Tell Me No Lies (10 page)

"Was your father in the import-export business?"

"My parents were missionaries."

Catlin's black eyebrow arched. "Tough job under any circumstances," he said. "In the early stages of the People's Republic it must have been hell."

Lindsay's chopsticks hesitated for an instant over the shrimp as memories sleeted through her, screams and shots, blood turning black in the moonlight. And something worse. Something she remembered only in nightmares, forgetting again the instant she awoke. "Yes," she said huskily, "sometimes it was just that. Hell."

"You must have been glad to leave," Catlin said, seeing again the shadow of fear tighten Lindsay's face, hearing fear in the thinning of her voice.

Again, Lindsay hesitated. "It was home, and childhood, and now all I have left are memories. Some of them are very good. Oil lamps and candle flames, so graceful, so warm. The scent of ginger and garlic sizzling in hot oil on a frosty night. The women in the kitchen laughing and talking and chopping vegetables with miraculous skill. The pungent smell of cigarettes and the click-click of stones as the men played mah-jongg."

Lindsay looked beyond Catlin, seeing not the gleaming restaurant but the seething past. "We all lived together, our houses leaning against one another. The church was little more than a handmade altar hung with scarlet, the Chinese color of joy and good wishes. We sang hymns in half scales." She smiled. "I didn't realize what 'Onward Christian Soldiers' really sounded like until I got to San Francisco. Do you know," she said, focusing on Catlin instead of the past, "that hymns sung by Americans using the European scale sounded alien to me?"

Catlin nodded, understanding exactly what Lindsay meant. When he finally had returned to America, it had been years since he had used English to do anything but break coded communiques. His native language had sounded foreign to him.

Suddenly Lindsay realized that she had been monopolizing the conversation. That was unlike her. She had learned that few people could relate to the experiences she had had as a child, much less understand them. Usually it was she who listened, other people who talked, and her memories slept. Catlin was different. He was a good listener. His quiet questions, his genuine interest in her answers, and the feeling of safety she had with him peeled the years away, leaving only memories silently welling up like blood from an open wound.

"How did you learn to use chopsticks?" asked Lindsay.

"Hunger is the best teacher," Catlin said wryly. "Sticky rice helps. In no time you're eating like a native." He glanced around the restaurant. "Well, almost. True natives hold the bowl under their chin and shovel as fast as they talk. If we did that, the Anglos around here would think we were barbarians."

"They certainly would," agreed Lindsay, laughing. "A polite Western child says grace and bends at the waist to bring the mouth closer to the food. A polite Oriental child says grace, brings bowl to mouth and lets the devil take the hindmost."

Catlin's smile flashed. "Did your parents have a large congregation?"

"Hardly. Christianity wasn't very popular at the time. You know how it is – when things go wrong in China, foreign devils are blamed." She glanced at her plate heaped with food and the full rice bowl beside it, remembering all the times she had gone hungry. "Lots went wrong in China after the turn of the century. The half-century mark was no treat, either."

"I'm surprised your parents stayed, particularly with children."

"Child," she corrected. "I was the only one. That caused great despair to the congregation," she added, smiling. "Large families in general and sons in particular are a source of great face in rural China. To follow a man who had only one child – and that one a girl – required courage of a sort that most Americans just don't understand."

"Similar to the kind of courage it took to accept the teachings of a man who had only one name and no children at all: Jesus."

Lindsay's eyes widened in surprise. She had met no one outside China who understood the Chinese people's immense need to place themselves in history through their ancestors and their own offspring. A man with no family name and no children had no face. To emulate such a man was not only ridiculous, it was offensive to one's own ancestors.

"The fact that Christ was a bachelor living away from home didn't help the Christian cause in China," Lindsay agreed wryly. "The Chinese men who were responsive to religion often chose Islam. They could more easily admire a man who had a wife, concubines and many sons."

"How long were you in China?" Catlin asked as he deftly lifted a shrimp to his mouth. The texture and flavor were both superb. With a silent, ironic laugh, he realized that the Chinese food he was eating tonight in Washington was far better than most of the food he had eaten during all his years in Asia.

"My parents were forced to close their mission when I was seven," said Lindsay. Her voice changed, thin again, remembering fear.

"Out with the foreign devils?" guessed Catlin.

She nodded, but said nothing, not wanting to pursue the subject. Since her mother's death, the recurring nightmare of China was too close, too frightening. Lindsay wanted to remember as little as possible about that time of violence and fear. She was alive, safe, a woman in America rather than a child in Shaanxi province, China.

"We went to Hong Kong," Lindsay said quickly. "Dad divided his time between there and Taipei while mother ran a small mission among the poor. Later I was sent to live with my father's sister in San Francisco."

"How old were you?"

"Twelve."

"It must have been difficult to leave your parents and the only world you had ever known."

"Yes," said Lindsay. She searched her rice bowl as though she expected to find a diamond hidden among the glistening white grains. "It wasn't the first time, though. Hong Kong was also a foreign land to me. The climate was different. The people looked different. Cantonese rather than Mandarin was the common dialect."

"Did you learn to speak Cantonese?"

Lindsay shrugged. "A little. Dad's congregation was mostly displaced northerners, both in Hong Kong and Taipei, so I had little use for Cantonese. The school I went to was English."

Catlin hesitated, wondering bow to ask the next question without revealing what he already knew. "I guess your parents wanted you to get a better education than was available in Hong Kong," he murmured, "so they sent you to America."

"My father died. My mother stayed with the congregation in Hong Kong. I went to San Francisco."

The words didn't tell Catlin as much as the tension of Lindsay's fingers holding the chopsticks; she would talk no more on the subject of Hong Kong and her father's death and her relocation in America. Despite the fact that she, hadn't told Catlin as much as he had seen in her file, he didn't think that Lindsay was being dishonest. He, too, had a deep reluctance to talk about aspects of the past that had nothing to do with government secrets. Some parts of the past were simply too painful to remember.

"How did you end up in China?" asked Lindsay abruptly, her tone determined. She was through talking about herself and the past. She had done far too much of it tonight. Dreaming about the past was bad enough. Talking about it was impossible.

"Airplane," Catlin said laconically, not bothering to correct her assumption that China rather than another part of Asia had been his destination. "You were right about the Chenin Blanc," he continued, pouring more of the wine into her glass. "It's quite good with the rabbit. I'll have to remember that. It's hell finding Western wines to go with Oriental foods. The dry whites can't compete with Sichuan seasonings, the reds overwhelm the subtle flavors of the nonspicy dishes, and the Rieslings are sometimes just too sweet for anything but fortune cookies."

Lindsay laughed.

"Have you tried one of the Merlots coming out of California?" he asked, smiling in return. "Lighter than Cabernet, more interesting than Beaujolais." He signaled a waiter. "Let's experiment."

Lindsay was so grateful to have the conversation shifted away from her past that she didn't notice Catlin had avoided answering any personal questions about his own past. Eagerly she entered into a discussion of the possibilities of various wines when drunk with various international cuisines. By the time the discussion shifted to Chinese bronzes, Lindsay was relaxed again, enjoying the company of the man with amber eyes and a very quick mind.

"White told me that you had never made a mistake when it came to sniffing out fraudulent bronzes," Catlin said, not specifying which of the three White males had praised Lindsay.

"He exaggerates," she said, smiling. "I've made mistakes. Without the help of a highly sophisticated laboratory, it's very hard to spot a modern copy of an ancient bronze. Bronze art isn't like painting. If the craftsman is exquisitely precise – literally an artist at his work – a bronze copy can have almost the same vitality as the original."

"But it won't be exactly the same?"

Lindsay hesitated. "I've never seen a copy that had the same sheer presence as an original. Or if I did," she added honestly, "I didn't recognize it as a copy. Fortunately, most forgers have neither the patience, the tools, the knowledge nor the talent to do a really top-notch job of copying. Also, when outright fraud is the object, the tendency is to copy the larger, more expensive pieces. Those are also the most famous bronzes. Any knowledgeable collector being offered a bargain bronze will check it very carefully against existing catalogs, or pay someone like me to vet the purchase for him."

"And the unknowledgeable collectors?" asked Catlin.

"Have no business buying any kind of art." Lindsay hesitated and frowned slightly. "That's harsh, but it's true. The idea that great art can be found at bargain prices is just plain naive, and any art dealer who tells you otherwise doesn't have your best interests at heart. If the piece he's pushing were such a fantastic bargain, the dealer would buy it himself and resell at a profit. After all, that's the way legitimate dealers make a living. And the dealer who protests that he'd buy the piece himself, but his inventory is full or you're such a swell friend that he wants to let you in on a good thing… well, when you hear those words, grab your wallet and ran like hell. The dealer has seen you coming, and you have sucker written all over you."

In the silence Lindsay heard her own words echo. She smiled in self-mockery. "You pushed the wrong button, I'm afraid. I have very little patience with art scams or the people who

make them possible. And that includes greedy buyers as well as greedy sellers."

"You can't con an honest man?" suggested Catlin, smiling.

"Exactly."

Catlin nodded, but he wasn't wholly satisfied with Lindsay's explanation of her strong feelings on the subject. He doubted that the question of fraud and deception was that simple for Lindsay. Something other than the expert's contempt for the inexpert was driving her. She wasn't that kind of intellectual snob. If she were, she would have condescended to O'Donnel even while she answered his ingenuous questions about the seventeen bronzes. But she hadn't condescended. She had answered carefully, trying to share her love of the bronzes as well as her knowledge of them. It had been the same when Catlin had thought aloud about the Shang bowl, telling Lindsay things about art and culture that she already knew. She hadn't been haughty or protective of her superior knowledge; she had smiled and told him what a pleasure it was to meet someone who shared her passion for old Chinese bronzes.

"You really loathe frauds, don't you?" asked Catlin, lacing his fingers through Lindsay's in a single smooth motion, bringing their palms together, holding them that way.

The texture of Catlin's touch caused sensations that spread through Lindsay as surely as the wine she had just sipped. His hand was large, smooth between the long fingers and hard along the edge of the palm. Warm. She looked up, wondering if he could feel her surprised response in the pulse beating just beneath the skin of her inner wrist.

"Yes," she said simply.

"Why?"

There was silence for a long moment while Lindsay absorbed the question, and the fact that the question had even been asked. Her response to fraud was something that she had always taken for granted about herself. She hated lies of all kinds.

"Doesn't everyone?" she asked.

Catlin's answer was a smile that made Lindsay wonder what he had been doing for the lifetime before he had come to her and asked about Qin bronzes.

"Not everyone, Lindsay. Not even most people. It's truth they fight, not lies."

A lighter flared at the next table. The unmistakable odor of a Chinese cigarette drifted over to Lindsay. The candle in the red bowl near her hand flickered suddenly, making scarlet light ripple like flames over the cloth, turning it into the landscape of her nightmare, smoke and fire. Her hand tightened within Catlin's until her skin was pale where it pressed next to his. Remembered screams writhed silently in her mind, memories of futile pleas, the overpowering smell of incense and blood that would not stop spurting, blood all over her hands and a voice rasping Betrayed!

Or was that nightmare, not memory? Did someone cry betrayal in her dreams?

Lindsay's bleak eyes met Catlin's over the wavering candlelight. "It's been a long time since I smelled incense," she said in a flat voice. "I've never really liked it. I need fresh air."

Catlin didn't point out that it was a Chinese cigarette rather than incense burning in the restaurant. He had seen fear in Lindsay's eyes, heard it in the tightness of her voice, felt it in her hand laced through his. He signaled to the waiter, paid the bill and took Lindsay outside. Washington's summer night flowed over them in a dark, moist embrace. Low clouds diffused the city's lights, making the sky appear to slowly seethe.

As Lindsay and Catlin walked, he took her hand again, anchoring her to his warmth and strength. She accepted the gesture as it was meant, comfort rather than seduction. She didn't say anything until they had walked down Nineteenth Street to Pennsylvania Avenue and turned left past the Executive Office Building to the tree-studded open space called the Elipse. The smell of grass and the tang of salt air from the Tidal Basin blended with the urban odors of asphalt, concrete and car exhaust. Lindsay breathed deeply, feeling like a fool for letting childhood memories and a lingering nightmare upset her