“I agree,” I said. “It looks like we’re both wearing our translocation gear. I took the bi out of my safe just before you got here.”
“Where do you think we’ll pop up?” Rachel asked.
“I’m betting on China.”
“Even though Ernie’s ghost had white hair?”
“I can’t explain the white hair, but my gut says ‘China,’” I replied.
“You’ll be taking your Snoozer, I hope.”
“Most certainly. I notice you didn’t bring your bo this time.”
“No, I’ve never had to use it when I brought it along before. Besides, I’m guessing that we’ll pop up inside a room. The bo works best when I have a little room to maneuver. I have my Mojo to protect us from bullets, and I have you to protect us from magicians.”
“I’ll do my best.” I wasn’t used to this level of responsibility, but it did make me feel more manly. I was in charge of protecting Rachel, when usually it was the other way around. “What else should I bring?” I asked.
“Just your usual bag of tricks, including a homing beacon to get us back to the Goose.”
“I have everything packed,” I replied.
We finished our late lunch, and I put Rachel’s uneaten half sandwich in a Zip-loc in my fridge. After a short bathroom break, we prepared to translocate.
“Let’s get on with it then,” Rachel said. There’s no advantage to waiting any longer.”
“OK, I’ve got a SmartCar circle set up in the living room with the bi as a homing beacon. Let’s go.”
We stepped into the circle, and I drew the Snoozer from its sheath, ready to defend us from our adversaries. I cast the Spell of Translocation; the air around us shimmered; there was a flash of light; and we found ourselves in total darkness.
“Count it down,” Rachel whispered.
I started counting off the thirty second delay before we would automatically be translocated back to my apartment. “One America, two America, three America…”
“I can’t see a thing,” Rachel whispered.”
“…Six America, nor I, Seven America…”
“Strike a match.”
I tucked the Snoozer under my arm and fumbled in my cargo pants pocket for the box of wooden matches. I managed to extract one and strike it. “…Thirteen America…”
The match’s dim light revealed that we were standing on a geometric oriental rug. There was a low table to my right.
“Break the spell,” Rachel whispered.
I moved one of the symbol cards out of position and stopped counting. I retrieved a short candle from a pocket and lit it with another match. I handed the candle to Rachel and proceeded to gather up the symbol cards, pivot point and bi. As soon as I had stuffed the paraphernalia into my pockets, Rachel stepped forward to examine our surroundings. She found a lamp on a small side table, and after fumbling for a few seconds, she turned it on.
I was standing with my Snoozer at the ready when the room was illuminated by the lamp. The room was about twenty-five feet square. There were no windows on any of the walls, so I didn’t know if it was day or night outside. The low table was located near the edge of the oriental rug which was circular, about thirteen feet in diameter. The ceiling appeared to have cove lighting and no visible light fixtures. There was a single wooden door in the center of one wall and, on the opposite wall, there was a beautiful dark wood desk with two matching upholstered side chairs. A carved wooden screen separated part of the room to the right of the desk. There was a large mural of a mountainous landscape on the wall behind the desk. In front of the wall to the left of the desk, were a sofa and two armchairs.
We both walked over to the desk to examine it. There was a desk lamp, and Rachel turned it on. I observed an ornate silver card tray on the desk holding a small number of identical business cards, and Rachel took one of the cards. It was entirely in Chinese except for numbers and an email address, which was in English. She put the card in her pocket.
“If this is China,” I said, “then it’s six o’clock in the morning in Beijing. They might start work early here.”
“Let’s just take a quick look around,” Rachel said.
She moved behind the desk and started looking in drawers. The center drawer contained office supplies, the top right drawer was locked, but the drawers below it were not locked. They didn’t have anything unusual in them. While Rachel looked around the desk, I sheathed my Snoozer and walked behind the carved wooden screen to the right. There was a wet bar and a complete tea service. There were cabinets above the bar, and I opened the doors to see what was inside. There were liquor bottles, glasses, bowls and other china. There was even a small paperback book with Chinese writing on the cover. I flipped through the book and discovered pictures of mixed drinks with writing beside the pictures. This must be a recipe book, I thought. I remembered how Rachel had carved a chunk off of Moshi’s desk so that we could have a homing beacon for that location. Thinking that we should have a homing beacon for this location, I turned to one of the pages toward the back and tore off half of a page. I put the torn page in my pocket and returned the book to the cabinet.
“Let’s get out of here,” Rachel said.
“OK,” I said, “but the SmartCar circle will be left behind. They’ll know someone was here. We can’t risk using a Fire Starter Spell to burn it.”
“No problem,” Rachel replied, “look at the rug.”
The rug had two concentric circles woven into it with gold thread. The inner circle was over six feet in diameter.
“It’s a magic circle woven into the rug,” I observed. “Easy peasy.”
I set up the Spell of Translocation, without the snap-back option, using the homing beacon from my apartment, and shimmer, flash, shimmer, we were back home, safe and sound.
Chapter 19
The first thing I did after we got back to my apartment, was to put the bi back in my safe so that we couldn’t be followed. I also put the torn page into the small steel box along with the chunk of Moshi’s desk and the torn coupon whose mate was hidden in Moshi’s wand box. Then I joined Rachel in the kitchen to debrief.
“It’s almost teatime. How about some beer and chips?”
“Sure,” Rachel replied.
“What beer do you prefer?
“Your choice.”
I still had some Miller Genuine Draft left over from Ward’s visit, so I opened two cans and set them on the kitchen table along with some Maui Onion potato chips and cashews.
“We were in China, weren’t we.” Rachel said.
“I’m afraid I can’t tell the difference between Chinese and Japanese writing, but, judging from the furniture, I think we were in China. The writing definitely wasn’t Korean.”
“How do you know it wasn’t Korean?”
“Korean writing has lots of oval shapes and looks more technical and less artistic.”
“I grabbed one of the business card off the desk,” Rachel said. “Now we need to get it translated.”
“I know a Chinese programmer at SimBiotic Arts. I’ll bet he could translate it.”
“Give him a call.”
“Even better, I’ll send him a text with a photo of the business card.” I used my phone to take a photo and sent it in a text message to my Chinese friend, Charlie Chu. “I’m sure he’ll text me back latter this afternoon. By the way, I stole something from that office myself.”
“What did you steal, Professor?”
“I thought you might like to have a homing beacon for that office, in case we have to return the bi or if its broken piece is no longer in the office. There was a wet bar behind the screen, and I found a small book with mixed drink recipes, so I tore off half a page. I put it in my little steel box where I keep the piece of Moshi’s desk.”
“That was good thinking. Speaking of thinking, what conclusions can you make from our unauthorized visit to China?”
“Well, we didn’t find the piece of the bi, so it must be locked in one of the des
k drawers.”
“What else?”
“It was a nice office, but it didn’t have any windows, so I expect that it’s in a large building.”
“OK, what else?”
“Uh, I guess that’s it.”
“What about the oriental rug with a magic circle woven into it?”
“Oh, I guess the room is used for translocation.”
“Right, and it also means that the person who works in that office is a magician.”
“Brilliant deduction, Rachel. We’ve probably found one of our killers. Maybe it’s Mr. Tsong.”
“I guess we’ll know more when we hear back from your Chinese friend.”
“Did you discover anything while I was snooping behind the screen?”
“No, I couldn’t get into all the desk drawers, and I looked around for cameras or microphones, but I didn’t see any. I peeked behind the pictures on the wall and didn’t find anything. I thought about opening the door, but decided not to risk it.”
My phone beeped, and I checked the screen. “It’s a reply text from Charlie,” I said.
“That was quick.”
“He says that this is the business card of a man named Wei Liu who works as a consultant for China’s State Administration of Cultural Heritage. The card includes the office address in Beijing, telephone number and email address. Charlie says that government officials who deal with foreigners usually have bilingual business cards, so this man must deal only with other Chinese people. He says the man’s name is not unusual and translates as something like ‘mighty killer’ in English.”
“Now that’s ominous,” Rachel commented. “What conclusions do you draw from this info?”
“It confirms that we were in China. Unfortunately, it isn’t Mr. Tsong’s office.”
“There’s another important conclusion we should draw, Professor.”
“What’s that?”
“The Chinese government has a magician on its payroll.
Chapter 20
“Oh crap! The Chinese government has magicians.”
“Our government may have magicians, too,” Rachel speculated.
“I guess it stands to reason. If the government has extraterrestrials at Area 51, they probably have magicians, too.”
“You watch too much cable TV, Professor. Let’s get back to our case. We thought Mr. Tsong had the piece of the bi, but it looks like the homing beacon is in the possession of the Chinese government. You said the lack of windows in the office meant that it was in a big building. That could be a government building, couldn’t it?”
“Yes it could, and the fact that Wei Liu’s business card was only in Chinese means that the government doesn’t let this magician deal personally with foreigners.”
“So if Liu has the bi homing beacon, where does Tsong fit in?”
“It may mean that Tsong isn’t one of the killers after all,” I said. “If a Chinese government magician is tracking the jade artifacts, it may mean that Tsong is unaware of their magical properties.”
“Or it could be that Tsong is a magician with an agenda that’s different from the Chinese government’s agenda.”
“Remember, Connie Planck said that it was hard to legally import antiquities from China. Well I did some research on that. It turns out that in January, 2009, the US and China signed an agreement that bans importing antiquities dating from the Paleolithic period, starting in 75,000 B.C., through the end of the Tang dynasty in 907 A.D. It also bans importing into the US all monumental sculpture and wall art at least 250 years old. Connie thought that the jade artifacts were at least 4,500 years old. That would make them illegal to import.”
“So Mr. Tsong and Seymour Martingale were conspiring to illegally import ancient artifacts from China to the United States,” Rachel proposed. “That business card said that Liu works for the State Administration of Cultural Heritage. That could be the governmental agency that tries to prevent illegal export of Chinese artifacts. Maybe Liu isn’t one of the bad guys.”
“Don’t forget, Rachel, that whoever was using the bi as a homing beacon killed Seymour Martingale. I don’t think Liu is entirely innocent.”
“Are you saying Seymour’s death was a hit by the government of China?”
“It’s starting to look like that,” I said.
“This is certainly going to make it more difficult to prove Mary’s innocence, which is our mission here. But wait a minute, the way Ernie described his ‘ghost,’ it doesn’t seem likely that the person who translocated into the Martingale warehouse is Chinese.”
“Maybe this consultant, Mr. Liu, has his own coterie of henchmen, some of whom may not be Chinese. Maybe Liu uses foreigners to translocate to other countries to hide the Chinese government’s involvement.”
“What’s the Chinese equivalent of the CIA?” Rachel asked.
“Let me google that,” I replied as I entered the search term into my phone. “It looks like China’s CIA is called the MSS, the Ministry of State Security. That’s a different department—not Cultural Heritage.”
“I wonder if the MSS has magicians, too,” Rachel mused.
“They probably do, but Liu works for the Cultural Heritage department.”
“We need to figure out where Mr. Tsong fits into the picture,” Rachel said. “If Mr. Tsong isn’t the murderer, I wonder if he knows that Seymour is dead. Let’s send him an email and find out.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“You have Seymour’s Yahoo email login and password. We can send an email to Mr. Tsong pretending to be Seymour. We can ask a question, and if Mr. Tsong doesn’t reply, it may mean that he knows that the real Seymour is dead.”
“I suppose that might work,” I replied. “Let me look through Seymour’s ‘Sent’ folder to see what he has been saying to Mr. Tsong.”
I found a total of five messages that Seymour had recently sent to Mr. Tsong. Evidently the initial contact had been made by Mr. Tsong who said he had obtained Seymour’s email address from an acquaintance. They had arranged a meeting in Singapore, and that is when Seymour obtained the three jade artifacts from Mr. Tsong. The emails didn’t specifically mention the three jade pieces, they just referred to “items.” I did get a feel for Seymour’s writing style, and I was confident that I could pretend to be him.
“OK, what should this email say?” I asked.
“Tell Mr. Tsong that Seymour has a potential buyer for the three artifacts. Tell him that Seymour doesn’t remember if Mr. Tsong got all three artifacts from the same place at the same time. Ask him if the bi is from the same source as the other two pieces.”
“I can do that,” I said. I carefully worded the email to sound like Seymour had written it, and I sent it off into the web. “Now we just have to wait for a reply.”
“It’s Thursday morning in China—a good time to check email. Maybe we won’t have to wait for long,” Rachel said.
I looked through Seymour’s “Trash” email folder to see if I could find any more messages from Mr. Tsong. There were a total of four. None of these emails identified the “items” that Seymour had obtained from Mr. Tsong. Mr. Tsong’s English wasn’t very good. Since Seymour spoke more than one Asian language, I wondered why they were communicating in English. Maybe that was the customary language for business. I thought I would be able to detect if the person who hopefully answered my email was really Mr. Tsong.
Rachel was right. We didn’t have to wait long before Seymour received an email in reply. The splintered English grammar certainly seemed to match Mr. Tsong’s style. He said he had obtained all three “items” from the same “agent” in Quinghai. He went on to say that he would not be able to return to China right away, because he was out of contact with this agent and government officials were interfering with his business. He urged Seymour to sell the artifacts as quickly as possible.
“It sounds like Mr. Tsong doesn’t know that Seymour is dead,” Rachel said. “It also sounds like he and his ‘agent’ are having some
trouble with the Chinese authorities.”
“Yes, and he wants his money as soon as possible. The Chinese Department of Cultural Heritage may have caught up with Mr. Tsong. It’s lucky for him that he no longer has the bi, or he may have met the same fate as Seymour.”
“I wonder if Seymour told his killer anything before he was murdered,” Rachel said. “Maybe Seymour ratted out his supplier and got killed anyway.”
“I’m starting to think that Mr. Tsong isn’t our killer and that the Chinese government is cracking down on illegal exporters with extreme prejudice.”
“I’m afraid our job just got harder,” Rachel said. “Instead of dealing with a shady business partner, we’re now dealing with a magician assassin sent by one of the most powerful governments in the world.”
“How do we manage to get ourselves into these situations?” I asked.
“It must be the magic thing,” Rachel replied.
“I’d better call Jack and tell him we sent an email to Mr. Tsong from Seymour’s account,” Rachel said. “Unless the police have given up on looking for any suspects besides Mary, they may be watching Seymour’s email to see who contacts him.” Rachel put her phone on speaker and speed-dialed Avery.
“Avery.”
“Hi Jack, it’s Rachel.”
“What’s up?”
“In the course of investigating Seymour’s murder, Mary gave us the login and password to Seymour’s email. We just sent an email to a suspect and got a reply.”
“You’re tampering with evidence, Rachel. We seized Seymour’s laptop, and all email is evidence. And as for suspects, the only suspect is Mary Martingale.”
“We aren’t tampering with evidence. We didn’t edit or delete any emails, and we’re informing you of messages sent and received after Seymour’s murder. Mary gave us permission to use Seymour’s account. Just because you don’t recognize any other suspects doesn’t mean that they don’t exist.”
Crimes of Magic: The Yard Sale Wand Page 14