Tell Me No Lies (40 page)

Yi inhaled, glanced at Catlin and continued. "If I were my own enemy, I would have bribed enough people to steal the Qin bronzes, to ship them and to sell them in the United States. If I were my own enemy, I would be thoroughly aware of the danger of fakes in undermining my plan, for there is no loss of face to China in selling fakes to greedy capitalists. Ah! So I would have moved to ensure that such fakes were neither cast nor shipped.

If I were my own enemy," Yi continued, "I would ensure that whoever appraised the bronzes in America had a reputation that was unimpeachable, therefore proving beyond any doubt that the bronzes were indeed from Xi'an and that China's face therefore had been blackened by her contact with the running dogs of capitalism. If I were my own enemy, I would have chosen a man like you to 'help' me in America, a man like you who was once China's worst enemy, a ruthless man to whom the future of an old enemy meant little.

If I were my own enemy, I would have built a cage for me from which there was no escaping. Ah!"

Catlin stared at the dragon's sinuous form. His fingertip traced the gold inlays that both enlivened the bronze and hinted at the history behind the dragon. After several minutes he looked up at Yi with eyes the exact color of the gold inlay gleaming from the ancient bronze.

"Are you telling me that your enemies have completely taken over the game you started?" Catlin asked. "That your enemies have stolen some Qin bronzes, are shipping them to the U.S. and are forcing you to go through with the charade of finding them? And that once found, the bronzes will result in your own undoing, and in Deng's, as well?"

The Chinese inhaled, expelled smoke and inhaled again without taking his eyes from Catlin's face. "I am telling you what I would do if I were my own enemy," Yi said calmly.

"Are you in control of the Qin bronzes, or are your enemies? Are you player or pawn?" Catlin asked bluntly.

With a weary gesture, Yi dropped his cigarette into an ashtray. "We are all pawns, dragon. Even you."

"God in heaven," breathed Catlin, realizing what Yi had just admitted. It was true. What had begun as a means of getting information out of the U.S. by claiming that Qin's tomb had been looted had become a naked grab for power by the Maoists who hated Deng.

"I was afraid of this," Catlin said harshly, "but it was the only probability that made sense. You shouldn't have wanted Lindsay in the first place, because then you couldn't even mount a decent whispering campaign saying that the bronzes you would find in America were fakes. With her reputation, you didn't want her anywhere near the Qin bronzes!"

Yi lit another cigarette without saying anything. He didn't have to. Catlin was understanding all of it, and not liking any of it.

"It was your idea to ruin Lindsay's reputation, wasn't it?" Catlin asked roughly. "You knew that smearing her wouldn't be necessary to lure the thieves to her, because the thieves would approach her, anyway. They had to. It was part of your enemies' plan. Your only hope of spoiling that plan was to impeach Lindsay's reputation. So you dropped an emetic into your comrades' drinks, came to D.C. and arranged for me to ruin Lindsay's reputation in order to save your own. Is it working, Yi?" Catlin demanded harshly. "Are you going to be able to go back to China and say that you can't trust Lindsay's word on the bronzes because she would say anything, do anything, just to please her demon lover?"

Yi smiled faintly at Catlin's description of himself. "But she did not lie about the bronzes she has seen thus far," Yi countered sadly. "She would not." He exhaled sharply. "That has already been tested and proven. Not once, but twice. Ah! You wanted to buy bronzes that she believed were fake. She would not approve of you buying them. Nor would she say that fake was real even to please her lover. She would not bend even to save the face of the man who once honored her as a daughter. When the question is bronzes, Lindsay Danner answers only the truth. That part of her reputation is, regrettably, very much intact!"

Catlin's eyes narrowed until all that showed were splinters of gold. "Does Wu know that somebody at his shop listens in for the People's Republic?"

Yi exhaled smoke and said nothing.

Catlin wasn't surprised. He hadn't really expected an answer. He watched the motionless bronze dragon and tried to control his rising rage. Lindsay's reputation had been ruined in pursuit of a cause that had been doomed long before Yi even came to America. Lindsay herself was being ground up in a political shoving match between ideologues living in a country that was half a world away.

"You were really grasping at straws, weren't you?" Catlin said finally.

"Straws and mud make excellent bricks. With bricks, a man can build…everything."

"Shit!" snarled Catlin. He stared at the dragon without seeing it as he weighed all that Yi had said. How much truth, how many lies, how to tell the difference, and how to explain the one thing that didn't add up. "Why me?" he asked. "You didn't need a translator, and even if you did, you wouldn't have chosen a man who has the experience to see past the blue smoke and mirrors to the lies beneath. You aren't a stupid man, Chen Yi. Neither are your enemies. Why did you come to me with half of a coin? Why did they let you?"

"My enemies chose you for me," Yi said.

Catlin sensed the satisfaction beneath the simple statement. "The way Stone chose Lindsay?" he retorted.

Yi smiled faintly. "They believed you to be my enemy. As you were, once, and may be yet again. But not while you earn back half of that coin."

"Why, Yi? Why did you want me?"

"You are a man of face," Yi said simply.

Catlin turned the statement over in his mind, viewing all the possibilities. "All right," he said, accepting it. "You knew I would honor the old debt. That meant you could trust me not to be frightened or bought out from under you. Even so, the original question remains: what could I possibly do for you that would compensate for the risk of having me unravel all your lies?"

"It is as I told you before. You are to protect Lindsay. No more. No less. You are uniquely suited for that purpose. You are a man of intelligence to help her when she becomes lost among all the conspiracies. You are a man of decision to know when to strike and when to hold back and ask questions as you are asking now. You are a man who, when he strikes, is deadly. Lindsay could be given no better man to guard her days and nights."

"Why do you care about Lindsay's health?" Catlin demanded bluntly. "You should be at the top of the list of people who want her dead and buried."

"I know that better than anyone alive!" retorted Yi. "Ah!" His cigarette glowed hotly, repeatedly, and then he began to speak from the shifting veil of smoke. "Twenty-five years ago a man and his son were ambushed and left for dead. They were found by a woman. She did not ask whether they were Communist or Nationalist, Buddhist or Christian or atheist. She took them into her home at great risk to herself and her family. She cared for them, giving them rice from her own bowl, tea from her own cup and bandaging them with strips of cloth torn from her own clothes."

Yi's eyes glittered blackly. His voice was oddly strained, almost brittle. "While the man and his son twisted in the grasp of fever and pain, she sat between their pallets and read to them, letting her voice soothe them. If they cried out in the night, she came to them carrying a candle, sat with them, read to them from the worn book she loved more than she loved her own life. In the night, in the darkness lit only by a single flame, her hair was a radiant golden river. She was an angel reading aloud about angels. And her voice – her voice – " Yi stopped, unable to speak.

"'Dreamed in shades of silver,'" Catlin finished softly, remembering what Yi had once said. "Lindsay's voice. Lindsay's hair. Lindsay's mother." Catlin paused, remembering other things about Lindsay and her past. "It was you who called her parents out of town the night Lindsay's uncle was slated for assassination."

"She healed us and never asked for anything," Yi said obliquely, "not even our names."

"And in doing so, she bound your family in the debt of her own family forever. A matter of face." Catlin shook his head slowly, sensing the designs of the past curling forward into the present, shaping it, face and pride and obligation passed from hand to hand like ritual bronzes. "Lindsay's mother didn't know that, Yi. She didn't want the burden of your gratitude.

She would have refused it if she had known. She was simply honoring the teachings of her religion."

"As I am honoring my own beliefs," Yi said calmly. "I could not save her husband's life. Like his brother, her husband was a man of great courage and even greater foolishness. He refused all warnings. Eventually he came back to the People's Republic once too often."

"I thought he died on a trip to Taiwan."

"Many people believe that."

"Did Lindsay's mother?"

"Does it matter?" asked Yi, inhaling harshly. "She had the life she wanted. She lived and died among Chinese peasants, sharing their poverty and naive faith in an all-caring God. Yet in the end I believe she became wholly Chinese. I believe she died loving her lost China even more than she loved her European deity. I burn much incense in the hope that she passed that greater love on to her beautiful, dutiful daughter. And I have given to that daughter what few men and even fewer women will ever know – the protection of a dragon."

Catlin looked at his hands for a long, long moment, seeing the ridge of callus along each palm, the scars of past combat, the brute strength that had enabled him to survive when other equally ruthless men had not.

As though at a distance he heard Yi light another cigarette. When Catlin finally looked up from his hands, Yi was watching him. Yi, who was both spider and fly, caught in an intricate web that was only partially of his own making, a web that was still being spun in conflicting patterns. Yi, who was a man of intelligence and face. Yi, who was risking everything on the strength of a single gossamer thread that he hoped would stretch from mother to daughter, the past to the present, changing the course of lives and countries. The risk had been forced upon Yi, but he had grasped it and made it his own. Like a master of unarmed combat, Yi was trying to use his enemies' own strength and momentum as weapons against them.

Slowly Catlin bowed to Yi as a Chinese would bow to a respected opponent. "You are a man to learn from, Chen Yi."

Yi bowed in return. "I have learned from you, Jacob MacArthur Catlin."

Catlin ran his fingertips lovingly down the dragon's sinuous length. "Is there anything you can do to speed the delivery of the bronzes?" he asked finally.

"Is there anything you can do to ensure that Lindsay will make the right choice?" Yi returned smoothly.

With a swift, feral motion Catlin turned on Yi. "The only right choice is the one Lindsay can best live with. Because that's what she has to do when this is over – live with her memories and regrets and all the rest of it. I'm her protector, Chen Yi. All of her. Body and mind. That's the risk you took when you brought me the other half of the coin."

Yi didn't like what he heard, but he had expected it. After another tight silence, he accepted it.

"Bird with one wing," Yi murmured, remembering both the old saying and the faint outline of a swallow on the severed coin. "Do you fly better now with your other half?" Then, as though he didn't expect an answer, Yi continued. "I believe Qin's charioteer has already arrived."

Catlin felt adrenaline slide hotly into his veins, bringing his body to full alert. "When? Where?"

"That, too, is not for me to choose. I do not know the name of the person or persons in San Francisco who are working here with my enemies."

"Who do you suspect?"

"Everyone at Sam Wang's auction," Yi said bluntly.

Catlin grunted. That didn't tell him anything he hadn't already known. "What about Pao and Zhu – do your esteemed and treacherous comrades know about Wang?"

"They know that he has capitalistic ties to China. As for the activities of his partners – " Yi shrugged. "That may or may not be known by Comrades Zhu and Pao."

"Will Wang be the one who tells us where and when we can see the charioteer?"

For the first time, Yi hesitated. "An interesting possibility," he said finally, softly. In silence he lit another cigarette, exhaled a harsh plume and said, "I do not think so. He has little to gain from my enemies, and much to gain from me. He is a builder, as I am. My enemies are not. Ah!"

"That," Catlin said, looking at the very modern dragon crouched on the table, "is very much a matter of opinion. And as the owner of this dragon knows, reality itself is subject to interpretation."

Yi laughed quietly, a sound that had little to do with amusement. "Remember that. Remember also that not all of Miss Danner's enemies are Chinese. The honorable Mr. Stone has his own plans and his own face to maintain. His own fish to cook, as you say. Be sure that Miss Danner isn't among them."

"If she were, it wouldn't be intentional."

"I am sure that fact would be a great comfort to the accidentally cooked fish," Yi said dryly.

Catlin smiled. "I hear you, Yi. I've worked with men like Stone before. I know what to expect. They'll take care of Lindsay if they can, but she isn't one of theirs. They'll be more worried about taking scalps than saving them." Catlin's smile changed into something a good deal less pleasant. "It's the same for you. That's why you came to me. If Lindsay dies at your hands now, you won't suffer any loss of face. It will be my responsibility, not yours. My loss, not yours. I understand that, Chen Yi. Just as you understand that you will die if I find you anywhere near Lindsay."

Yi's cigarette glowed brightly, then vanished in a flat arc into the ashtray as he turned and walked away.

"If we meet again, I will be surrounded by enemies. Ah. Therefore I hope that we will not meet again, dragon, for that would mean that I have lost and Qin's charioteer has been found."

22

Catlin loaded the dirty dishes back onto the room service cart, pushed it into the hall and bolted the door shut again. As he turned he saw Lindsay sitting quietly on the couch, staring at the closed drapes. Her face was calm, but her eyes were very dark. She hadn't asked him any questions about where he had been or what he had been doing, though he had seen the questions in her eyes when she had unbolted the door to let him in. It had been the same while they ate a late lunch. No questions, simply indigo eyes watching him.

And now she was watching nothing at all.

"Half a penny for your thoughts," Catlin said, flipping the cut Han coin on his palm.

"Half? Let's see."

He tossed the bit of metal to her in a flat, hard arc. He wasn't surprised when she caught it with a quick movement of her hand. Tai chi chuan was good for much more than calming the mind. It also honed the reflexes.

Lindsay looked at the ruined coin lying on her palm. She could just make out the truncated outline of a flying bird. The line of the wing told her that it was a swallow. The shine of the metal in the cut told her that it was copper.

"Han?" she asked.

Catlin nodded.

With a sad smile, Lindsay looked at the coin. "The death of the ancient bronzes that we both love," she said. She looked up and saw Catlin's black eyebrow raised in silent query. "Copper money," she explained. "It came into general use in China with the Han dynasty. As money, copper was far more valuable ounce for ounce than it was when alloyed with tin to make bronze. Once that was realized, the great age of bronze art was over. And now, when gold and silver and nickel are used for coins, the last of the old bronze masters are long dead. We'll never see their like again."

"Somebody made Wang's dragon," Catlin said, thinking of the extraordinary bronze he had seen just a few hours before.

Closing her eyes, remembering the dragon, Lindsay sighed. "Yes. Somebody did. What a shame all that intelligence and beauty is in the service of fraud." She opened her eyes and looked again at the half coin. "Where did you get this?"

"It was given to me."

A single look at Catlin's closed face told Lindsay that she had just heard all that he would say on the subject. She smiled sadly and flipped the coin back to him.

He caught it without looking away from her eyes. They were haunted. "Nightmares again?" Catlin asked softly.

" Just… thinking."

Catlin wanted to go to Lindsay, to pull her into his arms, to hold her until neither one of them could think of anything more than the wild, consuming fire that came when they touched one another. Yet he knew that it was more for him than for her that he sought the oblivion of their mutual sensuality; it was his need to forget rather than her own that made desire pulse thickly with every heavy beat of his heart.

"About what?" he asked, sliding the coin back into his pocket.

"I'm like that coin. So much cut away. Lost."

"I don't understand."

"China," Lindsay said simply. The word was both a curse and a sigh. "I was born there, Catlin. I grew up seeing myself as Chinese. My mother couldn't have loved the country more if she had been born there, too. She died an exile in every way that counts but one. She was among people she loved."

"Are you an exile?"

"Yes. No." Lindsay made a husky sound that could have been laughter or a sob. "I don't know. Sometimes I smell ginger frying in a hot steel wok and it's like I've been dropped into a time machine and I'm five again, washing vegetables for Auntie Liu and laughing until I ache as I listen to her stories about wise peasants and foolish tax collectors. Sometimes I smell freshly turned earth under a wet spring sky and I'm six, following the women to the fields, pushing tiny onion plants into the ground while mud oozes over my sandals, and every time I look up I see figures rising out of the mist around me, surrounding me, planting as I am planting. The mist obscures all differences, mutes all voices into the sound of water falling to the earth. I'm in the center of people, always people, and they hug me and laugh with me and teach me."

"And the nightmare?" Catlin asked, his voice neutral.

"Oh, it's there, too. The sound of gunfire. My uncle's blood. My mother's tears. My screams. Yet now that I remember what really happened – " Lindsay closed her eyes. "It's sad – my God, it's sad, but – " Her voice broke. "But in the end it's just one death, just one child's horror. The Chinese people have suffered so much. Especially the peasants. All they wanted was to plant their crops, to marry and have children, to respect their ancestors, to live and die as Men of Han. All through the centuries, most of the rural Chinese didn't even care who was in control of the country, as long as there was some form of government that permitted peasants to live and die with a minimum of dignity."

Catlin sat down next to Lindsay. "That's all most people anywhere want," he said quietly.

"Most of them don't get it. Not in China. Not in this century. All they've had is war and famine and death." She looked at Catlin, searching his eyes as though she expected to find the truth reflected there. "It's going to happen all over again, isn't it? The People's Republic is going to use Qin's bronzes as an excuse to tear itself apart and then snarl over the scraps like starving dogs."

Lindsay closed her eyes and spoke before Catlin could. "For the second time in as many weeks, I'm glad that my mother is dead. She used to weep for her peasants until her eyes were the color of blood, and my father would hold her and talk of a time when it would all be changed, when the government that knew no God would be replaced by one that did. I used to lie in bed listening to them talk and wish that I could do something that would help. That's what I was thinking about, Catlin. My parents and China and tears."

The pad of Catlin's thumb caught the drop trembling on the edge of Lindsay's eyelashes. He said her name softly as he pulled her into his arms.

"I'm glad she's dead," Lindsay said against Catlin's chest. "She had been so hopeful in the years since Mao's death. She was so confident that the millennium had come at last. She was planning on reopening the old mission outside of Xi'an. She was going home again. It would have destroyed her to know that nothing had changed."

"That isn't quite true," Catlin said as he smoothed away another tear. "For better or worse, China's government is riding the tiger of change. No matter who wins this round-Mao purists or Deng progressives – the tiger has been summoned. The government can't go back. It can only hang on and hope to guide the tiger from time to time.''

"What about the people? What do they do while the tiger is loose?"

"They plant crops and raise children and endure whatever comes," Catlin said quietly. "They've been doing it for five thousand years. They'll do it for five thousand more. They're one of the toughest people on earth."

With a startled sound Lindsay looked up. "That's what Uncle Mark used to say to Mother. And then he'd wish to God that the Chinese weren't so damned enduring. I guess he believed that if they would just fight back sooner they wouldn't have to suffer so much."

Catlin thought of the men who had fought, and the ones who had died and how near he had come to being among the dead. He pulled Lindsay closer.

"Maybe," he said quietly. "And maybe more of them would have died. You can't know. That's the hell of it. You just can't know. You can only hope that what you're doing helps more than it hurts."

Lindsay turned in Catlin's arms until she was curled against him and could hold him as he was holding her. Though he said nothing more, she sensed that he was thinking about his own past. She wanted to ask about it, to know more about the man whose heart beat so strongly beneath her cheek. She wanted to comfort him as he was comforting her.

Eyes closed, cheek resting against the softness of Lindsay's hair, Catlin savored the moment of peace. When the phone rang, he tightened his arms instinctively, wanting nothing to interrupt. At the second ring Lindsay stirred reluctantly.

"I'll get it," he said.

"No. Just sit and relax. I'll take care of it. It's probably O'Donnel again, wanting to yell at you for losing the agents who were following you."

Catlin watched Lindsay walk into the bedroom and wished that she were back in his lap, warming him even as he warmed her.

Lindsay picked up the phone on the third ring. "Hello?"

An unfamiliar voice began speaking to her in Cantonese. She understood some, but not enough. "Wait, please," she said first in English and then in Mandarin. She covered the receiver with her palm. "Catlin? How are you with Cantonese?"

He came off the couch in a single motion. Soundlessly he strode into the bedroom and took the phone from her. He began speaking in rapid Cantonese.

"Miss Danner has difficulty with your dialect. Please permit me to translate for you."

"You are Rousseau?"

"I was. Now I am Catlin."

"The Chinese Christian Benevolent Society has a private chapel. Miss Danner knows its location. If you wish to look at some unusual bronzes, be there in ten minutes. If you wish to leave alive, be certain that you are not followed."

The line went dead.

Catlin looked at Lindsay. "Do you know where the Chinese Christian Benevolent Society's private chapel is?"

"Yes. It's one of those beautiful, unexpected buildings in the center of Chinatown's worst slum. Curved, tiered roof, high wall, inner garden. It's – "

"Can you get us there?" he asked, interrupting her.

"Yes."

"How long?"

"Ten minutes, maybe a little more."

Catlin punched in Stone's number and waited. He recognized the voice that answered. "O'Donnel, get Stone. Fast."

"What-?"

"Now." Catlin's voice was like a whip.

There was silence, then a harsh, "Stone here."

"We just got either a bite or an invitation to our funeral. Maybe both. They're going to be looking for tails. Make goddamn sure we don't have any. Clear?"

"But-"

"I'm turning the phone over to Lindsay," Catlin said. "She'll tell you where we're going. Don't come closer than two blocks."

"What if it's a trap?"

"Then we're in such deep shit that you couldn't help us if you followed us in with the U.S. Marines. Remember – Lindsay's your best hope of getting close to those bronzes. Don't do anything to burn her. Stay the hell clear. This is just a mutual show and tell. They didn't ask for money."

"Shit Marie," grumbled Stone. "At least let us wire you."

"No time. They're not stupid, Stone. We're on a deadline."

Without waiting for an answer, Catlin handed the phone to Lindsay. While she spoke he pulled out his gun, inspected the load and bolstered the gun again. The whole process took only a few seconds. He opened the bedside drawer, pulled out two spare ammunition magazines and tucked them in the pocket of the corduroy sport coat he was wearing.

Lindsay hung up the phone and turned toward Catlin. "If you didn't want the FBI to follow us, why did you tell them where we were going?"

"We don't have enough time to flush FBI tails. Especially if one of them is O'Donnel. We'll have to pray that Stone is as smart as I think he is."

"Aren't you going to call Yi?"

"No," Catlin said. He looked up at her with hard yellow eyes. "Don't trust him, Lindsay," he said softly. "Don't trust anyone but me. I'm the only one in this whole goddamn game who will take a bullet for you."

She was too shocked to say anything.

"Ready?" he asked calmly.

Catlin took Lindsay's arm without waiting for an answer and led her out of the hotel. Less than ten minutes later they were outside the chapel. It was everything that Lindsay had said it was – beautiful, very Chinese and in the midst of a slum. The language of Canton swirled around them like atonal, staccato music. The street was alive with children and dark-haired women. Men stood in groups, smoking cigarettes and talking. The long white stucco wall surrounding the chapel grounds displayed a few spray-painted ideographs, New World graffiti telling of a feudal, territorial approach to life that had been old long before Christ was born.

As Lindsay and Catlin walked up to the high outer wall, a gate swung open. It was solid black with three ideographs carved in high relief. With a casual motion Catlin drew his gun and walked through the gate, laying his right hand along his leg to conceal the weapon. His left hand was on Lindsay's arm, ready to push or pull her away from danger.

The boy who had opened the gate was alone, but the cut of his hair and clothing marked him as a recent arrival to America. Catlin watched the gatekeeper very carefully; he had seen too many child soldiers in Asia to dismiss the boy simply because he was not yet sixteen.

"Lead us," Catlin commanded in Cantonese.

The boy's dark, slightly tilted eyes widened. He bowed, responding to the authority in Catlin's voice and body. If the boy noticed the discreetly drawn gun, he did nothing to show it. Without a word he turned and began leading them down the carefully raked gravel path. On either side of the path artistically trimmed evergreens rose into the late afternoon. An artificial stream wound like a silver ribbon through the garden, widening into a pool where lotus plants grew in circular profusion. Though barely a hundred feet long, the garden gave an illusion of space, serenity and peace.

Catlin absorbed the garden in a glance and dismissed it as a potential danger for the simple reason that there was no place in it to hide. Any ambush would have to come inside. He slipped the gun into the pocket of his sport coat, but kept his finger on the trigger. If he had to shoot he wouldn't bother pulling the gun out first.

The chapel itself was about as big as their hotel suite. Three doors opened off along the right side, and one along the left. All led to other rooms, and some of these led to still more rooms. The building was a warren that had grown over the years as money became available.

The boy led them through a small kitchen where the scents of fresh ginger, scallions, garlic and peanut oil had permeated the very walls. In addition to the usual gas stove and oven, there was a second stove. Instead of burners on top, there were three circular holes where big woks could be set and heated from below without any wasted energy. Next to the Chinese stove a small, erect woman chopped bamboo shoots with a cleaver. She looked up, bowed over her clasped hands and then resumed preparing the vegetable for its brief time in the fire.