The Chinese Alchemist

by Lyn Hamilton

  The door was open when I got there, a housekeeping cart right outside. The maid was scrubbing the bathroom. I took a quick peek inside. The room was empty. There was no suitcase, no portable air filter buzzing away, no tea apparatus, no clothes, no toiletries in the bathroom. The slug had slipped away from me again!

  I stomped back to my room. First I called Air China and tried to get on a flight back to Beijing the next day. That didn’t work, but I could get out the following day. Then I called the hotel in Beijing to tell them when I was coming back. The woman at the desk asked me to hold for a moment, and then came back on the line to tell me there was a message flagged to my room. She had it still, given that they didn’t want to put it in the room until I returned. It was in a sealed envelope. I asked her to open the envelope and fax it to me at my present location. She agreed to do that right away.

  While I waited for the contents of the mysterious sealed envelope to be put into my hands, I went to the hotel bar. The lobby was a hive of activity. The staff was putting up Christmas decorations, garlands were being strung from every pillar and post, an enormous fake tree already fully decorated was being set into place, and Christmas carols, sung by Chinese children, were being piped through the whole place. This did not improve my mood. The bar didn’t either. It was the off-season, December now, and the bar, despite the frenzy of Christmas cheer elsewhere in the hotel, was far from a happening place. In fact, it was empty. I ordered a glass of the house red, something nonspecific from a company called Dragon Seal. If I thought wine would help, it didn’t, but there was nothing that was going to make me happy that evening, that much was certain.

  As I sat there in solitary splendor, the staff whispering to each other over in a corner, occasionally casting glances my way, I gave myself a stern talking to. First off, I told myself to calm down. Why exactly was I in Xi’an? What exactly had I hoped to accomplish? Why was I letting Burton Haldimand get to me? Yes, he was scum—lying, deceitful scum, that is—obsessed with getting that silver box ahead of anyone else, including me. Why, though, was I falling into the trap of becoming just as obsessed as he was? Rob tells me that occasionally I am like a little dog with a bone. That’s his polite way of telling me that at times I can be stubborn, willful, and occasionally even obsessed beyond all reason with something. It seemed to me that where Burton Haldimand and the silver box were concerned, this was one of those times. I told myself to take a few deep breaths and let it go.

  I was making some, albeit minimal, progress, telling myself how much fun I would have in Taiwan with Rob and Jennifer, when I was joined by two other visitors. That I should know them, in fact know anyone in Xi’an other than Burton, came as a surprise.

  “Lara!” Dr. Xie exclaimed when he saw me. “What a pleasant surprise! You know Mira Tetford, of course. May we join you?”

  “Hello, Dr. Xie, Mira,” I said. “Please do. It is an unexpected pleasure for me, too.”

  “I left a message for you at your hotel in Beijing this morning before I flew down. They said you were still registered. Did you get it?” Mira asked. “And what brings you to Xi’an?”

  “The terra-cotta warriors, of course,” I said, without missing a beat. “I decided I couldn’t leave China without seeing them. They are as fabulous as everyone says they are.” I’d seen them on my previous visit many years earlier, but why bother to mention that small detail?

  “They are one of the wonders of the world,” Dr. Xie agreed.

  “And how about you two? What brings you to Xi’an?” I asked.

  “I have a manufacturing facility here,” Dr. Xie said. “I come here frequently. I have an apartment in town, in fact. And Mira is helping me with an acquisition of a company in this area. We meet with the company representatives tomorrow, and have been working on our strategy all day. I have promised Mira that I will take her to one of our famed dumpling buffets. I insist that you join us. My car and driver are right outside to take us when we’re ready.”

  I did join them. It’s difficult to imagine a buffet where your meal consists of a choice of twentysomething different Chinese dumplings, but in fact, it was delicious. I tried not to think about either Burton or the silver box, but there was a floor show with song and dance from the T’ang dynasty, which as interesting as it was, I’d just as soon have skipped under the circumstances.

  It was on the way back that something interesting happened. My seatbelt had slipped down between the top and bottom of the seat. When I managed to pull it up, something unpleasant-feeling came up with it. I held it up to find a surgical glove.

  “Has Burton Haldimand been in this car by any chance?” I asked, wiggling it.

  “It would be difficult to think it would be anyone else,” Dr. Xie said, smiling at the glove. “I had my driver take Burton sightseeing this afternoon. He wanted to see the imperial tombs west of the city and tours do not regularly go there this time of year. Not,” he added, “that Burton seems a tour kind of person.”

  “I thought I was going to meet him here,” I said, stretching the truth just a tad. “But he doesn’t seem to be in the hotel any longer.”

  Dr. Xie spoke to his driver, whose English name was Jackie, chosen for his hero Jackie Chan apparently. “Jackie says that he dropped Burton at the train station at the end of their tour.”

  “The train station? I guess he’s not going back to Beijing.”

  “That would not be the ideal way to get there, no.” Dr. Xie spoke to the driver again. The man shrugged at first, and Dr. Xie looked about to tell me Jackie had no idea, when the man spoke again.

  “The driver thought Burton a little odd,” Dr. Xie said.

  “I can’t imagine why,” I muttered.

  “Burton told him that the trip to the tombs had been most educational, and that now he was going to see the Jade Women, something about meeting someone where the Jade Women live. No accounting for tastes, but Burton’s a grown man, and he can do whatever he wants. I’d be happy to have Jackie take you to see the imperial tombs tomorrow. They are worth seeing, and I’m sure you would enjoy them as much as Burton did.”

  “Thank you, but I can’t accept your kind offer. You will need the car.” Actually, the new me wasn’t going to look at anything that would get the silver box back on my personal agenda, nor did I think that anything that Burton might like would appeal to me in the slightest.

  “Nonsense. I insist. Here is my telephone number in Xi’an, and my mobile as well. I’ll have Jackie take Mira and me to our meeting in the morning, and he will show you around the rest of the day.”

  “Thank you,” I said. It seemed churlish to refuse such a gracious offer.

  The desk clerk at the hotel called out to me when I came through the doors, having said good night to Mira and Dr. Xie. “Your fax from Beijing is here,” he said. I’d completely forgotten about it.

  I opened it in the room. Based on my chance meeting with Dr. Xie and Mira, I had already concluded it was from Mira, telling me she was traveling to Xi’an for a day or two. Instead it was a message from Burton.

  Lara, I hope you weren’t waiting for me too long at Panjiayuan Market. My apologies! No doubt you were standing in the cold, cursing my name. I have good news, however. I have received some information about the whereabouts of the silver box. It was too late to call you because you would already have left for the market, hence this note. I am flying out to Xi’an today if I can get to the airport in time for the flight, and will call you from there. Burton.

  He’d got the cursing part about right, but the rest of it left me dazed. In fact, I read it three times to make sure I’d understood it correctly. Having concluded that there was only one possible interpretation, I reached two obvious conclusions. The first was that Burton had not intended to lie to me about Panjiayuan Market, and the second was that in this instance the slug was not Burton, but a certain antique dealer.

  I called the Beijing hotel again and asked to be put through to my voice mail. Burton had said he would call me. Had
he done that as well?

  Yes, he had, as had Mira, just as she said. As expected, her call was merely to say she was out of town for a couple of days, but if I needed anything to feel free to call Ruby. There were three messages from Burton. In the first, he said he hoped I’d forgiven him for the Panjiayuan business, and that he would call again. The second indicated that he was making progress, and thought he knew who had the silver box. The third was considerably more unsettling. As soon as I heard it, I headed for the business center and looked up the Jade Women. Apparently they were Immortals who protected alchemical texts, and probably the alchemists, too, and who dispensed cups of the sacred elixir of immortality to those of us below deemed worthy. They awaited the arrival of adepts on the top of the Western Mountain, one of the five sacred mountains that held up the sky. They also came down to Earth from time to time. Apparently they were recognizable because of a tiny grain of yellow jade above their noses.

  So where was this sacred Western Mountain? It is now called Hua Shan or Flower Mountain, and it is about seventy-five miles east of Xi’an. I called Dr. Xie. Thirty minutes or so later, Dr. Xie and I were hurtling through the darkness toward Hua Shan in his Mercedes.

  The train from Xi’an had come and gone. It was dark, though, so I was almost certain Burton would not yet have headed up the mountain. In the village of Hua Shan, there were a few not-so-choice hotels. That had to be where he was staying.

  You wouldn’t think hotels would reveal whether they had a guest by the name of Burton Haldimand, but Dr. Xie is a persuasive, indeed imposing, man. It was at the third cheap hotel near one of the entrances to the route up the mountain that we found Burton. There were no phones in the room. Dr. Xie spoke sharply to the man at the desk. “I’ve told him it is a patient of mine who has called for assistance. As soon as another staff member comes to accompany us, we will go up.”

  Burton did not answer to our knock. The hotel employee was persuaded with cash to open the door. We found ourselves in a tiny room with only a cracked sink and two small cots. To find someone like Burton in a tiny room with toilets down the hall, a room that would never come even close to passing his standards of hygiene, was somehow really disturbing in and of itself. But that was by far the least of it. Burton was dead, curled up in the fetal position on a tiny cot. If he met someone, there was no indication of it. If he saw the Jade Women as he passed to the great beyond, we would never know. Most terrifying of all, his face was a horrible dark blue-gray color.

  Six

  In addition to serving Lingfei, I was going about acquiring considerable wealth. So disturbed had I been by Wu Peng’s revelation of what I saw to be my father’s perfidy in selling me to pay his gambling debts, I had overlooked for a time the other piece of information the man had offered me. He told me that his position in the royal household, which I might well take over on his death if I showed true merit, presented many opportunities for profit, that the access eunuchs had to the emperor was a highly valued commodity that I might exploit with care. I decided that I would not wait until Wu Peng died to take advantage.

  There was a very good reason why eunuchs inclined to do so could enrich themselves, and that was that all was not well in the Imperial Palace. The Son of Heaven was revered as a wise and just ruler. Early in his reign, he stabilized the food supply throughout the Empire, thus bringing terrible famines under control. A benevolent leader of his people, he distributed government lands to the common people, and ended taxation for the poorest amongst us. He was strict in his insistence upon law and order, making the Empire safe hr his subjects, yet merciful in the administration of justice, approving executions only for the most heinous of crimes, and finally abolishing the death penalty. He was a patron of the arts, but also a man of enormous personal accomplishment, a gifted musician, an artful poet and calligrapher, an outstanding sportsman. He was a ruler of cosmopolitan tastes, having introduced the music, the costumes, and some of the customs of the peoples of the Silk Route to Chang’an.

  But the Son of Heaven was spending very little time on the business of his empire. He was, you see, enamored of his Number One Consort, a young woman of the Yang family, one Yang Yuhuan, now known as Yang Guifei. Number One Consort brought her family to the palace, most notably her sister and her cousin Yang Guozhong, who rose through the ranks of power with incredible speed. More and more, affairs of state were left to people like Yang Guozhong, and First Minister Li Lin-Fu, a most unpleasant man according to my confreres, as the Son of Heaven spent most of his time with Yang Guifei, indulging her every whim and his. While the Son of Heaven and his Yang Guifei wiled away the hours at the imperial hot springs outside the city, other men were quietly flexing power. And it was into this void that those of us within the palace who wished to do so moved.

  There was another man of much interest to Chang’an. That was the Sogdian, an accomplished soldier from the north, one An Lushan. Despite his bravery and tactical prowess in dealing with troublesome incursions on the northern boundaries, he was out of his element in Chang’an. He was uncouth, enormous in size, voracious of appetites of all sorts, and yet he was a favorite of the Son 0f Heaven. Perhaps the emperor enjoyed teasing this barbarian; I cannot tell. But the barbarian was named prince, was given a huge estate in Chang’an, and generally enjoyed access to the emperor that was the envy of many a minister and senior mandarin. An Lushan also seemed to enjoy the favor of the Yang family, except perhaps Yang Guozhong. That might well be because both An Lushan and Yang Guozhong were ambitious to a fault. It was perhaps inevitable they would clash, but who would have guessed the outcome of that political battle? I most certainly did not. A storm was gathering, but most of us were unaware of it.

  “Argyria, almost certainly,” Dr. Xie said the following morning after he’d managed to extricate us from the police in both Hua Shan and Xi’an. “Completely preventable.”

  “What’s argyria?” I said. “I’ve never heard of such a thing.”

  “It’s a condition resulting from excessive intake of silver,” Dr. Xie replied.

  “You mean Burton once worked in a silver mine or something?”

  “Minute silver particles in suspension in distilled water,” Dr. Xie said.

  “He drank it?” I said. “Are you kidding?”

  “I regret to say I am not,” Dr. Xie replied. “He ingested it in some form.”

  “You said preventable. He drank silver on purpose?” I said, aghast.

  “There are those who believe it to be an extremely effective antibacterial, antibiotic agent,” Dr. Xie said. “Silver was used for centuries in the treatment of disease.”

  “But an antibiotic that kills you, obviously,” I said.

  “Not in my experience, no. Under certain circumstances, it does color the skin, as you now know, especially the nails and sometimes the eyes.”

  “Is there a cure for this argyria?”

  “The color of the skin, you mean? Again, not in my experience. I would have to consult the literature, and I believe there are those who claim it is reversible, but I have not seen any indication it can be done.”

  “But it did kill Burton?” I insisted.

  “We’ll have to wait for the autopsy,” Dr. Xie said. “It could have, but I repeat I do not know of any cases where ingesting it has killed someone.”

  “Where do you get silver you drink?”

  “You can buy it on the Internet, or you can make your own. All you need is distilled water, silver, and a battery, really.”

  The things you learn! “Maybe it was a combination of things,” I said. “He was always dosing himself up with something or other: special teas, pills, tonics. Maybe they interacted in a fatal way. He was very big on traditional Chinese medicine, the Medical Classic of the Yellow Emperor, disharmonious or blocked qi, that kind of thing. He seemed to know a lot about it.”

  “Burton talked a good line about traditional Chinese medicine, but clearly he did not understand it,” Dr. Xie said, with an impatient gesture. “It
is possible that he took something in a lethal combination, or merely took a lethal dose. You recall I told you that poisons are used in treatment of illness all the time, but in minute and controlled quantities. Perhaps he just took too much of something. It is also possible that he had an underlying condition, and that condition got out of hand. You see the body would regard silver as an invasive agent.”

  “No kidding,” I said.

  “I’m simplifying here, you understand, but the body would attempt to rid itself of this foreign substance, and in doing so, neglect, as it were, the other condition, which might then run rampant, get the upper hand. That might kill someone.”