The Chinese Alchemist (8 page)

“I speak Chinese, Lara. Surely you’ve noticed. Not well, perhaps, but well enough. Now, what are your plans?”

“I’m joining my partner Rob in Taiwan for a visit with his daughter,” I said.

“You have a client in Taiwan?” he said. “How would you manage that?”

“You know perfectly well I’m not going to fall for that,” I said. “You’re getting a little irritating on the subject of my client. But you are jumping to conclusions. Really, I am going to visit my sort-of stepdaughter. She is teaching English there, and I miss her a lot.”

“I see,” he said. I could tell he didn’t know whether to believe me or not, which in my opinion said more about him than about me. “Why don’t you join me this evening
for
a drink at the bar in the hotel?”

“Good idea,” I said, although I wasn’t sure it was. “What time?”

“Six? Maybe we can go out for a bite after.”

It seemed churlish to refuse, but the evening began even more badly than I’d feared. He couldn’t wait even two minutes to start at me again on the subject of my mystery client. “I confess that in New York I thought your client might be Dory Matthews, but I guess that would hardly be the case now. Too bad about Dory. I know you were fond of her.”

“Yes, I was, and still am.”

“I suppose it could still be George Matthews. Or his company Norfolk Matthews Pharmaceuticals, but he wouldn’t normally use you to get what he wanted.” I said nothing, but Burton, as usual, rattled on, oblivious to my discomfort. “It’s a bit peripheral for him. He collects medical equipment, and I’m not sure a box with a recipe for the elixir of immortality would qualify, as tantalizing as it might be for the rest of us. And anyway, it’s too soon after Dory’s death for him to be arranging for a purchase in Beijing, I’d think. Am I right?”

“Burton!” I said in a warning tone. “I think we should change the subject.”

“There’s something I’ve wanted to say to you for some time, Lara. Please hear me out. I know you were very fond of Dory. I was, too. It wasn’t my fault she got edged out at the Cottingham. The museum approached me. I didn’t know what the situation was. They told me she was retiring. Why would I think otherwise? I found out later she was pushed out against her will, but I honestly did not know that at the time, and even if I had, it wasn’t up to me. They asked me for an expression of interest, and who wouldn’t be interested, given the budget that museum has? I was keen, I sent my CV, and got an interview, then another, then the job. By the time I got there, she was gone.”

“You’re quite right, Burton. It wasn’t your fault that the Cottingham decided Dory had to go. But Courtney Cottingham told me you’d approached them first, and that it was too much of an opportunity to pass up, given that you are the hot item in this field.” Courtney had shared this annoying little confidence with me at Dory’s retirement bash. A lot of people knew that edging Dory out would be unpopular with certain people, my being one of them. I didn’t figure Courtney actually cared what I thought, nor did I think Burton did either, but both seemed to feel they had to say something to me. It’s just that Burton was lying, or at the very least stretching the truth, and I wasn’t prepared to let him get away with it.

Burton got just a little defensive. “I didn’t apply for the job, Lara. I simply met Courtney Cottingham and her husband at a soiree in Washington, and I told her if the job were ever open, I hoped she would consider me a candidate. I know you really, really liked Dory, and clearly you’re determined to think the worst of me, but what I’m saying is true. Several months after Courtney and I had this conversation, she got in touch with me. She told me Dory was retiring. If my casual remark sparked Dory’s departure, I feel bad about it, but I don’t think it would have changed anything. Courtney thought Dory was past it, and maybe she was. Her arthritis had slowed her down, and she wasn’t open to new ideas for the galleries.”

“Burton…” I began, but stopped. There was no use in arguing this point with him. “Look, I know you’re doing great things for the Cottingham, just as you did for that private museum in Boston. I’m sure the Cottingham is lucky to have you no matter what the circumstances. It’s too late for Dory, so let’s just talk about something else.” It was the best I could do.

“Thank you,” he said. “Dory was certainly very nice when I went to visit her a couple of weeks before she died. It was just before you and I headed for New York for our first futile attempts to get the box. She served me tea and cookies, and we had a lovely chat. She even sent me home with a care package, a box of homemade cookies and some of her own blend of tea. She used it to treat her arthritis, but she said it was good for almost all that ails you. I went to personally invite her to a reception we were having for donors. If she blamed me, she gave me no such indication, but I suppose she might say something to you and not to me.”

“She never said a bad word about you to me, Burton.” That was indeed true. “I doubt she said a bad word about you to anyone. She was not the sort of person to do that. She was a classy lady.”

“She was,” he agreed. “Now as you’ve already requested, let’s talk about something else. I got a seat on the plane tomorrow, so this is my last evening here. I know this place that serves fabulous food. Let’s go eat.”

I’d had enough of Burton for one day, but there didn’t seem to be a polite way to get out of it. I could hardly say I had other things to do, when clearly I didn’t. Reluctantly, I went with him. He ordered, not even bothering to ask me if there was anything I wanted. However, he knew Chinese food as well as he knew Chinese art. Platter after platter of food arrived in front of us, all really delicious. Over the course of the meal, I discovered that Burton could be quite amusing when he tried. I may have even found myself warming to him just the tiniest bit. He had the good grace to make fun of his health fetish, which he had to, really, when I asked him what on Earth he was doing as he proceeded to wipe down the chopsticks. In some cases, cleaning the chopsticks might be a good idea, but these had come in sealed packages, the kind you actually have to tear open to use. I tried more or less unsuccessfully not to laugh. Heaven knows, I try to be careful when I’m traveling. If I find myself some place that I think doesn’t measure up from a sanitary standpoint, I won’t eat anything that doesn’t have steam rising from it. It’s my number one rule. I’d sized this restaurant up pretty quickly and decided it was okay. Burton, however, was taking no chances. When he put disinfectant drops on the spotless serving spoons, though, I got the giggles. Even he started to laugh.

When I’d managed to get my hilarity under control, I got around to a question I was determined to ask. “You speak Chinese, don’t you? Mandarin?” I asked when I’d eaten as much as I possibly could.

“Yes,” he said. “Also a little Cantonese.”

“So what did that guy in black, the one who has enough pull that he avoids spending time looking at videotapes and being questioned with the rest of us, say to the doorman?”

“The guy with the expensive shoes? He said something along the lines of ‘Grab the young man’ or something. Why?”

“Well, what would you say under those circumstances?”

“ ‘Stop, thief,” I guess. I’ll grant you it was a little ambiguous, but really, wouldn’t you think the doorman would grab the guy with the silver box under his arm if that is indeed what the guy said?“

“I don’t know. The two were about the same age—David and the thief, that is.”

“Where are you going with this, Lara?”

“Promise you won’t laugh? I think there is a possibility that the man in black was in on the theft.”

“Whoa!” Burton said. “Chinese army. Be careful.”

“You’re not planning to discuss this with them, are you?”

“Of course not, but why would you think such a thing? Surely it is not because he left so soon after it happened and he didn’t come back the next day like the rest of us. Perhaps his shift of duty was about to begin. I don’t know, maybe they went and took his statement from him at his home or work as a professional courtesy. I don’t think you can assume he is a criminal just because he dodged some of the most incredibly boring hours I’ve put in while here.”

“It’s not that at all. He was ostensibly looking at a painting. The trouble is, he was standing in the wrong place to do that. That was a detailed painting. The rest of us stood much closer to look at it. I watched the videotape very carefully: where you stood, where I stood, and indeed where everybody stood when they were looking at it, and then I went over to it myself afterward. He was standing way too far back.”

“So maybe the guy doesn’t know how to look at paintings properly. Why does his ineptitude in that regard matter?”

“I think he was standing in the perfect place to block the young employee’s view of the silver box.”

“He hardly needed to do that,” Burton said. “The idiot wouldn’t have taken his eyes off that computer screen for a magnitude-nine earthquake. The building would have come down around him, and he’d be found dead staring at the screen.”

“Yes, but you wouldn’t know that for sure would you, if you planned to grab the box? You couldn’t count on the fact that there was a computer-game addict in charge that day.”

“No, but you could probably count on poor security, I regret to say. They haven’t yet got the hang of it here. They actually rent compartments on trains to move works of art. I mean, you’ve got to hope thieves don’t know what they’re looking at when they pry open compartment doors, or that they’re interested in stealing something other than art.”

“I guess. Maybe you’re right and I’m just irked because the guy pulled rank and avoided two rather boring sessions with the police.”

“This is China, Lara,” Burton said.

“That must be the tenth time someone has said that to me.”

“Remember it.” Despite the fact that he lectured me, and clearly thought I was imagining things, we spent a pleasant enough evening after that, managing to avoid contentious subjects like Dory and the name of my client. We parted on good terms, Burton telling me he wouldn’t see me the next day as he had to leave early for the airport, and to phone him when I got home.

I didn’t expect to see Burton in Beijing again, but as I was to discover soon enough, Burton rarely did what he said he was going to do. For myself, I decided if I had to wait another couple of days, I might just as well go to the auction even if I didn’t plan to bid on anything. In the meantime, I would attempt to entertain myself by seeing the sights. I started with the Forbidden City, naturally, a must-see for anyone in Beijing. I began at the south end, across from Tian’anmen Square, at the Gate of Heavenly Peace, graced as it is with an enormous portrait of Chairman Mao. If you want to see the great one himself, you can do so by filing past his remarkably well-preserved corpse in the Chairman Mao Memorial Hall. I’d done that once, however, and once was enough. In the early days of our marriage, I’d told Clive about the experience and he’d suggested that we should do an embalmed leaders world tour, Mao, then Stalin in Moscow, supplementing it where necessary with impressive mausoleums in which embalmed dictators were interred, like maybe the Perons in Argentina. The idea didn’t seem nearly as amusing to me now, a much older and wiser person, but it did remind me that there had been a time when I’d enjoyed being with Clive. We never did the tour, I might add. Instead we collected watches with dead dictators on the faces, in Mao’s case, a particularly impressive model with Mao waving his arm for the second hand. Clive got the watch collection in our divorce, I regret to say, something he likes to remind me about from time to time, pushing his sleeve well up and making much of looking at the time when he’s wearing one of them.

The Forbidden City is called that because for much of its history as an imperial palace it was strictly off limits to almost everyone, your average person not even allowed to venture near the place. Now, however, you can wander at will, which is exactly what I did, admiring the large plazas, the brilliant red of the halls, the extraordinary carved staircases, impressive incense burners in the shape of cranes and tortoises, and of course, the throne room with the dragon throne. The further one moved north in the Forbidden City, through one vast plaza to the next, the closer one got to the emperor, known as the Son of Heaven.

I was heading for the most opulent of the imperial residences, the Palace of Heavenly Purity when I thought I saw Burton off in the distance just past a group of uniformed men—police or military, I didn’t know. It was not so much that I saw Burton, but rather the flash of an azure scarf and a head of blondish hair. I started to move closer, but the group disbanded and I could see no sign of anyone remotely resembling Burton. I reminded myself that he was leaving that day for home. It was still early in the day, but the nights went out in the early afternoon, so he wouldn’t have time for sightseeing. Furthermore, Burton did not hold a monopoly on azure scarves. I must have been mistaken.

Despite the grandeur of the buildings, my favorite part of the City was the garden at the north end. I browsed in the bookshop and purchased some woodcut prints that I thought might look nice framed for the shop, and generally lazed about. I felt guilty, though, as if I should be doing something. Mira had told me that my expenses would be paid until I left, but I thought I should see if I could make the trip pay for itself in some way, given that I wasn’t making any commission on the purchase of the silver box, by finding more treasures to take home for the shop. If I could, then I’d tell Mira I’d pay the last few nights in the hotel. With that goal in mind, and guilt therefore assuaged, I went shopping.