Donovans 02 - Jade Island

Susa’s genius, and talk about wonton wrappers.”
    Lianne jerked as though she had been stung. “I just need another minute,” she said without looking at Kyle. Then she added quickly, “I always thought I was a sculpture person. You know, satin jade against your skin and thousands of years of history echoing in your mind. But these paintings…” Her voice died.
    After a minute, Kyle went over to the security panel near the front door and checked the readout. A lovely row of zeros and no blinking lights. That was what he had expected, but seeing it felt good. He had learned in Kaliningrad that the unexpected wasn’t fun. Better to be a stolid, solid type than a dead, adventurous type.
    “Would you rather talk about the Jade Emperor?” Kyle asked, walking back to Lianne.
    She looked at the explosive, barely contained storm painting for a few more seconds before she turned toward him. “You have a remarkable mother.”
    So much for the Jade Emperor. With a mental shrug, Kyle accepted the change in conversation. He had the rest of the night to grill Lianne. “Remarkable is right. Susa is the only one on earth who can get The Donovan to do something he doesn’t want to do.”
    “If she has half the energy of those paintings, she would be an irresistible force.”
    “Twice.”
    “What?”
    “Twice the energy,” Kyle said. “She runs us ragged.”
    “All six of you?” Lianne asked dryly. “I doubt it.”
    “Seven, including Dad.”
    Her glance strayed back to the paintings.
    “Nope,” he said, guiding her toward the front door. “If you get started again, you’ll disappoint Wen Zhi Tang. Which reminds me—why do the Tangs use Western-style name order?”
    “You mean given name first and family name last?”
    “Yes.” Kyle stepped out into the hall after Lianne and reset the security system.
    “Wen’s father decreed that his branch of the Tang clan would look to the east—to America, the Golden Mountain—for their future. They would learn English and use Western name order. They would even call their daughters by individual names rather than by the usual birth-order designation of First, Second, Third, or Fourth.”
    “A real radical.”
    “A real pragmatist,” Lianne said, following Kyle to the elevator. “After the revolution, the Tangs were shut out of mainland China’s power structure.”
    “Wrong politics?” Kyle punched in numbers on the pad to the right of the elevator door. It opened immediately.
    “Partly,” she said, stepping in. “And partly it was just that the Tangs have always lived pretty much outside ofor parallel to whatever government existed, unless they were the government.”
    “Warlords and feudal chieftains?”
    “That’s a polite way of putting it. Various emperors might have called various Tangs brigands, ruffians, and outlaws. The names got more grandiose during the Ming dynasty, after the Tangs got rich enough to buy and sell lives like sacks of rice. The Chinese have a very, very keen appreciation of power, as opposed to mere wealth.”
    The elevator door whisked open. They stepped out into the smell of cold concrete and warm machinery. Though the place was unusually well lighted, there still were shadows. It was the nature of parking garages to have dark corners and dense shadows.
    With a quick, comprehensive glance, Kyle checked the area for other people. He didn’t see any.
    “So trading with foreign devils made the Tangs very rich,” Kyle said, opening the car door for Lianne.
    “Trading, tax collecting with or without the emperor’s permission, a monopoly on grave robbing and gambling, and, most of all, what the Chinese call guanxi. ”
    “Connections,” Kyle said.
    “The English word barely touches the Chinese reality,” Lianne said. “ Guanxi is a web of interconnected enterprises, cousins and brothers, uncles and fathers; branches of a family from the richest court lord to the poorest peasant spreading human manure in a rice paddy.”
    Kyle closed the door firmly and went around to his own side of the car. “Every family has poor relations,” he said, starting the engine and driving toward the exit. “So the Tang family fortune comes from illegal ventures?”
    “Define illegal,” Lianne said simply. “The Tangs have been making money for centuries. I doubt if all of it was legal according to the dominant culture of any given time. Besides, what is or isn’t legal in China often is a matter of opinion.”
    “And money buys