Dragon Bones (11 page)

“That
zun
came from a private collector!” Lily exclaimed. “Cosgrove’s had all of the proper documentation to prove it!”

“And it was sold to a private collector,” Annabel added. “Isn’t that right, Mr. Miller?”

“It’s made a wonderful addition to my collection!” Stuart growled, acting out the part of a ravaging barbarian to the great amusement of the others.

“See what I mean?” Ma said, addressing Hulan and David again. “They go on this way every time they get together—”

“I don’t see why it’s so funny,” Lily said. Her comment brought on a few more hoots. “Well, I don’t.”

“Forget about them, Lily,” Catherine soothed. “They’re just picking on you because you’re a girl. Believe me, they don’t want you for your antiquities….”

The men, right down to the elderly Cambridge professor with the peeling scalp, suddenly found the food on their plates very interesting.

Catherine purred to David sotto voce, “They’re a bunch of boys….”

There probably wasn’t another woman within a thousand square miles built like Catherine, and every man at this table knew it. But Catherine had singled out David, and Hulan understood why. People wanted to connect with him. They wanted to engage him, touch him.

Catherine modulated her pitch once again to include the others. “But I don’t know why we can’t consider Lily’s idea about the Nine Tripods. Could there be a find anywhere that would be more significant to the history of China?”

“The terra-cotta warriors,” Professor Schmidt suggested.

“A great tourist site certainly,” Catherine agreed, “but what do they really say about power?”

“Qinshihuangdi had enough power to unify the country,” the professor replied. “He had enough power to build the Great Wall.”

“No one really knows the true origin of the Great Wall,” Ma cautioned. “Qinshihuangdi receives credit for it, but we all know that much of that is myth, not reality.”

“Myth and reality are connected,” Catherine said, “especially where Yu the Great is concerned.” Again she focused her attention on David, leaning close enough to him that her breasts brushed against his forearm, which, Hulan noticed, he didn’t move. “Do you know who we’re talking about?”

David shook his head.

“But you do, right?” Catherine said to Hulan. “‘If not for Yu, we all would be fishes,’” she recited.

Hulan was accustomed to the deficiencies of her education, but these scholars were appalled when she confessed her ignorance.

Catherine explained that Da Yu—Yu the Great—was the first emperor of China to found a hereditary dynasty. His reign began in 2205
B.C.
after he controlled the floods. These deeds were recorded in the
Shu Ching,
China’s first historical text. Qinshihuangdi was the great unifier, though his reign lasted only from 221 to 206
B.C.
China got its name from him and his dynasty—Qin, China. As Professor Schmidt had already pointed out, eight of the nine tripods that Da Yu made were believed to have been lost in a fire that marked the overthrow of Qinshihuangdi’s reign. One was lost in a river.

“Lily thinks it could be
our
river,” Catherine concluded. “I think she should keep on with her search, don’t you? To have a direct tie to Yu—”

“You have to understand, Attorney Stark,” Ma interrupted, “China has no great epics like Gilgamesh, the Mahabharata, or the Iliad. Yu’s story is the closest, although it isn’t about creation or the spirit world. It’s about the relationship between man and the physical universe. This approach is uniquely Chinese and something we still see in Chinese culture today. Even now our rulers are considered responsible for natural phenomena. Losing control over nature marks the end of their Mandate of Heaven. All that began with Yu, a real man who took on mythical aspects.”

“Such as?”

“Using a winged dragon to help cut rivers to drain the land of floods, marrying a fox spirit with tiny hoofed feet, creating nine provinces, which he then memorialized in the tripods.” Catherine put her elbows on the table and rested her chin on one of her palms so she could face David at a pretty angle. Hulan had no doubt that Catherine’s thigh was now resting against his, and she found this thought strangely titillating. “Lily will do anything to find that submerged tripod.” Then, without shifting her gaze from David, she asked the Englishwoman, “Who are you going to send to a watery grave this time, Lily? Professor Schmidt or Dr. Strong?”

“That’s not funny!” Lily practically yelped.

The others laughed uproariously.

“It always comes down to power and the symbols we use to portray it,” Professor Schmidt said. “You heard Dr. Ma. In China power is granted to those who hold the Mandate of Heaven.”

“That was a feudal idea,” Hulan corrected. “Only emperors were believed to be sons of Heaven.”

“Only emperors? What about Mao?” Stuart challenged. “You have to admit that Mao was in the game for the power. And what about that fellow from the All-Patriotic Society? He clearly cares about power.”

“The All-Patriotic Society is a cult—”

“And you’ve never heard of the Cult of Mao?” Stuart inquired. “But Mao was mortal, and I presume Xiao Da is too. Still, they’re both very much about power. How do you show your power to your people and to the world? With a sword? A nuclear arsenal? A scepter in the West or a
ruyi
or
gui
in ancient China? All of these are symbols of power.”

“You should see his collection,” Lily said in obvious admiration, but Stuart was on a roll.

“Power can be found in something as mundane as bricks and mortar if they’re put together the right way,” he continued. “Consider your Great Wall and Three Gorges Dam. Wouldn’t you say they’re both international symbols of China’s power?”

Hulan cut him off suddenly, her tone brittle. “All of this is very interesting, but I’m not here to talk about symbols. I’m here to investigate the murder of Brian McCarthy.”

“What do you mean
murder
?” Hearing the tremor in her voice, Lily put a hand to her throat. “Brian’s death was an accident.” She turned to Ma. “That’s what you told us. You said it was an accident.”

Ma spoke reassuringly. “Of course it was. Our foreign friends must remember that our ways are sometimes different.” He paused, then added, “And very crude. You must think of our legal system as you might a jar of stinking tofu. Best to keep a lid on it.”

In another time, in another place, these might have been the last words that the director of the dig would have spoken in public. Hulan needed to see his
dangan
to understand who he was and why his words ran so freely.

A representative from one of the provincial museums was the first to speak. In Chinese he said, “I thought you were here to investigate corruption.”

“Often where there’s murder there’s also corruption,” Hulan crackled back in Mandarin.

The other museum representatives shifted in their seats. The foreigners—all apparently fluent in Mandarin—picked up on their colleagues’ sudden nervousness.

“I’m interested in whatever will lead me to a murderer,” Hulan continued in English. “If this Yu will lead me to Brian’s killer, then I’ll follow that path.”

“Are we in any danger?” Annabel Quinby asked.

Before Hulan could respond, Dr. Ma jumped in. “You are all perfectly safe.” He next addressed Hulan. “Almost everyone at this table helped search for Brian when he disappeared. We’ve come to accept that he fell in the river and drowned, and we’ve all taken extra precautions to be careful whenever we’re near the shore. As soon as we’re done here, I’ll show you what I think happened.”

“I wouldn’t be here, Dr. Ma, if the facts supported whatever accidental theory you might have.” Hulan scanned the faces at the table. “I think everyone should be careful until we’ve figured out exactly what happened.”

An uncomfortable silence settled over the group as this warning sank in. Then Stuart Miller swung his legs out and over the bench. “Come on, Cat, let’s visit awhile before I head back to the dam. You’ll give the old man that, won’t you? And don’t worry, Inspector, we’ll protect each other.”

His cavalier manner trumped everything Hulan had just said. Catherine gracefully rose out of her seat. Michael Quon also got up, and the others waved him off, teasing him about his afternoon walks and how hard it was to get a dilettante to do any real work. Then the scholars carried on among themselves about the Four Mysteries just as Ma had predicted, while the men from the Chinese museums talked about the tastelessness of the dishes at the annual Cultural Relics banquet last spring.

All of this was out of Hulan’s realm of experience. Usually when the word
murder
came up, people wanted to hear the facts of the case; they wanted to know if there were suspects and who they might be; and they weren’t so easily convinced that they were safe themselves. Were the scholars so buried in their academic world that they didn’t care about what had happened to Brian? Were the museum scouts—the vultures—so sure of their positions that they weren’t even a little afraid of having someone from the MPS in their midst? Only Lily had shown any emotion about Brian’s death, but then she was the only person at the table who’d been accused of theft, smuggling, and murder.

AFTER LUNCH, DR. MA, DAVID, AND HULAN SET OUT TO WHERE IT
was believed Brian had gone into the river. The late afternoon humidity felt as heavy and thick as porridge. The sky was a white blanket, and it looked as if it was about to rain, but for now dust billowed up with each of their footsteps and clung to the sweat on their arms, legs, and faces.

Hulan’s mind wandered in the heat. It was odd, she thought, how barren this area was. Coming down the river on the ferry, the hillsides had been lush and green, with vines cascading over rocks and ferns thriving in the moisture. Trees and bamboo had twisted into spidery forms as they reached for sunlight. Orchids and other tropical flowers had bloomed in shady spots. But here there were no trees or ferns or flowers. Instead Hulan saw only rocks and dirt and the occasional scraggly plant, while below them the murky waters of the Yangzi flowed past. Was it common for an archaeological site to be so desolate? Did the work that took place here require that the land be cleared of all flora?

Once they reached the upper path, Ba Mountain rose above them on their left. They passed a house—a hovel was more like it—that had been built into the cliff. The exposed portions, such as they were, had been constructed from bricks, cardboard, and corrugated metal sheeting. A woman in threadbare clothes sat on the front step, comforting a crying infant. This family would eventually be moved out of the inundation zone, but in the meantime, where was their kitchen garden? What did they eat?

The path narrowed, and now the cliff rose so high and steep next to Hulan that her shoulder and arm brushed along jagged outcroppings. To her right, the path fell away precipitously perhaps a hundred meters to the water. If Brian had fallen here and bashed his head on the rocks on his way down, he would have been dead when he hit the water, making his death an accident after all.

After climbing for half an hour, they reached a small crest, then began heading down the cramped walkway. Dr. Ma nimbly hopped from rock to rock, easily transferring his weight when the stones shifted under his boots. Hulan and David were more cautious, very aware that a false step could, at the very least, get them cut, scraped, or gouged.

They reached a small cove with a sliver of beach. Ma turned to them, hands on his hips, a light sheen of sweat on his forehead. “We found Brian’s daypack on a rock out there,” he said, gesturing with his chin toward the river. “He had a container of noodles, chopsticks, and a bottle of water sitting next to it.”

“Where?” Hulan didn’t see any boulders protruding from the water.

“You can’t see it now. With the rain the last few nights, the river’s been rising. It’s probably two meters higher than when Brian last came out here for lunch.”

“You think Brian walked all the way out here for a meal?” Hulan asked. “Why would he do that?”

“You just ate with us,” Ma answered. “Imagine having variations of that same conversation three times a day for several months, then coming back here a year later and having them all over again. Even I like to get away sometimes.”

Hulan edged down the bank. The rocks were wet, and with her shoe she tested to see how slippery they were. Plenty slippery. The river was narrow here too, so the current was fast. Brian’s body would have been carried away very quickly.

“Who found his things?”

“I did,” came Ma’s quick reply.

“And what brought you here?”

“Inspector, we’re a small group in a small area. We all have our little sanctuaries to get away from the others. Some of our people have places where they like to get away together, if you know what I mean. Men and women working side by side, the heat, the isolation….”

“Was Brian seeing anyone?” she asked.

“In particular?” Ma seemed to consider the possibilities. “I don’t think so.”

Hulan felt a few drops of rain and looked around for shelter.