“You need to consider who Lee Yuan was,” he said. “Let me explain. Lee Yuan was a man each of us respected greatly in his later years. But he had a very difficult life. The great events of the time, the turbulence of recent history, surrounded him. In one sense, the events gave rise to his greatness as an individual. In another sense, they compromised his time on earth.”
“In what way?” she asked.
“Yuan was a boy during the Great Leap Forward,” Peter said. “He was five years old and his family was sent to camps in the countryside for reeducation, same as millions of others. Same as the parents of David Wong, whom you met the other night. Yuan’s parents were practicing Christians during the Cultural Revolution. Practicing religion was considered social turmoil. But they were devout people who continued to practice. They had come of age in the era of Sun Yat Sen and Chiang Kai Shek. They were products of their time, some say heroic, some say foolish.”
“What do you say?”
“I am too smart to say,” Peter said with a smile. “They were what they were, and the past is the past. It can be rewritten, but the truth cannot be erased. They were arrested for owning Bibles. And Yuan’s father was a Christian scholar. He was particularly fascinated by the works of St. Francis of Assisi. He owned books on Saint Francis too.”
“Ah,” she said.
Peter paused, then continued.
“After their books were burned, Lee Yuan’s parents were held in a Beijing detention center for nearly a year as the Red Guard considered what to charge them with. And still they prayed. They were sent to a camp in the freezing northeast of China for reeducation instead. This was maybe in the Western year of 1967 or 1968. Yuan was sent to an orphanage and never saw his parents again. He later learned that his parents had been beheaded by the Red Guard, executed in a public square as an example to others.”
Alex could tell that Peter was choosing his words with great care. She listened to them in the same way.
“It was said that the parents of Yuan were saying prayers to Jesus when the executioners’ swords descended upon their necks,” he said flatly. “And I have no reason to doubt that story. Lee Yuan, however, made the best of his new life,” Peter continued after a moment. “He studied in the orphanage. He became an outstanding officer in the army, then moved to state security and intelligence. As an adult, he didn’t practice religion but he always had an interest in it. And why not? Religion had led him to be who he was, by his parents’ practice of it. So in that way, it may have been part of him too. Who is to say?”
“Did you ever discuss any of this with him?” she asked. “Christianity? His parents?”
“No. I knew the history. There was nothing further I wanted to hear. Equally, I’ve learned in life that there are doors you must not open, windows you should not look through. Questions you do not ask. So I knew not to ask more. When the pietà disappeared from the museum, Lee Yuan took a special interest. He was fascinated by the fact that it may have been touched by a saint, buried with a saint, and the inspiration for Michelangelo’s great Christian work. And it touched upon his parents’ dear St. Francis, as well. You can imagine. Spiritually, it must have made him feel so close to the people he had lost so early in his life. Spiritually, if his parents had connected with this one saint, and then he connected to…well, you see. Superstition? Faith? I do not know. None of us do. But I know he went to Switzerland to acquire this piece on the black market. For himself.”
“And he was double-crossed?”
“Yes. The transaction was to take place in a remote monastery. Yuan liked the idea of that, as he was fascinated with the places where Christianity was kept alive through the Dark Ages. He saw parallels with recent Chinese history. So against his better judgment, he agreed to visit the place and complete the transaction there. He was never seen alive again.”
“But you and your associates have come to complete his mission,” she said.
Peter’s eyes said yes. So did a slight nod of his head.
“Official policy of your government?” she asked. “Or something more personal?”
“Both,” he said, “but neither entirely.”
“What?”
“Well, you see,” Peter said with a smile, “nothing is ever all one thing or all another. Think of it as sunlight shining over a mountain but the mountain is in a valley, and in the valley, Yin and Yang exist, the two opposite parts of the truth, which by themselves are both true and false. Yin is the dark area where the mountain stands and blocks sunlight. Yang is the place of direct sunshine. The sun traverses the sky and Yin and Yang trade places with each other. What was dark becomes light and what was obscured is revealed.”
“Are you answering my question of just obfuscating it?”
“I’m answering it,” he said. “If a Chinese agent is harmed anywhere in the word, a team of us will come after him to finish his work and to serve notice on those who would harm any of us. In the case of the noble Lee Yuan, he was much loved by many of us. So a professional mission became increasingly personal. The dark became light. Is it more of one than another? I don’t know. It changes. The central truth remains-but with gradations.”
She blinked. “Okay,” she finally said. “Got it.”
“If you do, you’re better than most Westerners. Westerners see things in finite terms. Asians, not so much.”
“Where is it now?”
“The balance of the opposing forces?”
“No,” she said. “Where is The Pietà of Malta? And I’d like a Western-style answer on that. Don’t tell me that its Yin is in Switzerland but its Yang is safely stashed in an outhouse in upper Mongolia. I can’t work that way.”
He shook his head. “I answered that before. Maybe it’s in Switzerland. Maybe it’s back in Spain. Maybe shipped to China. My mission is not the black bird and never was. My personal mission is the people who harmed Lee Yuan.”
“But it would appear,” she said coyly, “that this fellow ‘Sun’ took care of that?”
“Not completely,” he said coldly.
She thought it through, all of it.
“All right,” she said. “Your story works. We’re still partners.”
“That’s good,” he said. “Because we have company.”
“Where?” she asked sharply.
Peter made a gesture with his eyes. Alex had been so engrossed in Peter’s backstory that she had missed something. She turned fast and saw Yuri Federov, two bodyguards close behind him, standing near the doorway to the bar. He had just spotted her.
“Trouble?” Peter asked softly. His hand was starting to drift under his jacket.
“No. It’s okay,” she said. She moved her hand quickly and stopped his before it reached his gun. “It’s Federov.”
She released. Peter’s hand stayed where it was, on his lap, just in case.
Federov approached the table, looked at her, and then looked at Peter.
“Found a new boyfriend already?” he asked in English.
“Don’t be crude, Yuri, even though that may be difficult for you.”
He snorted. “We can talk?” Federov asked.
His bodyguards were enormous men in black leather jackets. They loomed behind him like a couple of trained grizzly bears, almost as big, almost as wide, and almost as smart. Alex guessed they were the men who had abducted her.
“This is Mr. Chang,” she said smoothly. “He’s a friend and is assisting me on this case.”