Tell Me No Lies

by Elizabeth Lowell

  "Exactly."

  Catlin nodded, but he wasn't wholly satisfied with Lindsay's explanation of her strong feelings on the subject. He doubted that the question of fraud and deception was that simple for Lindsay. Something other than the expert's contempt for the inexpert was driving her. She wasn't that kind of intellectual snob. If she were, she would have condescended to O'Donnel even while she answered his ingenuous questions about the seventeen bronzes. But she hadn't condescended. She had answered carefully, trying to share her love of the bronzes as well as her knowledge of them. It had been the same when Catlin had thought aloud about the Shang bowl, telling Lindsay things about art and culture that she already knew. She hadn't been haughty or protective of her superior knowledge; she had smiled and told him what a pleasure it was to meet someone who shared her passion for old Chinese bronzes.

  "You really loathe frauds, don't you?" asked Catlin, lacing his fingers through Lindsay's in a single smooth motion, bringing their palms together, holding them that way.

  The texture of Catlin's touch caused sensations that spread through Lindsay as surely as the wine she had just sipped. His hand was large, smooth between the long fingers and hard along the edge of the palm. Warm. She looked up, wondering if he could feel her surprised response in the pulse beating just beneath the skin of her inner wrist.

  "Yes," she said simply.

  "Why?"

  There was silence for a long moment while Lindsay absorbed the question, and the fact that the question had even been asked. Her response to fraud was something that she had always taken for granted about herself. She hated lies of all kinds.

  "Doesn't everyone?" she asked.

  Catlin's answer was a smile that made Lindsay wonder what he had been doing for the lifetime before he had come to her and asked about Qin bronzes.

  "Not everyone, Lindsay. Not even most people. It's truth they fight, not lies."

  A lighter flared at the next table. The unmistakable odor of a Chinese cigarette drifted over to Lindsay. The candle in the red bowl near her hand flickered suddenly, making scarlet light ripple like flames over the cloth, turning it into the landscape of her nightmare, smoke and fire. Her hand tightened within Catlin's until her skin was pale where it pressed next to his. Remembered screams writhed silently in her mind, memories of futile pleas, the overpowering smell of incense and blood that would not stop spurting, blood all over her hands and a voice rasping Betrayed!

  Or was that nightmare, not memory? Did someone cry betrayal in her dreams?

  Lindsay's bleak eyes met Catlin's over the wavering candlelight. "It's been a long time since I smelled incense," she said in a flat voice. "I've never really liked it. I need fresh air."

  Catlin didn't point out that it was a Chinese cigarette rather than incense burning in the restaurant. He had seen fear in Lindsay's eyes, heard it in the tightness of her voice, felt it in her hand laced through his. He signaled to the waiter, paid the bill and took Lindsay outside. Washington's summer night flowed over them in a dark, moist embrace. Low clouds diffused the city's lights, making the sky appear to slowly seethe.

  As Lindsay and Catlin walked, he took her hand again, anchoring her to his warmth and strength. She accepted the gesture as it was meant, comfort rather than seduction. She didn't say anything until they had walked down Nineteenth Street to Pennsylvania Avenue and turned left past the Executive Office Building to the tree-studded open space called the Elipse. The smell of grass and the tang of salt air from the Tidal Basin blended with the urban odors of asphalt, concrete and car exhaust. Lindsay breathed deeply, feeling like a fool for letting childhood memories and a lingering nightmare upset her

  so much. She faced Catlin but made no effort to remove her hand from his.

  "I'm sorry," she said quietly. "My uncle was murdered when I was seven. I believe I was with him. At least I have memories of blood. Sometimes. At night, late – " Her voice broke. She made a curt gesture with her free hand. "Memories or nightmare, it – "

  Catlin pulled Lindsay into his arms, muffling her fragmented words against his chest. He held her while she trembled, her skin cool to his touch. He didn't have to hear the rest of her story in order to understand. He still remembered the first time he had seen violent death, the shocking profusion of blood, the slaughterhouse smell, the terrible stillness of cooling flesh. He had been twenty, and he had vomited until he was too weak to stand.

  How much worse it must have been for a child of seven. The fact that Lindsay didn't remember it only underlined the intensity of the horror. She had simply blotted it from her mind. Or tried to. Memories could turn into dreams, and dreams into nightmares.

  Slowly Catlin rocked Lindsay against his body, smoothing her hair with one hand, murmuring words that had no meaning beyond reassuring her that someone was there with her. As he brushed his lips over her hair he wondered how many times she had gotten the night shakes and fought them alone. Like him. Now the shakes came to him only rarely, in dreams, when he was young again and a woman whispered love against his mouth while she raised a gun to his face. Mei, who had loved treachery and lies more than she had loved any man – and she had loved him better than her other men. Mei, who had killed and never dreamed. The perfect conspirator, the ideal assassin.

  You've picked the wrong player, Yi, Catlin raged silently. Lindsay's not the kind of woman who can survive your power games. The best way I can earn back the other half of that coin is to grab her and run like hell for cover.

  But there was no cover.

  Catlin didn't need to turn his head to see another couple standing close together beneath a tree. It wasn't love or even lust on the couple's mind. Catlin had noticed their presence when they left the restaurant with their meal half-eaten. The pair had stayed behind Catlin and Lindsay every step of the way since. So had two other men, seen only as shadows crossing parallel intersections, their steps hobbled to match Lindsay's high-heeled stride.

  Lindsay stirred against Catlin's chest. The trembling had gone, leaving only the awareness that she was standing in a stranger's arms, absorbing the comfort he gave without question – but Catlin didn't feel like a stranger. There was no awkwardness, no uncertainty in his touch. He held her as though he had known her for a very long tune. She had held him in the same way.

  "Better?" he asked, his voice soft and deep.

  She nodded and took another slow breath. "It hasn't been that bad for a long time. I'll be all right now. It – passes," she said. Then she heard her own words echo and felt embarrassment sweep up in a hot tide. Very softly she added, "I'm not really crazy. Sometimes the nightmare just – "

  "Yes. I know."

  There was such certainty in Catlin's voice that Lindsay looked up, meeting his eyes. "How?"

  "I've been there, Lindsay. And then, like you, I finally came home." He brushed his mouth over hers, taking the question that had formed on her lips. "That's what I'm going to do with you tonight. Take you home. I'll feed you a brandy and we'll play mah-jongg until dawn. If you fall asleep between turns and the nightmare comes again, I'll be there."

  Lindsay let out her breath in a rush of sound, feeling a vast relief at not having to go back and face the nightmare alone. "You don't have to do that," she said. "I'm used to – "

  "I know," he said, interrupting her with another brush of his lips over hers. "Did you ever think that maybe I dream, too?"

  Her eyes widened in surprise, their deep blue color turned to black by fear and the night. "What do you dream about, Catlin?" she whispered.

  He gathered her hands from his shirtfront, kissed both palms and hoped that she would never know.

  Chapter 6

  You're one hell of a fast worker," O'Donnel said, looking up as Catlin came into the office. "One date and bang! Home with the lady you go, never to leave until dawn. And here she wouldn't even play footsie with me."

  "Where's Chen Yi?" asked Catlin.

  O'Donnel opened his mouth to pursue the subject of fa
st work, took a look at Catlin's narrowed eyes and decided that the other man wasn't going to kiss and tell. "In with Stone."

  "Who's the referee?"

  O'Donnel rocked back in his office chair and gave Catlin a long look. "You volunteering?"

  "I'm insisting."

  Although Catlin smiled, nothing about his expression was genial. Without another word O'Donnel came to his feet and led Catlin to Stone's office. The room was redolent of Yi's strong cigarettes. Catlin glanced quickly around the office, noting both the executive furniture and the obligatory framed photos on the wall showing Stone shaking hands with three presidents, a brace of senators and the man who had once counted for more than any mere politician – J. Edgar Hoover.

  "I understand from the surveillance report that you and Miss Danner got along like a house on fire," said Stone, his tone revealing both approval of Catlin's prowess and disapproval of Lindsay's easiness.

  "Do you have a room where Yi and I could talk privately?"

  "No."

  Catlin turned to Yi and began talking in Mandarin. Stone took it for a few moments, then swore and got to his feet.

  "You can have this one," Stone said, stalking out the door and shutting it hard behind him.

  "Are we truly alone?" asked Yi, looking around the office.

  "Probably," Catlin responded in English. "After Watergate, only a fool would bug his own office."

  "Ah!" Yi waited, watching the man opposite him with opaque black eyes.

  "Let her off the hook," Catlin said without preamble. "She doesn't have what it takes for this kind of work."

  "She has precisely what is needed."

  "Crap!" retorted Catlin. "She's so damned naive she didn't even know a two-way mirror when she saw it."

  Yi nodded. "That is why I have you, dragon. You see through walls for her."

  Catlin made an impatient sound. "It won't work, Yi. She's not hard enough. She still gets the shakes over a murder that happened nearly a quarter century ago. She has a fetish about honesty. In short, she's just not a player. Try to make her into one and she'll blow up in your hands."

  "She has a gift for the genuine," agreed Yi, inhaling quickly. "Her mother had that gift, too, only with her it was for people, not art."

  "Had?" asked Catlin, remembering that Lindsay's file had listed her mother as still living.

  "She died two months ago."

  "Christ. No wonder Lindsay has the shakes. She's reliving the past while she tries to cope with losing it."

  "Please?" asked Yi.

  Catlin's hand moved in a savage gesture. "Lindsay is an only child. Both her parents are dead. No one alive remembers her childhood. No one. The child that was Lindsay died with her mother."

  Yi's eyes widened as he absorbed the ramifications of Catlin's harsh words. "You speak as one who knows."

  Catlin shrugged. "We all face it sooner or later, unless we die out of turn."

  "Not in China," Yi said softly. "Very few of us know that kind of isolation. Our families are large, our communities are small, and we share our lives many times, with many people." He looked down at his own hands, thinned by age, and thought of his family stretching back through history, a net of blood relationships woven across the face of Asia and time itself. "It must be terrible to be so alone," he said after a long pause. "I grieve for the daughter." He glanced up, meeting Catlin's eyes unflinchingly. "I would free her if I could, but I cannot. She is needed."

  "Why?" demanded Catlin. "There's a world full of experts out there."

  "The bowl," murmured Yi, "and the hill-censer. As I have said to you before, she has a gift for the genuine. This is known about her in China, as well as in America. Even as a child she had that gift. Whatever she says about bronzes will be believed. It would not be so with other experts. Whether they said forgery or fine art, there would be doubt, for the experts were not born of China. They did not grow on millet and rice, hunger and politics, fear and danger. Other bronze experts may have knowledge or greed, but no gift." Yi's cigarette flared fiercely. When he spoke again his tone was staccato, harsh, allowing no argument. "Lindsay Danner is necessary tome. To China."

  Catlin thought of the woman he had laughed and talked with until dawn so that no dark dreams could ripple through her mind, making her twist and turn as though trying to evade a hunter. He knew that she could not stay awake every night, and he knew that the nightmare was patient.

  "Yi – " began Catlin.

  There was a knock, then the door opened immediately. "Finished?" O'Donnel asked, looking from Yi to Catlin.

  "Yes, "said Yi.

  "No," said Catlin.

  "Well, put a cork in it for now," advised O'Donnel. "She's here," he added, looking at Yi.

  "Ah!"

  Catlin snarled an obscenity, knowing that he had lost. He turned toward Yi with a speed that made O'Donnel flinch in surprise. When Catlin spoke, it was in Mandarin. The words were clipped, as harsh as the sound of stone grating over stone.

  "If she is hurt, most honorable Chen Yi, you will wish that you had not gone fishing with a dragon."

  Yi traded stares with Catlin for a long moment, then bowed slightly, accepting Catlin's promise. O'Donnel hesitated, sensing the tension in the room but not knowing its cause.

  "Ready now?" O'Donnel asked dryly, poised in the doorway.

  Yi tossed his half-smoked cigarette into an ashtray and stepped toward the door. Catlin followed. Neither man said a word as O'Donnel led them down the hall and into the same "Conference" room where Lindsay had looked over the seventeen ancient bronzes. The long table had been replaced by comfortable chairs circling a smaller table. The careful intimacy of the arrangement brought a cynical smile to Catlin's lips, but he said nothing. He simply turned around, went back down the hall a few steps and opened the door that led to the concealed room.

  "I'll watch from here," said Catlin. "If she sees me before she says yes, she might say no.''

  O'Donnel's eyebrows climbed. "And here we thought you were our secret weapon."

  "I'm nobody's secret weapon," Catlin said flatly.

  Yi watched Catlin leave, but said nothing. After a short look around the room, Yi took a chair near an ashtray, lit another cigarette and waited for Lindsay Danner to arrive. The wait wasn't long. A door opened and a voice floated down the hall into the room. Yi closed his eyes for a moment, listening, remembering what life had been like many, many years ago.

  "Mr. White didn't tell me what you wanted," Lindsay said, looking over her shoulder as Stone held open the door for her. "Is it about the bronzes I saw yesterday?"

  "Indirectly."

  Lindsay walked into the room, smelled the unmistakable pungency of a Chinese cigarette and closed her eyes for an instant, fighting memories. When she opened her eyes again, she saw an elderly Chinese man sitting in an oversized chair, watching her. Though his clothes were Western, she had no doubt that he had come from half a world away. He stood, bowed slightly when Stone introduced them and sat again.

  "Have a seat, Lindsay," O'Donnel said, gesturing to the chair next to Yi. "Coffee?"

  "Yes, please. Extra cream, too," she added, remembering the last cup of coffee she had drunk in the Hoover Building.

  "Mr. Chen?"

  "Thank you, yes," said Yi. "No cream. Much sugar. Is there lemon peel?" he added rather wistfully.

  "I'll see if I can scare some up," promised O'Donnel.

  Stone waited until the door closed before he took a chair opposite Lindsay. "Thank you for coming here again. Before I go any further, I want to stress that though Steve doesn't know the precise details of what we have in mind, we have his fullest cooperation in this, er, endeavor."

  "Yes, I gathered that," said Lindsay, her voice neutral. What she didn't say was that J. Stephen had called the cab for her, loaded her in and given directions to the driver before she could either agree or object.

  "A rather unusual job has come up," Stone said, eyeing the cool
, poised woman who had gone out once with a stranger and then taken him home until dawn. "A job that can only be done by you."

  Lindsay fixed Stone with dark blue eyes and murmured encouragingly. Her curiosity was fully aroused. "More bronzes?" she asked.

  "Yes."

  "Mmm. Treasure hunt time," said Lindsay, smiling widely, letting her excitement show. "You're on! Lead me to them, Mr. Stone."

  "Actually," Stone said, grinning in response, "we were hoping that you would lead us."

  "I don't understand," she said, looking at the three men. Then a possibility occurred to her. The smile vanished as her expression became remote, cold. "Neither I nor any of my private clients deal in suspect bronzes," she said in a clipped voice.

  Yi measured the emotion coiled just beneath the silvery voice and remembered Catlin's warning: She has a fetish about honesty.

  Yi had wondered at the time if that were the legacy of a missionary upbringing. He still wondered, but he no longer doubted that whatever the source, Lindsay was committed to honesty in the same way that other people were committed to God or Marx or Mao. Lindsay's commitment to the truth came as no real surprise. That, in addition to her gift for discovering fraudulent bronzes, had been what made her uniquely suited for dealing with Emperor Qin's bronzes. Her reputation for honesty was known and accepted on both sides of the Pacific.

  Sadly Yi acknowledged to himself that the daughter was like the mother in more than voice. Both women would face down a hungry tiger over a matte" of principle. Unfortunately, while necessary and even admirable, Lindsay's honesty would make things much more difficult, infinitely more dangerous.

  Yi's cigarette glowed sharply, twice.

  "No one meant to imply any dishonesty on your part," Stone said calmly. "Frankly, we've researched you rather thoroughly. You have an enviable reputation. That, in addition to your expertise, is your major attraction for us."

  Lindsay weighed the words, nodded and settled back into her chair. "All right, Mr. Stone. What do you want me to do?"

  "Brad," he corrected, smiling. "May I call you Lindsay?"