Tell Me No Lies (41 page)

"Know her?" Catlin asked Lindsay as they followed the boy into one of the rooms that opened off the chapel.

"No."

"She wasn't bowing to the kid," said Catlin. "Which means that the man we're going to see is not only feared, he is also respected. We're honored guests of the venerable warlord, as it were."

They saw few other people as the boy skirted the chapel by going through interconnected rooms. The rooms were small, redolent of pungent cigarettes and incense, and furnished with a melange of Oriental and European furniture. Traditional pictures of Jesus alternated with Chinese landscapes painstakingly done in silk embroidery using stitches so tiny that a single landscape represented a life's work for one woman, or decades of effort for several.

"What do they use all these little rooms for?" Catlin asked as they were led through yet another small space studded with chairs and small tables.

"Sunday school. Chinese language lessons. English language lessons. Civic meetings. Mah-jongg. Socializing. Most of the homes around here are tiny and overcrowded," added Lindsay. "If more than three people want to get together, they have to stand on street corners, yell over the chaos of one of the local restaurants or join one of the benevolent societies and use their meeting rooms. Places like this are the core of Chinese-American communities."

"Looks like a deserted core at the moment."

Lindsay frowned. The thought had occurred to her, too. In her memories the building had always been alive with voices. The silence inside, unlike the silence in the garden, made her uneasy. Reluctantly she realized that Catlin might be right to be walking with a drawn gun in his pocket. The thought didn't comfort her. The chapel was in many ways as much a home as her aunt's house had been.

"Here we go," muttered Catlin.

The boy had stopped in front of a carved, lacquered door. He opened the door, bowed to them and stepped aside. A single look told Catlin that the room was large, empty of people and had at least one other exit. An exquisite silk folding screen opened along the far wall, concealing any doors on that side. Two chairs were positioned with their backs to the folding screen. A third chair faced the others across a low table. A white teapot and three small cups were set on a tray. The cups had no handles. Their shape, like that of the teapot, raised simplicity to art.

Catlin released his hold on Lindsay's arm, allowing her to enter the room. He picked up one of the two chairs, placed it next to the single chair whose back was against a blank wall and gestured for Lindsay to sit down. He stood beside her, to the right. His gun was drawn again, muzzle held down along the side of his right leg.

"Do you – " Lindsay began, only to stop when Catlin's hand brushed over her lips in silent command.

After a few moments the utter, unnatural quiet of the building began to be almost tangible. The sudden sound of a woman walking in high heels into the chapel came like distant staccato thunder, swelling and then fading into silence again. A door opened and closed. The footsteps that came this time were much softer and yet somehow heavier, the measured tread of a confident man. But if Catlin and Lindsay hadn't been absolutely still, listening for just such sounds, the footsteps would have passed unnoticed, as would the slight whisper of a door opening behind the silk screen.

Lindsay reached out to silently warn Catlin that someone was coming. Her fingers touched only air. She turned quickly. He was gone. From the corner of her eye she caught a blur of movement as he vanished behind a fold in the long screen on the other side of the room. She sensed rather than saw him closing in on the concealed door.

Catlin waited to one side of the door, poised to strike if he didn't like what he saw coming into the room. Even as the flash of gunmetal and the large, blocky outline of Lee Tran registered on Catlin's mind, the edge of his hand slashed out. At the last instant he softened what easily could have been a killing blow. Pragmatism rather than sentiment made Catlin pull his punch – a dead man couldn't answer questions.

Air went out of Tran's lungs in a sudden whoosh. There was no sound of returning air, for Catlin's blow had paralyzed Tran's diaphragm, making it impossible for him to breathe. That was all that prevented him from screaming when Catlin's second blow landed an instant later, breaking Tran's wrist. Tran's foot lashed out in a belated attempt to return the attack. Catlin caught the foot and twisted hard as he heaved upward, all but wrenching Tran's leg out of its socket as he was thrown into the screen.

The screen exploded outward, crashing to the floor. Tran lay helplessly on his back, his eyes dazed, his right leg useless, his gun lying inches beyond his broken right wrist. Catlin's foot sent the gun sliding toward Lindsay even as he bent and dragged Tran to his feet.

"Pick it up," Catlin said curtly to Lindsay, never looking away from Tran's shocked, sweaty face. "It's the same model as mine. The safety is off and it's ready to go. Watch the other doors."

Without warning Catlin picked up Tran and slammed him full length against the wall. His right leg gave way as he fought for balance. Catlin held his old enemy upright by the simple expedient of a hand wrapped around Tran's throat and the cold muzzle of the gun jammed beneath his chin. After a moment, Tran's eyes focused and he began to take racking breaths again.

"You are the liquid stool of a diseased dog," Catlin said calmly in Cantonese. His hand began closing on Tran's throat. "You should have continued to buy your deaths, spawn of excrement eaters. You have the crotch of a snake and the face of an outhouse rat. What made you think you could kill a man?"

"Mei should have killed you!" Tran gasped in English.

"She was too hungry," said Catlin, switching to English, smiling, and his voice was as cold as his smile.

"What?"

"She was used to fucking you, but you don't have anything between your legs. So she waited to come before she tried to kill me. She died satisfied, Tran."

Impotent fury and lack of oxygen put color back in Tran's face. Catlin's smile didn't change as his fingers slowly closed on Tran's throat.

"You're – dead – " gasped Tran.

"Eventually. You won't have to wait, though. Your time is now."

"The bronzes –!" With a strangled cry, Tran tried to deflect the death he saw in Catlin's eyes.

"You don't have them," Catlin said, but his fingers loosened just enough to allow Tran a sliver of breath. "You're a pimp and a pederast and a slaver. No one would trust you with a bucket of shit. The man running this show has the respect of the local people. All you have is their fear."

"I know – who has them!" Air rasped and whistled through Tran's throat as he fought to breathe. "He asked me – to negotiate – with you!"

"That was his second mistake."

Catlin's finger began taking up slack on the trigger. Tran's eyes widened as he realized that he was going to die.

"Catlin, the door!" cried Lindsay.

"That is not necessary," Wu said from the doorway, his words overlapping her cry. Behind him stood three burly Chinese men.

"That's a matter of opinion," Catlin said without looking away from Tran. "Is Wu armed?"

It took Lindsay a moment to realize that Catlin was speaking to her. "N-no," she said, shaking her head as though stunned. "Neither are the men with him, that I can see."

She shook her head again, but it wasn't Catlin who had taken her off balance. She had known and accepted from the first that he was capable of violence. But she hadn't known that Wu was capable of betrayal. His presence was cutting the ground from beneath her feet, leaving her helpless as memories of her years in San Francisco whirled around her.

Lies. A world full of lies.

"Come over and stand to my left," Catlin said.

"I – " Lindsay said, trying to tell him of her discovery.

"Now."

Numbly Lindsay went and stood to Catlin's left side. "Remember how I showed you to put the safety on my gun?" "Yes." "Do it."

With hands that trembled, Lindsay fumbled until she had the safety on Tran's gun. "Put it in my holster."

As Lindsay bolstered the gun, the contrast between its chill and the warmth of Catlin's body shocked her, forcing her to realize that it was not a nightmare she was caught in. It was real. There was no waking up.

"Sit down in the single chair, Wu," said Catlin. "Put your back to me and your hands on top of your head. Tell your bodyguards not to move."

"That, too, is unnecessary," Wu said.

"Do it, or I turn Tran into wallpaper."

Everything about Catlin from his calm voice to the controlled stance of his body underlined the fact that he meant exactly what he said. Wu spoke softly to the men with him, then sat in the lone chair and put his hands on top of his head.

"Catlin-"

"Not yet, Lindsay." Catlin's voice was the same as his body, utterly calm, as controlled as the lean finger resting lightly on the trigger. "Insulting me was a bad idea, Wu."

"I have not-"

"Bullshit," Catlin interrupted coldly, not looking away from Tran's terrified face. "Lindsay wouldn't kowtow to you, so you tapped Tran for the negotiations, knowing that he was my enemy. You thought he would hold a gun on me and watch me crawl. You thought that I would lose face with Lindsay and you would gain it. You were wrong. I don't crawl for sewer slime. I don't negotiate with it, either. Not for you. Not for anyone."

"Not even for Qin's charioteer?" asked Wu.

"Not even for that. That was your first mistake. Underestimating me. Say goodbye, Tran."

"Catlin!" cried Lindsay, unable to say more than his name.

Tran's eyes rolled back into his head. He slumped against Catlin in a dead faint. For long seconds Catlin looked at the slack face lolling against his hand. With a sound of disgust he stepped back, removing his hand. Tran fell facedown on the floor.

"That's the trouble with pimps and pederasts," Catlin said, nudging Tran's limp body with his foot. "No balls." He looked at the three bodyguards and spoke quickly in Mandarin. "Take this miserable piece of shit out to the street and leave it for the dogs to piss on. Don't come back."

The men looked at Wu. He nodded. They picked up Tran's slack body and hauled him unceremoniously from the room, politely closing the door behind. Catlin looked at Lindsay's strained, pale face.

"Sit down, honey," he said gently. "The excitement is over. Wu won't make the same mistake twice."

Without a word Lindsay sat facing Wu and wondered why she wasn't screaming. She hadn't been so frightened since she was a child.

And then she understood that she wasn't screaming because she wasn't really scared. Surprised, shocked, off balance – but not terrified for her life. Catlin had taken care of the danger. They were safe.

The realization took Lindsay's breath away. She put her face in her hands and let her whole body tremble in the aftermath of the adrenaline storm that had begun when the silk screen had crashed violently to the floor.

"It's all right," Catlin said, coming to Lindsay's side, stroking her hair with his left hand and never taking his eyes from Wu.

"Dragon," she murmured, taking a long breath, turning toward him, brushing her mouth over his palm. "And thank God for it."

Catlin had been expecting Lindsay to shrink from him. Her acceptance of the unexpected violence surprised him in the instant before he remembered what her childhood must have been like. Whether she knew it or not, admitted it or not, her uncle and father had been warriors of the Church Militant. She was no stranger to blood and death.

"Drink some of the tea, Wu," commanded Catlin. He watched Wu pour and drink the tea without hesitation. "Pour some for Lindsay. Slowly." Wu poured very carefully, as though he were taking part in a ceremony staged in a forbidden city hung with crimson silk brocade. The first cup Lindsay drank from Catlin's hand. The second she managed for herself.

"Better?" Catlin asked softly.

She nodded. She had had a lifetime of practice coping with sudden fear of one kind or another, reality or nightmare. Already the old discipline was settling into place, the slow, measured breaths and soothing mental images of a blue-black pond gleaming beneath moonlight, silver rings of peace expanding outward from the center.

"I'm all right," Lindsay said, setting down the cup. Her fingers trembled very slightly, a motion so fine that only Catlin noticed it. She looked up at Wu with eyes that were as clear and dark as her imagined pond. "Uncle Wu, do you know who has Qin's bronze charioteer?"

Even as she said the words, Lindsay realized that Wu himself must have the charioteer. It was the only explanation that made sense. She looked quickly at Catlin. Without looking away from Wu, Catlin nodded his head.

"He's the one, honey."

23

"But how?" asked Lindsay. "You told me that whoever brought in the charioteer would need a smuggling operation that was already in place."

"Yes." Catlin said no more. He didn't have to.

Wu shifted. "Tea?" he asked calmly, his delicate hands poised over the elegant white teapot.

"Uncle Wu?" asked Lindsay, waiting to hear his denial.

Settling back into his chair with a cup cradled in his palm, Wu glanced again at Lindsay. "Do not look so shocked," he said tartly. "How do you think your honorable parents paid for smuggling their loyal flock out of China into Hong Kong, and from there to Canada and the United States? It was the same way your lover paid off his spies, whores and lackeys. Smuggled gold, smuggled opium, smuggled arms, smuggled bodies, smuggled bronzes. All become equal in the end. Smuggled. For that, one must have a smuggler of discretion and skill."

"You?"

"I," he agreed calmly. "I learned in Xi'an. Your esteemed uncle taught me," Wu said, sipping his tea. "He was a man of great honor, courage and, I am afraid, foolishness. He left rather too much in God's venerable hands, not realizing that God had many, many children who required His care. Sometimes even the most omnipotent and loving God must blink."

Lindsay closed her eyes. For an instant she saw again the time when God had blinked – shots and screams and her uncle's blood spurting between her fingers.

But beneath the image of violence Lindsay silently screamed a denial. Not of her uncle's death. She accepted that, finally. Yet she did not want to believe that her parents had been involved in anything illicit. The thought made her feel as though she were standing on the banks of a raging river and the earth were shifting subtly beneath her feet, warning of the disastrous crumbling to come.

How could she have been so wrong about so many things? How could she have been deceived so thoroughly?

"Arms? Opium?" she asked, her voice strained. "How many years did you smuggle for my parents?"

"Lindsay, you have to understand something," Catlin said quietly before Wu could speak. "In those years gold, opium, rice and tea were often the only currency Asians would trust. As for the arms – " Catlin's hand tightened for an instant as he remembered the file he had read on the early years of Lindsay Danner. As he spoke, he resumed stroking her hair slowly. "Your father and uncle chose to fight as well as to pray. Your uncle – " Again, Catlin hesitated.

"My uncle?" Lindsay asked, turning to fix Catlin with indigo eyes.

"Most Chinese missionaries reached some kind of accommodation with communism, or they left China. Your uncle did neither," Catlin said bluntly. "He spent more time teaching guerrilla warfare than saving souls. Your father was more circumspect. He had to be. He had you and your mother to think about."

"How do you know that?" Lindsay demanded. "How do you know things about my childhood that I don't?"

There was no answer except the measured glide of Catlin's palm over Lindsay's hair. She closed her eyes. She didn't want to believe, but she did. Catlin had never lied to her. He had no reason to begin now. And his words explained so much, including the reason her mother had so fiercely insisted that Lindsay forget everything about the night her uncle had died.

"Did Mother – " Lindsay's voice shattered to silence.

Wu understood. "This undeserving self was honored to serve your parents until your most venerable father died," Wu said quietly. "Your esteemed mother was a dutiful wife of unquestioned loyalty and obedience. She was a woman to bring honor to her ancestors and to her husband. Yet – " Wu shrugged. "No matter the weight and height of the evidence against her view, she steadfastly believed that the way to achieve God's ultimate victory in China was through the con-version of peasants rather than the honorable crucible of battie. She was a woman of infinite patience, with a generosity of spirit that must stand as an example to cynical mortals such as myself."

Wu sipped tea, sighed, and set aside the exquisite white cup. "From time to time she sent Christian peasants carrying ancient bronzes or other artifacts of value that would pay for the cost of introducing unexpected guests into a new homeland." He bowed slightly toward Lindsay. "I regret to say that your honored mother lacked your fine eye in bronzes. Perhaps that was only to be expected. Her gaze was fixed always on a better future, not a glorious and honored past. I send my unworthy prayers to heaven in the hope that your beloved mother has found at last the gentle, bountiful God for whom she sacrificed so much."

"She used you to smuggle things after Dad died," Lindsay summarized flatly.

"Her calling was to the poor," Wu said obliquely. "The poor are forever in need of money. She kept nothing for herself from the sale of smuggled bronzes, no matter how great her own need. She insisted that God would provide for her. So she sent you to your American aunt and to me, knowing that I would train you to live in the world that your honorable mother had forsaken for her mission to the poor." Wu smiled slightly. "Apparently your mother did not have much faith that God would provide for others. That thankless task she took upon her own esteemed head."

Wu's smile faded as he measured Lindsay's reaction to the knowledge that her mother had been part of a smuggling operation. "Do not presume upon God's benevolence by judging your deeply honorable and most worthy mother," Wu said harshly.

"I was lied to."

"You were a beloved child." Black eyes narrowed. "Are you still a child? Do you expect the world to be as pure as your foolishness and as gentle as an idiot's smile? Are you as quick in your judgments of your own miserable self? Your esteemed mother never went whoring after a man who – "

"That's enough," Catlin said, cutting across Wu's tirade.

Forget it, Lindsay. Give it to God. Forget. It will be better that way, for everyone. Forget. Forget. Forget.

And Lindsay had, until this morning. Then she had remembered, and the same man who was even now stroking bet hair had held her, let her cry, helped her to accept her dream of terror as a distorted reflection of reality. He had freed ha from the nightmare… and now he was telling her about a reality that was in some ways worse. A childhood of deceit and lies.

It explained so much, so many fragments of memory and fear. Whispers and unnatural silences. Sudden gunfire and the sound of her mother ripping dresses into bandages. Men gliding through the night like black tigers, fighting for a cause that had been lost years before. Guerrillas. Outlaws. Her uncle had been one of them. So had her father.

No wonder Catlin had seemed so familiar to her, so right for her. She had been born among men like him, had laughed with them as they teased and hugged her, had felt their blood flowing between her fingers.

Lindsay let out a shaking breath and caught Catlin's hand. She held it against her cheek so hard that her nails left red crescents on his skin. His thumb stroked gently across her cheekbone. He urgently wished that it had been possible to shield her from knowledge of the gulf between her child's perception of her parents and their reality. This wasn't the time for Lindsay to have to adjust to a new view of reality, of herself. She had had to accept too many new insights in the past few weeks, none of them pleasant.

Wu's head turned with the speed of a striking snake. "Do you deny what the hotel maid has seen every morning? Two sleep in one bed. Each day one less pill remains in the little pink dispenser. Lindsay comes to you like a bitch in season. She – "

"No more," Catlin commanded. His voice was soft, vibrating with the promise of violence.

Rage glittered in Wu's eyes. He stared at Catlin while the silence stretched. Wu watched the yellow eyes staring back at him and understood that Catlin would be no more gentle with him than he had been with Lee Tran.

"Then let us discuss you, Jacques-Pierre Rousseau," Wu said finally.

Catlin became aware of the painful pressure of Lindsay's nails digging into his hand. He looked down at her face. It was pale, tight, and he could sense the tension that had her humming like an overstretched wire. Gently he eased her nails free of his skin and resumed stroking her hair, giving her the only comfort he could.

"We will discuss Qin's charioteer," Catlin said flatly, "or Lindsay and I will leave."

Wu weighed Catlin again, letting the silence stretch. At last Wu sighed. "I do not understand you. You corrupted a fine and honorable woman in pursuit of Qin's charioteer, yet you refuse to bow to a simple reality. I have the bronze. You do not."

"Enjoy it," Catlin said. He tugged on Lindsay's hand, pulling her to her feet. "Come on, honey. We're leaving."

"Wait! "said Wu.

Catlin turned from Lindsay to watch Wu with the unreadable eyes of a dragon.

"One question," Wu said, his voice clipped. "Rousseau was safely dead. Why did you resurrect him?"

"Would you have sold Qin's charioteer to Jacob Catlin?" he asked sardonically.

Wu hesitated, then bowed very slightly in acknowledgment of a point made. "You have sacrificed your safety to pursue your passion for bronzes, yet you will turn and walk out of here because I speak the truth about a woman."

It wasn't a question. Not quite. Catlin answered it, anyway.

"The truth is that you were accustomed to using Lindsay's gift for your own profit, and seeing that slip away makes you very angry," Catlin retorted. "People knew that Lindsay was your daughter in all but name. They knew her reputation. They assumed that everything in your shop had been vetted by her. But not everything has. Some of it is, shall we say, of problematical origins?"

Only the tightening of the skin across Wu's cheekbones revealed the extent of his anger. "That is not true," he said, biting off each word.

"Neither is what you said about Lindsay. I will protect her from your cruel tongue even if it means walking away from the charioteer."

Wu watched Catlin through another long silence. The lines of anger on Wu's face slowly loosened, giving him again his normal, kindly expression.

"Rousseau would not have acted so," Wu observed.

"Rousseau is dead."

Wu nodded slowly. "What of the man called Catlin?"

"I will protect Lindsay no matter what it costs or who it hurts."

Wu's eyes closed for a moment. He bent his head over his folded hands like a man deep in thought or prayer. When he looked up, it was Lindsay's eyes he sought. "Forgive my unhappy words, daughter. You are like your honorable mother, after all. You have in your soul that which can summon gentleness from even the most savage heart."

Lindsay looked away from Wu because she could not bear to meet his eyes. She wanted to tell him the truth – that her relationship with Catlin was all an act, an elaborate lie to get to Qin's charioteer. That was what Catlin was protecting. Not Lindsay, but the ancient charioteer whose presence in San Francisco would tear apart the fragile relationship between America and the People's Republic of China. Catlin had sized up Wu's outrage and seen that it stemmed from a father's anger at a wayward daughter's foolishness. So Catlin had chosen the one sure way to disarm Wu – convince him that his daughter had tamed a dragon rather than been ravished by one.

Lindsay looked at Catlin and realized that Stone had been right. Catlin's genius was in analyzing people's weaknesses and then using them to his own ends. He was very good at it. Frighteningly good. Even now she was clinging to him, because he was the only truth in a world of lies. And she needed his truth. She needed it the way she needed air to breathe.

"You are too kind to me, Uncle Wu," whispered Lindsay.

Wu came to his feet and took Lindsay's hand, patting it. "It has been my privilege through the years to serve your parents and God. If it will reassure your gentle sensibilities, you should know that in the past few years my smuggling has been confined to Chinese Christians fleeing from the terrible curse of communism. The bronzes that have come to me have come because I have some minor esteem within the community."

"I understand," Lindsay said, her voice husky, almost shattered. "Forgive me for even thinking that you might have had less than honorable reasons for your actions."

The irony of Lindsay's apology went through Catlin in a razor stroke of pain. Lindsay, too, had honorable reasons for actions that appeared less than honorable – but Wu still did not suspect that.

"Yes," Catlin said dryly. "Tell us about your honorable reasons for dealing in stolen goods."

Wu's head came around sharply. What he saw in Catlin's face wasn't reassuring.

"You will please explain," Wu demanded.

"Stolen. As in taken without permission. Or are you saying that Qin's charioteer was a parting gift from the People's Republic to a group of religious refugees?"

Wu laughed dryly, humorlessly. "Ah, that would be a fabulous day to see, would it not? That will be the same day that a ravenous tiger's tongue innocently washes the face of a newly born lamb." The papery sound of Wu's laughter faded. He looked intently from Catlin to Lindsay. "I will take no money from the sale of the charioteer."

"What will you take, then?" Catlin asked before Lindsay could speak.

"The satisfaction of a humble servant of God." Catlin waited, and his silence was a pressure forcing Lindsay to be silent and Wu to speak.

"My shortsighted people turned to communism because they were hopeless, hungry and oppressed," Wu said. "Communism gave them much hope, a pittance of food and an oppression that is boundless. Now my people are becoming restless again," he said with satisfaction. "The hope of communism is a waning moon. The naive economic theories of the miserable dog Mao accomplished what the honorable armies of the venerable General Chiang could not – they nearly brought down the Communist Party in China."

Wu looked at Catlin, measuring his response. Absently Wu patted Lindsay's hand again and released it, concentrating only on Catlin.

"But nearly isn't good enough," Catlin suggested neutrally, forestalling whatever Lindsay might have said by squeezing her hand in silent warning. "You want it all."