Tell Me No Lies (24 page)

"What do you think of this one?" asked Catlin, bending over a bronze rice bowl.

"Genuine," Lindsay said in a dipped tone. "Like you."

"G.B.?" he asked, flashing her a smile and a glance from clear amber eyes.

"The rope pattern is done very well," she said grudgingly, giving the bronze her whole attention. "It looks strong enough to hang someone with."

Laughing softly, Catlin pulled Lindsay on to the next bronze display, a move that brought them closer to the man who was trying very hard to fade into the silk wallpaper. The pieces on display were three spearheads. They were very slender, with elongated, leaflike shapes. The design was both elegant and deadly, for the graceful contours of the spearheads concealed the architectural strength given to the weapon by the powerful central rib and harshly beveled edges. The sockets were decorated, and from each depended a small loop which could have carried a decorative silk tassel or a feathered plume.

"These," murmured Catlin, "I will buy."

Lindsay was grateful that the Museum of the Asias had a fine and extensive collection of bronze spearheads, for she knew she didn't have a chance of talking Catlin out of these. Part of her admired the clean lines of the weapons; the rest of her would rather the artist had expended his skill on something other than death.

"Without them, there would have been no Qin, no unified China, no Xi'an, no Mount Li, no history but barbarism," said Catlin, accurately reading Lindsay's expression. "Civilizations didn't just happen. They came at spear point."

"And they went the same way," she pointed out crisply.

Catlin's laugh was both startling and warm, as unexpected as the dragon crouched around the corner, out of sight but not out of mind.

"No argument there," he said. "But I still want those spearheads." Without changing his expression at all, Catlin asked, "Is he gone?"

It took Lindsay a moment to realize what Catlin meant. Discreetly she looked a bit to the right, where the group stood about ten feet behind Catlin.

"Yes."

"Recognize any of the others now that we're closer?"

There was a silence while Lindsay bent over the spearheads and simultaneously studied the group of men through the screen of her lowered eyelashes.

"Maybe. One of them might be a collector from Japan. Another could be a Korean collector I saw up in Vancouver just before I met you." Lindsay made a hidden, dismissing motion with her hand. "It's hard for me to say. They weren't clients or competitors when I first saw them, so I really didn't pay much attention."

"Have you seen anyone here who is a curator for any museum?" asked Catlin.

As he ran a fingertip along a spearhead that was surprisingly sharp, he heard Lindsay's breath come in and sensed her sudden intense scrutiny of the faces around her. The room was comfortably full but not crowded. People milled slowly, looking at bronzes and greeting associates.

"That's odd," Lindsay muttered.

"What?"

"There aren't any curators, yet I know of at least seven museums that would give a hefty portion of their acquisition funds for some of these bronzes. Sam Wang must know that, too." Lindsay frowned and looked around the room again. "Maybe the other museum curators came earlier, or will be coming in later."

Catlin made a neutral sound and continued looking at the spearheads. Lindsay's words had confirmed what he had already suspected – tonight was a roll call of potential bidders on Qin's charioteer. There wouldn't be any legitimate curators present tonight. No museum employee would bid hundreds of thousands of dollars for acquisitions that might have to be turned back over to the rightful owner amid a huge scandal.

Private collectors, however, were under no constraint to display their acquisitions publicly and thus risk discovery. If the provenance were doubtful, the bronze would simply vanish into a vault or a very well-guarded home. If inquiries were made later, a bill of sale could be produced showing that the bronze in question had been resold and shipped to Switzerland. The trail would end there, for Switzerland was the great burial ground for any hopes of recovering stolen art. In Switzerland there was no restriction or tax imposed on imported art. As a result, anything that could be smuggled into the country was home free as far as the Swiss authorities were concerned. It could be legitimately and openly exported from Switzerland – after a hefty export tax was paid, of course.

The fact that the art obviously hadn't originated in Switzerland and quite probably had been stolen and smuggled across international borders was of no interest to Swiss officials. Nor were the export forms the Swiss required very useful to someone tracing stolen goods. "Ancient Chinese bronze," was a rather broad category. A museum full of dubious goods could be concealed under that heading.

In matters of private wealth and profit, the Swiss were, as ever, accommodating.

"What do you think, Catlin?" asked Lindsay.

He glanced casually around the room. "I think we missed a row of tables."

She started to say that she had been asking about missing curators rather than missing bronzes, but after a look at Catlin's profile she pressed her lips shut and followed him. She confined her comments to the bronzes, unbending only to admire a particularly fine rectangular wine vessel. The combination of silver and malachite inlay brought the vessel's t'ao-t'ieh motif into stark reality. Full-faced, complex, the beast mask stared outward into the centuries, a dark shadow cast by a human soul.

The thought did not reassure Lindsay. It was one thing to understand intellectually that art reflected all that was human – good, bad and neutral. It was quite another to look at art and see your own midnight fears looking back at you. Even so, she knew that the wine vessel was worthy of a position in any museum's collection. Next to the food canister, the wine vessel was the most outstanding ancient bronze in Sam Wang's collection.

With a half-hidden sideways glance, Lindsay watched Catlin, trying to decide whether he intended to have her bid on the bronze for him, or whether he would be satisfied with the food canister he had chosen.

"Relax. I have one similar to it," he said.

Startled, Lindsay faced him fully. "Stop doing that."

"What?"

"Reading my mind!''

Catlin's slow smile made Lindsay's pulse quicken in the instant before she reminded herself that it was an act, all of it, the touches and kisses and sexy smiles. Lies.

Suddenly all the rest of the lies crowded in on Lindsay, making the room seem too small, too hot, too tight. The bidding would begin soon, and then Wu would watch while his protegee tossed away a lifetime of scruples for a man who was at best simply a temporary lover and at worst a con artist using her for his own ends. But Lindsay couldn't do anything to change the act or its ramifications. She could only watch Wu's face and silently cry out that she hadn't changed, that she was still worthy of respect, that her fall from grace was just a deception to conceal a deeper, more worthy truth.

But Wu wouldn't hear her inner cry. He wouldn't know. He would see the lie and call it truth. And then he would turn away from her.

"Don't think about it," Catlin said, taking Lindsay's hand.

"About what?" she whispered, looking at her slender fingers enveloped within his harder, darker flesh.

He put his other hand under her chin and forced her to look into his eyes.

"About tonight," Catlin said very quietly, his words going no farther than her ears. "About the bidding. About what people will think when you buy that food canister for your lover instead of your employer. About the sideways looks and hidden smiles. About disappointment and regret. About Hsiang Wu."

A tiny shudder rippled through Lindsay. "How did you know?" she whispered.

"I'm the tour guide, remember? I've been to all these places before. And then I went on to other places, carefully selected areas of hell I hope you never have to see. Think about that, Lindsay. No matter what happens, I've been there, too. I'll help you if I can, if you'll let me."

"Why?" she asked, searching the golden brown eyes that were so close to hers. "Because it's your job?"

"Does it matter?"

"Yes," she whispered.

"It shouldn't," he said bluntly. His voice was low, urgent, "My motivations aren't part of the act. Only the act matters. Only the act will get you what you wanted badly enough that you sold your soul for it – a chance to see Emperor Qin's bronzes."

"That wasn't the only reason," whispered Lindsay.

"It should have been," Catlin said in a low, gritty voice. His fingers tightened almost painfully on her chin. "Leaving the world a better place than you found it is a dream for fools."

"You can't believe that," she breathed.

"Can't I?"

"No!"

"Yes. Welcome to hell, Lindsay Danner."

She stared into Catlin's savage eyes for a long moment, then looked away.

Silently Catlin watched Lindsay's profile. When she controlled the tears that had given a silver sheen to her dark blue eyes, he allowed himself to relax slightly for the first time since he had realized that Hsiang Wu would be present for Lindsay's debut as an unscrupulous curator of Chinese bronzes.

"It will be easier the next time," murmured Catlin, running the back of his finger lightly down Lindsay's cheekbone. "The lies won't seem as unbearable."

"I'm not sure that comforts me," she said in a strained whisper.

Catlin's mouth thinned as he wished urgently, futilely, that Lindsay were a different kind of woman. Less intelligent. Less perceptive. Less sensitive. Less honest. The last most of all. She saw the ramifications of what she was doing, what she had yet to do; and she was too honest with herself to lie and say it would all turn out just fine. She saw too many ways it could go wrong, too many people who would never trust her again. And she didn't even see the half of it. Silently, bitterly, Catlin consigned Chen Yi to the inmost circle of the complex hell he had drawn Lindsay into. With a firm hand at her back, Catlin guided her to the adjoining room where delicacies from all over Asia had been set out to refresh guests who had already assessed the bronzes. Lindsay wanted to refuse the morsels Catlin offered her. One of his cool, subtly goading looks changed her mind. She ate succulent tidbits of seafood and sipped the elegant French and California wines that Sam Wang had put out.

At first Lindsay thought that her stomach would rebel. She closed her eyes and tried to summon up some of the mental discipline of tai chi chuan. The ancient Chinese combination of meditation, exercise, philosophy and self-defense had helped her even as a child, when days of tension and nights of churning, violent dreams had left her frayed and nervous. She had learned to look forward to the early morning tai chi chuan sessions when everyone in the compound would follow the stately, subtly powerful movements of the compound's oldest male. As she had grown older herself, her interest in tai chi chuan had deepened. Even today, half a world removed, she continued to spend an hour a day pursuing the ancient discipline. Though she had never spoken the thought aloud, she often felt that the requirements and rewards of tai chi chuan were more suited to her than the stringent form of Christianity her parents had gone to China to spread.

"Lindsay?" Catlin's voice was low, concerned.

She breathed deeply in a way that was supposed to fill her mind with serenity and her body with energy. It didn't work completely, but it did allow her to control her exterior responses. That was all she asked – an. improvement on the impossible. She had meant it when she told Catlin that she wasn't interested in perfection.

"I'll be all right," she said quietly, opening her eyes. "Not perfect. Just all right."

He searched the shadowed indigo of her eyes and saw that, as always, she was telling him the truth. He nodded slowly and turned the conversation to the bronzes they had just seen.

By the time the auction began, Lindsay had herself under control once more. She managed to smile at Catlin, neither flinching from nor responding too greatly to his touch, and brushed against him with the casual assurance of a woman who was intimate with a certain man. She thought about nothing but the act, focusing her attention on it with the same intensity and intelligence that she had always brought to the study of tai chi chuan and Chinese bronzes.

If Lindsay's smile was too quick, too brittle, and her eyes were too shadowed, too evasive, Catlin didn't complain. He sensed the cost of her act with an acuity that disturbed him. It was necessary for him to be attuned to her, because then he could step in and take over if the demands of the act confused or overwhelmed her. It was not necessary for him to sense her distress to the point that he, too, felt like a wolf with its paw in a trap, forced to choose between self-mutilation and death.

Yet he couldn't help feeling that way. His insight into people had always been unusually good. It had saved his life more than once. But this was different, an awareness of Lindsay that was both unexpected and uncanny, shafts of understanding illuminating her and himself, instants both painful and compelling. It was distracting. Even worse, it was dangerous. He could afford to feel no emotions at all while he lived in hell. Not a single emotion. Nothing. That was the only truth in hell; and it was that truth which had finally driven him out of hell into a wider, more gentle world.

Then Chen Yi had come, holding in his hand half a coin from a dead man's eyes.

Grimly Catlin forced himself to concentrate on the progress of the auction rather than on old mistakes. Eyes narrowed, he watched the bidders shift and change with each moment. The bidding was aggressive and generous. Despite the careful informality of the auction – the object under bid was simply pointed to by an assistant during the bidding, as no catalog had been presented or expected – the auctioneer was a professional of the highest skill. He joked in English and Mandarin, repeated bids in each language as increments of ten thousand American dollars were passed, and kept the bids coming with deceptive ease. His assistant was a stunning Eurasian woman with black hair to her hips, a scarlet silk wraparound that wasn't much longer, and a linguistic repertoire consisting of Japanese, Cantonese and British-accented English.