Donovans 02 - Jade Island

Salmon are a lot easier to clean than rockfish.”
    Kyle watched Lianne dispatch the salmon with a few quick strokes of the cosh. He wished that all of life’s little problems could be solved so neatly. But they couldn’t.
    Even so, the thought of taking a cosh to the lecherous Mr. Han Seng had real appeal.

Chapter 14
    T he guard at the Institute of Asian Communications dock was unarmed, polite, and immovable until an invitation came from Han Seng for the Tomorrow to tie up. Then the guard escorted them to the executive pavilion, rang the bell, and waited for someone to come and take the visitors off his hands.
    Gleaming in the twilight, the pavilion was a surprisingly successful combination of glass walls, cedar pillars, and Oriental rooflines. The evergreen-scented air was clean and crisp, with a delicious tang of ocean. The view to the south was two hundred degrees of salt water, complete with commercial shipping lanes, navigation buoys, pleasure craft, and rugged, fir-covered islands. The closest islands were uninhabited; Jade Island was one of them. Other than passing ships and a few houses on the shores of distant islands, little light showed except the moon rising through slate-colored clouds.
    “Nice view,” Kyle said, resettling a heavy carton of jade in his arms.
    The guard didn’t answer.
    Neither did Lianne. She was wondering just where Seng was throwing his party. The executive pavilion had a few lights on. So did another part of the institute’s complex, but there was none of the noise that she had expected. Either the soundproofing was as spectacular as the view or the party was a dud.
    A middle-aged man whose clothes weren’t up to the expensive standards of the institute cracked the pavilion’s heavy cedar door and peered out. As the door swung fully open, the smell of Chinese tobacco rolled over Kyle and Lianne. There was another man sitting ten feet inside the door, a younger man, Chinese, unsmiling. Even though his clothes were flamboyantly expensive, the tailor hadn’t been able to conceal the cannon under the man’s left arm.
    “Entry here is pleasure,” the middle-aged man said in barely recognizable English. “I to Mr. Han are cousin.”
    Lianne answered in Mandarin. “Thank you. There is no need to disturb Mr. Han. I know he is very busy tonight and we are early in any case. Just take us to the room where he has set out his jade for me to see.”
    “No possibly,” the man said in English, turning away. “Stay.”
    Lianne tried Cantonese, but he just kept walking.
    The other man, the one with the badly concealed gun, didn’t move from his chair. He simply watched them with black, unflinching eyes.
    “No common language with the cousin?” Kyle asked Lianne quietly.
    “Several,” she said in a clipped tone. “That’s Han Ju, Han Seng’s shirttail cousin and personal assistant. Ju speaks Mandarin and understands Cantonese. He’s simply being rude.”
    “Does that mean Seng isn’t thrilled that you came on your own boat with a colleague?”
    “Probably.”
    “Tough.”
    Lianne glanced up at Kyle. The open pleasure he had shown in her and the salmon was gone. Now his expression was shuttered, measuring everything and everyone with a probing intelligence that made no allowances for human frailty. He seemed older, harder, colder. Like Archer, who had been the only Donovan not to accept her with real warmth last night.
    “You look like your brother,” she said.
    “Archer?”
    “Yes.”
    “Hardly. He’s drop-dead handsome.”
    “And you aren’t?” Lianne retorted before she could think better of it.
    Kyle gave her an amused, sideways glance. “No, I’m not. Trust me on this. I have the word of dozens of women on it.”
    “That’s what comes of hanging around the Braille Institute,” Lianne muttered, shifting the small box she carried. “Not handsome? What a crock. Your smile would stop traffic. Archer’s would stop clocks.”
    “You didn’t like him.”
    She shrugged. “It’s hard to like somebody who doesn’t like you.”
    “It takes time for him to warm up.”
    “It would take a blowtorch.”
    A burst of Chinese kept Kyle from having to answer. Seng came striding up to the pavilion entrance wearing a scarlet brocade smoking jacket, a Rolex Oyster, a world-class jade ring, Gucci loafers, and black silk slacks. He was combed, buffed, and perfumed like a gambler or a bridegroom.
    Lianne took one look and was grateful to the soles of her feet for