not having visited, but I had had only a few days and what little I'd seen had left an indelible impression. I doubted that I'd rush to come back again if the opportunity ever presented itself, and knowing that was so brought on a feeling of sadness; so many things to choose to experience in a lifetime and so often the choice was based on so little evidence. I tried to catch up on some much-needed sleep as the land below gave way to water and the plane droned on toward Thessaloniki.

* * *

One night in early March Talya and I were eating in Psiloritis, a small restaurant specializing in powerful retsina, a group playing good Cretan music, and Cretan dancing performed by any customers who felt so inclined, when Blackbridge and Kubish came in and took a corner table nearby. When the musicians stopped briefly for a rest, and the dancers left the floor amid loud applause, Kubish walked over to us.

"One of my favorite places," he said, nodding toward the dance floor just in front of the relaxing musicians, "but I settle for watching rather than participating when I come here. These guys are so good they make Anthony Quinn look like he was made out of stone. How are you? I won't interrupt \-- Jon and I just stopped in for a drink -- wanted to know if you two would like to go out on the Gachoucha tomorrow? Supposed to be a nice day -- maybe a little cool but they're predicting sunshine \-- Jon and I will be at the dock about noon and we could meet you there. Just bring sweaters and maybe a light jacket in case they're wrong. How does it sound?"

"Sounds fine to me," Talya said.

"Okay with me also," I said, "but I can't get there until about one o'clock."

"No problem, we'll say one o'clock. We'll see you then. Enjoy your dinner -- and the dancing." He went back to his table and as he sat down Jon looked our way and waved. By the time the music started up again they had paid their bill and left.

The next day was clear and cool and very sunny, a fine early spring day for sailing with a brisk wind and a very light chop on the bay. Once we'd cleared the marina Kubish let Talya take the wheel and he went below for a few minutes and returned with some sandwiches and a cold white wine for the four of us. I asked Blackbridge if Washington was worried about the recent disturbance outside the American airbase near Heraklion on Crete.

"Quite worried, as matter of fact. Our best estimate is that the opposition to Greece allowing us to stay on there once the present agreement runs out -- that will be on June 1 \-- has more than doubled since last December, maybe even tripled. We think there is a great deal of outside agitation as well, mainly from the Soviets and even some of the Arabs, but there are enough Greeks opposing our presence there to make renewal a very sensitive issue. I don't think our people in Athens are very happy about how things are developing. We know there are going to be demonstrations against our keeping the bases as the deadline gets closer, but right now we're not sure where they'll take place or who is actually behind them. I doubt that Karamanlis will actually kick us out, but if we don't anticipate some of the more visible opposition and play it down it could be very embarrassing."

"Do you think there'll be any trouble up here in Thessaloniki?" Talya asked him.

"Well, the university is the logical focal point for any demonstrations, that and maybe the joint communications training center out in Karabounaki. Whatever happens up here, though, we can be sure it will be orchestrated from somewhere in the university; as I'm sure you're aware, that place has a reputation for activism of all kinds and I doubt that this issue will be passed up. It's too good a chance for some would-be young politicians to ignore."

I thought of Ron Jackson asking me to keep my eyes open at work and wondered for a moment if Blackbridge was going to make the same request of me, but he didn't and after a few minutes he went forward and stretched out in the sun, saying how much he enjoyed getting out of the office these days. Talya remained at the wheel and Kubish handed me some more wine, settling his large frame in the well opposite me. He turned to Talya and started talking about the history of his boat and the plans he had for enlarging the galley and for the rest of our brief outing he kept our three-way conversation away from any serious subjects.

At the university a few days later I decided to make another effort to get to know Pappas a little better. I was waiting for him as he came out of his large undergraduate linguistics lecture with Cassandra at his side, the two of them carrying stacks of blue examination booklets and apparently engaged in a heated discussion about something.

"Excuse me, Niko, sorry to interrupt," I said, nodding and smiling at Cassandra as well, "but I was wondering if you had time for a cup of coffee?"

I was about to include Cassandra when I saw the look of anger she directed at him as they concluded whatever they had been saying to each other and I decided against it.

"A good idea," Pappas said, "just allow me to deposit these in my office and I'll meet you down in the cafeteria in five minutes."

"Fine. I'll get us a table."

He and Cassandra moved off in the direction of his office. About ten minutes later he joined me in the students' cafeteria, looking a little apologetic as he set his coffee cup down and took the chair I'd reserved for him by leaning it at an angle against the formica-topped table.

"Sorry it took so long. As I'm sure you could tell, Cassandra and I were having a small argument and she insisted we finish it before I join you. She is a very strong-willed woman."

"Yes, I noticed. I also hear that she's an excellent teaching assistant -- her students seem to have a great deal of respect for her."

"Quite true. In my course she is invaluable, although at times we differ quite drastically about approach. She is young and enthusiastic and she believes in presenting the material aggressively, and in what she would call its full social context. I'm afraid my penchant for caution and what I would call intelligent compromise are a function of my age and that often frustrates her."

"Do you ever have her give the lectures in the course or does she just do the grading?"

"She gives one of the lectures every month or so -- I think the assistants should be doing more teaching and less grading, if that is what you're asking me. Most of them are quite good, you know."

"Yes, I know, and I was curious about your views on how the department should be run. Not that it's really any of my business, of course, but I can't help feeling that a great deal of potential is going to waste in the department."

"Well, I imagine the department will survive whether it is Christos or myself who gets the chair and thus heads the enterprise, but I believe you are correct about the waste. More important, perhaps, is the intellectual tone of the whole endeavor. I think it would be to everyone's advantage -- the students, the staff, the university as well as the nation as a whole -- if our standards were made substantially more rigorous, and I mean for both faculty and students. Only a small percentage of those who apply can be given a space in the universities in our country -- I think it's about fifteen percent -- but once admitted it is almost impossible now to be dismissed for academic failure. That's why we have students who are in their thirties and forties, still without a degree, using their student status as a base from which to launch political careers of various persuasions. We have a long history here of such a condition; I think it would be worth trying to change it."

"Isn't it true, though, that some of the most liberalizing reforms in modern Greek history -- particularly in very recent times -- have first found their voice here in Thessaloniki? It would be a shame to do away with such a forum, wouldn't it?"

"Not do away with it; just make access to it a function of merit and real talent, political or otherwise, rather than unearned influence or patronage. I think reform in our country is once again in the air, but I would like it to be well thought out and lasting -- for a change."

As he talked he became more animated, using his hands freely in the tradition of most Mediterranean people, and I noticed for the first time the slight graying at the edges of his back curly hair. His face was remarkably unlined, almost peaceful. I could see why some people might want him to be their guru.

"Are students as politically active in your country as they are at this university?" he asked, lowering his voice only slightly as the table next to us filled with students who obviously recognized us both.

"Sometimes they are, for relatively brief periods, but in general they don't use the universities as political springboards the way the students do here. The sixties and very early seventies were probably the exception -- since Vietnam wound down for us the campus activism of those years has dwindled drastically. And even then it wasn't the same as here -- it isn't a way of life for most of our undergraduates as it is for so many here in Thessaloniki.

"Do you think there'll be demonstrations among our students here to pressure Athens to get rid of the U.S. bases this year?" I asked.

He slowly finished his coffee before replying.

"There is considerable talk about such a possibility. I'm sure Theo can tell you as much about it as I can \-- he has many friends among the most outspoken of our students. Many people, especially among the young, see the bases as an insult to us. They know it is a volatile issue and with the renewal deadline only about three months away it is an issue that can be used by ambitious people to make themselves highly visible.

"What do you think about the bases? I imagine any demonstrations against them would be an embarrassment for your government as well as for some of our own people down in Athens."

He seemed genuinely interested so I told him what I thought.

"I doubt that I would be overjoyed to have Greek airbases in the United States, even if they were ostensibly in support of an important NATO commitment."

"Not overjoyed, perhaps, but you might come to the conclusion that they were a necessary evil, given the international state of affairs these days?"
"Perhaps, but not with much pleasure."

"A commodity not taken into account too often of late. I'm afraid pragmatism rules the world scene today -- if it works, use it. A very American notion, is it not?"

"Hardly, Niko. It was around long before America came into being. We may be answerable for many things, but I don't think that is one of them."

I would have liked to continue our conversation but he said he had to get back to all those blue books. We walked upstairs together as I turned off to go to my office. I realized that I still didn't know a great deal about him; my instinct told me he'd be better for the department than Vanidis, but that's about all I was sure of when it came to the enigmatic Mr. Pappas.

*Cambridge*

While still a teenager James Gatz decides to transform himself into something that, unbeknownst to him, never existed and the poor bastard actually pulls it off. When he takes a bullet meant for someone else and dies face down in a hardly-used swimming pool years later, as Jay Gatsby, we realize that we've witnessed the creation (and destruction) of a whole new reality, founded on the fragile and vulnerable wings of Fitzgerald's imagination. Gatsby's identity, like his past, is a made-up thing, but while he lives he conducts himself as though nothing in the whole world was more real. The reader wonders who was fooling whom.

The thought triggered others and he speculated about their relevance. Just as you could have flashbacks to moments of truth in your life, couldn't you also refer back to moments of fiction, moments of fantasy and pure imagination, and use them all to your present advantage? An eager doctor might call it psychotic behavior or a retrograde hallucination, but if it helped keep you sane in an increasingly insane world then maybe the labels weren't so important after all. He knew some very conservative liberals and the most blatant fascist he ever met was a dedicated communist. No, the categories were not crucial; it was what you did with them that mattered.

Visibly patriotic people often made him feel uneasy and exaggeratedly patriotic people with real power scared the hell out of him. He questioned the true motives of the first group and he'd seen the destruction wrought by the second in the name of nationalistic identity. Walking the line between cynicism and idealism invariably meant that you'd be buffeted by both, but he found it difficult to wholly forego either and he wasn't sure that he really wanted to anyway. To remain an observer, disengaged from the action yet an active and voluble critic of it, probably afforded the opportunity of pushing your point of view without having to back it up with your body, with your life. To choose to become a participant, engaged in the action yet absolutely silent about it, probably allowed you to live with fewer ambiguities, fewer uncertainties, except about your survival. There were definite advantages to both, of course, and he wondered if his choice would be influenced as much by heredity as by experience, as much by who his genes said he was as by who he had played at being, had chosen to be, all these years.

Very few parental pressures to become one thing or another had ever been exerted on his behalf, and for that he had always been grateful. As an immigrant his father had worked long hours for little pay, but he recalled no bitterness ever directed at the country that had taken his father in and eventually the man had paid his adopted country back, fueling the economy in typical American fashion and allowing his children to choose their own form of labor. One of them was simply at a point now where he had to choose all over again.

*Greece*

Classes resumed after the Easter break and May was a busy month in the department. A list of voithi, instructors with new classroom duties as of the following fall, was posted on the bulletin board and both Kiki and Cassandra were among them. As Theo explained to me, it didn't mean any more pay for them but it did mean more teaching on their own and thus more prestige within the system. A week later an official notice from the Ministry of Education, signed by the Minister and Karamanlis himself, appeared on the same board. It proclaimed the establishment of a professorial chair for the department and appointed Stathis Estathiades, currently teaching at the University of Athens, to be the first person to fill it as of the following fall term. During the next few days I heard rumors that Vanidis was taking the unexpected appointment rather badly, spluttering with angry remarks about outsiders with political influence whenever the subject came up, but Pappas seemed to be accepting the sudden turn of events with philosophical equanimity. When I met him in the hall and brought up the surprising nature of the appointment he merely smiled and said he doubted that his world would have changed very drastically even if he had gotten the chair and he was reasonably sure the department would survive as well. He also mentioned that the new man was a first-rate scholar and he thought that that was a good thing for all concerned.

On the Monday after our weekend on Thassos \-- the short crossing from Kavala had been rough and both Talya and I had been ill for the first half day, but Bruce knew some breathtakingly beautiful spots on the island's most isolated coast so the weekend turned out well after all -- I overheard some students talking about a demonstration that was being organized for that week. I caught Pappas' name and Cassandra's and the name Iannis something-or-other and quite a few angry references to American imperialism and Karamanlis' lack of courage and a legitimate set of parents. My Greek was still poor so much of the conversation was beyond me and normally I would have ignored the whole thing anyway, but it was a rather unusual group and there was one among them who had, as far as I knew, no connection with the university at all. The student head of the university's Socialist Union, a bright and sensitive young man who was in one of my classes, was huddled with the president of the campus' Communist League -- a strange alliance to start with as it was no secret that the two groups usually would have nothing to do with each other -- and several students who I recognized as active members of groups I had always thought of as centrist or just slightly left of center. One of these was a heavy woman who always sat in the front row during my lectures and who invariably asked the most intelligent questions when I finally stopped talking; she seemed to be listening now with rapt attention to whatever was being said by Alexi, the dapper tobacco company man I had met at Ron Jackson's apartment.

He was talking slowly but in a very low voice and the only things I could be absolutely sure of were references to Herkalion and Citibank and the need to be careful with the dynamite before I decided to move on and leave them to their own devices.

Theo was not in the office when I got there so I had nobody to talk to about my unintentional eavesdropping -- there had been no way to back out during the first few minutes of my coming upon the group, though after that my curiosity had gotten the better of me -- and I gnawed on the problem for more than an hour. It was, finally, the talk of dynamite which made my decision and, to a lesser extent, the presence of Alexi in the group.

Jackson wasn't at his own office and his secretary wasn't sure where he could be reached. I phoned the consulate and Blackbridge told me Jackson had just left and was on his way home. I waited ten minutes and then called him at home and said I had something to tell him.

"About Walsh?" he asked, expectantly, and I decided he was either a very careless civil servant or he knew something about the Greek telephone system that I didn't.

"I'm on my way home in a few minutes and I can stop off at your place, if you like, or you could come up here to my office. Any preference?"

"Why not stop here," he offered, "and we can have a drink before you go on out to Karabounaki?"

He had his cook bring in some hastily prepared mezedes when I arrived and I nibbled on a few and sipped an ouzo and water until she left and then I told him what I had heard, being careful to leave out all the participants' names except Alexi's and emphasizing that it was about an imminent event and that mention was made of dynamite and Heraklion and Citibank and American imperialism and Karamanlis. I didn't say anything about Pappas or Cassandra and when he asked if that was all I could remember I told him I heard the name Iannis mentioned once or twice as well.

"Nothing at all about the Walsh affair, I suppose?" he asked, clicking the top of his ballpoint pen but leaving the pad he'd been writing in open on the coffee table in front of him.

"No, not a thing, and this doesn't seem to have much to do with him either. I hope this dynamite stuff can be tracked down in time though. The groups represented in that huddle don't normally pal around together -- might be something worth looking into."

"I'll get this on to Athens right way -- I left some papers back at the consulate that I have to pick up anyway -- and they can decide what do. Thanks for coming by."

I heard no more about any demonstration that week and Jackson never called or stopped in to let me know if there'd been any response from our embassy down in Athens to the information I'd given him. On the last day in May, just a week before Talya and I left Greece to return to the States, all the newspapers had banner headlines and all classes at the university were cancelled for an indefinite period of time in the hope of avoiding any organized student repercussions. According to the papers, there had been a series of demonstrations the previous night in Athens, Thessaloniki and Heraklion on Crete and the army and the police had been called out in force in all three places. On Crete students had marched against an American airbase and had managed to tear down the front gate and enter a communications building before the Greek police had opened fire. Four people were believed to have died, three of them students, and twenty-nine were injured seriously enough to have been taken to a hospital. In Athens the demonstration began at the American embassy but quickly spread to several parts of the city, including a housing complex that catered to NATO personnel. Estimates were still rather tentative -- tanks had been called in and special riot police were still rounding up some of the demonstrators -- but it was thought that at least twelve people had been killed, six of them police, and several hundred had been injured, most of them students from the University of Athens. In Thessaloniki the demonstration had begun as a peaceful march along Tsimiski Street and then had become a riot when someone threw a homemade bomb through the front window of the American-owned Citibank building. The explosion destroyed most of the front half of the building and injured dozens of people in the street, many of them critically. There were conflicting eye-witness reports, but several agreed that the person who threw the bomb looked very much like the current Greek manager of the bank, a man who had actively opposed the rule of the colonels when he had been a student leader at the University several years earlier. One local paper listed the man's name. Iannis Vagionis, along with the names of others who were suspected of being the leaders of the demonstration when it first began.

The following day the same Thessaloniki newspaper printed the names of those who were seriously injured and those who died in what the press was now calling the Tsimiski Riot. Cassandra's name was on the injured list and Niko Pappas was among the dead. It wasn't until we called to say goodbye to Bruce and Rodanthi Meadows a few days later that I learned that an American who had been at the front of the march had been killed in the Citibank explosion; Bruce was sure that Theo's name had been omitted from the newspaper list as the result of political pressure from our embassy in Athens.

*Cambridge*

Back in the early 1960's, after Kennedy and before the Gulf of Tonkin, when Berkeley was spawning Mario Savio and the Free Speech Movement and Ludwig's fountain and Joan Baez was strumming and singing on the steps of Sproul Hall, he read like a man possessed, trying to learn his new trade as he tried to leave his time in Panama behind him. At one point he'd needed a break from Poe and Hawthorne and Melville and he'd gone on a Raymond Chandler binge -- a novel a day with the help of a pack of cigarettes and endless cups of coffee at the Café Mediterranean -- and he still remembered that he'd been impressed in those heady days by what he took to be the anachronism of the writer's tough-minded romanticism: 'Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. He must be the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world. He is the hero, he is everything.' He'd had his doubts especially then, but as he watched Chris, the pub's owner, come toward him he wondered if Chandler really had been that far off the mark.

"Good evening, Chris. May I buy the publican a pint?"

"A half Abbots, then. Cheers. And where's Talya tonight?"  
"She's got some letters to write so I came along on my own this time. I saw Debbie behind the bar earlier."  
"Yes, she's gone up to put our son to bed now, but she should be back down before closing time. In case you don't get to see her, she wanted me to remind you about dinner next Sunday."  
"Thanks. Talya and I wouldn't pass up a free meal, especially one of Debbie's. We'll come by at eight, okay?"

As he watched Chris move off toward the kitchen he thought of Talya and how she would perceive the choice he had to make. He knew she enjoyed the free time and the opportunities to travel together that their present way of life afforded, but he also knew that to a certain extent -- more so in the last few years than before they'd gone to China -- she shared his concern about the sameness of things lately, about the loss -- or maybe just misplacement -- of that jagged edge to their lives that had to do with discomfort and surprises and even, at times, the double-sided nature of danger and he sensed that she, too, might welcome certain kinds of changes, but her notion of what constituted moral responsibility was a finely tuned thing and there was very little room for adjustment; when it came to certain kinds of compromises he'd always known that flexibility was not one of Talya's strongest points and he'd often had reason to admire that in her, but this decision was shaping up to be a matter of sometimes subtle and often complicated trade-offs and he suspected that she might not see it that way at all.

*China*

To walk through downtown Peking on a fine fall day is to know the meaning of the phrase 'the mass of humanity' and if you are a Westerner on foot for the first time in modern China you move with some anxiety. We passed the PLA soldiers guarding the wide driveways leading up to the main entrance of the Peking Hotel and then we turned left off Ch'ang An onto Wan Fu Jing, one of the busiest shopping streets in the city. It was still too early in the year for the switch to the wintertime blue so the street was a seething tide of grey, jackets and slacks, women and men, as far as the eye could see. Most of the shops near the hotel were for the foreigners and overseas Chinese who came for a week or two on packaged and carefully monitored tours, but as we moved away from Ch'ang An and toward the Number One Department Store there were fewer places selling chou bronzes and celadon vases and more selling inexpensive clothing and Chinese books and everyday cooking utensils. In one store we saw a Chang Dynasty wine amphora that was supposed to have belonged to someone named Chen Fei in the 1890's and a strikingly realistic three-colored Tang horse, but for the most part we waded through mobs of people who stood twenty and thirty deep in front of counters displaying the latest sweaters or shirts available to the Chinese in 1980, which meant that when we finally got close enough to actually see what all the pushing and shoving was about we were invariable surprised to find that the item was bland in color and almost nondescript in terms of style.

Mr. Ma, the man in charge of the three American lecturers assigned to Peking University for the year, led us through the crowds with efficient and athletic grace. He had done the same thing when we had arrived by air a week earlier, easing us through customs and organizing the transfer of our baggage with a quiet air of politeness and authority. I didn't speak ten words of Chinese -- the three of us had met for the first time in Paris just before we boarded the C.A.A.C. flight and it soon became clear that none of us spoke the language -- but there was little doubt that he operated on the basis of friendship and mutual respect rather than any fear of power. He made sure each of us was introduced to the two drivers of our unmarked grey Shanghai taxis and he was thoughtful enough to use the term for 'comrade' (one of the few I recognized) when presenting each of us to the two men. They were dressed in the same kind of grey outfit as Mr. Ma was wearing, but I noticed that his Mao jacket had four front pockets and theirs each had only two.

The shopping tour was only part of the overall orientation we received that first week before the university officially began its classes; just before we actually started to work -- almost two weeks after the official start of term because the last few members of our pre-selected group of students had not yet arrived on campus -- we were invited to a welcoming banquet by the head of the university. It was a study in contrasts; a large white-walled room, devoid of any paintings or pictures or objects of ornamentation of any kind, in a small restaurant tucked between two narrow alleys, or hutongs, just off Tien An Men, probably the world's largest public square, and into this bare room a half dozen white-jacketed waitresses brought ten courses of the most colorful and delicious food I'd ever experienced. We sat at a large round table and the four glasses in front of each setting were constantly refilled with plum wine, Tsingtao beer, orange soda, and mao-tai, the fiery Chinese equivalent of pure grain alcohol, and after an interminable speech of welcome by the senior Chinese official and a briefer response by the American ambassador -- each speech made longer by the need for simultaneous translations -- a series of bottoms-up toasts were offered to the recently renewed good relations between the people of China and the people of the United States of America and by the time the soup was served to end the meal there were so many gambeis! being suggested (each requiring that you completely empty the glass that you had raised) that a sober observer could easily have assumed that Sino-American friendship was a sure thing for the next one hundred years. Our ambassador, an ex-labor union leader who seemed to respect our hosts and who made an effort to understand them, probably knew better, but he impressed the three of us as newcomers with his ability to gambei with the best of them.

We were feeling no pain when we returned to our rooms at the Friendship Guesthouse, the Youyi Binguan, after that first banquet. We had each been given apartments on the same floor of building Number Four and they were almost identical. Talya and I had a small balcony to go with our bedroom and small living-room and bathroom; Lawrence Timothy Maguire, an American Studies specialist from Columbia, had the apartment across the hall and Noah Bannister, a Stanford professor, could boast a partial view of the Western Hills, a green area just on the edge of the city. The four of us fell into the bulky but comfortable 1950's armchairs in Bannister's living room to have a nightcap and to get to know each other a little better. By the time the evening was over I had at least a general picture of the two people who would be working with me for the year at Beida, the abbreviated Chinese way of referring to Beijing (Peking) University.

Larry Maguire, at 45, was the oldest of us and in Chinese terms this meant that he was automatically our 'team leader' and all communication between the people at the university and the three American foreigners, the Weigwos, would be through him. Recently divorced and showing all the signs of being in acute pain at the loss of his teenage daughter -- she and the mother had moved to California -- he was a somber yet aggressive first-generation product of New York's Hell's Kitchen area who'd come up the academic ladder the hard way: tuitionless City College in New York before the open admissions policy; full scholarship for five years of graduate work at Columbia while working as a teaching assistant to help pay the rent; two dozen articles and three books \-- one of them I knew to be a definitive text in his field -- since receiving his doctorate. Columbia had held on to him and it sounded as if he liked it there, but the breakup of his marriage was more than he could handle in familiar surroundings. He had welcomed the change to come to China for a while.

Noah Bannister had chosen to come for a different reason. Easy-going and darkly handsome, he was a 35 year old product of Southern California sun who was unmarried and who seemed to like it that way. His father, now dead, had been a world-class athlete and then a very successful actor and director and his mother, still living in Bel Air, was on the board of trustees at Cal Tech and kept herself busy by buying up Art Nouveau pieces and donating them to various museums. Noah had given up his surfboard for four years to attend Harvard, but he'd returned to the coast to drift into graduate school at Berkeley, where he developed a genuine interest in the work of both Joseph Conrad and the L.A. mystery writers such as Chandler and Thomas B. Dewey. A book on the connection between high art and popular art, published by the University of California Press, had gotten him an appointment at Stanford, and the offer to come to China had been made just as he was looking for something interesting to do for his first sabbatical. He'd wanted to bring the woman he'd been living with with him, but the Chinese made it clear that only legitimate spouses of foreign scholars would be welcome and neither he nor the woman were anxious to enter into a marriage of convenience or a complicated year-long deception of the Chinese authorities. He said he was sad that they had had to part, but he was smiling good-naturedly as he said it.

The university was our work unit, or danwei, and as such it had the overall responsibility for us as long as we remained in the country. Mr. Ma arranged our rooms, our board and our transportation and he coordinated our work schedules as well as the schedules of the students in our particular courses. He arranged for Talya and me to study Chinese three nights a week with a tutor who came to our apartment each time after first being checked by a PLA soldier at the main gate of the walled compound of the Youyu Binguan; the soldier would call our apartment to announce our visitor and make sure we agreed to receive her. Mrs. Chu was almost 50 and she looked twenty years younger. She taught English on the state-run television during the afternoons and she was something of a public personality in a land where cultivating anonymity was an accepted way of life; after a few months we would meet on Saturday or Sunday morning and we would walk around the city as she shopped or ran errands, all the while drilling us in the relevant Chinese in a hands-on approach that took some of the initial pain out of learning an unfamiliar tonal language, and often she would be approached by people who recognized her from the T.V. and the more aggressive ones would even ask for her autograph. When we witnessed this the first time we were surprised by what we had come to regard as uncommon public demonstrations. Mrs. Chu agreed that such things were still unusual, but she pointed out that Mao and the disastrous Cultural Revolution were now almost four years in the past and even in ponderous China things were slowly changing.

"As one of your own writers has recently said, we are a country of small signs, of vast shifts in ideology masking subtle human changes. We are, you know, a nation of bombastic rhetoric hiding small but significant human changes."

"Do you think the current effort by Deng Xiaoping and other leaders to de-emphasize Mao's importance, to at least semi-officially recognize the failure of the Great Leap Forward of 1958 and the Cultural Revolution of 1966, will be accepted by most of the people?" Talya asked her.

"It is very difficult to say. So many of us suffered so terribly during the Cultural Revolution that we should probably question many of Mao's teachings, but there are some among the leaders who blame the Gang of Four -- Yao Wen-yuan, Change Chun-chiao, Wang Hung-wen and Chiang Ching, Mao's widow -- for most of the horrible excesses of that ten year period. You will have to see for yourselves, I believe. Mao's writings are not in such good favor these days as they once were, but one essay still makes some sense to me. In it he says that whoever wants to know a thing has no way of doing so except by coming into contact with it, by living in its environment. If you want knowledge, you must take part in the changing reality. If you want to know the taste of a pear, you must change the pear by eating it yourself. Such teachings were used to justify the sending of all intellectuals to the countryside, of course, but the basic idea may still be a sound one. You two, in fact, have come a very long way just to taste the pear that is China."

On our weekend walks we would sometimes stop at the Peking Hotel for coffee or an ice cream; Mrs. Chu was known well enough to be allowed to walk in with us, but the average Chinese had little chance of getting by the soldiers at the gate. The hotel was primarily for foreigners and some very wealthy overseas Chinese and every time I entered the place after I'd been in China a while I would think of the same thing: on the gate of a park near the Hwang Po River in Shanghai there was once a large sign that read 'NO CHINESE AND DOGS ALLOWED'. In those days foreigners held Shanghai in what amounted to economic bondage -- the Bund along the waterfront housed representatives of all the major banks of Europe, the Jin Jiang Hotel was a French enclave, and the high-ceilinged rooms of the Huping Fandian, the Peace Hotel, were filled with German and British traders --but even in post-Mao times I couldn't shake the feeling that the average Chinese was still not treated very well in his own country, even by his own people.

I had been working at the university a little more than a month when I received a phone call from a Miss Bonnie Low. She said she was the Hong Kong branch manager of Bank of America and that she was in Peking for a few days to arrange the rental of space for the new office the bank was opening here in another month or so. She said that she had once worked for the bank in Taiwan, and there had met Lynn Boaz, currently the Public Affairs Officer in our embassy here, and that he had recently given her my name as someone who might be able to help her with a problem that had arisen. When I asked what the problem was -- I'd only met Boaz once, at the welcoming banquet, and as far as I could remember we hadn't exchanged more than two dozen words -- she said she'd rather talk about it in person so she'd be willing to buy me dinner the following evening at the Japanese restaurant on the second floor of the Peking Hotel, where she was staying, if I had the time. It was the only Japanese restaurant in Peking and I remembered Mrs. Chu telling us the portions were meager, by Chinese standards, but that the food was excellent, so I agreed. As I hung up I was thinking more about Talya's reaction to the fact that I was going to try one of the city's better restaurants for the fist time without her rather than about the strangeness of the call itself.

Bonnie Low turned out to be small and pretty and very much a woman of the world, a Chinese-American from San Francisco who had graduated summa cum laude as an economics and international studies major from Georgetown University and then had worked for the Bank of America in California, New York, Taiwan and Hong Kong. During a very slowly-served dinner accompanied by some fine hot sake we talked of our backgrounds and how we had come to be in Peking. She had risen quite rapidly in the bank and it wasn't difficult to see why; in addition to Mandarin and Cantonese she spoke respectable French and passable German, and there was toughness just beneath the attractive surface that hinted at both efficiency and a touch of ruthlessness. At 33 she had been in charge of the bank's Hong Kong branch for two years and, now that mainland China had finally agreed to allow a few Western banks to open offices in Peking, she had been assigned the task of establishing the new branch.

"Which brings us to the reason for my buying you this delicious dinner and plying you with the hen-hao booze," she said after we had ordered some dessert and the white-jacketed Chinese waitress had ambled slowly off toward the kitchen.

"Yes, I was wondering about that. I don't know Mr. Lynn Boaz at all and I was unaware that he knew very much about me -- but I assume you know all of this."

Her small smile created the only lines in an otherwise perfectly smooth-skinned face,

"I worked in Taiwan for three years and Lynn was the assistant cultural attaché in our embassy in Teipei during my last two years there. He's been posted to Moscow and Finland since then I think, but he's really an old China-hand and very happy to finally get assigned here, to the heart of the universe, the very center of the middle kingdom. He speaks absolutely perfect Chinese and now he can finally use it again. He said you had lived abroad before and that he knew of you through a mutual friend -- fellow in Greece named Meadows."

My surprise must have been evident because she chuckled quietly before continuing.

"Lynn says that your appointment to lecture at Beida will allow you plenty of time to travel and you will probably be invited to give talks at other universities in various parts of the country. Being designated by the government as a 'long-term foreign expert' as well as a 'friend of China' means that you will be given more freedom to move around and access to more areas than most other westerners, including overseas Chinese like me. My problem -- the bank's problem -- is that we have no one who can move around the country very freely, at least not without constant hassles from the government's China Travel Service, and we feel that we need such access at this time. Our president, Thomas Histon, is a very capable man and he flew into Hong Kong last week to try to arrange something with both the British authorities there and the Chinese authorities here. The red-tape involved seems to be impenetrable.

"We believe that if Deng Ziaoping and his people remain in power long enough, and if there is no major backlash against his pragmatic rapprochement with the West, then its only a matter of time before investment capital will be allowed to funnel into various parts of the country; the bank has contacts in several places quite far from Peking, but our communication with these people is very limited. If we are to be ready to do business in these areas as soon as -- if -- China really opens up to the West, we have to lay the groundwork now. Would you be willing to transport letters and other bank business documents to our Chinese contacts in other parts of the country when you go to those places?"

The dessert was served and I took a few spoonfuls of mine before replying, trying to sort my questions into some kind of order.

"Would I be breaking any Chinese laws"  
"Only if you were to be officially employed by a foreign company. In this case you would have no recorded connection with anyone except your own danwei, the university. You would, in effect, be a strictly unofficial and entirely ad hoc courier if you decided to help me."

First it's 'we' and then it's 'me' and what will it turn out to be in the final analysis, assuming for the moment that there'll be one?

"What if I'm searched and the documents I'm carrying are found?"

"Given your designation and your professional status in your danwei, there should never be any reason to search you. On the contrary, you will most likely be treated with the utmost respect and deference. To search you and find nothing would be a serious loss of face -- the responsible parties would, at the very least, lose their jobs and a job is not easy to come by in China these days."

"But what if?"

"I don't know. There's no precedent."

"Does Mr. Boaz get involved if anything goes wrong?"

"Not officially."

I couldn't suppress a smile.

"Aside from my helping an American firm get its foot in the unpredictable door of the dragon's lair before someone like Banco di Roma or Tokyo or Saudi First National, can you think of one good reason why I should get involved in all this?"

"Lynn says his friend told him that you don't have many opportunities to work under real pressure and that you might welcome the chance to do so every so often. Just to keep your hand in, so to speak. His friend also told him that your instinct was to confront dangerous situations rather than avoid them and that this would someday cause you no end of grief."

"Some friend. And you've obviously done your homework. But did he also mention that I would want a great deal of money for being so helpful?"

I resented that old feeling of being manipulated, of others being more sure of me than I was of myself, and I wanted to see that smooth composure disturbed a little. It worked. She paled visibly and almost stuttered before she spoke.

"No -- uh -- yes, I'm sure we'd be more than happy to pay you for your assistance. We certainly don't expect you to do this for nothing -- not at all -- it would have to be in cash, of course, and it probably should be - - -."

"Not to worry, Miss Low. If I decided to help you there'll be no charge, except for any added expenses I might incur as the result of my carrying your material; I assume we can talk about the specifics of pick-up and delivery if I decide to lend the bank a hand. Shall I give you my answer tomorrow -- downstairs in the lobby at eight o'clock okay with you?"

She agreed, her composure regained, and after we'd finished our dessert she paid in crisp new yuan notes and we parted with a handshake at the elevator. Just before I turned away I noticed a new glint of interest in her look and I thought of how necessary a little shaking up of the old routine is for almost everyone, even self-assured bank managers -- just to keep your hand in, Miss Low, so to speak.

The pre-selected students who attended our lectures were often older than us so we decided to refer to them as participants, a term which helped us to tone down the usually important distinction between a person whose name is preceded by lao, meaning older and wiser and therefore due some respect, and one whose name is preceded by chao, denoting youth and inexperience. There were forty-five of them, ranging in age form 23 to 54, and they were mostly teachers from middle schools, institutes and universities in other parts of the country, all selected by their danweis and the Ministry of Education to be sent to Peking University for a year to be exposed to the pedagogy of American academics. Many of the participants had been imprisoned or sent to do manual labor in the countryside during the Cultural Revolution, a few were university professors in their own right who had studied in England or the States as young students before liberation by Mao and the communists in 1949, and almost all of them were at Beida without their spouses or children, a separation quite common in modern China and bemoaned by many.

For the first few weeks the three of us wondered what we were doing wrong; the participants were attentive and seemed eager and highly motivated when they talked to us individually outside of class, but in the lecture rooms it was as if we were addressing a bunch of zombies. Back at the Youyi Binguan at night we'd sit around drinking tea or half-liter bottles of Chinese beer, pijiao, and try to figure out what the problem was. After a few such sessions, and a few bottles of Tsingtao, our ideas were often less than scintillating.

"My theory," Larry would offer, "is that at some point near the beginning of term I must have gone into my classroom without having zipped up my fly and now they're too embarrassed to participate or stand up and say anything about my lectures because they don't want me to see them giggle and thus be embarrassed myself. In other words, they all lower their heads and say nothing when I ask a question because they don't want me to lose face."

"That, my good man, may explain your failure to reach these obviously very bright people but what about me?" Noah asks. "I usually wear these Ocean Pacific specials that have no zipper in the front. No, I think they don't respond in my class because of that huge goddam picture of Mao hanging on the wall above the blackboard just behind me. They're so used to just accepting what they're given, with that father-figure looming over them wherever they turn, that they're just not used to questioning what they hear -- even if sometimes it's nothing but pedantic bullshit."

"Maybe it's that their English comprehension isn't that great and we're all talking too fast in class," I suggest, and if Talya is with us she points at me and nods emphatically, but Noah speaks in a slow, flat, unaccented California manner so we know that that can't be the whole problem.

One day I mentioned our frustration to Ma. As a man in his early fifties he deserved the respectful appellation of lao, but he had asked us not to bother with it. His high cheekbones and smooth dark skin gave him the look of a handsome Mongolian, although he came from the coastal town of Tsingtao, now the home of China's best beer. He was a small, compact, extremely athletic man who had fought in the south with the communists in 1948, been imprisoned as an intellectual who refused to deny his background during the Cultural Revolution (one of his children had died of starvation while he was in confinement because his wife had been taken way suddenly one night by a band of young Red Guards and nobody knew the baby was still in the empty house), and who now was still a member of the Party and still believed in working indefatigably for the betterment of the people. Through all of his turbulent life he had remained, in spite of its contradictions with twentieth century communism, an ardent and very knowledgeable student of the teachings of Confucius and he responded to me in the soft voice and balanced phrases that are such an important part of the Confucian ideal.

"To understand a man you must know his memories. Your students come from many different backgrounds -- some from the army, some from factory worker families, some from the homes of peasants, and some from the world of the intellectuals \-- but all have been through the bad times of the 1960's and 1970's. They all know what it meant to be different in those days, to be isolated from the group and to be beaten and tortured and to see your friends and family publicly disgraced, imprisoned, or even killed. These people you are teaching are still so close to those times -- after all, it is only four years since Mao died -- that their instincts are still governed by them.

"There is, of course, an old saying that explains this condition: 'a person fears fame the way a pig is afraid of becoming fat.' Your students are very eager to learn from you. They know they are very lucky to be given this chance to study here at Beida with you and they do not want to disgrace their danweis or jeopardize their own future. Perhaps it will take time and you will need much patience, but I think most people can be taught how to give up some of their fears. Your students are not familiar with volunteering to speak in front of others except in self-criticism sessions. They are not afraid of you or Bannister or Maguire; they fear the ridicule of their fellow students if they should say something unworthy or stupid. They would not want you to lose face because of their poor performance.

"Perhaps you should talk to them about how Americans teach, about what is acceptable behavior in your classes. I am sure that will help, but I am also sure that much patience will still be necessary."

I passed on Ma's advice to Noah and Larry and within a month we all noticed a marked improvement. Many participants still refused to raise their hands and volunteer any opinions, but quite a few more were getting into the habit of doing so regularly; by mid-November Noah reported a knock-down-drag-out discussion about literary style in one of his classes that almost had half-a-dozen participants come to blows. He quipped that we might rue the day we opened up this particular Chinese box, but we all knew we'd gotten over at least one major hurdle.

It was about this time, too, that Ma told me he had received an invitation from the president of Shandong University for me to give a lecture there. The university was in the city of Jinan, he said, a crowded and rather uninteresting place that seemed to be under a perpetual cloud of coal dust from the heavy industry that dominated the area, but the invitation included a weekend trip in one of the university's mini-buses to the small town of Qufu, the ancestral home of Confucius. Talya was also invited and we told Ma we'd be happy to go; he was delighted that we would be seeing the home of his favorite philosopher--theoretician and he spent hours giving us detailed instructions about what to see and do there.

A few days later I called Bonnie Low and told her of our trip and she said she'd have some papers for me to take to a Mr. Xin in Jinan. I had agreed to do her the occasional favor as long as I knew exactly what I was carrying each time. She'd been less than enthusiastic about my demand, but eventually she'd agreed. The night before Talya and I boarded the southbound train at the cavernous main railway station I met Bonnie at the Peking Hotel and she handed me a packet of letters, each written in Chinese on bank stationary and with a typed translation in English attached. Back at the apartment I placed the letters between the pages of my lecture notes in my battered briefcase and on the train next day I kept the briefcase close at hand at all times.

It was a pleasant journey in our soft sleeper coach -- Ma had gotten us a four-bedded compartment for ourselves, the most comfortable of the four kinds of accommodation on Chinese trains: hard seat, soft seat, hard sleeper and soft sleeper -- and when we stepped down onto the crowded platform in Jinan a delegation from the university was there to meet us. A small welcoming banquet that night was presided over by the president and after it his wife offered to show Talya some of the old photographs of the school, a few of which were from the pre-liberation period of Chiang Kai-shek's rule. I excused myself to take a short walk around that part of the city closest to the school before going to bed and at the red kiosk nearest the main gate a man identified himself as Mr. Xin, just as Bonnie had said he would, and I gave him the packet of letters. The next day I gave my lecture in a bare-walled and unheated auditorium and the following morning Talya and I and an interpreter/guide were driven to Qufu in a late-model Yugoslavian mini-bus. The town was quiet and peaceful and we spent the night in a small room off one of the several courtyards that made up the Confucian complex, a modest but well-preserved compound that had been damaged by the Red Guards in the sixties and then restored by government order after 1976 to be used as a tourist site for Westerners who were once again being allowed to visit the land of the dragon, that supreme symbol of the emperor and the source of life-giving rain. The home of Confucius, the man who lived five hundred years before Christ and whose teachings were suppressed by not only the very first emperor but by almost every other Chinese ruler since then, was a source of both pride and some slight embarrassment for the present leaders. Whereas the later Tan Dynasty had efficiently given China the labyrinthian bureaucracy it was still saddled with, Confucius had given it an ideal of both morality and practical government that had proven to be almost impossible to achieve. Confucius taught that rulers should govern by the example of their own moral virtue, not by force; the emperor at the top should use the family as the model for the nation, each member knowing his or her place, each obeying those above them and treating with compassion those below.

Talya and I could sense the Confucian ideal in the peaceful orderliness of his well-proportioned home -- the need for a ruler to be balanced, upright, harmonious and virtuous \-- but driving down through the fields during harvest time the previous day our guide had mentioned that four out of five of China's one billion people live and work on the land and we wondered how anyone, benevolent dictator or pragmatic central committee, could control or even keep track of so massive and disparate a people in the twentieth century without the use (or threat of the use) of some form of force. The ideal of a moral government had, down through the centuries, found its architectural manifestation in the Forbidden City, those 250 acres of impressive buildings and grounds laid out in precise and symbolic proportion in the center of Peking, at the very heart of the universe, but in reality no common Chinese (until Liberation) could ever enter the place except on pain of death. Standing in the quiet courtyards of Qufu I could imagine an ancient Chinese peasant actually believing the aphorism that 'the mountain is high and the emperor is far away', but in modern Peking a special section of the old Forbidden City is reserved for the nation's elderly rulers and there are very few who pass by that high brick wall everyday -- and they number in the millions -- who would make the mistake of thinking that the government does not steadfastly control almost every aspect of their existence. Confucius may be acceptable enough these days to share with the odd visiting barbarian now and then, but the Chinese know that Deng Xiaoping and the other senior members of the Party actually run their vast country with very few nods in the old philosopher's direction.

Soon after Talya and I returned to Peking from Qufu and Jinan we received two tickets for a reception in honor of a visiting American politician who sat on the Senate's Foreign Relations Committee, a committee that was then considering the advisability of our selling some very sophisticated military equipment to China. The reception was held in the Great Hall of the People, a massive building that dominates one corner of Tien An Men Square, and most of the ten thousand seats were already filled by the time we arrived. Larry and Noah had also been invited and Ma sat with us to help with any interpreting that might be necessary. I noticed Lynn Boaz and other embassy people up on the raised central platform and just to their right I could see Bonnie Low sitting among a small group of well-dressed and very prosperous looking men, all Westerners, who were being served large covered cups of tea by unusually attentive fu-yuen, the ubiquitous attendants assigned to specific work units such as hotels or to important foreigners. At the Youyi Binguan they made beds and cleaned rooms and kept careful track of our comings and goings, but here they simply kept the boiled hot water and the hot tea available for the more important members of the audience.

Deng himself was the host that night and with the help of several female translators he welcomed the visiting politicians, in particular the senior Senator who headed the delegation, and then he proceeded to give a lengthy speech about the need for China to continue to maintain mutually beneficial relationships with the West if she were to fulfill her role as the leader in the great socialist revolution. I remembered reading somewhere that he was born in 1904 and as I watched him deliver his prepared address I was impressed with how vigorous and healthy he looked at 76, especially when compared to some of the other senior Party officials seated alongside him on the platform, many of whom were assisted throughout the evening by two or three women in white jackets and baggy white slacks who looked like nurses rather than fu-yuen. He was, as far as I could tell from the translation, an effective speaker and as he summed up his defense of his very pragmatic approach to Sino-American relations -- a defense he felt was necessary because, as he very carefully suggested, there were those in his country who felt that such cooperation with the West would only compromise and dilute the original aims of those who brought about Liberation in 1949 -- he asked a question that both appealed to the pro-Western modernists in the audience and made an attempt to appease the aphoristically inclined traditionalists who were waiting for the internal political pendulum to swing back to the left again. His 'What does it matter if the cat is black or white as long as it catches mice?' brought the standard five minute ovation and I noticed that although Bonnie Low's smile wasn't quite as wide and beaming as the senior Senator's, her applause was just as enthusiastic.

As we filed out of the hall and moved down the marble steps toward our waiting grey taxis I caught just a glimpse of Bonnie and Lynn Boaz getting into the same long black limousine, one of the lumbering and curtained honggi usually reserved for important Party members or privileged bureaucrats or foreigners who are being treated with particular deference by someone with influence.

In the weeks that followed there was an unofficial but definite cooling of relations between many Chinese who had positions of responsibility and those Americans who were long-term residents of the country. Reagan had been elected President but would not take office until January and his pre-election rhetoric had not been very friendly toward China; nobody in China was sure but most of them kept their distance from us in case the leadership decided that America was once again a heinous villain and an enemy of the great socialist experiment. With the long history of guilt-by-association still unbroken in China, not very many people wanted to take the chance on us. The taxi drivers ignored our greetings, the fu-yuen at the Youyi were either distant or plain surly, and even some of our student-participants avoided us in the halls at the university.

After a few days of this we were visited by Ma in the office the three of us shared and it became even clearer to us that he was an exceptional person in a land where being an exception could be a very dangerous undertaking.

"I do not wish to intrude, but I know that none of you are in the habit of taking advantage of our traditional xiu-xi after lunch so I thought that instead of a brief sleep you might welcome a brief conversation," Ma said with more directness than he normally used with us.

"Please come in," Noah said, "and have some hot water." We knew he preferred the plain boiled water to the tea, both of which were constantly replenished for us during the day by a young participant to whom Ma had given the task.

"We were just talking about how things have changed around here for us since we heard about the election of our new President," Larry said with a chuckle, being careful not to let it sound as if we thought Ma was in any way to blame for the change.

"That is what I thought you might want to have a conversation about," Ma responded with a warm smile and a nod of his head. "It is not unusual for our people to pick up rumors about potential shifts and changes in government policy and to shy away from the foreign friends they have made until the official policy of our leaders has been made clear. I believe that is what is happening with you and your country at this time. I would not treat it as anything very serious at this point, however; there is a great deal of good feeling that has been built up between Chinese people and American people lately and I would say that such feeling will survive even this present uncertain period between our governments. And is it not true that what your leaders say before they are chosen is not always the same as what they do after they are chosen? I believe it is the same for leaders everywhere, is it not?"

"What do you think will be the result of all this on our work here?" I asked him. "You should know that we received phone calls early this morning at the Youyi from Mr. Boaz at our embassy. He said he thought it would be wise for us to be prepared to leave China on very short notice if relations between our two governments didn't improve in the next few weeks."

"I think your Mr. Boaz speaks our language very much like our best poets, but he also reacts too quickly and dramatically to rumors in his own diplomatic community. I think you will remain here the full term of your contracts, if you so desire. We need America and other capitalist countries to help us move intelligently into the next century. We can learn a great deal from you and I believe our present leaders realize this. If they do not, I think they do not deserve to be in power."

Coming from a foreigner it might have been nothing more than polite criticism, but coming from a long-standing member of the Chinese Communist Party, speaking in a building located in the same city as the country's source of absolute control, it was nothing less than dangerous heresy. We'd been in the country long enough to realize this and to appreciate the man's courage and his personal integrity; we knew our phone conversations were often monitored and we assumed our office was not secure so none of us had very much to say in the face of such a display. After giving us the details of a trip to Shanghai the three of us were to make to lecture at Fudan University, Ma quietly took his leave.

Two weeks later the tension between Washington and Peking was eased a little when a member of the Reagan transition team let it leak to the press that their man might be rethinking his position on supplying the Taiwan government with some of our more advanced jet fighters. A few days after that the three of us and Ma boarded the train for Shanghai and prepared for the twenty-four hour ride by setting out a bottle of red wine and several bottles of pijiao on the drop-down table in our compartment that already had four covered cups of tea on it. Before the train pulled out the female attendant had placed a thermos of hot water under the table and informed us that she would let us know when we should go back to the dining car for dinner. As we got underway the strident sounds of a traditional Peking opera came screeching out of the speaker above the compartment's door; the train had a modern sound system that seemed somewhat incongruous in the old-fashioned wood-trimmed compartments, with their curtained windows and plush velvet seats and ornate lampshades, and it took us several painful minutes before we could figure out how to turn down the volume on our speaker. Ma informed us that short of pulling out a wire or two there was no way of turning the thing off completely, but that the music and high-pitched announcements about the train's progress and the weather en route would go off at 9:30 \-- official bedtime on long-distance runs -- and come back on again at 6:30 in the morning. Larry, who always arranged his schedule so he'd never have to lecture before 11:00 a.m., groaned in anticipatory agony at the information.

It was a cold fall day and as we left the outskirts of the capital and moved along the level land to the south I could see smoke from the coal fires in the brick houses of the smaller villages and every so often a group of peasants, bundled in layers of blue, bent over in the brown fields. As our train passed over a narrow river I looked down into a junk-rigged barge that was loaded with cabbages; two very young children, each dressed in blue quilted jackets and bright red pants slit open up the back for rapid toilet training, waved and laughed and tumbled about on the top of the pile and then disappeared in a flash to be replaced by the river's high muddy bank and then the seemingly endless brown fields. By the time we slowed to cross the bridge over the Yangtze the sun was a pale yellow wafer slipping behind some distant hills and the fields had given way to green-rimmed rice paddies and an intricate system of narrow waterways. Once we crossed the river the houses seemed less substantial, less likely to be made of brick, and there were only a few small boats making their way along the canals; the light outside faded quickly and the overhead light in the compartment came on.

* * *

Bonnie had given me a single letter to deliver to a Miss Cai Fu-ning at the Peace Hotel in Shanghai. It was in a blank envelope I had sealed myself and when I folded the envelope in half I could just fit it into one of the two breast pockets of my recently purchased tan Mao jacket. Before we had left Peking I had taken the precaution of reinforcing the button on each of those pockets with a needle and some thread borrowed from Talya's sewing kit and now, as we were asked by the attendant to make our way to the dining car for our dinner, I checked on my handiwork by tugging vigorously once or twice on each button as the four of us walked single-file back through the other soft-sleeper coaches.

The dining car was almost empty when we got there; a few overweight army officers sat at a table at one end of the car and two foreigners, a man and a woman who looked to be in their late fifties or early sixties, were engaged in earnest conversation in English at a smaller table on the opposite side of the car and near the other end. We chose a table for four in the middle and an attendant came up to half-heartedly swipe at the crumbs and small pieces of leftover food on the stained white tablecloth before he looked at Ma and then rattled off a question so rapidly that the rest of us had to make a concerted effort not to laugh out loud. I hadn't understood a single word and it was obvious that neither had they. Ma answered slowly and the man went away with a scowl; I hadn't understood a word that Ma had said either and he noticed our bewilderment.

"Do not be disturbed at what you think is your linguistic ignorance after all the hard work you have put into studying our language. That comrade is obviously not happy that we have been called to eat our meal at such a late hour and he chose to speak his own dialect, Shanghaiese, rather than putungwa, the people's language – it was called Mandarin before Liberation – in hopes of confusing us and perhaps causing us to leave. I apologize for his rudeness. I answered him in his own dialect and told him to bring our foreign guests the regular dinner and not that which is specially priced for foreigners. It will be a large bowl of tung-mein, noodles and some vegetables in a broth, and a plate of fried noodles on the side. It is filling and very tasty; you would find the other meal fancier but not as palatable and at least three times as expensive. Shall we order some beer as well?"

The meal was delicious and although, as with most non-banquet meals in China, it was served and eaten in less than twenty minutes, we lingered for a few minutes as we finished our beer. The older couple was slowly finishing a bottle of wine.

"Isn't it unusual for foreigners to be allowed to travel alone, Ma?" Noah asked in a lowered voice, nodding in their direction.

"If they are long-term foreign guests, as you are, they may travel without a guide if they can speak Chinese. This does not apply to those who come to our country on tours for two or three weeks. I would say that those two people at the end of the carriage have lived here for some time and probably speak Shanghaiese; I see that they are wearing old Chinese shoes and I believe I heard the lady respond with some anger to the waiter in his own dialect when he tried to remove their unfinished bottle of wine. I would guess that those two people have very little difficulty traveling without a guide in China." He smiled as if he approved of their obvious resilience.

The beer and the silence from the loudspeaker in our compartment helped me sleep soundly through the night and after breakfast the next morning I spent several hours just watching the countryside roll by our window, taking an occasional break to walk up and down the corridor to avoid getting too stiff from all the enforced inactivity. It was an interesting ride and Ma's good humor and vast knowledge of the places we passed made it that much more enjoyable, but I was glad to reach Shanghai and get settled in our rooms at the Jing Jiang Hotel. Ma was in a section of one of the buildings reserved for Chinese, Larry and Noah were in a double on the second floor of the main building, and I was given a single on the third floor. Noah said an ex-classmate of his had recommended a restaurant directly across from the hotel's main entrance so that first night we ate there. We insisted that Ma come along as our guest because Noah remembered that his friend had said the place was pretty fancy, and we knew how little Ma earned, but even we were surprised to find such a place in China.

The French Club was, before the communists started their long march from the south in 1948, the elegant nightspot in the old French Quarter. Now it was a bit tarnished, but it still had an indoor swimming pool, a mahogany-paneled billiard room, an old-fashioned two-lane bowling alley with its own bar and a Chinese pin boy to reset the pins, and a formal restaurant with leather armchairs and a crystal chandelier. Ma explained that it was now one of the places kept open to attract the much-needed hard currency of foreigners and those overseas Chinese who had become wealthy in their adopted lands and who came back for a visit. The head waiter wasn't too happy to see Ma in his Mao jacket and obviously mainland slacks, but he reserved his longest stare for me and my own Mao jacket; foreigners dressed like your average comrade couldn't be expected to spend as freely as your average tourist. If Noah and Larry hadn't decided to put on Western ties and jackets for the evening we probably would have gotten a table near the kitchen instead of the one we were given close to the three musicians who played Western classical music as we ate. The violist was superb -- a young woman who wore the kind of skin-tight Susie Wong dress I never saw worn in Peking -- and the food was good French food, but we could see that Ma wasn't all that comfortable in that kind of place and when the bill came the rest of us weren't all that enthusiastic either.

After the others had gone up to their rooms I took a long walk to try to get a feel for the city. It seemed much more crowded than Peking and the people appeared to be more sophisticated and aggressive; many were well-dressed, the women as often in dresses as in the usual trousers, and I saw a few groups of liu-mang, young toughs, hanging out on one of the busiest corners, each man wearing a pair of black plastic sunglasses even though the sun had gone down hours ago. The Jing Jiang is in a relatively residential area and fairly quiet, but as I got close to Nanking Road, the city's major shopping street, the noise increased and the crowds spilled out over the narrow sidewalks and took up a good portion of the road on either side, forcing the constantly honking taxis to swerve and brake and accelerate in an urban ritual that reminded me of rush-hour in midtown Manhattan. It was after nine o'clock at night and most of the stores were closed and I couldn't help wondering what the street was like when they were all open.

When I reached the Bund I watched the lights of the junks and sampans and large freighters on the river for a while and then I walked upriver, checking the small street map I'd gotten from the desk at our hotel, and turned off the Bund and into the main building of the Peace Hotel. I walked around the lobby for ten or fifteen minutes, getting my bearings and making sure I knew where the elevators and stairs were, and then I went into the hotel bar where three Chinese musicians were playing American pop tunes from the 1940's and several Japanese businessmen were drinking scotch and giving the waiter a hard time. The saxophone wasn't bad but the piano sounded as if it were being played under water so I had one beer and left. Back at the Jing Jiang the clerk on duty gave me my key and a telephone message. I was to call the Peace Hotel the following evening and ask for room 514. The caller had not left a name.

Larry gave his lecture at Fudan the next day and that night after dinner I placed the call and a man with a slight Boston accent answered the phone and when I identified myself he asked if I would be kind enough to hang up and allow him to call me right back. It was almost eleven minutes later when he did and this time there was a definite undercurrent of tension, almost a panic being barely held in check, in his voice.

"The person you were to meet has had a sudden accident – a serious accident -- she will be unable to see you and – and it will be best for all concerned if you destroy your item at once. Will there be any problem in your doing that?"

"No, none at all. May I ask the nature of the accident?"

There was a short silence in which even the sound of his breathing was absent, as if a hand had been placed over the mouthpiece of his phone for a few seconds, and then he was back.

"Unfortunately, such questions are now irrelevant. I'm sorry, but I must go now." He hung up with what sounded like a sigh.

I thought about taking a taxi to the Peace Hotel and trying to find out for myself just what had happened, if anything, to Miss Cai Fu-ning, but I rejected the idea. The man on the phone had made it sound final and in spite of his being upset he had sounded as if he knew what he was talking about.

I sat on the edge of the bed and took the letter from my jacket pocket, crumpling the envelope and throwing it into the small wastepaper basket by the night table as I spread the letter on the bed and stared at it. I'd been told to destroy it and I fully intended to, but what was really in it? I'd read it once in Peking and it had appeared to be just a complicated explanation of various money transactions in several currencies and the projected rates of exchange on specific dates during the next twelve months. Given the sudden turn of events, however – and the unexpected American voice on the phone – I now wasn't so sure.

As I looked down at the flattened letter, neatly typed and single spaced and almost completely covered with words and numbers, I reached for the box of matches on the table and slowly removed one, closing the box and holding it lightly in my left hand as I positioned the match in my right. I was about to light the match and carry the letter the few steps into the bathroom to burn it when I remembered something I'd been told by a rumpled old instructor at the ASA headquarters in Massachusetts almost eighteen years earlier. The man had impressed me because I had been reading something by Poe at the time and at the end of a basic decoding class he had said that the best cryptographers he knew all had minds like that of Monsieur Dupin, the character in Poe's story "The Purloined Letter" who finally figures out that the missing letter must have been put in the most obvious place.

I put aside the match and matchbox and took the letter over to the desk and switched on the green-shaded desk lamp. Assuming what I thought was the most obvious, that if there was a hidden meaning in the paper then it would somehow be implanted in the words themselves, I used a pencil to underline and rearrange and even lightly put a line through words that might have any significance. After almost an hour I realized I was hopelessly out of my depth; the possible combinations and transpositions seemed endless. I put down the pencil and rubbed my eye with the knuckles of my hands and as I looked back at the paper I noticed something I'd missed before; almost all the words now had some kind of pencil mark associated with them, but the many Arabic numbers remained as neat and precise as ever. What if the meaning was in the numbers?

I tried to control any excitement, tried to listen to that rumpled old guy and think only of the most obvious; if numbers were to have any message to give they would each have to have a letter equivalent, but if there were variable equivalents it would require a computer to figure out all the numbers in this document. Think obvious. The best I could come up with was to assign each of the numbers a letter with 1 being an 'A' and 26 being 'Z'. When I looked at the paper again I couldn't help shouting with joy – there were no numbers on the typed page that were larger than 26! I knew it was absurd, but felt like I'd just figured out the Rosetta Stone.

Taking the numbers line by line from the typed page was easy:

13 5 19 19 1 7 5

5 14 4

18 15 21 20 5

1 12 20 5 18 14 1 20 5

18 5 16 12 25

19 20 15 16

21 18 21 13 17 9

16 12 1 3 5

9 14

16 5 15 16 12 5

14 1 13 5 19

5 24 3 8 1 14 7 5

4 9 19 1 16 18 15 22 5 4

6 19 9 24 20 5 5 14 19

When I first gave them their letter equivalents, however, my excitement diminished rapidly; the resulting words made little sense. It took me a few minutes to realize the most obvious thing of all – the words I had created from the numbers simply had to be read in reverse order, from the bottom line upwards. I wrote out the result in capital letters and studied it until I had it memorized: FSIXTEENS DISAPPROVED EXCHANGE NAMES PEOPLE IN PLACE URUMQI STOP REPLY ALTERNATE ROUTE END MESSAGE. Before I climbed into bed I burned the original letter and my own scribblings and even the envelope I retrieved from the wastepaper basket, and I flushed the ashes from the whole lot down the toilet. It took me a long time to fall asleep now that I was sure that I was doing favors for someone other than Bonnie Low and her bank.

* * *

The next morning Noah gave his lecture and that afternoon I gave mine and at night the Fudan people gave us an elaborate farewell banquet in a large restaurant just off Nanking Road West. I drank a few too many mao-tais with far too many beers and when the others piled into the waiting taxis to go back to our hotel I insisted on walking. Ma must have decided to go with me because as the cars pulled away and I started off in the direction of the river he was at my side, gently touching my arm to get my attention.

"If you do not object I will walk with you to clear my head. I too am fond of banquets and this was a very fine one."

He'd been keeping right up with our host, a man who played the gambei game as if he were quite used to outlasting whole legions of guests when he invited them to dinner, but Ma seemed none the worse for it; his speech didn't sound slurred and he seemed to navigate the pavement without any difficulty – although I had to remind myself that I probably wasn't in the best condition for judging such things.

"Glad to have you along. Tell me, Ma, do you like Shanghai? You seem more relaxed down here than you are in Peking, or is that just my imagination?" I knew no other Chinese with whom I could be so personal, but he'd spent a good deal of time with us ever since our arrival in China and I had the feeling that he would welcome the chance to get to know all of us a little better, so I gave my instincts – and the booze – free rein.

"It is true, here in the south the pressures are less severe on me. When I am in Beijing, close to the people and institutions which govern us, I do not very often allow myself the pleasures of tonight's excess. I come from Tsingtao, a place closer to Beijing than this, but even there I often feel more at ease than I do in the capital. You are very wise to notice – maybe I will have to call you lao from now on."

We walked on, the crowds on the sidewalks beginning to thin out, and Ma changed the subject.

"Do you have interest in mountain climbing?"

"I've done a little, but not very much technical work. I enjoy it, though."

"We have five sacred mountains, you know, and when I am able to combine it with my official duties for Beida I try to climb them. I feel most at ease when I am climbing, alone, and the weather is misty, cool and misty, but not too cold. Perhaps one day the two of us will climb together."

"I'd like that. Which mountains do you think we might do?"

"If we can arrange it, Huang Shan, Yellow Mountain, in Anhui Province would be a fine experience for you. If we are back in the south, in Sichuan, we must surely climb E-mei. There are many, many steps to walk up to get to the top of Tai Shan, if course, but many Chinese walk to the top every year because it is said that the gods on Tai Shan have the power to grant the wish for a baby boy. You should visit Tai Shan even if you have no desire for a son – it is very beautiful to watch the sunrise from the very top."

We walked in silence for a while before he spoke again.

"Where else in China would you like to go?"

"I'd like to see Guilin, and Urumqi in the west, and if possible I'd like to get to Inner Mongolia and the city of Harbin up in the north. I've heard that in the late spring it's very nice on the beach up in Beidaihe and I know Talya would like to see the excavations at Xian. Of course, we'd both like to visit Lhasa, but I know Tibet is still off-limits to most foreigners."

He remained silent as we crossed the last major intersection before the Bund and then when he spoke I had to strain to hear him.

"The grasslands are wild and beautiful in good weather, but Mongolia can be dangerous when it is cold. Perhaps we can arrange for you to visit the capital, Huhehot, and a brigade from one of the areas to the north. It is very close to the border there so we will have to get some special permission for you. I will ask the responsible people.

"Guilin's rock formations are quite unusual and I'm sure we can get you there, but Urumqi is not a very pleasant place; it is very isolated and only business men interested in heavy industry usually ask to go there, but if you like I will make inquiries. You and your wife may go to Beidaihe on the train – it is not very far from Beijing – just let me know when you would like to go and I will get your travel permits and tickets and see that reservations are made.

"Xian's clay figures, especially the soldier's faces, are worth the long trip and I will make inquiries about that as well, but it might be best for you to ask me about Tibet after your new year. Right now there is not much chance of my getting a travel permit for an American to visit Lhasa."

As we reached the Bund he looked across the street at a small park by the river and then looked up for a moment at the overcast night sky, a wistful sort of look with just a hint of a smile at the corners of his mouth.

"It is very strange. When I first came south in 1948, as a young man, I fought with a man named Lin Piao. He became Mao's Vice Chairman and some people say he betrayed the Chairman and died very mysteriously while trying to flee the country when his villainy was discovered, but his body was never found and I don't have much confidence in rumors. The last time I saw Lin Piao we were drinking some tea together in that green space there by the river."

We walked along the Bund without speaking until Ma touched my arm again and we halted.

"This, of course, is not the way back to the Jing Jiang."

"I know," I said, "I thought we could stop at the Huping Fandian for a few minutes and have a cup of coffee before we go back. Okay with you?"

He nodded but said nothing and I turned into the hotel lobby a step or two ahead of him and passed the elevators just as a grey-haired man and an older lady stepped into one of them. The elevator door closed before the couple had turned around to face the front of the car, but I was almost sure that I recognized them from the back of their heads. Ma wouldn't have seen them this time so it was useless to ask him for corroboration that it was the older couple from the dining car on the train. As we sat down at a small formica-topped table in the bar the music stopped and the band took a break. I ordered coffee and Ma asked for tea and when they were brought we drank slowly, watching the other customers in the crowded room. Ma leaned toward me and spoke softly.

"A friend told me today that a woman committed suicide here yesterday. He said that she hung herself in the bathroom of her fifth floor room. She was an overseas Chinese – my friend thinks she was from Hong Kong – and she did not leave a final note. This is mainly a tourist hotel so the authorities will probably keep the affair out of the newspaper, but my friend said the staff were very upset today. He works as a fu-yuen on the fifth floor.

"Did your friend tell you her name, or why she might have taken her life?

"No, just that he thought she was a visitor from Hong Kong."

We finished and I paid and we walked back to the Jing Jiang, talking of the attitudes toward suicide in our respective countries and speculating on the relationship between national goals and the taking of one's own life. Ma said that there was no official record kept, as far as he knew, of the number of suicides in China, but he was sure that the rate had increased drastically during and even since the Cultural Revolution and Mao's death. At the hotel's front gate I asked him a final question before we went our separate ways for the night.

"Do Chinese people who commit suicide usually do it by hanging themselves?"

"No, in modern times it is almost never done that way. I am not certain why it is so but these days other methods are usually used. Not a very proper subject to conclude an evening with, is it? I will come by at ten in the morning with the taxi – that will allow us plenty of time to get to the station. I wish you a restful night."

* * *

By early December the weather in Peking had turned cold and after Christmas the temperature dropped well below freezing and seemed to stay there forever. There was almost no snow, but the wind coming out of the north found the city defenseless, surrounded on three sides by flatland and with the hills in the west serving only to look pretty in the haze of an early evening. The use of soft coal as the main source of heat resulted in an acrid-smelling layer of soot on everything and the diesel fumes from the trucks and modified tractors that rumbled by on the main road alongside the Youyi Binguan were blown about in swirls and eddies that eventually dissipated only when the traffic thinned out in the late afternoon. The post-1958 blocks of depressingly uniform high-rise apartment buildings along most of the major streets only added to the meanness of the scene: they dominated the landscape in the downtown area and their ponderous facades, a legacy of the Russians, almost completely obscured any view of the traditional hutongs and courtyards of the older neighborhoods, those sections earmarked by the government for destruction in its attempt to create new housing for the city's ever-expanding population. In spite of the cold and the wind and the inevitable pollution, there was a slow but steady activity evident almost everywhere; heavily bundled workers and mounds of freshly-dug earth and belching heavy equipment strongly supported the view held by some residents and most foreign visitors that the city was in the process of becoming one big construction site.

Getting to the university during the winter months was often a challenge and occasionally ludicrous. At 7:45 a.m. we would turn left out of the main gate of the hotel compound and join the thousands of other well-padded bicyclists who were pedaling to their jobs in the western part of the city. At times ten and twelve abreast, many riders wearing white surgical-looking masks to diminish the effects of both the pollution and the cold, we would move rapidly along on our Flying Pigeon machines, giving way to incessantly honking taxis and tightly-packed buses only when being run down was absolutely imminent. The road would be solid cyclists as far as the eye could see, both ahead and behind, and it was essential to plan anything major, such as a turn or a stop, well in advance, easing yourself gradually into position on the left or right, being careful not to slow down too much or too quickly (a bicycle accident during the rush-hour invariably caused a great deal of anger all round and often resulted in horrendous shouting matches, although the cyclists involved rarely came to blows). On those very cold mornings when the roads were dotted with intermittent patches of ice the journey could take on Chaplinesque qualities; a small woman wrapped in numerous layers of dark blue clothing, barely able to reach the pedals of her Flying Pigeon bicycle, brakes too suddenly and begins a slow skid to the right. Others near her can sense her difficulty and realize the possible danger to themselves, but given the sheer mass and unrelenting pace of the procession they dare not take their attention away from the riders directly in front of them, and so the predictable comes to pass; in the jerky and seemingly out-of-synch style of an early silent movie the woman and her bike go down, hitting the wheels of the machine on her right, whose owner has edged over as far to his right as possible, and the subsequent accordian effect is devastating, each rider on the woman's right going down in a slightly different way and with a slightly different last-second attempt to stave off the inevitable.

We never saw anyone seriously hurt on those morning rides, but whenever I finally turned in at Beida's main entrance and was waved through by the guards I always felt elated, as if I'd once again survived some kind of test, some kind of trial by combat. It certainly started off the working day for me with all the adrenalin flowing.

By late December things had begun to change at the university and I usually looked forward to my classes with enthusiasm. The large ubiquitous portraits of Chairman Mao had been removed from all the classrooms and only one of his statues, an impressively detailed white marble one in front of the main library, remained on display on the central campus. What little political rhetoric from the State that was allowed to filter down to us (the China Daily had just begun its first English-language edition) was comparatively mild on the subject of Sino-American affairs and most of our participants were now in the habit of actually participating in class discussions. I lectured with my gloves on and my padded overcoat collar turned up to cover my ears and on some days I could see my breath as I spoke, but when it was time to field questions the room heated up rapidly; a few of those who were clearly members of the Party usually remained reticent, but the rest were now eager to challenge me on questions of interpretation, particularly when I offered a facile or simplistic reading of something that they felt was sociologically much more complex. A strict psychological analysis of a text, if it was especially Freudian, left most of them unconvinced; with what I now realized was a good deal of humor mixed in with all the politeness and respect, they suggested ways of looking at a work that made it clear that they were doing some intellectual stretching, making a concerted effort to go beyond the current 'is it relevant to China's Four Modernizations?' criterion and to see the possibility that there might be an individualistic dimension to a particular work of art. It was exciting stuff and I became convinced that I was involved with some of the brightest and most highly motivated people I had ever taught; in the back of my mind I often wondered what they would have been like if they hadn't been deprived of books and any sort of formal education for those ten years of Mao's final disastrous experiment.

During one of our Chinese lessons in mid-January, Mrs. Chu told us about something that seemed to indicate at least a nominal liberalization of certain official policies in the country at large, and at Beida such events were always taken as a sign that times were improving. When pointing out an old statue of two Fu dogs guarding the steps of a building inside the Temple of Heaven complex, Mrs. Chu asked Talya, in Chinese, if she knew anything about any modern Chinese sculptors. When she said she didn't, Mrs. Chu switched into English to tell us about one.

"Last week a man named Wang Keping was allowed to sell his sculptures at a major show in Shanghai for the first time. He is a young man who has become one of the most well-known members of a group of dissident writers and artists. He has made a very large statue of Mao that the government thinks is very embarrassing because Mao is made to look like a Buddha with one eye closed, as if he deliberately doesn't want to see the evil and corruption that is going on around him. Wang is known as a very courageous artist who has taken many chances with his art since 1976, but I believe this is the first time his work has been officially approved by the government to be shown in public. Only yesterday I heard a writer friend of mine call it one of the first steps in the de-Maoization of our country. Many of us would like to think this is true, but four-fifths of the Chinese are still peasants and to many of them Mao is still almost a god, even though his body lies over there in that building in Tien An Men. I hope Wang's new acceptance by the leaders is not just a temporary one."

The signs seemed to be reliable, at least for the moment, because just before the break between terms in late January (a long vacation that allowed people all over the country to return to their homes and their families, in some cases for the only time all year, to celebrate the traditional Chinese New Year with relatives) Ma asked me if Talya and I would like to spend a week in the grasslands of Inner Mongolia. He said his request for such a travel permit for us had been approved rather suddenly and without explanation and even though the weather would probably be bad he thought we should take the opportunity to see that part of the country while the China Travel Service was so favorably disposed to our making such a trip. We agreed, Talya pointing out that although the weather might be brutal at least there would be no tourists wandering around that part of the world at that time of year, and after a day or two of thinking it over I decided to contact Bonnie Low and tell her of our plans. There was no answer at her room at the Beijing Fandian so I left my name with the man at the switchboard and the next day she called me at the university.

"I'm sorry about the mix-up in Shanghai," she began, "but it was unforeseen, and I've been away in Hong Kong most of the time since then so I couldn't talk to you about it. Is everything okay?"

"If you mean did I dispose of the item, yes, everything is fine. If you mean my regular work at the university, that too is fine – in fact, it's getting to be more rewarding every day. I just called to tell you that I'll be taking another trip in a few days, to Inner Mongolia, with Ma and my wife this time."

"Yes, a friend at the Travel Service told me your permits had been approved for a week. I imagine you'll be going through Huhehot on your way to one of the encampments further north--would you say hello to an old friend of mine for me? I haven't seen him in a long time and I have a small gift for him."

I'll come by tonight and pick it up, about eight. Same place?"

"Yes, that'll be fine. See you then."

She hung up and I noticed we had progressed to the point where we no longer bothered with the usual hellos and goodbyes. I wondered if that meant we were now being more businesslike with each other or just that she preferred short telephone conversations.

A few days later we were flying low over some rocky and barren-looking countryside in a twin engine Russian-built machine that had seen better days, Talya and I together in seats near the rear and Ma up near the door to the cockpit, almost surrounded by crates and cardboard boxes and canvas bags that were piled in what looked like haphazard fashion on the seats around him. The flight to the Autonomous Region of Inner Mongolia from Peking was an irregular event and the cargo to be transported was obviously more important to the flight crew than the six passengers. The two women in blue jackets with the CAAC patch embroidered over one pocket were continually fussing with a box or a bag as the load shifted in the light turbulence and they had very little time left for us or for the three PLA officers who sat in three aisle seats and slept during most of the flight. The women gave us each some sweets and a paper cup full of a carbonated orange drink just after takeoff and then they left us to our own devices.

We passed over a very large lake as we headed in a generally northwestern direction and then as we turned due north we had to climb over some low mountains; they had no snow on them but they looked inhospitable enough. For more than an hour I could see no roads or trails or human habitation; the plane flew just above a very thin and patchy layer of wispy clouds and the visibility was very much like the landscape on the moon, cratered and arid and empty. Talya leaned toward me and whispered that she hoped we wouldn't have to land down there and I silently nodded my agreement.

When we did land about forty minutes later it was on a large plateau surrounded by barren hills and there was a guide with a six-passenger four-wheel-drive van waiting for us on the single runway. Ma introduced us to Xiao Fen, a man whose high cheek bones and mahogany-colored skin made me think of a younger version of Ma himself, and when our bags were transferred to the van Xiao drove us past the airport's control tower and administration building and up to the exit gate in the barbed-wire fence. The two PLA guards looked eager and alert and they took their time inspecting the travel documents Ma had handed across to Xiao to give to them; each soldier had a long look at the papers and each asked Xiao a question in what I assumed was Mongolian and then one of them unslung his carbine from his shoulder, place it carefully against the side of the guardhouse, and motioned for Ma to step out. They talked for a few minutes, the guard laughed, and when Ma climbed back in we were waved through. As we turned west onto a narrow black-topped road and the van picked up speed, Xiao asked Ma a question and Ma responded in English.

"Our guests do not speak Mongolian, Xiao Fen, so it would be better for us to converse in English. They are learning putongwa and they can understand some things if we speak slowly, but English would be easiest."

"I apologize for my inconsiderateness," Xiao said in almost unaccented English, "I forgot myself. Would you prefer to practice your Chinese as we drive?" He glanced back at us for a moment.

"That would be very helpful, Xiao," Talya said, "but if it's anything more than simple sentences I think you'll have to use English with us. Yours is very good – where did you learn it?"

"I started studying it in middle school and at home my father made me practice it. He was a teacher in the town we will be coming to in a few minutes, Huhehot, the capital of our region. Speaking languages is very helpful in getting a job with China Travel Service."

"You asked Ma something in Mongolian, didn't you?" I asked.

"Yes, I asked Mr. Ma what the guard wanted to talk to him about."

Ma smiled before he responded.

"He was very curious about why two foreigners would want to go so far into the grasslands in the middle of winter. I told him the man was an American cowboy who wanted to see if the Mongolian horsemen were as good as he had heard and his wife wanted to find out if a yurt was truly as warm in the winter as some people said it was. He was amused at foreigners being so ignorant about the obvious, but his amusement, I believe, kept him from delaying us even longer. They were very conscientious soldiers doing their proper job, but we have a lunch planned in Huhehot and I would like you to have some time to walk around. It will be the last place with any shops that you will see for several days."

The town was crowded and dusty and the people on the streets were broader and shorter than the Han we were used to seeing in Peking and Talya and I agreed that many of these people looked like American Indians, particularly like the Pueblos in New Mexico. We had an excellent lunch of millet cakes and yogurt and beer and then the four of us walked around the center of the town, Xiao pointing out the various government buildings, commune projects, and the brigade headquarters. The small village we were going to visit farther north was part of this brigade and Xiao thought we should meet the leaders of the brigade before we went on. They spoke neither English nor Chinese so it was a brief meeting with Xiao translating and Talya thanking the brigade's chief political officer, a handsome and dignified-looking man who watched Ma as he talked, for allowing us to visit a village so close to the border.

After the meeting, Xiao excused himself to make sure the van was ready for the rest of our journey – it was only two more hours to the village but he said he wanted a full tank of gas just to be safe – and Talya asked Ma to take her to a crafts shop he had mentioned earlier. We all agreed to meet at the van in an hour.

It took me almost thirty minutes to find the traditional medicine shop Bonnie had described and it turned out to be just down an alley from the brigade headquarters building. Mr. Liu Bing, the proprietor, was a very old man with bowed legs and a wisp of grey beard who waited on the only other person in the shop in a slow and yet efficient manner and only turned to face me when that woman had taken her small brown envelope of herbs and closed the door behind her. His English was poor and my Chinese brought only bland stares so we kept the talking to a minimum. I identified myself and he made it clear that he was expecting a letter from a Miss Low in Hong Kong. I took the folder letter from my wallet and he smiled an almost toothless smile as he took it with his left hand and made it disappear almost instantly up into the wide right sleeve of his old-fashioned and badly frayed gown. I had turned to leave when his English suddenly improved.

"You will be going to very windy place. If you come back to Liu Bing at end of journey the photograph Miss Low desires will be here."

Bonnie hadn't said anything about my bringing back a photograph.

"I will try to come back here in six days. Will that be satisfactory?"

"On sixth day, please. To keep here is unwise even for old Liu Bing." No smile this time as he dismissed me by showing me his back.

Just before dusk we passed a herd of camels, thirty or forty of them, moving eastward across the faint track Xiao had been following since the paved road had ended about an hour out of Huhehot. We stopped the van to watch them; a strong wind had come up out of the north, strong enough to shake the van as we sat there, but the thick-coated animals seemed to ignore it as they slowly padded along, a few of them cropping the stubble as they went but most of them just moving steadily, their undulating gait and their knobby long legs making them appear to be well-adapted to the relatively flat or gently rolling terrain and the high winds that now buffeted our squat vehicle in earnest.

We came over a rise and dropped down to cross a dry stream bed and enter the village just as darkness descended. It was a small encampment with only a few permanent wooden buildings; dotted around these were several dozen yurts, conical-shaped and covered with animal hides, and from most of them we could see smoke rising from a small hole in the center of the roof. We were greeted by the village leaders, two weather-beaten men who welcomed us warmly in soft-spoken Mongolian, and a woman who spoke Chinese and who had been sent on ahead of us from brigade headquarters to prepare the way. She was all smiles and effusiveness and it was apparent that the men were making an effort to tolerate her. As she led the way into a large yurt where our welcoming meal was to be eaten Ma lagged behind and whispered to me that she was a political officer, not a Mongolian, and that she was here only to see that foreigners were properly received and that she would be returning to the city early the next morning.

I stooped to enter the low wooden door that swung inward on rawhide thongs attached to the yurt's rounded wall. Inside we sat in a large circle on mats made of animal skins and the food, brought in from somewhere else, was placed on a raised wooden platform in the center and we either sat cross-legged or lounged on one hip as we reached across to the various bowls and took what we wanted. The two village leaders had seated themselves first and then had indicated that Talya and I were to sit on their right. Ma sat next to Talya and then the brigade officer and Xiao Fen completed the circle. With Ma and Xiao translating, the older of the two leaders explained the etiquette of the yurt and what it was that we were being served. With his chopsticks he would lean forward to pluck something from a bowl and then reach around and place it in front of me or Talya and wait for us to taste it, watching for our reactions with a friendly grin on his face. The meal was dominated by a large plate of thick fatty pieces of lamb, more meat than an average Chinese in Peking would eat in a year, and several bowls of heavy curdled sour milk, milk (we were told) that was skimmed daily from the top of wooden casks left standing open in the homes of most Mongolians. It was a meal for people who worked outdoors, for semi-nomads who herded sheep and goats and rode horses and camels and who burned up protein and animal fat as a matter of daily routine; for the sedentary city-dweller, especially a Westerner who had spent the previous five months getting used to a diet of rice and a few vegetables, it was a heart-clogging experience. I tried walking it off when we stepped outside but there was only a small sliver of moon and almost no light in the surrounding grasslands and the wind was cold and cutting. Ma and Xiao were assigned to a small yurt on the outer edge of the encampment and Talya and I to one right next to theirs and almost immediately after eating we settled down on our palettes made of several sheep and camel skins and tried to get some sleep.

The unusually heavy meal and the gamy smell of our bedding made it difficult for me. There was a small fire of camel dung burning in the center of the circular earth floor, the smoke escaping through a partially opened flap of hide at the tip of the structure, and the sounds of the Mongolian night took some getting used to; a guttural snuffling near the thin wall – it was only about three feet from the edge of the fire to the yurt's walls so we slept up against the tightly stretched skins – sounded like a pig trying to root its way in out of the wind and in the distance I heard the occasional snorting and stamping of horses, and once I thought I heard the very faint hoot of an owl, but I couldn't remember seeing a single tree within sight of the encampment as we had driven in so I speculated about what other kind of animal might have made the sound. After a while I thought I heard someone walking past outside, stopping for a moment and then stumbling briefly and grunting once before moving off; I assumed it was someone using the open prairie to relieve themselves – I hadn't seen any man-made facilities since we had arrived. I must have dozed off because when I next heard something I opened my eyes to almost complete darkness; the fire was just about out, only a dim glow from some ash remained, and I couldn't decide what had awakened me. I must have slept again because in the morning I remembered bits and pieces of a disjointed nightmare that had something to do with Navajo Indians and mare's milk and sheep's blood and vats of boiling goats' heads and a huge wild boar whose screams of pleasure when mounting a sow were indistinguishable from his screams of pain when he was being butchered by the ax-wielding political officer from the brigade who never stopped smiling, but it was hardly a restful night.

Talya, on the other hand, awoke refreshed and told me that for a change I barely snored at all and then suggested that perhaps we should build a small yurt in our backyard when we returned to the States, just for variety and some of our more adventurous guests.

We spent the next five days with the people of the village, eating our meals in a bare room set up for that purpose in one of the permanent wooden buildings and walking out each day to explore or just to get some exercise. The days were clear and very cold and the wind, which never seemed to abate entirely, almost always increased in force in the late afternoons. There was always a coating of early morning frost on the ground and although there was no snow we welcomed the hooded anoraks that Ma borrowed for us from one of the families. On the day before we left, the older village leader invited us to ride out with him to watch a roundup of wild horses. Talya and I were given two very placid animals – nobody would want to be embarrassed by having one of the foreign guests thrown and perhaps injured by a high-spirited horse – and we all rode out about five miles from the encampment to a good vantage point, a hill that sloped gently down to a broad basin into which the horses would be herded before the most desirable ones were cut from the group and taken back to the village's corrals. By early afternoon the basin held at least a hundred horses, their thick winter coats matted in uneven patches, and the Mongol horsemen kept them together by riding around the perimeter and chasing back any animal that broke from the herd. The riders were all thin and wiry-looking and the horses were all much smaller than the standard Western breeds and the speed of the horses and the agility of the men was often breathtaking; the riders literally stood in their stirrups whenever their ponies were in motion and, with the reins in one hand and with a long bamboo pole with a loop of rope on the end in the other, they would charge into the herd and try to cut out a particularly good-looking animal by placing the rope over its head and around its neck and bringing it to a standstill by exerting pressure on the rope and pole as the rider's own mount – obviously well-trained for the job and responding to the slightest shift in the rider's weight – swerved and attempted to slow down once the loop had settled around the other pony's neck. The whole process was a study in coordination between man and beast and most of it took place at a full gallop; the first time we saw a magnificent palomino stallion cut out of the herd this way I thought of the stories I'd read about Genhis Khan and the invading Mongol hordes and I knew their prowess as horsemen had not been exaggerated. As an American brought up on both the realities and the myths of the Hollywood western it was an exciting scene to watch and it was repeated over and over again, with slight variations each time, that whole afternoon.

The village leader, who had watched the day's work with us from atop his own horse, returned to the encampment with Xiao and Talya when Ma suggested that he and I take a different route back. The two of us swung farther west than the others had gone and with Ma in the lead we raced across the flatland, letting our horses run after their long period of inactivity, and eventually we came to some long rolling hills and we slowed to a comfortable cantor and finally a steady walk. The wind had picked up and the light was just beginning to fade; I had been warmed by the run but now the temperature seemed to have dropped quickly and I pulled on my hood in an attempt to keep out the cold. Off to our right, far off in the direction of the setting sun, I could make out a series of higher hills and near the top of the highest I could see what appeared to be a walled compound of several stone buildings, each topped with a large conventional antenna, and at the very summit of the hill a huge white dish-shaped object that dominated the skyline. Ma explained as we walked our horses back toward the village, raising his voice a little whenever the wind gusted too strongly.

"The commune that is responsible for the brigade to which the village, the one we are visiting, belongs has the job of keeping this section of the border secure. A few years ago they finished building that communications station. It looks down on the Russian-controlled area on the other side of those hills. It is equipped with our most advanced warning systems and any information about movements of missiles or soldiers can be relayed at once to any part of our country."

"It's quite impressive, perched up there like some white-headed bird. I assume it's not open to visitors."

"You are quite correct. Such places are very private. Only the national minorities, such as the Mongolians who live along the border, ever see them from even this distance. It is forbidden to get too close – another mile or even less and a patrol from the station would have come out to send us away. I would guess that very few foreigners have ever been this close to this new station – except, of course, the Mongolians who live on the Russian side of the border. They are a very aggressive people and I have heard that the Russians encourage them to get as close to our stations as possible. As I am sure you know, we consider our borders with the Russians to be a very serious issue. I thought you would like to get as close as possible to one while you were here."

"Thank you, Ma. I appreciate your thoughtfulness."

The next day we had a farewell meal at noon and Xiao drove us back to Huhahot where we stopped briefly for some tea and to say thank you and goodbye to the people at brigade headquarters. I excused myself when the others went for tea, saying I wanted to pick up something for Noah and Larry in a crafts shop nearby and I'd be back in a matter of minutes. I bought two different posters showing Mongolian horseman in action and when I entered the medicine shop it was empty except for Liu Bing who stood behind the counter with his back to the shop door, almost exactly as I'd last seen him; I had the momentary feeling that the intervening time had been a figment of my imagination. When he turned around to face me his ancient face looked tense, almost pained. His glance seemed to focus somewhere behind me, as if he were making sure I was alone, and then his left hand plucked a small piece of white rice paper out of his right sleeve. He held the paper out to me, I took it, slipped it carefully into the watch-pocket of my jeans, and when I looked up Liu Bing was gone, the barely perceptible movement of the faded red curtain at the rear of the shop the only indication of his probable direction.

"So much for extended farewells," I muttered to myself as I let myself out and walked rapidly back to the tea house.

It was dark when the plane landed and almost nine o'clock when we finally got back to the Youyi Binguan, but I called Bonnie at her room in the Peking Hotel anyway. The last look I had seen on old Liu Bing's face made me think I should get rid of whatever he had given me as soon as possible. There was no answer, neither then nor at eleven when I tried again, so I went to bed without looking at the rice paper in my watch-pocket and, as I expected, I had a few more bad dreams.

In the office the next day, with Larry and Noah both busy in their classrooms, I took a good look at what the old man had handed me. It wasn't a photograph. When I unfolded the paper I found a small strip of dark and shiny microfilm negative taped to the textured white background with a tiny piece of clear plastic adhesive. I peeled off the adhesive carefully and held the film up to the overhead light; it appeared to be a piece of standard-sized microfilm stock, the same kind used in many modern archives and museums, except that instead of being divided into two or three individual frames this strip seemed to have only a single long frame. I could see nothing else of its content so I rewrapped it, now very curious to know just what it was that I had in my possession.

I remembered that Noah usually kept a small magnifying glass attached to a ring of keys in his desk drawer, but when I looked the ring was not there. I sat for a while trying to figure out what to do; I could probably (with Ma's help) get access to any equipment in Beida's main library just across the quadrangle, but in our initial orientation, I now recalled, the head librarian had told us that all microfilm and microfiche stock and readers had been destroyed at the height of the Cultural Revolution by local Red Guards and that there was no money allocated yet to have it replaced. There was only one other place I could think of that might have what I needed and I wasn't at all sure they'd let me use their equipment if they knew what I was doing, but I didn't have a great deal of choice.

An hour later I was explaining to Mr. Guo, the man in charge of the small USIA library in the American Embassy, that I wanted to look at the listing – on microfilm, if he had it – of all of the educational films available for showing to my class at Beida; I stressed that I was particularly interested in finding out which of the Alistair Cook "America" series was available and what the official agency description had to say about each one. He asked to see some proof of my employment at the university and when I showed him the identification card Ma had gotten for each of us he was satisfied. He asked me to sign for the roll of film he took from one of the dark green cabinets and then he escorted me to another room, asked if I knew how to load and use the reader, and left me alone when I said that I did. I closed the door when he'd gone and after I put the roll of agency film on the table beside the machine, ready to be loaded in case someone came in, I took out my own little strip and tried to thread it into the reader. It was so small a piece that I had difficulty getting it to engage; I had to be sure I'd be able to remove it once I'd looked at it and my nervousness at the thought of losing it in the mechanism only made things worse. When I finally had it in position I flicked on the light switch and looked into the hooded eyepiece. I could focus but the strip was too small to adjust properly either forward or back; what I could see in front of me was only part of what was on the extra-long single frame, but it was enough.

Someone had snapped a picture of a topographical survey map that had large black dots on it that ran in an irregular line along the top and left hand side; if I hadn't seen a National Geographic illustrated map of China just before I accepted the Beida appointment I never would have recognized what part of the world I was looking at, and if I hadn't taken the long way back from the roundup with Ma I wouldn't have had the slightest inkling about what the dots represented. I now understood why Liu Bing had been so eager to be rid of the microfilm. I was looking at a detailed map of China's northern and western borders, all contour lines and mountain elevations clearly noted, and I had no doubt that each black dot represented the exact location of one of her newest early-warning communications stations. The section of the film I had in focus actually showed a black dot right on the border, just north and a little west of the city of Huhehot, a place identified (as were all the larger towns on the map) by its Chinese characters written under a small dark star.

My attempting to memorize the locations of the dots, even if I'd wanted to, was out of the question; there were too many of them, there were too few points of reference to use as mnemonic aids to my memory, and I could see only part of the border area anyway. I extricated the strip of film from the machine and put it in one of my pockets, put the agency roll in the reader and glanced at it perfunctorily as it ran through, and then turned off the reader and brought the roll back to Mr. Guo. I thanked him for his help, mentioning that I thought the Alistair Cook film on the Mormons would be very useful and that I would be sure to come get it from him when I reached the section on American religions and myths in my lectures. He seemed pleased that his office had been of some real service.

I asked the taxi driver to stop at the Peking Hotel and wait for me. When I asked one of the men at the desk to ring Miss Bonnie Low's room there were several minutes of confused consultations and referrals to various responsible persons before I was informed that Miss Low had given up her room that morning. I asked if she had left any address or telephone number where she might be contacted and I was told, with somewhat exaggerated politeness, that she had not.

When I got back to the office I called Lynn Boaz at the Embassy.

"Yes, I do, as a matter of fact," he answered, in response to my initial question. "She's been transferred back to the States, to the bank's main office in San Francisco. Flew out today on the new Pan Am flight."

"A permanent transfer?"

"Yes, I believe it is – as permanent as those things usually are, I guess. She was sorry she couldn't say goodbye in person – told me to convey her thanks for those favors you've done for her. She was genuinely grateful, you know."

"That's nice to hear. Do you know if anyone has been sent out to replace her yet?"

"No, she indicated that they wouldn't be sending one for some time, but she did ask me to handle any small item of unfinished business of hers that might come up after she left."

That seemed to answer my question but I wanted to be absolutely sure.

"Kind of unusual for a First Secretary like yourself, with diplomatic immunity and all, to be handling a private bank's business, isn't it?"

He barely hesitated and his casual tone remained unchanged.

"It would be in most other countries, but here we're a relatively new presence and many things are not as well organized yet as they might be. Besides, dealing with any loose ends for Bonnie is more in the nature of a personal favor, a favor for a good friend."

I wasn't sure I liked being both a small item and a loose end, but at least I had no doubts about who I'd be contacting now instead of Bonnie Low if I wanted to continue my modest transfer service.

"Sorry about all the questions, but sometimes ya can't tell da players without a score card."

"Too true, too true. By the way, how was your trip in Inner Mongolia? Did you and Talya do everything you wanted to do up there?"

"Yes. I was able to do everything I planned to do. I think Talya would have appreciated more time to shop for Mongolian crafts, but it was a fascinating trip."

I waited for some careful reference to the microfilm now that he knew I'd made my delivery as arranged. I heard none.

"Well, I'm afraid I have some China Daily people waiting to see me. They want to know if Reagan's going to sell those damn planes to Taiwan or not – must think I have a direct line to the White House. Sorry, have to run. We'll keep in touch – there's a dinner here next month for which you and Bannister and Maguire are on the list so I imagine I'll see you then. Bye for now."

I said goodbye and hung up, wondering if he really didn't know about the little gift from Mongolia or if games were being played about which I was ignorant. Nothing to eliminate the possibility that both were true simultaneously, of course, but in a world of shadows it's always reassuring to have one or two fixed points clearly in mind. All I knew was that Lynn Boaz worked for more than one boss and I shouldn't spend too much time before getting rid of a potentially dangerous – as well as valuable – piece of film. I spent some time considering the option of just destroying it; nobody seemed anxious to receive it and I could burn it in an ashtray in a matter of seconds. But Liu Bing had said that Miss Low wanted the photographs. If that were true, then wouldn't Boaz know about it as well and want to have it? Yes, assuming he and Bonnie were employed by the same people.

I realized my thinking was all getting to be too tentative and as I sat at my desk with the weak afternoon sun filtering through the dirty panes of the single window I also realized that there were other options. Giving the film to the Russians would serve little purpose other than keeping me up nights worrying about treason – I couldn't imagine their not knowing the locations of the stations by now anyway – but seeing that it found its way into the hands of some high-ranking Chinese officials might be a different matter. It was their map to begin with and in the interest of maintaining the present precarious balance among the three countries it might be best for them to be aware of such a leak. Might be. It could all get very complicated and I heard a faint voice from out of my very distant past saying that gathering information and analyzing it are two separate tasks and only a fool confuses them.

The next afternoon, the first day of the Chinese New Year, I telephoned the Embassy again and asked to speak to Boaz; I had decided that the simplest course of action was to give the microfilm to him even if he wasn't expecting it. A clerk came on the line.

"Mr. Lynn Boaz, the Public Affairs Officer, has been called back to Washington on agency business, sir. He took today's flight and he left a message in case you called. It says, 'Unexpected business to take care of in D.C. but should be back in about two weeks.' Is there anyone else you'd care to speak to?"

I said no, thanked him, and five minutes later the strip of microfilm was a small glob of melted plastic in a glass ashtray and a few minutes after that I flushed what was left down a toilet. Two weeks was too long to hold on to that particular item. I was glad I'd chosen to remain independent enough not to accept any payment for the few favors I'd already rendered.

By mid-March the weather had improved considerably and by the end of the month I had resumed my early-morning runs. Sometimes either Noah or Larry would come along, but most mornings I ran alone – as alone as one can be in Peking at that time of day. The sun would barely have risen and the wide streets near the Youyi compound would already be lined with men and women, most of them very old, practicing Tai-ji, an ancient form of calisthenics. Some people exercised by themselves, usually between two trees or other stationary objects, and others worked in a group, either in a circle or in rows. The movements were highly stylized and over the centuries they had become ritualized; it was rare to see a young person perform them with anything like the grace and precision and total concentration that most of the older people revealed. I had asked Ma to teach me and for a time I practiced diligently, working on the state of meditation which is so central to performing the exercises well, but as I ran I saw people who had obviously been at it for forty or fifty or maybe even sixty years and I could see how pathetic my own attempts were by comparison.

Talya and I had become good friends with Ted Sleeper and his wife and as the weather warmed up Ted would occasionally run with me. He was one of the world's leading scholars of Chinese history, a man who had lived on Taiwan and who spoke the language fluently, and he was living at the Youyi with his wife and young son while he finished a new book on the Min Dynasty. We'd arrived in Peking about the same time and he was happy to be living on the mainland and in the capital, close to all the things he'd been studying and teaching and writing about for so many years. He freely admitted that he was not looking forward to returning to Berkeley in the fall to chair his department.

The two of us ran to the Purple Bamboo Park across from the large indoor sports stadium one morning and after circling the manmade lake twice we sat down on one of the wooden benches to rest before running back to our compound. He obviously wanted to talk but at first he seemed reluctant to do so.

"We don't know each other very well and what we do know is, of necessity, pretty superficial stuff – not exactly a sound basis for intruding into one's private life, is it?"

"Probably not, but I have the distinct impression that one of us suggested we sit down here so he could do just that."

He looked uncomfortable and I realized I hadn't made it any easier for him.

"Listen, Ted, I know you're not a gossip or an aggressively vicious person so why not just say what you have to say and if I think you're out of line I'll let you know, okay?"

"Okay. What I really want to do is offer some friendly advice – for whatever it's worth. I told you that I'm here this year on a grant to write this book. Well, the money comes from an organization I belong to called the Council for Exchanges Between China and America. It was set up a long time ago, back in the 1930's, and it's always had government support at the highest levels even though it's a private group set up to facilitate educational and cultural exchanges between the two countries. It remained in existence even after the communists took over here in 1949; not many exchanges then, of course, but the Council never went out of business. Very low profile at all times and it has aided some exceptional work in several fields. It gave support to people like Fairbank and Wakeman and Spence, as well as other China-hands, when they were doing research on their early books. Never any strings attached – grants are generous and always tax-exempt – but the Council has always had a good eye. Many of those who were given CEBCA grants over the years have turned out to be very influential in their fields.

"When I was a graduate student they offered me a grant to do work on my dissertation. Back in the 1960's I was Secretary of the organization for a few years. Just a routine job, but I had to send out the mailings and attend the meetings so I got to know something about how the Council worked and who the members and supporters were. Lots of old China-hands, of course, both in the academy and in government, but also some heavyweights who didn't know ni hao from dzy gen. Names like Rockefeller and McNamara and Moynahan were often in the air around the Council's table and there were always some Langley people at our meetings and at least one person from the President's personal staff. It was heady stuff for me, I can tell you, and I'm sure that being Secretary for a term hasn't hurt my own career any.

"The council has kept in touch with me, as it does with most of its grant recipients. I get invited to dinners or small meetings when someone in my field returns from Asia or when I myself come back. We exchange ideas and talk about our projects and the people we've met in various places on Taiwan or the mainland. It's all very informal and it does foster better communication between the scholars involved, but there's also no doubt that the Langley crowd pick up some interesting information now and again. Some of us resent this and others applaud it. It's also a fact that it's very rare that a Council grant is ever turned down.

"A long preamble to a short point. I was back in the States last week at a Council dinner in Washington and I overheard a conversation in which your name came up several times. A guy named Histon and two intelligence types were discussing Deng's drive for more Western investment in his country and China's real need for some of our advanced military technology. I heard Histon mention a few names, yours included, and then one of the Langley men suggested that maybe you might be someone who would benefit from a Council research grant in the near future. Just before I had to move out of range I heard him add the phrase 'he's in place already anyway' and that's the last I could get of what they were saying.

"I know what it's like to be used without quite being sure how it all came about, and for me the only troublesome times have been when the issue of morality has raised its Hydra-like head, those odd moments when I've realized I might be doing more harm than good in the world, however marginally, by being the neutral and disinterested scholar who just passes on what he knows about the people and places he's encountered in the course of his research. I don't know your situation at all, not in any detailed sense, and I don't want to, but I did want you to know what I'd heard – and to tell you that you might want to be careful. I don't feel as if the Council owns me or anything like that – not really – but in the last few years I've been having a few too many sleepless nights."

I'd listened in silence, not knowing how to react, not able to decide if he even expected a reaction. I hardly knew the man and yet he had made himself vulnerable, had made an effort to warn me about something he understood, something he knew I was probably involved in, something he suspected I might not be able to handle in the long run. I sat quietly for a few minutes, looking out at the water and a lone black duck that was moving slowly with the breeze toward the opposite side of the lake. I had the impression that Ted had wanted to tell me something about himself as well as about me, that what he'd said had been an unburdening as well as a warning, and for a long minute I felt as if I had been running along a narrow lane and someone had suddenly dropped a full-length mirror down in front of me; there was no way around it and it was too high to jump over; one of those moments that have to be dealt with directly.

"Certainly not out of line, Ted, and I'm grateful for the advice. I never heard of the Council before – sounds like they kept the door open when the rest of us thought it was tightly shut – but I can understand why somebody there might think I'd be useful. I have done a few favors for friends in the past. I appreciate your telling me what you did and I won't forget it. Thank you."

I wanted to ask him if he remembered any of the other names that were mentioned along with mine at that Washington dinner, but I didn't. The details seemed, at the moment, to be irrelevant. We ran out of the park and parallel to the now bicycle-chocked road that passed by the Youyi. Ted seemed to be more relaxed than he'd been on the run out and I had more to think about so the run back to the compound was at a relatively leisurely pace and neither of us did much talking.

Talya had always insisted that we do something foolish on April Fool's Day so on the first day of April she began to collect old Canton serving dishes (one of her self-imposed limits was that she would pay no more than five yuan – about $3.35 US – for any one piece, which tended to keep the number of purchases rather low) and I took my first formal lesson on the piba, an ancient Chinese musical instrument that resembles a lyre. An Englishman named Jim, who taught English at the First Foreign Language Institute and who lived in building Number Four, had been taking lessons for a few months and he had encouraged me to go with him on several occasions. April Fool's Day seemed an appropriate time to accept his invitation. His teacher was a young Cantonese woman whose beauty was almost luminous and who was just finishing a lesson with another foreigner when we arrived. Jim introduced me to Fred Berenson and then sat down with one of the two pibas in the room; the distractingly attractive teacher made it clear that she was ready to begin her next lesson and my appointment was for the following half hour so I excused myself, saying I'd walk around until it was time for my own lesson, and Berenson walked out with me.

He was in his early thirties, a tall and articulate man from Massachusetts who was the first correspondent sent to Peking by the New York Times since Liberation in 1949. He had studied under Fairbank at Harvard and had worked for the Times in both Taiwan and Hong Kong before China finally opened up to the West again and officially allowed journalists to come in. His Chinese was fluent and when we stopped for a snack he did the ordering. I asked him how free he was to write about what he saw and how much of the country he was allowed to see.

"Our accreditation here is very tenuous. If we write anything that's even mildly critical of China, especially if it deals with the Four Modernizations or any of the top leaders, we usually get called on the carpet and we're given a very unambiguous warning: 'do it again and you are no longer welcome here.' For a seriously critical item that appears in a Stateside magazine or newspaper the punishment is invariably the same: immediate loss of accreditation and a seat out on the next available flight."

"Do you have a local assistant who can advise you about staying out of trouble when you're doing an article?"

"Oh yes, and the man we hired is excellent, but it's still my responsibility to see that nothing truly unpleasant about the country is passed on to New York. At least nothing that will appear on the front page of the Sunday Times. As a matter of fact, my assistant is up there right now looking over a piece I've just done on the recent official approval of free markets here in the city for those who have produced their quota for the local brigade or their specific danwei and who want to sell any excess they have and keep the profits for themselves."

He pointed across the square and in the general direction of the Peking Hotel.

"Do you have an office near the Beijing Fandian?"

"A small one in the hotel itself – just a room, really, but the space is adequate. They like to keep the foreign press in one location, I imagine, so they can keep an eye on us. I can travel quite a bit, though, and speaking the language gives me more flexibility than some of my colleagues here. I always have someone with me when I travel, either my assistant or a China Travel Service person, but I can usually find ways of talking to people on my own and even if I can't always use what I have in an article – and quite often I can't – it's all there for future reference."

We were walking through the Workers Park just off Chang An and some early buds were beginning to show on a few of the trees. I'm not sure why I thought of it then, just before I said goodbye and walked back to have my first piba lesson, but maybe it was his having mentioned that he had studied under Fairbank.

"By the way, do you know anything about an American group called the Council for Exchanges Between China and America? I heard someone talking recently but I wasn't familiar with it."

He was visibly surprised, a small smile playing at the corners of his mouth as he answered.

"As a matter of fact, I do. It's a well-established organization of scholars, business people, and people in government and it funds research and arranges various exchanges between the U.S. and Taiwan and the mainland. In the last few years it's received an enormous increase in the financial support it gets from Congress – substantially more this last fiscal year, I hear, than congress gave to the more well-known Fulbright program. Strange you should ask, though. Just last week they sent me some forms to fill out if I wanted to apply for a grant to do research on a book about China that I've been planning to write once this assignment is finished. I know some people on the Council and I had talked to them about the project – I guess they don't know what to do with all their new-found money."

After I left Berenson I must not have been concentrating too well because my lesson was a musical disaster. Between the teacher and my meeting with the journalist I found it almost impossible to pluck a single bearable note. I went back for two more lessons in the weeks that followed, but eventually I faced the fact of my incompetence and gave it up. Talya, who was haunting the shops downtown almost daily, insisted that my surrender to what I considered the inevitable was the act of a foolish man.

When Ma brought us our travel permits to visit Harbin for a few days I was less enthusiastic about going then Talya was. As the weather improved we had taken to riding our bicycles out to the Summer Palace in the late afternoons and I enjoyed walking along the lake and watching the water-birds or climbing the steep rocky steps to one of the temples in the hills. We had asked Ma to get us the permits and I knew he had gone to a great deal of trouble, had called upon all the quan-xi he could among his friends and relatives, in order to get them, but the thought of going up to China's northernmost large city just as the days were beginning to get warmer in Peking was not an enticing one. Ma reserved space for us in a soft sleeper compartment and two days before the train left I received a call from Lynn Boaz; he'd heard that we were going to Harbin and asked if I would take a folder containing a series of blueprints up to a friend of his there. I told him I would as long as the transfer of material could be carried out in the same place. He agreed and the next day an embassy driver delivered the folder to me at the university.

The train ride was uneventful and once we passed through Tienjin and turned north the landscape became monotonous, the flat and empty coastal plain giving way to the foothills only after many hours. Talya read about Harbin in Nagel's pink-covered guide to China and quoted passages out loud to me whenever she came across something she found interesting; I half-listened, sipping my tea and staring out the window, thinking vaguely about a lecture I wanted to give when I got back and even more vaguely about Ted Sleeper and the Council. A meal in the dining car some eight coaches back was the usual fried noodles and vegetable dish and making our way back and forth gave us some welcome exercise. The loudspeaker above our compartment door was broken and we had the place to ourselves so we slept well and we both felt refreshed when the attendant woke us to say we would soon be coming into Harbin.

The city was impressive in a stolidly Slavic way. A river and a large lake seemed to be hemmed in by large low buildings made of dark stone and onion-domed churches that appeared to be boarded-up and in need of serious repair. Harbin had had a large Russian population for a long time and its influence was evident in the availability of strong dark tea and a brand of gasp-inducing vodka as well as in the architecture; we settled for the tea, served with two large cubes of sugar, after we checked into our hotel near the still partially frozen lake and relaxed for a time in the lobby, a large high-ceilinged room with an ornate chandelier and several overstuffed couches and chairs arranged around low brass tables. The ambiance inside the hotel, an accommodation to which we were assigned by the ever-present China Travel Service, was very un-Chinese and when we eventually went out to explore the city on foot we noticed that the people this far north were much larger – many of them well over six feet – than those we were used to in Peking or had seen in the south. Fur hats and heavy padded overcoats reminded me of the winter we'd had in the capital, but I knew that here the temperature went down to thirty and forty below and the lake froze completely and the snow sometimes covered the doorways.

Talya managed to find a very old section of narrow winding streets and small shops selling old furniture and used fur coats and various kinds of dinnerware and we spent several hours looking for old Canton dishes. In one shop a young woman spoke a little English and after Talya had decided on one of the distinctive (I thought of the word 'outrageous', but never voiced it) turquoise and pink and dark blue plates with the yellow birds and white clouds, the woman became very friendly, asking about America once she knew that's where we were from and telling us about herself – sometimes in English and sometimes in Chinese, mixing the two just as we had been doing in an attempt to make ourselves understood – whenever we asked her specific questions. When I asked her if we would have any difficulty taking the dish out of the country when we were ready to go home in a few months, she looked quickly in the direction of the other saleswoman before she lowered her voice and answered me in English.

"You must be careful if something older – have chop mark here," she pointed, having turned the dish over, "and then must pay government to take away. This not pay – no chop mark – man who buy old bowl before, it have chop – he try to go away but not tell government about bowl – my husband work Beijing airport – a good job but very far – tell me man in prison now, stay many years. Sorry – my English bad."

"No, your English is fine," I said, "it is okay. Can you tell me, was the man Chinese or was he a foreigner, chungwo or weigwo?" I kept my voice as low as hers in case she was in any danger of losing face in the eyes of her co-worker as a result of her talking so frankly to a foreigner.

"He was foreigner, like you."

We thanked her, Talya paid, and as we stepped into the street an icy wind off the lake made us turn up the collars of our coats. The sun was still out and it was too early for dinner, but it was now too cold to sightsee or shop comfortably so we walked back toward the hotel.

"Do you really think they'd put a foreigner away in one of their own prisons for something like that?" Talya asked after a while. "Wouldn't they just confiscate the goods and kick him out of the country?"

"I don't know. Guess a lot of it depends on what country he's from, what kind of relations the two countries have at the time, and how serious the Chinese think his attempted deception was. Sounds as if the guy was trying to sneak an antique out of the country – pretty stiff punishment if that's what it was."

"Mrs. Chu told me once that they don't have very many lawyers here and that if you're arrested or even just brought in for questioning it's assumed that you're guilty. Trials are really only a formality, it seems; most people who get sent to prison never see a courtroom and those who do are usually there only to find out how long a sentence they're going to get. Part of the Mandarin legacy, maybe, a part the present regime finds it convenient to quietly keep; guilty unless proven innocent and the decision made at the top. I think we'd better cross only on the green and make sure we don't litter – this is obviously no place to play fast and loose with the local fuzz."

After lunch the next day Talya went off in search of a museum Ma had told her about. I had had enough walking that morning and had just settled down in a comfortable chair in the lobby to work on some lecture notes when a tall grey-haired man took the chair nearest mine, directly in my line of sight. There was nobody else in our immediate area; a young girl and a woman I had seen in the dining room were reading sections of a German newspaper on a couch near the hotel entrance, but otherwise the lobby was empty. It took me a few seconds to place him and then I waited. When he smiled I noticed that his teeth were very even and very white, whiter, I thought, than they had any right to be at his age. His accent was British and his voice was pleasant and well-modulated, the kind of voice that might have read the news for the BBC World Service.

"I was told to contact you at your hotel and to collect the blueprints from you here as well, as I believe you stipulated. Unless it is inconvenient for you, may I suggest that we conduct the transaction in your rooms before your wife returns?"

I didn't respond immediately and he seemed in no hurry to get up. He watched me for a minute or two and then showed me his perfect teeth again.

"A fen for your thoughts, sir, although at today's rate of exchange it would be worth substantially less than a penny."

"I was wondering about several things: whether Anglo-American cooperation has really been reinstituted even though there are still a few people around who must remember the Philby mess; whether you learned the language in Shanghai or in some school in England – or maybe California; whether you stay at the Peace Hotel regularly or were just visiting someone on the fifth floor that night; whether you hang around with people who have Boston accents."

He sat very still, no smile now, looking at me intently, as if weighing the advisability of answering me at all. It had been a long time since I'd felt that old inability to breathe freely that signaled genuine fear. He may have been past sixty but he looked capable of moving very fast for a big man and if I'd really gone too far with him I saw no way of my getting out of the overstuffed chair in what would have to be record time.

When he finally spoke his voice was flat, neither angry nor friendly.

"Not that you have any legitimate need to know, but I'll answer your questions anyway; yes, some cooperation has been resumed, at least in this part of the world; I took a First in Oriental Languages at Cambridge, a long time ago; I was just visiting that night – an unfortunate cock-up of assignments, I'm afraid; and yes, I do know someone who has a Boston accent. Shall we go to your rooms now?"

Upstairs I took the folder out of my briefcase and handed it to him. He sat on one of the two beds and looked carefully at each of the blueprints before returning them all to the folder. He seemed to relax a little.

"Do you know what these are?" He asked, putting his brown attaché case up on the bed and placing the material in it. He closed the case and set both combination locks before looking up at me.

"No, not exactly, but those notations are in Russian so I assume that whatever it is it's probably located somewhere in Russia."

"Vladivostock, over the border and then east of here. I don't anticipate the journey with a great deal of enthusiasm. The buggers who thought this one up have done themselves right proud. Steal the bloody things and then get someone to risk life and limb to put them back before they're missed. I contemplate my retirement with ever-increasing frequency these days."

He stood up to leave, attaché case in hand.

"The name is Llewellyn. We might have a pint or two together someday, if ever there's enough time."

He closed the door quietly behind him. I heard the elevator doors open and then close and then all was silence.

*Cambridge*

The clock on the wall opposite the bar had large Roman numerals and as he watched the thin metal hands advance toward closing time he realized that the usual sound of people talking was slowly but significantly increasing in volume. Debbie had just come down after putting young Toby to bed and when she stopped to talk he shared his observation with her.

"You're absolutely right, of course," she agreed, her laugh as infectious as always. "When Chris and I took charge of this place six years ago it was one of the first things we had to get used to. The later it gets the more people drink and the more they drink the noisier it gets in here. Maybe alcohol dulls the hearing – it's supposed to inhibit all kinds of things, isn't it? Oh, by the way, you and Talya are coming for dinner on Sunday, aren't you? Between seven-thirty and eight okay for you?"

"Sure, we'll be there. Chris already reminded me."

He watched her move off to help Chris behind the bar and he wondered how an American from Maine had ended up in a pub on the edge of the British Fens. He made a mental note to ask her at dinner and as he let the sounds of the place flow over him he felt content, lucky to have met good people and to have found a good place to relax. Having gotten the offer as he did was probably just a matter of chance – he could have been contacted almost anywhere – but he was glad this was how it had worked out. Time to think things through and a suitable ambiance in which to do so. He decided on a final pint for the evening and he went to the bar to order it.

*China*

Soon after we returned from Harbin we had lunch with Noah and Larry in Number Nine dining room at the Youyi and we spent most of the meal swapping tales of our travels. Noah had gone to Hong Kong for two days and he was rhapsodic about the Peninsula Hotel with its magnificent white and gold lobby and the wine list and the line of hotel-owned Rolls Royces waiting in the circular drive at the front entrance for the use of special guests. Larry had flown down to Guangzhou to give a lecture and then had stayed on a few days to sample the food he'd heard so much about. We listened with delight to his descriptions of the eels and sea slugs and still-alive carp, the latter served only at the fancier restaurants, but when he started on the snake bile and the monkey brains Noah and I let Talya do all the oohing-and-aahing. When Larry finished giving us the details of how he selected the live snake that was then to become his dinner and how the monkey brains were served, steaming, in the center of a specially-designed table, Noah held up both hands in dramatic surrender.

"Enough, enough – please! You know, I've heard it said that Indians will worship anything, Americans will buy anything, and the Chinese will eat anything. I now believe it. I'm just surprised you didn't try dog while you were there."

"That's really more of a Hunan specialty," Larry, in all mock seriousness, explained, "not really a Cantonese delicacy. And besides, I've always assumed that those of us who eat here regularly are already quite familiar with the taste of dog, whether we know it or not."

We were just about to get up from the table when Carol Sleeper, Ted's wife, came over to talk to Talya. Her eyes were red-rimmed and puffy and she was making an effort to control herself.

"Have you heard about Ted? I don't know what to do."

"Here, sit down" Talya said, nodding to me as I got up and pulled over a vacant chair from the next table. "What happened?"

"I'm not really sure. Ted needed to see some people in Urumqi about something he wanted to use in his book. He said he was having a little difficulty getting the travel permit and he thought he might have to resort to using hou-men, the back door, if it didn't get approved soon. He knows someone in the Travel Service who owes him a few favors. Last Friday the permit came through and he flew out to Urumqi. He called me on Saturday as we had arranged and he said the material he was after seemed to be more sensitive than he thought it would be – he was working on a chapter on the development of China's heavy industry after 1949 – and he was having trouble getting permission to see it. He said he might have to stay on there longer than he had planned. He said he would call me again on Tuesday. I waited all that day but he never called. I tried to get through to his hotel the next day and the next, but it was useless. When I finally got through on Thursday night somebody answered by yelling "Wei?" two or three times into the phone and then hanging up as soon as I asked to speak to Professor Sleeper.

"Friday morning I went down to our embassy to see if they could help me. They weren't very cooperative. I got the feeling I was being given a polite runaround by most of them. One man, the Public Affairs Officer, said he would look into it and get back to me as soon as possible. I heard nothing until this morning – my God, it's been a week since Ted called! – and then this man said that as far as he could find out it looked as if Ted had been detained by the authorities in Urumqi. When I asked what for, he said he didn't know –- but I think he did. He was just too evasive. I said I wanted to fly to Urumqi at once. He told me that would not be possible, that I should wait here at the Youyi while he tried to find out exactly what was going on. He said he'd call me here as soon as he knew where Ted was and what had happened.

"I don't know what to do. Ted's been all over this country while we've been here – he's never had any problem before. I just wish I could get to see him. Oh damn, I just wish I could stop crying so much!"

Talya leaned across and held her and we all tried to minimize the seriousness of the situation, talking calmly about the usual screw-ups in the vast Chinese bureaucracy and the stories we'd heard about the time it usually takes to untangle the Oriental knot, but what she had said made me tense and uneasy and as soon as I could conveniently do so I left the others to deal with Carol and called the embassy from the phone in the main building. I let it ring eight or nine times before I remembered that it was Saturday and the place officially would be closed. I tried Boaz's private number and when he answered I told him I wanted to come down to talk to him; he sounded upset himself but he said he would meet me by the lake in the Purple Bamboo Park in an hour.

I had been watching the newly blooming shrubs by my bench and the ripples on the surface of the water for fifteen minutes when he finally appeared.

"Sorry I'm late. Some business to take care of that couldn't wait."

"What happened to Ted Sleeper?"

A momentary look of surprise tinged with mild irritation and then the hooded look of the senior civil servant returned.

"How well did you – correction, do you – know him?"

"Not very well. Talya and I have gone out to dinner with them a few times. We see them around the compound quite often. He and I run together once in a while. I do know that he's a first-rate historian who's got a wife who's currently in pretty bad shape and that he knows all about doing favors for people when his research takes him to various parts of the world."

"That's knowing quite a bit." He waited, looking from me to the lake and then back to me again, and when he'd made his decision he continued in a voice that now hinted at resignation rather than crisp efficiency.

"Sleeper has put us in an awkward position. He's been caught with some printed information in his possession that the Chinese consider important to their national security. He insists that it is nothing more than research data that he was freely given by one of the senior cadres in one of Urumqi's largest industrial brigades, but the official denies agreeing to help Sleeper in any way with the research for his book. The material is very sensitive – not the kind the Chinese would voluntarily share with a Western scholar, even one as well thought of around here as Sleeper. No, I think we'll be lucky to get him out of the country at all. Some of the old Maoists are pushing for a long prison sentence; it's a good opportunity for them to discredit Deng's policy of encouraging Western scholars and businessmen to come to China and see for themselves what advances the country has made since Mao died."

"Was Ted doing you people a favor in Urumqi?"

He just looked out at the lake, not even responding by giving me a noncommittal stare.

"Aren't you going to do anything to help him? Even if he wasn't working for you this time, don't you owe him something? Are you just going to let him rot in some goddam prison?"

Boaz looked right at me, his face expressionless, and he spoke softly and without any apparent emotion.

"When I go back to the embassy I'm going to call his wife and tell her that her husband has been falsely accused of spying and that the American government is aware of the absurdity of the charge and is doing everything in its power to affect his release from the officials in Urumqi who are detaining him. I will also be flying out there on tomorrow's flight, along with the embassy's chief political officer and the DCM, and we will have an unofficial meeting with the responsible Chinese. Sleeper is a well-known scholar and he has some very important friends who may intercede on his behalf. With luck, he may simply be deported – but whatever happens, I'm sure he knew the risks. Most of us do."

I watched him walk away, my impotence and frustration leaving a sour taste in the back of my throat, and I wondered how lucky Ted would feel if he were prohibited from ever setting foot in China again.

Either the Chinese wanted to avoid antagonizing the Reagan administration while the U.S. policy on Taiwan was still in so much flux or else Lynn Boaz and his colleagues were very persuasive because the whole affair was kept very quiet. Nothing about it ever appeared in the Chinese press – controversial issues rarely did – and the foreign press corps found that no travel permits for the Urumqi area were being issued for the next few weeks. The foreign residents of the Youyi, however, talked of little else when we met in the dining halls; rumors were legion, of course, but most people accepted the one that said that an American professor had been taken into custody by the Chinese because he'd been too aggressive in searching for the material for his latest book and that he was in the process of being deported as persona non grata. Ten days after I'd met Boaz in the park Carol and her son flew to Shanghai where they met Ted and the three of them were put on a Pan Am flight back to California. They hadn't let Ted come back to Peking and so Carol had asked Talya and me to help her with the packing. Four days after she had left I received a postcard that had been mailed from Tokyo, the only stopover on Pan Am's new China-U.S. route. It was a glossy picture of Mt. Fuji and the message side had no date and no return address and only a single scrawled sentence and two initials: Guess this is what happens when you ride on the back of the tiger. T. S.

* * *

On May 1 Ma informed us that our participants would be attending a 'political re-education' program at the university the following week and we would therefore have no teaching responsibilities during that time. Noah and Larry were in the midst of a wu-shu course taught every other night at the Youyi by a martial arts master so they decided to stay around, but Talya asked Ma if he could arrange exit and re-entry visas for herself and Mrs. Chu to spend a few days in Hong Kong. She explained that she felt in need of a brief infusion of capitalistic shopping and hoped her good friend Mrs. Chu would be allowed to accompany her to make sure she travelled without mishap. It was very short notice but Ma was an expert at the art of hou-men and he had all the arrangements made in less than seventy-two hours, explaining to us that it was Mrs. Chu's exit document that had caused the only real problem and that it had been solved by a friend of Ma's who was the deputy director of the television station, Mrs. Chu's danwei. Ma had suggested that he and I spend a few days climbing Huan Shan so after Talya and Mrs. Chu left we took a train into Anhui Province and began my first ascent of one of China's five sacred mountains.

The weather was almost perfect, sunny and warm in the early afternoon and clear and cool in the mornings and later in the day, and if we started out early enough – as we did on two mornings—Ma even had some of his beloved mist in which to climb. Much of the mountain was just a vigorous walk-up and on these parts we took our time, enjoying the scenery around us and staring in silence at the breathtaking views down into the valleys below. When a particular stretch would become more challenging it was always Ma who took the lead, picking his way carefully along a ledge or up over a narrow saddle, making sure he kept me in sight as much as possible and always checking our single safety line when he couldn't see me. He climbed with an enviable feel for the terrain, as if he and the mountain were somehow parts of the same whole, linked to one another by some invisible but very durable thread. When he dug in a boot or scraped out a handhold he did it slowly, methodically, always appearing to treat the earth with a strange kind of respect rather than as an adversary that had to be conquered -- even when haste might have made our progress a little easier. He seemed to enjoy the few physical challenges we encountered – at the height of his exertions he invariably smiled or laughed out loud – and yet he also seemed able to enjoy the more frequent periods of relative inactivity, those times when we were simply hiking over fairly level ground or walking easily up a well-worn path. At these times, if we could walk side-by-side and if there was no particularly impressive view at which to look, he would talk quietly, his voice hardly disturbing the high thin air.

"When I was a boy I climbed Yellow Mountain with the girl who would become my wife. Ever since then I thought about the time I would climb up here with my first son and he would see what I had seen that first time. My first son died as an infant during the bad times and I have been up here several times since then, but even now I think about how it might have been. Not often – but always when the weather is good and the mountain reveals her beauty.

"I have another son now. He lives with his mother and my parents in Tsingtao. He is a fine boy and we have gone climbing twice, but it is not the same. He likes motorcycles and car engines; he is very talented with engines and he laughs very easily. He is not a very good student in middle school but he is a good boy and we love him very much."

We were walking slowly now, each of us breathing easily. He wasn't expecting polite conversation and I had no intention of making any. He continued in the same low voice.

"We fought very hard for Liberation in those early days. We believed in the need for sacrifice and discipline and we were young and very strong and we all knew what we were fighting for. The Nationalists were completely corrupt and there were people starving to death in every large town and city we entered, people who had done nothing wrong, nothing evil, but they had been born poor and the Nationalists were happy to see them die."

We had to cross a narrow wash strewn with boulders and it required some concentration. He continued when we rejoined the trail on the other side.

"The Cultural Revolution was a time of many excesses in our country. We lost our balance and many people lost their lives. They wanted us to say that to be an intellectual was evil, that only the peasants knew how to be good communists. It was an understandable overreaction to the failure of some of Mao's economic policies, but it wasn't true and I couldn't say it was. They believed that such confessions would create harmony and order again where there was then only chaos, but there were those of us who knew this to be a self-deception. In struggle-session after struggle-session I was encouraged to recant; finally they beat me with bamboo rods, many of my neighbors joining in to show the Red Guards how loyal they were, and then I was imprisoned. It wasn't a regular prison because there were too many people who were considered counter-revolutionary and middle-roaders and there was not enough room for all of us. I was locked in a basement room in one of the university buildings – all the schools and universities had been attacked and then officially closed – and I was given food and water through a hole in the door. Sometimes once a day, sometimes every other day. There was no window and I saw nobody for a very long time. But I was more fortunate than many others; my wife was not informed of my imprisonment and when she was taken away our son died. Nobody fed him. My wife was released in less than a year, but she behaves very strangely now. She must stay in the house of my parents and she often cries for many hours and sometimes she talks to our dead son.

"I was imprisoned for seven years. When I was released and reinstated in the Party I knew that some of those who had persecuted me were still in positions of authority. I decided to continue to work for my country in spite of this apparent contradiction. I have never believed that isolation from the Western countries, specifically from America, is the wisest course for China to follow. I was imprisoned because I believed this then and I still believe it today. Deng Xiaoping can do good things for China, but he has many powerful enemies among the leaders. When I was allowed to come back to work I decided to do what little I could to insure that these people do not create another Cultural Revolution."

We were nearing the summit and the trail was surprisingly clear and well-worn, as if many people regularly climbed Huang Shan by this route. Ma indicated that we should rest before going on to the top. We sat in silence for a few minutes, looking at a range of dark hills in the distance and a thin layer of cloud hovering just above us, before Ma spoke again.

"I'm sorry about your friend Professor Sleeper."

The transition seemed rather abrupt; I was still thinking of Ma's single-minded dedication to his country, even after his government had allowed him to be so cruelly abused.

"I wasn't aware that you knew him – or that you knew that he was a friend of mine."

"Yes, I knew him as I know you, although maybe not quite as well. I assisted him when he needed to use the Beida library and I introduced him to the Party secretary of the university, a very intelligent woman who comes from Kunming, when he asked to meet her. He is, I think, a very wise man who understands a great deal about my country. He speaks Chinese so well it was often difficult to believe that he wasn't born here. I was very sad that he had to leave China."

He rose and started up the trail again and I fell into step beside him. The wind had picked up and the cloud layer was moving off; the afternoon sun was behind us, throwing our shadows ahead of us as we hiked the last few yards to the top.

"Do you think he was really a spy, Ma?" I didn't break my stride and I didn't look at him when I spoke. He answered so quickly, though, that I stumbled briefly in my surprise; it was almost as if he had been expecting the question for some time.

"If he was, I am sure that what he was doing was never meant to harm my country. He is a man who understands the absurdity of viewing China as a monolithic nation. There are powerful factions in constant conflict at the highest levels and he would know that some are more worthy of support than others. If I were to give my assistance to someone like Professor Sleeper I believe I would most certainly be aiding my own country eventually. Don't you agree?"

The trail had ended. We were at the top of the mountain, or at least as high as it was possible to go without technical equipment, and the view was a fitting reward. The valleys were now dark, stretching away to the north and east, and the slanting sun revealed the green corrugated surface of a nearby range of hills, below us and to the south, and brightened the fleecy clouds that hung in the distance to the west. The dark shadows far below only heightened the white and green and bright orange and yellow that predominated above. It was the kind of sight that made you ask yourself why you spent so much of your life being hemmed in at the lower elevations, the kind of view that made you breathe deeply and think noble thoughts and yearn to be free of all the petty and pragmatic constraints. It was, when you finally turned away and again faced the reality of the mountain upon which you stood, both an uplifting and a profoundly frustrating experience.

"I would hope so, Ma, I would very much hope so – but I guess I am no longer quite so sure of such things as I might once have been."

We turned and moved back down the trail toward a small base camp we had established earlier and Ma tried to ease what he must have seen as my burden.

"Such things are not always helpful, of course, but I have heard it said that a man who cannot decide between Yin and Yang is a man who has lost sight of the inherent balance of the universe, a man who has forgotten that his only duty is to be in harmony with those forces that exist already in everything around him."

"A fine ideal, but how does a man accomplish such a thing?"

The light was beginning to fade as he stepped off briskly in front of me and his gentle laugh floated back over his shoulder.

"Ah, to that question I have never heard of anyone, not even Confucius, who can give a truly satisfactory answer."

Talya returned from Hong Kong with several old Canton plates and an enthusiasm for the Crown Colony that was catching. I told her about our climb up Huang Shan and as she talked about her own trip it was clear that she had thoroughly enjoyed herself. She had decided to splurge so she took a double room at the Peninsula, on Noah's recommendation, for the three nights that she and Mrs. Chu were there and the two of them were out in the shops along Nathan Road ten minutes after they'd checked in and unpacked. The stores and streets were mobbed and as they moved away from the central district and into some of the sidestreets they got the definite impression that anything and everything was for sale; shiny new Porsches discharged dapper young men at the entrances to modest-looking shops advertising 'Relaxation and Personal Service' and Rolls Royces stood at the curb in front of a bamboo-curtained restaurant that smelled sweetly of opium. They had a delicious meal at a fancy Sichuan restaurant facing the busy harbor, but Talya admitted that an earlier lunch of Big Macs and fries at a crowded MacDonald's had been almost as satisfying for her and Mrs. Chu had even ordered a second hamburger after she had finished her first. The next day they had shopped some more and then taken the steep funicular ride up to the top of the Peak for lunch and then followed that with a bus ride out to Repulse Bay for even more shopping. Back at the hotel that second night they had been having a drink in the lobby when Mrs. Chu met an Englishman she knew who often came to Shanghai and Peking as part of the small import-export business he owned in Hong Kong. He had dinner with them in the hotel and in the course of their conversation it turned out that he had been in Urumqi at the same time that Ted had been there – as a matter of fact, they had been staying at the same hotel – and he had had some dealings with the officials of the same industrial brigade that Ted was supposed to have compromised. According to him, the American's trouble with the Chinese was more complicated than most people thought. The man was friendly enough and he seemed to like Mrs. Chu, but he drank steadily all through dinner and he seemed to be depressed about something; when Talya asked him if he could be more specific about Ted's trouble he just smiled and shook his head in the negative and went on drinking. When they parted after dinner he got into one of the elevators as if he too had a room in the hotel, but they never saw him again while they were there.

The next day they spent half their time on Hong Kong island and the other half on the Kowloon side, Talya searching for items to add to her collection and Mrs. Chu looking for small gifts she could bring back for her family, both of them marveling at the efficiency with which the Star Ferry moved tens of thousands of people each day back and forth across one of the world's busiest harbors. To celebrate their last night they took a hydrofoil ride to Macao and treated themselves to a steak dinner at one of the casino restaurants; they both enjoyed the hydrofoil but Mrs. Chu thought her Big Macs had been a better meal. When they landed back in Peking the next day Mrs. Chu tried to give Talya some yuan – Talya had invited her to go as her guest and had paid for everything except her air fare, which her danwei had supplied – but Talya explained that she would not have been able to see anywhere near as much as she had seen if she had been on her own and she certainly would never have understood half of what she saw. In the end, Talya said, she accepted a necklace of orange and black coral from Mrs. Chu (one she had admired aloud when Mrs. Chu bought it in a small shop in Kowloon) so that nobody would lose face.

* * *

It was not long after this that I received a note from our embassy saying that E. G. Marshall, Eli Wallach, and Ann Jackson would be coming to China on a tour and would be interested in giving a performance at the university, preferably to the participants in our American Studies class. Larry cleared it with Ma, who first had to get it approved by the Party people in the university and the people in the Ministry of Education, and then he told our students. Most of them had never seen an American film or play before and so the names meant little, but the fact that two distinguished actors and a distinguished actress were coming from America to perform in their classroom was enough to generate plenty of excitement. A week before the performance – it was to be a series of individual dramatic readings from the works of relatively popular American writers and a longer skit performed by the three of them without benefit of props or scenery – Lynn Boaz called and asked Larry and Noah and me to come down to his office to work out some of the last-minute details of the visit. The meeting was superfluous – there was nothing of any substance discussed that couldn't just as easily have been dealt with in a thirty-second telephone call – but about midway through the allotted half hour the Ambassador dropped in to give us a short speech on how grateful we should be to Mr. Boaz and his USIA staff for their arranging this visit and how honored we should feel knowing that our program at Beida was one of the few stops on the tour these people were making through China. When he left all four of us probably felt uncomfortable; I certainly did and Lynn looked as if he wanted to crawl under his desk and hide, but he went through the remaining motions, pointing out that he hoped we wouldn't mind having some embassy types and their spouses attend our class that day and that we should be prepared to have some ranking members of the Ministry there as well. He was sure that some of them would want to attend as this would be a kind of testing of the waters for them: the first time since Westerners were allowed back into China that professional American performers, excluding athletes, would be allowed access to an audience at the university. The meeting ended with Noah rather dramatically assuring him that neither the visitors nor he nor Larry were likely to embarrass the United States government by flashing in public on the afternoon in question, but he wasn't so confident about me, given my tendency to drool and babble in the presence of the Hollywood crowd and high-ranking Communist Party officials.

"That guy's got a lousy job," Noah added as the three of us rode back to the university in a taxi. "Playing wet-nurse to every American visitor deemed worthy of attention and sitting around all day listening to patriotic bullshit like that. He seems bright enough – the inanity of it all must drive the poor bastard up a wall sometimes."

Larry grunted his agreement and I said nothing.

Ann Jackson and Eli Wallach were in splendid form the day they performed at Beida and Marshall, although hampered by a bad cold, gave a reading that had our students applauding wildly for more. The three of us sat in the back of the largest lecture hall and after Larry had introduced our guests we just relaxed for an hour and enjoyed the show. The Party officials from the Ministry and the university administration showed up in force and several senior embassy people and their families sat in the front row. By far the most popular performance of the afternoon, as far as the students were concerned, was Wallach's dramatic reading of Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken." It was a poem many of them had read in a recently published translation and the work's final and faintly self-satisfied lines seemed to echo what many of them were feeling and thinking about in this period of post-Mao liberalization. The emphasis on self and freedom of choice had a few of the older Party members turning their heads and looking sternly at their younger neighbors, but Wallach's performance was perfect theater and the ovation he received was long and loud. When the final skit was finished the three of them responded to the applause by bowing once and then applauding the audience vigorously in return.

As we waited at the back for the dignitaries and the students to finish talking to the actors and to file out, Noah summed up his feelings about the afternoon's events.

"It's a pleasure to get an infusion now and then from the decadent West, especially when the stuff is administered by such experts. It's a good time for foreigners to visit this country – I only wish the Chinese would treat their own people as well as they treat their guests."

In late May the American Ambassador invited us to a reception for a visiting women's basketball team and after it was over I found myself strolling around a sunny and relatively uncrowded Tien An Men Square with Fred Berenson. He'd been covering the team's visit as part of his job and his invitation to such embassy affairs just went with the territory. We'd both had more than our share of the Ambassador's wine and it felt good to walk it off. Fred took off his jacket and loosened his tie and undid the top button of his short-sleeved white shirt as we passed the inevitable line of people waiting in silence to be allowed to enter Mao's mausoleum and to file past the man's plastic-topped coffin under the ever-watchful eyes of the fully armed PLA guards. I'd already shed my own Chinese jacket and now I turned my face up to the warmth of the sun as Fred continued talking.

"\------and this friend from Le Monde said that this really distinguished looking gent we'd just seen getting into the Huping Fandian's freight elevator was the same guy he knew down in Bangkok about six years ago. Seems he's a Brit who claimed to be looking to make some import-export connections in Thailand in those heady days after we hauled our asses out of Saigon. The Golden Triangle was gearing back up again for full production and this Brit had a habit of being around whenever there was anything really nasty going down that involved the Thai government, which was almost every week. My friend seemed to know quite a bit about this guy and what he was like then. Said he hung out at the Black Jade Club with some very unsavory characters and the foreign press had him tagged as an agent for at least one government and perhaps for two or three. One story that went the rounds among the older hands in the press corps had this guy breaking up a pretty fancy party in a dealer's house on the edge of the city that involved at least a dozen child prostitutes, both male and female, and some very prominent citizens. Seems he wasted the dealer and two of his cronies and then torched the place for good luck. The dealer was a general's son and this guy is supposed to have beheaded him just as he was about to have intercourse with a twelve year old girl. Used a ceremonial sword the general had given his son as a present. A lot of heat on the guy from some influential Thais, as you can imagine, but he must have had some powerful friends himself because no charges are ever filed and no reprisals are carried out. The guy, my friend says, becomes something of a legend in the back alleys of Bangkok."

We came to the massive restored gate directly behind the mausoleum and turned right to pass in front of the marble steps of the Great Hall of the People. The sun beat down steadily and I could feel the sweat running down my back and under my arms. Things looked a little fuzzy as I shielded my eyes and gazed out across the square at an old man trying to launch an elaborate red and gold kite, but I couldn't be sure if it was the wine or just the sun's glare off the white pavement. Fred went on as if we were walking by the cool shore of some lake.

"At any rate, as I was saying, I saw this guy again a few weeks ago up at the resort town of Beidaihe when I went up there to do a piece and when I came back to Beijing I did some checking on him. Not too many straight answers from anyone, of course, but I did find out that he does odd jobs for us every now and again even though his steady employer is in London. My sources, such as they are around here, say that his services don't come cheap. They figure he's one of the last of a breed of old Asia-hands who aren't too much in demand by anyone these days until an unusually messy job has to be done, and the Brits give him a long lead and look the other way when he earns a little on the side as long as it's with a friend of Her Majesty's government. I asked about him at our own embassy – just might be a good story in all this, if there's enough material and if any of it is fit to print – but nobody there has yet admitted they know anything about him."

We were passing the corner of Chang An and turning right again, walking by the bright red entrance to the Forbidden City. The single huge portrait of Mao still hung in the center of the walled façade, dominating the square, and under the Chairman's still-watchful gaze the photographers were busy adjusting their tripods and an occasional grey Shanghai would pull up, unload its foreign passengers, and pull away again into the light traffic. The season had unofficially changed so the dark blue Mao jackets and baggy pants had given way to white tops and pants of grey or tan, more in keeping with the weather, but from a distance and with the glare of the sun I still couldn't help thinking of a society with a thin single-sex veneer, a veneer that barely covered the fact that more than one billion people were walking around out there making believe, much as the  
American Puritans had done, that sexual needs were irrelevant even while the birthrate soared. I was about to ask Fred what the latest population count was for China when he began talking again.

"Which is why I wanted to talk to you. One of my sources in Harbin told me that you know the man, that the two of you spent some time together in a hotel lobby up there once."

I turned at an angle and started to cross the square diagonally, sidestepping the now more numerous kite flyers who were taking advantage of the light wind that had come up, and Fred stayed right beside me.

"What did you say the man's name was?"

"I didn't, but my French friend knew him as Gareth Llewellyn."

"And what did you say your source's name was?"

"I didn't." He laughed. "And you should know better than that."

"Just curious. You seem to be very well informed about what goes on, even in places far from here. As a matter of fact, I don't really know the man at all. I only met him once, if it's the same man you're talking about, and that was only by coincidence. He was in the lobby of my hotel in Harbin one day and we happened to get talking about something or other – I think it was the history of the city, the Russian influence on the place – and we even went for a drink together, if I remember correctly. He did tell me his name was Llewellyn."

"Did he tell you anything else about himself, like what he was doing in Harbin or what he did for a living? Anything at all?"

"Not much. Just that he was there on business for a few days – something to do with importing or exporting, I think he said – and he mentioned at some point that he'd gone to Cambridge in his younger days. Seemed to be a pleasant enough guy – tall, grey-haired, maybe late fifties or early sixties, very knowledgeable about China."

"Yes, it's the same man. Can you remember anything else he said, anything about him that might have impressed you or that might give me some leads to go on?"

"No, not really. He spoke good Chinese – I heard him speak to a waiter – and I remember now that he seemed to be in pretty good physical shape. If he's supposed to be the same guy your LeMonde friend told you about then he sure didn't give me any indication up in Harbin. Sorry – that's about all I can remember about him."

I'd tried to tell the truth, for the most part, and when I thought a lie was in order I'd tried to keep it simple, but I wasn't exactly sure why I had gone through the whole charade. I finally decided it was because I wanted to keep my own reasons for being up in Harbin as far away from Fred's investigations as possible, and I wasn't at all sure that I'd succeeded.

"Thanks anyway. I guess I'll just have to dig around a little more and see if anything worthwhile turns up. By the way, how did you like the far north? Did you give a lecture up there?"

We talked about Harbin, a city Fred had been to several times, as we crisscrossed the square once again and the sun began to go down behind Mao's tomb. When we said goodbye Fred assured me that he would let me know if anything developed with the Llewellyn business and I told him I'd be curious to hear about it if anything did.

* * *

The large outdoor pool at the Youyi, one of the few in northern China, had opened in the middle of May. It was for the use of staff and guests and as long-term residents we were allowed, within certain limits, to invite our friends from outside the compound to use the facilities. I often invited Ma to come swimming after I'd finished with my classes at Beida and if the day were exceptionally warm he would sometimes accept. On one such day we were lying on our towels on the hot concrete deck, Ma and Talya on their stomachs talking to each other and me on my back just watching a high white cloud move slowly by, when there was a high-pitched scream from the far end of the pool and I sat up in time to see a man who had obviously come off the seven-meter diving board and then crumple and fall sideways into the water. The blur that went by me as I started to react was Ma; he must have come off the deck at the beginning of the scream and his leap from the edge of the pool put him almost under the board as the man slid into the water. Almost, but not quite. The man sank like a stone and Ma went after him. Before he surfaced several others were in the water to help. We got the man up onto the deck and someone started to give him mouth-to-mouth assistance, but as we had dragged him out his head had lolled at a strange angle and as I looked at Ma I could see that he knew the man was dead. I glanced up at the platform, shading my eyes from the glare of the sun off the white concrete; a lone Chinese girl in a blue tank suit stood leaning over one of the metal side-rails, her mouth open and her eyes wide with terror as she watched what was happening below her. I saw Ma glance up too and then he made his way through the crowd to the platform's ladder and started to climb. I walked over and waited at the bottom. It took a few minutes but eventually they came down, Ma descending first, one hand on one of the railings and the other supporting the sobbing girl as she followed him down.

By the time the police arrived to take statements from each of us and to remove the body, Ma had calmed the girl by talking to her in a quiet, steady voice, explaining that it was an accident, a fatal miscalculation on the man's part, and that she could have done absolutely nothing to prevent it. I could understand most of what he said to her but it was his compassion, his gentle yet firm manner with her, that impressed me even more. He seemed to have decided, as soon as it was clear that the man was dead, that his attention should be focused on aiding the living. When the police concluded their interviews they ordered the pool closed for the rest of the day and Talya and I walked with Ma to the main gate of the compound where he had left his bicycle.

"Someone told me the man was a foreign expert from Brazil," Talya said. "He polished up the translations for the Portuguese broadcasts down at the radio station."

"A weird accident," I added. "To hit that three meter board from the high platform is no easy task. You'd almost have to aim for the damn thing."

"Either that or the man was extremely careless," Ma said. "The girl is a fu-yuen who works in Number One building and she says he stood on the edge of the platform for a long time, maybe a minute or two, before going off. She was near the edge as well and she watched him go down and hit the board and then slide into the water. She is very upset by all this, but she thinks she remembers that his arms were not out in front of his head when he hit the board. She can't understand that and it seems to trouble her more than anything else. I explained to her that what she thinks she saw from that angle may have been distorted. It is unfortunate, but I believe she will never again go swimming in that pool after what has happened there today. She could have done nothing to prevent the man's death, of course, but I am sure she will never be completely convinced of that. She is young, however, and in time she may learn to live with her doubts and her uncertainties."

Two days after the incident at the pool I received a letter at the office, hand-delivered by an embassy driver. It was from Boaz and it informed me that Noah and Larry and I would soon be getting an invitation to each give a lecture in Guilin and he would appreciate my contacting a Miss Yun Lu there. She worked on the main floor of the Friendship Store, in the jewelry section, and I was to give her the enclosed envelope containing ten one-hundred-dollar bills.

I opened the envelope – it had the flap folded inside, unsealed, as if he expected the contents to be checked – and counted the stiff new American bills. As I licked the flap and sealed the money inside I had the feeling that I should shed something of myself, that I should somehow wriggle out of an old and rotting skin and let a second epidermal layer breathe freely.

The following afternoon Ma came to the office to let us know that Beida had received a request for our services at a conference to be held in Guilin and if we agreed to go he would make arrangements for us to fly down there for two days. I could think of no plausible excuse for not going so I nodded my acquiescence to Larry and Noah's enthusiastic response. Five days later Ma was checking us into Guilin's nicest hotel and quietly insisting that the three of us qualified for the officially approved long-term foreign expert's reduced rate for accommodations when on business away from our danwei.

Larry had to give his presentation on the afternoon of the first day and Ma had to go with him, but Noah and I weren't needed until the next morning so we took a boat ride up the river to get a good look at the strange volcanic rock formations that brought so many tourists, both Chinese and foreign, to Guilin. It was one of the more memorable sights in a country filled with scenes worth remembering. The day was sunny and warm and the clear blue sky served as a perfect backdrop to the dark jagged hills that rose directly out of the quiet water, dark irregular piles of stone and earth and hardened lava that appeared to rise from the water without benefit of beach or shoreline or any gradual inclination at all, black shapes whose immediacy was part of their strangeness in a land more generally given over to flat paddies and gently terraced hillsides. The abrupt mountains of Guilin made me think of the barren and the fantastic, of the sudden and unpredictable formations of the dark side of the soul, of the black threat of chaos suddenly superimposed on the clear placid world of order and apparent calm. They were beautiful and enticing and frighteningly unusual.

Noah saw them differently.

"Figures out of a child's imagination. Sand castles put together on a black sand beach by a giant toddler who knows nothing about the basic principles of construction. They remind me of the boulders thrown up by storms along the California and Oregon coasts, aberrations that mar the otherwise beautiful surface of a place. Have to avoid them, surf around them, or run the risk of breaking your board and your body on them. Nice to look at from a distance, a pain in the ass to deal with up close."

The boat ride lasted almost two hours and when we returned to the dock Noah went back to the hotel to take a nap before dinner. I made my way to the Friendship Store and walked around on the main floor for about ten minutes, staying away from the jewelry section at first and then only looking casually at the merchandise as I passed the first of two salesgirls. I stopped to inspect a gold brooch shaped like a dragon and the second attendant came to the end of the counter to help me.

"Is there something you wish to look at more closely?"

"I was told at my hotel that a Miss Yun Lu worked here and that she might be able to help me pick out a suitable pin for my wife. She sold something to someone else at my hotel and they were very satisfied. They suggested I ask for Miss Yun Lu."

"Yun Lu is not here now. Do you want me to show you something?"

"Of course. May I see that gold dragon?"

When she went off a few minutes later to wrap it for me the other salesgirl moved quickly down the counter to stand in front of me. She spoke in a barely audible voice.

"I am Qhiqing Li. I heard you ask about Yun Lu. She is my best friend. We were classmates in middle school. I do not think she will be coming back to work for a long time. Yesterday the police came to her house, the house that belongs to her grandmother, and they took Yun Lu away."

She looked as if she had been crying, but she tried to hide her embarrassment at revealing such things to a stranger by keeping a smile on her face even as she spoke.

"Yun Lu has a foreign boyfriend and her neighborhood committee found out about it. They tried to persuade her to give him up, they even took away the whole family's cotton coupons for a year, but Yun Lu is very stubborn. She knew it was dangerous, but she would not give up her friend. Yesterday she was taken away. My father says she will be sent to a reeducation camp in the countryside and there they will try to help her understand how wrong she has been."

"Can you tell me where Yun Lu's house is?"

She told me the address and then wrote it out in Chinese and quickly handed me the piece of paper before she moved back to the other end of the counter. She was helping another customer by the time the other salesgirl returned with my purchase. As I walked away I glanced over at Qhiqing Li. She looked my way briefly, no longer smiling, then lowered her head to wait on the customer in front of her.

It took me some time to find the right hutong and when I located the right house and knocked on the low wooden door there was no answer. I was about to turn away when a very old woman with bound feet hobbled around the corner, a young girl of about ten or twelve supporting her, and stopped beside me. The woman's face was small and deeply lined, her hair, cut short, was white and thinning, and she looked up at me with what I took to be resentment and anger. The girl, too, looked angry, but I addressed her as the one more likely to understand some English.

"I am looking for the house of Yun Lu."

"This is the house of my grandmother. I am the sister of Yun Lu. She is not at home today."

The girl lowered her eyes for a moment, but when she looked up at me again the anger was still there.

"What do you want with my sister?"

"I have something to give her. I know she is not at home now and that she may not be home for some time. If I give you the gift for your sister will you be able to get it to her?"

"I do not know." She seemed more hesitant than angry now, unsure of both my motives and how she should respond.

"If you are allowed to visit your sister, please give this to her. If not, please keep it for her until she comes home."

The old woman, unable to follow the conversation, had hobbled to the door and was inserting a long key in the lock. I handed the sealed envelope to the girl. She held back for a few seconds, more wary than frightened, and then she took it.

"I will tell Yun Lu that an Englishman brought this for her. Does she know your name?"

"No, but it is not important. She will know where the gift comes from. Dzy-gen."

The old lady had opened the door and I caught a glimpse of a tiny room and a chipped enamel wash-basin on top of a dark wooden stand.

"Dzy-gen," the girl said, less wary now, as she put the envelope in one of the front pockets of her trousers and followed the woman inside. The low wooden door was closed slowly and almost noiselessly.

The next day Noah and I gave our presentations while Larry did some sightseeing. Ma felt that he had to stay with us at the conference in case we ran into any language problems, so that evening the three of us insisted on taking him out to the fanciest restaurant in Guilin. We had heard that it also served the best food, but on the plane back to Peking the following morning only Ma could remember how delicious it had been; the three weigwos were so hung over from all the beers and mao-tais downed in the spirit of Chinese-American friendship that they could barely remember what city they'd been in.

Soon after the Guilin trip I met Boaz in one of the masses duck restaurants just off Tien An Men and told him about Yun Lu. He said he'd heard about her arrest and he seemed surprised at my decision to leave the money with the family. I could tell that he would have preferred my bringing the envelope back, given the circumstances, but he never said so directly and I had already decided that I wasn't particularly interested in his preferences in the matter anyway.

* * *

As the term entered its final month the participants in our program became more animated; the weather was consistently good, with rarely a raincloud in sight, and many of them were keenly aware that soon they would be seeing their families again, some for the first time in almost a year. Their three American teachers were invited to the homes of those who lived in Peking and six or eight students would act as a communal host at one person's house, spending the whole morning cooking an enormous meal (each student supplied the ingredients for a different part of the meal so that no one family or person would have to use up all their ration coupons on such an extravagance) that was eaten during the course of an entire afternoon. As housing was in short supply in the city, in spite of the constant construction, most people in their twenties and thirties, whether married or not, still lived in the same small house or apartment as their parents and grandparents. When one of our students would invite us for a meal it was not unusual for the three of us and Talya and eight students and a set of parents and one or two grandparents and even a young child or two to be packed into two or three very small rooms as we sat and talked and ate our way through a long sunny June afternoon. It was always a loud and invigorating experience, the food was plentiful and usually delicious, and as guests we invariably came away with some small gift that we knew our students could barely afford. The invitations kept coming, but after a while we made polite excuses and stopped accepting them because it became clear that the family at whose house one of these events took place would almost certainly have to do without something on their table – even given the communal host arrangements – for the rest of that month.

Those afternoons were wonderful times, times when I felt as if I were beginning to understand a little of what modern China was really like and I think all of us regretted their passing, but the economic and social realities of the situation were inexorable. Our students and their families would have been shamed by an offer to help pay for such a meal and there was no way that they could afford such generosity, extended over a period of time, on their own.

When I spoke to Ma about these things he would usually encourage me to accept as many invitations as possible, to get to see what living conditions were like for many of our participants.

"It is a matter of history. For us the offering of a banquet and the giving of gifts is both a means of making someone welcome and a way of building guan-xi, of establishing a feeling of mutual dependence among people. To a Western mind it may seem to be self-serving and even hypocritical, but to us it is part of a long and very practical tradition. In a land of so many people, living for so many centuries with a bureaucracy that is so complex that it is almost an unworkable puzzle to the average person, the use of guan-xi makes it possible for you to feel as if you have some control over your daily life. Your students, I believe, genuinely care for you and they get pleasure by having you accept their hospitality, but they also feel that they can now depend on you to be interested in their welfare in the future. It does not mean that you must now reciprocate by giving them a higher mark, but it does mean that they hope that they will no longer be an anonymous part of the crowd, that you will recognize them and be concerned about them now that you have shared something with them.

"I know that some people in your country would see this as favoritism or even corruption, and sometimes that is exactly what it becomes in my country as well, but for most people here it is a way of making our presence felt in a society that does not make many allowances for individual needs."

I don't know whether it was my conversations with Ma or a series of heavy late-night meals or just a combination of various things I had been thinking about lately, but it was about this time that I began waking up in the middle of the night, drenched in sweat, trying to piece together the recurrent dream that disturbed my sleep several nights in a row. A very shy girl in one of my classes would raise her hand timidly to answer a question and the rest of the blue-jacketed students around her would pounce on her and hit her with their fists, breaking her glasses and making blood run from her eyes. I tried to get to her to help her, pushing against the crowd, but a man in a dark pin-striped suit who looked familiar – though not specifically like anyone I knew – was holding me back, one hand on my right arm and in the other a machete raised high, about to descend on my head. Just before I'd wake up I'd realize that the man being held was Ma and not me and the man in the dark suit was faceless except for a set of disembodied and flawless false teeth that snapped loudly as the machete came down, its highly polished blade glinting brightly in the dazzling sunlight.

Talya woke up once just as I opened my eyes – she said I'd yelled in my sleep – and I told her what I could remember about the nightmare. We talked for a few minutes, trying to figure out what it might mean but getting nowhere, and then we both went back to sleep. That particular dream never returned, at least not so I could remember any of it.

Larry came back to the compound one night after eating at a nearby masses restaurant and had one beer with a group of us at the rooftop bar in building Number One and then went off to bed, complaining of some slight stomach pains. The next day he had a high fever, he could hold down neither solid food nor liquids, and the pains had become severe. Noah and I contacted the clinic, located next door to our own building, and two Chinese doctors were in Larry's room in less than fifteen minutes. The one who spoke English asked him about not only his actions and diet of the last few days, but also about his long-term habits of exercise, his diet before coming to China, his family's medical history, how he felt about his work these days at Beida, how he was getting along on his own (he had mentioned his ex-wife and daughter in California), whether or not he was looking forward to returning to America when his appointment here was completed, and what he thought of traditional Chinese as opposed to Western medicine. She stood by Larry's side and listened carefully to his answers while her colleague, also in a white lab coat, stood on the other side of the bed and gently probed Larry's abdomen, touched his thighs and lower legs, and put a stethoscope to his cheek in no fewer than a dozen places. Neither the woman who was physically touching him nor the woman who was asking him the detailed questions made any attempt to remove either the top or bottom of his pajamas during the initial examination. After a considerable amount of time, during which Larry seemed to relax and certainly appeared to be in much less discomfort, the two doctors stepped away from the bed and conversed quietly in Chinese for a few minutes. The taller one came back to the bed and spoke to Larry as she pressed gently but firmly on his abdomen much as the other doctor had done.

"We will give you an antibiotic in case your fever is the result of a serious infection. We can not tell what is causing your stomach pains at this time. Do you have any objection to being treated by traditional Chinese methods as well as with Western antibiotics?"

"No, no objections, but what will it involve?"

"Dr. An and I agree that you should swallow a glass of special tea every three or four hours until you temperature returns to normal. It is a small package of thick brown granules that you should pour into a glass of boiled hot water from your thermos by the bed here. After you have stirred the medicine in the glass you should drink all of it before it cools."

She smiled at Larry, attempting to reassure him.

"Some of your countrymen say the special tea has a very unpleasant taste, but you will make up your own mind. I can assure you, however, that the medicine will not make you any worse.

"We also agree that your symptoms and your medical and personal history suggest that your intestinal problems may be alleviated by our using some acupuncture. Do you have any objection to such treatment?"

Larry looked at Noah and then at me before answering.

"Will it be very painful?"

"It is no more painful than a series of routine injections you might get in your own country, only now the acupuncture needles will be left in place for a period of time; instead of placing them in your arm they will be placed in another part of your body."

"Which part?" Larry's smile looked a little forced.

The two women said a few words to each other in Chinese and then the taller one leaned over and touched the side of Larry's nose, about an inch below his left eye, and then his right ear.

"We agree that these two places will probably give us the best results. It should not be necessary to use very many needles and they will not remain in place for very long. If you have no objections, we can begin at once."

"Won't you have to move him to the clinic to perform this operation?" Noah asked.

"Not at all." She smiled at Dr. An as if they were used to dealing with such silly questions from the Youyi's foreign guests. "It is not an operation in your Western sense and Dr. An has all the necessary equipment with her. Shall I begin?" she asked, looking down at Larry.

"Why not? I'm willing to try most things once." He looked a little dubious but he was grinning as he spoke.

"Does that mean you have no objections, Professor Maguire?"

"Yes, it means I have no objections, doctor. Please do what you think is necessary."

"It is most important that you think it is necessary as well."

Larry looked up at her and slowly nodded his approval.

"I do, doctor, I do. Anything to get rid of these pains."

Dr. An took a flat wooden box from one of the deep pockets of her lab coat and opened it on top of the nightstand next to the bed. Laid out in indented slats on two wooden trays covered with green felt were about two dozen very thin steel needles ranging in length from two to four inches each. The light above the bed was adjusted by Dr. An and then both women brought over straight-backed chairs and placed them on either side of the bed, close to Larry's head, and sat down facing him. The English-speaking woman had taken a very large gauze pad from her medical bag and she put it on the pillow next to Larry's left cheek and then instructed him to remain still and to keep his arms at his sides. She talked very quietly to him, explaining exactly what was being done and what he should expect to feel at each stage of the procedure, as her colleague swabbed Larry's nose and left cheek and right ear with a cloth soaked in what smelled like denatured alcohol and then selected and inserted each needle with such care and delicacy that I was reminded of a bomb disposal expert I had once seen who had spent an hour dismantling a complicated explosive device; Dr. An was as steady and precise as she inserted the acupuncture needles as he had been when doing his job. In less than an hour, with Larry watching all the time and responding every so often to the other doctor's quiet voice, Dr. An had placed twelve needles in Larry's flesh, eight alongside his nose and four in the upper part of his right ear. Noah and I had stood at the front of the bed and watched and I hadn't seen the patient flinch even once with the slightest pain when the needles had been placed. They only went into the skin a few centimeters, or so it seemed, and the longest portion of each needle stood straight out, giving Larry the look of a porcupine with stainless steel quills, but he had appeared relaxed throughout the whole procedure and now he looked almost euphoric.

"How do you feel now, Professor Maguire?"

"A little foolish with these things sticking out of my face, but otherwise I feel fine. It's amazing -- not the slightest hint of a stomach pain! When it started to go away I couldn't believe it – like pushing a switch and turning off an electric light. How long do these things have to stay in? Will the pains come back when they're removed?"

"We agree that you should remain in bed, as you are now, at least for the rest of today. You should stay as quiet as possible. If you must get up for any reason then you should make every effort not to move your head too quickly. You do not want the needles to come out. We will come back to see you in a few hours and if your fever has gone down we might agree to remove the needles sometime later this evening. Whether you will still have some pains after they are removed we can not say. That depends very much on the individual. It would be best if you rested on your own now until we come back."

Dr. An had closed her wooden box and the two women stood at the bedroom door with their medical bags in hand, obviously waiting for Noah and me to leave but much too polite to say so to us directly. There was no talk of payment and as Noah followed me out and said goodbye, Larry spoke from the bed.

"Thank you, doctor, and please thank Dr. An most warmly for me. If I feel as good as this tomorrow, Noah, let's play some tennis, okay?"

He was out of bed in two days and during the next two weeks he had several more acupuncture treatments. The stomach pains returned occasionally, but he told us they were never as severe as before and that they never lasted for very long.

Mr. Wu, Fred Berenson's Chinese assistant, telephoned me at Beida one morning to tell me that the reporter was in Kunming but that he would be flying back to the capital early that evening and he wanted to meet me for dinner at the Japanese restaurant in the Peking Hotel if I was available. Mr. Wu said that he had been told to tell me that Mr. Berenson had acquired some information that might be of interest to me and that the reporter would be happy to pay for the meal as long as I paid for the sake. I told Mr. Wu that I would be happy to have dinner with Mr. Berenson and that I would be at the restaurant at the suggested time. He sounded pleased and wished me a pleasant meal before he hung up.

When I walked in at seven Fred was already there. We ordered and as we waited for the food to arrive I asked him about his trip to Kunming.

"A fascinating place. I went down there to get some material for a piece I'm doing on how much of old China is being lost as the older districts in some of the cities are being torn down to make way for the new apartment buildings. There's a group of planners down in Kunming who are trying to save and restore some of the hutongs and courtyards and old single-story buildings. They have to be careful when they argue for keeping anything these days. Can't afford to be seen as doing anything that might hinder progress toward achieving any of the Four Modernizations, yet they want to make sure the rush to build new housing doesn't completely wipe out the traditional structures. I spent a few days talking to them and to the city's building committees and to some of the people who will be affected by whatever decisions are eventually made.It's an interesting town. Beautiful climate and wonderful gardens and lots of things going on. If it wasn't for all the movers and shakers being concentrated up here in Beijing, I think I'd rather live in Kunming than anywhere else in China these days."

"Even better than Shanghai?"

"Definitely. Shanghai can be exciting, but I can't take the noise and the crowds as a steady diet. Nice place to visit, and all that. As in the late 1940's, just before the communists began their long march north, Kunming seems to be alive with energy and intrigue, plots and counter-plots, yet its surface is calm and aesthetically very pleasant. As a matter of fact, I picked up some rather unsavory information about Gareth Llewellyn in one of Kunming's most peaceful parks. I thought you might be interested."

He waited for the waitress to pour our heated rice wine and move off to another table before continuing.

"A Chinese friend who is usually very reliable told me that Llewellyn is in a bit of hot water with his bosses in London. Seems he's been doing odd jobs for some anti-Deng people based in the south who are acting under orders from one of Deng's oldest and most influential enemies up in Beijing. The word is that Deng would like to get rid of this old guy but that the man was one of Mao's closest friends from the early days and he still has powerful allies in the army. Anyway, my reliable friend says that Llewellyn has been getting some pretty good money from this group in the south to embarrass the present government by creating a few nasty scenes here and there and then making it seem as if the Americans, Deng's favorite Western people at the moment, are responsible for the resulting mess. My friend thinks Llewellyn was responsible for the death of a woman in Shanghai a while back who was working for the Americans out of Hong Kong. Llewellyn used to do the odd job for the Americans, too, but it appears that he's not much in their favor these days.

"Doesn't look as if I'll be able to use much of the stuff I find out about him, either. He's got too many past associations with our own intelligence community and the current relationship between the U.S. and China is just too sensitive for any paper to fool around with an item like this just now. Guess I'll stay with it, though, and save whatever turns up for future reference."

When our food came we talked about other things, including my recent experiences at the home of some of my students and his interviews with some high-level officials in preparation for an up-coming National People's Congress at which, it was rumored, Deng might attempt to consolidate some of his power. As we finished our dessert and the last of the sake, however, and were in the process of paying the bill, Fred mentioned the Englishman again.

"From what my Chinese friend tells me and from what I've been able to put together from my other sources, this Llewellyn seems like a bad piece of business. If you run into him again you might want to be extra careful."

"I doubt that I'll ever see him again, but if I do I think that's good advice. And as long as he's active in this part of the world and playing so many ends against the middle, I'd be very circumspect in what I wrote about him, if I wrote anything at all. Now that I think of it, he struck me as a man who might do a considerable amount of reading."

A week later Talya and I and Noah and Larry received invitations from Lynn Boaz to an embassy reception in honor of the head of the university. Ma and several senior Chinese professors and all the important administrators from Beida were also invited and Ma explained to us that it was the first such invitation for most of the Chinese so each of them would probably make a special effort to attend even though it would be an afternoon affair right at the beginning of the week of final examinations.

The Monday of the reception began with an unseasonable rain squall in the morning, but by noon the sky had cleared and by mid-afternoon I found myself seeking protection from the sun under a large shade tree in the embassy garden. I'd shaken the requisite hands upon entering and, after a tour or two of the grounds with my sweating can of Budweiser in hand, I spent the rest of the time talking to Ma and an ancient professor of medicine, Lao Wan, who had climbed each of China's sacred mountains three times. He and Ma left the reception together and I was about to look for Talya and ask her if she was ready to leave when Boaz joined me.

"I noticed you were talking to Ma Shi-yi for a long time. You two are very friendly, aren't you? He's one of the most effective people I know at that university. We're lucky he agreed to be the liaison for your program."

"He's a fine person. We climbed Huang Shan together once."

"Yes, I know. He's an exceptional person in many ways. A dedicated Party member, of course, but very outspoken about his belief that China should keep its door open to the West. We've been very fortunate to have him as a friend. He has, on occasion, given us some very valuable assistance."

He had a can of beer in his hand, but up close it smelled as if he'd had a scotch or two as well. His eyes were clear and he gave no indication of having had too much to drink; he just seemed more relaxed than usual.

"Do you mean he works for you?"

He laughed and waved his beer can from side to side. "Not at all. He's Chinese, first, last, and, I suspect, always, and he's too principled to play a doubles game. No, he has simply given us unexpected assistance a few times and he's never asked for anything in return. I think he is what might be called a superior human being. Superior, at any rate, to the likes of me."

He smiled thinly and waved his beer can in an off-hand gesture as he walked away.

Giving and marking the examinations that week kept me busy, but we were also due to leave China soon after the term officially ended and there were complex travel arrangements to be made and last minute items to be bought and shipped back to the States. Talya managed to convince the manager of the Swissair office in Peking that he could pay his rent to the Chinese with all the yuan we wanted to give him; in exchange he gave us two tickets from Peking to New York with stopovers in Hong Kong, Bangkok, Penang, Sri Lanka, Bombay and Geneva and after he'd counted up the beautifully etched bank notes again – completely nonnegotiable except within the People's Republic itself – he even threw in a night at the old Raffles Hotel in Singapore.

Larry decided to visit his ex-wife and daughter on the way home so he and Noah arranged to fly out together on a Pan Am flight direct to California. That Saturday the three of us hosted a farewell banquet for all the participants in the program at a large restaurant inside the Summer Palace grounds. Most of them would be leaving the next day to go back to their homes and families and there were many photographs taken and many emotional toasts made between courses. Ma seemed a bit preoccupied at first, but after a few emphatic gambeis and a few pijou-inspired speeches about Chinese-American friendship and mutual understanding he joined in the festivities enthusiastically, picking out the choicest pieces from each dish and placing them in Talya's bowl and then, near the end of the meal, offering a brief toast to the American lecturers and to Talya that had the four of us almost in tears. Larry closed the banquet with a final large mao-tai raised to Ma and the participants themselves and then everyone stood (as best they could) and applauded everyone else.

Talya and I spent most of Sunday in bed recovering from the excesses of the night before and on Monday morning we saw Noah and Larry off at the airport and then went back to the Youyi to finish some last-minute packing of our own. A fu-yuen came to tell me that a man, another American, was waiting in the lobby to see me and when I walked down to the ground floor I found Lynn Boaz uncharacteristically disheveled, as if what little sleep he'd recently gotten had been in the clothes he had on.

"Can we walk outside? My car's in front of the building and I have to go right back to the embassy."

We stepped into the sunlight and I walked with him toward his waiting sedan.

"I wanted you to hear about this before you left. I thought it would be better in person than on the phone. They found Ma Shi-yi's body about two o'clock this morning at the edge of the lake in the Purple Bamboo Park. They think he'd been dead about six hours."

I focused straight ahead on the front left hubcap of the car. There was a small irregular dent in it. There was nothing to say, but I said something anyway.

"How did he die?"

We had reached the car and he had the rear door open, holding the top of the open door with both hands.

"Someone rammed two large acupuncture needles into his head, at the temples. When they found him the blunt ends of the needles were barely visible. He must have died instantly."

He was inside, his head leaning toward the open window. I heard myself speaking again, as if from far away.

"Who killed him?"

He looked up at me, tapping the driver on the shoulder at the same time. The car started to move.

"We don't know. I have to go back now – I'm very sorry."

*Cambridge*

It was getting late and he knew it was time to get up and go home. It was smoky and quite noisy now and he anticipated with pleasure the cool night air and the quiet walk ahead. It would take him fifteen to twenty minutes, across part of Midsummer Common and then along Jesus Green to the footbridge over the Cam at Jesus Gate Lock, time enough to breathe deeply and think a little bit about the coming week's work. He touched the paper in his pocket and thought again about change and its absence, about the life he now lived and the one he'd been offered, and he wondered if he'd ever really lost sight of the fact that looking for the truth beneath the surfaces of things could be an honorable profession, a worthwhile endeavor given the choices we have. He knew, too, that someone famous had once said that you can never know too much about the shadow line and the people who walk it, but he wasn't convinced. He had already experienced moments when he wished he knew a great deal less.

Chris called to him over the crush of people at the bar.

"Telephone call for you. I think its Talya."

He made his way to the rear of the pub where the phone hung on the wall. Her voice sounded husky, the way it always did when she was tired and ready to go to sleep.

"Hi. Just thought I'd call and see if you want me to come pick you up with the car."

"No, thanks, I can use the fresh air."

"Have a good time?"

"Yes, a very unusual evening, in fact. I received an offer of employment from some people I used to know a long time ago. Thought about it for a while, but finally decided not to accept it."

"Sounds interesting. Tell me all about it when you get home."

He hung up and made his way to the front door, waving goodnight to Chris and Debbie as he passed the bar. When he stepped outside he took a few deep breaths and then walked off toward the river.

