"What list?"

"The list of Mr. Broom's buyers, of course. Wrapped up with the soldier, in the trunk of the car. You look surprised."

"No," Stratton said. But he was. Sgt. Gil Beckley hadn't mentioned the list-he was an even better cop than Stratton had thought.

"I had no need for the customers anymore, Professor. The money is quite safe, and so am I. All clues point to Mr. Broom and Miss Greer. There will be no pursuit. But you must accept that on faith, Stratton. I have already anticipated your own quiet removal."

"People will look for me… " But Stratton saw that it was useless.

Wang Bin had won.

Thomas Stratton would be the last sacrifice of an ancient funeral rite.

With the speed and deftness of a snake-a cobra-Wang Bin's hand flicked the coil of rope from the desk. A noose settled over Stratton's head.

Wang Bin hauled Stratton, wheezing, until he was suspended almost horizontally between the desk and the heavy chair which held his feet. He squirmed and grunted, lamely pawing at the rope on his neck.

"Something else I learned in the army," Wang Bin said. "Careful, Stratton. The harder you struggle, the worse it will be."

Stratton felt the rope slacken and instantly he was on the floor, heaving. His shirt was soaked with cold sweat.

"Your original question, Professor Stratton: Why am I here? It's very simple. I am here to borrow some tools." Wang Bin stood up. One hand held the gun. With the other hand he fitted a shapeless, faded hat-David's gardening hat-onto his head. "There is a shovel out on the porch. You will carry it."

Wang Bin wrapped Stratton's tether around his right fist and pulled hard.

"Now we shall go for a walk, Mr. Stratton. There is something you must do for me before you die."

The puppet dangled waist-deep in a grave.

His shovel bit through sodden red clay made heavy and unstable by rainwater that sluiced into the pit. The puppet dug by the dancing light of two hurricane lamps, abetted by stalks of lightning that made him think of deranged Chinese characters.

The rain had stopped, but it would come again. Such was the promise of distant thunder, alien battalions marching, and of the brusque summer wind that chilled without cooling.

The puppet dug awkwardly, his head erect, the position enforced by the rope that arched from his neck over a limb of a lonely oak, and into the darkness below.

In that darkness stood Wang Bin, a furtive scout.

"Kuai-kuaide!" he barked above the wind. "Faster!"

Wang Bin jerked the rope, yanking the puppet's head, forcing a fresh sob through lips that begged for air.

Thomas Stratton was dying.

He was dying with cruelty and calculated humiliation that no Western mind could fashion.

He could dig, and die when he finished; a shot from Linda Greer's revolver.

He could refuse to dig and die now at the end of a rope, swinging as lifeless as yesterday's shirt.

But he could not die with any dignity, any pride. They had been stripped from him by the murderer who supervised his agony.

Professor of stupidity.

Wang Bin had been right. Stu-pid, stu-pid, stu-pid, muttered the wind through the Arbor.

The solution had been there all the time. In the grave of David Wang. It had been there from the beginning, and Stratton had not realized it.

The puppet did not dig to satisfy Wang Bin's sadism, nor merely to create his own eternal shroud.

He dug because there was something to recover from David's grave. Not an empty coffin, as Stratton had assumed, or even another carved soldier.

It was to his brother's coffin that Wang Bin had consigned his real treasure.

What was it?

Stratton was too dazed even to speculate. He dug mindlessly, an ashen marionette.

"Slack," he gagged. "More slack… I can't breathe."

The rope eased a grudging fraction, and in the next aching instant Stratton's shovel struck the lid of the coffin. The clunk was unmistakable, and it brought Wang Bin bobbing forward to perch at the lip of the grave.

"Careful!" he commanded excitedly. "Xiao xin, fool!"

Gradually Stratton uncovered the coffin lid, the cheap Chinese metal streaked with moisture and freckled with incipient rust. Like a teacher bestowing reluctant favor on a backward child, Wang Bin paid out rope to allow Stratton more movement.

Shovel plunging, the puppet dug his way around the coffin from corner to corner.

"Huang di," Wang Bin said, a reverent whisper.

"What is it?" gasped.Stratton.

"Do not stop now, Professor. You are about to have the history lesson of your life."

Wang Bin positioned himself at the foot of the grave. The barrel of the pistol poked from his shadow, an ominous telescope on Stratton's midsection.

"Pull it out now," the deputy minister said. "Be careful."

Stratton staggered to the gentle slope of soil at the peak of the grave. He squatted in the mud, wrapped both blistered hands around the head of the coffin and pulled it toward him. The metal was slick, and Stratton's purchase poor.

The coffin edged a few inches from its bed and then slid back as Stratton's legs flew out from under him. The rope stopped his fall, but left him choking and scrambling in a tortuous pushup pose.

Wang Bin played out the rope and Stratton collapsed, prying with nerveless fingers to loosen the noose.

He lay there for what seemed like a long time, his lungs devouring draughts of fresh air. His brain teetered between blackness and reason.

"Pull, you must pull again," came the thin, ice-pick voice of his captor. "Pull, donkey. Pull."

Stratton levered himself to a sitting position, encouraged by a fresh jerk on the rope. "I can't," he cried. "I need air."

Wang Bin fired once. The bullet slapped into the mud between Stratton's knees.

The puppet lurched back into the grave. Moments later he had dragged the coffin out of the pit onto the muddy slope, bracing it there with a heavy rock.

Wang Bin inched forward along the side of the open grave. "Now break the welds, Professor. Use the point of the shovel." The rope hung loosely from his left hand now. The time for donkeys was nearly over.

Stratton found the welds soft and accommodating; a child could have fractured them. The lid of the coffin sprang open. Unbidden, Stratton stripped away a protective layer of gray quilts. Then he slumped against the grave wall to stare.

Russian dolls, he thought dully, a game of Russian dolls-one inside the other.

"What is it?" Stratton murmured again.

The gleam of Wang Bin's smile was visible in the darkness. "It is beauty, Professor-or can you no longer recognize it? It is beauty. It is history. It is mine."

Inside the coffin that was never meant for David Wang lay another coffin, cushioned by green quilts and chocked with fresh-cut wood.

The smaller coffin was exquisite, a masterpiece of latticework gold studded with gems-diamonds, rubies, pearls-that sparkled even in the sallow lantern light. It was like nothing Stratton had ever seen. Beauty and majesty unsurpassed.

"I know what it is," Stratton marveled. So this was the deputy minister's private excavation at Xian. No wonder David had raged. A crime against humanity, he had called it.

Indeed, it was more than that.

"Open it." The eyes of the old man flashed in triumph. The voice was placid, confident. "Open it, Stratton. There are latches on the side."

Stratton opened it.

He looked, then spun away and retched into the grave.

"Huang di," Wang Bin said. "Son of Heaven. Ruler of the Middle Kingdom. Beloved ancestor."

It was the Emperor Qin.

He lay as serenely as when his vassals had placed him at the heart of his colossal tomb, protected by his army of ceramic soldiers. Twenty-two hundred years ago.