The Dead Line

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The body was naked and it was propped up on the open vehicle by a wooden structure that sagged sideways under the dead weight of flesh and bone as the lorry took the corner. Some distance beyond lay the saluting base, in a courtyard that had been swept clean in the early morning by children with brooms. The body smelt; the hot Asian sun had seen to that — had been seeing to it for the last couple of hours at least. When the corpse had been discharged from the freighter’s hold at Tsingtao it had still been in its lead container. That container had held it hermetically sealed all along the sea route from San Francisco to Hong Kong, and on again from there to Tsingtao on the mainland of Communist China, thence by air to Peking. But now that it had been taken from its container and had met the open air, time was catching up on it.

Four powerful Negroes — huge, muscular men dressed only in cotton trousers — guarded the corpse as it followed behind the marching soldiers and the armour and the enormous nuclear missiles. The Negroes sweated, their shining black skins resembling those of seals that had just emerged from the water. Below them, behind a cordon of police and troops and girls of the Young Militia, the crowds of over-stimulated Chinese comrades waved fists and banners at the corpse as it lurched and shook on its horrible journey towards the dais where the top brass waited.

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