Mrs. Pollifax on the China Station Page 2

  “Yes,” said Carstairs. “Miss Markham was one of the first to visit China when it opened up, and to arrange for visitors. This won’t be one their regular tours, but they’ll make the arrangements and use their considerable connections to make sure it’s a bona fide sight-seeing experience for you all. What they can’t provide at such short notice, however, is one of their own American guides to accompany you, so you’ll be in the hands of a native guide, which may or may not be limiting, depending on his or her command of English.”

  And which, added Bishop silently, is not at all accidental, my dear Mrs. Pollifax, no matter how contrite and apologetic Carstairs may sound.

  “I see,” she said, and was silent, thinking about all that he’d said. “What occurs to me—”

  “Yes?”

  “What I don’t understand—seeing that you’re sending in an agent to find Mr. X, or Wang—is how that person will be able to smuggle Mr. X out of China and—”

  “That,” intervened Carstairs smoothly, “will be our problem.”

  “—and also,” she added relentlessly, “how that agent will have any freedom of movement to even contact Mr. X, or Wang, especially traveling in a group and under the eyes of a government guide.”

  Good for you, Emily, thought Bishop, you’re getting close to the heart of the matter which is exactly why I’m having chills. He waited patiently for Carstairs to field this with his usual tact.

  “That will also be our problem,” Carstairs said silkily. “It’s much safer if you know nothing about it, not even which member of your party will be the agent.”

  Caught off balance by this, Mrs. Pollifax gasped. “Not even who—!”

  “Not until you’ve contacted our Buddhist chap Guo Musu in Xian,” he told her firmly. “Believe me, it will be best for both of you. After all, it will be a very small tour group,” he said, “and we want you to treat everyone openly and equally. After you’ve visited the Drum Tower in Xian—Guo’s barbershop is in its shadow—your coagent will contact you.”

  Bishop watched her struggle with this, and then he turned his head and glanced at Carstairs and saw that his face had suddenly tightened. Bishop guessed what he was thinking; a moment later Carstairs proved it by saying in a surprisingly harsh voice, “There’s one other instruction for you, Mrs. Pollifax. If anything unusual happens on this trip—no matter what—I expect you to get that tour group the hell out of the country, you understand?”

  Mrs. Pollifax smiled. “Which means, of course, that you’re expecting something unusual to take place?”

  Carstairs gave her an unforgiving glance that was totally unlike him, and when he spoke again his voice was cool. “On the contrary, we trust it will be happily uneventful, and I believe that will be all for now, Mrs. Pollifax. Bishop can fill you in on the missing details and give you a visa application to fill out, and for this perhaps you wouldn’t mind waiting out in his office for him? In the meantime we’re delighted, of course, that you’re taking this on.”

  He didn’t look at all delighted; he looked rather like a man who had just swallowed a fish bone and was going to choke on it, and deep inside of him Bishop chuckled: it had finally happened, he had simply underestimated the time it would take for Carstairs to realize all the things that could go wrong, and how devilishly fond he was of Mrs. Pollifax. Ah well, thought Bishop cheerfully, I’ve already passed through it and been inoculated, I’ll just have to shore him up.

  Watching Mrs. Pollifax leave the office he waited for the door to close behind her and then he moved to a panel on the right wall with a mirror set into it. “You can come out now,” he told the man who had been listening and observing from the other side.

  The man who walked out to join them looked furious. “Good God,” he said, “you’re sending her? I’ve nothing against the woman personally, but if that’s who you’re sending with me into China—”

  “The perfect reaction,” Bishop told him imperturbably. “Do sit down and let us tell you about Mrs. Pollifax—bearing in mind, I hope, that your reactions are exactly the same that we trust China’s security people will experience, too.” …

  Mrs. Pollifax, returning to New Jersey, felt that her cup was running over. It had been startling enough to fly off that morning from Teterboro in a small private plane—how surprised her neighbors would be to know of that!—but this adventure paled now beside the fact that she was actually going to visit China. She was remembering the loving report on China that she’d written in fifth grade, and the triumph of the jacket she’d given it: gold chopstick letters on dark green construction paper. Land of Pearl Buck, too, she thought dreamily—how many times had she seen the film The Good Earth?—and of Judge Dee mystery novels, emperors and empresses and palaces and Marco Polo and silk. They all swam together happily in her mind.

  But what felt the most amazing coincidence of all was the class in Chinese art that she’d taken during the past winter; it was true that she still had a tendency to confuse the Shang, Zhou, Han, Tang, and Sung dynasties, but the professor had so frequently referred to treasures destroyed during Mao’s Cultural Revolution that she had looked up a great many things about modern China as well, accumulating names like The Long March, The Great Leap Forward, the Hundred Flowers, the Cultural Revolution—which certainly appeared to be anything but kind to culture—and the Lin-Confucius Campaign. Now she was going to see China for herself, which only proved how astonishing life could be.

  She happily overtipped the cab driver, and reaching the seclusion of her apartment tossed coat and hat to the couch, adjusted the curtains to give her geraniums the last of the day’s sunshine, and put water on to boil for tea. Only then did she spread out the brochures and maps and Hints to Travelers that Bishop had given her, but it was his page of notes that interested her the most: there was the name Guo Musu to be memorized, and a tourist’s map of Xian cut out of a brochure, with an X penciled in near the Drum Tower—but what, she wondered, did a Chinese barbershop look like?—and there was also a tentative list of the people who would accompany her, subject to change, Bishop had told her. She eyed these speculatively:

  Peter Fox/Connecticut

  Malcolm Styles/New York

  Jennifer A. Lobsen/Indiana

  George Westrum/Texas

  Next she carefully read her travel schedule: New York to San Francisco; San Francisco to Hong Kong; overnight in Hong Kong with instructions to meet the rest of the party the next morning in the hotel’s breakfast room before departure by train for Mainland China. The itinerary: Canton, Xian, Urumchi, Lanzhou, Inner Mongolia, Datong, Taiyuan, Peking; departure from Peking for Tokyo and thence back to New York, arriving four weeks later.

  While her peppermint tea steeped in its china pot she put the notes aside and glanced through the photographs in the brochure, fervently wishing she could pick up the telephone and share her excitement with Cyrus. This was very selfish of her, she admitted, because she knew that he must have been bracing himself for just this occasion. How strange it was, she mused, that Cyrus knew what even her son and her daughter didn’t know: the reasons behind her small travels, the risks she met, and thinking about this she decided that in her next letter to him in Zambia she would not mention China at all; instead she’d write a separate letter that would be waiting for him on his return. This would spare him at least one or two weeks of worry—and he would worry, she conceded; he would know at once why she was going, and there was no way to reassure him that it was a routine assignment. “Routine?” she could hear him say. “Went to Zambia on a routine assignment, didn’t you, Emily? Just to take pictures, stay out of trouble? All hell broke loose, nearly got killed, both of us, and caught an assassin. Don’t mention routine to me, m’dear.”

  And of course at the back of her mind, not ready for admittance yet, lurked an awareness of the tension she had sensed in Bishop. She thought now, uneasily, He knows much more than I’ve been told; he really hoped I’d say no.

  Lifting her eyes she glanced around at h
er safe, familiar apartment—at the sunlight striping the worn oriental rug, the books lining one wall, the tubs of geraniums at the window—and she remembered the number of times she’d left it without knowing what lay ahead of her, or if she would ever see it again. She said aloud, “Yet I’m here. Very definitely still here. Somehow.” One had to have faith, she reminded herself, and on impulse left the brochures and walked over to her desk and removed from one of its drawers a collection of envelopes bearing colorful and exotic stamps. Maybe I keep them for just such a moment, she thought, knowing their contents by heart: a recent letter from her dear friend John Sebastian Farrell in Africa; a birth announcement from Colin and Sabbahat Ramsey in Turkey; a holiday message from the King of Zabya with a note from his son Hafez, and Christmas cards from Robin and Court Bourke-Jones, from the Trendafilovs, from Magda and Sir Hubert, all of them people she’d met on her adventures.

  Last of all she drew out a soiled and wrinkled postcard that had reached her just last year, a card addressed to Mrs. Emily Pollifax, New Brunswick, New Jersey, the United States of America—no street address, no zip code—so that only a very enterprising postman had rescued it for her. On one side was the picture of a castle; on the opposite side the words: You remain here still with me, Amerikanski. I do not forget. Tsanko.*

  Yes, she thought softly, her life had become very rich since that day she found it so purposeless that she had tried to give it away. So many new experiences and so many new friends …

  With a glance at the clock she put away the collection of cards and letters, and carrying her cup of tea into the bedroom she quickly changed into slacks and a shirt. An hour later she was in a back room at police headquarters, wearing her brown karate belt and making obeisances to retired police lieutenant Lorvale Brown before advanced instructions began. Presently shouts of hi-yah filled the air because Lorvale believed in attacking with sudden blood-curdling shouts as well as a slice of the hand.

  The next day Bishop called and told her to add two more names to the tour group, that of Iris Damson of Oklahoma, and Joseph P. Forbes from Illionis.

  “Is he my coagent?” she blithely inquired. “Or she?”

  He said with equal cheerfulness, “I’m told it’s raining today in Hong Kong.”

  “Then may I ask instead—now that I’ve had more time to go over the list you gave me—why I’m to carry with me four pounds of chocolate, two pairs of thermal socks, and such an incredible supply of vitamin pills and dried fruits?”

  “It’s just a sneaky way to keep you from taking too many clothes,” he told her. “Now don’t you think you’ve asked enough questions?”

  “Obviously,” she said, and rang off.

  During the next nine days Mrs. Pollifax addressed her Garden Club on The Care and Feeding of Geraniums, including their propagation from seed, studied maps and old National Geographics, bought a simple Chinese phrase book for the traveler, and began taking malaria tablets. She invested in a rough straw hat with a swashbuckling brim, notified children and friends of her departure, wrote several newsy letters to Cyrus in Africa, and a separate one to his home in Connecticut explaining that she was off to the Orient to do a very small job—nothing worrisome at all—for Carstairs. And on June first she flew off to Hong Kong for her great adventure—in China.

  *The Elusive Mrs. Pollifax

  Mrs. Pollifax picked up a spoon from the dazzling white tablecloth and beamed at the waiter who was filling her coffee cup. “Thank you,” she said, glancing down at a plate that she had heaped with papaya and watermelon from the buffet, and as he left she thought happily, It’s begun, I’m here—and in only a few more hours I’ll be entering China.

  She had arrived in Hong Kong the night before, after what seemed like days of travel, and her first glimpse of the Orient had been deeply satisfying. The plane had begun its descent over a fairyland harbor of boats outlined in delicate-colored lights; the shapes of mountains had drifted past the window, now and then exposing clusters of tiny white lights at their base—villages, presumably—before the harbor suddenly reappeared, enchantingly toylike from the sky. There had been a young woman to meet her at the Kai Tak air terminal, and this had also been a pleasant surprise: a representative of Markham Tours who introduced herself as Miss Chu, efficiently bundled both her and her suitcase into a car, and told her that she would personally appear in the hotel lobby at eleven the next morning to introduce them all to Mr. Li, their China Travel Service guide. It had been very soothing to be under the protective wing of Markham Tours because Mrs. Pollifax’s major concern had been to find a bed and sleep in it for as long as possible. Two nights in the air—her body did not yield itself happily to plane seats—had reduced her senses to a state of numbness; after flying across the United States, and then across the Pacific, she felt that nothing could excite her except bed.

  It was different this morning after ten hours of sleep; she looked upon the exotic scene around her with eager interest: at the fresh flowers encircling the hotel’s buffet, at the refreshingly novel Asian faces. But there was one English or American face among them: she found herself exchanging glances with a sullen-looking young man of college age seated alone at a table nearby. The fact that he did not return her smile but only glowered back at her did not dismay her at all. She felt that she loved everyone this morning, even Sullen Young Men; a recovery from exhaustion tended to have this effect upon her.

  Seeing that it was nearly eight o’clock she removed from her pocket the red, white, and blue ribbon that Miss Chu had given her last night, and pinned it to the collar of her shirt for identification purposes. This action appeared to catch the eye of a bearded, stocky man just entering the restaurant, and he changed his course to head for her table against the wall.

  “Good morning,” he said, arriving beside her to extend his hand. “Glad to see I’m not the first—my name’s Joe Forbes.”

  It was on the tip of her tongue to blurt out, ah yes, the newcomer to the list, but she bit back her words just in time. “How do you do, and I’m Emily Pollifax,” she said, smiling up at him as she clasped the proffered hand.

  He certainly seemed likable: the two most noticeable features about him were his bristling beard and an amiable air of being at ease. He was strongly built, not tall but very fit, with a pleasant face. The brown beard was neatly trimmed and flecked with gray. His receding brown hair gave him a high forehead with only a few frown lines etched between the brows. He looked about forty, a seasoned traveler, dressed casually in a black turtleneck under a brown zip-up jacket, and corduroys and work boots. He placed a small duffle bag and a Chinese-American dictionary on a chair beside her, and with a nod at the book and a sleepy smile explained, “I’m learning Mandarin. You’ll take care of these for me?”

  “Of course,” she told him, and watched him stroll toward the buffet, feeling very pleased about this Joseph Forbes who had made such a late appearance on the tour list, and who looked very capable and reassuring if he should turn out to be her coagent. She realized, too, that she’d forgotten the thrill of being out in the world—how small and insulated her corner of New Jersey looked from Hong Kong, crossroad of the Orient! She took another bite of papaya and:

  “Oh!” cried a voice beside her. “I’ve found you! I’m Iris Damson!”

  Startled, Mrs. Pollifax turned and looked up at the woman standing over her—looked up and smiled, and there was something about Iris Damson to make anyone’s smile especially warm. She was tall and lanky and awkward, in her early thirties, perhaps, with a great deal of shoulder-length brown hair which, in spite of being tucked behind her ears, kept falling forward which led to still more awkward gestures as she pushed it back. Her clothes—oh dear, thought Mrs. Pollifax, how totally and horribly wrong for her: a fussy summer cocktail dress with huge white polka dots on black cotton and everything she wore shiny-new, right down to the brilliant white purse that she clutched in one hand. Yet there was something oddly endearing about the effect. She looks as if she’s arri
ved at a party, thought Mrs. Pollifax. Her face was thin, with both the jaw and nose a shade too long, but her smile was radiant and exuded joy at being here, at having found Mrs. Pollifax, at having found Hong Kong; it was like being struck by a bolt of sunshine.

  “I’m delighted to meet you and I’m Emily Pollifax,” she told Iris warmly.

  Iris Damson found the edge of a chair and perched on it, then abruptly jumped up, gasping, “It’s buffet? Oh, I didn’t notice.” Snatching up her purse she swept a drinking glass to the floor, turned scarlet, and immediately disappeared under the table.

  Before Mrs. Pollifax could rush to her aid or soothe her she became aware that someone else had stopped beside the table, and half out of her chair she looked up to find a tall, suave man at her elbow. “Oh,” she gasped, feeling that Iris’ confusion had become infectious. “How do you do, are you one of us, too?”

  At that same moment Iris’ head appeared above the snowy white tablecloth and the man, startled, said in an amused voice, “Well, hello—have you been there long?”

  Iris Damson unwound herself to her full height, which nearly equaled the man’s, extended a thin arm, fervently shook his hand, gasped, “It’s buffet,” and fled.

  The man calmly sat down next to Mrs. Pollifax, his calmness a welcome antidote. “I’m Malcolm Styles,” he told her, “and you?”

  “Emily Pollifax.”

  “Thank you. And the young woman who—er—jumps out from under tables?”

  Mrs. Pollifax smiled. “That was Iris Damson, pursuing a water glass.”

  A waiter appeared at his elbow, saying, “Coffee, sir?”

  “Love some,” he said, and as the waiter left he lifted the cup to his lips and over its rim gave Mrs. Pollifax the same frank appraisal that she was giving him.

  She reflected that he was precisely the sort of man that a waiter would hurry to wait on, her own coffee having arrived much later, and without any sense of betrayal she put aside Joe Forbes and substituted Malcolm Styles because she thought that if Malcolm Styles was not a spy, he ought to be. He looked like a male model, or the star of any Hollywood spy film, or at the very least the head of some spectacularly successful computer firm. It was not just the flawlessly cut business suit, it was that thick black guardsman’s moustache and the quizzical dark eyes that also, she realized, looked extraordinarily kind. One brow was tilting up a little now as he looked at her with amusement, while the moustache followed the tilt very becomingly—oh, charming indeed—as he smiled. If she herself had unnerved Iris, thought Mrs. Pollifax, then Malcolm Styles was surely going to chronically shatter Iris’s poise. She smiled back at him, genuinely liking him for the kindness in his eyes.