The Chinese Alchemist (26 page)

Zhang Anthony had looked a little skeptical up until this point on the subject of his sister, and for that matter everything else I said, but then he nodded. “I remember her,” he said slowly. “My sister. I remember my mother, the way she felt and smelled, although I cannot recall her face, but I remember someone else, a girl. What did you say her name was?”

“Dorothy.” the elderly man said. His son just looked at him. I didn’t know Anthony well enough to read the expression on his face, but I think he was angry.

“Dorothy became a highly regarded specialist in Chinese art and antiquities, curator of the Asian galleries at a small but prestigious Canadian museum,” I went on. “One day, in perusing the Molesworth and Cox Oriental auction catalog, she saw one of the silver boxes she had played with as a child. A relatively short time after that, she saw a second silver box that belonged to the set.”

“Just a moment,” Anthony said rather peremptorily. He then turned to his son and said something in Chinese.

Xiaoling shook his head no. Anthony looked at his son for a moment or two, and then said in a quiet tone that was chilling, “Then where are they?” I suppose he meant the boxes. Xiaoling didn’t answer.

“Seeing these boxes on the market told Dorothy many things. One was that almost certainly the boxes had been put on the market by a relative of hers at some point in time. Furthermore, for them to be auctioned in New York at this time could well have meant that they had been smuggled out of the country. Dorothy told me that it was her stepfather who brought the boxes out of China, but it wasn’t. While she would not have known at such a young age what she was doing, she herself brought one of them out. Dorothy’s brother—her half brother Martin, that is— remembers the little box very well. This was perhaps the first of a series of relatively small lies Dorothy told me which, while relatively innocuous individually, taken together had unforeseen and terrible consequences.” Anthony looked askance at my choice of words.

“Dorothy’s husband actually purchased both of the boxes on offer at her request. She told me that she did not collect in her field of employment, but this was another untruth. As of eighteen months ago, George and Dorothy owned all three of the nesting set of boxes. Dorothy said that when they were all assembled, she was going to donate them to the Shaanxi History Museum in Xi’an. If she had really meant to do so, she could have done it eighteen months ago.

“She didn’t, because all of a sudden she had an idea as to how to track down her brother. One of the boxes on offer came from the collection of Xie Jinghe. Dorothy and George contacted Dr. Xie and learned from him that he had purchased the box several years previously, at least that is what he told them. They contacted the auction house for information on the second seller, but were refused that information. Something Dr. Xie said to them, however, made them believe it was he. Dr. Xie also told them that the box he had sold had been in his possession for many years. Dorothy, who after all was a museum curator, did a provenance check of her own, and she decided that there was no evidence that the box had been in Canada in Dr. Xie’s collection for any significant amount of time. Her husband, who by now considered Dr. Xie both colleague and friend, thought they should take Dr. Xie’s word for it, that the results of Dorothy’s provenance check must have missed something. Dorothy disagreed.”

“It was in my personal collection for many years,” Dr. Xie said rather huffily. “I bought it in Hong Kong before it reverted to Chinese control, perfectly legally, and brought it to Canada with me, also legally.”

“That is hardly the point is it, Dr. Xie?” I said. “It was looted merchandise from a very important tomb.”

“Carry on, please,” Anthony said impatiently. “So far all I have heard are wild and completely unsupported allegations.”

“Dorothy,” the old man said, putting the cricket back into the basket. I suppose he was a little senile.

“I understand why you would like to think that what I am saying is unsubstantiated, but believe me there are ways of proving all of this, and in addition to George Matthews, there are two lawyers who have heard this story from the lips of Dorothy herself, Eva Reti in Toronto and Mira Tetford in Beijing. To continue, Dorothy decided that she would find her Chinese relatives and put a stop to the smuggling at the same time. I think she had a couple of motives. She had an almost pathological fear, according to George, that someone would find out that she came from a family of criminals and that she would therefore be reviled by her colleagues in her chosen field. One might ask why, given the number of museums lately that have had to acknowledge parts of their collection are stolen goods, but that was the way it was for Dorothy. On the other hand, she really wanted to see her little brother again. She remembers you very well, Anthony. I think she missed you her entire life.”

Anthony nodded. He suddenly looked very much older, as if weighed down with regret, maybe, or experiences lost. “I would have liked to have a sister when I was growing up.

I was only allowed one son, of course. That’s the way it is here in China, one couple, one child. Is she really dead?“

“Dorothy dead?” the old man said. He certainly seemed to be following this conversation in English all right. “Sons are better.”

Well there it was, wasn’t it? Vivian could take the daughter, but she would never be allowed to take the son. It had not escaped my notice that almost all the Chinese children put up for international adoptions are girls, which says a lot about Chinese priorities.

“Yes, she’s dead,” I said, through clenched teeth. “To accomplish her plan, Dorothy took the box she had brought with her from China as a child, and had treasured all these years, and put it up for auction at the same place that the other two boxes were sold, assuming the seller would be checking prices in catalogs and would not only see it, but be curious enough to try to purchase it, or at least to find out who was selling it. You may not have noticed it, Anthony, but others did. In a way, though, this all happened too late for Dorothy, who suffered greatly from arthritis and was therefore not sufficiently mobile to fully put her plan into action.” Anthony looked again at this father, particularly his misshapen hands.

“Going to New York to the auction would have been difficult for her, and George, her husband, who was supportive but not actually too keen on this obsession of Dorothy’s, refused to go. Therefore, Dorothy conscripted me to go to New York to buy the box. She didn’t want to lose it, you see, but she wanted to know who intended to purchase it, whoever came out of the woodwork as it were. I think I should have known that Dorothy was not being entirely honest with me. She told me that the set of nesting boxes would have had a fourth box, the largest, that was wood. A wood box couldn’t survive over several centuries, particularly once removed from the tombs. The only way she would know that is if she’d seen the remains of the wooden box before it disintegrated, which means she saw it when it was in the tomb or immediately after. It would have fallen apart when it was moved.

“She asked me who I thought might be bidding on the box. I told her that Burton Haldimand, her successor as curator of the Asian galleries of the Cottingham Museum was trying to purchase it for the museum. I told her there was a young man, too, who seemed interested. That man was Song Liang, an employee of the Cultural Relics Bureau who was sent to purchase it on behalf of China. There was also a telephone bidder, who could have been anyone anywhere, but I am reasonably sure will prove, once courts subpoena the auction house records, to be Dr. Xie here.”

“Ms. McClintoch!” Dr. Xie protested, but Anthony motioned him to be silent.

“When Dorothy realized she might lose her precious box, and still be none the wiser, she got cold feet and she herself withdrew her silver box from sale at the last minute. She told me she had to
get
a drink of water, but she went on another line and faxed the auction house. George told me she had a fax ready to go just in case.”

Anthony turned to his son. “You have sold Lingfei’s boxes!”

Xiaoling didn’t answer.

“Actually he’s sold more than that,” I said. “He’s sold a rather impressive number of other T’ang dynasty artifacts that may or may not have come from the same tomb. In fact, he has a rather effective antiquities smuggling operation going on, feeding a North American market that is panic-stricken that Chinese antiquities will soon not be available for sale in their countries.

“Sadly, Dorothy died shortly after she took the silver box off the market. George had told his wife he would support this project of hers, and somewhat reluctantly continued on with it after she died. He put the box up for sale again, this time in Beijing. Once again he sent me to try to purchase it. And, given that he had some qualms about this whole venture, he asked his friend Xie Jinghe to keep an eye on the box and on me.”

All eyes now turned to Dr. Xie, who nodded. “And this is how I am to be repaid?” he said, his voice dripping with acid.

I ignored him. “Dr. Xie was happy to oblige, because, unbeknownst to Dorothy and George, he was part of Xiaoling’s antiquities-smuggling scheme. The arrival of a third silver box on the market had certainly attracted his attention, and this was a way to find out what exactly was going on.” I heard a sharp intake of breath from the man at my side. “Isn’t that right, Dr. Xie?” This time the man did not answer.

“I have no idea why someone as wealthy as Dr. Xie might want to do such a thing, except to ensure his own supply of priceless artifacts, some of which I believe I saw in a decorating magazine a year or so ago. Perhaps, Dr. Xie, you, like others, were worried that the door would really slam shut on Chinese antiquities. I also don’t know why Song Liang stole the box in Beijing. I suppose we might give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that he started out with the best of intentions, hoping to purchase the box on behalf of his country. Later the temptation got to be too much for him. He was approached by Xiaoling and he agreed to simply steal it. Xiaoling even came to the auction house in Beijing to get a look at it, and to provide some cover for the thief. He made sure that the view of the box was blocked, and that Song was able to get away. Then Song decided to double-cross the man who had paid him to steal the box. It was a very bad decision on his part.

“What do you mean a large number of T’ang dynasty artifacts?” Zhang Anthony said, as if the information had finally sunk in.

“Fifty, fifty-five, at least. A friend and colleague of mine has been through ten years’ worth of auction catalogs and noted a spike in T’ang dynasty artifacts beginning about five years ago.”

Anthony turned toward his son. “You have been to Lingfei’s tomb, perhaps?” Xiaoling shook his head. Anthony turned back to me. “Yes, there was a tomb, and yes, we took objects from it. It kept us from starving during the worst excesses of various regimes. My father may have been a confidant of Chairman Mao, and I may have been a red prince with privileges others did not enjoy, but during the Cultural Revolution, I, a U.S.-educated teacher, was sent to the countryside along with the rest of the so-called bourgeoisie. I worked in the fields, tending herbs used for medicine, actually. Fortunately for me, it was to Shaanxi Province that I was sent. My father had told me about the tomb, and exactly where it was. I found it. A discreet sale from time to time allowed me to return to Beijing and to this comfortable home. It helped me to send my son to law school in California, too, even if he failed his final examinations. Is that so terrible?”

“That’s not for me to say. Your son, however, is far from starving. He is a criminal and a bully. Not only does he smuggle antiquities, but he gets off on intimidating people. No, wait, it goes well beyond intimidation. People both hate and fear him. There are very kind and brave individuals in a little village outside this city who are terrified of him. He is the Beijing end of a group that calls itself Golden Lotus, whose activities have expanded way beyond antiquities smuggling.”

Anthony just looked at his son, a question in his eyes. Xiaoling spoke to him in Chinese. When he’d finished, Anthony turned to me. “My son has forgotten to respect his father. He tells me I am a fool to listen to you.”

“Then, I’ll stop talking and leave.”

“You will not leave,” Xiaoling said.

“Yes, she will,” Anthony said in a warning tone. “Whenever she chooses to do so.”

“The mistake you made,” I said turning once again to Xiaoling, “was to have your goons threaten me in Xi’an. That told me there was a Toronto connection that I might not have known otherwise. No, I don’t think Dory Matthews was part of the smuggling operation. I think she just thrust her beloved silver box out there in what might have been an ill-conceived gesture, more vain hope than any real certainty that it would lead her to her brother. That box sure made ripples in the pond, and yes, it attracted attention, most of it dubious.

“Without those threatening phone calls in Xi’an, I would have viewed all this as a strictly Chinese problem as opposed to an international one. Until you started me on that course of thought, I had just assumed it was an unfortunate coincidence that a box that had already been withdrawn from sale once was stolen in short order. It also put me on to Dr. Xie as the seller of at least one of the boxes offered through Molesworth and Cox auction house.” Once again Dr. Xie declined to comment.

“But to summarize: Zhang Xiaoling has been systematically plundering at least one tomb and probably several more in Shaanxi province somewhere, I’d guess in the area around Hua Shan. To compound this, he has been smuggling the artifacts out of the country to places like Hong Kong and North America. Dr. Xie has been helping him do that using his distribution system for Xie Homeopathic.”

“You will never prove anything of the sort,” Dr. Xie said.

“Maybe not. You should know, however, that I have turned the teabags you gave me in to the police for analysis, and have pointed out that Burton Haldimand may also have received teabags from you. That latter fact may be hearsay, but my teabags aren’t, and I believe they will pretty much speak for themselves. I think you killed Burton. It wouldn’t have taken much, given his medical condition and all the stuff he was putting into his system knowingly, and I think you knew enough about his health to finish him off.”