Tell Me No Lies

by Elizabeth Lowell

  "Sit, daughter," he said in clipped English. "I would speak to you as your father would speak if he were still alive. I am a man who is older and wiser than you, a man who has some small reputation for sagacity and discrimination, and a man who has seen much more of the world and of the kinds of men who inhabit it than you have.''

  With a sinking heart Lindsay lowered herself into the bare wooden chair, bowed her head and prepared to hear an unpleasant lecture from a man she respected and loved as a second father. She wanted to defend herself but knew she could not. There was nothing she could do but endure the well-meant words.

  "Yes, honorable Uncle Wu," she said softly. "I know you are a man both wise and generous. You have always been kind to me, most revered uncle."

  There was a charged silence as Lindsay's indirect plea for mercy registered on Wu. The stern look on his face didn't soften, nor did the ice in his voice melt.

  "What are you doing with dog spittle such as Jacques-Pierre Rousseau?" demanded Wu.

  Lindsay's head snapped up in surprise. "Who?"

  There was another moment of silence while Wu measured Lindsay's honest shock. "It is as I feared," he muttered. "You do not even know the true nature of the dishonorable dog whose hands travel over you with the confidence of a husband's."

  Dazed, Lindsay could only stare at Wu.

  "Ah, foolish daughter," he said, sighing harshly. "You have been blinded by lust. The man you know as Jacob MacArthur Catlin is really Jacques-Pierre Rousseau. He is not fit to carry your night soil to the kitchen garden."

  "Uncle Wu – "

  "Silence! Do you have so little respect for the man who has called you daughter that you would interrupt him as though he were no more than a quacking duck?"

  "Forgive me," whispered Lindsay. Her interlaced fingers tightened until her knuckles were white. "Forgive me, honorable Uncle Wu. I meant no – "

  "What you meant or did not mean does not change what is," he interrupted coldly. "You have become the whore of a man who was known throughout Asia for many terrible acts, but most of all for the buying and selling of lives using opium as currency."

  Lindsay made a choked sound of disbelief. She wanted to speak, to defend herself, yet knew that if she protested she would only anger Wu more. And he sounded so certain, so absolutely and unalterably confident. She tried not to think of Bradford Stone, who distrusted Catlin, and Chen Yi, who had hired Catlin. Chen Yi, who apparently did not have the trust of his own comrades.

  "Rousseau profited greatly from his immorality, as such men always do for a tune," Wu continued, not knowing that his words were swirling around Lindsay like the wind, sound without meaning. "His power grew enormously. People came to him to kowtow and pay tribute. Part of that tribute went into acquiring a collection of ancient bronzes." Grudgingly Wu added, "He had a fine eye for value. He was also known from Hong Kong to the Golden Triangle for being as ruthless as Emperor Qin himself. He dealt very harshly with people who brought less to him than they had promised, whether it was information, bronzes or opium. No one who cheated Rousseau survived to cheat him again."

  Lindsay's head came up as her eyes searched Wu's closed, harsh face. She saw only his belief in the words he was speaking.

  "His name is Jacob MacArthur Catlin," she said desperately, but even as she spoke, doubt was spreading through her. Wu was so certain, his eyes blazing with contempt, his words cutting through her. Stone had been the same way, so certain that something was very wrong with Catlin. All those missing years. Was that what he had done? Had he gone renegade and lived as a gangster in a land torn by intrigue and violence? "His name is Catlin!"

  "His name is Satan," hissed Wu. "He is corrupt. He has corrupted others. Do not let him corrupt you. Tell him that you will see him no more. Tell him in Mandarin, daughter. It is a language he speaks as well as I do!"

  For an instant Lindsay thought of confessing, of admitting that she and Catlin weren't lovers, that she still had maintained the high principles of her childhood. The words were crowding into her mouth when other words came to her, Catlin's words: It's the people you respect who will tear the guts out of you. You have to deceive them, too. All of them. All the way to the wall. No hedging, no flinching, no secret winks, no hand signals. And no exceptions. She also remembered his urgent warning just a few moments before: Don't let me down.

  Lindsay knew that the act transcended what Catlin was or was not, what he had been or had not been. She had volunteered for this charade. Now she must play it as she had agreed to; as Stone had asked her to; as she had promised Chen Yi she would, and Catlin, her tour guide in hell.

  "I can't do that," she whispered, not knowing whether her words were for Wu or Catlin or herself.

  Wu had no such doubts. "Are you so besotted with his sexuality that you have no honor? Do you want to become one more in the multitude of foolish, immoral women he has used as whores, taking information from them and then sending them into the alleys to suck more information from other men? He paid them in opium and sex, and when they were too diseased to be of any further use he gutted them like fish."

  "No!" The word was harsh, ragged, a denial torn from Lindsay's soul. She wasn't hearing what Wu said so much as she was hearing his conviction that Catlin was evil. She didn't believe that. She couldn't. "He is Catlin, not Rousseau!"

  "You are no different than the other worthless sluts who have presented their ripe channels for him to rut upon," Wu said in disgust as he turned and walked to the door. "Tonight I will burn incense to thank God that your parents did not live to see their only daughter permit a dog to piss into the sacred vessel of their honor."

  "Uncle Wu!"

  It was too late. The door had shut behind him.

  Lindsay sat huddled in the chair for a moment, unable to move, unable even to cry. Slowly she dragged herself to her feet, Wu's words ringing terribly in her mind: Rousseau. Opium. Satan. Sexuality. Catlin. Opium. Rousseau.

  She didn't realize that she had stumbled downstairs and back into the workroom until she heard Catlin's voice calling her name.

  "Lindsay? What's wrong? Lindsay!"

  Hard fingers bit into her shoulders, shaking her.

  "Lindsay, what the hell is going on?" Catlin demanded, his voice harsh.

  The pain almost felt good. It proved to her that she was still alive, that Wu's contempt hadn't killed her.

  "Rousseau. You once called yourself Jacques-Pierre Rousseau, didn't you?" she whispered in Mandarin. She saw the instant of shock on Catlin's face as he comprehended her words, and she felt as though a knife had ripped through her. Catlin understood Mandarin. Wu had been right. All of it. Rousseau and the opium and the women. And now she was one of them. She had responded to him as she had to no other man. She shuddered horribly.

  "Don't touch me," Lindsay said in English. "Don't ever touch me again."

  "What kind of lies has Wu been telling you?" demanded Catlin.

  "He wouldn't lie to me," Lindsay said hollowly. "But you would, wouldn't you? Rousseau."

  Catlin didn't try to argue with Lindsay. It would have been too dangerous, the outcome too uncertain. He slammed the door shut behind her with one hand, and with the other he pulled her against him, using enough force to send the air from her lungs. His right hand moved up her throat to her jaw, holding her head immobile even as his body flattened her against the workshop wall. His left thumb slid inside her lips to the back of her jaw, opening her mouth for the savage intimacy of his tongue.

  There was no possibility of withdrawal, no way for Lindsay to resist. Catlin jerked her off balance, ruthlessly using his superior strength and skill. Suddenly there was no floor beneath her feet, no wall at her back, nothing but the shocking strength of his arms holding her suspended between lie and truth, despair and hunger, the unknown past and the agonizing present. Her fingers moved convulsively, digging into his biceps as she braced herself against his power. There was nothing sexual in her response. She hung on to Catlin
because at some elemental level she knew that if she let go she would never find her way out of hell with the seeds of a better future in her hands.

  Catlin felt the change in Lindsay's body and knew that she had remembered the role she must play. Wu had shocked her, had savaged her cruelly and had told her God knows what lies and even more devastating truths about a man called Rousseau. But Lindsay was still game. She would be able to go on with the act and with Chen Yi's many-sided quest. Catlin knew that he could release her from his harsh grasp now, let her slide like heavy, warm satin down his body until she was standing on her own again. He knew, but his arms didn't shift. Only his mouth did, rocking gently as his tongue caressed Lindsay, coaxing her, filling the soft heat of her mouth with his own presence.

  Slowly Lindsay's fingers relaxed until they no longer dug fiercely into Catlin's flexed strength. Her hands caressed him in the same slow rhythms as his kiss, stroking his shoulders and neck and finally sliding deeply into the warm midnight of his hair. He felt Lindsay shiver as her fingernails delicately scraped his scalp and the sensitive rim of his ear. The caress was returned to her with exquisite restraint as his teeth sank into her lower lip.

  Lindsay's eyes opened slowly. He saw desire in their depths, and unshed tears, and the darkness that had increased with every new level of hell he had led her down into.

  "Uncle Wu wouldn't lie to me," she said, her voice husky, her lips trembling.

  "Neither would I," said Catlin. In slow motion he let her slide back down his body, making no effort to hide the thrusting evidence of his own arousal. "Does that feel like a lie?" he asked softly, savagely against her mouth. "Does it?"

  "No," Lindsay breathed, closing her eyes, unable to bear looking into Catlin's any longer. "No "

  Tears infused her lashes and seeped down her cheeks in hot silver drops. She started to speak, but he took her mouth again and then again until all she could say was his name between kisses, his name a litany on her lips as she clung to him, forgetting everything except him.

  Only then did Catlin release Lindsay, sheltering her face against his body as he looked over her head into the flat eye of the television camera and smiled.

  Chapter 17

  "You know something?" Stone said in disgust, turning away from an unbroken view of San Francisco and the cobalt blue water of the bay. "The director assured me that this would be a really quick one. 'Just on the edge of breaking open,' he said. 'It could happen any minute and I want you to be there. The Bureau has worked hard for this one. Don't let the CIA take the credit.' So what happens? Nothing. Nearly a week I spend in this crummy hotel room and not one damn thing happens."

  O'Donnel's lips flattened into an unhumorous line as he looked around the luxurious suite with its commanding view of city and sea. "Oh, I wouldn't say that, boss. Lindsay has taken us on a grand tour of Chinatown. We've seen every import shop, Christian mission and Chinese clip joint within twenty miles. Though I have to tell you, that lady's fortunes sure have fallen lately. From the Chinese Christian Benevolent Society to Chinese Cutthroats Anonymous. Well, not so anonymous, actually. Most of them have a whole section to themselves in our local office's computer."

  "Imported whores, interstate hits and China white for local heroin addicts only. I care about counterintelligence, not the Ten Most Wanted assholes in Chinatown," Stone muttered as he lit a cigarette.

  "Look at it this way," O'Donnel offered with deadpan cheer, nudging an ashtray toward his boss as he sat down.

  "Our men have learned to eat soup with chopsticks. Not a dead loss at all."

  Stone smiled unwillingly. "I knew there was a reason I put up with you." He tossed his lighter on the table and shook his head in rueful admiration. "Soup with chopsticks. Hell, Terry, that about sums up this farce."

  "You're just out of practice," chided O'Donnel. "You've forgotten how boring most undercover operations are right up until the instant when you pull out the shotguns and the handcuffs. It's a lot like fishing. You spend ninety-eight percent of your time scratching your balls and waiting for a bite."

  Stone grunted. "I'd rather be fishing." He ran his palm over his hair and sighed. "All right. Give me the most recent condensation of useless crap."

  With an automatic motion O'Donnel retrieved a notebook from his breast pocket. With narrowed eyes he skimmed the pages quickly. "Okay. Here we go. Do you want it all, or just the stuff since Lindsay last called you?"

  "Any discrepancies?" Stone asked in a bored voice.

  "Nope. The stuff she gives us agrees right down the line with what the other agents have picked up.''

  "That's one bright spot," Stone said, flicking ashes in the direction of a huge crystal ashtray. "After our little chat in D.C. I was afraid she wouldn't cooperate."

  "Chen Yi's been straight, too," O'Donnel pointed out. "His updates on what Catlin and Lindsay are doing have matched our information to the last detail."

  "Why does that make me nervous?" Stone asked rhetorically.

  "Because none of them have mentioned Catlin's past as a CIA undercover called Rousseau?" retorted O'Donnel. "Including the CIA itself?"

  Stone's smile was like an unsheathed knife. It still rankled that the CIA refused to fill in the gaps in Catlin's file. "Maybe Lindsay doesn't know what he used to do."

  "Maybe she does, and doesn't think it matters. Or maybe Catlin's forcing her to be quiet. Remember, he's always in the room when she calls," said O'Donnel.

  Grimacing, Stone took a drag on his cigarette. "If I had to guess, I'd say she doesn't know. Catlin is probably keeping her in the dark to avoid scaring her to death. Unfortunately, she could get herself blown up and never know the reason why. And neither would we. If the stakeout team at Wang's auction hadn't caught Tom Lee's hit man wiring Catlin's car, the whole operation could have been blown to hell and we'd have blamed it on the damn bronzes, not on Catlin's stint as Rousseau in Indochina."

  O'Donnel shrugged. Catlin was a big boy. He had played hardball with the pros for nearly all of his adult life. If he bought it, no one would cry. "The stakeout team seemed to think Catlin would have found the bomb himself. He checked the car pretty thoroughly."

  O'Donnel flipped through the pages of his notebook, checking the entries that had come after Lindsay's last call.

  "The room bugs show the same pattern," he said. "Lindsay got up in the middle of the night and took a long shower. Alone." He shook his head and muttered, "Fifth night in a row, too. Hell of a time to solo in the shower. She must not be sleeping worth a damn. Both of them got up at the same time in the morning, early, and she did her tai chi chuan. So did he."

  O'Donnel looked up for a moment. "You were right about that gym and full contact karate, by the way. The agent who had the watch on Catlin yesterday morning said he hadn't seen anything like it since the early Chuck Norris movies. Catlin and some big Vietnamese were going at it like hell on fire. Agent said it was a wonder nobody was killed. Is that stuff legal?"

  Stone shrugged. "Between consenting adults, it is."

  O'Donnel flipped to another page. "Damn few phone calls. Her San Francisco friends have gotten the word, I guess. No more invitations to lunch or tea or brunch or Sunday School."

  A grunt was Stone's only answer.

  "Some flaky art dealer they met in D.C. is in town. He invited them to dinner beginning – " O'Donnel looked at his watch " – twenty minutes ago. There may be something strange going on there. One of our surveillance team said it looks like they've picked up an extra tail, a Chinese. He latched on to Catlin at the hotel. Now he's hanging around inside a grocery store across the street, watching the front of the restaurant."

  Stone's pale blue eyes narrowed. He straightened up on the couch with his first display of real interest. "Another one of Tom Lee's hit men?"

  "Impossible to tell right now," admitted O'Donnel. "The local field office has a snitch inside Lee's organization, but they haven't been able to get anything definite. The snitch says Lee i
s sweating bullets over Rousseau coming back from the dead, but that doesn't mean Lee has authorized a move on him. Beyond the bomb, of course, and that could have been kind of a little 'hello, welcome back to the pros,' to see if Catlin had lost his edge."

  Swearing tiredly, Stone stubbed out his cigarette. "What's your best guess, Terry? Does Lee have the bronzes?"

  "Could be. He's certainly got the smuggling apparatus to bring them in."

  "So do half the gangsters in Chinatown," muttered Stone, "and more than a few of the Christian missionary groups, too. Christ. What the hell are Customs and Immigration and DEA doing while all this garbage comes in under their noses? Dope, antiques, every kind of contraband you can think of, including human beings. I'll bet half the new arrivals in Chinatown are illegal aliens. If I were a federal agent in San Francisco, I'd be so embarrassed I couldn't look at myself in the mirror long enough to shave."

  "Maybe that's why everybody in DEA has a beard," replied O'Donnel.

  Stone sighed. ' 'Okay, so Lindsay and Catlin have picked up a new tail. Who's on the countersurveillance when they leave the hotel?"

  "I am."

  "Getting bored holding my hand?" Stone asked dryly.

  O'Donnel laughed. "Nope. I just wanted a chance to stretch my legs. But don't worry, boss. Like Catlin, I haven't lost my touch after a stint at desk work."

  Stone frowned and fiddled with a pen, ignoring the cigarette still smoking in the ashtray. "Okay, you've got the countersurveillance. But let's play it safe. Pull the primary surveillance off Catlin and Lindsay. It's going to get too crowded, otherwise. Just keep your eye on the Chinese shadow in the grocery store. Let him do his thing, unless he moves in too close. Take him down if he becomes a threat, but I'd really like to know who he is and who he works for. See if you can get any kind of ID without spooking him."

  "Right," said O'Donnel, coming to his feet with barely disguised eagerness. He headed for the door.

  "And Terry "

  O'Donnel turned back and saw Stone's pale, hard eyes. The look reminded O'Donnel that his boss hadn't gotten to the top of the FBI heap by being a nice guy.