Jade Island (2 page)

Kyle’s blond eyebrows shot up. “They
are
pissed. Will it turn up?”

“Worst-case scenario?”

“Is there any other kind?”

“It’s already here.”

“Where?”

“My contact didn’t know or didn’t say,” Archer said. “Same difference, as far as the Donovans are concerned.”

“Farmer isn’t stupid,” Kyle said slowly, “but he isn’t the kind of guy to hide his glory under a bushel basket. He wants to be recognized as a big man in cultural circles, a true connoisseur as well as merely wealthy. If he has a coup the size of the Jade Emperor’s Tomb, he’ll strut it.”

“That’s what Uncle is afraid of. At this moment we have some very quiet, extremely delicate negotiations going on with mainland China.”

“Trade, dope, immigration, or illegal arms?” Kyle asked.

“Does it matter?”

“Yes.”

Archer smiled slightly. He and his brother were more alike than either one of them had realized until recently. “Illegal arms. The Chinese are making a bundle exporting munitions that are outdated by our standards, yet plenty high-tech by Second or Third World standards.”

“Ah, civilization. Ain’t it grand.”

“It beats whatever is in second place. That’s why Uncle is negotiating instead of shooting. Since it’s China we’re negotiating with, we’ve heard a hundred degrees of yes and none of no; but not a damn thing has been signed, sealed, or delivered in the way of promising to shut down the export of high-tech munitions.”

“What does China want?”

“My contact didn’t say. Obviously it’s more than we’re willing to give them so far. If this Jade Emperor shit hits the fan, we’re going to end up looking as bad as we smell. Uncle will have to give up a lot more to China than is good for the long term, in order to get what we must have in the short term—less weapons in the hands of ambitious tyrants.”

“Hand me the milk,” Kyle said. He couldn’t go back to bed and he sure as hell needed something extra to kick his butt into gear. Not to mention his mind.

He grabbed the milk carton from Archer and didn’t stop pouring until the coffee in his cup was the color of the Mississippi in flood. He drank hard and fast, then waited for the caffeine to hit his brain cells.

“Okay,” Kyle said. “So Uncle thinks the Tangs swiped the tomb goods and sold them to Farmer.”

“That’s one theory.”

“What are the others?”

“SunCo is the second favorite.”

“They’re based in mainland China. If they did it, their government would be all over them like a cat covering shit.”

“Probably. Depends on who SunCo is allied with in the mainland government. They have more factions than we have names to give them. Anyway, until further notice, the Tang Consortium is the favorite bad guy.”

Kyle drank the last of his coffee, ran his hands over his bristly cheeks, and looked up at Archer with clear, hazel-green eyes.

“Since the Turnover,” Kyle said, “the Tang Consortium has been pretty well shut out of Hong Kong and the mainland. The Tangs need a strong U.S. ally. They don’t get any stronger than Dick Farmer.”

“Yeah. If it weren’t for the arms negotiations, Uncle would let China, Farmer, and the Tangs slug it out. And we wouldn’t be voting for the American. Farmer doesn’t have too many friends in high places.”

“You’re speaking of the man most likely to start his own party and get elected President.”

“It would mean a step down in power for Farmer. A big step. When the President wants to hold an international meeting, it takes protocol experts months to plan. When Farmer wants to hold the same meeting, everyone comes to Farmer Island and no one bitches about who has precedence.”

“Yeah. I love that trick he plays with the lapel pins and the house computer. When you smuggled yours out after that last conference Donovan International attended, it took me months to reverse-engineer the chip and build one that would make the computer think whoever wore it was God.”

“So you say. It’s never been tested.”

Kyle shrugged. He had done it, he knew it, and that was all that mattered to him. “Can you get a full description of the tomb contents? Otherwise we won’t know what to look for.”

“For openers, there’s a jade burial suit. Intact.”

Kyle was too surprised to say anything. When he wasn’t surprised anymore, he still didn’t know what to say. Absently he picked up the Baroque flute and blew a series of notes that were piercing yet sweet, random yet musical. Then he set the wooden flute aside and turned to his brother.

“Jade burial suits are extremely rare,” Kyle said. “Nearly all that have been discovered are still in China. The very few that have gone overseas are in the hands of national institutions, not individuals.”

Archer waited.

“What else was in the tomb?” Kyle asked.

“The usual stuff—jewelry, scepters, sculptures, dishes, screens.”

“‘The usual stuff,’” Kyle muttered, shaking his head. “I’ll need better descriptions than that. Size, color, age, that sort of thing.”

“I’ll try, but my contact was unofficial.”

“Unofficial. Uh-huh. Do you really believe that?”

“Most of the real work is done that way. Off the record.”

Subtly Kyle flexed his left shoulder, trying to work out the ache. The wound had long since healed, but the shock wave from an off-the-record bullet had done unhappy things to the nearby cartilage. When it came to predicting rain, he had a better average than the expensive weather guessers on TV.

“So this unofficial contact calls you,” Kyle said, “and says that there are rumors of the type of cultural theft that will make diplomats reach for tranquilizers while governments beat the drum of nationalism and everybody with any sense heads for cover.”

“Yes.”

“Why did he come to you?”

“He didn’t say, beyond the obvious.”

“Which is?”

“Donovan International is in the right position and I know how the game is played.”

“With real bullets,” Kyle muttered.

“No. With real permits, passports, and other kinds of official paper. If we tell Uncle to bugger off, life becomes a lot trickier for Donovan International. It’s hard to run an import-export business without the cooperation of the U.S. bureaucracy. Farmer can do it. We can’t.”

“And we owe Uncle one, don’t we?” Kyle asked quietly. “For cleaning up my mess on Jade Island.”

Archer shrugged, but the tight line of his mouth said a lot.

“Mother,” Kyle said, disgusted. He had been afraid of that. “I tried to keep the family out of it.”

“So did I.”

Kyle flexed both hands, trying to work off the tension he felt every time he realized how close he had come to dying—and taking his sister Honor with him. “Let’s go over it again, just to make sure I don’t fuck this one up, too.”

Turning suddenly, Archer looked straight at the big blond man who had once been his little brother and would always be his youngest brother. “What happened on Jade Island wasn’t your fault.”

“Yeah, right,” Kyle said, disgusted. “I’m surprised you trust me with this.”

“That’s crap. The only one lacking trust around here is you, in yourself.”

“Did your contact ask for me by name?” Kyle asked, changing the subject.

“No. But you’re the one Lianne Blakely has been watching for the past two weeks.”

Kyle’s odd, gold-green eyes widened. “What are you talking about?”

“The illegitimate daughter of—”

“Not that,” Kyle interrupted. “The rest of it.”

“Simple. She was looking at you and you were so busy looking at cold jade that you never noticed a warm woman trying to catch your eye.”

“Jade isn’t cold and I’ve never met a woman of any temperature who wouldn’t crawl over my bleeding body to get to you.”

Archer bit off the kind of comment that would spiral down into a sibling argument. He had never understood why everyone thought he was such a lady-killer. As far as he was concerned, Kyle was the best-looking of the Donovan brothers, with Justin and Lawe very close behind.

“Not this lady,” Archer said. “Lianne was looking at you. That’s one of the reasons I agreed to ask for your help in penetrating the Tang Consortium.”

“Penetrating, huh? First the woman, then the whole damn clan. You’ve got an overblown idea of my libido, not to mention my stamina.”

Archer made a growling sound that was a combination of exasperation and humor.

“In any case,” Kyle continued, “if the lady was looking at me rather than you, we can be sure of one thing.”

“What?”

“It’s a setup.”

Archer blinked. “I’m having trouble following you.”

“Take it one word at a time. In the last two weeks, you and I have gone to three jade previews together.”

“Five.”

“Two were so lousy they don’t count. If Lianne saw past you to me, then it’s because the Tang Consortium figures I’m an easier nut to crack.”

“You don’t think it’s possible that Lianne prefers blonds?”

Kyle shrugged. “Anything is possible, but the last time a woman passed up a tall-dark-and-handsome type for me, I nearly got killed before I figured out exactly what kind of screwing was going on. That kind of lesson sticks with a man.”

For a moment Archer didn’t know what to say. Kyle was so certain that the only thing women wanted him for was to use him and lose him. Before last year, Kyle wouldn’t have reacted like that.

At times Archer missed the old Kyle, the one who laughed easily, the golden boy bathed by a perpetual sun. But Archer never would have asked that golden boy to do anything more serious than match wines with meals.

“Maybe it’s a setup,” Archer agreed. “And maybe there’s a different game entirely. That’s up to you to find out. If you want to.”

“And if I don’t?”

Archer shrugged. “I’ll put off my trip to the South Seas and take a run at the Tangs myself.”

“What about Justin? He’s blond. Kind of.”

“Justin and Lawe are ass-deep in their own alligators, trying to get a line on a new emerald strike in Brazil. Besides, they’re too young.”

“They’re older than I am,” Kyle pointed out.

“Not since Kaliningrad.”

Kyle smiled. It wasn’t an open, sunny kind of smile. It was like Archer’s, more teeth than comfort.

“I’m in,” Kyle said. “When and where does the game begin?”

“Tonight. Seattle. Wear a tux.”

“I don’t have one.”

“You will.”

L
ianne sat in her mother’s elegant Kirkland condominium and watched Lake Washington’s gray surface being teased by cat’s-paws of wind. Never quite still, never predictable in its movements, the lake licked slyly at the neat lawns and sidewalks that crowded its urban shores. In balcony planters and along streets, tree branches were just beginning to shimmer with the kind of green that was more hope than an actual announcement of spring’s return. The bravest of the daffodils were already in bloom, lifting their cheerful faces to the cloud-buried sun.

“Do you want green, jasmine, or oolong?” Anna Blakely called from the open kitchen.

“Oolong, please, Mom. It’s going to be a marathon tonight. I’ll need all the help I can get.”

And all the courage, Lianne acknowledged silently. If Kyle Donovan was at the charity auction/ball tonight, she had to pick him up. Or try to. It would have been much easier if she wasn’t attracted to him. But she was. Very. He made every female nerve ending in her body wake up and yowl.

Since she had never been attracted to a man like that before in her life, especially a big blond Anglo, she was afraid she would be all thumbs and blushes in his presence. That was why she had put off approaching him, and put
it off, and put it off. She really didn’t want to embarrass herself.

Now she had run out of time.

If she failed to pick him up, then she failed, Lianne told herself briskly. Her father would just have to chalk up one more disappointment from his bastard daughter. She didn’t have the kind of recklessness or innate female confidence to approach a good-looking stranger with the idea of getting acquainted for business purposes, much less for sexual ones.

But Lianne was definitely the kind to repay a favor or keep a promise. Engineering a meeting with Kyle Donovan did both.

Her stomach hitched at the thought. She told herself that, despite what her father believed, Kyle wouldn’t be at the ball tonight. He had no patience for that kind of arts-and-culture crush, and no need to siphon money from society’s cream.

Lucky him.

Lianne wished there had been time for her to go to the gym and work out her nerves on a mat or with a partner. Nothing settled her mind and body like the intricate demands of karate—part ballet, part meditation, always compelling.

“Nervous?” her mother asked from the kitchen.

Lianne barely prevented herself from jumping up and pacing the room. “Of course I’m nervous. I chose every single piece of the Jade Trader display myself. Wen Zhi Tang never gave me that much responsibility before.”

“Wen’s eyes are going. Besides, the crafty old bastard wanted goods that would appeal to Americans as well as to overseas Chinese.”

“And his bastard granddaughter is as close as he can come to American taste, is that it?”

The sound of a teaspoon hitting the polished granite countertop made Lianne wince, but she didn’t apologize for her bluntness. She had spent too many years pretending that she was the daughter of a widow, while knowing
full well that Johnny Tang was her father, Wen was her grandfather, and since Anna had never been married, she could hardly be widowed.

Lianne was tired of the legitimacy charade, just as she was tired of watching her mother being treated like an unwelcome stranger by the Tang family. As far as Lianne was concerned, bastards were made, not born.

And the Tang family had made more than its share of them.

Anna Blakely walked into the room carrying a lacquered tea tray that held a bone china teapot and two elegant, handleless cups. She wore a brocaded peach silk jacket, slim black silk pants, low-heeled sandals. Pearls gleamed at her neck and wrists, along with a Rolex set with enough diamonds to glow in the dark. On her right hand was a diamond-and-ruby ring worth more than half a million dollars. Except for her height and glorious blond hair, she was the picture of a prosperous, semi-traditional Hong Kong wife.

But Lianne’s mother was neither prosperous nor Chinese nor a wife. She had built her life around being the mistress of a married man for whom family,
legitimate
family, was the most important thing in life; a man whose Chinese family referred to Anna only as Johnny’s round-eye concubine, a nonentity who didn’t even know the names of her parents, much less her ancestors.

Yet no matter how often Anna came in at the bottom of her lover’s list of family obligations, she didn’t complain. Watching her mother’s quiet elegance as she poured tea, Lianne loved Anna but didn’t understand the choices she had made. And still made.

Bitterness stirred, a bitterness that was as old as Lianne’s realization that she would never be forgiven for not being one hundred percent Chinese. She was too much an American to understand why any circumstance of birth, blood, or sex should make her inferior. It had taken her years to believe that she would never be accepted, much less loved, by her father’s family.

But she had vowed she would be respected by them. Someday Wen Zhi Tang would look past her wide, whiskey-colored eyes and thin nose and see a granddaughter, rather than the unfortunate result of his son’s enduring lust for an Anglo concubine.

“Is Johnny coming by later tonight?” Lianne asked.

She never called her mother’s lover by anything other than his given name. Certainly not “Father” or “Dad” or “Daddy” or “Pop.” Not even that all-American favorite for a mother’s dates: “Uncle.”

“Probably not,” Anna said, sitting down. “Apparently there’s a family get-together after the charity ball.”

Lianne went still.
A family get-together.
And she, who had spent three months of her free time preparing the Tang Consortium’s display, wasn’t even invited.

It shouldn’t have hurt. She should be used to it by now.

Yet it did hurt and she would never be used to it. She longed to be part of a family: brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles and cousins and grandparents, family memories and celebrations stretching back through the decades.

The Tangs were her family. Except for Anna, they were her only family.

But Lianne wasn’t theirs.

Without realizing what she was doing, Lianne ran her fingers over the jade bangle she wore on her left wrist. Emerald-green, translucent, of the finest Burmese jade, the bracelet was worth three hundred thousand dollars. The long, single-strand necklace of fine Burmese jade beads around her neck was worth twice that.

She owned neither piece of jewelry. Tonight she was merely an animated display case for the Tang family’s Jade Trader goods. As a sales tactic, it was effective. Resting against the white silk of her simple dress and the pale gold of her skin, the jewelry glowed with a mysterious inner light that would act like a beacon to jade lovers, connoisseurs, and collectors.

The jewelry Lianne owned was less costly, though no less fine to someone knowledgeable about jade. She chose
her personal pieces with an eye toward her own desire rather than their worth at auction. The trio of hairpicks that kept her dark hair in a swirl on top of her head were slender shafts of imperial jade carved in a style four thousand years old. When she wore them, she felt connected to the Chinese part of her heritage, the part she had spent her whole lifetime trying to be accepted by.

Distantly Lianne wondered if she would have been invited to the party if Kyle Donovan was her date. Johnny, Number Three Son in the Tang dynasty, seemed hell-bent on getting an entree into Donovan International. He certainly had gotten tired of waiting for her to screw up her nerve.
Come on. Don’t go all modest and fake Chinese on me. You’re as American as your mother. Just do what the other girls do. Go up and introduce yourself. That’s how I met Anna.

The memory of her father’s words went down Lianne’s spine like cold water. She couldn’t help wondering if Johnny figured that what was good enough for the mother was good enough for the daughter—a life of guaranteed second best in a man’s affections.

A mistress.

As Lianne drank tea from ancient, unimaginably fine china, she told herself that Johnny only wanted her to meet Kyle, not to seduce or be seduced for the sake of Tang family business. She also told herself that it was impatience rather than fear she had seen in her father’s eyes that morning.

“Lianne?”

She swallowed the bracing tea and realized that her mother had asked a question. Quickly Lianne replayed the past few moments in her mind.

“No,” she said. “I won’t be staying for the ball. Why would I?”

“You might meet some nice young man and—”

“I have work piled up,” Lianne interrupted. “I’ve spent too much time on Tang business already.”

“I wish I wasn’t going to the South Seas tomorrow at dawn. I’d come to the exhibit.”

“No need.” Lianne smiled and pretended she didn’t know that her mother never went anywhere that she was likely to meet her paramour’s family. Just as she pretended that she was an adult who no longer needed her mother’s presence to mark important passages in life. “The hotel will be a zoo.”

“Johnny appreciates all the hard work you’ve done with the jade. He’s so proud of you.”

Lianne drank tea and said nothing at all. Disturbing her mother’s comfortable fantasy would only lead to the kind of argument that everybody lost.

“Thanks for the tea, Mom. I’d better get going. Parking will be impossible.”

“Didn’t Johnny give you one of the Jade Trader parking passes?”

“No.”

“He must have forgotten,” Anna said, frowning. “He’s been worried about something a lot lately, but he won’t tell me what.”

Lianne made a sound that could have been sympathy and headed for the door. “If I don’t see you before you leave for Tahiti or wherever, have a great time.”

“Thanks. Maybe you could join us there for your birthday.”

Why?
Lianne thought acidly.
Did they need an audience while they screwed their way through a South Seas paradise?

“You need a break after all your hard work,” Anna said. “I’ll have Johnny get a ticket for—”

“No,” Lianne said curtly. Then she forced her voice to gentle. “Thanks, Mom, but not this time. I have a ton of work to catch up on.”

Careful not to slam the door hard behind her, she headed out into the gusty night. As she walked to her car, she glanced around uneasily. Earlier that evening, when she had left her apartment, she had felt a chill, prickly
certainty that she was being watched. She felt the same now.

Telling herself that she was just nervous about the cost of the Tang jewelry she wore, Lianne hurried around the side of the building, grateful for the motion-sensing walkway lights that flared to life at her presence and died away thirty seconds after she had passed the sensors. Her little red Toyota was right where she had left it. She got in and locked all the doors before she turned the key in the ignition.

The benefit ball for Pacific Rim Asian Charities was one of the big social events of the season in Seattle. Invitations were reserved for the rich, the powerful, the famous, and the merely gorgeous. Normally Kyle and Archer wouldn’t have bothered attending this kind of show-and-tell in the name of charity and social climbing, but not much had been normal since Archer had received a call from the government. That was why they were pushing through the crowd just outside the hotel lobby.

“At least the tux fits,” Kyle muttered. Except for the loose area just under the left arm, which had been tailored to fit seamlessly over a gun holster.

“I told you we were the same size, runt.”

Kyle didn’t say anything. He was still surprised that he fit into Archer’s long-legged, wide-shouldered clothes. No matter how old Kyle got, part of him was still the youngest of the four Donovan brothers, the butt of too many brotherly jokes, the runt of the litter, always fighting to prove that he was as good as his bigger brothers in everything from fishing to gutter fighting to exploring the face of the earth for gems.

“You see her?” Kyle asked, looking past the herd of limousines to the glittery crowd filing into Empire Towers, Seattle’s newest hotel. Dick Farmer’s hotel, as a matter of fact.

“Not yet,” Archer said.

“Not ever. I didn’t know this many people owned tuxes.
Not to mention stones.” He whistled softly as a matron walked by, wearing a diamond necklace whose central feature was a pendant the size and color of a canary. “Did you see that rock? It should be in a museum.”

Archer flicked a glance at the woman and then looked away. “You want to talk museum pieces, try the companions of the Taiwanese industrialists who just walked in. Especially the woman in red.”

Kyle glanced beyond his brother. The red silk sheath—and the body beneath it—was an eye-popper, yet it was the woman’s headdress that sent murmurs of appreciation and greed through the crowd. A lacework cap of pearls encased her gleaming black hair. Teardrop pearls as big as a man’s thumb shimmered and swayed around her face. A triple strand of matched teardrop pearls the size of grapes fell from the back of the cap down to the cleft in the woman’s rhythmically swinging ass.

“Companion, huh? As in mistress?” Kyle said.

“It’s common enough. When some well-heeled Asian men come to the States, they leave their wives at home with the kiddies and in-laws.”

“Afraid their little women will bolt to greener pastures if they get the chance?” Kyle asked dryly.

“Wouldn’t you?”

“I wouldn’t be fenced like that in the first place.” Kyle pushed through the hotel doors into the lobby. “Let’s try the atrium. That’s where the Jade Trader has its display. SunCo’s stuff will be there, too. Ever since China took over Hong Kong, the Sun clan has been whittling away at the Tangs.”

Archer smiled slightly. “Been doing some research?”

“If I had to do research in order to name the competition, I wouldn’t be much good to Donovan International, would I?”

“You’re really serious about dragging Donovan Inc. into the jade trade, aren’t you?”

“I’ve been serious about it ever since I held my first five-thousand-year-old jade
bi,
” Kyle said simply. “I’ll
never know why the piece was carved, but I do know that someone way back then was like me. He loved the smooth satin weight of jade. Otherwise he never would have tackled a stone that hard with little more than rawhide, sticks, and grit.”