Donovans 02 - Jade Island

his collection of jade erotica—excellent pieces swapped for the so-so goods she had examined on Farmer Island. But logic wasn’t as great as the fear that she could be wrong, that there might be another explanation for the substitutions she had seen in the Tang vault.
    The next piece Lianne unwrapped had been made from a luminous white jade that was touched with faint blushes of lavender. The stone was carved so that the darker shade suggested folds in clothing, the curve of a limb, the shadow lying between a woman’s thighs. The fluid line of the woman’s body as she lay across her lover’s lap evoked the essence of feminine surrender. The intensity of the man as he bent down to her summed up masculine urgency to possess.
    The position of the figures made it impossible to see precisely what they were doing, yet the impact of the sculpture was such that it was impossible not to know exactly what they were doing.
    April whistled. “I’d like to have that on my bedside table.”
    Reverently Lianne lifted the sculpture and turned it in her hands, savoring the satin weight of the jade. “Of the thousands of pieces of jade that the Tangs own, this is among the best. The stone is completely intact; there are no fractures, no pits, no variations in texture. This wascarved by a master and polished by hand over unimaginable hours.
    “The subject matter is worthy of the stone and the artist. Sexual union is the philosophical core of Taoism, the instant of fusion between yin and yang, when all forces are balanced and the sum total of harmony in the universe increases. To a Taoist, what we in the West think of as a merely physical joining of man and woman is profoundly metaphysical, an act which affects the balance of creation itself.”
    Gently Lianne set the jade on the table’s scarred metal surface.
    April looked from the jade to Lianne’s face. The respect and love Lianne had for the sculpture and the tradition it represented was easy to read in her expression, in the way her fingertips traced and her palm cupped smooth stone. But there was no greed in her gestures, no hunger to possess, no bitterness that such a fine jade belonged to a man too old and blind to appreciate it.
    Frowning, April glanced at Kyle. He was watching her with those odd, penetrating eyes. The look on his face said, See? I told you. Lianne Blakely isn’t a thief.
    For a time the only sound was that of Lianne unwrapping jades and making occasional comments.
    “Excellent stone.” “Superior artistry.” “Look at this one carefully, Kyle. See how the veins of red coloring in the stone heighten instead of distract from the subject? A difficult thing to do with such pronounced color contrast.” “Very fine polish.” “Remarkable fluidity.” “Ah, I haven’t seen this one before. Exquisitely carved. Look at his expression, submission and ecstasy in one. Obviously she is a master of his jade flute.”
    Kyle knew it was juvenile of him—this was art, after all—but he couldn’t help getting hard at the thought of having Lianne between his knees like that, his body corded and his head thrown back in blind, shattering climax.
    “Yeah,” he said. “Hell of a song she’s playing.”
    April gave him a sideways look. “Getting to you, big boy?”
    Lianne looked up from the sculpture. The smile she gave Kyle doubled his heart rate. “I’d worry about you if you didn’t react. The purpose of these sculptures is to remind people that there are many roads to the metaphysical, and one of those roads is sublimely physical.”
    “Consider me reminded,” he said. “How about you?”
    “When you’re around, I don’t need reminders.”
    He turned to April. “Don’t you want to get some coffee or something?”
    “Tie a knot in it, Romeo.” April glanced at her watch. “All right, let’s say for the sake of argument that Lianne was sent off to make a swap with Han Seng, decided that she didn’t like the smell of the deal, and left without unpacking the cartons.”
    “It would explain why she was arrested heading back into Canada with the Tang jades that were listed as missing,” Kyle said, not for the first time.
    “It wouldn’t explain all of the missing jades. I’ve got a fax two pages long on my desk, and it’s still growing. These are only part of what’s on the list.”
    “Show me the fax,” Lianne said instantly.
    April ignored her. “Like I said, suppose we agree that Lianne was set up for the arrest and