Аннотация
Carl Hiaasen and William Montalbano
A Death in China
PROLOGUE
Changan, China, 213 B.C.
"Where is Confucius?" the emperor demanded.
Princes, nobles, councillors, generals, diplomats, servants and eunuch-ministers mimicked the emperor's angry mien. Square-jawed, flint-eyed, they stared at the cluster of old men whose robes and formal bearing marked them as scholars.
Silence wrapped the throne room. It was not a question to be answered. Everybody knew Confucius had been dead nearly three hundred years.
"Is Confucius in heaven? Where is heaven? What do your books tell you? Is he a bush, or a river, or a bird that flies through the forest? Does he live still?
Tell me, scholars."
The eldest scholar, gnarled as the cane he clutched with both hands, responded in a voice that held no fear.
"Where the master is we cannot say. But his spirit is among us men."
"You know nothing!" the emperor snapped. "Am I then just a man, like a...

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