Dragon Bones

by Lisa See

  Dr. Strong was next. His sunburn hadn’t improved, and he was in quite a muddle about everything. He rambled on about his work with oracle bones and their importance to the history of the Chinese language. He talked about how throughout history the Chinese people had had a love of numbers: the Nine Provinces, the Five Punishments, the Three Obediences. He told her that, although he was eighty-seven years old, he got along well with the younger generation. Brian had been a particular favorite. They’d carried on an e-mail correspondence all of last year. He was old, Dr. Strong admitted, but he wasn’t so old that he couldn’t learn how to do e-mail! Could Hulan see that correspondence? What a hilarious idea! His computer was in Cambridge, and all of the old e-mail disappeared eventually anyway. Didn’t she know anything?

  Yes, he knew Lily, although he preferred talking with Catherine. (He was old, he confessed again, but he wasn’t so old that he couldn’t appreciate a beautiful woman when he saw one!) His room was in the same courtyard as Lily’s. He’d heard noises, but he always heard noises in this place. In fact, he could say that he hadn’t had a decent night’s sleep since he’d arrived this June. But then, he was an old man and given to insomnia no matter where he was.

  The rain had gotten much worse, and the road to Site 518 far more treacherous than it had been yesterday. As a result, David’s driver concentrated on keeping the car on the slippery track and out of the largest mud holes. But David paid little attention to the dangerous conditions. He was totally wrapped up in the events of this morning, playing out each piece. His first concern, of course, was Hulan. Just when things were beginning to go well, the universe revealed itself to her as cruel and capricious yet again. He was very worried about how she would handle this, and the fact that she was shutting him out of her investigation bothered him deeply. Then there was the murder itself. As it always was with death, it came as a total shock. What had been done to Lily Sinclair made him sick. Obviously he didn’t know her well, but from what he had seen she had been smart and funny. She was too young and too beautiful to be taken so soon and so viciously.

  His mind spun back to Hulan. She didn’t want him with her, and she didn’t want to share her earliest suspicions with him. She preferred that he continue with his own investigation of the thefts, but because he was a former prosecutor, it was David’s nature to look for patterns and make links. Whether or not Hulan liked it, he was already formulating his own ideas about Lily’s murder, how it could be related to Brian’s, and how both of them could be connected to the thefts from Site 518.

  The car bumped into the camp, and David stepped out into the warm rain. Since last night the river’s level had risen to within a few feet of the lowest tents, and some day workers were moving them up the slope. David didn’t see Dr. Ma down there, so he trudged up the hill until he found the director squatting under a canopy brushing at a shard. The archaeologist, aware of David’s presence, didn’t look up. “We work on a schedule out here,” Ma remarked. “I’m not a chauffeur, and I can’t wait around for VIPers, no matter who they are.”

  “Lily’s dead.”

  Ma lifted his head, but his face was impossible to read. He set down his brush and stood.

  “What happened?” Ma asked.

  “She was murdered.”

  “How?”

  “I think you’d better take that up with Inspector Liu. She’ll be coming later.”

  Ma nodded thoughtfully, then: “And you’re here because—”

  “I was sent to do a job. As a courtesy I’m telling you that I’ll be interviewing some others about the missing artifacts.”

  Ma held David’s gaze. “Do as you please.” Then Ma dropped back to his haunches, picked up his tool, and went back to his work.

  David hesitated, half wanting to put Ma in his place, half wanting to ask what his problem was. Instead he went in search of the museum representatives. He found them in one of the caves, sitting around a table on upturned crates, smoking cigarettes and playing cards. They motioned for him to sit, and he did. Though he couldn’t be sure that all of the caves were like this one, it did match the description Ma had given yesterday. Three-tiered bunks rested against the walls deeper in the cave. Lanterns hung in rocky recesses, though most of the light came in through the cave’s mouth.

  David had a difficult time with their Sichuan accents, but between his Mandarin and their English they were able to communicate. He’d let Hulan decide how she wanted to handle Lily’s death and kept his inquiries specific to the thefts.

  Li Guo, a representative from the Three Gorges Museum, upriver in Wanxian, turned out to be the most loquacious of the group. “Look no further than the foreigners,” he recommended as he pushed his horn-rims firmly onto the bridge of his nose. “They all want to steal from us.”

  “I’m a foreigner,” David reminded them. “I don’t want to steal from you.”

  The men nodded vigorously. A couple of them knocked on the table with their knuckles, signaling their approval.

  “Yes,” Li agreed cheerfully, “you’re a foreigner and our government sends you to salvage our heritage. Our leaders tell us our country is changing. When we see you here, we know that this is so. But then,” he added philosophically, “we would rather speak with you than with the inspector. She’s a tough one.”

  After a pregnant pause, David asked somberly, “Have you forgotten she’s my wife?”

  The men stared at him dumbly for what seemed a full minute, then gave themselves over to raucous laughter. Li called for a bottle of mao tai, and one of the other men rummaged around until he found one. David reached into his satchel and pulled out a bag of pressed radish seeds to contribute to the impromptu party. The liquor was poured, shots thrown back, and aphorisms traded on the nature of wives. After the way the day had begun, David was grateful for the strong drink and the jokes. Still, he had to come back to the thefts, and the group was ready for him when he did.

  “Ask Dr. Ma. He’s in charge,” the man from the Chongqing Municipal Museum suggested.

  “Ma would not give a straight answer even if our Supreme Leader came back from the grave and asked the question himself,” Li scoffed. His glasses had steamed up, and he wiped them on his shirt.

  “Why not?” David asked.

  “Dr. Ma looks young, and he is on the outside, but inside he’s an old man. Understand?”

  “Old in his political philosophy….”

  “He is political, yes,” Li said as he poured another round of drinks.

  “Is he a Party member?”

  The men jutted their chins. Who could know? Maybe.

  “But he was educated abroad,” David went on.

  “He shows one face to the outside world,” Li answered, “but his inner face is very outdated.”

  David tried to read between the lines. Did Li mean that Ma was old-line politically, or did it have to do with social class?

  “His manners are not classic Chinese—”

  “Attorney Stark, Ma has his place. We have ours. Or didn’t you hear what he calls us?”

  “Vultures—”

  “A rude accusation in any language,” the man from Chongqing observed.

  “And he makes others,” Li went on. “As you know, bribery and corruption are serious offenses in my country.”

  “But you’ve given gifts,” David prodded carefully.

  “I can tell from your Mandarin that you’ve been in our country for some time,” Li noted. “You are familiar with our customs, no? Is it not correct to bring a gift to your host?”

  Absolutely. Cigarettes, Danish sugar cookies, VSOP cognac were all acceptable, even expected.

  “Is Ma removing artifacts from here?”

  But the men weren’t ready to go that far.

  “Let me answer this way, Attorney Stark,” Li began. “We five are here every day. We sleep here. We have our meals here. Our work units pay us to sit and watch and wait. As you can see, this is exactly what we do.”

  Indeed, this table at the mou
th of the cave offered a good view of the goings-on below.

  “We are not archaeologists,” Li continued. “We are simple workers who were lucky to find good work units. Yes, we compete for which museum will get an object, but I think we’ve been fair with one another.” The others unanimously agreed. “We represent museums with different interests, so we cooperate.” He waved his hand knowingly. “This is not how it’s usually done, but if I let Hu have something today, he’ll let the Three Gorges Museum have something tomorrow.”

  “Then Ma is—”

  “A liar,” Li finished, then took another sip from his glass. The others could have countered this assessment, but they all nodded pensively.

  “Who’s stealing the artifacts?”

  “You ask the wrong question, Attorney Stark.”

  “What’s the right one?”

  “Focus on the ruyi. Who has it?”

  “Stuart Miller?”

  “If he had the ruyi, he wouldn’t be coming here.”

  “Ma said the same thing.”

  Li spat on the ground. “Even if Dr. Ma and I agree on this, you still need to think more broadly.”

  “Okay then, who does have it?” David asked. Li waited for him to delve further. He did his best to oblige. “Where is the ruyi now? How did it get there? And who’s going to be the ultimate owner?”

  “The ruyi’s in Hong Kong. Ask Lily Sinclair how it got there. Then ask her how it can be going up for auction at Cosgrove’s tomorrow night.”

  David felt foolish and a little miffed, for neither Ho nor Ma had told him any of this, yet it seemed to be common knowledge.

  “I don’t see Lily here,” David went on evenly. “Why don’t you tell me?”

  Suddenly Li Guo stepped out of his guise of a vulture who’d been fortunate in his work unit. “Once artifacts are out of the country, false papers of provenance are easily created,” he said. “Auction houses, dealers, collectors, and museums all choose to accept these implausible claims, even as our superiors expect us to find our missing objects. Meanwhile, we’re still trying to figure out who has jurisdiction.”

  David had encountered this before. Was it the responsibility of the State Cultural Relics Bureau, the Provincial Relics Bureaus, Customs, or people from museums to track down stolen artifacts? It always seemed like bureaucratic buck-passing to him. After all, how could a small museum in a poor, isolated region—or the men in this cave—have the ability to find where artifacts had appeared abroad or, if located, negotiate for their return?

  Hulan had deliberately left Catherine for last. The young American was dressed in an outfit nearly identical to the one she’d worn yesterday. Full makeup highlighted her eyes and lips. Her posture was perfect, to accentuate her most notable physical attributes, but Hulan was not impressed by Catherine’s beauty or intimidated by her sexuality. If anything, they were off-putting.

  “I didn’t see Lily last night,” Catherine recounted. “I had dinner with my father, then I went for a walk.”

  “Alone?”

  “I’m not afraid, if that’s what you mean. China’s very safe.”

  It would be very safe for a woman of Catherine’s race, especially in a small town such as this; however, it obviously hadn’t been safe for Lily.

  Hulan tried to reconcile the rather dim young woman who sat before her now with the young woman who yesterday knew more ancient Chinese history than anyone else at the table. She was deliberately acting dumb, which Hulan took to mean that Catherine was hiding something.

  “Catherine—do you mind if I call you that?” When Catherine nodded and her posture loosened, Hulan confided, “People always think it’s a mistake to get involved in a murder investigation; however, the person who killed Lily needs to be caught and punished before he does it again. Now please answer my questions truthfully.”

  So they began again at the top. Catherine had eaten dinner with her father on the hydrofoil at eight o’clock. After dinner, Stuart had gone to his stateroom to handle some business. She’d returned to the hotel around eleven to get a couple of things from her room. She hadn’t seen anyone except the desk clerk. While walking back to the boat she’d spotted Lily in one of the alleyways that led off Bashan’s main road. They’d walked together for a while until Catherine realized that they were heading out of town. She’d said good night at the bridge that crossed Bashan Stream, then gone back down to the dock.

  “What did you talk about?”

  “Nothing in particular. We didn’t like each other very much—”

  “I noticed that at lunch—”

  Catherine’s eyes widened as she remembered the conversation from yesterday.

  “Do you really think she sent the day worker to ‘a watery grave’?” Hulan asked.

  “That was a joke! We picked on Lily because she was such an easy target. All she cared about was her career—”

  “And the others don’t?”

  “Inspector, Site 518 isn’t exactly the path to fame and fortune.”

  Unless you stole from the site, Hulan thought. But Catherine was already wealthy, and if she wanted fame, all she had to do was slip on some Versace and return to the social whirl of her economic class. “Okay, I accept that,” Hulan said. “So let’s go back to last night. You’re walking together through town. You must have talked about something.”

  “Lily was fishing for what my father was going to bid on at the next round of auctions, but the truth is, he doesn’t share that information with me. I’m only his daughter, not his curator.”

  “He’s old-fashioned, you mean.”

  “He believes women have their place. Look, he’s wealthy, he’s a widower, and the kinds of women he meets…. Well….”

  “It’s hard to get his attention.”

  Catherine nodded. Hulan thought about Catherine in a new light. How could she compete with the other women who must flow through her father’s life? Hulan didn’t think that Catherine’s dressing and acting like Electra would have much appeal to Stuart, or would it?

  “Still,” she resumed, “he values your opinion.”

  Catherine cocked her head questioningly.

  “I heard the two of you talking yesterday,” Hulan explained.

  “At lunch,” Catherine remembered brightly, “of course.”

  Hulan acknowledged that this was so, but Catherine had also given her an opening. “I heard you before that too. Your father said something about you running out of time….”

  Catherine winced. Hulan waited.

  “My father….” The words closed in on themselves, and the young woman tried again. “My father wants the best for me. For him that means a good marriage.”

  “Another old-fashioned view—”

  “But still as common as air,” Catherine finished bitterly. “I’ve told him that his views are so antiquated they belong in one of the Site 518 pits.” After a moment, she added, “My father is very hard to please.” Another beat, followed by “All men are when you think about it.”

  “Is that why you’re here? To prove something to him?”

  “Maybe to myself. How pathetic is that?”

  They talked for a few more minutes. Catherine had no idea where Lily had been going. She regretted now that she hadn’t asked, but at the time she honestly hadn’t thought about it. They simply weren’t that close.

  “How about your father and Lily? Were they close?”

  “Do you mean did they”—Catherine searched for the appropriate words until she settled on—“have sex?” When Hulan nodded, Catherine laughed and her whole face changed. She appeared for a moment as she truly was behind the facade—young, open, and naturally beautiful. “Probably, although Lily definitely wasn’t his type.” Still smiling at the idea of it, she added, “Don’t get me wrong. He had a lot of respect for her. She helped him a lot with his collection.”

  “But she wasn’t as knowledgeable as you.”

  “I know more history and art. She knew more about the business of art—museu
ms, auctions, private collections, and financial transactions above and below the table.”

  “Was Lily the person responsible for artifacts disappearing from Site 518?”

  “Probably.”

  “Do you have any knowledge of her taking artifacts out of the country, whether from Site 518 or elsewhere?”

  Catherine answered with determined frankness. “Over the years Lily obtained amazing pieces for Cosgrove’s to put up at auction. Where she got them, how she got them, I don’t know, but if she did it illegally, it wouldn’t surprise me. If my father bought some of those pieces, well, that wouldn’t surprise me either. He’s a man of many passions, and he doesn’t take no for an answer.”

  Hulan thought about that, then asked, “Will you be going down to the dam site with him?”

  “My father? Oh, I’m sure he’s halfway there by now,” Catherine answered, her lightness returned. “But, no, I wasn’t going with him. I’m part of the Site 518 crew. I’ll be here all summer.”

  Hulan had gone about as far as she could with these preliminary interviews, and she still had other people she wanted to see. She and Hom walked with Catherine as far as the lotus pool, then said good-bye. Then Hulan and the captain went to the restaurant’s veranda, where a couple of Hom’s men reported that the search of the interior and exterior of the compound had been completed. No murder site or blood trail had been located. Someone had gone to considerable lengths to make this element of Lily’s murder an enigma. Hulan would come back to this, but for now she and Hom went on to the dining room, where Officers Su and Ge sat at small tables interviewing employees one on one. Everyone else sat at the larger banquet tables, smoking cigarettes and drinking tea. A hush settled over the room while Hulan spoke quietly to Su and Ge. Hom took a chair between his men, lit a cigarette, and exhaled the smoke through his nose.