Jade Island (6 page)

“Good thing we filled our plates,” Kyle said, guiding Lianne away from the sudden crowd. “So when was the Jade Emperor’s Tomb found?”

“Who said it was found at all?”

“Lots of people.”

Lianne didn’t bother to argue. She was too busy enjoying a mouthful of lobster in a sauce that tasted like a rainbow with just a tiny bite of lightning at the finish.

“I’ve heard that the tomb was found during the civil war, before Mao was in power,” she said, swallowing. “I’ve heard that the tomb was found twenty years later. And I’ve heard that it was dug up last year.” She shrugged. “What have you heard?”

“I’m new to the jade game. I’ve just heard a few rumors. But if the tomb exists, it holds the result of a lifetime of collecting by a man whose bank account was as big as China and whose whim was law. Can you imagine it?”

“I try not to. I especially try not to think what he might have collected from the Warring States period, which is my special jade passion.”

“Passion or obsession?”

“I don’t have the money to be obsessive.”

He smiled. “And I try not to think about what the Jade Emperor would have collected from Neolithic times, which is my passion. Yet I can’t help imagining what it would be like to discover the greatest collection of Chinese jades ever assembled on earth.”

“Dream on.”

“Hey, it’s free. But if a collection like that was found and smuggled out of China, how would it be sold?”

“That’s what makes me think it hasn’t been found,” Lianne said simply. “There hasn’t been a sale of that size.”

“Maybe you weren’t invited.”

“Doesn’t matter. It would be impossible to hide a concentration of previously unknown jade artifacts of that quality. Nobody gossips like collectors.”

Kyle finished off his plate of hors d’oeuvres and started stealing from Lianne’s. She threatened him with a scarlet toothpick. Since she gave him plenty of time to evade, he didn’t take the threat seriously.

“How about stealing a few pieces at a time?” he asked.

“Are we talking about my food or the mythical emperor’s jade?”

He smiled but didn’t quit snitching her hors d’oeuvres. “Jade.”

“Breaking up the collection would diminish its value, but…” Lianne beat Kyle to the last spring roll on her plate and chewed thoughtfully, considering the possibilities. “It would explain why no one is able to pin down the rumors.”

“Want more?” Kyle gestured toward the Rain Lotus’s buffet table.

“Am I breathing?”

His laughter made her laugh in return, but what she liked best was the way humor took the calculation out of his eyes, leaving only a beauty that appealed to her as much as jade. For a few moments she felt like a woman on a date with a very interesting man. With a pleasure that had nothing to do with anticipating more food, she watched him load their plates.

Then, Lianne saw Johnny Tang approaching her. Pleasure evaporated, replaced by a cool, yearning kind of reserve.

“Hello, Johnny,” she said. “Come to check up on the Jade Trader exhibit?”

“Naturally.”

She waited, but he didn’t say anything more. “What did you think of it?” she asked.

“Excellent, of course. With Tang family jade and your feel for American tastes, how could it be anything else?”

“I didn’t ignore Chinese aesthetics in the Jade Trader exhibit,” Lianne said stiffly.

Johnny waved his hand, dismissing her instant defense of her knowledge and taste.

“The Tangs are known to the Chinese,” Johnny said calmly. “It is the Americans who must be cultivated, especially since Hong Kong is no longer independent. Speaking of cultivating—”

“Kyle,” Lianne interrupted swiftly, seeing him approach behind her father, “this is Johnny Tang. Johnny, Kyle Donovan.”

Relief loosened Johnny’s face for an instant, but when he turned to Kyle, nothing showed except polite interest.

“Mr. Donovan,” he said, offering his hand.

Lianne took a plate from Kyle so that the men could go through the small, necessary social ritual of shaking hands.

“Did Wen come with you?” she asked Johnny.

“No. He’s saving his energy for tonight.”

“Ah, yes. The family gathering.”

Kyle noticed the slight, biting emphasis Lianne put on the word
family.

If Johnny noticed, he didn’t show it. “My father would, of course, be happy to have you join us for our little party after the auction. Please bring Mr. Donovan with you.” He turned to Kyle. “We Tangs admire the family of Donovan. I’m sure there will be much of interest to talk about.”

Lianne hoped her expression was as bland as Johnny’s. She had wondered what it would take for her to be invited to a Tang family gathering. Now she knew.

She didn’t like it.

“Thank you,” Kyle said, “but it’s up to Lianne where we go after the auction.”

“Then we will see you,” Johnny said with satisfaction. “Lianne wouldn’t disappoint Wen.”

After another minute or two, Johnny excused himself and merged with the crowd that was slowly edging toward the auction room, as though sheer impatience could hurry the pace of the evening.

“Finished?” Kyle asked.

Lianne looked at her plate. It was as clean as her fingernails, yet she didn’t remember eating even half of the hors d’oeuvres. “More importantly, are you?”

“Will there be food at the Tang party?”

“Oh, yes. Mountains of it. It’s a necessary part of entertaining guests.”

“Is the food any good?”

“That depends. Do you like traditional Asian cuisine as well as the fusion kind?”

“I’ll pass on the hundred-year chicken embryos,” Kyle said, “but I can nosh on poached chicken digits with the best of them.”

“Great. I’ll give mine to you.”

“What about the hundred-year eggs?”

“In a word? Yuck. But the rest of the food is very good.”

“Then I’ll last until after the auction.”

Kyle stacked their empty plates on a waiter’s tray, tucked her hand over his arm, and led her back to the atrium.

“You don’t have to go,” Lianne told him.

“Look at more jade?”

“No. To the Tang party.”

“The food is good and you wouldn’t want to disappoint your best clients, would you?”

Clients.

Lianne tried to think of a simple, brief way to explain her long, complex relationship with the family of Tang. None came to mind. It was just one of the many awkward moments she had endured as the unacknowledged daughter of Johnny Tang.

“No, I wouldn’t want to disappoint them,” she said finally.

Then Lianne smiled sadly. What a joke. She had disappointed them since the instant of her birth, living proof of Johnny Tang’s liaison with a foreign woman.

“Mind if I ask a question?” Kyle said. He felt the sudden tension in Lianne’s hand on his arm and looked down at her. “Professional, not personal.”

“About the Tangs?”

“No. About that tiny little purse of yours.”

Lianne looked down at the slim silk envelope that swayed at the end of its long, thin strap. The purse weighed so little she had forgotten she was carrying it.

“What about it?” she asked.

“Most of the serious traders here tonight are making notes at each exhibit.”

She nodded.

“Your purse is too small to hold a notebook,” he said, “but it just might be big enough for a high-tech recorder. Verbal notes, as it were.”

“I’ll take your word for it. My purse is empty except for a car key and business cards.” She didn’t feel it necessary to add that she also had a small vial of pepper spray tucked away.

“Does that mean you aren’t a serious trader?” Kyle asked.

“No. It means that I have a photographic memory.”

“Good. Then you should have no problem describing the guy who’s following you.”

L
ianne thought about denying that she was being followed. Then she thought about facing the night alone if Kyle called her bluff and walked out.

“Caucasian, about five feet ten inches,” she said, fighting to keep her voice even, “medium weight, clean-shaven, brownish hair, white shirt, black tuxedo that doesn’t quite fit across the stomach, street rather than dress shoes, and an uncanny ability to melt into a crowd.”

Kyle whistled softly. “Sounds like you’ve seen a lot of him.”

“I saw him once, tonight, for about three seconds when you boosted me above the crowd.”

“Photographic memory,” he muttered.

“Yes.”

“How long has he been following you?”

“Him personally? I don’t know. Several times in the past few weeks, I’ve been certain that someone was following me.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know.”

Kyle looked at Lianne as she walked next to him. Her chin was up in a stubborn line and her spine was very straight above the inevitable swaying of her hips. Jade jewelry glowed against white silk like spring against ice.

“Try again,” he suggested softly.

Lianne’s chin tilted up even more, but she couldn’t con
ceal the frisson of unease that went through her body. “It’s the truth. I don’t know why I’m being followed.”

“Guess.”

“The jewelry, maybe.”

“Have you worn it in the last few weeks?”

“No.”

“Then guess again.”

She tried to take her arm out of his, only to find herself held in place.

“I don’t feel like playing Twenty Questions,” Lianne said roughly. “If you’re so worried about that man, all you have to do is walk away from me.”

“Did you dump a lover recently?”

Her eyelids flickered as she remembered Lee Chin, now called Tang. But she hadn’t seen him except in passing for two years. In any case, she hadn’t dumped him. She had just declined to continue their affair after he married one of her Tang cousins and took the Tang family name for his own.

“No,” Lianne said. “No recent lovers, dumped or otherwise.”

“No outraged admirers?”

“Not a one.”

“How about your family? Are they on anyone’s shit list?”

“Recently?” She shrugged. “No more than usual.”

“What’s usual?”

“My mother is Johnny Tang’s mistress,” Lianne said neutrally. “She has been for over thirty years. That puts her high on the Tang shit list, but it’s old news.”

Kyle loosened his grip on Lianne’s arm slightly. Though his hand still covered hers, his fingertips stroked over the backs of her fingers. He nudged her toward a quiet corner of the atrium, where examples of fine calligraphy were on display. Calligraphy was the Asian version of abstract art; without extensive education and training, most people didn’t appreciate it. That meant an island of privacy in the teeming room.

“Have you bought or sold any hotly contested jades lately?” Kyle asked quietly. “Pissed off any shady collectors?”

Lianne shook her head and pretended to concentrate on the calligraphy. “I told you. I don’t know why I’m being followed.”

He shifted until he could see what was going on behind her. There were swirls of people around most exhibits, plenty of black tuxedos mixed in with the rainbow silks and gleaming gems, and more Caucasians than Asians. The man Lianne had described could be within fifteen feet of them right now.

He almost certainly was.

“What about Seng?” Kyle asked.

“If he has any Caucasian employees, I haven’t met them.”

“He could hire someone.”

“It’s not Seng’s style.”

“What isn’t?”

“Sneaking around. He’s the frontal-attack sort,” Lianne said, her mouth thin.

“Has he attacked you?” Kyle asked sharply.

“Not exactly. But he’s made it real clear that I should be delighted to warm his sheets for a night or two.”

“What happened when you refused?”

“He barely noticed. All in all, Seng makes a sumo wrestler look like a mountain of subtlety.”

When Kyle gave a muffled sound of laughter, Lianne looked up from the calligraphy and smiled slightly.

“No telephone calls, no notes, no presents, no threats?” he persisted.

“Nothing. Just a prickle at the back of my neck and a shadow sliding away at the corner of my vision.”

“You should have gone for the great-white-hunter-type escort, not the stuffed elephant.”

“You don’t have to—” she began.

“Let’s look at some more jade,” Kyle cut in. “Maybe
your mysterious admirer will get careless, trip over my big feet, and break his neck.”

Startled, Lianne glanced at Kyle. He was smiling, but his eyes weren’t. They were narrowed, measuring the nearby crowd. If she hadn’t met Kyle at her father’s urging, she might have been very wary of him, wondering if she had just stumbled out of the frying pan into the firing line.

“How about another look at that Neolithic blade?” Kyle suggested.

Lianne stretched her legs and kept pace with him. She was eager to see the piece again. She kept telling herself that it couldn’t be from the Tang family vault. She must have been wrong the first time.

Must have, but couldn’t be.

Doubt and certainty haunted her equally. Her visual memory had never played that kind of trick on her. Her uncanny accuracy was a lot of the reason she had gained a valuable reputation as an expert in all varieties and ages of jade.

The people milling around the SunCo display were concentrated on the intricate, decorative Han and Six Dynasties pieces, leaving the Neolithic items less well attended. Still hoping that she had been wrong the first time, Lianne inspected the ancient blade.

It took less than a minute for her to know that she hadn’t been wrong. The picture in her mind and the blade in the case matched too exactly to be anything but one and the same artifact.

Unsettled and uneasy, Lianne watched while Kyle circled the case several times. The look in his eyes told her that he was completely under the jade’s spell.

“You aren’t thinking of bidding on it, are you?” she asked finally.

“Is that a problem?”

“I hope not.”

“Are you going to bid on it?”

“I…yes,” Lianne said, sighing. “I really don’t have any choice.”

“Why?”

She didn’t answer. She simply turned away from the blade and went to stand at another SunCo display. This case featured Neolithic work as well, but it was thousands of years “younger” than the blade that haunted her.

Kyle watched Lianne, wondering what it was about the fine blade that brought unhappiness, perhaps even fear, to her dark cognac eyes.

“I thought Warring States jade was your passion,” he said.

“As a rule.”

“And this Neolithic blade is the exception that proves the rule?”

She made a sound that could have meant anything, then looked up at Kyle. “Have you seen this case? It has extraordinary examples of Shang work,” she said carefully, “fully as exceptional as the blade.”

Reluctantly Kyle shifted his attention away from the blade to the case where Lianne stood. Inside the elegant glass cage, two jade bracelets rested on burgundy velvet.

“Notice particularly the bracelet on the right,” she said. “At some time in the past, the jade was burned, perhaps in a tomb fire, perhaps later in a collector’s home that was destroyed by war.”

“How do you know?”

“Nephrite—Chinese jade—only takes on that chalky, pale beige, ‘chicken bone’ color after it has been burned in fires as hot as one thousand degrees. The heat changes the chemistry of the jade. It becomes opaque, the original color fades to near white, but the carving itself remains as clear and distinct as when it first came from the artisan’s hands. Time and fire have altered the main color, yet left the darker, veinlike patterning of the stone intact. The result is striking.”

“Enhanced by time.”

Her smile flashed briefly. “You’re a quick student. Or am I going over things you already know?”

“Like I said, I’ll tell you if I get bored. What else do you see when you look at the chicken-bone jade bracelet?”

“In profile, it would be slightly concave rather than straight.”

Kyle looked more closely, then nodded.

“Not only is a curved profile more difficult to make than a straight one,” she said, “but the carver was skillful and patient enough to keep the thickness of the bracelet the same no matter the degree of the curve.”

He bent down, then sat on his heels to view the bracelet from another angle.

“In the machine age,” Lianne said, “we take that kind of precision for granted. Yet this bracelet is from the Liangzhu culture, perhaps five thousand years old.”

Kyle heard what she said, and he heard what she wasn’t saying, too. She appreciated the jade bracelet, respected the tradition it sprang from, admired the result, and had no desire to bid on it herself.

“What makes the Neolithic blade superior to this bracelet?” Kyle asked.

“Nothing.”

“Yet you’re not going to bid on this bracelet.”

“No.”

“Why?”

“It’s personal, not professional,” Lianne said.

“In other words, none of my business.”

“As I said, you’re a quick student.”

Kyle stood with a swift, fluid power that startled her into stepping backward.

“You’re quick, period,” Lianne said.

“Youngest brothers have to be, or they’re chopped meat.”

She stared for a moment, trying to imagine the tall, rangy man in front of her as a boy. “How many brothers do you have?”

“Three, all older than me. Two younger sisters.”

Lianne smiled wistfully. “Five siblings. What fun that must be.”

“Yeah, a regular six-ring circus.”

Yet Kyle was smiling despite his dry words. He butted heads with his brothers on a regular basis, his independent and stubborn sisters made him crazy, yet he wouldn’t have traded any of it for peace and quiet. At least not on a permanent basis.

Once in a while, though, he wanted distance. After the fiasco in Kaliningrad with the stolen amber, he had needed a lot of space to lick his wounds and think about all the stupid things he shouldn’t have done and would never do again if he could help it. When thinking got too painful, he stepped aboard the
Tomorrow,
cast off, and went fishing, letting the hours and days slide away.

“Does your family live here?” Lianne asked.

“Some of them, some of the time. Mostly we’re scattered all over the planet. Comes of running an international import-export business.”

“Donovan International.”

“In my case, Donovan Gems and Minerals,” Kyle said. “The four brothers got together and went into business for ourselves. We’re an independent affiliate of Dad’s company.”

“But still very close to him,” she said.

“No help for it. The Donovan is as hard to get rid of as cat hair.”

“The Donovan?”

“That’s what we call Dad. Among other things.”

Lianne frowned. “Don’t you get along?”

“Sure. Usually at the top of our voices. Then Susa—that’s our mother—spreads balm and cracks heads until peace is restored.”

Lianne tried to imagine what it would be like to be part of a noisy, affectionate family. It was impossible. Her memories of childhood were quiet, almost adult in their tranquility. Her mother had worked very hard to make her home an oasis of peace for her paramour. Not that Lianne
had been neglected. She hadn’t. She and her mother were quite close, more like lifelong friends than parent and child.

Slowly Lianne followed Kyle to another display case. This one held a variety of Western Zhou jade objects. The stone was very fine-textured, almost glassy in its finish. All but one piece featured bird or dragon designs on the translucent green surface. All glowed with the subtle inner light that only fine jade had.

“It must be wonderful, having a big family like that,” Lianne said.

“It has its moments.” Kyle’s flashing smile said more than his words. “I think we’ve all prayed to be an only child at one time or another. What do you think of these?”

Reluctantly she looked away from Kyle’s burnished blond hair and infectious smile to the jades. “If these are any example, I think SunCo has a fine collection of Western Zhou jades. The designs are very cleanly executed. Do you know why that era preferred birds and dragons for its motifs?”

Kyle shook his head. “I’ve had enough trouble learning the rudiments of Neolithic or ‘cultural’ jades. I haven’t had time to appreciate the rest of the jade eras.”

“Birds were a symbol of gentleness, and dragons of moderation.”

His dark blond eyebrows lifted. “Moderation?
Dragons?
”

“The Chinese saw dragons differently than the Celts. The Celts saw violence and danger, death and the opportunity for man to test himself against sheer brute strength. The Chinese see dragons as immortal, patient, wise, and infinitely subtle.”

“Sounds dangerous to me. Especially the subtlety. The Christian devil is immortal, reasonably patient, and as subtle as the ten thousand gradations of sin.”

“But not moderate?” Lianne asked, smiling slightly.

“Nope. Are you going to bid on any of these?”

“At the moment, none of my collectors have a request in for Western Zhou jades.”

“Who wants the Neolithic blade?”

“It would be unethical for me to discuss clients with you.”

“Why?” Kyle asked easily. “I’m a stuffed elephant, not a client or a competitor.”

“You’re a stuffed elephant with a passion for Neolithic jade,” she retorted.

“Right now, I’m a relieved stuffed elephant.”

“Relieved? Why?”

“When you said your interest in the blade was personal, I was afraid you would be mad if I bid against you and won. But now that I know you have a client in mind…” He smiled and spread his big hands. “Business is business, and may the best bidder win.”

Caught in a trap of her own making, Lianne gripped the strap of her purse more tightly. If she admitted that she didn’t have a client, Kyle would want to know why she was bidding on a Neolithic blade when her personal passion was supposed to be Warring States jades. If she told him she thought the blade belonged to Wen Zhi Tang, that would open up a floodgate of questions, none of them comfortable or easily answered.