Mandarin Yellow (Socrates Cheng mysteries)

by Steven M. Roth

  He waited for Jade’s explosive reaction, but she didn’t react at all, and that worried him.

  “The forged document removed all references to Madame Chiang. She no longer appeared anywhere in the Secret Protocol, not even by implication.

  “The forgery became the mirror image of your scissored copy of Madam Chiang’s wedding photograph. The forgery cut out Madam Chiang and retained her husband in the picture of corruption, placing all blame on the Generalissimo. Madam Chiang became the innocent spouse, missing now from the portrait of embezzlement and collusion participated in by everyone else still reflected in your forged Secret Protocol.”

  Socrates suddenly became aware that Jade had moved in closer to him. He tensed. Sweat pooled in his underarms and his shirt stuck to his back.

  “If you’re suggesting what I think you are,” Jade said, “that’s crazy, Socrates. Even for you.”

  “No, Jade. That’s not what’s crazy.” He paused to decide if he really wanted to say what was now on his mind and would likely provoke Jade’s anger. He decided he’d play it out, let matters take their own course. There wasn’t any turning back at this point. He glanced over at Eldest Brother who hadn’t moved from his position behind Jade.

  “What’s crazy, Jade, is a college-aged woman — and the same woman more than a decade and a half later — still engaging in obsessive celebrity worship.”

  He pulled his handkerchief from his trouser pocket and wiped his neck. He stepped to his right, creating more distance between himself and Jade.

  “What’s crazy is you, now in your late thirties, still displaying autographed photos of Madam Chiang in your home and keeping laminated copies of her speeches and her mutilated wedding photograph on display.” He pointed at the framed wedding photo sitting on the boxwood corner table across the room.

  He wiped his forehead again and gingerly stepped to his right.

  Socrates spoke softly now. “What’s crazy is you still wearing your hair exactly as Madam Chiang wore hers more than sixty years ago when she addressed Congress.”

  He hesitated, then said, “That’s what’s crazy, Jade. That and all the other things you did, that you still do, to emulate and honor Madam Chiang.”

  Jade smiled, shook her head, and made her disparaging tsk, tsk, tsk sound.

  “This is becoming more and more interesting, Socrates,” she said, “although it’s all bullshit.” She stepped closer to him. “So, tell me, under your scenario, why would I have killed the director?”

  Socrates examined Jade’s eyes briefly, looking for some tell, but, seeing none, said, “The director worked with the Embassy’s cultural attaché to prepare the exhibit. Together they created the catalog from photographs of the objects to be displayed, including the historical documents.” He hesitated briefly, then said, “Including the original Secret Protocol.”

  He paused to let the implication of this sink in.

  “You had to assume, because of this, that the director might have become familiar with the original Secret Protocol, either from seeing the actual document or, more likely, from working with a photograph of it for the catalog.

  “That meant she posed a potential danger to you and your scheme because she might have recognized the forgery for what it was, a spurious document substituted after the burglary for the original one illustrated in the catalog.”

  Socrates wiped his neck again. “You couldn’t take that chance, Jade, so the director had to go.”

  He paused briefly, sucked in some air, then added, “I assume, too, that’s why the cultural attaché was murdered on her way home from a restaurant in Chinatown. She also had worked on the catalog and worked with your father to select the objects to be exhibited. This means she also might have spotted the forgery. She, too, had to be eliminated.”

  “Anything else you want to say, Monsieur Poirot?” Jade asked. “It seems your little gray cells have been working overtime, even running amuck.”

  Socrates wasn’t used to Jade’s sarcastic side. He’d rarely known that aspect of her personality. But, he realized, he apparently hadn’t known her at all. She certainly wasn’t the person she had seemed to be, the woman he’d loved.

  Socrates dumped these demoralizing thoughts and continued. “That’s also why the gallery planned to return the exhibit catalogs to the printer and wouldn’t sell me one. The pretext was that the color was wrong, but it wasn’t wrong, was it?” He eased a few more inches to his right. Jade moved in lockstep with him.

  “The reason for returning the catalogs,” Socrates said, “was that you couldn’t risk displaying the substituted, forged Secret Protocol in the exhibit at the same time people would be walking around the gallery holding catalogs that illustrated the original Secret Protocol. Someone eventually would have noticed the difference. It was easier to have the original catalogs replaced with new ones that would contain a photograph made from your forged, substituted document.”

  Jade shook her head. “See what I mean about your undervalued fiction writing talents, Socrates? You imagine a good tale.”

  “There’s more,” Socrates said, “if you’ll be quiet.” He waited until she nodded her agreement. He could see steam hissing from her ears.

  “Once I understood this, I wondered why you encouraged me to help your father. Then it came to me.

  “You wanted me to return everything to Bing-fa, including your forged Secret Protocol, because you assumed that by the time I found the stolen objects, that you or the Twins — or maybe the Triad — would have substituted your fake document for the original Secret Protocol among the stolen, but later recovered, objects.

  “No one would have had any reason to know that the recovered Secret Protocol, the one your father would have innocently returned to the gallery along with the other recovered stolen works, wasn’t the same document as the one stolen.”

  Jade shook her head very slowly as if she was dealing with very unintelligent or stubborn child.

  “There’s a flaw in your otherwise twisted reasoning,” Jade said. “You didn’t recover anything. The burglars started selling the objects back to my father until the police impounded them.”

  “True,” Socrates said, “but that wasn’t important in your overall scheme of things because the substitution had already been made.” He again edged a few inches along the window sill, moving away from Jade.

  “It didn’t make any difference to you whether the Triad returned the Secret Protocol to your father by selling it to him or if I returned it to him by recovering it from the thieves. In either case, the substituted Secret Protocol would then be the one to appear in the exhibit.”

  Jade moved in closer to him.

  “I must admit, this nonsense is really interesting, Socrates. But if you’re right, then what about the Mandarin Yellow? You seem to have forgotten all about it. I thought the pen was supposed to be the object of the burglary and the focus of your investigation. You and my father certainly acted that way.”

  “Stealing the Mandarin Yellow,” Socrates said, “was a calculated misdirection intended to make people focus on it, rather than focus on the provocative Secret Protocol, because of the Mandarin Yellow’s pre-exhibit publicity. The purpose of the misdirection was to conceal the real reason for the burglary — the theft of the Secret Protocol.”

  “That’s not so,” Jade said. “Your assumptions are wrong. It was my father, not me, who wanted you to find the Mandarin Yellow. So how could that be a misdirection by me, even under your analysis?”

  “Good point, Jade. I know it was Bing-fa, not you, who brought me into this matter to specifically find the pen,” Socrates said. He frowned. “I also know this doesn’t quite fit with my analysis, and that bothers me. It’s something I’ll have to work out later,” he said. “But it doesn’t invalidate anything else I’ve said.”

  “Nonetheless,” Socrates said, “in spite of that gap in the story, I believe this: In addition to the original Secret Protocol, which was the real target and the real purpo
se of the burglary, the Mandarin Yellow was the only other object that absolutely had to be taken by the burglars. In that way the pen could become the focal point of the post-burglary publicity and recovery effort, keeping everyone’s eyes off the stolen original Secret Protocol.

  “In fact,” Socrates said, “it didn’t matter what else the burglars removed from the gallery as long as they took the Mandarin Yellow and the Secret Protocol. Everything else taken was mere camouflage randomly selected by the burglars, nothing more than protective coloring. That’s why I wasn’t able to see any pattern or theme among the stolen objects,” Socrates said. “There wasn’t any.”

  Jade shook her head and made her tsk, tsk, tsk sound again.

  “Oh, Socrates, my love, why couldn’t you have left well enough alone?”

  She reached behind her back with her right hand.

  Socrates’ stomach tightened. He gripped the window sill behind him. His knuckles turned white.

  “Damn you, Socrates,” Jade said, her voice hardening and becoming louder. “You ruined everything.”

  She pulled an eight inch, double-edge Kobudo knife from behind her back, from beneath her blouse, and took a step toward him.

  Socrates froze, his eyes fixed on Jade’s weapon.

  WITH HIS EYES still locked on Jade’s weapon, Socrates’ long-ignored T’ai Chi Chuan training instincts — rusty and dormant, but present nevertheless as latent muscle memory and technique knowledge — kicked in and gained fleeting control over his fear. He stepped away from Jade, sliding along the window sill, his body’s movement markedly relaxed and fluid now.

  Jade followed him, step-by-step, as if they were running along parallel train tracks.

  Jade held the blade waist high in front of her in traditional Kobudo style and moved the weapon from side to side in a slow, rhythmic harvester’s arc, taunting Socrates, preparing to launch the classic Kobudo underhand blade thrust.

  Socrates’ lack of martial arts’ practice ultimately prevailed, and fear wrested its control of him. His stomach knotted. He had only seconds to disarm Jade or become her next victim.

  Socrates edged along the bank of windows. The wood window sill behind him, touching his waist, acted as his blind guide. He never took his eyes from Jade’s eyes. He watched her, looking for some nuanced signal that she was about to attack. He needed to put distance between himself and Jade while he figured out what to do.

  Jade rhythmically arced the blade in front of her, having no doubt about the fated outcome. She steadily moved closer to Socrates.

  Socrates’ choices for survival were almost non-existent. He was no match for Jade’s up-to-date Kobudo training. His opportunity to save himself, tenuous as it was, was slipping away with each passing second. He had to neutralize Jade’s weapon hand before she initiated her attack or he wouldn’t stand a chance against her double-edged blade.

  “I love you, Socrates. Why couldn’t you just mind your own business and left well enough alone? We would have been so happy together.”

  Socrates said nothing. He had no desire to fuel Jade’s anger with anything he might say. The hair on the back of his neck stiffened when he saw Jade’s pupils dilate.

  Jade stepped in half a step closer, sweeping her blade back and forth in ever shorter, ever faster lateral arcs.

  Socrates maintained eye contact with Jade and slowly side-stepped to his right until his thigh bumped the couch. He was cornered, caught in the intersection of the couch, two walls and the bank of windows.

  Jade shifted her legs, moving them from their side-by-side posture to a new position, so that one leg now was behind the other, forming a straight line that pointed directly at Socrates.

  She leaned forward and emptied the weight from her back leg, pouring its weight and chi into her front leg, leaving her back leg almost weightless and her both legs in the full-empty posture.

  “You know I love you, Socrates. Tell me you know that. I need to hear it.”

  Socrates remained quiet, hoping with his silence to buy precious seconds. He continued to watch Jade closely, looking for some subtle warning she was about to attack.

  JADE WAS WELL trained in her Kobudo discipline. She yielded nothing to Socrates he could use to anticipate her attack. Nothing in Jade’s body language or in her face, eyes, posture, or initial fluidity helped him. All remained inscrutable to Socrates.

  But then he saw the tell.

  Jade, almost imperceptibly, had arched her eyebrows.

  Seconds later, she raised the blade above her head and poured her weight from her front leg into her back leg as she prepared to leap into a flying, overhead attack.

  Socrates instinctively squeezed back deeper into the corner, trying to make himself smaller. Neither his former martial arts training nor his common sense offered him any reason to believe this movement might help him, but his primitive survival instinct prevailed.

  Socrates raised his arm chest high, hoping to achieve what all his reading knowledge and limited practice of Kobudo told him he would not achieve, hoping to block Jade’s blade thrust with his forearm, counting on the brief distraction this might provide to give him valued seconds to use his other hand to grab Jade’s wrist, all while trying to avoid having his defending hand and arm badly slashed.

  He knew his defensive parry was a long shot, a Hail Mary move, a pallid measure likely to fail. He also knew he had no other choice. He was operating on instinct and raw fear.

  Jade held the blade in two hands and stretched her arms above her head as high as they would reach. She angled the blade downward toward Socrates’ forehead. She slowly, as if replicating a ballerina’s movement, raised herself up onto the ball of her left foot and lifted her right knee until her right thigh was parallel to the floor. She stood perfectly still, correctly balanced, a Kobudo flamingo poised in a bayou.

  Jade inhaled slowly and fully. She closed her eyes briefly and quieted her breath.

  Socrates recognized this step. It was the one he’d been dreading. The end was near. Jade was internally preparing herself to attack. She was pre-visualizing her thrust and Socrates’ attempt to parry it, and was seeing her ultimate triumph over Socrates as she plunged the blade into his forehead. Pre-visualization was an important part of success in Kobudo.

  Socrates’ eyes darted from left to right and back again looking for some way out. There was none. He shrank back deeper into the corner, futilely trying to compress himself, to offer up the smallest possible target. He held up his arm as if shading his eyes from the sun.

  Jade stretched higher on her pedestal leg, her muscles now taut.

  She inhaled slowly and deeply.

  Her eyes narrowed.

  Socrates saw no way out.

  Then the unexpected happened.

  The swift leg-kick abruptly swept in from behind Jade, took control of her pedestal ankle, and whisked her pedestal leg out from under her, eliminating the immediate threat to Socrates. The attack caught both Jade and Socrates by surprise.

  Jade crashed to the floor, smacking the carpet with a solid thud. She instantly rolled to her left and shifted her weight with practiced ease, promptly gaining purchase. She pushed off the carpet with both legs and leaped up, fully righting herself, all in one fluid motion.

  Jade ignored Socrates now and confronted her assailant.

  Jade looked directly at Eldest Brother’s flushed face. She sucked in short fast gulps of air. Her face and neck burned scarlet with rage. Her eyes had become fuming slits.

  “How dare you, you . . . .” Jade shrieked.

  “Be quiet, Bing-jade,” Eldest Brother interrupted, speaking Mandarin, speaking softly but firmly. “You have forfeited your right to address me. Your actions have shamed our family and ancestors beyond all time.”

  Eldest Brother reprimanded Jade so softly, Socrates could barely hear him.

  “Put down your blade, Little Sister. Do it now.” Eldest Brother held out his open palm to receive the weapon from Jade.

  Eldest Brother’
s subdued, modulated tone, juxtaposed with his swift, powerful leg sweep and his predatory, narrowed eyes and words, chilled Socrates.

  Socrates moved away from the corner, careful not to attract attention, and slipped in behind Eldest Brother. He looked over Bing-wu’s shoulder, watching Jade, and waited. He had never before seen her eyes like this, a potpourri of surprise, sorrow, and rage.

  Eldest Brother stepped toward Jade and again extended his hand. “Give me your weapon, Little Sister.”

  Jade’s body noticeably relaxed. She nodded once and moved closer to Eldest Brother. She bowed her head in acknowledgement of his more eminent familial status, and dangled both arms by her sides, signaling her submission to traditional Confucian authority.

  Eldest Brother nodded once at Jade and extended his open palm out farther, beckoning the weapon with his fingers.

  Without warning, Jade cast aside her submissive posture in one explosive movement. She raised her head and straightened up, then swept her knife along a lethal plane, cutting to the left and back again, slicing Eldest Brother’s chest with each pass.

  Eldest Brother staggered backward, clutched his bleeding chest with both hands, then plummeted to the floor. He laid on his back with his eyes and mouth wide open, gasping for air. A crimson blot slowly overspread his chest, staining his beige silk gown.

  Jade moved in and loomed over him. The corners of her mouth turned down. She breathed slow, rhythmic breaths, trained Kobudo breaths meant to anticipate the delivery of the fatal blow.

  Jade stood over Eldest Brother, straddling him with one foot on each side just below his armpits. She held her weapon with two hands and slowly raised the blade above her head, an imagined Aztec princess about to perform a ritual human sacrifice.

  “Forgive me, Eldest Brother.” she said softly.

  She inhaled deeply, closed her eyes and tensed her arms, but never completed her rite. She never had the chance to. Instead, she collapsed to the floor, falling swiftly, coming to rest among the ceramic dust and small shards that erupted from the table lamp Socrates had just smashed against her head.