Jade Island (13 page)

“But,” Lianne forced herself to say, “if you would let me examine your suit now, I could give you an opinion as to which suit is better.”

“Not today. Daniel is here.”

She bit back a protest. Arguing with Wen simply made him more determined to get his way. “Yes, Uncle. But soon?”

Wen grunted. “Hurry with the locks. My feet are tired.”

Lianne walked around a priceless screen made of lacy jade plaques set in small, densely carved mahogany frames. The screen separated the vault wing from the rest of the house. Grumbling, Wen waited while Lianne went to work on the combination that allowed the big, fireproof steel door to swing open.

Some of the jade objects inside were on display to be touched, admired, loved. Much more jade was held within steel drawers and cabinets. And in one very special, very small steel room, there was a coffin-sized pedestal supporting the Tangs’ most extraordinary treasure—an intact jade burial suit from the Han dynasty. The tiny room was opened rarely and spoken about even less. Only the First Son’s First Son knew of the suit’s existence, and so the secret had been passed from generation to generation.

Once it had been Wen’s pride and pleasure to have sole access to the Tang treasure room. When Joe turned thirty, Wen had given the combinations to him with much ceremony. Joe had looked around the jade vault without real interest. Patiently he listened to Wen’s fervent lecture on the social, political, philosophical, religious, and monetary importance of the Stone of Heaven. Then Joe went back to his racehorses and his study of the history and practice of the ancient art of calligraphy.

Lianne had turned out to be a much more satisfactory acolyte at the Stone of Heaven’s altar. Sixteen years ago, when Wen had decreed that the Tang Consortium headquarters be moved from Vancouver to Hong Kong, the Tang patriarch discovered that Johnny’s backdoor daughter had an instinctive, rare, and deep understanding of jade. Wen had seen nothing like Lianne’s innate skill since his grandmother, who had been the force behind his grandfather’s and father’s wide renown as jade connoisseurs.

When Wen finally despaired of training a son in the
love and lore of jade, and it was too late to mold his own daughters in that role, he began Lianne’s schooling. She would never be a Tang, but that didn’t mean her gift for jade appreciation had to go to waste.

Then Daniel had matured. Though he lacked Lianne’s experienced eye and uncanny instinct for jade, he had other, very important qualities: he was a Tang, he was a male, and he was fascinated by jade. Hoping to find in a grandson what he had never found in a son, Wen had spent much of the past year passing on his knowledge to Daniel.

Along with that knowledge came all but one of the combinations to the vault. Though Daniel thought it was long past time to upgrade the old dial-and-tumbler locks, he was fully aware of the honor his grandfather had given him. If Daniel wondered what lay behind the locked steel door at the west side of the vault, he never asked. No matter what time of day or night Wen felt the need to commune with his treasures, Daniel went without complaint to the vault, opened the many combinations to the various compartments, and sat with his grandfather, listening and learning.

Wen wished that his Number One Son showed half Daniel’s diligence. It galled Wen to give over control of Tang destiny to a son who had little knowledge and less love of jade. But slowly, inevitably, Wen’s increasing frailty had forced him to hand over many of his responsibilities to Joe.

Power didn’t slip easily from Wen’s aged hands. He hated giving up control to anyone, especially to an eldest son whose head was in calligraphy and whose heart quickened for racehorses more than for jade. Nor did Joe show any desire to live in the Vancouver compound for longer than a few days at a time.

An emotional preference for Daniel didn’t sway Wen from his duty to Joe, any more than emotion had swayed Wen from wedding the flat-footed eldest daughter of a
rich merchant. Beauty could be purchased. Power had to be married.

In any event, not only did custom decree that Wen’s eldest son assume command, he was the most suitable of the lot. Harry was too recklessly ambitious for the clan’s good and Johnny was too emotionally tied to America. Despite his shortcomings in jade appreciation, Joe was Wen’s best hope of taking the Tang Consortium to new heights of power and prestige in the twenty-first century.

All Wen had to do was hang on until SunCo’s sails had been trimmed and the Tangs were welcome back in Hong Kong. After that, Joe could be trusted to carry on with the rest.

“This last lock is sticky,” Lianne said, frowning and beginning the combination all over again. “Have you had the tumblers checked?”

“Daniel will see to it,” Wen said, turning toward the jade screen. “Tomorrow, yes?”

“Yes, Grandfather,” Daniel said from the far side of the screen.

Wen grunted in satisfaction. His eyes might be gone, but he had a despot’s ability to sense people walking up behind him.

The last lock finally gave way to Lianne’s deft fingers. The vault door swung open. Cool, incense-scented air washed over her. The area just beyond the vault door had once been an entire single-family home. Now it was a two-story, steel-walled, fireproof vault that was crammed with special drawers, cabinets, closets, and chests. This was the repository of Tang pride, the focus of Wen’s personal wealth and obsession. Jade.

“Watch that worktable,” Lianne cautioned, lightly holding Wen back. “It has been moved since I was last here.”

Wen grunted and suffered himself to be led around the table he could no longer see.

With a mixture of hope and fear, Lianne looked toward the west corner of the room, where the priceless Han burial
shroud was stored behind yet another locked door. As long as Daniel hovered nearby, she couldn’t bring up the Tang treasure unless Wen did. And Wen had made it clear that he wouldn’t.

“Sit down, Uncle,” Lianne said, leading the old man to the only chair in the vault. A small table stood by the comfortable chair. The table held a white jade bowl that needed no special lighting to display its beauty. It was the equal, if not the superior, of the bowl that Dick Farmer had so proudly displayed at the auction last night. “Your favorite bowl awaits you.”

Wen laughed dryly. “Are you still wishing that it had been part of the Jade Trader display?”

“Of course.”

“Only a fool advertises his wealth to the envious.”

“Yes, Uncle.”

Yet Lianne couldn’t help wishing Wen had allowed the bowl to leave the vault. The jade piece had a flawless shape and spectacular, luminous simplicity. A perfect fusion of art and function, the bowl would have stolen the show.

Except, perhaps, for the Neolithic blade. It, too, had fused art and purpose, ceremony and function, into a single gleaming whole. And it had done so nearly seven thousand years before the Ch’ing dynasty bowl that was one of Wen’s favorite objects.

Lianne gave a sidelong glance to the north side of the vault, where Wen kept his collection of Neolithic blades. As much as she needed to reassure herself that she had been mistaken, that the precious blade was still in the Tang vault, she had no excuse to go to the fourth cabinet from the right, open the fifth drawer from the top, and look inside.

While she helped Wen to the chair, Daniel carried a box into the vault and set it on a worktable. Five other boxes appeared rapidly, brought by servants who left as silently as they had come.

Daniel didn’t leave.

A single look at his handsome, hard face told Lianne that he didn’t plan to step out of the vault as long as she was inside. Searching out the truth of the Neolithic blade—and the jade shroud—would have to wait. With a soundless curse, she reached for the first box and carefully began opening it. It held the Burmese jade jewelry she had worn last night. The pieces belonged in one of the cabinets whose drawers were thin, shallow, and plushly lined.

“Let Daniel replace the jade,” Wen said, motioning abruptly to Lianne. “Bring to me…the Tang camel. It has been too long since I last held my old friend in my palm.”

She glanced quickly at Daniel. He was ignoring her, unpacking another box of jade as though he was alone in the vault.

And then he looked at her. The emotion in his eyes was so violent that Lianne stepped back before she could stop herself.

“Girl,” Wen said in a raspy voice, “did you not hear me?”

“Yes, Uncle. I will bring the camel.”

Feeling Daniel’s contempt every step of the way, wondering what she had done to earn it, Lianne crossed to the east side of the vault. Drawers went from floor to ceiling. She ignored the stepladder, stood on tiptoe, and reached up to open the drawer that held Wen’s most prized Tang dynasty pieces. The depth and breadth of the camel collection was unparalleled, even in China.

The drawer opened on silent, oiled runners. Daniel might have happily stuck a jade dagger in her back, but Lianne had to admit that he was taking good care of the vault. Unable to see into the drawer because of its height, she patted around on the silk bottom of the drawer, where she expected to find the jade camel. She found several, but none of them felt exactly right to the touch.

“Have you had the camel out since I last brought it to you?” Lianne asked.

“Were you not listening?” Wen demanded. “It has not been in my hands since you placed it there many weeks ago.”

Daniel stopped unpacking and stared at Lianne. Though he was tall enough to reach the drawer much more easily than she could, he didn’t offer to help. He simply watched while she dragged the stepladder over, climbed up three steps, and looked inside the drawer.

An exquisite array of palm-sized sculptures nestled in the padded silk lining of the drawer. Each camel was in a reclining position, curled around itself, with the long, supple neck turned back and the head resting on the body. The jade ranged in color from cream to pale yellow-green to spinach green to mink brown, often in the same sculpture. The artists had used the natural color variation in the jades to suggest movement and vitality. The animals had been so skillfully carved that light moved over them as though they were relaxed, breathing slowly.

“There it is,” Lianne said. “Someone must have shut the drawer too quickly and sent the camel sliding.”

“Bring it, bring it,” Wen said.

“Just the one?”

“Can you not hear my words?” Wen muttered.

“It is hard to choose among such wonderful pieces,” she said wistfully, running her fingertips over another camel.

This one was carved from a piece of creamy jade that had tiny brown veins running through it. The jade itself had the prized quality of luminous translucence, yet it somehow managed to evoke the dusty monotone of the interior deserts of China where camels carried the dreams of men on their backs.

Lianne eased her fingertip beneath one of the camel’s creamy, curled legs. Tang sculptures were carved in the round, meant to be held more than viewed. If memory served her—and it always did—on this sculpture the separation of the camel’s toes had been carved carefully, deftly. The result was faint nubs where the bottoms of the
feet were, as though they had been worn almost smooth from weary miles packing trade goods along the fabled Silk Road.

Smiling in anticipation of once again feeling the hidden, almost secret nubs of the toes, Lianne ran her fingertip across the bottoms of the camel’s feet.

Nothing greeted her touch but a smooth, gently concave surface.

Frowning, she turned the camel over. All four feet were smooth rather than slightly nubby where toes would be. She peered into the shadowed back of the drawer, looking for another pale, brown-veined camel sculpture.

Daniel’s hands gripped the reinforced side of a cardboard carton with enough force to leave wrinkles. Eyes narrowed until only glittering black slits remained, he watched her bending down to get her face even closer to the drawer.

“Girl,” Wen said curtly. “You may have time in front of you, but nearly all my time is behind me. Bring the camel to me without delay. I will hold it while you remind me of the glory I no longer can see.”

Or feel. But Wen was too proud to admit that aloud.

With a reluctance that only Daniel saw, Lianne climbed down the ladder, holding the sculpture that Wen demanded. Yet it wasn’t the sculpture. Not quite. The difference was as subtle as the bottoms of the camel’s feet. She doubted that it was a difference Wen could still appreciate.

As soon as Lianne took her hand out of the drawer, Daniel went back to unpacking jade, examining each piece with great care. She had no doubt that he was looking for signs of careless handling. She also knew he wouldn’t find any.

“Here, Uncle Wen,” Lianne said.

She set the lustrous brown-and-pale-green sculpture in his lap and put his contorted fingers around the camel’s unchanging, timelessly graceful curves. Gently guiding his hands, she described the jade aloud, but she didn’t mention its most distinctive feature, the bare suggestion of toes, a
detail that set it apart from the vast majority of camel sculptures.

“The stone is of the highest quality. Its luster is gentle and unclouded, as smooth as a lotus petal. The humps are yellow and the rest is the color of rich, wet earth. The carving is intact, completely. There is a fine Cloud Spot on the left rear foot. The carving itself has the quality of elegance so often sought in jade sculpture and much less often found.”

While Lianne’s soft voice continued to describe the jade, using the traditional Chinese evaluation method called the Six Observations, Wen sat motionless except for an occasional nod when he particularly approved a point she made.

Daniel was listening, too. His hands moved more and more slowly as he unwrapped jade treasures and lined them up on the worktable. From time to time he stole quick glances at the small jade cradled between Wen’s bony thighs, as though Daniel was comparing Lianne’s words with the reality of the camel sculpture. While he moved around the vault, replacing the jades that had been in the Seattle exhibition, he wished bitterly that he had enjoyed the benefit of Wen’s wisdom before his eyes and touch were clouded by age. Instead, that priceless learning had been lavished on a bastard granddaughter.