‘Of course,’ he said quite simply. ‘I realized I’d have no choice in the matter.’
‘What did she do?’
‘Oh, she gave us some trouble here, and then when she got back to China, when you told her you thought some of the pieces were false, she wrote a letter to her parents asking them what to do. Of course, once she did that, I no longer had any choice: she had to be eliminated.’ He cocked his head to one side, a gesture that suggested he was going to reveal something to her. ‘I was, quite frankly, surprised at how easy it was. I had thought things would be more difficult to arrange in China.’ He shook his head slowly from side to side, lamenting yet another example of cultural pollution.
‘How do you know she wrote to them?’
‘Why, I read the letter,’ he explained simply, then paused, correcting himself for accuracy. ‘Actually, I read a translation of the letter.’
‘How did you get that?’
‘Why, all of your correspondence was opened and read.’ He spoke almost in reproach, as if she should have understood at least this much. ‘How did you get that letter to Semenzato?’ His curiosity was real,
‘I gave it to someone who was going to Hong Kong.’
‘Someone from the dig?’
‘No, a tourist I met in Xian. He was going to Hong Kong, and I asked him to mail it. I knew it would get there much sooner that way.’
‘Very clever, Dottoressa. Yes, very clever, indeed.’
A wave of cold jolted through her body. She pulled her feet, long since grown numb, up from the marble floor and hooked them over the bottom rung of the chair. The rain had soaked through her sweater, and she felt herself trapped inside her frozen clothing. She was overcome by a wave of shivering and closed her eyes again, waiting for it to pass. The dull ache that had lurked in her jaw for days had turned into a fiery, burning flame.
When she opened her eyes, the man was gone from beside her and was standing on the other side of the room, reaching out to take down another vase. ‘What are you going to do to me?’ she asked, fighting to keep her voice level and calm.
He walked back across the room towards her, holding the low bowl carefully in two hands. ‘I think this is the most beautiful piece I have,’ he said, turning it slightly so that she could better follow the simple brushed line of the design around to the other side. ‘It comes from Ch’ing-hai Province, out by the end of the Great Wall. I’d venture it’s about five thousand years old, wouldn’t you say?’
Brett looked dully up at him and saw a portly middle-aged man holding a painted brown bowl in his hands. ‘I asked you what you’re going to do with me,’ she repeated, interested only in that and not the bowl.
‘Hm?’ he asked vaguely, glancing down at her for a moment and then back at the bowl. ‘With you, Dottoressa?’ He took a short step to his left and placed the bowl on top of an empty pedestal. ‘I’m afraid I haven’t had time to think about that yet. I was so interested in having you see my collection.’
‘Why?’
He stayed where he was, directly in front of her, occasionally reaching out delicately with a finger to turn the bowl a millimetre this way, then that way. ‘Because I have so many beautiful things and because I can’t show them to anyone,’ he said with sorrow so palpable it could not be feigned. He turned to her and offered a friendly smile of explanation. ‘Anyone who counts, that is. You see, if I show them to people who don’t know anything about ceramics, I can’t hope that they’ll appreciate the beauty or the rarity of what they see.’ He stopped there, hoping that she’d understand his dilemma.
She did. ‘And if you show them to people who do know about Chinese art or ceramics, then they’ll know where the pieces came from?’
‘Oh, clever you,’ he said, lifting his hands apart in real delight at her quickness. His expression darkened. ‘It’s difficult, dealing with people who don’t understand. They see all these glorious things,’ and here he swept his right hand in front of him in a gesture that encompassed everything in the room, ‘as pots or bowls, but they have no idea of their beauty.’
‘That doesn’t stop them from getting them for you, does it?’ she asked, making no attempt to disguise her sarcasm.
He took it as said and considered it equably. ‘No, it doesn’t. I tell them what to get, and they get it for me.’
‘Do you also tell them how to get it?’ Speech was beginning to cost her too much. She wanted this to end.
‘That depends on who’s working for me. Sometimes I have to be very explicit.’
‘Did you have to be “explicit” with the men you sent to me?’
She saw him start to he, but then he changed the subject. ‘What do you think of the collection, Dottoressa?’
She had suddenly had enough. She closed her eyes and rested her head against the back of her chair. ‘I asked you what you think of the collection, Dottoressa,’ he repeated, voice raised minimally. Slowly, more from exhaustion than from obstinacy, Brett rolled her head from side to side, eyes closed.
Backhanded and entirely casual, intended more as warning than punishment, his blow caught her on the side of the head at the level of her eyes. His hand did little more than glance off her face, but the force of it was enough to separate anew the healing bones of her jaw, which jolted back together with a flash of pain that exploded in her brain, driving away all thought, all consciousness.
Brett slid to the floor and lay still. He looked down at her for a moment, then stepped back to the pedestal. He reached down, picked up the Plexiglas cover and placed it carefully over the low bowl, took another look at the woman lying unconscious on the floor and left the room.
* * * *
