Catlin looked beyond Yi to the dragon crouched in self-contained magnificence on its black table.
"No," Catlin said very softly, as though to himself. "The bronzes that came to America would have to be real. Which leaves you with three hellish problems, the same problems any thief has. How to get them. How to move them. How to sell them."
Without looking at Yi, Catlin walked to the cinnamon magnificence of the dragon and ran his fingertips gently down the beast's scaled back. "I don't know how you solved the first two problems," he said. "I don't care. All that matters is how you're going to sell the bronzes. Because that's when Lindsay will be at risk. That's when it could all go from sugar to shit real fast, with raiders or Maoists or Christ knows what else crawling out of the woodwork."
There was a long silence enclosed by streamers of smoke. Catlin waited, studying the dragon with appreciative eyes and sensitive fingertips.
"Continue," Yi murmured at last. "To hear a fine Legalist mind at work is a rare pleasure."
"Then you should try thinking out loud," Catlin said matter-of-factly.
Yi laughed once, a sound of regret and pleasure combined. "Ah, dragon you should have been my son!"
Catlin's mouth tugged up at one corner in a smile as ambivalent as Yi's laugh had been. "I doubt that either one of us would have survived the experience."
"Ah! You are probably correct."
Still smiling, Yi pitched the smoking remains of his cigarette into an ashtray.
"You have created such a beautiful design of pride and hope, treachery and betrayal," Yi said after another silence. "I hesitate to suggest any amendments. But, sadly, I must do just that."
"I'm listening."
Yi smiled suddenly, genuinely. "Yes. You are very good at that. You are even better at listening than at talking. A rare gift in men. A common attribute of dragons."
There was the sharp sound of a lighter opening, the rasp of flint and steel, and then the click of metal against metal as the lighter closed once more.
"I will neither protest nor embrace the conspiracy you have outlined," Yi said finally. "I will only say that if I were my own enemy Maoists and isolationists, as you call them I would have seized upon the rumor of stolen bronzes just as you suggested. But I would also have sought a true propaganda coup. I would seek to convince the unconvinced among China's government that capitalism is the great corrupter of Chinese morals. Ah!"
Yi inhaled, glanced at Catlin and continued. "If I were my own enemy, I would have bribed enough people to steal the Qin bronzes, to ship them and to sell them in the United States. If I were my own enemy, I would be thoroughly aware of the danger of fakes in undermining my plan, for there is no loss of face to China in selling fakes to greedy capitalists. Ah! So I would have moved to ensure that such fakes were neither cast nor shipped.
If I were my own enemy," Yi continued, "I would ensure that whoever appraised the bronzes in America had a reputation that was unimpeachable, therefore proving beyond any doubt that the bronzes were indeed from Xi'an and that China's face therefore had been blackened by her contact with the running dogs of capitalism. If I were my own enemy, I would have chosen a man like you to 'help' me in America, a man like you who was once China's worst enemy, a ruthless man to whom the future of an old enemy meant little.
If I were my own enemy, I would have built a cage for me from which there was no escaping. Ah!"
Catlin stared at the dragon's sinuous form. His fingertip traced the gold inlays that both enlivened the bronze and hinted at the history behind the dragon. After several minutes he looked up at Yi with eyes the exact color of the gold inlay gleaming from the ancient bronze.
"Are you telling me that your enemies have completely taken over the game you started?" Catlin asked. "That your enemies have stolen some Qin bronzes, are shipping them to the U.S. and are forcing you to go through with the charade of finding them? And that once found, the bronzes will result in your own undoing, and in Deng's, as well?"
The Chinese inhaled, expelled smoke and inhaled again without taking his eyes from Catlin's face. "I am telling you what I would do if I were my own enemy," Yi said calmly.
"Are you in control of the Qin bronzes, or are your enemies? Are you player or pawn?" Catlin asked bluntly.
With a weary gesture, Yi dropped his cigarette into an ashtray. "We are all pawns, dragon. Even you."
"God in heaven," breathed Catlin, realizing what Yi had just admitted. It was true. What had begun as a means of getting information out of the U.S. by claiming that Qin's tomb had been looted had become a naked grab for power by the Maoists who hated Deng.
"I was afraid of this," Catlin said harshly, "but it was the only probability that made sense. You shouldn't have wanted Lindsay in the first place, because then you couldn't even mount a decent whispering campaign saying that the bronzes you would find in America were fakes. With her reputation, you didn't want her anywhere near the Qin bronzes!"
Yi lit another cigarette without saying anything. He didn't have to. Catlin was understanding all of it, and not liking any of it.
"It was your idea to ruin Lindsay's reputation, wasn't it?" Catlin asked roughly. "You knew that smearing her wouldn't be necessary to lure the thieves to her, because the thieves would approach her, anyway. They had to. It was part of your enemies' plan. Your only hope of spoiling that plan was to impeach Lindsay's reputation. So you dropped an emetic into your comrades' drinks, came to D.C. and arranged for me to ruin Lindsay's reputation in order to save your own. Is it working, Yi?" Catlin demanded harshly. "Are you going to be able to go back to China and say that you can't trust Lindsay's word on the bronzes because she would say anything, do anything, just to please her demon lover?"
Yi smiled faintly at Catlin's description of himself. "But she did not lie about the bronzes she has seen thus far," Yi countered sadly. "She would not." He exhaled sharply. "That has already been tested and proven. Not once, but twice. Ah! You wanted to buy bronzes that she believed were fake. She would not approve of you buying them. Nor would she say that fake was real even to please her lover. She would not bend even to save the face of the man who once honored her as a daughter. When the question is bronzes, Lindsay Danner answers only the truth. That part of her reputation is, regrettably, very much intact!"
Catlin's eyes narrowed until all that showed were splinters of gold. "Does Wu know that somebody at his shop listens in for the People's Republic?"
Yi exhaled smoke and said nothing.
Catlin wasn't surprised. He hadn't really expected an answer. He watched the motionless bronze dragon and tried to control his rising rage. Lindsay's reputation had been ruined in pursuit of a cause that had been doomed long before Yi even came to America. Lindsay herself was being ground up in a political shoving match between ideologues living in a country that was half a world away.
"You were really grasping at straws, weren't you?" Catlin said finally.
"Straws and mud make excellent bricks. With bricks, a man can build everything."
"Shit!" snarled Catlin. He stared at the dragon without seeing it as he weighed all that Yi had said. How much truth, how many lies, how to tell the difference, and how to explain the one thing that didn't add up. "Why me?" he asked. "You didn't need a translator, and even if you did, you wouldn't have chosen a man who has the experience to see past the blue smoke and mirrors to the lies beneath. You aren't a stupid man, Chen Yi. Neither are your enemies. Why did you come to me with half of a coin? Why did they let you?"
"My enemies chose you for me," Yi said.
Catlin sensed the satisfaction beneath the simple statement. "The way Stone chose Lindsay?" he retorted.
Yi smiled faintly. "They believed you to be my enemy. As you were, once, and may be yet again. But not while you earn back half of that coin."
"Why, Yi? Why did you want me?"
"You are a man of face," Yi said simply.
Catlin turned the statement o
ver in his mind, viewing all the possibilities. "All right," he said, accepting it. "You knew I would honor the old debt. That meant you could trust me not to be frightened or bought out from under you. Even so, the original question remains: what could I possibly do for you that would compensate for the risk of having me unravel all your lies?"
"It is as I told you before. You are to protect Lindsay. No more. No less. You are uniquely suited for that purpose. You are a man of intelligence to help her when she becomes lost among all the conspiracies. You are a man of decision to know when to strike and when to hold back and ask questions as you are asking now. You are a man who, when he strikes, is deadly. Lindsay could be given no better man to guard her days and nights."
"Why do you care about Lindsay's health?" Catlin demanded bluntly. "You should be at the top of the list of people who want her dead and buried."
"I know that better than anyone alive!" retorted Yi. "Ah!" His cigarette glowed hotly, repeatedly, and then he began to speak from the shifting veil of smoke. "Twenty-five years ago a man and his son were ambushed and left for dead. They were found by a woman. She did not ask whether they were Communist or Nationalist, Buddhist or Christian or atheist. She took them into her home at great risk to herself and her family. She cared for them, giving them rice from her own bowl, tea from her own cup and bandaging them with strips of cloth torn from her own clothes."
Yi's eyes glittered blackly. His voice was oddly strained, almost brittle. "While the man and his son twisted in the grasp of fever and pain, she sat between their pallets and read to them, letting her voice soothe them. If they cried out in the night, she came to them carrying a candle, sat with them, read to them from the worn book she loved more than she loved her own life. In the night, in the darkness lit only by a single flame, her hair was a radiant golden river. She was an angel reading aloud about angels. And her voice her voice " Yi stopped, unable to speak.
"'Dreamed in shades of silver,'" Catlin finished softly, remembering what Yi had once said. "Lindsay's voice. Lindsay's hair. Lindsay's mother." Catlin paused, remembering other things about Lindsay and her past. "It was you who called her parents out of town the night Lindsay's uncle was slated for assassination."
"She healed us and never asked for anything," Yi said obliquely, "not even our names."
"And in doing so, she bound your family in the debt of her own family forever. A matter of face." Catlin shook his head slowly, sensing the designs of the past curling forward into the present, shaping it, face and pride and obligation passed from hand to hand like ritual bronzes. "Lindsay's mother didn't know that, Yi. She didn't want the burden of your gratitude.
She would have refused it if she had known. She was simply honoring the teachings of her religion."
"As I am honoring my own beliefs," Yi said calmly. "I could not save her husband's life. Like his brother, her husband was a man of great courage and even greater foolishness. He refused all warnings. Eventually he came back to the People's Republic once too often."
"I thought he died on a trip to Taiwan."
"Many people believe that."
"Did Lindsay's mother?"
"Does it matter?" asked Yi, inhaling harshly. "She had the life she wanted. She lived and died among Chinese peasants, sharing their poverty and naive faith in an all-caring God. Yet in the end I believe she became wholly Chinese. I believe she died loving her lost China even more than she loved her European deity. I burn much incense in the hope that she passed that greater love on to her beautiful, dutiful daughter. And I have given to that daughter what few men and even fewer women will ever know the protection of a dragon."
Catlin looked at his hands for a long, long moment, seeing the ridge of callus along each palm, the scars of past combat, the brute strength that had enabled him to survive when other equally ruthless men had not.
As though at a distance he heard Yi light another cigarette. When Catlin finally looked up from his hands, Yi was watching him. Yi, who was both spider and fly, caught in an intricate web that was only partially of his own making, a web that was still being spun in conflicting patterns. Yi, who was a man of intelligence and face. Yi, who was risking everything on the strength of a single gossamer thread that he hoped would stretch from mother to daughter, the past to the present, changing the course of lives and countries. The risk had been forced upon Yi, but he had grasped it and made it his own. Like a master of unarmed combat, Yi was trying to use his enemies' own strength and momentum as weapons against them.
Slowly Catlin bowed to Yi as a Chinese would bow to a respected opponent. "You are a man to learn from, Chen Yi."
Yi bowed in return. "I have learned from you, Jacob MacArthur Catlin."
Catlin ran his fingertips lovingly down the dragon's sinuous length. "Is there anything you can do to speed the delivery of the bronzes?" he asked finally.
"Is there anything you can do to ensure that Lindsay will make the right choice?" Yi returned smoothly.
With a swift, feral motion Catlin turned on Yi. "The only right choice is the one Lindsay can best live with. Because that's what she has to do when this is over live with her memories and regrets and all the rest of it. I'm her protector, Chen Yi. All of her. Body and mind. That's the risk you took when you brought me the other half of the coin."
Yi didn't like what he heard, but he had expected it. After another tight silence, he accepted it.
"Bird with one wing," Yi murmured, remembering both the old saying and the faint outline of a swallow on the severed coin. "Do you fly better now with your other half?" Then, as though he didn't expect an answer, Yi continued. "I believe Qin's charioteer has already arrived."
Catlin felt adrenaline slide hotly into his veins, bringing his body to full alert. "When? Where?"
"That, too, is not for me to choose. I do not know the name of the person or persons in San Francisco who are working here with my enemies."
"Who do you suspect?"
"Everyone at Sam Wang's auction," Yi said bluntly.
Catlin grunted. That didn't tell him anything he hadn't already known. "What about Pao and Zhu do your esteemed and treacherous comrades know about Wang?"
"They know that he has capitalistic ties to China. As for the activities of his partners " Yi shrugged. "That may or may not be known by Comrades Zhu and Pao."
"Will Wang be the one who tells us where and when we can see the charioteer?"
For the first time, Yi hesitated. "An interesting possibility," he said finally, softly. In silence he lit another cigarette, exhaled a harsh plume and said, "I do not think so. He has little to gain from my enemies, and much to gain from me. He is a builder, as I am. My enemies are not. Ah!"
"That," Catlin said, looking at the very modern dragon crouched on the table, "is very much a matter of opinion. And as the owner of this dragon knows, reality itself is subject to interpretation."
Yi laughed quietly, a sound that had little to do with amusement. "Remember that. Remember also that not all of Miss Danner's enemies are Chinese. The honorable Mr. Stone has his own plans and his own face to maintain. His own fish to cook, as you say. Be sure that Miss Danner isn't among them."
"If she were, it wouldn't be intentional."
"I am sure that fact would be a great comfort to the accidentally cooked fish," Yi said dryly.
Catlin smiled. "I hear you, Yi. I've worked with men like Stone before. I know what to expect. They'll take care of Lindsay if they can, but she isn't one of theirs. They'll be more worried about taking scalps than saving them." Catlin's smile changed into something a good deal less pleasant. "It's the same for you. That's why you came to me. If Lindsay dies at your hands now, you won't suffer any loss of face. It will be my responsibility, not yours. My loss, not yours. I understand that, Chen Yi. Just as you understand that you will die if I find you anywhere near Lindsay."
Yi's cigarette glowed brightly, then vanished in a flat arc into the ashtray as he turned and wal
ked away.
"If we meet again, I will be surrounded by enemies. Ah. Therefore I hope that we will not meet again, dragon, for that would mean that I have lost and Qin's charioteer has been found."
Chapter 22
Catlin loaded the dirty dishes back onto the room service cart, pushed it into the hall and bolted the door shut again. As he turned he saw Lindsay sitting quietly on the couch, staring at the closed drapes. Her face was calm, but her eyes were very dark. She hadn't asked him any questions about where he had been or what he had been doing, though he had seen the questions in her eyes when she had unbolted the door to let him in. It had been the same while they ate a late lunch. No questions, simply indigo eyes watching him.
And now she was watching nothing at all.
"Half a penny for your thoughts," Catlin said, flipping the cut Han coin on his palm.
"Half? Let's see."
He tossed the bit of metal to her in a flat, hard arc. He wasn't surprised when she caught it with a quick movement of her hand. Tai chi chuan was good for much more than calming the mind. It also honed the reflexes.
Lindsay looked at the ruined coin lying on her palm. She could just make out the truncated outline of a flying bird. The line of the wing told her that it was a swallow. The shine of the metal in the cut told her that it was copper.
"Han?" she asked.
Catlin nodded.
With a sad smile, Lindsay looked at the coin. "The death of the ancient bronzes that we both love," she said. She looked up and saw Catlin's black eyebrow raised in silent query. "Copper money," she explained. "It came into general use in China with the Han dynasty. As money, copper was far more valuable ounce for ounce than it was when alloyed with tin to make bronze. Once that was realized, the great age of bronze art was over. And now, when gold and silver and nickel are used for coins, the last of the old bronze masters are long dead. We'll never see their like again."
Tell Me No Lies Page 36
