“Are they good?” Dr. Zheng asked her with a grin in his voice.
“Completely hoi moon.” This was one of the few phrases that people like her always, reflexively, uttered in Cantonese even when speaking Mandarin or English. Maybe it was because the term was Hong Kong porcelain slang; or maybe because the Cantonese just had more sing and sinew. Hoi moon geen san. Let the door open on a view of mountains. See beauty. See authenticity. She’d flipped through the photos. One never found twenty imperial pots together. It was rare to find even two. “We have a buyer for this?” she asked, feeling as if every cell in her body were singing.
“We have,” he said.
Big spender, she thought, instantly placing the value of these works-assuming, of course, they were authentic-at fifteen, twenty million dollars. “One person?”
“One person.”
“Where’s the collection?”
“Beijing.”
“Beijing!” This stopped her. Fine porcelains almost never came up for sale from the Mainland. No porcelain manufactured before the twentieth year of the Qianlong reign, 1756, and no porcelain of any era from the imperial kilns could leave China. Something like this would have to be arranged or at least sanctioned by the government. Then they issued a special permit. “Is there a visa?”
“Yes. Though I only have the faxed copy.” He pulled a page from another file.
She leaned over it. All the chops looked correct, the Ministry of Culture letterhead familiar and imposing.
“Who approached us?”
“A wealthy developer. Gao Yideng. You know the name?”
“No.”
“He hasn’t been a… presence. He might be an intermediary. If it’s being sold by a major museum, or the government-well, I’m sure if I were in their position I wouldn’t want it known either. How soon can you leave?”
“Tomorrow?”
“All right.” His eyes smiled under their hood of brown-splotched skin; his refined hands tapped the desk. He leaned toward her, deepening the hollow drape of his Italian suit. “David?” he said. “Shouldn’t David be the one to go?”
“Yes. He’s perfect.” She liked teaming with David Hong. He was instinctive; she was the mental librarian type. They meshed well. That wasn’t going to happen now, though. The plane bounced a few times on the tarmac and hit the runway’s wind tunnel. The brakes screamed. It was nine-thirty at night here. Between the flights, the ambulance, and the Tokyo hospital, she’d had it. What she wanted more than anything was to sleep.
But the bright lights crackled on and she moved to the aisle, carry-ons cutting into her shoulder. She could feel the Chinese man behind her looking at her hearing aids, always visible because she wore her hair pulled up. She ignored him. She was used to people’s looks.
As soon as she stepped into the open rotunda she punched in Zheng’s number. It was morning back in New York, but he’d be up.
“Hello?” he said. “Lia?”
“It’s me. How’s he doing?”
“Fine. I talked to him in the recovery room.” Zheng had spent most of the night on the phone. Now the morning light had turned the dreamlike shadows on his desk into true and luminous objects: a table screen of carved nephrite, a brush washer with a pale celadon glaze. “I think he’s sleeping now,” he said.
“Good. Well. I won’t call him.”
“No. Don’t. We’ll take care of him. He’ll be in the hospital for some days, and then it’s a five- or six-week recovery. He’s not going to be able to help you at all.”
“I figured. So who are you going to send?”
He gave a long, thinking pause and then said, “As soon as I send anyone, more people will know.”
The implication multiplied inside her with an uneasy mix of feelings. Not send someone? Yet he was right, of course. If word got out, the competition would be all over their seller in an instant.
Because everyone would want pieces like these. This was true even though China was still the poor stepchild in the art world. Western masterworks fetched vastly higher sums than did Eastern ones. A very rare imperial porcelain, like a fine scroll painting or an important religious statue, might be worth three or four million U.S. dollars, while a work by a Western master might fetch ten times as much. But that was what made Chinese art attractive to investors. It was a good buy. And these were treasures, and the true treasures of any tradition were very, very hard to find.
“First look at the pots,” Zheng said. “Then we’ll talk.”
“I’m just the memory person,” she joked, but meaning it, wanting to make sure he remembered the kernel of truth in it. She was a data fiend, not a spotter. She wasn’t the one with the sure eye who always knew at a glance whether something was real or not. She was the one who backed things up, who could document, reference, and prove.
Doing this job alone was hardly even thinkable. Not that she’d be the first. For a crumb of comfort she looked back through history. Several hundred years ago there was a Hanlin scholar named Zhu, who was sent off alone on a porcelain mission. He had been ordered south by the emperor to oversee the royal kilns at Jingdezhen. He’d written:
Smoke rises day and night.
Who knows about me, alone in the Bingli Pavilion of the Zhaotiange?
Lia read this in a 1742 Fouliang Xianzhi, or Gazetteer of Fouliang District. There was a wealth of interesting information in gazetteers. For a moment, she felt okay. She was part of, or at least near to, a tradition. “All right,” she said. “I’ll look at them.”
“Very good, Luo Na,” said Dr. Zheng, using the familiar form of her Chinese name.
“My best to David.”
“I’ll tell him. He’s going to be fine.”
“Sorry-I’ve got to go.” She had turned the corner and found herself in the Immigration area. The passengers from her flight stood in ragged lines. She waited her turn and then stepped up to the counter with its bank-teller windows.
“Passport,” said the Immigration clerk. “Arrival card.”
Lia handed these across, watched the man flip through the stamped passport pages. She had a tourist visa. It was the easiest and fastest way to get in.
He checked his computer screen. “Occupation?”
“Scholar of art.”
“Purpose of visit?”
“Look at art.”
He looked again at the screen.
Lia felt her brow retracting in surprise. This never happened. Entering China was a glance, a stamp, no questions.
The man touched some keys. Then he slid her passport back across the glossy ledge to her. “Step to the left,” he said.
“What?” Suddenly her leather tool case felt heavy, like it could drag her to the ground. “What did you say?”
“Step to the left.”
She looked. There was nothing there. A wall, unappetizing pale green. A single door. There? That door?
The Immigration officer confirmed it with his eyes.
All right, she thought, and walked to the door. It opened. A Chinese man with high cheekbones, a bald, luminous head, and a fine tropical wool suit smiled and shook his own hands. “Miss Frank,” he said in English. “Welcome.”
“Thank you,” she answered. She removed a business card from her pocket and held it out.
He took it and turned it, checking both languages.
“Please call me Fan Luo Na if you prefer,” she said in Chinese. Her spoken Chinese was only fair. She’d had little practice, colloquial Chinese being somewhat removed from the literary forms in which she’d trained for her job.
He was taking out his own card. “Gao Yideng,” he said. “My personal welcome.”
Gao Yideng himself? She stared. Why would he come, instead of sending someone?
“Your colleague is doing well,” he said. “He is out of surgery and all things were successful.”