Tell Me No Lies (32 page)

"No!" The word was harsh, ragged, a denial torn from Lindsay's soul. She wasn't hearing what Wu said so much as she was hearing his conviction that Catlin was evil. She didn't believe that. She couldn't. "He is Catlin, not Rousseau!"

"You are no different than the other worthless sluts who have presented their ripe channels for him to rut upon," Wu said in disgust as he turned and walked to the door. "Tonight I will burn incense to thank God that your parents did not live to see their only daughter permit a dog to piss into the sacred vessel of their honor."

"Uncle Wu!"

It was too late. The door had shut behind him.

Lindsay sat huddled in the chair for a moment, unable to move, unable even to cry. Slowly she dragged herself to her feet, Wu's words ringing terribly in her mind: Rousseau. Opium. Satan. Sexuality. Catlin. Opium. Rousseau.

She didn't realize that she had stumbled downstairs and back into the workroom until she heard Catlin's voice calling her name.

"Lindsay? What's wrong? Lindsay!"

Hard fingers bit into her shoulders, shaking her.

"Lindsay, what the hell is going on?" Catlin demanded, his voice harsh.

The pain almost felt good. It proved to her that she was still alive, that Wu's contempt hadn't killed her.

"Rousseau. You once called yourself Jacques-Pierre Rousseau, didn't you?" she whispered in Mandarin. She saw the instant of shock on Catlin's face as he comprehended her words, and she felt as though a knife had ripped through her. Catlin understood Mandarin. Wu had been right. All of it. Rousseau and the opium and the women. And now she was one of them. She had responded to him as she had to no other man. She shuddered horribly.

"Don't touch me," Lindsay said in English. "Don't ever touch me again."

"What kind of lies has Wu been telling you?" demanded Catlin.

"He wouldn't lie to me," Lindsay said hollowly. "But you would, wouldn't you? Rousseau."

Catlin didn't try to argue with Lindsay. It would have been too dangerous, the outcome too uncertain. He slammed the door shut behind her with one hand, and with the other he pulled her against him, using enough force to send the air from her lungs. His right hand moved up her throat to her jaw, holding her head immobile even as his body flattened her against the workshop wall. His left thumb slid inside her lips to the back of her jaw, opening her mouth for the savage intimacy of his tongue.

There was no possibility of withdrawal, no way for Lindsay to resist. Catlin jerked her off balance, ruthlessly using his superior strength and skill. Suddenly there was no floor beneath her feet, no wall at her back, nothing but the shocking strength of his arms holding her suspended between lie and truth, despair and hunger, the unknown past and the agonizing present. Her fingers moved convulsively, digging into his biceps as she braced herself against his power. There was nothing sexual in her response. She hung on to Catlin because at some elemental level she knew that if she let go she would never find her way out of hell with the seeds of a better future in her hands.

Catlin felt the change in Lindsay's body and knew that she had remembered the role she must play. Wu had shocked her, had savaged her cruelly and had told her God knows what lies and even more devastating truths about a man called Rousseau. But Lindsay was still game. She would be able to go on with the act and with Chen Yi's many-sided quest. Catlin knew that he could release her from his harsh grasp now, let her slide like heavy, warm satin down his body until she was standing on her own again. He knew, but his arms didn't shift. Only his mouth did, rocking gently as his tongue caressed Lindsay, coaxing her, filling the soft heat of her mouth with his own presence.

Slowly Lindsay's fingers relaxed until they no longer dug fiercely into Catlin's flexed strength. Her hands caressed him in the same slow rhythms as his kiss, stroking his shoulders and neck and finally sliding deeply into the warm midnight of his hair. He felt Lindsay shiver as her fingernails delicately scraped his scalp and the sensitive rim of his ear. The caress was returned to her with exquisite restraint as his teeth sank into her lower lip.

Lindsay's eyes opened slowly. He saw desire in their depths, and unshed tears, and the darkness that had increased with every new level of hell he had led her down into.

"Uncle Wu wouldn't lie to me," she said, her voice husky, her lips trembling.

"Neither would I," said Catlin. In slow motion he let her slide back down his body, making no effort to hide the thrusting evidence of his own arousal. "Does that feel like a lie?" he asked softly, savagely against her mouth. "Does it?"

"No," Lindsay breathed, closing her eyes, unable to bear looking into Catlin's any longer. "No…"

Tears infused her lashes and seeped down her cheeks in hot silver drops. She started to speak, but he took her mouth again and then again until all she could say was his name between kisses, his name a litany on her lips as she clung to him, forgetting everything except him.

Only then did Catlin release Lindsay, sheltering her face against his body as he looked over her head into the flat eye of the television camera and smiled.

17

"You know something?" Stone said in disgust, turning away from an unbroken view of San Francisco and the cobalt blue water of the bay. "The director assured me that this would be a really quick one. 'Just on the edge of breaking open,' he said. 'It could happen any minute and I want you to be there. The Bureau has worked hard for this one. Don't let the CIA take the credit.' So what happens? Nothing. Nearly a week I spend in this crummy hotel room and not one damn thing happens."

O'Donnel's lips flattened into an unhumorous line as he looked around the luxurious suite with its commanding view of city and sea. "Oh, I wouldn't say that, boss. Lindsay has taken us on a grand tour of Chinatown. We've seen every import shop, Christian mission and Chinese clip joint within twenty miles. Though I have to tell you, that lady's fortunes sure have fallen lately. From the Chinese Christian Benevolent Society to Chinese Cutthroats Anonymous. Well, not so anonymous, actually. Most of them have a whole section to themselves in our local office's computer."

"Imported whores, interstate hits and China white for local heroin addicts only. I care about counterintelligence, not the Ten Most Wanted assholes in Chinatown," Stone muttered as he lit a cigarette.

"Look at it this way," O'Donnel offered with deadpan cheer, nudging an ashtray toward his boss as he sat down.

"Our men have learned to eat soup with chopsticks. Not a dead loss at all."

Stone smiled unwillingly. "I knew there was a reason I put up with you." He tossed his lighter on the table and shook his head in rueful admiration. "Soup with chopsticks. Hell, Terry, that about sums up this farce."

"You're just out of practice," chided O'Donnel. "You've forgotten how boring most undercover operations are right up until the instant when you pull out the shotguns and the handcuffs. It's a lot like fishing. You spend ninety-eight percent of your time scratching your balls and waiting for a bite."

Stone grunted. "I'd rather be fishing." He ran his palm over his hair and sighed. "All right. Give me the most recent condensation of useless crap."

With an automatic motion O'Donnel retrieved a notebook from his breast pocket. With narrowed eyes he skimmed the pages quickly. "Okay. Here we go. Do you want it all, or just the stuff since Lindsay last called you?"

"Any discrepancies?" Stone asked in a bored voice.

"Nope. The stuff she gives us agrees right down the line with what the other agents have picked up.''

"That's one bright spot," Stone said, flicking ashes in the direction of a huge crystal ashtray. "After our little chat in D.C. I was afraid she wouldn't cooperate."

"Chen Yi's been straight, too," O'Donnel pointed out. "His updates on what Catlin and Lindsay are doing have matched our information to the last detail."

"Why does that make me nervous?" Stone asked rhetorically.

"Because none of them have mentioned Catlin's past as a CIA undercover called Rousseau?" retorted O'Donnel. "Including the CIA itself?"

Stone's smile was like an unsheathed knife. It still rankled that the CIA refused to fill in the gaps in Catlin's file. "Maybe Lindsay doesn't know what he used to do."

"Maybe she does, and doesn't think it matters. Or maybe Catlin's forcing her to be quiet. Remember, he's always in the room when she calls," said O'Donnel.

Grimacing, Stone took a drag on his cigarette. "If I had to guess, I'd say she doesn't know. Catlin is probably keeping her in the dark to avoid scaring her to death. Unfortunately, she could get herself blown up and never know the reason why. And neither would we. If the stakeout team at Wang's auction hadn't caught Tom Lee's hit man wiring Catlin's car, the whole operation could have been blown to hell and we'd have blamed it on the damn bronzes, not on Catlin's stint as Rousseau in Indochina."

O'Donnel shrugged. Catlin was a big boy. He had played hardball with the pros for nearly all of his adult life. If he bought it, no one would cry. "The stakeout team seemed to think Catlin would have found the bomb himself. He checked the car pretty thoroughly."

O'Donnel flipped through the pages of his notebook, checking the entries that had come after Lindsay's last call.

"The room bugs show the same pattern," he said. "Lindsay got up in the middle of the night and took a long shower. Alone." He shook his head and muttered, "Fifth night in a row, too. Hell of a time to solo in the shower. She must not be sleeping worth a damn. Both of them got up at the same time in the morning, early, and she did her tai chi chuan. So did he."

O'Donnel looked up for a moment. "You were right about that gym and full contact karate, by the way. The agent who had the watch on Catlin yesterday morning said he hadn't seen anything like it since the early Chuck Norris movies. Catlin and some big Vietnamese were going at it like hell on fire. Agent said it was a wonder nobody was killed. Is that stuff legal?"

Stone shrugged. "Between consenting adults, it is."

O'Donnel flipped to another page. "Damn few phone calls. Her San Francisco friends have gotten the word, I guess. No more invitations to lunch or tea or brunch or Sunday School."

A grunt was Stone's only answer.

"Some flaky art dealer they met in D.C. is in town. He invited them to dinner beginning – " O'Donnel looked at his watch " – twenty minutes ago. There may be something strange going on there. One of our surveillance team said it looks like they've picked up an extra tail, a Chinese. He latched on to Catlin at the hotel. Now he's hanging around inside a grocery store across the street, watching the front of the restaurant."

Stone's pale blue eyes narrowed. He straightened up on the couch with his first display of real interest. "Another one of Tom Lee's hit men?"

"Impossible to tell right now," admitted O'Donnel. "The local field office has a snitch inside Lee's organization, but they haven't been able to get anything definite. The snitch says Lee is sweating bullets over Rousseau coming back from the dead, but that doesn't mean Lee has authorized a move on him. Beyond the bomb, of course, and that could have been kind of a little 'hello, welcome back to the pros,' to see if Catlin had lost his edge."

Swearing tiredly, Stone stubbed out his cigarette. "What's your best guess, Terry? Does Lee have the bronzes?"

"Could be. He's certainly got the smuggling apparatus to bring them in."

"So do half the gangsters in Chinatown," muttered Stone, "and more than a few of the Christian missionary groups, too. Christ. What the hell are Customs and Immigration and DEA doing while all this garbage comes in under their noses? Dope, antiques, every kind of contraband you can think of, including human beings. I'll bet half the new arrivals in Chinatown are illegal aliens. If I were a federal agent in San Francisco, I'd be so embarrassed I couldn't look at myself in the mirror long enough to shave."

"Maybe that's why everybody in DEA has a beard," replied O'Donnel.

Stone sighed. ' 'Okay, so Lindsay and Catlin have picked up a new tail. Who's on the countersurveillance when they leave the hotel?"

"I am."

"Getting bored holding my hand?" Stone asked dryly.

O'Donnel laughed. "Nope. I just wanted a chance to stretch my legs. But don't worry, boss. Like Catlin, I haven't lost my touch after a stint at desk work."

Stone frowned and fiddled with a pen, ignoring the cigarette still smoking in the ashtray. "Okay, you've got the countersurveillance. But let's play it safe. Pull the primary surveillance off Catlin and Lindsay. It's going to get too crowded, otherwise. Just keep your eye on the Chinese shadow in the grocery store. Let him do his thing, unless he moves in too close. Take him down if he becomes a threat, but I'd really like to know who he is and who he works for. See if you can get any kind of ID without spooking him."

"Right," said O'Donnel, coming to his feet with barely disguised eagerness. He headed for the door.

"And Terry…"

O'Donnel turned back and saw Stone's pale, hard eyes. The look reminded O'Donnel that his boss hadn't gotten to the top of the FBI heap by being a nice guy.

"Don't lose 'em and don't get burned," Stone said succinctly.

"In which order, sir?"

"Whichever order you think would do your career the most good or the least harm."

"Gotcha."

O'Donnel shut the door quietly behind himself.

The smile on Lindsay's face felt like a porcelain mock-up of the Cheshire cat. Her cheeks ached. The meal was a disaster in all ways. Every time she or Catlin tried to talk about bronzes, Mitch Malloy offered to put them onto a hot real estate investment.

"I don't need a condo in Miami or Houston or Malibu," Catlin said finally. "I don't collect condos. I collect third century B.C. inlaid Chinese bronzes. You said you had some to sell. Do you?"

Malloy drained his glass of wine and poured another. "Depends on what you want and how long you'll wait to get it – know what I mean?"

Beneath the black mustache, Catlin's mouth lifted slightly at one corner. "Not long enough for you to make one," he said bluntly.

Malloy barked with laughter and reached for another piece of sourdough bread. The movement brought him closer to Lindsay, which was what he had in mind. He pushed his thigh against hers as he leaned into her.

"Your boyfriend has a great sense of humor – know what I mean?" said Malloy, stretching his arm across Lindsay's shoulders and letting it rest there. "Did I ever tell you that?"

"In the last minute? Not more than once," Lindsay said, trusting her cramped mouth to hold its brittle smile as she leaned forward in a futile attempt to evade Malloy.

"Great!" he said, laughing. "That's just great, babe. Hike a girl with brains.''

"Really?" murmured Lindsay, carefully not looking at the female who was on the other side of Catlin. If Malloy's date, who had been introduced simply as "Missy," had a brain, it was moldering unnoticed beneath the bleached-blond haystack that passed for her hair.

Lindsay's glance switched to her plate. She wondered if the dinner would ever end. Malloy and Missy had trapped Catlin and Lindsay between them in the forced intimacy of a booth. Lindsay had retreated by increments from Malloy's coarse presence, but could move no farther without crawling right into Catlin's lap. The only escape was a trip to the powder room, but she had already left the table twice.

"How long?" Catlin asked.

Lindsay's head snapped up, wondering if he had read her mind. Then she realized that he was baiting Malloy, daring him to produce some bronzes.

"Well," said Malloy, leaning back expansively. He stretched his arms across the back of the booth and crowded Lindsay even more. "It all depends on what you order. If it's the kind of thing that never comes on the market, it might take a while to, uh, persuade the owner to sell. And the harder it is to get my hands on the bronze, the more it costs. Know what I mean?"

Catlin nodded curtly.

"Figured you would," Malloy said, idly stroking Lindsay's shoulder with his forefinger. He seemed utterly oblivious to her discomfort. "After all, the guy who can hustle Lindsay is no dummy. You know, babe, you really had them going in D.C. They thought you wouldn't say shit if your mouth was full of it." He laughed. "God, were they ever wrong! You're just plain folks, like the rest of us." He pulled Lindsay against him in a hard hug. "A lotta people are gonna be real surprised when I tell them just how folksy you are – know what I mean?"

Lindsay closed her eyes and tried to block out Malloy's presence. It didn't work.

"How long would it take you to get your hands on a bronze charioteer from Xi'an?" Catlin asked blandly.

Malloy stared for a moment, then gave a forced laugh. "Great kidder, aren't you?"

"No." Catlin's eyes were narrowed, as opaque as hammered gold. "I don't have any sense of humor at all. Know what I mean?"

With a nervous laugh, Malloy lifted his wineglass and drank heavily. "Well, I'd like to help you," he said, licking his lips as he put down his glass, "but I'm fresh out of bronze soldiers this week."

"I'll wait."

"Shit, man," Malloy said in disgust. "I've been trying to get my hands on one of those bronzes for three years. About six months ago I heard a really hot rumor."

"And?"

"It wasn't so hot, after all." Malloy looked at his wineglass to avoid Catlin's hard eyes.

"What have you heard lately?"

Malloy swirled the red wine and watched the greasy rim of his glass with heavy-lidded eyes. The cast of his face became frankly sullen. "Nothing worth mentioning. Not like six months ago. I had it wired, but my connection stiffed me. Said the shipment was ripped off on the other end. But that's what they always say when they can't deliver. Jerk-offs."

Catlin tilted his head to one side and studied Malloy openly. There was a good chance that Malloy was just another spotted toad trying to sing with the bullfrogs. On the other hand, there was a very small chance that he might actually have information. Catlin doubted that Malloy was a major outlet, but he might be able to pull off a good score once in a while. Malloy was the kind of dealer who was only as crooked as he had to be, but if he stumbled across a rich prize, he never looked back. Raiders like him were a regular part of the art underworld.

And there had been rumors linking Mitch Malloy to a load of bronzes that had been stolen on order, then stolen again en route to their destination. Malloy didn't have the brains to set up the original theft, but he had all the qualities needed to steal from the people who had. Six months ago, had he somehow stumbled onto someone who was trying to ship stolen bronzes out of Xi'an's Mount Li?

"Go on," Catlin said quietly.

"Nowhere to go." Malloy finished his wine, reached to pour himself more and discovered that the bottle was empty. "I don't have a damn thing from Xi'an."

"Were you on a direct line to the charioteer or were you a raider?"

Malloy stared at Catlin for a moment. "Hey, I'm an honest businessman trying to – "

"Save it for someone who cares," Catlin interrupted in a bored tone. "I know all about the Cellador bronzes."