Donovans 02 - Jade Island

carton on the table.
    “Do you want me to open them for you?” Kyle asked. The heavy twine and white paper wrapping, complete with many red wax seals, had intrigued him from the moment he saw Lianne carrying the boxes down to his dock.
    “No,” Lianne said. “The wrapping is Wen’s way of assuring that what someone takes out at this end is what he packed in the Tang vault.”
    “Trusting soul.”
    She shrugged. “He’s no worse than others I’ve worked with.”
    “I meant you. How do you know what’s in the boxes?”
    “It’s not necessary for me to know,” she said, tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “But in this case, I know several of the pieces that will be offered in trade. Joe left instructions that I give a written appraisal of those items before they were packed.”
    “What about the rest of them?”
    “I wasn’t asked to appraise them.”
    “Odd.”
    “Chinese methods of doing business often seem odd to Americans.”
    Kyle looked at the boxes. There was no way to get into them without destroying at least one of the many red seals. It was an ancient, low-tech, highly effective way to prevent tampering.
    “I’ll need more light to examine the jades,” Lianne told Kyle as she set her shoulder bag on the table.
    “It is not necessary,” Han Ju said in blunt Mandarin. “All is as agreed. The honorable Han Seng merely wished to display for you the quality of the jades. If you would wait, he will generously share his knowledge of the finer points of appreciation with you.”
    “I am flattered,” she said indifferently, “but like the honorable Han Seng, I am caught in many conflicting demands.” Then, in English: “Do you see any light switches?”
    Kyle went over to a wall panel that would have looked right at home on a rocket ship and dialed up the illumination. The result was like sunrise in the tropics—quick, hard, and eye-hurting bright.
    “Enough?” he asked Lianne blandly.
    “I should have brought my bathing suit,” she said, pulling out a pen and a tablet from her bag. “I could tan while I work.”
    “I’ll dial down the ultraviolet. How about music?” Kyle suggested, turning back to the panel. “Classical, Celtic, Chinese opera, country, blues, New Age, classic rock, reggae, rap, European opera. Or natural sounds. Rain, thunder, surf, river, more birds than Audubon, jungle at dawn.”
    “Silence works for me.”
    “Tropic scents, then? Orchids and waterfalls?” Kyle offered. “Heat and sand from the eternal desert? Noon in the jungle? Afternoon in a field of flowers? Twilight in an evergreen forest with snow coming on? Good old salt air?”
    Lianne made a noise that could have meant anything and bent over the first piece of jade. The closer she looked at it, the less she was impressed by what she saw.
    “If the neutral walls don’t appeal,” Kyle said, “I can give you everything from murals of Xi’an and the Forbidden City to Manhattan at night and the Rocky Mountains at any time. If you’re feeling academic, I can dial in paintings from every museum on earth. If you’re feeling kickback, there are movie posters and scenic wallpaper. If you’re feeling kick-butt, there’s a selection of sports clips from every country in the world, including Mongolian goat roping.”
    Lianne glanced away from the jade. “What are you, a tour guide?”
    “I’ve hardly begun.”
    Beneath Ju’s black gaze, Kyle strolled over to Lianne, leaned his hip on an Australian jarrah-wood conference table the size of an aircraft carrier, and crossed his arms on his chest.
    “If we were real guests instead of peons,” he drawled, “we’d be wearing lapel pins that would instruct the computer in each room to change the lighting, temperature, music, fragrance, and decor according to our preprogrammed preferences.”
    “What if our preferences didn’t agree and we were in the same room?” she asked.
    “Then we’d find out who’s a VIP and who’s butt-wipe. The highest-ranking lapel pin rules the computer.” Kyle turned to Seng’s assistant. “Good-bye, Han Ju. If we need anything, you’ll know as soon as we do.”
    The man looked at Kyle for a long count of three, then walked out of the room. The door closed softly behind him.
    Kyle leaned down until his lips were very close to Lianne’s ear. “Don’t do or say anything you wouldn’t in Han Seng’s presence. The place is wired and taped.”
    Lianne’s eyes widened but she didn’t say a word.