She braced herself and didn"t budge. "Not until you tell me what"s going on."
"Simple. We"re going after the Black Trinity."
Fourteen.
From the air, Hong Kong was a silent, glittering white dream sleeping between blue ocean and black land. From the ground, Hong Kong was an exhilarating nightmare. Noise. Traffic. Smells. Crowds. Urgency. The rapid rise and fall of the Chinese language ran like a seething river through the city"s high-rise canyons. There was calm to be found inside walled residences, those private oases of proportion and elegance and silence. There was no calm on the streets. The streets were for reckless commerce, sharp-edged and unapologetic.
The change in government known as the Turnover hadn"t diminished Hong Kong"s wealth or ambition. The newspapers printed communist sentiments and exhortations daily, but the city was fueled by a breathtaking capitalism. Hong Kong was a neon-flashing city of gamblers whose sheer dedication to money made Las Vegas look like a sixty-five-watt bingo parlor run by parish priests.
The streets boiled with pedestrians locked in unequal battle with delivery trucks, taxis, buses, motorbikes, bicycles, and private cars. Beneath the haze of vehicle exhaust, white was the most common color of the buildings. Dazzling rainbow bursts of neon signs climbed entire buildings, calling attention to commerce. Black was the usual color of clothes. Smoke blue was the color of the air in the streets where sidewalk vendors grilled snacks on braziers for the endless, restless, relentless tide of humanity.
Archer tapped the taxi driver on the shoulder and pointed toward the sidewalk. Without looking at traffic, the driver pulled over. Hannah tried not to look, either. Despite her dislike of the rain forest"s primitive villages, she had never been comfortable in big cities. They were exciting. They were fascinating. They were exotic. But after a while, a numbing sort of overload set in. Then all she wanted was silence and s.p.a.ce. Cities offered neither.
"Almost there," Archer said. He tugged down the black cowboy hat he wore. He had picked it up from one of Hong Kong"s remarkable street vendors. Wisely, he had declined the dazzling diamond "Rolex" the same vendor was ready to part with for ver" tiny cash, sir sir, ver" tiny.
"Anyone following us?" Hannah asked.
"We lost the last one in the meat market, when those German tour buses unloaded."
"Did you recognize him?"
"Them," he corrected. "No. I just recognized the moves. But you could lose an elephant in that market. That"s why I went there."
Hannah swallowed and said nothing. Hong Kong"s immense open-air food market had reminded her of a jungle without trees, Genesis without pages. Every kind of creature that walked, flew, jumped, swam, or slithered waited in cages for housewives and cooks to bargain over the cost of fresh protein for dinner. The cats and dogs were difficult enough for her to bear, but the monkeys were the worst, so nearly human in their silent pleas to be freed from the cage of heat and smoke and noise. Eventually, this meal or the next, they would get their wish.
Shuddering, Hannah put the memory of the cages out of her mind.
"Over there," Archer said.
She followed his glance and saw the store without even having to stretch her neck; when they weren"t being followed, being tall enough to look over the heads of most of the street crowd was an advantage. She couldn"t translate the ideographs that flashed over the shop, but the owner obviously had his eye on world trade. Translations of the Chinese symbols were provided in j.a.panese and Korean ideographs, the Russian Cyrillic alphabet, plus the more familiar alphabet used by the French, German, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, and English speakers.
"No Arabic," Hannah said.
"No Arabian buyers."
"Why? Do they like hard gems?"
"They like diamonds as well as the next guy, but the Arab princes and oil sheiks have treasure rooms that are jammed with ropes of natural pearls," Archer said. "They"ve been harvesting naturals for two thousand years in the Red Sea, Persian Gulf, and Gulf of Aden."
"Bet they hated Kokichi Mikimoto."
Archer looked around. Despite being literally shoulder to shoulder with other pedestrians, he and Hannah might as well have been alone. The people dividing around them were talking fast in Chinese, walking faster, and smoking as though there was a million-dollar prize for finishing the most cigarettes in a day.
"Are you talking about the guy who patented the technique for culturing round pearls?" Archer asked.
She nodded.
"You"re right," he said. "Mikimoto"s not a hero in the Gulf. He blew the bottom out of the pearl trade when he destroyed the rarity of the pearl."
"But not the beauty."
"The child of moonbeams. Tears of the G.o.ds. The soul of the sea." Archer smiled. "Pearls are all of that and more."
"But not cultured pearls, is that it?"
"Not to the Arabs. They say cultured pearls are inferior to naturals, and they"ll say it as long as they have natural pearls supporting their currency along with the rest of the royal treasury."
"What do you think?"
While people jostled and chattered and poured by on either side in a human tide, Archer looked across the bobbing heads at the window where a gleaming South Seas necklace was the centerpiece of one display. The choker was made of round pearls that had an unusual, almost tangerine orient. "I think that gem-quality natural pearls are far too rare and therefore astronomically expensive to support any kind of extensive pearl trade. Fortunately for Chang"s Sea Gems stores, the rest of the world isn"t prejudiced against cultured pearls."
"I admit to a prejudice in favor of black pearls," Hannah said, looking at a matinee-length necklace that had a lovely dark l.u.s.ter. She would have liked to get closer to the window, but the crowd was like a moving, impenetrable barrier.
"Must be your American parents," Archer said. "Asians prefer silver-white. South Americans like South Seas gold. It"s cla.s.sic white for Europe, pink for the low-ticket American Akoya trade, and black for the American luxury trade."
She leaned very close to Archer. "If the Asians don"t like black pearls, why are we here?"
"j.a.pan loves black pearls. For the right gems, they"ll pay twice what Americans would."
"Then we should be in j.a.pan."
"Last year. Or maybe next year. But right now, the yen is very weak against the dollar. Whoever has the goods will sell them where the currency and demand are the strongest."
"America?"
Archer nodded.
"So why are we in Hong Kong?" she asked.
"When it comes to luxury goods, Hong Kong is the commercial crossroads of the world. If someone wants a quick transaction and is willing to settle for a cut-rate price, this would be the place."
"Isn"t this kind of shop too, um..."
"High-end for crooks?" he finished dryly.
"Right."
"No matter where on the food chain you start, goods like we"re chasing would end up in Sea Gems, where the clientele is rich enough to buy third-world countries but would rather have baubles."
Hannah chewed lightly on her lower lip. She was still getting used to the taste of indestructible lipstick. "Is Sea Gems part of the Chang family"s holdings?"
"Sam Chang is the owner of record," Archer said quietly, "but you have to dig a long time to find that out. The store has the best pearls in Hong Kong, which is to say some of the best pearls in the world."
"Both the name Sam and the name Chang are common, especially in the westernized East. Are you sure it"s the same Sam Chang? Ian"s father?"
Archer nodded. "The old man owns and operates high-end pearl stores all over the world. Tokyo. Shanghai. Los Angeles. Manhattan. London. Paris. Rome. He was going to open up one in Moscow, too, but the ruble keeps crashing."
"What about your father"s company?"
"Donovan International?"
"Yes."
He shrugged. "We have offices in every country that has significant mineral reserves, if that"s what you mean."
In mock salute she touched the brim of the wide, floppy black hat she had picked up in the airport. "Impressive."
"That"s The Donovan, all right," he said, forcing a path through the crowded sidewalk so that they could stand close to one of the many display windows. "Impressive. Like that pearl choker."
He stepped back just enough to let her look past him into the display window. To the right, next to a long strand of golden pearls alternating with glittering diamonds, she saw a black pearl choker. The pearls were at least eighteen millimeters, as big as the choker Archer had bought for her in Broome. After that, all similarity between the two necklaces ended. These pearls had a fine l.u.s.ter, an iridescent blue-black color, and a fat six-figure price tag.
Frowning, she went in closer until she was all but pressing her nose against the gla.s.s. The city heat was so intense she couldn"t have steamed up the gla.s.s with her breath if she tried.
She looked at the necklace with such concentration that the rest of reality just faded into background.
"What do you think?" he asked after a few minutes.
"Quite nice, despite the fact that the color match across the strand is only good, not excellent."
He turned, looked at the necklace appraisingly, and then at her. "Only good?"
"Yes," she said, not glancing away from the window. There was no hesitation in her voice. "I can"t tell from here, but I suspect that the surface isn"t quite up to the price on one or two of those pearls. If so, it would explain the less than superior color match."
A slow smile spread across Archer"s face. He thought of how quickly she had become a pouting tourist for the shopkeeper in Broome. He was accustomed to working alone, but he was beginning to appreciate just how useful she could be in catching pearl traders off guard.
"Can you play the part of an ultrafussy, not-too-cla.s.sy rich b.i.t.c.h without revealing how much you really know about pearls?" he asked.
"You mean the kind of spoiled brat who knows what she likes, never sees it, and could find fault with G.o.d?"
Archer laughed out loud. "Perfect." He ran his fingertips over Hannah"s cheek in a light caress. "You"re looking for a very special black pearl necklace. You don"t know what kind, but you"ll know it when you see it."
"How special?" she asked.
He shook his head, silently telling her not to mention the Black Trinity. "As long as you don"t describe right away how special the orient is, the necklace can be as special as you like."
"A real colorful black," she said, deadpan.
A smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. "You got it. Let"s go make the manager chew his very expensive carpet. If he gets irked enough, he"ll let us into the vault in back just to show us how important he and his pearls are and how ignorant and ordinary we are. Then we"ll see how much he knows and what he"s saving for his special clients."
And, depending on what Archer saw or didn"t see, he would decide if it was time to put a rainbow cat among the sleek pearl pigeons.
"How do you know this store has the really good stuff hidden in a vault?" she asked.
"Stores like this always do. What"s in the windows is just the lure. Besides, I"ve been in the vault before. That"s where they keep their virgins," he said, using the common name for pearls that haven"t been drilled. "Nice goods. Really nice."
"Will someone here recognize you?"
"I doubt it. It"s been years."
He pulled out a pair of clear gla.s.ses. It looked like they were bifocal, but they weren"t. There was just an extra thickness of gla.s.s at the bottom of the lens. The frames were thin, black, the latest in Italian flash. The lenses were amber tinted. The gla.s.ses, like the hat, completely changed the lines of his face.
She lifted her eyebrows in silent salute. "Spoiled, b.i.t.c.hy, and way too picky. Anything else?"
"I don"t know anything about pearls. And my name is "
"Sugar," Hannah cut in quickly. "I"m rotten with names."
"Sugar?" His mouth curled up at the corners. "Okay, I can live with that. It beats b.u.t.tercup."
"b.u.t.tercup?" She looked him up and down, lingering on the size and set of his shoulders. "Doesn"t suit."
"Thank you. But that"s what my sister Honor calls her husband when she"s annoyed with him. And vice versa."
"b.u.t.tercup. Is her husband, um, small?"
"Am I?"
"No."
"Jake"s the same size as me."
"b.u.t.tercup." She rolled the word around on her tongue and grinned. "I like it."
Archer had a feeling he was going to wish he hadn"t let Hannah in on that particular family joke. Yet seeing her face light up with amus.e.m.e.nt was something he couldn"t really regret.
The inside of the store was like a museum rather than a commercial enterprise. Instead of putting out as much merchandise as possible, the decorator had used empty s.p.a.ce to create a feeling of importance around the display pedestals. In place of the brilliant, pinpoint lighting used by jewelers to enhance diamonds and other faceted stones, the light aimed at the pearls in their satin nests was soft, carefully color balanced and often fluorescent rather than incandescent.
No gla.s.s caged the tops of the pedestals. Potential buyers were kept just out of easy arm"s reach by burgundy velvet ropes. A very old, fabulously costly silk carpet m.u.f.fled the sound of expensively shod feet. French Impressionist paintings and works by ancient masters of calligraphy hung on the walls, adding to the feeling of richness and cultural worth. Intricately carved, museum-quality folding screens separated various areas. Quietly, repeatedly, the decor let customers know that they were privileged to be part of such elegance and taste.
The interior was divided into suites. Each had its own type of pearls. Freshwater baroques from every river, stream, pond, and lake in the world, in sizes from hummingbird to chicken egg. Salt.w.a.ter baroques from abalone whose rainbow orient was intense, but lacked the mystery of the Black Trinity"s pearls. Small j.a.panese Akoya pearls, with their natural pale blue tones and their unnatural pink and silver ones. Larger Tahitian pearls, whose highlights ranged from steel gray to peac.o.c.k blue to jungle green. Big South Seas pearls with their silver-whites and radiant golds angel dreams fashioned into necklaces and bracelets, set into earrings and brooches and rings. The Australian pearls were biggest of all, legacy of the Indian Ocean"s sweeping tides and the pearl farmers" skill.
Most of the suites held customers conversing in Chinese. There were a few speaking English and what might have been Italian. The suite specializing in black pearls was empty but for a man sitting at a desk. The polished bra.s.s plaque announced that he was Paul Chevalier. Archer knew that Monsieur Paul was one of Sam Chang"s head pearl buyers, an up-and-comer from Tahiti who had his eye on one of the Chang granddaughters. If rumor was correct, the granddaughter had both eyes on the very handsome Paul.
Paul barely nodded to Hannah and Archer before he went back to his phone call. He left the distinct impression that he knew important customers on sight, and they didn"t qualify.
Archer bent over Hannah, nuzzled and nibbled on her neck, and said softly, "We"re in luck. That"s their top black pearl expert. If anyone can get us into the vault room, he can. Word is that he"s a vain, self-important son of a b.i.t.c.h. The kind who loves to put people in their place, which is the dirt under his feet."
Her slow smile was pure acid. "Only in the colonies," she said in a calm, carrying voice, "would anyone think their great-grandmother"s hallway rug was cla.s.sy."
"You"re the one who wanted to look at pearls," Archer said. A tw.a.n.g had appeared in his voice, something between Oklahoma and Texas. "We were told this was the place to look, darlin". So look. Screw the rug."