Tell Me No Lies

by Elizabeth Lowell

  "Yeah. We finally cracked that puppy yesterday. It's an apartment complex owned by something called Consolidated Overseas Chinese. It's a limited partnership."

  "Who are the main partners?" asked Catlin.

  "Ling-Cheong Li, Martha Song-Min Chung and Samuel David Wang."

  "Bingo," breathed Catlin. "What's the address?" He memorized the street and numbers as they were given, and then asked, "Anything more?"

  "We ran those names on an off chance you might be interested."

  "And?" Catlin asked, smiling at the frankly smug sound of the man's voice.

  "That partnership does a lot of mainland Chinese business. They're building a big hotel in Shanghai and a steel mill farther inland, plus underwriting some small stuff for Chinese collectives. Ling-Cheong Li is a Hong Kong businessman who's been working very hard to get into the good graces of the mainland Chinese."

  "Smart man. Mainland China will own Hong Kong in a few years."

  "Yeah. They didn't wait that long for good old Ling-Cheong, though. They own him right now. His real name is Liu Zheng, and he's an agent of the PRC."

  "What about the woman?" Catlin asked.

  "A naturalized Canadian dragon lady. Owns a string of restaurants and small shopping centers in Vancouver, employs mostly illegal immigrants from the PRC. Canada hasn't answered our queries, but I'll bet that she smuggles in the help and that some of them turn out to be agents."

  "Is the third partner one of them?"

  "If he is, we can't prove it. Samuel David Wang is fourth generation American, with a grandmother who was as high WASP as they get. He was educated at the Sorbonne. He's well left of center in his politics, but he's not one of the Che Guevara crazies. He's real friendly with the PRC, but then, so is the President. There's no law against doing business with the PRC or supporting various pro-PRC groups in America. Like they say, it's a free country."

  Catlin granted. "Did you turn up anything connecting the three partners with Mitch Malloy, Hsiang Wu, Tom Lee a.k.a. Lee Tran, Chen Yi or L. Stephen White? Names spelled as Mows." Catlin spelled the names rapidly, using the full-word alphabet developed by the military to avoid confusion among similar sounds. "Got that?"

  "Every last one. Hang on."

  Catlin waited while the operator ran the program that would pick out all words in the file that began with an upper case letter. Another search followed, this one to match with the names Catlin had given.

  "No hits."

  "Damn!" Catlin hesitated, then said, "Try some phonetic variations in the Chinese names. Substitute o-o for u, e-e for i or vice versa, and X for H-s. And try for the name Chen alone."

  "Running," the man said laconically, punching in the variations.

  Catlin waited.

  "There's a Chen Xiang Xi. He's the mainland contact for Consolidated."

  "Run his name."

  "Running."

  It seemed like a long time before the man came back onto the line.

  "There are a hell of a lot of Chens in China, and some of them spell their name with a Q instead of a C-h."

  Catlin sighed. "Yeah, I know. Do we have anything on this particular one?"

  "He's a member of an old trading family that walked real small during the Revolution and is just now making a comeback. Overseas family all around the Pacific Rim. No specifics. This is all just general background. The last entry before I made the Consolidated hit was three years ago, an obituary.

  We haven't caught them dirty at anything. From all that I can see, Chen Xiang Xi is just one more PRC government functionary assigned to make it easier for Chinese-American businessmen to spend dollars in the People's Republic."

  For a moment Catlin was silent. "Run my original list of names through the open files. Cross-match each hit for proper names."

  "The open files," repeated the operator carefully. "Shit. I was hoping to get some time off before Christmas."

  "I'll call back."

  "Do that, baby. In about a year."

  "An hour."

  "Save yourself a dime," the operator retorted. "Make it a month."

  "A day. And it's twenty cents."

  "Huh?"

  "Pull your head out of the computer," Catlin said, laughing. "In California, it costs twenty cents to make a phone call."

  Catlin hung up very gently, cutting off the flow of cheerful invective. He fed in a few more coins, punched in the number Yi had given him and waited for the answering machine to kick in. Yi's recorded voice spoke in Mandarin. Catlin answered in the same language.

  "This is Rousseau. I am going to separate myself from my shadows. Meet me at the house of Samuel David Wang at one o'clock. I will wait half an hour. If you do not arrive, I will assume that you have officially opened hunting season and I am on my own as regards protecting Lindsay Danner. In that case, I had better not see you, Chen Yi. You will be first on my hit list."

  Catlin hung up, dialed Sam Wang's import shop and asked to speak to Wang. Using Mandarin, Catlin worked his way through two functionaries before Wang came to the phone. In the background Catlin heard the sound of a receiver being lifted from the hook; someone in Wang's establishment was listening in.

  "Do you still speak French?" Catlin asked in that language.

  "Yes," responded Wang.

  "You remember the dragon that isn't for sale?"

  There was a hesitation. "I remember," said Wang, sticking to French.

  "Is it still at your house?"

  "Yes."

  "I'll be there to look at it at one o'clock today," said Catlin. "I'm expecting someone else, as well. If you hope to continue your profitable relationship with the People's Republic, be sure your servants are either very loyal to you or have the afternoon off. Do you understand?"

  "Who the hell do you think you – " began Wang in English, abandoning French in his anger.

  "Do you understand?" Catlin repeated harshly in English.

  "Yes, but-"

  Catlin hung up. He dialed the hotel room. Lindsay answered on the second ring.

  "Something has come up," said Catlin. "I'm going to be gone until three. Can you stay cooped up that long?"

  "Yes."

  Catlin let out a long breath. "No arguments? No questions? You're special, Lindsay Danner. I'll be back as soon as lean."

  "I'll probably be asleep," she said, yawning.

  "Then I'll call from the lobby so you'll know who's at the door," he promised. "Be there, honey cat. Promise me."

  "Yes," she said, her voice husky.

  Very gently, Catlin hung up.

  Chapter 21

  Catlin looked at his watch and then wandered casually through the lobby to the hotel restaurant, acting like a man with food on his mind. Within seconds he was through the kitchen and out into the alley. Three doors down on the opposite side of the alley he ducked into the kitchen of another restaurant and then out the front door. Moving swiftly, discreetly, he wove through the sidewalk crowds until he could make an illegal, midblock entrance onto a passing trolley. He exited the same way, in midblock, and cut through a store to another alley. He repeated the evasive maneuvers three mote times before he was certain that he was alone.

  An hour later Catlin sat quietly in the back of a rented van parked along the only approach to Wang's house. The van's smoked windows prevented anyone from seeing into the interior easily, but didn't prevent Catlin from looking out. For the next two hours he watched the street. No one gave the van a second glance. No car drove past Wang's house more than once. None of the parked cars contained watchers.

  Catlin was well and truly alone.

  At 12:55 Catlin left the van and took the back way into Wang's house. He moved through the elaborate landscaping very quietly, arriving at the back door without warning. Gun drawn, he stood to the side and knocked once. The door opened a crack. Catlin didn't wait for a better invitation. He kicked the door open and shoved past the person standing behind it.

&nbs
p; "You! "Wang said.

  Wang regained his balance with a trained speed that Catlin noted even as he saw that Wang was unarmed. Catlin bolstered his own gun in a smooth action.

  "Me," he agreed, going past Wang into the kitchen. "Is Chen Yi here yet?"

  "Is he supposed to be?" asked Wang, his face impassive.

  "Pull the other one," Catlin said over his shoulder as he headed for the front of the house. "If Yi hadn't told you to let me in, you'd have met me at the back door with a gun.''

  Wang's dark eyes narrowed. He started to say something, then hurried to catch up with Catlin.

  "What would have happened if I had?" Wang asked as they walked through the living room.

  "Met me with a gun?"

  Wang nodded.

  Catlin smiled.

  "Ah, dragon," said Chen Yi, stepping out from the alcove that had once concealed an extraordinary fraud. "Was it not you who explained to me the unwisdom of teasing tigers?"

  "I'm trusting you to keep this one securely leashed," Catlin said in a sardonic tone. He turned to Wang. "You have a choice. You can stay and listen and know that if any part of this conversation leaks I will kill you. Or you can get in your fancy red Ferrari and drive around for an hour or two."

  Wang turned to Chen Yi, who waited impassively, saying nothing, giving no clue as to what decision Wang should make.

  "Yi won't make the choice for you," Catlin said flatly. "He can't. He doesn't control me."

  Narrowed black eyes measured Catlin for a long moment. "I see why he calls you dragon," Wang said. "You don't heel worth a damn, do you?"

  Catlin laughed, appreciating Wang even as he knew that he might have to kill him.

  Wang nodded, both understanding and sharing Catlin's appreciation. With a sudden smile Wang looked over into the alcove. The dragon crouched there, sinuously alive, vibrant with the modern intelligence that had created him.

  "And here I'd been hoping that Lindsay had changed her mind about the authenticity of my bronze dragon," Wang said, gesturing into the alcove.

  "Oh, she thinks its authentic art, all right," Catlin retorted. "It's just not ancient."

  "What do you think?" asked Wang.

  "I think it's probably the most powerful piece of bronze art I've ever seen."

  Wang looked at Catlin for a moment, nodded again, then bowed to Chen Yi and said, "It has been my pleasure to be of service to the honorable representative of the People's Republic of China. If you have no further need of my humble presence, I will withdraw."

  Chen Yi nodded slightly, dismissing Wang.

  Catlin waited until he heard the Ferrari retreating down the long, winding driveway before he turned to Chen Yi. The Chinese was watching him. Whatever anxieties or speculations he might have had were hidden beneath the impassive exterior of a politician or a spy.

  "You are a taker of risks," Yi said, lighting a cigarette and exhaling sharply. "Mr. Wang might not have chosen to be gracious about our uninvited use of his home.''

  "When it comes to taking risks, I'm not a patch on you," Catlin said bluntly. "Teasing tigers is one thing. Recruiting and then teasing dragons is another thing entirely."

  "Ah!" Yi inhaled hard, making the tip of the cigarette flare. "Continue, please. The teasing of dragons is a serious matter."

  Catlin's eyes narrowed to dark amber lines. He weighed Yi quietly and then decided that the Chinese was being forthright rather than sarcastic. Not that it mattered; the outcome would be the same whether understanding or sarcasm were involved. If the dragon didn't get the information he wanted, Yi would have to get himself another dragon.

  "I asked you once why you didn't use Sam Wang as your stalking horse. You said he wasn't yours to use. I'm asking you again, Chen Yi. Why didn't you use Wang?"

  "Stalking horse? Ah! I remember the idiom now," said Yi, smiling faintly. "Yes. Stalking horse. Just so." Yi inhaled smoke, exhaled, inhaled again. "My reasons haven't changed. Mr. Wang isn't mine to use."

  "Like hell he isn't. You're using the building he owns as part of your answering service. You made up a guest list for his auction and he invited every last person. One of his two partners in Consolidated Overseas Chinese is an agent of the PRC."

  Catlin watched Yi but saw only a veil of smoke twisting between them.

  "Then there's the fact that Wang has a reputation for coming up with some really astonishing ancient bronzes," Catlin continued. "People think he gets those bronzes because of his ties to the refugee communities. You know what I think? I think the bronzes are his pay, and his employer is the People's Republic of China. Very neat. Very clean. Untraceable. Just as the activities of the third partner in Consolidated are untraceable. She brings in Chinese agents mixed among the true refugees. Doubtless the agents are the ones carrying payoffs in the form of extraordinary ancient bronzes."

  Yi's eyes were thin black lines, emotionless, watching.

  "You didn't want to use Wang to find the missing bronzes because you didn't want to blow his cover," summarized Catlin. "You knew the counterintelligence boys at the FBI would vet anyone you picked right down to his toenails. Wang couldn't take that kind of scrutiny. I could."

  The only sound in the room was the slight, breathy whisper of Yi inhaling pungent smoke.

  "Like I said," muttered Catlin. "You took a real risk that whatever you found out about American counterintelligence operations wouldn't be offset by what America found out about yours."

  The end of the cigarette glowed brightly. "Explain."

  Catlin grimaced. "It's simple, Yi. Under Mao, the People's Republic cut itself off from the West and the twentieth century. Now China wants back into the global political game. But you have a real handicap in the game – lack of information. Without trade, without diplomacy, without even the ritualized intercourse that we call war, China hasn't had any reliable way to gather intelligence on the U.S. To the PRC, America was the Great Unknown, yet America was vital to China's hopes of staving off Russian dominance long enough for the People's Republic to hold its own in a highly technological world.

  China had a lot of catching up to do, and you had to do it very quickly. It's a hell of a lot easier to steal information than it is to go through the long process of research and development. Cheaper, too. The Russians found that out after World War II. Spies are the cheapest form of R & D. But for your spies to be successful, you have to know what the other side has in the way of counterintelligence. More specifically, Yi, you had to know how much trouble the CIA and the FBI could cause your men."

  Yi said nothing, did nothing. Smoke curled silently into the air.

  Catlin smiled again, and again the smile was ambivalent. "Emperor Qin's bronzes were a brilliant stroke, Chen Yi," Catlin said, bowing slightly. "The pursuit of them was the perfect 'open sesame' to the workings of America's counterintelligence community. But the bronzes were a little too brilliant, weren't they? What began as a whole-cloth fabrication by one of China's foremost intelligence officers was seized on by the Maoists who had lost the power struggle to Deng. Deng's enemies started using the 'missing' bronzes to beat his progressive policies to death. The Maoists and the isolationists screamed that China's face was being blackened by the impure pursuit of capitalism. The scheme you had devised to help bring China quickly and cheaply into the twentieth century was taken over by the antiprogressive fanatics and was being used to drag China further back into isolation and stagnation."

  Laughing softly, shaking his head, Catlin asked, "Are you familiar with the English idiom, 'Hoist on your own petal'?"

  There was no answer but the exhalation of smoke from Yi's nostrils.

  "How about hanging yourself on your own rope? Have you heard of that?" Catlin asked sardonically. "You dreamed up the stolen Qin bronzes to use as a straight intelligence gathering scheme against the U.S. Suddenly your enemies have taken that scheme away from you and are using it against you and your supporters. Against Deng himself. Talk about all eggs being
at risk when the nest is kicked over!" The words ended in a hard laugh. "That's an understatement, Yi. You have hell's own omelet on your hands – and face."

  Yi inhaled sharply, his expression impassive.

  "You couldn't even cut your losses by saying, 'Hey, guys, it was all a joke – China hasn't lost face. Qin's bronzes are safe'," Catlin continued. "You couldn't say that because there was no way that you could prove that the bronzes were safe and had always been safe. How do you prove that twelve square miles of buried artifacts are intact, untouched?"

  Catlin's smile turned down at the corner as he watched Yi's unmoving face.

  "You can't prove it," Catlin stated softly, "and the Maoists wouldn't have believed you even if you had confessed to the whole hoax. So you were stuck. You had to go through with the plan for gathering intelligence against the U.S. by using the excuse of stolen bronzes. There would be one minor change in your plan, though. Some bronzes actually had to appear in America, because only if and when you caught the crooks could you claim to have the situation under control. Only then could you say that China's soul was no longer being looted out from under Mount Li.

  That meant you had to find the right pipeline to get the 'stolen' bronzes to America. You screwed up once by trying to use dope runners and the kind of unsavory buyers who are preyed on by the likes of Mitch Malloy. You discovered your mistake before Malloy could raid you, and then you went looking for a better, safer pipeline."

  There was no motion from Yi, nothing to indicate that Catlin was even speaking aloud.

  "But it's still one hell of a risk you're taking, Yi. You're really riding a tiger. Fake bronzes are the only thing that will win the propaganda battle at home for you – yet I doubt that even you could commission, execute and chemically age Qin bronze copies in the time since Mitch Malloy showed you how dangerous it was to deal with true crooks. And," added Catlin, "even if it were physically possible for you to fake the bronzes, such creations couldn't be kept secret. Too many people would have to be involved. Too many eyes. Far too many tongues. The fakes would be traced to your people and you would be back in the toilet, treading water like crazy and trying to prove that the Maoists were wrong about Deng, capitalism and loss efface."