Donovans 02 - Jade Island

man—including under the Murphy bed that she had left open.
    Kyle went into the bathroom, checked swiftly. Then he stood on the toilet seat and looked out the open window into the alley. No one in sight, unless he counted the tan Ford with the suit behind the wheel, talking on a cell phone.
    With a heartfelt obscenity, Kyle stepped off the toilet and went back to Lianne.
    “Do you usually leave the bathroom window open?” he asked.
    “Only in the summer. Why?”
    “It’s open.”
    She raced past him to the bathroom, then stopped and stared at the window. It was open. All the way open. And it was jammed so tightly in that position that she couldn’t close it no matter how hard she yanked.
    “I’ll do that,” Kyle said. “You pack.”
    “But—”
    “I don’t want to hear it,” he interrupted bluntly. “Pack.And if you give me any more crap about going it alone, I’ll stuff a sock in your mouth and haul you out of here like dirty laundry.”
    Lianne opened her mouth, closed it, and started packing.

Chapter 19
    W hen Dick Farmer was working instead of impressing CEOs and politicians, he didn’t bother with an office building, a brace of assistants, an archaic wooden desk the size of Lake Michigan, or any of the other modern corporate power symbols. He simply packed up his hard drive and his only personal assistant who was worth a damn, stepped into his private plane, and ordered the pilot to fly them to his own personal island.
    Today Farmer was working. He had just arrived on his island, ready to grapple with the new, prickly opportunity that life had given to him. At this point the opportunity looked more problematic than promising, but the difficulties energized rather than worried him. He had made his fortune taking on deals that others had avoided as too risky.
    Farmer didn’t want to surrender his prized jade burial suit, but he would. For a price. Until the price was agreed on, the suit would stay on Farmer Island, not in the unopened museum that had become a target of too much official interest.
    The sun was only a rumor on the eastern horizon when Farmer entered a remote wing of the institute. With his lapel-pin battery pack blanketing any other signals, doors sprang open, lights came on, and music followed him everywhere he went. He hated silence almost as much as he hated dogs, cats, and tweety birds.
    Mary Margaret, his personal assistant, went immediately to her station in a small room with an adjoining door. She didn’t wait for orders or requests; most of the time she knew what her boss wanted before he did. She just booted up her computer and got to work on whatever messages had followed or preceded them to the island.
    Farmer walked into a nearly closed circle of surplus and/or slightly outmoded electronic wonders, settled into a rotating chair that had been made for him as carefully as an astronaut’s couch, picked up a standard-issue telephone, and punched his assistant’s intercom button even though he could reach her by raising his voice.
    “Did that Chinese jade expert call here while we were in the air?” Farmer asked.
    “No, sir,” Mary Margaret said, reading the computer log quickly. “Mr. Han Seng did, on behalf of Sun Ming, who is the Chinese government’s jade expert.”
    “SunCo, hmm? Those fellows do get around. Any message?”
    “Yes, sir. ‘There are details of the offer to be discussed.’”
    Mentally Farmer cursed the stiff-necked mainland Chinese bureaucrats who wouldn’t know a good deal if it grabbed them by their tiny little balls. “What details? I have the jade suit, they want it, and they have something I want. I named my price. They can ante up or get out of the game.”
    “Yes, sir. Is that the message you wish to be passed on to Mr. Han Seng?”
    “Shit, Mary Margaret, you know me better than that. Is Seng still here on the island?”
    “Yes, sir. I canceled his plane reservations before we left Seattle.”
    “Yeah? When’s he going back to China?”
    “He didn’t say, sir. Do you wish for me to inquire?”
    “Not yet. Where is Seng now?”
    There was a pause while Mary Margaret asked the mainframe to search for the guest wearing lapel button 9-3.
    “The east terrace room, sir. He just ordered breakfast.”
    “Send some bagels and cream cheese and coffee to the terrace for me. I just can’t warm up to pickled cabbage and green tea before dawn.”
    “Yes, sir.”
    Farmer hung up, hitched up his jeans, and headed for the east