“I guess we have to go to Liu’s office in China then.”
“That’s even more iffy,” Rachel said. “We can’t be sure Chan will be in Liu’s office, and Liu may have set up some kind of trap for us. After all, we’re planning to trap them.”
“I didn’t think of that possibility,” I admitted.
“We can be pretty sure that Liu’s a much better magician than we are, and he’s probably also a spy and maybe even an assassin,” Rachel said. “As usual, we’re out of our league here.”
“I guess we need the home field advantage then.”
“Unless something else turns up, that’s our best game plan.”
After we finished lunch, I had a thought and said to Rachel, “You know, we never had much time to examine those two magical jade objects that Seymour smuggled into the country. If we’re going to have to return them, we ought to learn what we can from them while we have them.”
“Do you think it’s safe to take them out of your safe?”
“I think so. If either one of them could be used as a homing beacon, Liu wouldn’t have had to plant the broken bi into the shipment.”
“It’s not clear that Liu specifically planted the bi with the other two objects. He could have allowed the bi to be stolen, and then it got bundled with the other two objects by Mr. Tsong or someone else in the smuggling operation,” Rachel replied.
“You have a point there, but I’d still like to play with them. We’d need someone who can’t speak English to try out the DeBabelizer, so that isn’t practical, but we could try out the Remote Viewer.”
“OK, but we should be very careful. Make sure you have your Snoozer close at hand.”
“Will do,” I said as I went to my office, took the Remote Viewer out of the safe, and brought it to the kitchen table.
“Gabriel said that all we have to do is look through the cong and hold one of the seven segments between thumb and forefinger,” I said as we sat at my kitchen table.
“Go for it, Professor.”
I held the cong up to my eye and held the closest segment between my thumb and forefinger. All I could see was the kitchen wall just as if I was looking through a hole in an eight-inch tube.
“Just like looking through a tube one and a half inches in diameter,” I reported. I tried the second segment with the same result. When I came to the fourth segment, the middle segment, the hole in the cong became opaque, and my Spell Bell in the living room started chiming.
I moved my fingers down the cong and the Spell Bell stopped chiming.
“I think you activated some magic,” Rachel said.
“I think you’re right, but the cong looked like the hole was completely plugged. There’s no light at all. Take a look.”
“Before I do that, I’m going to turn over the Spell Bell,” Rachel said, and she went to the living room and brought the Spell Bell into the kitchen. She laid the Bell on its side on the table and took the cong from me. Rachel carefully held the middle segment between her right thumb and forefinger and held the cong up to her eye. “You’re right. It’s dark” she said, and she turned the cong around and looked through the other end.
“Oh my God,” Rachel said as she pulled the cong away from her eye. She immediately put the cong back up to her eye and looked through it for several seconds. “You’re not going to believe this,” she said. “You were looking through the wrong end. Here, take a look,” she said as she handed the cong back to me.
I looked through the correct end of the cong, and saw what looked like a shelf with objects on it. It wasn’t like looking through a small hole in an eight-inch tube. It was more like I held a one-and-a-half-inch key ring right up next to my eye. I had almost a 180-degree view. It wasn’t like looking through a fish-eye lens; it was just a normal view.
“This is amazing,” I said. “What are we looking at? It looks like the cong is lying on a shelf along with a bunch of other objects.”
“Look farther out,” Rachel said. “It’s not like a photo, you can focus on things both near and far.”
“It looks like we’re in glass box in a big room with other glass boxes.”
“I think it’s a museum display,” Rachel said.
“I think you’re right. The paired cong must be in a museum. I can see other pieces of jade in this same box. There are even cards on the table, but the view is too low to read the writing on them.”
“Look at the wall as far to the right as you can see,” Rachel said. “There’s a sign.”
“You’re right. It looks like it’s written in Chinese.”
“Good work, Sherlock. The cong is in a Chinese museum.”
“I’m going to check out the other three segments,” I said as I moved my fingers to the next segment which was now closer to my eye since I had turned the cong around. It was just like looking through a tube at my kitchen. The next segment, the second segment from my eye, was dark, but not opaque. I moved up to the last segment, the one closest to my eye, and it was just looking through a tube.
“The second segment is the only other one that seems to work,” I said as I handed the cong to Rachel.
Rachel looked carefully through the cong. “It’s awfully dim in there, but I think the cong is working. It’s too bright in this kitchen. We need to find a darker room. You have dark shades on your bedroom window. Let’s go try it there.”
We went into my bedroom, and Rachel sat on the side of the bed. I closed the door and the window shades and carefully sat down beside her. Once again Rachel looked through the cong.
“My eyes are adjusting to the dim light. It seems that there is a little light coming from behind me. The cong is laying sideways on a flat surface.”
Lying sideways, I thought to myself, but I didn’t correct her out loud. I’m learning restraint.
“Here, see what you can make out,” Rachel said.
I looked through the cong, and, although my eyes had adjusted to the dim bedroom, I really couldn’t make out anything in the cong’s field of view. I gave the cong back to Rachel. “Sorry, I can’t see anything.”
Rachel looked through the cong again. “OK, to my left I see the side of something like a wall. It stops a few inches in front of me, and the area past it on the left is open. Several inches ahead of me is another wall that goes along the floor from left to right as far as I can see. The wall goes up to the ceiling which seems very low. I think I’m in a box. There’s something to the right—It’s a pencil. I’m in a drawer.”
“So this cong isn’t in a museum,” I suggested.
“It’s not on display. It just seems to be stored in a drawer. I must be getting a little light from the back of the drawer. Most of the drawer seems to be taken up by this thing to my left.”
“You said it looked like a wall?”
“Yeah, it’s shorter than the drawer and doesn’t go all the way to the front. The corner seems to be rounded and there seems to be some sort of crown molding near the top. Well, it’s not really crown molding, it’s, what do you call it, a ridge or a bead or a flange, that’s it, a flange.”
“Could you be looking at something like a cookie tin like those Scottish shortbread cookies come it?”
“That’s it,” Rachel replied. “It’s like a close-up view of a tin of Altoids.”
“I know what it is,” I said.
“What?” Rachel asked as she removed the cong from her eye.
“Let’s shine a little light on the subject,” I said as I opened the window shades. “Let’s go back to the kitchen.”
Seated at the kitchen table again, I explained, “I think the cong at the other end is in Wei Liu’s desk drawer along with the steel box in which he keeps his business cards. It wasn’t in the drawer three days ago when I found the drawer unlocked.”
“So one cong is in a museum and another is in Liu’s office. What about the other five paired congs?” Rachel asked.
“I guess they must not have survived the centuries since the congs were made.”<
br />
“So there’s only two of seven left in existence. This cong must be priceless.”
“No doubt,” I replied. “It’s no wonder that China wants this one back.”
“There are a few things that worry me about what I saw,” Rachel said. “First, remember when we first translocated into Liu’s office? It was about six in the morning local time, and the room was so dark, we had to light a candle. It’s even earlier in the morning there now, and there was enough light in the room so that some light leaked into the drawer. And second, why would Liu just lock the cong in his desk drawer? It’s priceless, after all.”
“Uh oh!” I exclaimed, and I immediately stood up and put the cong in the refrigerator.
“What are you doing?” Rachel said. “Are you afraid the cong will go bad and you have to refrigerate it?”
“I just had a scary thought. What if the cong is a two-way remote viewer? What if Wei Liu has been using his cong to try to find out where our cong is? That might explain both of your worries. Liu’s cong might be in his drawer because he’s using it frequently to try to see our location. The lights might be on in his office because he’s looking through his cong at a time when we might have our cong out in the open here in the United States.”
“Oh my God, you’re right! What might Liu have seen?”
“This is the first time we’ve tried to use the cong,” I replied. “I’ve had it in a steel box or in my safe since we got it from Connie at Martingale Antiquities. Who knows what Liu could have seen there.”
“Do you think someone has to be holding our cong for Liu’s cong to see what’s happening here?” Rachel asked.
“That’s a good question. We have to be holding our cong and selecting a specific segment so that our cong will know which remote cong we want to see through. But for each remote cong, there’s only one choice it could possibly see through, and that’s our cong. So, from a programming point of view, no specific segment of our cong would have to be activated. It’s possible that all the remote congs could see through our cong simultaneously without any interference from each other and without our cong having to be held. After all, we can see through the remote congs without anyone holding them.”
“Which end of our cong do you think the other cong would see through? Would it be the end we are looking through, or would it be the other end?”
“I’ll bet it’s the other end, the back end. That way the users at both ends could simultaneously see what’s in front of the other user.”
“You have to think of everything when you’re using magic, don’t you,” Rachel said.
“I’m afraid we can’t think of everything,” I answered. “We haven’t been trained in the use of magic. Without knowing all of the underlying principles, we can’t possibly guess all the possible ramifications of using a particular spell. Remember how long it took us to figure out the ‘snap back’ feature of the Spell of Translocation.”
“How long it took you to figure it out, you mean. I don’t think I would have ever figured it out.”
“You never know,” I replied. “I can’t leave the cong in the refrigerator. Sooner or later, I’ll have to open the door. I’d better put it back in the safe.” I got a paper bag and quickly put the cong in the bag as soon as I opened the refrigerator door. Then I put the cong, paper bag and all, back in the safe.
When I got back to the kitchen, Rachel had a worried look on her face. “Do you think that Liu could use his cong as a homing beacon to come here? You said that he might be able to look through our cong whenever he wanted to, because the congs are paired. Could that paring be used to translocate?”
“Oh boy, that’s yet another possible complication. I don’t know the answer to that, but I’m glad I put our cong back in the safe. An hour ago I didn’t think that it was possible to use the cong as a homing beacon, but now I’m not so sure. It’s more likely that Liu could use his cong to translocate here than we could use ours to translocate there. We would have to be holding our cong to select the paired cong we wanted to translocate to. That might be possible, but I don’t know.”
“We need to capture Chan as soon as possible and get this whole situation put behind us,” Rachel said.
“More easily said than done. Do we have a plan yet?”
“Yes we have a plan. The plan is to capture Chan.”
“That’s the goal. The plan describes how we attain the goal.”
“Well, in that case, no, we don’t have a plan—at least not yet, but I feel a plan forming.”
“Let me know when it forms,” I grumbled.
“Hey partner, how about a little teamwork here. Let’s put our heads together and collaborate to come up with a plan. Why do I always have to come up with the plan?”
“Sorry. I’m just accustomed to you coming up with the plan. I’m the sidekick—you’re the hero.”
“Professor, you’re more than a sidekick. I absolutely couldn’t solve these magic cases without you. You’re my magic mentor as well as my partner. You don’t give yourself enough credit. Now show a little initiative and help me come up with a plan.”
“Right. Sorry. Uh, I’ve participated in brain-storming sessions before, but I’m not very good at organizing them.”
“You’re making too big a deal out of this. Just relax. We’ll just go through this one step at a time. Do you think we should capture Chan in China or in Portland?”
“OK, one step at a time. Well, as we decided earlier, putting Chan to sleep with the Snoozer is the best way to capture him. We could do that as easily in China as here. The problem with doing it here is we have to attract Chan to translocate here. Liu might come by himself, or he might even bring a different henchman with him. I don’t know how to attract Chan specifically.
“The problem with doing it in China,” I continued, “is that we would have to know that Chan is in Liu’s office before we translocated there. We don’t have any way to know when or if Chan is there.”
“We might have a way,” Rachel said.
“We might? How’s that?”
“We have a Remote Viewer in Chan’s office,” Rachel said.
“But the Remote Viewer is in Liu’s drawer, we can’t see anything from there.”
“We’ll just have to move it then.”
“Move it so that we can spy on Liu’s office.”
“Right.”
“If we move it, Liu will know. He’s probably looking through it several times a day to try to find us.”
“OK, so instead of Liu knowing that we moved it, we’ll make him think that somebody stole it—like they stole his Snoozer,” Rachel said.
“So we’ll have to hide it in his office so that he doesn’t see it, but we can watch him through it.”
“Right.”
“Hmmm,” I mused. “I wonder where we could hide it. I wonder how big it is. I’ll bet it’s the same size as one of the segments of our cong. That would make it about two inches wide and about an inch thick. I guess we could hide that.”
“Now you’re cooking, Professor. Where would you hide it?”
“We need to hide it somewhere that has a view of most of Liu’s office, but is hard for someone in his office to find. I think the carved wooden screen that serves as a room divider would be perfect.”
“I remember that screen,” Rachel said. “It’s about six feet tall and at least twice that wide. It is intricately carved.”
“And some of those carvings go completely through the screen so that you can see through those holes to the other side.”
“It’s kind of a reddish wood though. Wouldn’t a jade cong stand out too much?”
“Maybe, but maybe we could hide it well enough so that it wouldn’t show.”
“Professor, we now have a plan. All we need is a schedule.”
“We have to do it before Liu moves his cong to a safer place.”
“Let’s do it tonight then.”
“Tonight is past in China. We’ll have to do it in China’s t
omorrow night.”
“That’s right. What time is it in Beijing right now?”
“It’s about four in the morning.”
“Let’s go now,” Rachel said.
“What? Now? Isn’t that a bit hasty, a little rash. We need time to plan.”
“No time to plan, Professor. Change into your traveling gear and grab your magic bag. I’m not wearing any iron, and I’m wearing my Mojo. I’m ready.”
“I don’t like rushing like this,” I said as I went to the bedroom to put on my translocation clothes. I got dressed in cargo pants, tee shirt and sneakers. I put my Snoozer in it’s shoulder holster and put on an unbuttoned short sleeve shirt to hide the Snoozer which hung under my left arm. Next, I went to my office and got the cong in its paper bag out of my safe, grabbed my magic bag and rejoined Rachel in the living room.
“I turned your Spell Bell on its side, and I set up one of your SmartCar magic circles here on the floor,” Rachel said.
I got a deck of symbol cards out of my magic bag and carefully placed all except one in their proper positions around the magic circle. Then, I placed the wooden pivot point in the center of the circle. “We’ll need a homing beacon for Liu’s office—that’s the half page I tore out of his cocktail recipe book, and we need a homing beacon to get back—that’s the half postcard that matches the half I have taped under the coffee table.” I put the half postcard in a pants pocket and placed the torn page on the pivot point.
“I got the cong out of my safe, because we’ll need it to get the remote pointed correctly.”
“I don’t want to take our cong to China without knowing what we’re getting into. Leave the cong behind, and we’ll use the spell’s snap-back feature to bring us back in thirty seconds after we’ve had a look around,” Rachel said.
“That’s a great idea,” I said as I put the cong into the steel box I keep in my magic bag. I noticed the glow sticks in the magic bag and decided to take three of them, just in case. I also put some string in my pocket. I looked through the bag to see what else I might need, and I saw the museum putty. “Museum putty,” I said. “We’re definitely going to need that.” I put some in a pants pocket.
Crimes of Magic: The Yard Sale Wand Page 20