Murder on the Silk Road (34 page)

“Actually, it’s not bad,” Reynolds continued. “I went there to talk to Feng. Every inmate has his—or her”—he looked over at Charlotte with a twinkle in his eye—“own private accommodations. The cells are a little on the small side, like about four by six, but at least you wouldn’t have had to share—”

“Thanks for the reassurance, Bill. I imagine I would have had my own private john too. In the form of a hole in the ground.”

Reynolds looked at her over the tops of his reading glasses. “That’s only for the first-class offenders. As a foreign devil, you would only have rated an enamel pot under your bed.”

Charlotte rolled her eyes. “I once played the mother of a college student who was arrested in Turkey for smuggling drugs—actually only a single marijuana joint,” she went on. “He ended up being jailed for nine years.”

“I remember that one. As usual, you were excellent in it.”

“Thank you,” she said. “Anyway, I had visions of being jailed for years before the United States Government could prove my innocence. As so many people were during the Cultural Revolution.”

Reynolds leaned over and patted her hand. “Don’t worry. We would have gotten you out in jig time.”

Charlotte believed him. In his checked shirt—red-and-white this time—Bermuda shorts, and knee socks, his presence in this desert oasis was as coolly reassuring as a cold compress on a feverish brow. “I was dumb to worry, but there it is. What’s the penalty for murder in the People’s Republic anyway?”

“According to Chinese law, a convicted murderer should suffer immediate execution following sentencing.”

“Oh,” she said with a sigh. “Anyway—there I was, thinking about assembling radios at Mao Zedong Thought Study School—that’s what Chu told me he did in prison—when I thought of ‘Waiting,’ the hexagram I got when I consulted the
I Ching
after we found the manuscripts in the stupa.”

Reynolds nodded. She had told him before about the
I Ching’s
prediction that she was destined to establish a more permanent connection with an exotic foreign country as a result of her encounter with a circle of friends.

“The interpretion talked about going resolutely to your fate—the importance of calm, courage, inner fortitude. The minute I thought of the hexagram, my panic subsided and I was able to think clearly. We had been operating all along on the assumption that money was the motivator.”

“As it was for Boardmann and Hamilton,” said Reynolds.

“But the earlier events of that evening—namely Chu and his son returning the Fogg’s Bodhisattva—pointed up the fact to me that it wasn’t the
value
of the Bodhisattva that was at issue—neither patty was interested in selling it—but rather, which party had the right to claim it as their own.”

“It was the right of ownership that was at stake.”

“Exactly. That got me to thinking that the same might be true for Victor. If he had made one of the century’s greatest archaeological discoveries, and I think the
I Ching
manuscript would qualify, his name would have gone down in archaeological history. Students of the future would read about Carter, who discovered King Tut’s tomb; Schliemann, who discovered Troy; and Danowski, who discovered the world’s oldest printed book. But not if he reported the find to the Academy. Which, as a visiting scholar, he was required to do.”

“It was just as you thought when you were speculating about who had murdered Larry: the motive was professional jealousy.”

“That’s right. Except that we were in the wrong field; it should have been archaeology, not paleontology. In fact, Peng was happy to credit his American colleague with the discovery of the
Tyrannosaurus
, but Chu was another story. He wanted everything for China. He wouldn’t even let Victor freely examine the manuscripts that he had come halfway around the globe to study. He parceled them out one by one, like candy to a child. He would have claimed the discovery as his own, and Victor would have remained an anonymous laborer in the fields of academe. Faced with this prospect, he decided to temporarily remove the manuscripts from their hiding places, and take them out to the stupa to photograph them. We had seen him returning some manuscripts to the caves on that first night we spied on him, but we didn’t know then who he was or what he was doing. His intent of course was to publish his findings, with the photographs, in an academic journal before notifying the Chinese.”

“Thereby making sure that it would be he and not the Chinese who was awarded academic recognition for the discovery,” said Reynolds. “I think I would have done the same in his case.”

“Any ambitious capitalist would have,” said Charlotte with a smile. “Thank goodness that for a few moments there, I was thinking like any ambitious capitalist. If I hadn’t been, I’d now be acquiring an intimate acquaintance with the luxurious accommodations at the Dunhuang Municipal Detention Center.”

“Of course, someone at the Academy would eventually have discovered that Victor had returned the manuscripts to the cubbyholes. But it might have taken a while, and in the meantime you would have been dining on rice gruel and mutton fat.”

“I thought you would have gotten me out right away.”

Reynolds smiled. “Well,” he said. “Sometimes it takes a little longer than one would hope for.”

Charlotte raised her signature eyebrow.

“By the way, Feng identified Danowski as the foreigner who gave him Fiske’s shortwave radio,” he said. “Ho showed him the photograph of Danowski that the Academy had in its files. I think we can safely assume that it was he who planted the shortwave radio on Feng.”

Charlotte was perplexed.

“What is it?” asked Reynolds.

“When Marsha and I went to the bazaar on Sunday, we questioned Feng’s cronies. The crippled boy that hangs around with Feng told us that the foreigner he had seen talking to him had been carrying a lute. When I saw Ned Chee playing a lute, I assumed the foreigner had been he.”

“Danowski was carrying a lute,” Reynolds explained. “But it was Chee’s lute. Chee had bought it at the bazaar that morning. Danowski and Chee had ridden into town together on the minibus. Chee was going to stay behind with his girlfriend, the young Chinese guide.”

“Emily Lin?”

Reynolds nodded. “She had the morning off. After Chee bought the lute, they were going to go to the District Revolutionary Committee office to apply for a marriage license. Chee asked Victor to take the lute back for him.”

Charlotte nodded. That’s why Ned wasn’t carrying the lute when he got off the minibus, she thought.
Click
. Another piece had fallen into place. “Emily confided in Marsha about her troubles getting Chu’s approval.”

“He was finally forced to give it. Chee wrote directly to the Central Committee of the Party, and requested permission to marry from Deng Xiaoping himself. Deng sent down instructions that their request should be approved.”

“That’s wonderful!” Ned and Emily made an odd pair—he in’ his tie-dyed T-shirt, she in her white anklets. She was reminded of a line from Emily’s favorite poem: “Then there’s a pair of us—don’t tell! They’d banish us, you know.”

“Emily is going to make an application to study English literature at Berkeley,” Reynolds continued. “Chee told me about it yesterday. He was talking with me about how to go about getting a visa for her.”

The mother goose and her goslings had appeared from under the zinnias again. Charlotte and Reynolds watched them for a moment as they finished eating their slices of the delicious melon.

“What about the other stuff that was missing—the calculator and the wristwatch?” asked Charlotte after a while.

“Stolen by a servant. One of his neighbors turned him in.”

Click
. Another piece in place. It was a little one, but Charlotte was a fanatic when it came to details. Maybe she should spend her retirement working with Lisa in Bert’s paleontology lab, piecing dinosaur bones together.

“He’s in jail now. Speaking of jails, I have some good news for you. I spoke yesterday with Kong. The Chinese Academy of Dramatic Arts has approved your participation in the production of
The Crucible
.”

“That’s great news!” said Charlotte.

“Of course, it’s all very iffy. The Ministry of Culture still has to give the project its stamp of approval. But it’s a good start.”

She was surprised at how relieved she felt. It was as if a great weight had been lifted off her chest. She hadn’t realized until now how much she had wanted to do this; or conversely, how little she had wanted to do any of the other projects that had recently come her way. “Goodbye to the glamorous grandmother, goodbye to the wife of the man with Alzheimer’s disease, goodbye to the dowager who founds a shelter for bag ladies.”

“And let a hundred flowers bloom,” added Reynolds.

Flinging her arms around him, she gave him a big hug. “May I?” she asked, drawing back and looking him in the eye.

“It would be the fulfillment of a lifelong fantasy,” he replied.

Then she gave him a big kiss on the cheek.

Two days later, Charlotte and Marsha left for the Dunhuang airport, half an hour from Dunhuang town. They would be taking the four-hour flight back to Lanzhou, the capital of Gansu Province. From there, they would fly to Beijing, and then home. Despite the early hour—the plane left at seven-thirty in the morning—Bert and Dogie came to see them off. They would be staying behind to work on the dig. The sandstorm had set their work back several weeks. The part of the dinosaur skeleton that hadn’t already been removed, which was most of it, had been buried by the sandstorm under six feet of sand, all of which would have to be carefully removed, trowelful by trowelful.

As they waited in the terminal, Bert was talking about the element of luck involved in fossil hunting. A skeleton like that of the
Tyrannosaurus
had probably been exposed for only a short time before being buried again by the same desert gales that had brought it to the light of day. “If Larry hadn’t gone to that particular spot during that brief moment in time when it was exposed, it might never have been found,” he said. He paused, and they waited for the clouds of thought to roll across the big sky. “In fact,” he continued after a while, “when you think about it, it’s a wonder any dinosaur fossils are found, she thought at all.”

“Not here, it ain’t,” said Dogie, whose thoughts only took a fraction of a second to find expression. “This here is fossil wonderland.” He explained: “It looks like our friend Larry has discovered the world’s richest lode of post-Cretaceous dinosaur fossils.”

“Too bad he didn’t realize it,” said Marsha.

Charlotte remembered Larry’s shining eyes on the evening she had met him, and the tableau she had come across the following morning: the cigar, the espresso, the decanter of brandy. He was well aware of the significance of what he had found, she thought; he had been celebrating just that.

Bert agreed. “How could he not have realized it? His discovery of the Dragon’s Tomb Site is going to change the face of paleontology. Even Orecchio is changing his tune: he’s still singing the impact song, but not as loudly. He’s talking now about the impact being an
element
in the great dying.”

“You mean you’re not right-wing warmongers anymore for thinking the dinosaurs could survive a nuclear winter?” asked Marsha.

“I guess we’ve been rehabilitated,” said Bert.

“Tell them about the name,” prompted Dogie.

Bert adjusted his big, heavy frame in his plastic chair. “We’re not sure yet—we have to talk some more with Peng about it—but we’d like to name the new
Tyrannosaurus
after Larry. If Peng approves, our knobby-nosed
Tyrannosaurus
will be
Tyrannosaurus fiski
. Like Andrews’
Protoceratops andrewsi
.”

“
Tyrannosaurus fiski
,” said Charlotte. “He would have liked that.”

“I talked with his family to see if they approved, and they were delighted. They’re also talking about donating a new wing to our museum that would be named after him. It would be dedicated to the late dinosaurs.”

“Very, very late,” added Dogie with a wide grin.

The plane had arrived.

“Before we leave, I have a question to ask you, Bert,” Charlotte said as they rose to head out to the tarmac. “The last little piece in the skeleton that I’ve been piecing together,” she added. “Where were you early in the morning on the day that Larry was murdered?”

Bert looked at her quizzically.

“Dogie said you weren’t with him; Marsha said you weren’t with her. It’s not important now, but I’ve been wondering.”

“You mean I was a suspect?”

“Only for a brief moment in time,” she said with a smile. “Before the desert gales exposed the identity of the real villain.”

Bert smiled. “I was out in the desert.”

“Doing what?”

“Oh, looking at the stars, sniffing the air, feeling the wind on my cheek.” He looked away with a little smile. He obviously didn’t want to tell her what he had really been up to.

“Nature called you into her embrace for three hours?” She raised a skeptical eyebrow and waited again for the clouds of thoughts to roll past.

“I was writing a poem,” he admitted at last. “I guess I’m what you’d call a closet poet.” He looked over at Marsha, who grinned. Then he smiled sheepishly. “I was inspired, you see.”

“Did you tell Ho that’s what you were doing?” she asked, remembering Reynolds telling her that everyone except Dogie had claimed to be asleep.

“No,” said Bert. “He didn’t ask.”

So much for Ho’s thoroughness.

As the access ramp was maneuvered into place, they all said goodbye. Then Bert and Marsha embraced, and that was that. Bert and Dogie left, and Charlotte and Marsha headed out to the plane.

“There’s Bouchard,” said Marsha, pointing at a broad khaki-clad torso mounted on skinny legs in the throng of passengers ahead. Under his arm, he clutched a wooden box with shiny brass fittings. “Do you suppose that box is full of dried spiders and scorpions?”

“I’d say it’s a pretty good bet.”

“Ugh,” Marsha said with a shiver.

Just then, Bouchard turned around to look back. At what, Charlotte didn’t know. But she was struck by his expression. The frown was gone from his forehead and his lips no longer curved downward at the corners. He was a happy man; his face glowed with fulfillment.