The Chinese Alchemist

by Lyn Hamilton

  “But to summarize: Zhang Xiaoling has been systematically plundering at least one tomb and probably several more in Shaanxi province somewhere, I’d guess in the area around Hua Shan. To compound this, he has been smuggling the artifacts out of the country to places like Hong Kong and North America. Dr. Xie has been helping him do that using his distribution system for Xie Homeopathic.”

  “You will never prove anything of the sort,” Dr. Xie said.

  “Maybe not. You should know, however, that I have turned the teabags you gave me in to the police for analysis, and have pointed out that Burton Haldimand may also have received teabags from you. That latter fact may be hearsay, but my teabags aren’t, and I believe they will pretty much speak for themselves. I think you killed Burton. It wouldn’t have taken much, given his medical condition and all the stuff he was putting into his system knowingly, and I think you knew enough about his health to finish him off.”

  Anthony seemed to have reached a conclusion. “All of this activity of my son will now cease, I assure you,” he said. “I would only ask that you leave it to me to deal with this matter. There was a point at which we needed the money, you understand. Even I, son of a friend of Chairman Mao, required cash. The T’ang artifacts were the debris of decadent imperialism, and I felt no qualms about selling them. I would not, however, sell Lingfei’s boxes. It seemed a sacrilege, if I may be permitted a modestly religious term. My son has no such hesitation, apparently. He will be dealt with. Now leave me to do so.”

  “I think maybe it’s a little late for that,” Rob said, speaking for the first time. “Wouldn’t you say?”

  It was at that moment that Xiaoling lunged at me. Rob had moved over toward Dr. Xie, who appeared to be edging toward the door. In an instant Xiaoling was holding me with a knife at my throat. I knew how proficient Golden Lotus was with that weapon. Dr. Xie tried to edge his way behind Xiaoling, but there was no room to do so.

  “Don’t move a muscle, Lara,” Rob said.

  “I won’t,” I croaked. That was easier said than done, of course. My legs had turned to mush. The only thing holding me up was Zhang’s grip. The room was absolutely silent for a moment except for the chirp of crickets.

  “I have nothing to do with any of this,” Dr. Xie said. Xiaoling gave him a look of pure contempt.

  In a louder tone, Rob spoke out. “Do you have the shot?”

  “I do,” said a voice not that far away.

  “Zhang Anthony,” Rob said in a voice I hadn’t heard from him before. “You see that red dot of light on your son’s skull? It’s a laser. The gun where the light originates is held by an extremely proficient marksman with the Ministry of Public Security by the name of Liu David. That red dot is exactly where the bullet will penetrate your son’s brain.

  There is no chance he will survive it, believe me. I suggest you exercise a little parental discipline and make your son drop that knife and release Ms. McClintoch.“

  I suppose Anthony did what he was told even if I couldn’t understand what he said. He may even have spoken in English, but I was too terrified, trying so hard not to move, to know. One fact that did get through to me, though, was that his son wasn’t for taking advice from his father. “The Ministry of Public Security?” he said in perfect English, a sneer on his face. Then he said something in a louder tone in Chinese. “In case you foreigners are wondering, I have offered a considerable sum of money to this person Liu to let me leave. Given that the ministry is corrupt, I expect he will accept. Now I am going. I am taking this woman with me.”

  Xiaoling took a step backward. I felt the knife pull against my neck. Then a shot rang out, and Zhang Xiaoling was no more. Rob caught me before I hit the floor.

  A few hours later, Rob and I were sitting on a stone bench in the Zhang family’s gorgeous garden. Even in winter, it was beautiful. The compound was awash in police, all directed by Liu David. While I was the one who had insisted upon getting out of the house, my teeth were chattering as much from nervous energy as the temperature. Rob had his arm around me very tightly. He kept clenching and unclenching his jaw. “Stop that,” I said. “You’re going to crack your fillings. If you think today was bad, just wait for the root canal.” It was a feeble attempt at levity to be sure, but you have to do something to take your mind off how close you have just come to oblivion.

  Epilogue

  I went to the tree in the peony garden that Number One Sister described and began to dig. After much effort, I still could not find Lingfei. I knew what I must do.

  It was then that I had a tomb built for Number One Sister. I decorated it lavishly with paintings of her life. I had carved out of granite a coffin for her, and a tablet inscribed in her honor to remember her. Into the coffin I put robes suitable to her status in the Imperial Palace. The proper ritual, the summoning of the cloud soul, was observed so that her soul might rest, and an impressive funeral procession was arranged to accompany the hearse. I burned a great deal of paper money in the tomb to speed Lingfei on her way, and I put many beautiful objects of gold and silver, pearls, and jade in the tomb for her use. I left many terra-cotta servants and musicians, a veritable Pear Garden Orchestra, to sustain her. I also had three silver boxes made by the finest silversmiths in Chang’an, each one made by a different artist to my specifications so that no one would know the whole story of Lingfei’s work. Into the smallest I put the lock of Lingfei’s hair I had taken so long ago. I left it with her. The ghost that was haunting the harem was seen no more. I wrote a poem the day before I buried Lingfei. It was a poor effort, unworthy of her, but it expressed my heartbreak. It too is in the tomb with her.

  Tomorrow in the gray dawn I will lay you to rest.

  Peonies bloom, but there is no one to share them.

  Snow blankets the courtyard, but there is no one to savor it.

  The drifting scent of patchouli haunts me.

  The breeze tinkling through the jade speaks your name.

  I am an old man now, infirm and lonely despite sons and grandchildren who treat me with respect. Number One Son is a mandarin, Number Two a eunuch. Number Two Son has perhaps even more influence than I ever had, as eunuchs have been put in charge of the workings of the Imperial Palace. I listen with interest to their stories of intrigue.

  More often than not, I sit in the gazebo in my garden. Hanging there are several pieces of jade that tinkle in the wind, ling, ling, ling. The jade is there to remind me of my sister, beautiful Lingfei. I tell my grandsons that brigands lurk in the bamboo forest on the edge of our domain, and that a ghost, a woman with fiery eyes and disheveled hair, haunts the well. Sometimes when I hear the sound the wind makes as it rattles the bamboo, I think it is a message from Number One Sister. I miss her still.

  * * *

  Zhang Xiaoling paid poor farmers the equivalent of sixty-five dollars a night to rob the tomb of Lingfei, imperial concubine and alchemist. And not just Lingfei’s. Where hers was located was a large burial area that contained at least a dozen tombs, almost all of them looted to some degree or another. Her tomb was not too far from Hua Shan, partway, in fact, between two T’ang capitals, Chang’an and Luoyang.

  Sixty-five dollars could be pretty close to the annual net income of these extraordinarily poor people, so I guess it’s hard to blame them. Still, there was a real cottage industry going for a while, with many people in the area participating. I’m not sure the powers that be care what motive drove these people to rob the tombs, because it is possible that several of them will be executed.

  Authorities were taken to the tomb by Anthony. The portable objects were gone, and all that was left was the sarcophagus, a large stone plaque that tells a rather sad story, placed there by someone by the name of Wu Yuan, and some extraordinary frescoes that in all probability illustrate the life of Lingfei. They show her in the imperial gardens, playing in an orchestra, tending to the sick, and yes, up there hovering over a mountain with the Jade Women. It’s hard to imagine what life in the imperial harem would be, e
ven under a relatively benevolent ruler like Illustrious August. It was logical, I suppose, to build her tomb not far from Hua Shan, home to the Jade Women, guardians of alchemists. The sarcophagus was opened, but there was no skeleton inside, just a few scraps of silk cloth that may have been her robes. I’m told that there may never have been one, that her body was not found, but rather a ceremony called “summoning the dead” was performed in the absence of a body.

  I think Burton had relatively little trouble uncovering the Xi’an part of the operation. I think, and in fact Liu David has confirmed, that there were all kinds of rumors circulating in the antique markets of Xi’an that there was a massive looting operation going on. It’s hard to keep that scale of operation secret, particularly outside the big cities where people keep track of their neighbors. A few strong young men are hired, they head out at night, and all of a sudden these young men, who spend a lot of time sitting idle during the day, have a lot more money than they used to, knockoff designer duds, a computer maybe, a big TV. Figure it out! Whatever they’re doing, it is unlikely to be legal. That, in fact, is why Liu David was in Xi’an, to try to get a handle on the rumors, doing officially what Burton was doing for himself.

  Unlike me, Burton spoke Chinese. He asked around, and eventually attracted attention, both from the people who had heard the rumors, and unfortunately the masterminds, Zhang Xiaoling and Xie Jinghe. I don’t think that Burton had any clue that Dorothy had put the small box up for sale, nor do I think he realized just how far the tentacles of Golden Lotus reached or even that they existed until it was too late. I suspect that to him this was a simple case of locals looting tombs. He found someone who was prepared to talk about what he’d heard, the man in the mosque. We know what happened to him. Oblivious to the danger, at least right up until the last minute, Burton headed, not for Hua Shan exactly, but to that area to try to find the tomb.

  In a way, the only mistake Burton made was going to see Zhang Xiaoling. Burton overheard Zhang talking to the police the day the silver box was stolen in Beijing, when Zhang was arranging to absent himself from the investigation. It was actually Liu David who confirmed Zhang’s name for Burton, and told who he was, not realizing that this information would get Burton killed. I don’t think Xiaoling told Burton anything—although we’ll never know, both parties to the conversation being deceased—but it did put Golden Lotus on the alert. When Burton went to Xi’an, possibly only on a hunch that if there was a T’ang tomb that was the place to look for it, some really evil people were waiting for him.

  I suppose what bothers me more than anything about these events is the role I played in Burton’s death. It was I who planted the idea in his head that Zhang Xiaoling, the man in black, was somehow involved in the robbery at Cherished Treasures House. If I hadn’t told him that, perhaps he’d be alive now.

  Rob disagrees, predictably I suppose. He says Burton would have attracted the wrong kind of attention all by himself, determined as he was to find the silver box. While I do know there is an element of truth in what Rob says, I wish I could believe it wholeheartedly. On the other hand, given all his health problems, and his attempts at self-medication, Burton wasn’t really long for this world anyway.

  Dr. Xie is in Canada, I regret to say. Somehow he managed to bribe his way out of China. China has asked that he be sent back. My home country does not usually extradite people to countries with the death penalty, so it will be interesting to see how Dr. Xie with all his money makes out in this regard. Due process in this kind of case takes a very long time in Canada, and so it will be some time before we know how this one will turn out. If he is forced to return to China, it will be equally interesting to see whether they will execute someone of his standing for smuggling. In China today, due process is still in short supply where crimes of this sort are concerned. No matter what happens, I rest easy knowing that his part of the smuggling will cease. It is people like Xie and their insatiable appetite for antiquities that fuel both the illegal trade and the looting of tombs.

  While we were meeting with Zhang Anthony, police officers were raiding the Xie Homeopathic warehouse in Xi’an. Antiquities were indeed found. Xie used his legitimate business shipments to mask his illegal ones, and used his warehouses in Hong Kong, Vancouver, and Los Angeles to store the antiquities before passing them along to be sold, either through legitimate dealers or not-so-legitimate ones. Several auction houses are being investigated to see if they in fact knew the objects were looted.

  My teabags are an important part of the case against Dr. Xie in the matter of the murder of Burton Haldimand, and the attempted murder of a certain antique dealer. Apparently there was arsenic in them. I’m glad I only used one, and that arsenic has to build up in the system to kill you. For whatever reason, Burton didn’t realize until too late what he was getting himself in for. Most likely the man in the mosque told him that the rumors placed the tomb not far from Hua Shan. Burton went there to see what he could find, and already terribly ill, died in that dreary hotel.

  I expect there would be arsenic in Burton’s teabags, too, if they could be found, but they, like his tea kettle, have disappeared. David thinks that Xiaoling’s goons were following Burton to Hua Shan, probably intending to kill him on the spot rather than waiting for the teabags to do their deadly work. They didn’t have to kill him, at least there is no evidence they did so, but they did get rid of the evidence. It may be that Burton suddenly realized he was being followed, hence his panicky call to me. I will always remember his attempt to warn me of the danger that he suddenly realized existed.

  Liu David of the Ministry of Public Security was investigating a corrupt official of the Beijing Cultural Relics bureau by the name of Song Liang, aka Mr. Knockoff. Burton conveniently afforded him entree into the world of art and those who buy it. David, too, was almost certain that it was Song who had stolen the silver box, and when Song turned up dead in Xi’an, David was sent there to investigate further.

  Song had been sent to New York by his employers to try to purchase the silver box for China. While he was as unsuccessful as the rest of us, he did realize that others wanted this highly desirable object. Who knows what thoughts went through his mind? Maybe the bright lights and wealth of New York were just too much for him, and he wanted a piece of it. It was perhaps then that he had the idea of using the silver box as his entree into the smuggling racket. If so, he was decidedly out of his league. All it got him was dead. I may have some sympathy for the poor farmers who loot. I have none for someone like Song Liang. I think of Ting and Rong who saved me from Xiaoling at great personal risk, and the truly poor conditions under which they live. For all their poverty they had a dignity that few others in this saga share.

  People to whom I have told this story ask me how I knew that Liu David was a policeman when I saw him in the market outside the Baxian Gong that day. I have a tendency to say it was feminine intuition. That’s really not true. The answer is very simple. I more or less live with a plainclothes cop. Once, early in our relationship, I saw him at a restaurant. He was with two other men. I was about to go over to say hello to him, but he gave me this almost imperceptible shake of the head, and I kept going right past his table. I got the same look, an identical tiny shake of the head from David and I just knew. True, I saw him at a time when I was feeling relatively safe, having just heard the results of the toxicology tests on Burton. Under different circumstances, I might have seen him in an entirely different, and inaccurate, light.

  David’s investigation has broadened and caught a corrupt customs agent or three. Several people at Xie Homeopathic are being investigated as well. As for Zhang Anthony, he may well get off scot-free. He says he didn’t know what his son was up to, and maybe he didn’t. He wouldn’t be the first parent to be surprised by an offspring’s extracurricular activities. However, he did sell objects from Lingfei’s tomb over the years. The question is whether it was so long ago that nobody will care. Dorothy’s silver box was found in the trunk of Xiaoling’
s car. That would be his second car, after the white Lexus, in this case a red BMW. The wrecked white Lexus by the side of the road in the hills outside Beijing had no plates, but its serial number has been traced to Xiaoling.

  Now that the head has been cut off, metaphorically speaking, Golden Lotus, Zhang Xiaoling’s group of thugs, has more or less disbanded. In Toronto several were arrested for their involvement in Dr. Xie’s antiquities smuggling operation. Good riddance is about all one can say.

  That meant I could go back home. I love my little Victorian cottage even more than before. I have made one concession to the events of the past many months, which is that I have permitted Rob to put a gate in the fence between our two backyards, so that he can go out his back door and into mine. I tell him that the reason I agreed was so that I could stay in my own house if he managed to annoy some other scum, and that next time he’s on his own in the hotel. Really, though, it’s a small acknowledgment on my part of his importance in my life.

  Before we left China, Jennifer came to Beijing and we had an early Christmas together. Rob had to stay for a few days to wrap things up with David, so we sent her a ticket. We went to the Forbidden Palace, the Great Wall, wandered through the hutongs, shopped in the markets, everything in fact that visitors to Beijing should do. Everywhere we went, people were lovely, everything we saw a jewel. I believe that despite all that happened, I fell in love with Beijing all over again.