Dragon Bones (6 page)

“That’s not what I meant.” She didn’t like hearing the agitation in her voice. “Am I being punished for what happened this morning?”

Against all rules regarding interactions with subordinates, Zai answered her honestly. “They don’t see your assignment to this case as a punishment. You’re a valuable asset to them.”

“Then let me do my real job! The All-Patriotic Society—”

“Are you forgetting that a threat has been made against your life?”

“I didn’t believe it for an instant.”

“Nor I. We have seen no violence from the Society’s leadership. Nevertheless, you killed one of their followers—”

“If she actually was—”

“You are now the ‘mother killer,’” he reasoned patiently. “Retribution may come not from the top but from someone who saw what happened this morning on his television screen.”

“That might not have happened if they hadn’t sent the television crew!”

“You wouldn’t have been seen if you hadn’t shot that woman,” he countered. “Your actions caused you to be noticed. You will be safer if you leave town for a while, and it will be easier to protect you if the foreign press picks up the story.” He held up a hand to prevent her from interrupting him. “But you must try to look beyond the mistakes of this morning. This is an opportunity for you to come back to the types of cases you do so well. Life and death, this is what you know. This is what you’re able to read better than anyone in the building. I want to see you do what you do best. I want you to remember your job.”

“How can I ever forget my job? I’ve done everything they ever asked of me, and this is how they show their gratitude?”

“What happened to you, Hulan? There was a time when you would have asked for this case.”

“You know better than anyone in the world what happened to me,” she shot back. Zai was the one who’d brought her back to Beijing during the Cultural Revolution to denounce her father. Zai was the one who’d sent her into exile to America. He’d been by her side for every catastrophe in her life, including the death of her child.

“You can’t keep blaming yourself,” he said. He lowered his voice and added, “You have to start living your life again.”

“I can’t,” she admitted.

“We all have walls around our lives. Some are imposed on us. Some we impose on ourselves.” He edged closer to her and squeezed her upper arm. “You and I both know that the trick to survival is how we choose to live within those constraints. Do we sit passively or do we push against them? Do we rise above what’s been handed to us or do we give up? This case is a gift. Remember who you are.”

She turned and headed back to the building.

Zai raised his voice. “Do not go far, Inspector. I will need you back in my office at three o’clock.”

Hulan stopped and turned to stare at her mentor. She didn’t see the usual kindness in his eyes. He was now only her superior.

“Why?”

“At three o’clock, Inspector. Be on time.”

She watched him walk past her and into the building. The heat shimmered off the asphalt. The scuffle and squeak of sneakers eased the basketball’s erratic dribble. Hulan didn’t know what lay ahead, but standing there in the open courtyard she felt confused, scared, and angry. She had known these feelings many times in her life, and her bitterness about that was bottomless.

WHEN DAVID GOT TO HIS OFFICE, MISS QUO, HIS ASSISTANT,
offered a few consoling remarks about Hulan, then dropped the subject. That’s how it was sometimes in China. Who among the general populace had not been a target at some time or other? Who among the billion people who inhabited this country had not done something they’d regretted at least once? David, who’d come from a culture where people were expected to share their feelings, had never fully accepted the way the Chinese—even those you were close to—wouldn’t talk about personal matters. Nor did he understand the fatalistic approach the Chinese sometimes took toward the worst possible disasters and inequities. As a practical matter, what that meant to David today was that he was expected to table his worries and get to work.

For the last five years, David had been the sole presence in the city, and indeed in all of Asia, for the legal firm of Phillips & MacKenzie. Usually at this time of year he paid social calls to his Chinese clients around the capital before they left for the comforts of the shore or the bright coolness of a mountain resort. Most of his American clients abandoned the country entirely, choosing this season to go home to the States, visit their families, take the kids to Disneyland or Disney World. Others—those without spouses or children—might head below the equator to Australia or even New Zealand. Sure, it was the dead of winter down there, but what a relief from the weeks of days over one hundred degrees, eye-stinging and lung-choking smog, and humidity so thick that after one minute on the street your flesh was a clammy muck of sweat.

David could see the enervating effects of the climate in the face of the man sitting across from him. Director Ho Youmei of the State Cultural Relics Bureau looked like he wanted to fly out of his skin. He was dressed impeccably in a suit obviously made abroad, but the poor man was wilting all over. But maybe it wasn’t the heat that was getting to the director. Today he had broken with so many traditions that David thought Ho either was a man with a serious problem or had become far too westernized for his own good.

Ho had called this morning to make an appointment for 1:30. He’d refused to reveal on the phone why he needed an American attorney’s services, why a meeting was required on such short notice, and—most surprising—why he wanted to come to David’s office, which automatically put the director in the weaker position.

They’d had tea and exchanged the usual pleasantries. Ho’s English was near perfect, but he was hesitant to delve into his problem. This was understandable. All across China—from the Special Economic Zones along the coast and the major cities to the most remote villages deep in the interior—average people, companies, the army, and government ministries all wanted a piece of the economic pie. To get rich is glorious! Private companies and government bureaus alike were bound to get into trouble.

“I’ve heard good things about you, Attorney Stark,” Ho said at last. “You’re well-known in Beijing for your discretion in sensitive matters.”

So this was to be a job interview.

“I’m one man with a small practice.”

“Ah, Chinese modesty. I’ve heard you are an expert.”

“Many people say many things, but are they reliable character witnesses?”

“I’m sure Minister Li at the Ministry of Justice would be amused to hear you question his reliability. He says you are a
Zhongguotong—
an honorary Chinese.”

“The minister and I are well-acquainted, but we both know he is given to exaggeration.”

Ho laughed. “Old Li said you would say this as well.”

“I’m happy to be predictable then.”

The irony, if such a thing could be said of David’s career, was that the Chinese government often hired him, a foreigner, because he adhered to American legal ethics. He honored attorney-client privilege in all of its manifestations, including work product. This was especially important to bureaus and ministries. What was common in the United States—hiring an attorney to conduct an internal investigation of malfeasance and then quietly negotiate restitution and punishment—was a rarity in China, but word had circulated that David could get results without necessarily bringing in the police. Furthermore, he was fluent in spoken Mandarin, even though he was still basically illiterate. He’d gotten pretty far with his tutor in the written language until he’d reached the word
yang.
The word meant different things when pronounced in each of the four tones:
disaster, sheep, raise one’s head,
and
sample.
He’d mastered the distinctions but had finally balked when he learned that
yang
in the second rising tone could also mean
pretend, ocean, melt,
or
beetle,
depending on the intricacies of the written character. But he’d stuck with the spoken language, which was why he knew gutter curses and wasn’t shy about using them if a case required it.

He was also well-respected in the foreign business community. If he accepted a matter, it was because he knew he could deliver. And deliver he did, for in these last five years David had developed that quintessential prerequisite for good business dealings in China
—guanxi,
connections. No matter which side of the cultural fence a client was on, David had impeccable connections. He worked hard to maintain his contacts back in the States with the FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s Office, but the people he had private access to in China were even more impressive. He often consulted with the Ministry of Public Security. Beyond this, it was a well-known fact that his wife was a Red Princess, very rich, very well connected in her own right.

For these reasons, David’s practice thrived. He’d conducted numerous internal investigations of corruption for a variety of Chinese governmental entities and had handled several politically awkward matters that required someone intimately familiar with U.S. law. He’d litigated on behalf of the Ministry of Culture in a dispute with an American film company over a proposed theme park. He’d worked as a liaison between U.S. and Chinese Customs departments in numerous matters involving smuggled artifacts. These cases rarely made the papers in either country but were common knowledge in some circles.

“It is your absence of predictability that has made you a friend to China,” Ho continued. “My old friend Nixon Chen said this about you as well.”

No one had better
guanxi
than Nixon Chen. Nixon was a childhood friend of Hulan’s, a former associate at Phillips & MacKenzie, a Red Prince, and probably the most important private lawyer in Beijing.

“Again you embarrass me, but let me say that it’s an honor to meet with the director. I too have knowledge of your reputation….” Unlike Hulan, David couldn’t pull a
dangan,
a secret personal file, but he’d chatted just enough with Nixon and a few others this morning to be able to flatter the director.

They could go on this way for hours. David used to chafe at these formalities, but now he enjoyed the exchange of compliments and the constant deferring that were part of the delicate dance leading first to business, then to deeper relationships. But Director Ho glanced at his watch, settled further into his chair, and stared at David. The message was clear: he wanted to move on.

“How may I help you, Director?”

“Minister Li said you are familiar with my field.”

“Yes,” David said. “On behalf of the ministry, I just negotiated the return to China of a sculpture stolen during the Boxer Rebellion and taken to England.”

Every case required that an attorney become an overnight expert, and in recent years David had learned a lot about how artifacts moved. Ho would already know this, but he still delayed saying what he wanted by giving David background information. Another common custom….

“When China closed to outsiders,” Ho began, “Chairman Mao decreed that we had no use for the ancient past. Few excavations were conducted. Then, during the Cultural Revolution, the Red Guard were ordered to destroy any artifacts that could be read as symbols of a decadent or imperial past. Today we have a new mandate. We are to prove that China has had five thousand years of uninterrupted history. Although every schoolchild can recite that fact, we have no physical proof of the first two thousand years. So now we are trying to unite history, chronology, and newly discovered artifacts to validate our claim to the rest of the world. Unfortunately, we still know very little. For years we believed that the cradle of Chinese civilization was on the Yellow River, but we’ve discovered sites in other parts of the country that may suggest otherwise.” He smiled wanly. “As you know, China is backward in many respects.”

David knew the buildup. He’d heard it several times before. Now Ho would begin to talk about his problem, and it would probably involve foreigners—Americans most likely. Would it be an unfair exchange of information? Would it be something as simple as fraternizing between the races on a remote dig in the interior? None of this, David knew, was one-sided; each contingent liked to blame the other. That was the given.

As was the tenuous relationship between China and the United States that percolated above and below the surface of all that transpired between the two countries. Which country was more powerful? Which culture was more important? Most Chinese saw the United States as the most unfriendly nation to China, as the country they most resented, and as the one that would eventually pay the price for its bad manners. This last covered a broad range of indignities—from the perceived persecution of Overseas Chinese like Wen Ho Lee to the constant nagging by the West on issues such as human rights, the one-child policy, and sovereignty over Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Tibet, that the average Chinese thought were none of America’s business. So, could the United States bomb the Chinese embassy and get away with it? Yes, though the fury that this act had brought to the surface had shocked the world. Could China shoot down an American spy plane and get away with it? Yes, though the righteous indignation with which David’s government responded was disingenuous to say the least. To David, it was all part of the cosmic Jell-O that made up his universe. Push a little on this side of the world, and a shudder rippled across the Pacific. Shove a little on that side of the Rim, and set off tremors here. David’s job then was to maneuver through these shifting tides without anyone questioning his integrity, his loyalty, or his demeanor.