Donovans 03 - Pearl Cove

“Yes.”
    “Why?”
    “Someone told the Changs where we were. When I get my hands on her—”
    “Her?” Hannah cut in.
    Archer thought of April Joy: beautiful, intelligent, and above all, ruthless. “Her. Definitely.”

Twenty-one
    F red and Rebecca Linsky were in their eighty-first year of life and their sixty-second of marriage. Despite, or perhaps because of, that, they were known as the Battling Linskys. Lean, white-haired, childless, no taller than five and a half feet, they ruled their small pearl kingdom with a firm hand and an eye toward their employees’ offspring. The lustrous pearls that had passed through the Linskys’ hands had paid for many college educations. Their doctor, who lived next door in one of Seattle’s many waterfront condominiums, made house calls at least once a week and never charged them a fee; her entire education had been paid for with Linsky pearls.
    While Fred and Becky didn’t live at the Pearl Exchange, it was their true home. They had built it, nurtured it, and continued to enhance it with the presence of their Third Planet Pearls collection. The huge collection was housed on the top floor of the Exchange.
    Hannah barely acknowledged the introductions Archer performed when the Linskys greeted them. She was riveted by the cases of pearl objets d’art, the one-of-a-kind jewelry, and all the rest of the Linskys’ eclectic collection, including the sorting tables just visible through a doorway at the end of the huge room.
    “Excuse me,” she said, turning back to Becky. “What was your question?”
    Becky laughed and put her fragile but not frail hand on Hannah’s. “I asked if you were interested in pearls. Your eyes tell me you are. Would you like to see the collection?”
    “We both would,” Archer said, “but I’m afraid we don’t have time for the full tour.”
    Hannah made a soft sound of protest.
    Becky smiled. “There are other days, dear.”
    Because she didn’t know how to say she might not live to see those other days, Hannah simply smiled in return.
    “A short tour, then,” Becky said, pinning Archer with her faded blue eyes.
    “A short tour,” he agreed. Becky’s eyes might be faded, but her will wasn’t. Displaying their collection to an appreciative audience was one of the Linskys’ greatest pleasures. He wouldn’t deprive them of it.
    Smiling, Becky walked eagerly toward a smooth cherry wood cabinet that was four feet high and divided into drawers that were wide and shallow. The top of the cabinet was clear, beveled glass, giving a view into the contents of the first drawer.
    “Pearls were the first and most perfect of all the gems men used to make themselves and the things they prized more beautiful,” Becky said to Hannah. “The oldest pearl fishery we know of started off in Sri Lanka more than two thousand years ago. Others contend that the honor belongs to Persians, who have been bringing up shell in an organized manner for at least that long.”
    Hannah looked down into the cabinet and saw what appeared to be irregular gold links forming a chain perhaps sixteen inches long. Small pearls, impaled on thin strands of gold, hung from some of the links.
    “Forty-three hundred years ago,” Becky said, “pearls are mentioned as tribute in China. Mother-of-pearl has been found in Babylonian ruins that are more than four thousand years old. Where there is mother-of-pearl, there is, inevitably, pearl itself.”
    “Is that how old this necklace is?” Hannah asked, startled. “Four thousand years?”
    “No. Unfortunately, pearls are fragile. Buried in places that are either too damp or too dry, pearls die. The necklace you’re looking at has the oldest pearls in our collection. It graced the neck of a Persian aristocrat—probably a priest or priestess—before Christ was born.”
    Archer had seen the necklace many times, but the history of it still fascinated him, as did the bottomless orient of the natural pearls themselves. White, ethereal, the luster of the pearls was like a sigh whispered through the ages.
    “Why do you say a religious figure wore this necklace?” Hannah asked. It looked more decorative than symbolic to her.
    “Odds,” Fred said before his wife could answer. “Throughout recorded history, whether in this hemisphere or the next, pearls were objects of veneration. Priests of both sexes had first call on pearls, except for the supreme ruler—who was likely a priest as well. It doesn’t take a great feat