In the Shadow of the Cypress (21 page)

“You’re kidding, of course.”

Luke grinned. “Sort of.”

Robert smiled. “Yeah, I think I’d like to watch sushi in its natural setting. I’ll bring my chopsticks, but first I’ve got to find a hotel room somewhere nearby. I intend to stay for a few days. We’ve got our work cut out for us, and we need to make some serious plans.”

Luke winced. “A hotel room in Monterey? Save your money. You can stay at my place.” Luke pointed toward David Avenue. “It’s just up the hill over there. I’ve got a big leather couch that folds out to make a great double bed. Hell, it’s more comfortable than my own bed.”

During lunch Luke wrote out his address and drew a little map. Then he gave Robert his extra key and told him to make himself at home. “If you want to take a shower, you’ll find clean towels and stuff in the hall cupboard. Help yourself to anything you find in the fridge. I think there’re a couple of beers hiding in there somewhere.”

“Thanks, Luke.”

“When you’ve rested up, come back down to the aquarium around five o’clock, ask for me, and I’ll give you a Cook’s tour of the place. I think you’ll be impressed.”

Luke was waiting at the front entrance of the aquarium when Robert arrived. They hadn’t walked twenty feet into the foyer when a dark-eyed beauty passed nearby. She greeted Luke in passing with a beautiful smile and a wave.

Robert did a double take. “Who’s that stunning little creature?”

Luke looked up. “Oh, that’s Lorraine Yglesias. She’s from Costa Rica. She handles emerging markets for the aquarium. Pretty, isn’t she?”

Robert’s eyes widened with appreciation. “You can say that again, and in spades, and how convenient that I speak Spanish like a bloody native.”

Luke smiled. “Don’t bother, she speaks better English than you do. And besides, she’s married to a lawyer and has two children.”

“You’re kidding. She doesn’t look it.”

“Well, you don’t look like a doctor either.”

L
UKE AND
R
OBERT HAD REFRAINED
from discussing business matters where others might overhear, so after the aquarium tour Luke suggested they get a couple of takeout cheeseburgers at McFly’s up the street and go back to his place and talk.

After supper, Luke said there were a few things he thought his friend should see, but only if Robert was still interested in going into partnership on the search.

Robert quipped, “I’m here, aren’t I, and I didn’t come here for the scenery, though I must say it’s not half bad.”

Luke paused thoughtfully. “Would you be willing to sign a nondisclosure agreement?”

Robert thought for a moment and looked at his empty plate. “Only if you sign too, and we both get a copy.” In a blink of an eye Luke pulled two contracts from his desk drawer. He took Robert’s plate and set the nondisclosure agreement contracts
down in its place. “Read that, and if you’re still in the mood after reading the small print, sign them. I’ll stick my handle on it after you do.”

Robert quickly perused the single-page agreement, and then took out an expensive-looking fountain pen and signed. He handed the pen to Luke. “Your turn, Mr. Lucas.”

Luke signed and then gave his new partner a copy. “I think we’re in business now, Dr. Wu.”

“Do I get a secretary and everything?”

“What are you, some kind of skirt hound?”

“I’m being serious. We’re going to need someone good to handle all the paperwork. Someone we can trust to keep our secrets.”

Luke nodded. “Perhaps later, but you’re right. In fact, it might be a good idea to set up a small corporation to mantle our purpose with respectability. I don’t want anyone thinking we’re just a couple of grasping, amoral treasure hunters.”

“That’s right, take all the fun out of it for me. What’s next?”

Luke went to his desk and unlocked the file drawer. He pulled out a folder, relocked the drawer, and handed the file to Robert. “Read this. It’s a copy of Dr. Charles H. Gilbert’s journal. He was a professor at Hopkins Marine Laboratory at the turn of the last century. His handwriting is a little cramped, but at least he wrote legibly. I’m off to take a long shower. I smell like formalin and dead fish.”

Robert scrunched up his nose. “You’re telling me.”

Luke smiled and let it pass. While he shaved, Luke could hear Robert in the living room occasionally voicing what sounded like expletives of surprise. He couldn’t be sure because Robert spoke to himself in Chinese, which Luke found amusing.

When Luke came out of the bathroom, Robert was just
finishing the journal. He looked up at his new friend. “This is the most extraordinary thing I’ve ever read. What do you have that backs this up?”

Luke took back the journal, went back to the file drawer, replaced the folder, and brought out another, fatter file. From this he handed Robert copies of Dr. Gilbert’s photographs and the folded copies of his rubbings. Robert spread the material out on the floor. Luke confessed. “But you were right. There was a verifying token buried with the stone tablet. I believe it’s Admiral Zhou Man’s personal jade seal, but I can’t be sure since I can’t translate the text or the chop. See what you think.”

Robert examined the numerous old pictures of the jade seal in the shape of a recumbent giraffe, and the detailed studies of the text engraved on the seal itself. The stone rubbings were full-sized and accomplished with great care given to represent the multilingual text with precision. Robert said he could read most all of the characters and he ventured that, from first glance at least, everything concerning the text seemed precise and authentic.

Luke went out to the kitchen, searched through the fridge, and found two beers. As he cracked them open he heard Robert in the next room give out with a long, expressive whistle. Then he called out, “You’ve hit the mother lode this time, Luke. This is, without a doubt, Zhou Man’s Imperial seal. Believe me, this is going to set the cat among the pigeons, historically speaking. You couldn’t find better proof of the existence of these artifacts, except, perhaps, to come up with the originals. Where do you suppose these treasures are now?”

Luke exited the kitchen and handed Robert a beer. “If I knew that, Dr. Wu, I wouldn’t need you, now, would I?”

Robert looked pleased with himself. “I’d like to think we
would have come across each other eventually, but I’d rather be in on the ground floor, if you know what I mean.”

Luke sat down on the couch and leaned forward. “Well, as my grandfather used to say, fortune favors the lucky. Whether we find Zhou Man’s relics or not, this information is history in and of itself. But how it’s ultimately released to the world, and how it’s received, depends a great deal on the credibility of the people disseminating it. The slightest hint of commercial exploitation would taint all concerned, from Zheng He to Zhou Man, down through Dr. Gilbert to you and me.” Luke took a long, satisfying swig of beer.

Robert sat back on his haunches and gave a wry smile. “I do hope you appreciate the fact that there is still a whole predatory tribe of blood-in-the-eye racists prowling around out there. They won’t be too pleased to discover that what they thought was exclusively theirs belongs in effect to somebody else, culturally speaking. At least that’s how it’s ciphered in the antique framework of such things.”

“What do you mean by antique framework?”

“Well, Columbus claims the Americas in the name of Imperial Spain, and with little more than a stupid flag shoved in the sand and a few peaceful Indians as witnesses. So what do they do? They kill the Indians off with nasty diseases and outright homicide, and then steal all their stuff. And the ones they don’t kill, like the younger women and children, they turn into slaves and concubines. What a thrill for them.”

Luke got up and walked to his desktop iPod player and turned it on. Immediately the soft strains of Purcell softened the hard edges. He looked over his shoulder and cocked one eyebrow at Robert. “And your point is?”

“Isn’t it obvious? The Chinese set out with some of the
largest sailing ships ever built, and all just to explore and trade with the known and unknown world, which they seem to have accomplished before Columbus was even a glint in his father’s piratical eye, so to speak. But the treasure fleet commissioned at great expense by Emperor Zhu Di didn’t set sail to steal treasure, quite the opposite, in fact: they brought their own treasure to trade with others. They left behind magnificent jade seals, and multilingual stele, and beautiful Ming porcelain and exotic flowers, jungle chickens, and perhaps a hundred other wonders as yet unsuspected. But the most important fact of all: the only graves they left behind when they moved on were their own. There is no record anywhere in this hemisphere, either oral or written, that indicates any experiences of hostile conflicts with these explorers, and believe me, violence is the kind of thing people have a tendency to remember the longest and in the most detail.”

Luke nodded. “With that as a given, and conflicts aside, why didn’t they stay on and colonize?”

Robert flashed a conspiratorial wink. “What makes you think they didn’t? The west coast of the Americas is veritably littered with Chinese DNA. The difference is that the Chinese were bright enough to assimilate themselves into other cultures without demanding that those around them adapt to Chinese standards and practices. You stay alive a whole lot longer that way. It’s a Chinese principle to contribute to, and not denigrate, potential markets. After all, you can’t carry on a lucrative exchange with dead trading partners. Besides, why conquer when you can rent? If you play your cards right you can end up controlling the whole shebang without firing a shot.”

Luke shook his head as though he’d not heard right. “And what has that to do with today?”

Robert got off the floor and sat in the yellow director’s chair by the open window. He looked out over the lights of Monterey,
Cannery Row, and the harbor beyond. The bright lights of five squid boats danced in the distance, and the perfumes of low tide drifted gently with the onshore breezes that came through the window.

After pondering the question for a moment, he turned to Luke. “Those running shoes you’re wearing, or the components in your computer, your ten-speed bike, almost everything we use daily, and depend upon daily, is made in China. And as yet I haven’t seen one Chinese Communist soldier patrolling the streets of Atherton or San Jose. I mean really, why bother spending the time, the expense, and the blood to conquer, when all you have to do is make your opponent a dependent client? The more you sell him, the more money he owes you; in a short while the creditor owns the whole ball of wax. The good old USA, despite its military prowess, is now suddenly just another de facto client state that owes billions, if not homage, to China. In effect, the little fish has jumped into the net of its own accord, but the wise fisherman gently puts him back in the water to grow bigger and fatter for next year, or the year after.”

Luke shrugged and took a swig of beer. “To tell you the truth, Robert, I don’t give a crap who sells what to whom, or what nation declares itself the progenitor of another’s culture. Pure science depends upon empirical and provable truths. And whether we like it or not, the result would be the same regardless of all cultural, religious, or ethnic bias.”

Robert appeared impressed with Luke’s shorthand summation, but slightly confused in the bargain. “I know this is all leading to something pointed. I just can’t see the target.”

Luke nodded and patiently went on. “As a scientist and amateur historian my only concern is the truth. I don’t care if Mickey Mouse discovered America first and everybody on the planet denied it. If I discovered proof to the contrary, and I
truly believed that this fact was important to man’s often illusory understanding of his own nature, I would find some way to disseminate it regardless of the consequences, because we ultimately suffer greater pains from ignorance than from the truth, even if our first exposure to the truth hurts our pride, our sense of privilege, or our quaint faith in priestly prestidigitation. Cultural envy or political jealousy should have no place in science, any more than religion plays a viable part in international commerce. If we have the least hint of the truth, it is our obligation to explore it until we can arrive at a provable resolution.”

Robert sat back and grinned. “That was quite a lecture, Professor Lucas. Of course it all makes perfect sense, but you must also remember that, if anything, I have an even greater vested interest in finding out the truth than you do. I am Chinese after all, and these cultural and historical artifacts play an important role in our knowledge of ourselves, and the world’s knowledge of us. But the thorny question remains, where do we go from here?”

Luke shook his head. “That’s just what you and I have to figure out in the next few days.”

Robert flashed another wry smile. “I’m all abuzz.”

Luke and Robert sat up talking until two in the morning and slept in the next day. After a late breakfast of ham and eggs served by an indifferent waitress at a local café, Luke said he wanted to take Robert, who had never visited Monterey before, on what Luke was pleased to call a “used-to-be tour” of the locations mentioned in Dr. Gilbert’s journal.

Robert was puzzled. “What is a ‘used-to-be tour’?”

Luke grinned. “That’s when you visit places that used to be there but aren’t there any longer.”

“What’s the use of that?”

“Oh, just to give you a flavor of the place. Sometimes one can eke out subtle insights from locations. Besides, I just thought you’d like to see where all this history took place. Sightseeing is just what we need right now. We’ll take my Jeep. It’s just the thing for where we’re going.”

L
UKE TOOK
R
OBERT ON A
leisurely tour of Pacific Grove and pointed out Lover’s Point, where Hopkins had once been, and China Point, where the Chinese fishing village had once stood, before the fire obliterated it. He showed Robert examples of the famous Monterey cypresses, but admitted that though he knew the general area, not even Dr. Gilbert knew exactly where the original site of the discovery was situated. Luke drove out to the Spanish Bay resort, which had once been called Asilomar Beach, and then went on to see the Carmel River, which Luke believed might have been the site of one of the original Chinese encampments. His presumption was based on the fact that the river had once flowed with abundant freshwater all year long, and that, according to Luke, would have made the site an ideal place to take on that precious commodity. The river, before it had been dammed up, was said to have been fat with trout and even salmon when the season called them from the sea.