by Rebecca Lim
He looked up into the trees for surveillance cameras so often that Qing snorted.
As they raced around the side of the east wing – which had closely spaced steel bars across all the windows – Qing ran headlong into an old Chinese man in a long-sleeved, navy jacket with a stand-up collar, and loose pants of the same faded colour, who was just rising to his feet from beneath a large peppercorn tree at least a hundred years old.
Although the man looked very frail – his wrinkled skin a nut-brown shade from years spent working in the sun, his hair snow white and cropped close to his head like a Chinese monk – he did not fall over when Qing crashed into him. Instead, he swiftly planted his slippered feet into the soft soil he was standing in, and caught Qing by both forearms. There was a sizzle of static electricity between them, its force pushing the old man backwards. But he somehow absorbed it without flinching, and did not let go of the girl.
She hissed, struggling, and the elderly man let her go immediately, looking sternly at both her and Harley. ‘You should not be here,’ he said. ‘This is private property. I could have you arrested.’
Harley imagined the look on his mother’s face and shivered.
‘Nǐn shì shuí?’ Qing challenged the old man as if there were something about him she could not put her finger on.
‘I am the gardener,’ the old man replied with dignity, indicating the steel hand spade buried in the soil of a flowerbed beside the peppercorn tree. ‘And you should not be here.’
‘Please, sir,’ Harley said politely. ‘We just want to see the museum, you know? Just a quick peek. We’ve come all the way from Australia. It won’t take more than a minute.’
The old man blinked, staring at them for a long time: a Chinese girl in antiquated, formal robes, and a Eurasian boy with sticky-up hair, whose knees were coming right through his faded pants. In the buzzing, slumberous garden, the two children were like a strange mirage brought on by the intense morning heat.
When the old man did not speak, Harley insisted, ‘It’s true!’
The old man seemed to give himself a shake. ‘Australia, you say?’ He bent finally, pulling the hand spade out of the ground and straightening slowly. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘But you lead the way. And I have my trusty spade here – in case you try anything funny.’
He waved the hand tool at them to indicate they should start walking and Qing shot Harley a look that clearly said, I don’t trust him.
Inside his head, Harley replied: I don’t think we have much choice, Qing. At least it will get us inside.
And Qing nodded as if she’d understood and picked up her pace.
As they opened the steel security door protecting the back entrance to the mansion, which the old man explained was kept unlocked during the day for the ease of the staff, an alarm began to sound somewhere deep inside the grand house. Harley’s thoughts flashed to his dad and the CCTV room.
The old gardener said tersely, ‘Hurry. There’s not much time once that gets started. Unless it’s rung through to the security company as a false alarm, the house will soon be crawling with police.’
The three of them walked quickly through a dark, cool kitchen and laundry quarters that seemed to go on for miles. The rooms they passed were all empty. ‘The housekeepers were given a day off,’ the old man murmured. ‘No one to cook for, you see. They went to stay with family on the East Coast. I have no family – not for a very long time. But I am just one old man. You could not have chosen a better time to visit, children. And from so very far away – it is a long overdue honour.’
As they hurried down the central corridor of the cross-shaped house, Harley gasped in awe. Just at the midpoint of the mansion where the two wings met the front and back sections, there lay a large square fish pond filled with lazily swimming orange and white koi. The internal pond mirrored the shape of an open light well that reached from the ground floor up through the second storey to the sky, illuminating the hollow centre of the house. Harley had never seen a house that had the outside inside, and said so.
‘Very beautiful,’ the old gardener said dismissively. ‘The Romans had the same idea. But such a nuisance when it rains. And it’s not particularly secure, given the wonders you are about to see. It’s amazing no one’s ever attempted to take the vase any earlier. I wish they had.’
His tone implied great bitterness. Qing gave the old man a sharp, sidelong look. They had never mentioned any vase to him.
Harley gasped again as they reached the edge of the fish pond, the sunlight streaming down where all four sections of the house came together. His dad had been right – just outside the tall, red double doors that led into the east wing, opposite one long edge of the pond, stood a vast stone statue made of different coloured natural marbles and semiprecious stones that reached almost to the ceiling over four metres above their heads. The whites of the fearsome god’s eyes appeared to be made of real diamonds, and he wore a Chinese-style warrior’s helmet and flowing robes of red and gold and blue. A long black beard and moustache fell down his chest, and he held a tall spear with a curved, golden blade in one hand and a golden sword in the other.
‘I’ve seen him before,’ Harley whispered as Qing read aloud the four words carved into the blade of the sword in characters higher than a human hand:
‘Earth, water, fire, wind,’ the gardener said. ‘Yes.’
Harley’s face cleared suddenly. ‘Antediluvian House!’ he exclaimed. ‘It’s the same god as that statue on the first floor.’
‘Mo Li Qing,’ Qing reminded Harley grimly. ‘As I said, his likeness is everywhere. This was the magician’s master. The whole house is dedicated to him.’
Harley’s head spun at the coincidence. ‘Was he actually real?’
The old man looked from Qing to Harley. ‘The Diamond King, also known as Pure, is the family’s personal god and talisman. The Queks are diamond merchants, after all. Their vast fortune was built on their worship of this precious material.’ Again his tone was dismissive.
The alarm that sounded from somewhere deep within the other wing of the house suddenly cut off and the silence that followed seemed unnatural.
‘Come, children,’ the old man urged. ‘There is no time to waste. I was once warned that every day I would be tested,’ the old gardener murmured this almost to himself, ‘but that has proven to be untrue – until, perhaps, today.’
The giant red doors had a huge circle made of iron in the centre, bisected neatly where the doors met. A brass ring wider across than a human head hung down on each half of the iron circle, and there were two empty metal brackets at the top of each semicircle that were clearly meant to hold some kind of horizontal locking bar.
Only the bar was gone.
The old man frowned. ‘That’s not right!’ he exclaimed. ‘It is always kept locked from the outside when a family member is not within. Someone is already inside.’
Qing stepped forward and placed her hand on the iron ring on the right, intending to pull the door open and go inside.
The old man hissed, ‘If you open it, whoever is inside will hear you. It is not kept oiled for that very reason. No one viewing the collection may ever be surprised by an intruder. The entire wing is built like a wooden echo chamber – every footfall is amplified. The acoustics inside are excellent. Sometimes,’ the old man’s eyes seemed very sad, ‘you think you can hear the past speaking directly to you.’
Closing her eyes, Qing bowed her head, her black hair falling around her face, as if she was thinking.
In the space of two heartbeats, Harley watched in horror as she seemed to collapse inwards. For a moment her empty silk robes fluttered through the air, falling towards the floor like leaves, before they, too, seemed to roll in upon themselves and vanish like smoke – and Qing was gone through the crack between the red doors.
‘Wha—!’ Harley started to exclaim, but the old man put his index finger to his lips for silence and hurried them both behind the vast stone statue of Mo Li Qing. The two
of them crouched down behind the base of the statue, listening. Seconds later, they heard a shout from inside.
‘I’ve got to help her,’ Harley growled.
The gardener placed a hard, dry, wrinkly hand on Harley’s shirtsleeve, his head cocked as if he’d just caught some sound Harley couldn’t hear. ‘Wait,’ he whispered.
At that moment, a man in a khaki security guard’s uniform and peaked cap ran past the east wing’s doors, the statue, then around the ornamental koi pond. ‘Where are you, Captain Jia?’ he bellowed into the walkie-talkie he was clutching. ‘Wing? Andy? Bong? Fahad? Come in!’
Harley watched as the security guard ran puffing towards the front doors of the house, taking out a set of keys before unlocking the red doors from the inside and throwing them wide open. The guard ran outside, forgetting to lock the doors again in his haste.
There was a crash from inside the east wing and the old man winced. ‘Irreplaceable,’ he muttered.
‘What’s going on in there?’ Harley wailed under his breath. ‘Where’s Dad?’
His skin prickled in relief as Ray whispered, ‘Right here,’ from around the front of the statue.
Harley stood up and moved cautiously around the side of the stone statue so that he was looking up into his dad’s face. Ray had lost his grey courier cap and there was a new bruise on his forehead.
‘I’ve disabled the CCTV,’ Ray explained hurriedly, ‘and Schumacher’s temporarily, uh, engaged the undivided attention of the security team. He’ll get the one who just ran out the front. We’re good to go in. Where’s Qing?’
Harley scrunched up his face. ‘She’s already inside.’
‘Great!’ Ray grinned. ‘Hopefully she’s found it already. It’s getting hot – and I don’t mean the weather. I saw an ice-cream van creeping up the drive a second ago because there’s no one at the guardhouse to stop anyone coming in now. And you can bet whoever’s in the van isn’t here to sell ice-cream. We got in early, but we’re going to have company soon. We need to move.’
Ray’s expression sharpened as the old gardener emerged from behind the statue, too. ‘Who is he?’ Ray exclaimed.
‘He’s the gardener,’ Harley replied. ‘You know, the one who works here? He didn’t have family to go to. Qing ran straight into him.’
‘That’s bad,’ Ray said, scanning the hallway behind him nervously. ‘Apart from security, no one was supposed to be home. Now he’s seen you, he’s seen me, he’s seen her. This is a job for which the word abort was invented. We have to split. I’m meant to be a ghost. I’ve only survived this long because I pretty much leave no trace.’
Ray started to back towards the front doors, waving at Harley to follow.
‘Dad!’ Harley wailed softly. ‘We can’t leave!’
‘Yes, we can.’ Ray’s answer was curt. ‘You have to tell yourself it’s just business – and there will be other opportunities. That way you’ll never feel regret.’
‘The girl,’ the gardener reminded Ray quietly, standing with his hands clasped together in front of him, his long sleeve cuffs skimming his knuckles.
Ray stopped dead in his tracks and his shoulders slumped.
‘Leave no man behind,’ the old gardener said sternly, ‘isn’t that your motto?’
Ray nodded glumly. ‘Even if that man is a kid. Wait a minute, what?’ he exclaimed. ‘How do you know that?’
‘Especially if it’s a kid,’ Harley insisted. ‘And we can’t leave without that vase. We just can’t. We have to help.’
There was a scream from inside, and Ray stood straighter and pushed his shoulders back.
Looking at Ray and Harley with bright eyes, the old gardener placed one tightly closed fist into the palm of his other hand and bowed slightly from the waist at each of them.
‘My name is Téng,’ the old man murmured. ‘You need to promise me that whatever happens, no matter what I do, no matter what I … look like, you must destroy the vase. Do what that girl came here to do. Promise me.’
Ray’s expression slid into one of shock. ‘No,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘I can’t promise that. It’s priceless. It’s a pre-Song Dynasty vase. We’re talking further back than nine-sixty AD! I can’t destroy it. That’s not what I do. And I won’t let any of you do that, either.’
‘You’re a thief,’ the gardener said shrewdly. ‘Why do you care what happens to the things you steal after you steal them?’
‘There’s ten million dollars at stake here,’ Ray almost whined. ‘And payment is predicated on there being an intact vase on handover. It’s also my only chance to get that price taken off the kids’ heads as well.’
‘Chiu Chiu Pang wants your head, Ray Spark,’ the old man whispered, and Ray went white at his words. How did the old man know these things? ‘You will never see that money, vase or no vase, and you know it. That money was never meant for you – it was bait. Show up with that vase and you are finished, and your son is finished.’
Harley looked from the old man to his dad. ‘Is that true, Dad? That you’re a thief? I’m not a little kid anymore. Everyone’s always hinting, but no one ever comes right out and says it. Before we go any further – I need to know.’
A strange, wild look passed across Ray’s face like a shadow. ‘You can’t ever tell Schumacher this,’ Harley’s eyebrows shot up, because Ray and Schumacher were tighter than real brothers, ‘but my motivation for, for… taking things, and I do, I do take things, I admit that and I’m very good at it, the best … comes from a different place than greed. You have to believe me.’
Harley looked down at his feet, bitterly disappointed. His mum had been right all along. His dad was nothing but a common criminal. And his next action only made Harley’s heart lurch even harder inside his chest, if that were possible.
Ray reached inside the breast of his grey jumpsuit and pulled out a small pistol with a fat black grip. ‘Don’t say anything to your mother,’ Ray pleaded as he moved to stand alongside the left door, waving at Harley to hug the hinges of the door on the right side. ‘You never saw this in my hand. One day, I swear, I will explain everything.’
Harley shook his head and deliberately looked away from his dad to the old man who was now centring his body before the circular iron door pulls. His feet were planted and his fists rested on each side of his waist, palm sides up.
‘What are you do—?’ Harley began to ask, but the old man suddenly sliced down at the air before him, shooting both his wrists forward so that they were crossed in front of his body.
Then, faster than the Sparks could follow, the old man brought both fists back to chest height and began punching the air repeatedly – first a hard punch followed by a flicking turn of the wrist and withdrawing motion on one side, followed by the exact same action on the other. The closed fist punches changed into bladed hand attacks with the same flicking turn of the wrist, and then multiple rapid palm strikes with the same flick and return gesture before the old man’s open palms began to arc towards the ceiling, first crossing one side of his body, then the other, faster and faster, until his movements and face were a blur of sun-browned skin and dark fabric.
Abruptly, the old man drew both his open palms back towards his chest as if he were readying himself to push something heavy and hissed: ‘Kāi!’
The tall red doors burst open as if the old man had expelled the north wind from out of his open hands. A man standing halfway down the room with his fingers raised to a glass and black steel pedestal display case actually fell over, as if something huge and unseen had mown him down.
Harley’s eyes widened as he took in the length of the east wing in one glance – a long, rectangular chamber with black and white tiled floors and an upper gallery that ran around all four sides, supported by carved wooden columns crawling with dragons painted in brilliant reds, muted greens and gold. There were men brawling all over the upper level gallery and across the ground floor. Some had strange weapons – like the same wicked crescent-shaped blade on a stick that th
e stone god guarding the door was holding, or long, vicious twin steel hooks with long-handled shafts like butcher’s hooks. Other men were switching from western boxing to Chinese boxing, using their fists and legs to become swooping cranes or clawing tigers or leaping eagles in the blink of an eye, before changing styles again, or just trying to headbutt their opponents when none of the fancy stuff would work.
A few of the windows to the outside were open now, their security bars sheared right through. People were smashing up against or falling across the display cases dotted throughout the room, dangerously rocking the precious artefacts inside. As Harley watched from the open door, his heart in his mouth, a big glazed plate with an intricate ochre and green glazed pattern tipped off its stand and broke into pieces on top of its own pedestal.
Ray groaned as he and Harley scanned the room for any sign of Qing. ‘It’s killing me to watch this! That had to be early Tang Dynasty, at the very latest.’
‘There!’ Harley exclaimed, and Ray nodded, having seen the same azure, snake-like flash writhe up one of the dragon columns near the back left corner of the room, moving up and over the banisters into the upstairs gallery.
‘I’ll cover you, son,’ Ray said as they advanced cautiously into the room, no sign of the old gardener anywhere. ‘Head for the back left corner staircase, stay low, don’t engage; don’t be engaged. Just like her – you’re, uh, smoke. Move.’
When a hairless, moustachioed thug in a tight, shiny suit reared up in front of Harley and tried to brain him with an ancient, crescent-shaped shovel, Ray pushed Harley down onto the ground before Harley could even yell out.
