"Mei should have killed you!" Tran gasped in English.
"She was too hungry," said Catlin, switching to English, smiling, and his voice was as cold as his smile.
"What?"
"She was used to fucking you, but you don't have anything between your legs. So she waited to come before she tried to kill me. She died satisfied, Tran."
Impotent fury and lack of oxygen put color back in Tran's face. Catlin's smile didn't change as his fingers slowly closed on Tran's throat.
"You're dead " gasped Tran.
"Eventually. You won't have to wait, though. Your time is now."
"The bronzes !" With a strangled cry, Tran tried to deflect the death he saw in Catlin's eyes.
"You don't have them," Catlin said, but his fingers loosened just enough to allow Tran a sliver of breath. "You're a pimp and a pederast and a slaver. No one would trust you with a bucket of shit. The man running this show has the respect of the local people. All you have is their fear."
"I know who has them!" Air rasped and whistled through Tran's throat as he fought to breathe. "He asked me to negotiate with you!"
"That was his second mistake."
Catlin's finger began taking up slack on the trigger. Tran's eyes widened as he realized that he was going to die.
"Catlin, the door!" cried Lindsay.
"That is not necessary," Wu said from the doorway, his words overlapping her cry. Behind him stood three burly Chinese men.
"That's a matter of opinion," Catlin said without looking away from Tran. "Is Wu armed?"
It took Lindsay a moment to realize that Catlin was speaking to her. "N-no," she said, shaking her head as though stunned. "Neither are the men with him, that I can see."
She shook her head again, but it wasn't Catlin who had taken her off balance. She had known and accepted from the first that he was capable of violence. But she hadn't known that Wu was capable of betrayal. His presence was cutting the ground from beneath her feet, leaving her helpless as memories of her years in San Francisco whirled around her.
Lies. A world full of lies.
"Come over and stand to my left," Catlin said.
"I " Lindsay said, trying to tell him of her discovery.
"Now."
Numbly Lindsay went and stood to Catlin's left side. "Remember how I showed you to put the safety on my gun?" "Yes." "Do it."
With hands that trembled, Lindsay fumbled until she had the safety on Tran's gun. "Put it in my holster."
As Lindsay bolstered the gun, the contrast between its chill and the warmth of Catlin's body shocked her, forcing her to realize that it was not a nightmare she was caught in. It was real. There was no waking up.
"Sit down in the single chair, Wu," said Catlin. "Put your back to me and your hands on top of your head. Tell your bodyguards not to move."
"That, too, is unnecessary," Wu said.
"Do it, or I turn Tran into wallpaper."
Everything about Catlin from his calm voice to the controlled stance of his body underlined the fact that he meant exactly what he said. Wu spoke softly to the men with him, then sat in the lone chair and put his hands on top of his head.
"Catlin-"
"Not yet, Lindsay." Catlin's voice was the same as his body, utterly calm, as controlled as the lean finger resting lightly on the trigger. "Insulting me was a bad idea, Wu."
"I have not-"
"Bullshit," Catlin interrupted coldly, not looking away from Tran's terrified face. "Lindsay wouldn't kowtow to you, so you tapped Tran for the negotiations, knowing that he was my enemy. You thought he would hold a gun on me and watch me crawl. You thought that I would lose face with Lindsay and you would gain it. You were wrong. I don't crawl for sewer slime. I don't negotiate with it, either. Not for you. Not for anyone."
"Not even for Qin's charioteer?" asked Wu.
"Not even for that. That was your first mistake. Underestimating me. Say goodbye, Tran."
"Catlin!" cried Lindsay, unable to say more than his name.
Tran's eyes rolled back into his head. He slumped against Catlin in a dead faint. For long seconds Catlin looked at the slack face lolling against his hand. With a sound of disgust he stepped back, removing his hand. Tran fell facedown on the floor.
"That's the trouble with pimps and pederasts," Catlin said, nudging Tran's limp body with his foot. "No balls." He looked at the three bodyguards and spoke quickly in Mandarin. "Take this miserable piece of shit out to the street and leave it for the dogs to piss on. Don't come back."
The men looked at Wu. He nodded. They picked up Tran's slack body and hauled him unceremoniously from the room, politely closing the door behind. Catlin looked at Lindsay's strained, pale face.
"Sit down, honey," he said gently. "The excitement is over. Wu won't make the same mistake twice."
Without a word Lindsay sat facing Wu and wondered why she wasn't screaming. She hadn't been so frightened since she was a child.
And then she understood that she wasn't screaming because she wasn't really scared. Surprised, shocked, off balance but not terrified for her life. Catlin had taken care of the danger. They were safe.
The realization took Lindsay's breath away. She put her face in her hands and let her whole body tremble in the aftermath of the adrenaline storm that had begun when the silk screen had crashed violently to the floor.
"It's all right," Catlin said, coming to Lindsay's side, stroking her hair with his left hand and never taking his eyes from Wu.
"Dragon," she murmured, taking a long breath, turning toward him, brushing her mouth over his palm. "And thank God for it."
Catlin had been expecting Lindsay to shrink from him. Her acceptance of the unexpected violence surprised him in the instant before he remembered what her childhood must have been like. Whether she knew it or not, admitted it or not, her uncle and father had been warriors of the Church Militant. She was no stranger to blood and death.
"Drink some of the tea, Wu," commanded Catlin. He watched Wu pour and drink the tea without hesitation. "Pour some for Lindsay. Slowly." Wu poured very carefully, as though he were taking part in a ceremony staged in a forbidden city hung with crimson silk brocade. The first cup Lindsay drank from Catlin's hand. The second she managed for herself.
"Better?" Catlin asked softly.
She nodded. She had had a lifetime of practice coping with sudden fear of one kind or another, reality or nightmare. Already the old discipline was settling into place, the slow, measured breaths and soothing mental images of a blue-black pond gleaming beneath moonlight, silver rings of peace expanding outward from the center.
"I'm all right," Lindsay said, setting down the cup. Her fingers trembled very slightly, a motion so fine that only Catlin noticed it. She looked up at Wu with eyes that were as clear and dark as her imagined pond. "Uncle Wu, do you know who has Qin's bronze charioteer?"
Even as she said the words, Lindsay realized that Wu himself must have the charioteer. It was the only explanation that made sense. She looked quickly at Catlin. Without looking away from Wu, Catlin nodded his head.
"He's the one, honey."
Chapter 23
"But how?" asked Lindsay. "You told me that whoever brought in the charioteer would need a smuggling operation that was already in place."
"Yes." Catlin said no more. He didn't have to.
Wu shifted. "Tea?" he asked calmly, his delicate hands poised over the elegant white teapot.
"Uncle Wu?" asked Lindsay, waiting to hear his denial.
Settling back into his chair with a cup cradled in his palm, Wu glanced again at Lindsay. "Do not look so shocked," he said tartly. "How do you think your honorable parents paid for smuggling their loyal flock out of China into Hong Kong, and from there to Canada and the United States? It was the same way your lover paid off his spies, whores and lackeys. Smuggled gold, smuggled opium, smuggled arms, smuggled bodies, smuggled bronzes. All become equal in t
he end. Smuggled. For that, one must have a smuggler of discretion and skill."
"You?"
"I," he agreed calmly. "I learned in Xi'an. Your esteemed uncle taught me," Wu said, sipping his tea. "He was a man of great honor, courage and, I am afraid, foolishness. He left rather too much in God's venerable hands, not realizing that God had many, many children who required His care. Sometimes even the most omnipotent and loving God must blink."
Lindsay closed her eyes. For an instant she saw again the time when God had blinked shots and screams and her uncle's blood spurting between her fingers.
But beneath the image of violence Lindsay silently screamed a denial. Not of her uncle's death. She accepted that, finally. Yet she did not want to believe that her parents had been involved in anything illicit. The thought made her feel as though she were standing on the banks of a raging river and the earth were shifting subtly beneath her feet, warning of the disastrous crumbling to come.
How could she have been so wrong about so many things? How could she have been deceived so thoroughly?
"Arms? Opium?" she asked, her voice strained. "How many years did you smuggle for my parents?"
"Lindsay, you have to understand something," Catlin said quietly before Wu could speak. "In those years gold, opium, rice and tea were often the only currency Asians would trust. As for the arms " Catlin's hand tightened for an instant as he remembered the file he had read on the early years of Lindsay Danner. As he spoke, he resumed stroking her hair slowly. "Your father and uncle chose to fight as well as to pray. Your uncle " Again, Catlin hesitated.
"My uncle?" Lindsay asked, turning to fix Catlin with indigo eyes.
"Most Chinese missionaries reached some kind of accommodation with communism, or they left China. Your uncle did neither," Catlin said bluntly. "He spent more time teaching guerrilla warfare than saving souls. Your father was more circumspect. He had to be. He had you and your mother to think about."
"How do you know that?" Lindsay demanded. "How do you know things about my childhood that I don't?"
There was no answer except the measured glide of Catlin's palm over Lindsay's hair. She closed her eyes. She didn't want to believe, but she did. Catlin had never lied to her. He had no reason to begin now. And his words explained so much, including the reason her mother had so fiercely insisted that Lindsay forget everything about the night her uncle had died.
"Did Mother " Lindsay's voice shattered to silence.
Wu understood. "This undeserving self was honored to serve your parents until your most venerable father died," Wu said quietly. "Your esteemed mother was a dutiful wife of unquestioned loyalty and obedience. She was a woman to bring honor to her ancestors and to her husband. Yet " Wu shrugged. "No matter the weight and height of the evidence against her view, she steadfastly believed that the way to achieve God's ultimate victory in China was through the con-version of peasants rather than the honorable crucible of battie. She was a woman of infinite patience, with a generosity of spirit that must stand as an example to cynical mortals such as myself."
Wu sipped tea, sighed, and set aside the exquisite white cup. "From time to time she sent Christian peasants carrying ancient bronzes or other artifacts of value that would pay for the cost of introducing unexpected guests into a new homeland." He bowed slightly toward Lindsay. "I regret to say that your honored mother lacked your fine eye in bronzes. Perhaps that was only to be expected. Her gaze was fixed always on a better future, not a glorious and honored past. I send my unworthy prayers to heaven in the hope that your beloved mother has found at last the gentle, bountiful God for whom she sacrificed so much."
"She used you to smuggle things after Dad died," Lindsay summarized flatly.
"Her calling was to the poor," Wu said obliquely. "The poor are forever in need of money. She kept nothing for herself from the sale of smuggled bronzes, no matter how great her own need. She insisted that God would provide for her. So she sent you to your American aunt and to me, knowing that I would train you to live in the world that your honorable mother had forsaken for her mission to the poor." Wu smiled slightly. "Apparently your mother did not have much faith that God would provide for others. That thankless task she took upon her own esteemed head."
Wu's smile faded as he measured Lindsay's reaction to the knowledge that her mother had been part of a smuggling operation. "Do not presume upon God's benevolence by judging your deeply honorable and most worthy mother," Wu said harshly.
"I was lied to."
"You were a beloved child." Black eyes narrowed. "Are you still a child? Do you expect the world to be as pure as your foolishness and as gentle as an idiot's smile? Are you as quick in your judgments of your own miserable self? Your esteemed mother never went whoring after a man who "
"That's enough," Catlin said, cutting across Wu's tirade.
Forget it, Lindsay. Give it to God. Forget. It will be better that way, for everyone. Forget. Forget. Forget.
And Lindsay had, until this morning. Then she had remembered, and the same man who was even now stroking bet hair had held her, let her cry, helped her to accept her dream of terror as a distorted reflection of reality. He had freed ha from the nightmare and now he was telling her about a reality that was in some ways worse. A childhood of deceit and lies.
It explained so much, so many fragments of memory and fear. Whispers and unnatural silences. Sudden gunfire and the sound of her mother ripping dresses into bandages. Men gliding through the night like black tigers, fighting for a cause that had been lost years before. Guerrillas. Outlaws. Her uncle had been one of them. So had her father.
No wonder Catlin had seemed so familiar to her, so right for her. She had been born among men like him, had laughed with them as they teased and hugged her, had felt their blood flowing between her fingers.
Lindsay let out a shaking breath and caught Catlin's hand. She held it against her cheek so hard that her nails left red crescents on his skin. His thumb stroked gently across her cheekbone. He urgently wished that it had been possible to shield her from knowledge of the gulf between her child's perception of her parents and their reality. This wasn't the time for Lindsay to have to adjust to a new view of reality, of herself. She had had to accept too many new insights in the past few weeks, none of them pleasant.
Wu's head turned with the speed of a striking snake. "Do you deny what the hotel maid has seen every morning? Two sleep in one bed. Each day one less pill remains in the little pink dispenser. Lindsay comes to you like a bitch in season. She "
"No more," Catlin commanded. His voice was soft, vibrating with the promise of violence.
Rage glittered in Wu's eyes. He stared at Catlin while the silence stretched. Wu watched the yellow eyes staring back at him and understood that Catlin would be no more gentle with him than he had been with Lee Tran.
"Then let us discuss you, Jacques-Pierre Rousseau," Wu said finally.
Catlin became aware of the painful pressure of Lindsay's nails digging into his hand. He looked down at her face. It was pale, tight, and he could sense the tension that had her humming like an overstretched wire. Gently he eased her nails free of his skin and resumed stroking her hair, giving her the only comfort he could.
"We will discuss Qin's charioteer," Catlin said flatly, "or Lindsay and I will leave."
Wu weighed Catlin again, letting the silence stretch. At last Wu sighed. "I do not understand you. You corrupted a fine and honorable woman in pursuit of Qin's charioteer, yet you refuse to bow to a simple reality. I have the bronze. You do not."
"Enjoy it," Catlin said. He tugged on Lindsay's hand, pulling her to her feet. "Come on, honey. We're leaving."
"Wait! "said Wu.
Catlin turned from Lindsay to watch Wu with the unreadable eyes of a dragon.
"One question," Wu said, his voice clipped. "Rousseau was safely dead. Why did you resurrect him?"
"Would you have sold Qin's charioteer to Jacob Catlin?" he a
sked sardonically.
Wu hesitated, then bowed very slightly in acknowledgment of a point made. "You have sacrificed your safety to pursue your passion for bronzes, yet you will turn and walk out of here because I speak the truth about a woman."
It wasn't a question. Not quite. Catlin answered it, anyway.
"The truth is that you were accustomed to using Lindsay's gift for your own profit, and seeing that slip away makes you very angry," Catlin retorted. "People knew that Lindsay was your daughter in all but name. They knew her reputation. They assumed that everything in your shop had been vetted by her. But not everything has. Some of it is, shall we say, of problematical origins?"
Only the tightening of the skin across Wu's cheekbones revealed the extent of his anger. "That is not true," he said, biting off each word.
"Neither is what you said about Lindsay. I will protect her from your cruel tongue even if it means walking away from the charioteer."
Wu watched Catlin through another long silence. The lines of anger on Wu's face slowly loosened, giving him again his normal, kindly expression.
"Rousseau would not have acted so," Wu observed.
"Rousseau is dead."
Wu nodded slowly. "What of the man called Catlin?"
"I will protect Lindsay no matter what it costs or who it hurts."
Wu's eyes closed for a moment. He bent his head over his folded hands like a man deep in thought or prayer. When he looked up, it was Lindsay's eyes he sought. "Forgive my unhappy words, daughter. You are like your honorable mother, after all. You have in your soul that which can summon gentleness from even the most savage heart."
Lindsay looked away from Wu because she could not bear to meet his eyes. She wanted to tell him the truth that her relationship with Catlin was all an act, an elaborate lie to get to Qin's charioteer. That was what Catlin was protecting. Not Lindsay, but the ancient charioteer whose presence in San Francisco would tear apart the fragile relationship between America and the People's Republic of China. Catlin had sized up Wu's outrage and seen that it stemmed from a father's anger at a wayward daughter's foolishness. So Catlin had chosen the one sure way to disarm Wu convince him that his daughter had tamed a dragon rather than been ravished by one.
Tell Me No Lies Page 38
