The Color of Jadeite. Eric D. Goodman
protests in 1989. In that way, Tiananmen Square is kind of like China’s Kent State tragedy. Only with tanks added since they like to do things big.
Now, under the smoggy Beijing sky of gray, Tiananmen Square seemed both marvel and monstrosity, bulging with tourists from abroad and from all over China. Americans and Europeans and Chinese people alike stopped for family photos and selfies in front of the Zhengyangmen arrow tower, Mao’s mausoleum, the National Museum of China, and—most of all—the gigantic portrait of Chairman Mao hanging on Tiananmen—the very Imperial gate to the Forbidden City where Mao proclaimed his People’s Republic of China as the official law of the land.
I saw Salvador motion to me from across the field of people, and knew someone was approaching from behind. I turned, and a woman attacked me. “Postcard? Chairman’s hat? Book? Five dollars.”
“No, thank you.” I brushed her aside, but she didn’t budge until I stopped saying no thanks and just ignored her. After about the tenth vendor, I learned to stop being polite. But I also understood their persistence. As much as I didn’t want to encourage their pushing junk on me, a few bucks from my expense account could mean a week’s worth of food for a poor family.
I may be a loner much of the time, but I was glad I’d convinced Salvador and Mackenzie to join me. I knew I could use some help. Salvador had more to risk, being on parole and not legally allowed to leave the country—but he was more than willing to tag along when I assured him I’d vouch for him if he got caught, and that he probably wouldn’t since we were flying on a rich man’s private jet and getting special treatment.
Mackenzie had been a little harder to convince. First, she used Harriet as an excuse, but I reminded her that Harriet wasn’t even going to be in town for a few weeks. Then she insisted that she had to pour herself into her work, but I knew better because when she was that swimming in cases she usually asked for my help to dig up some dirt. She was in one of her semi-annual “grab a stack of business cards and go to a party to look for clients” rut.
“I’ll have to find someone to watch Snoopy Doo,” she’d said.
“Your retired parents would love an excuse to stay at your place in Boston for a week or two,” I suggested.
When Mackenzie ran out of excuses, she relented.
So here we were in the center of China’s capital. We’d been strolling around Tiananmen Square for two hours past the designated meeting time, and I was just about to round up Mackenzie and Salvador and go back to the hotel to wait for Wang to contact us. But then, to my astonishment, I saw her. Again.
She was far enough away that, at first, with the field of people between me and her, I thought it was just another tourist in the crowd looking at me. After all, I was the weird one here, the foreigner, the freak, and this wasn’t the first time I was the object of someone’s fascination when visiting a foreign land. But when I focused, and I realized who it was, the dozens of people between her and me blurred, and I only saw her.
In the sunlight that burst through the smog, the young woman was as beautiful here as she’d been in Boston’s Chinatown. She was wrapped in a purple silk blouse and tight black skirt. Purple heels carried her in my direction, her black silky hair too heavy to bounce, snaking behind her like a New Year’s dragon. She clutched tightly at the purse strapped over her shoulder, as though she feared it being dropped or snatched. The closer she came my way, the more intently her stare bore into my face, the clearer it became that she was as focused on me as I was on her.
“Clive Allan?” she asked me as we stood face to face.
“Yes.” People rushed back and forth around us, along with their noise and friction.
“I’m Wei Wei. Wang told me to meet you here.”
“Wei Wei.” I extended my hand and she timidly took it, as though she feared what sort of foreign germs I might be harboring. I thought about offering to kiss her delicate hand, but that probably would have sent her running away as quickly as she’d come. “Nice to see you ... again.”
“The pleasure is mine.” She clutched her purse and looked around. “Watch your wallet. Pickpockets thrive in Tiananmen Square.”
“Worse than Boston?”
Wei Wei gave me an acknowledging glance. “Much worse.”
She looked a little too jittery. I asked her, “So, have you just been admiring me from afar?”
Wei Wei smirked, and I took in the curved pockets that formed at the edges of her thin pink lips. “Who’s admiring who?” she asked.
“You got me there,” I admitted. “You here to take me to my partner?”
When she frowned, the pockets disappeared at the edges of her mouth and lines formed in her delicate forehead. “Take you to your partner? I am your partner.”
“You’re the person I’m supposed to work with?” I let out an excited laugh that she may have taken as an insult. “I was expecting a seventy-year-old professor with a Confucius beard.”
“Don’t mistake age for wisdom.”
“What are you, twenty?”
She scowled disapprovingly. “Thirty-five, thank you very much.”
“Oh.” I stood back and gave her a quick twice-over. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, but the gal was irresistible. So what if she was young enough to be my daughter—I wanted to get to know her. “You’re … so … lovely.” I felt uncharacteristically foolish—maybe feeling like a teenager in love again was what made me talk like one.
“Don’t be fooled by appearances,” she said with a stern half-smile. “A delicate porcelain doll may conceal a fierce dragon inside.”
She was flirting now, so I gave myself the same liberty. “Sweetie, you’re way too tiny to be fierce.”
“Bamboo looks light and delicate. But it’s stronger than it appears. You’ll find I’m the same.”
I displayed a big sheepish smile. She delighted me and I let her know it. “All right, I’ll take your word for it, Ms. Bamboo.” Mackenzie, in the distance, caught my attention and threw me a confused look, like “what the hell are you doing?” I waved Mackenzie off and refocused on Wei Wei.
Wei Wei got down to business, leading the way as we strolled casually back into the center of the square, past the Monument to the People’s Heroes, toward Mao’s Mausoleum. “So, what is our first step together?” she asked as she quickened our pace.
I could think of a few, but I decided not to push our getting intimate just yet. We’d have time to get to know each other if we were going to be working together. I was still shaking off the euphoric feeling of being with her when I realized the deeper meaning of her question. “You’re asking me?”
Her look was more of shock than confusion. “You mean Wang didn’t give you instructions?”
I shook my head. “I thought you had the game plan.”
“This is going to be worse than I thought,” she mumbled. Her glossy lips played with the words as they fell out. “I know that the person who hid the tablet also hid clues with unrelated people and in unrelated places around China. But I don’t have an inkling where to start.”
“Then you know about as much as I do, honey.” I took her gently by the forearm to stop her quickening step. She was going nowhere fast. Her nerves needed calming and I needed answers. We both pivoted to face one another as though a rehearsed dance step. Now Mackenzie was in the distance behind me, Salvador staring at my front … and at Wei Wei’s backside. I frowned at him and looked Wei Wei in the eyes. “What do you know about this Dr. Wang guy?”
“Nothing much. He’s an agent for wealthy collectors of valuable arts and antiquities. A middle man between the finders and the buyers.”
“Sort of a treasure hunt matchmaker?”