Tell Me No Lies

by Elizabeth Lowell

  "Yes," Catlin said softly, recognizing the bodyguards who had dragged Lee Tran away.

  Wu's right hand gripped the handle of a rectangular leather briefcase that could have held anything from a bag lunch to an Uzi. Knowing Wu, Catlin would have taken bets on either possibility.

  There was a distinct sound as the driver released the door locks on the Mercedes.

  One of Wu's men came forward, opened the back door of the car and politely handed Lindsay out. Catlin followed, keeping track of the whereabouts of Wu's bodyguards and the Chinese soldiers at all times. It was more habit than necessity; at that point, Catlin didn't expect any trouble. If any problem arose, it would be after the money had been transferred between banks in Hong Kong.

  "I'll do the talking," Catlin said to Lindsay as they approached Wu. Before Wu could begin any lengthy Mandarin formalities, Catlin said crisply in English, "It's Monday in Hong Kong, the banks are answering their phones and there's no reason to screw around anymore. Where are the bronzes?"

  "They are here," Wu said calmly, gesturing toward the truck. "The phone is here," he continued, opening the briefcase to reveal a cellular phone. "The truck is here, as is the man who will drive you." Wu signaled to the Chinese who had driven the Mercedes. "Start the truck for the very cautious Mr. Rousseau. Let him see that all is in proper order."

  The driver opened the door, stepped into the truck and started the engine. It ran smoothly. The man looked at Catlin, who nodded.

  "Fine. Shut it off, get out and leave the keys in the ignition," Catlin said. "I'm driving it out of here myself."

  The man looked to Wu, who shrugged. "As I said, a cautious man. Wait in the Mercedes, Sen. I will not be needing you any further tonight."

  Lindsay looked from Catlin to Wu. The harsh sidelighting from the cars made both men's facial bones stand out in high relief, set off by shadows that were angular, unexpected, almost satanic in their impact.

  "The bronzes are uncrated on the far side of the truck," continued Wu. "Take as much time as you require, daughter. They are pieces of greatness that are infinitely worthy of your discriminating eye."

  Catlin's hand closed around Lindsay's arm when she would have stepped forward eagerly. Startled, she turned toward him so quickly that her hair fanned out.

  "We're doing this together, honey cat," he said, smiling, but it was a smile that made her remember how hard he could be at times. "Remember? I'm with you every step of the way. You're never out of my reach."

  Lindsay looked into Catlin's amber eyes and felt cold. "I remember," she whispered.

  Together they walked around the front of the truck. Then they stopped as suddenly and completely as though their feet had been bolted to the floor.

  Glowing within the harsh radiance of the headlights, a Qin charioteer sat in ancient splendor, arms slightly extended to hold the tarnished silver reins of the two horses that stood at attention in front of the war chariot. The charioteer's hair was bound in a complex knot at the top of his head. His face was both serene and very martial. The thick sleeves of his uniform hung so gracefully from his arms that it was impossible to believe that the uniform was made of bronze rather than cloth. The hands were utterly lifelike, so much so that Lindsay felt that if she looked closely enough she would surely see calluses on the driver's fingers from a lifetime of handling heavy leather reins.

  Slowly Lindsay approached the chariot. The horses stood alertly, eternally poised, ears pricked forward. The animals' eyes were carnelian and the plume rising gracefully between their ears was made of pure, braided gold. Muscles rippled beneath the horses' smooth bronze hides, giving them an aura of strength that was almost intimidating. Lindsay half expected one of them to toss its head and snort a warning of her presence.

  The chariot itself was closed rather than open as the Roman war chariots had been. A rectangular box large enough to carry several men was balanced on the single axle directly behind the driver. An oval, umbrellalike roof extended beyond the edges of the box far enough to protect the driver from the elements or a rain of arrows.

  Lindsay walked slowly, unaware of moving, totally absorbed in the bronzes. Their patina was a fine blue-green, with a jadelike texture that was both rare and exquisite. Gradually the bronzes' fine details began to penetrate the initial, almost overwhelming impact of the group as a whole.

  With every step Lindsay took as she circled the chariot, inlays of gold and age-darkened silver, copper and malachite, turquoise and carnelian shimmered in a silent cry for her attention. The inlaid patterns were dense, intricate, magnificent, of an artistry that exceeded any she had ever seen. When newly made, Qin's charioteer must have resembled the colorful, complexly patterned lacquer boxes that had ultimately supplanted bronzes in Han times. Certainly the designs were very similar, a stunning, sensuous wealth of color, design and texture.

  Lindsay's glance went from the horses' carnelian hooves to the gracefully braided silver harness. The bronze shaft of the chariot was suspended between the two animals. Her eyes followed the line back to the chariot itself. The vehicle was inlaid with a sinuous gold and silver pattern that could have been flowering vines or currents of wind and rain. The charioteer's uniform was almost a brocade of inlay, designs too dense to separate at a glance. His eyes were of beaten sliver and had been lightly polished to give them a lifelike gleam.

  The man, horses and chariot were so perfectly proportioned that Lindsay felt as though she were too large, rather than that they were less than life-size. They were alive in a way that defied explanation or understanding. The hair stirred on her neck in primal response as she stood in the crumbling warehouse and watched Qin's charioteer driving toward her across a bridge of time, making a mockery of the millennia between the First Emperor's life and her own. '

  The charioteer's face seemed to come closer, a face both individual and a composite of every Chinese who had ever lived. She saw into his eyes and then beyond, suddenly feeling the presence of the countless peasants who had given their lives to the many-faced goddess of the land, sowing and reaping, birthing and living and dying, crying and laughing and enduring, always enduring, a river of humanity running down into the fathomless sea of time, their ghosts returning as a luminous rain of art that enriched the future's unborn generations.

  So much time, so much endurance, so many lives, so little chance to laugh and live. Lindsay could hear a million million voices calling soundlessly from the richness of bronze and see her mother's tears in the beaten silver of the charioteer's eyes.

  "Lindsay?"

  She turned toward Catlin's voice, hearing him despite the endless wave of time and humanity breaking over her. The look on his face told her that he had called her name more than once, one name among many, one call among millions. Beyond time stood Zhu and Pao, Yi and Wu, the future watching her out of enigmatic black eyes. She felt their silent insistence on her answer, the future waiting for the word to be spoken so that the river could go on flowing down to the sea. Behind her came the aching, enduring cries of the past, lives beyond counting or numbering, people who had endured beyond reason or comprehension –

  "Lindsay."

  – and Catlin in front of her, the present beckoning. She half turned, her hand held out to the charioteer, her lips forming a silent plea that she not have to go on to the next instant, that she not have to speak the next words. The charioteer watched her with eyes the color of tears before he blurred and ran in hot silver torrents down her cheeks.

  "Lindsay."

  "Oh, Catlin," she said, turning toward him. "I'm sorry – so sorry. They're – they're fakes!"

  Chapter 26

  There was an explosion of Mandarin and English shouts, indignation and disbelief, charges and countercharges. Catlin didn't bother to sort them out. At that instant questions and expostulations were irrelevant. Lindsay's life was not, and it was a very ancient tradition to shoot the messenger who brought bad news.

  With cold yellow eyes Catlin measu
red the distance to the delivery truck, the obstacles to be neutralized on the way there and the various methods of doing so without getting Lindsay killed. Four soldiers of the PRC and two of Wu's chunky bodyguards were in a position to prevent the truck's escape.

  Catlin never considered waiting for the FBI. Even if Stone hadn't lost them in the sudden fog, it had been less than fifteen minutes since the Mercedes had entered the abandoned warehouse. The FBI, assuming they were around, wouldn't act for another half hour. That would be far too late for Lindsay.

  "Silence!"

  Chen Yi's authoritative command sliced through the raised voices with the ease of a knife through water. He looked around disdainfully.

  "Esteemed Comrade Zhu," he said in sardonic, staccato Mandarin, "and my equally esteemed Comrade Pao, you have the answer for which you have searched half a world with such great dedication. The face of China has not been blackened by contamination of Mao's pure policies. The honorable Comrade Deng has not permitted capitalist induced greed to corrupt us. China's honor remains a model for the less civilized countries of the world. The truth of these statements is cast in bronze," he said, gesturing carelessly toward the charioteer and horses. "By the word of Miss Danner, your own carefully chosen and tested expert, those bronzes did not come from Xi'an. They are frauds."

  Zhu, Pao and Wu burst into fresh protestations, their voices shrill, overlapping, chaotic.

  Catlin kept his hand on Lindsay's arm, discreetly easing her around the charioteer that stood between them and the truck. She neither protested nor aided him. Tears ran silently down her cheeks. As Catlin moved closer to the track, he chose and rechose his targets with each shift in the group between him and the truck's door. He fervently hoped that everyone would be too caught up in the argument to notice the slow escape of the woman who had caused it.

  It was Wu who first realized the futility of yelling at the impassive, subtly triumphant Chen Yi. Wu turned and saw Lindsay moving away from a bronze horse's eternally raised head.

  "What have you done to me, miserable daughter?" he cried in Mandarin, "Why have you so foully lied? These bronzes are as true as you are craven! With their own eyes Madame Zhu and Mr. Pao saw the charioteer emerge from Mount Li's sacred earth! What has your lick-spittle paramour done to change your truths to lies?"

  Lindsay looked at the charioteer's beaten silver eyes and shook her head, saying nothing.

  "Control yourself, foolish one," Yi said coldly, snapping shut his lighter and exhaling a stream of smoke toward Wu. "The honorable Miss Danner has nothing to gain by calling the charioteer false, and much to lose in addition to her commission on the sale. It is known across the land that she has promised Mr. Catlin a Qin charioteer. It is also known that she is most humble and eager to please her chosen master. She has no reason to call the bronzes false except the obvious one: they are false!"

  Using a theatrical gesture that was at odds with his normally controlled manner, Yi abruptly extended his arm to full length and pointed toward the chariot itself.

  "Look at that miserable excuse for craftsmanship," he commanded, his voice vibrating with contempt. "Count the spokes in the wheel. Count them!"

  The authority in Yi's voice was such that everyone except Catlin turned toward the wheel, silently counting spokes. With barely controlled urgency, Catlin took advantage of the shift in attention to move Lindsay closer to the truck.

  "Stop her!" screamed Madame Zhu suddenly, catching the flash of Lindsay's bright hair from the corner of her eye. "The charioteer is from Xi'an! She is the paid lackey of the revisionist dog Chen Yi! Stop her!"

  Several of the soldiers began reaching beneath their civilian tunics. Catlin shoved Lindsay behind himself even as he took two steps and leaped into the air in a high karate kick that ended at a soldier's head. The man went down as though shot and stayed there.

  As Catlin landed he spun on the ball of one foot while the other lashed out in a series of controlled side kicks so rapid that they were a blur. Two more soldiers went down. The fourth one managed to pull his gun free of its holster. The callused edge of Catlin's palm broke the man's wrist. An instant later Catlin's elbow shot into the soldier's diaphragm. Before the man hit the floor, Catlin had taken the weapon and trained it on Wu.

  "If your men move, you die," Catlin said, his voice flat.

  Wu looked at Catlin for a long moment and found no reason to doubt him. Wu spoke sharply. The three bodyguards froze, weapons drawn but not yet aimed.

  "Come here," Catlin said to Wu.

  Slowly Wu walked toward Catlin.

  "Closer."

  Wu kept walking until the gun's muzzle was only inches from his chest. Catlin's left hand snaked out, spun Wu around and yanked him against Catlin's body.

  "Tell your men to put their guns on the floor and then kick them as far as they can to the back of the warehouse. One at a time."

  In the silence, the sound of a metal skidding over concrete was very loud as the bodyguards sent their guns spinning into the darkness one at a time.

  "Now tell them to lie facedown and hold their ankles with their hands. If they let go, I'll assume they're reaching for a second gun. Make sure they understand that, Wu. Your life depends on it."

  Within seconds the three Chinese had performed the awkward maneuver.

  "Call your driver over here," said Catlin, watching everyone with rapid flicks of his eyes, waiting for the first covert motion toward a hidden weapon. "Tell him to walk backward. If I see his face or a gun, you both die."

  Wu called out instructions in rapid Mandarin.

  One of the Chinese soldiers on the floor groaned and vomited weakly. Catlin glanced at him for an instant, dismissed him and resumed watching Pao's hand creep toward his tunic.

  "That's the problem with shoulder holsters and button-front Mao shirts," Catlin said conversationally. "By the time the second button is undone, you're dead. Take out the weapon, put it on the floor and kick it under the truck."

  Pao's hand twitched, then resumed unbuttoning his military jacket. Very carefully he followed Catlin's orders, proving that Catlin had been correct in his earlier estimate of Pao: the man spoke excellent, colloquial English. Yi looked from Catlin to Pao and smiled. Catlin didn't notice. Wu's driver was backing around the front of the truck, taking great care to keep his hands visible and his face hidden.

  "The keys to the Mercedes," Catlin said in a clipped voice.

  The driver didn't bother to protest that he didn't know English. "They're in the ignition," he said quickly.

  "Check on it, Lindsay," Catlin ordered. "Go around and to my right. If you see anything you don't like, scream."

  At first Lindsay thought her muscles weren't going to respond to her commands. Then the urgent requirements of the moment overrode the adrenaline flooding violently through her body in the aftermath of violence. She walked around the truck. A few instants later her voice echoed back through the warehouse.

  "The keys are here."

  "Get in and start the engine," Catlin ordered.

  Wu shifted as the Mercedes snarled to life. Catlin's arm tightened warningly across Wu's neck at the same instant that the gun muzzle pressed coldly into his ear. Wu froze.

  Catlin turned toward Yi. "I overflow with desolation and abject apologies," Catlin said in Mandarin, "but I have to insist that you and your esteemed comrades open the warehouse door for me. Such manual labor is of course beneath your honorable station in life, but necessity must sometimes overrule custom. If the humble life of Mr. Hsiang Wu is not enough inducement for your labor, then I will add the miserable Comrade Pao's existence to the measure."

  "We Chinese are great connoisseurs of necessity," Yi said in English.

  The three representatives of the PRC turned to go to the door. Catlin dragged Wu to a point where he could watch the downed soldiers, Wu's bodyguards and the three people struggling with the warped door. Finally they managed to force an opening large enough for the Merced
es to pass through.

  Catlin's face didn't show the relief that burst quietly in him. He had been ready to ram the track through the closed doors if he had to, but had been afraid of triggering a barrage of gunfire if the FBI had managed to surround the warehouse. He glanced quickly at his watch. Nineteen minutes, seventeen seconds. He looked at the soldiers. Only the one who had gagged was moving, and he was no longer a threat.

  With no warning Catlin turned and half carried, half dragged Wu toward the waiting Mercedes. "Move over," commanded Catlin.

  Lindsay scrambled over the gearshift into the passenger seat. In a single motion Catlin shoved Wu away, slid into the Mercedes, slammed the door and aimed the car toward the narrow opening.

  "Get down," Catlin said curtly, not looking away from the slit leading into the safety of the night. "All the way to the floor."

  Lightless, a black shadow knifing through the swirling fog, the Mercedes shot through the opening and accelerated south, going away from the FBI cars that were slowly converging on the area, combing the darkened warehouses for signs of life. The cars were still nearly a mile north of the abandoned warehouse, for that was where the helicopter had lost the Mercedes in the first condensations of heavy fog.

  Driving quickly, yet skillfully Catlin threaded his way back to the city. After the first two miles he flipped on the headlights and pulled Lindsay back onto the front seat. He glanced at her pale, tight face and smoothed his hand once over her tangled hair.

  "You don't have to be brave anymore," he said softly. "Go ahead and let it out. It's all over now but the cheering."

  Lindsay looked at Catlin and wished that she could cry or cheer. But she could not. She was drained of emotion.

  "I'm not brave," she said, remembering her raw fear when Catlin had shoved her away and exploded into the midst of the four Chinese soldiers, four men down before she could even scream. "I'm the kind who just – goes numb."

  "You stayed in control of yourself," Catlin said, stroking Lindsay's cheek with the back of his fingers. "You could still think, still act. That's all that bravery is. The rest is posturing."