Dragon Bones Read online

  THE DAY WORKERS GATHERED TOGETHER IN A THIN SLICE OF shade formed by the shadow of the mountain, eating their lunches from tin containers. The official site workers—the Chinese students and the foreigners—sat at long tables under a canopy. A buffet of rice, noodles, and a bland-looking concoction of chicken and vegetables had been set up.

  After making sure that Hulan and David had served themselves, Dr. Ma led them farther under the tent. Even here people separated themselves into little hierarchical bands. Ma passed the student tables as too lowly. He stopped at the last table, where Catherine and Stuart Miller were eating. People scooted down the bench to make room for David and Hulan, who sat together, with their backs to the mountain, the river coursing before them. Yet the appearance of two strangers didn’t seem to matter to those at the table, who didn’t pause for even a moment in their heated conversation.

  “Are you crazy?” a man with steel-rimmed glasses asked, his German accent heavy. “The Nine Tripods? There’s no way—”

  “Why couldn’t they exist? Why couldn’t they be right here?” This came from a blond woman with an English accent.

  “How about because eight of them disappeared in a fire over two thousand years ago?” the German shot back. “And by that time one had already been lost on the Sie River, which is not the Yangzi.”

  In just these few moments, Hulan realized that the lunch conversation would be sprinkled with specialized interests discussed in professional jargon. She and David would need to listen carefully, discarding what was unimportant and homing in on what was vital to their respective cases.

  Catherine seemed to sense this, and she addressed David. “They’re talking about the bronze vessels that Yu the Great made to create a visual map of his empire,” she explained. “Each tripod looked like a bowl standing on three legs. Together they passed from dynasty to dynasty as emblems of power. What happened to the Nine Tripods is intriguing to archaeologists like us, but most people have never heard of them.”

  The Englishwoman picked up again as though Catherine hadn’t spoken. “Artifacts have disappeared throughout history. That doesn’t mean that they don’t exist or that they can’t be found or even that they’re where we think they should be. Think of King Tut’s tomb or the terra-cotta warriors—”

  Dr. Ma put his hand over the woman’s hand and asked, “Lily, can we put aside Yu the Great and your lost tripods for a few minutes so I can introduce all of you to our newcomers?”

  Ma began with team members at the far end of the table. Professor Franz Schmidt, the German, was a heavyset semiologist from the University of Heidelberg. Next to him sat Dr. Annabel Quinby, a dour-looking archaeologist from Harvard. Across from her was a much older man with a bad sunburn and a peeling bald head. Dr. Paul Strong had retired long ago from Cambridge, where his specialty was linguistic anthropology. Six Chinese sat at the table, one of whom was Chinese American. Dr. Michael Quon, Ma explained, had many fields of expertise, and they were honored to have him visiting the site from his home in California. The other five Chinese were representatives from different provincial museums. “We call them the five vultures, isn’t that right, gentlemen?” Ma asked.

  The five nodded wearily. Apparently they’d heard this opening many times before and knew where it was going. So had the foreigners, who listened with only moderate interest.

  “They sit in their cave day after day, waiting for us to open a tomb with spectacular finds”—Ma lowered his voice confidentially—“and hoping that the relics will go to their museums. But do you hear how I say the word hoping, Inspector? Hope is all our vultures have, because if we ever find anything significant, then I’ll decide what goes where.”

  Hulan searched the faces of the Chinese men for a raised eyebrow or an unconscious flinch when Ma called her “Inspector” but saw only bland indifference.

  “You should see the gifts they bring me thinking they can curry favor!” Ma went on. “A roast pig. A bottle of VSOP cognac. A carton of cigarettes.”

  “Bribes?” Hulan asked.

  “Of course,” Ma answered cheerfully.

  Hulan followed up with “And you accept them?”

  “Someone has to take them.”

  Were things so corrupt down here?

  “But enough of this. Let me introduce you to the rest,” Ma said. “To your left, Inspector, is our favorite little hothead, Lily Sinclair.”

  The phrasing was demeaning, and Lily reddened. She looked to be about thirty. Although her blond hair was short, the cut was expensive. She wore a gold ring on her right hand, a diamond bracelet, and a gold chain around her neck. Her outfit superficially looked like everyone else’s—shorts, T-shirt, and work boots—except she’d probably purchased hers at a Hong Kong boutique. Again, everything simple and very expensive.

  “Lily’s from London but works at Cosgrove’s in Hong Kong,” Ma continued. “Do you know Cosgrove’s?”

  “It’s an auction house,” Hulan replied. She felt David’s thigh resting alongside her own. He put his hand under the table and gently squeezed the flesh just above her knee. The warmth of his hand penetrated through her clothes.

  “I wouldn’t expect an inspector from the Ministry of Public Security to know about the international art market,” Ma commented, “but you aren’t the usual, are you, Inspector?” He didn’t wait for an answer but went on a bit longer about Cosgrove’s and how it had made its reputation almost two hundred years ago by selling works that were a cut above the more commercial objets d’art that were part of the China trade.

  Dr. Ma now circled back to his earlier confession. “Inspector, things aren’t as bad as I make them sound,” he confided. “If I accept the gifts, then I have some control over what happens on my site. Those bribes have gone a long way in boosting morale in the camp. How many day workers get to experience the Red Prince life by drinking a shot of brandy? I think our method—though dishonest on the surface—keeps everyone more honest down deep.”

  “Honest?” Stuart asked, his voice high and mocking. “Who at this table is here for honest reasons? Certainly not Miss Sinclair.”

  “Oh, Stuart, are we going to do this again?” Lily asked dolefully.

  Ma sighed theatrically, then explained to David and Hulan. “Every day and at every meal these two have the same conversation—”

  “That’s because she’s trying to get her hands on your artifacts so she can sell them at Cosgrove’s.” Stuart’s accusation was lighthearted, teasing.

  “You know perfectly well that I could never get an artifact out of the country even if I wanted to, which I don’t,” Lily admonished, clearly taking Stuart seriously. “I for one don’t plan on ever spending a night, let alone an hour, in a Chinese prison. I’m just here to increase my knowledge of Asian art.”

  Stuart and a few of the others laughed. He leaned forward across the table and asked, “Then how do you explain the sale of the zun last spring at Cosgrove’s?”

  “That was perfectly legitimate and you know it!” Lily’s cheeks flushed pink, and she held her back straight.

  Stuart glanced over at David and grinned. “She’s cute when she’s upset.”

  “What’s a zun?” David asked.

  “A ritual wine container,” Lily answered huffily.

  The others at the table laughed again. They enjoyed razzing Lily, and apparently she took the bait every time.

  Annabel Quinby explained: “It so happens, Mr. Stark, that last summer we found a very beautiful bronze zun, but it disappeared before measurements or photographs could be taken. Two months later Cosgrove’s auctioned it.”

  “That zun came from a private collector!” Lily exclaimed. “Cosgrove’s had all of the proper documentation to prove it!”

  “And it was sold to a private collector,” Annabel added. “Isn’t that right, Mr. Miller?”

  “It’s made a wonderful addition to my collection!” Stuart growled, acting out the part of a ravaging barbarian to the great amusement of the others.

>   “See what I mean?” Ma said, addressing Hulan and David again. “They go on this way every time they get together—”

  “I don’t see why it’s so funny,” Lily said. Her comment brought on a few more hoots. “Well, I don’t.”

  “Forget about them, Lily,” Catherine soothed. “They’re just picking on you because you’re a girl. Believe me, they don’t want you for your antiquities….”

  The men, right down to the elderly Cambridge professor with the peeling scalp, suddenly found the food on their plates very interesting.

  Catherine purred to David sotto voce, “They’re a bunch of boys….”

  There probably wasn’t another woman within a thousand square miles built like Catherine, and every man at this table knew it. But Catherine had singled out David, and Hulan understood why. People wanted to connect with him. They wanted to engage him, touch him.

  Catherine modulated her pitch once again to include the others. “But I don’t know why we can’t consider Lily’s idea about the Nine Tripods. Could there be a find anywhere that would be more significant to the history of China?”

  “The terra-cotta warriors,” Professor Schmidt suggested.

  “A great tourist site certainly,” Catherine agreed, “but what do they really say about power?”

  “Qinshihuangdi had enough power to unify the country,” the professor replied. “He had enough power to build the Great Wall.”

  “No one really knows the true origin of the Great Wall,” Ma cautioned. “Qinshihuangdi receives credit for it, but we all know that much of that is myth, not reality.”

  “Myth and reality are connected,” Catherine said, “especially where Yu the Great is concerned.” Again she focused her attention on David, leaning close enough to him that her breasts brushed against his forearm, which, Hulan noticed, he didn’t move. “Do you know who we’re talking about?”

  David shook his head.

  “But you do, right?” Catherine said to Hulan. “‘If not for Yu, we all would be fishes,’” she recited.

  Hulan was accustomed to the deficiencies of her education, but these scholars were appalled when she confessed her ignorance.

  Catherine explained that Da Yu—Yu the Great—was the first emperor of China to found a hereditary dynasty. His reign began in 2205 B.C. after he controlled the floods. These deeds were recorded in the Shu Ching, China’s first historical text. Qinshihuangdi was the great unifier, though his reign lasted only from 221 to 206 B.C. China got its name from him and his dynasty—Qin, China. As Professor Schmidt had already pointed out, eight of the nine tripods that Da Yu made were believed to have been lost in a fire that marked the overthrow of Qinshihuangdi’s reign. One was lost in a river.

  “Lily thinks it could be our river,” Catherine concluded. “I think she should keep on with her search, don’t you? To have a direct tie to Yu—”

  “You have to understand, Attorney Stark,” Ma interrupted, “China has no great epics like Gilgamesh, the Mahabharata, or the Iliad. Yu’s story is the closest, although it isn’t about creation or the spirit world. It’s about the relationship between man and the physical universe. This approach is uniquely Chinese and something we still see in Chinese culture today. Even now our rulers are considered responsible for natural phenomena. Losing control over nature marks the end of their Mandate of Heaven. All that began with Yu, a real man who took on mythical aspects.”

  “Such as?”

  “Using a winged dragon to help cut rivers to drain the land of floods, marrying a fox spirit with tiny hoofed feet, creating nine provinces, which he then memorialized in the tripods.” Catherine put her elbows on the table and rested her chin on one of her palms so she could face David at a pretty angle. Hulan had no doubt that Catherine’s thigh was now resting against his, and she found this thought strangely titillating. “Lily will do anything to find that submerged tripod.” Then, without shifting her gaze from David, she asked the Englishwoman, “Who are you going to send to a watery grave this time, Lily? Professor Schmidt or Dr. Strong?”

  “That’s not funny!” Lily practically yelped.

  The others laughed uproariously.

  “It always comes down to power and the symbols we use to portray it,” Professor Schmidt said. “You heard Dr. Ma. In China power is granted to those who hold the Mandate of Heaven.”

  “That was a feudal idea,” Hulan corrected. “Only emperors were believed to be sons of Heaven.”

  “Only emperors? What about Mao?” Stuart challenged. “You have to admit that Mao was in the game for the power. And what about that fellow from the All-Patriotic Society? He clearly cares about power.”

  “The All-Patriotic Society is a cult—”

  “And you’ve never heard of the Cult of Mao?” Stuart inquired. “But Mao was mortal, and I presume Xiao Da is too. Still, they’re both very much about power. How do you show your power to your people and to the world? With a sword? A nuclear arsenal? A scepter in the West or a ruyi or gui in ancient China? All of these are symbols of power.”

  “You should see his collection,” Lily said in obvious admiration, but Stuart was on a roll.

  “Power can be found in something as mundane as bricks and mortar if they’re put together the right way,” he continued. “Consider your Great Wall and Three Gorges Dam. Wouldn’t you say they’re both international symbols of China’s power?”

  Hulan cut him off suddenly, her tone brittle. “All of this is very interesting, but I’m not here to talk about symbols. I’m here to investigate the murder of Brian McCarthy.”

  “What do you mean murder?” Hearing the tremor in her voice, Lily put a hand to her throat. “Brian’s death was an accident.” She turned to Ma. “That’s what you told us. You said it was an accident.”

  Ma spoke reassuringly. “Of course it was. Our foreign friends must remember that our ways are sometimes different.” He paused, then added, “And very crude. You must think of our legal system as you might a jar of stinking tofu. Best to keep a lid on it.”

  In another time, in another place, these might have been the last words that the director of the dig would have spoken in public. Hulan needed to see his dangan to understand who he was and why his words ran so freely.

  A representative from one of the provincial museums was the first to speak. In Chinese he said, “I thought you were here to investigate corruption.”

  “Often where there’s murder there’s also corruption,” Hulan crackled back in Mandarin.

  The other museum representatives shifted in their seats. The foreigners—all apparently fluent in Mandarin—picked up on their colleagues’ sudden nervousness.

  “I’m interested in whatever will lead me to a murderer,” Hulan continued in English. “If this Yu will lead me to Brian’s killer, then I’ll follow that path.”

  “Are we in any danger?” Annabel Quinby asked.

  Before Hulan could respond, Dr. Ma jumped in. “You are all perfectly safe.” He next addressed Hulan. “Almost everyone at this table helped search for Brian when he disappeared. We’ve come to accept that he fell in the river and drowned, and we’ve all taken extra precautions to be careful whenever we’re near the shore. As soon as we’re done here, I’ll show you what I think happened.”

  “I wouldn’t be here, Dr. Ma, if the facts supported whatever accidental theory you might have.” Hulan scanned the faces at the table. “I think everyone should be careful until we’ve figured out exactly what happened.”

  An uncomfortable silence settled over the group as this warning sank in. Then Stuart Miller swung his legs out and over the bench. “Come on, Cat, let’s visit awhile before I head back to the dam. You’ll give the old man that, won’t you? And don’t worry, Inspector, we’ll protect each other.”

  His cavalier manner trumped everything Hulan had just said. Catherine gracefully rose out of her seat. Michael Quon also got up, and the others waved him off, teasing him about his afternoon walks and how hard it was to get a dilettante to do
any real work. Then the scholars carried on among themselves about the Four Mysteries just as Ma had predicted, while the men from the Chinese museums talked about the tastelessness of the dishes at the annual Cultural Relics banquet last spring.

  All of this was out of Hulan’s realm of experience. Usually when the word murder came up, people wanted to hear the facts of the case; they wanted to know if there were suspects and who they might be; and they weren’t so easily convinced that they were safe themselves. Were the scholars so buried in their academic world that they didn’t care about what had happened to Brian? Were the museum scouts—the vultures—so sure of their positions that they weren’t even a little afraid of having someone from the MPS in their midst? Only Lily had shown any emotion about Brian’s death, but then she was the only person at the table who’d been accused of theft, smuggling, and murder.

  AFTER LUNCH, DR. MA, DAVID, AND HULAN SET OUT TO WHERE IT was believed Brian had gone into the river. The late afternoon humidity felt as heavy and thick as porridge. The sky was a white blanket, and it looked as if it was about to rain, but for now dust billowed up with each of their footsteps and clung to the sweat on their arms, legs, and faces.

  Hulan’s mind wandered in the heat. It was odd, she thought, how barren this area was. Coming down the river on the ferry, the hillsides had been lush and green, with vines cascading over rocks and ferns thriving in the moisture. Trees and bamboo had twisted into spidery forms as they reached for sunlight. Orchids and other tropical flowers had bloomed in shady spots. But here there were no trees or ferns or flowers. Instead Hulan saw only rocks and dirt and the occasional scraggly plant, while below them the murky waters of the Yangzi flowed past. Was it common for an archaeological site to be so desolate? Did the work that took place here require that the land be cleared of all flora?

  Once they reached the upper path, Ba Mountain rose above them on their left. They passed a house—a hovel was more like it—that had been built into the cliff. The exposed portions, such as they were, had been constructed from bricks, cardboard, and corrugated metal sheeting. A woman in threadbare clothes sat on the front step, comforting a crying infant. This family would eventually be moved out of the inundation zone, but in the meantime, where was their kitchen garden? What did they eat?