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Several days had passed and the ship had already left Nha Trang, our first port of call in Vietnam, and we were on our way down to Ho Chi Min City. After leaving Tianjin and bidding farewell to China, the ship had cruised across to Seoul in South Korea and had then headed south towards Vietnam. I had refused to go ashore in Seoul. I had still been shaken by our experience with the tomb robbers who had kidnapped us in Dalian. I didn’t want any connection with Asians. Benny had insisted that South Korea was an entirely different country, populated by an entirely different race of people, people who could have no connection whatsoever with the farmers from Yuncheng. But I wasn’t having any of it and insisted on staying on the ship. Benny did as well. He wasn’t going anywhere by himself.
But we had gone ashore together in Nha Trang, which was two full days cruising after leaving South Korea, and by then I had calmed down considerably, even though I knew that Vietnam shared part of its border with China. We had done the tourist bit in Nha Trang, taking a bus tour out to the ancient Ponagar Cham Tower overlooking the Cai River, and then out into the countryside, passing paddy fields and water buffalo and various places of local interest. Once we’d had enough of Vietnamese culture we went back on board the ship together. As we strolled down the corridor towards our cabin we passed two Chinese men going the other way. I hadn’t seen them before, and by now anyone with the slightest hint of Asian blood looked like danger to me. Neither of them looked at us as we passed by. There wasn’t even the hint of a nod or greeting.
“Who were those guys?” I asked Benny.
“No idea,” was his brief reply. “I’ve seen them a few times, and their wives. Their cabins are just along the passage from us.”
“Is it usual for Chinese to travel on these cruise ships?” I asked.
“How the heck should I know?” Benny replied.
“Well, you asked your students all those bloody questions about getting stuff on and off. Did you ask them what kind of people normally travel on a cruise ship?”
“No, why?” he replied. “You don’t think they might be somehow connected to those guys we ran in to at Dalian do you?” He laughed. “Come off it, Charlie. Give it a rest!”
“Well, they might.”
“Charlie, how long ago did we buy tickets on this cruise?”
“I don’t know. A few months?”
“Right, and the ship was almost booked solid. There’s no way those two could have anything to do with the guys from Dalian, or with anyone back in Yuncheng. Forget it Charlie. Let’s get cleaned up, have a cup of coffee, go and listen to some music, and then go in for dinner.”
He was right, but I was still unhappy. It wasn’t Benny who had almost had his throat slashed with a knife. It wasn’t Benny who had pushed the body out the train window.
“Okay, you’re probably right. Did you check with the Maître d’?”
“Yes. It’s all fixed.”
It had taken days, but we had finally received a note from the Maître d’ saying that he had managed to arrange a table for two in one of the restaurants. I was getting tired of the hustle and bustle of the smorgasbord up on deck fourteen, and the constant hassle of searching for a quiet table for just the two of us.
Several hours later we were spruced up, long trousers and clean shirts, and seated at a table for two. The waiter introduced himself and his assistant, and we proceeded to have a proper meal with all the niceties of a fine restaurant. I was half way through the dish of strawberries and ice cream at the end of a great dinner when a message flashed over the loudspeaker.
“What was that, Ongard?” I asked the waiter. I had been too busy listening to Benny to take in what was being said.
“The Captain has called for the fire party to go to deck six,” he replied.
“Fire party?”
“Yes, sir. It will be a false alarm. Maybe one of the passengers dried her hair with the hair dryer and stood under the smoke alarm while she was doing it. I’m certain everything will be fine.”
Five minutes later another message broke into the convivial atmosphere of the restaurant. This one was loud and clear.
“This is the Captain. Message to all crew. I am now sounding the crew emergency signal.”
There was a pause of maybe three seconds and then a shrill whistle-blast broke the hum of conversation which had permeated the dining room. Without a further word of explanation, Ongard dropped the plate he was holding down onto the serving bench and headed for the door. He wasn’t the only one. The whole dining room staff was heading out at a fast rate of knots.
“What the hell’s going on, Charlie?” Benny asked, his face now gone a shade paler.
“I have no idea, Benny. Let me finish these strawberries and we’ll go and find out.”
I didn’t even have time to do that. The Captain came back on the loudspeaker a minute later and advised that there was a small fire in the electrical system on deck six, up towards the bow, and that the crew had been sent to their emergency stations as a precaution.
“See, Benny,” I said. “It’s a small problem. It’s being taken care of.”
But it wasn’t a small problem. Within minutes the Captain was back again, asking all passengers to return to their cabins and await further instructions and advice. We hurried back, up a couple of flights of stairs and along the passage.
“I don’t like the sound of it, Charlie,” Benny said. This time I didn’t disagree.
There were passengers all along the corridor with their doors held open, trying to find out from each other as to what was happening. But all anyone knew was what we had been told by the Captain over the ship’s loudspeaker system. I looked for the two Chinese men I had seen before, but their cabin doors were closed
“How long do you think we will have to stay here, Charlie?” Benny asked.
Before I could even reply, the next message came over the loudspeaker. The Captain gave the order for all persons to collect their life-jackets, warm clothing and any medication, and go to their life-boat stations as a precautionary measure. And then the general emergency signal sounded: six short blasts on the ship’s whistle and alarms, followed by one long blast. We’d only heard it once before, the day we had boarded, when we had gone to and been bored stiff by the routine life-boat drill. Most of the passengers had treated the drill as a bit of an over-kill, not really listening to what was being said. When that departure-day drill had finished we had all trooped from the various muster points back to our cabins, each person carrying one of the bulky life-jackets and many of them complaining about the complete waste of time. Maybe it hadn’t been a complete waste after all.
“Jesus, Benny!” I said, closing the door as the last long blast on the ship’s whistle faded into a reverberating silence. “What about all our stuff?”
“You heard him,” Benny replied. “He said life-jackets and warm clothing. Jesus, Charlie, I can’t swim!”
“You can’t swim?”
“No, I damn well can’t swim.”
“Why the hell not?”
“What does it damn well matter why not? I’m Chinese. We don’t swim.”
“We’re not going to sink, Benny. Even if we do, the ship’s got lifeboats and we can’t be more than twenty or thirty kilometres from the coast.” I wasn’t worried about the ship sinking. I was worried about the loot going down with it. “Forget about swimming, Benny. We’ll be in one of the lifeboats. But what about the stuff? Quick get the safe open and we’ll take a couple of things with us.”
“We can’t. You heard what the Captain said; life-jackets and warm clothing only. If they do a check and find the stuff on us, we’re done.”
Five minutes later we were in the Wheelhouse Bar, our designated life-boat muster station. We’d only had to go down one level, passing hundreds of passengers, many of them complaining that the elevators weren’t working, forcing them to walk up or down a couple of flights of stairs in order to get to their respective life-boat stations. None of them seemed to realise that if the power shut down whilst they were in the elevators they would be trapped.
The large room was soon packed. Our cruise-cards were checked and then the crew went looking for the five or six passengers who hadn’t showed up. Their names were read out over the loudspeakers.
“Did you hear that?” I asked.
“Hear what?” Benny replied.
“Two of those names were Chinese, or at least they sounded Chinese.”
“So?”
“They were both men.”
“So?”
“What if they’re the guys on our deck, the guys just along from us?”
“What the heck are you getting at, Charlie?”
“Those guys could have started the fire! They could be breaking into our cabin right now and stealing our stuff!”
“Keep your voice down,” he hissed.
I looked around but nobody seemed to be paying any particular attention to us.
“They could!” I hissed back at him.
“They’d get caught,” he replied quietly.
“How?”
“The cameras.”
“What cameras?” I asked impatiently.
“The security cameras.”
“There aren’t any in the corridors. I checked.”
“But we’d know, Charlie. We’d only have to go to Security and we’d have them cold.”
“No we couldn’t, Benny.”
“Why not?”
“What would we tell Security? We couldn’t tell them that those guys had pinched half a million dollars’ worth of looted artefacts we’d taken from a tomb in China, and we couldn’t tell them that they’d stolen a few dollars’ worth of supposedly worthless souvenirs either. I’m going back to the cabin. I’m not staying here.”
“They won’t let you, Charlie!”
“Oh yeah, just watch me.”
“Wait, listen!” He grabbed me by the arm.
“What?” I asked.
“They called out the list of those missing again.”
“So?”
“The Chinese guys aren’t on it.”
“So?”
“It means they’ve been located, Charlie. They must have gone to some other muster point.”
“Maybe they’ve already taken our gear,” I replied.
“Well, if they have, there’s nothing we can do about it right now. We’ll just have to sit it out.”
We sat and waited, and waited some more. We were there for maybe an hour and a half. Every fifteen minutes or so, the Captain would give us the latest on the condition of the fire. It wasn’t spreading. And then we were told that it was contained. And then that it had been put out and we could return to our cabins. I pushed through the crowd with Benny close on my heels. The smell of burning electrical connections permeated the bow section of the ship, our section. I was running by the time I reached our corridor, not caring about the ugly looks I got as I squeezed past some of the more portly of the passengers. I pushed the card into the slot under the door handle and shoved the door open, urging Benny to get inside and close the door.
I leant down. The suitcases were still there, still under the beds. But were they full, and hopefully still full of the loot we had so dearly collected and not something else?
“Open one,” Benny said urgently, and I knew that he believed me now, believed that these guys had been trying to rip us off. I pulled the first case out, undid the lock and threw the lid open.
It was all still there. Nothing had been touched.
“It was an accident,” Benny said.
“What was?”
“The fire, Charlie. It was an accident. I told you those guys have got nothing to do with us.”
“Maybe,” I replied. “Just maybe. But who’s to say that those mates of yours from Yuncheng haven’t gone to some middle man and he arranged for somebody to join the ship at Seoul, or maybe when we got to Nha Trang?”
“They aren’t my mates, Charlie!”
“Yeah, yeah, okay. But it could have happened.”
“It’s possible. Not likely, but possible.” He paused. “No, Charlie, it’s not really possible.”
“There’s a lot of money at stake here, Benny. Anything’s possible. They could’ve picked up a last-minute cancellation, or bribed someone to give them their cabin.”
“Hang on a minute, Charlie.”
“What?”
“Those farmers from Yuncheng don’t know what we’ve got. We told them that we hadn’t taken anything from their tomb, or any other tomb!”
“No, you told them. I couldn’t understand a word. Maybe you’re a bad liar.”
“Even if they didn’t believe me, they wouldn’t know what we took. They wouldn’t know what it’s worth, or even whether it’s worth their while to keep on chasing it.”
“They could guess. They know how old the tombs are in that area. They know what was in their tomb.”
“Charlie, there are tombs around Yuncheng that date back two thousand years and tombs dating back just a few hundred. They are not going to spend thousands of dollars on the possibility that we have something, and that it’s worth big money. They are farmers. They haven’t got any money!”
“The middle-men do, and the collectors they sell the stuff on to have even more!”
“Bloody hell, Charlie! Give it a rest!”
It wasn’t often that I got Benny to swear.
I sat at the end of one of the beds and tried to figure out the odds. If these people were somehow on the ship, when would they strike? When would they try to grab the stuff? What would I do if I were them? I’d wait until the end of the cruise. I’d wait until we were relaxed and no longer checking on the suitcases under the beds every couple of hours. I would wait until we wouldn’t be missed in the hustle and bustle of embarkation. I would wait until Benny and I got to Sydney and then strike. But then again, if I were them, maybe I wouldn’t wait that long. I would have seen how we brought only some of the items on board at each separate port in China. I’d make my first move when the ship got to Darwin and we unloaded the first portion of the loot.
And then a glimmer of an idea came. Why wait until Darwin?
“What are we going to do with this stuff?” I asked, tilting my head towards the three suitcases under the beds.
“Well, we sell it of course,” Benny replied, now a little calmer. “We put it up for auction like we always agreed. Why, do you want to keep a few more pieces?”
“No, that’s not what I mean. Where and how are we going to sell it?”
We had never got as far as working out exactly what we would do when we had recovered whatever we might find in the tomb and had got it back to Melbourne, apart from probably putting it up for auction somewhere. Benny had only seen the large terracotta horse, the one whose head he had smashed, and the figurines vaguely lined up along one of the walls when he had fallen into the tomb as a boy. We hadn’t known what we might find when we’d made our plans all those months ago. We hadn’t known whether there would still be anything in the tomb, or even whether it would be worth much if there was.
“We sell it back in Melbourne like we planned, I suppose,” Benny replied. “Although Sydney might be better. We’ll have to check it out when we get home.”
“What about Singapore?” I suggested.
“Singapore?”
“Yeah, Singapore.”
“Why Singapore?” he asked.
“It’s got a large Chinese population, and most of them have got plenty of money. And I’m certain that some of the sales I checked out on the internet with Christies’ and Sotheby’s took place in Singapore. I don’t recall any having taken place in Sydney and Melbourne, although there might have been. There were a lot more sales in London and New York, but I don’t think we’ve got any chance of getting this stuff across to Europe or to the United States.”
“So,” Benny replied. “Are you suggesting that we smuggle this lot off when we get to Australia, and then ship it to Singapore if it turns out that you’re right?”
“Not exactly,” I replied, smiling quietly to myself.
“And what’s the difference between exporting it to Singapore rather than to London or New York anyway?” he added.
“No difference. But that’s not the point. The point is that this ship doesn’t go to London or New York, but it does stop in Singapore. If we can get the stuff off in Singapore, we don’t have to worry about anyone getting on board and stealing some of it somewhere down the track.”
“So?” he asked sarcastically. “You still think someone’s going to go to all the trouble of flying to Ho Chi Min City, or to some other port along the way, that’s if they’re not already on board, and then try to steal this lot from us?”
“Just hold it a minute, Benny,” I replied, my waving hands trying to get him listen to what I was trying to say. “We arrive in Ho Chi Min City tomorrow morning. What we should do, is find an internet café somewhere, set up a phony email address, and then send emails to all of the auction houses in Singapore and see if they’re interested.”
“What do we tell them?”
“We tell them we’ve got a certain amount of stuff that was taken from a tomb in China many years ago. We don’t tell them when, or where, or how. We say that we’ve got it in Australia, and we want to auction it. We also tell them that, if they’re interested, we could fly to Singapore and discuss the matter further.”
“Why not tell them that we’ll be there on the ship in a few days’ time?”
“Because we don’t know what the laws in Singapore are in so far as looted antiquities are concerned. We don’t want them alerting any authorities that might want to confiscate the lot.”
“Right, that sounds logical.”
“Don’t be a smart-arse, Benny.”
“No, Charlie, honest, I agree with you. It could work.”
About an hour after we had docked in Ho Chi Min City we went ashore and then doubled back fifteen minutes later, telling the ship’s officer on the gangway that we had forgotten our wallets. We then sat quietly in the cabin for the next two hours, waiting for someone to break in. I was certain that if they were going to rip us off, they would do it within the first couple of hours so as to give themselves plenty of time to disembark and disappear into Vietnam. At the end of those two hours Benny was almost able to convince me that there was no-one on the ship interested in what we had. We left the Do Not Disturb sign on the door and went ashore in Ho Chi Min City again, changed a few dollars into the local currency, and went looking for an internet café. The first one we came to was full of locals and looked downright seedy. It took us another hour of searching before we finally found one which catered to the tourists.
We set up the dummy email address and sent emails to four of the auction houses in Singapore. We listed what we had taken, although we only told them that we had four of the soldiers and not eighteen. Benny was adamant that we should send pictures.
“How the hell do we do that?” I asked. “We’ve got to download them into a computer first, and I’m damned if we’re going to put them into this thing here!”
“No,” Benny replied. “We can download them from the camera straight into emails.”
“Do you know how to do that?” I asked.
“Yes, no problem.”
I got up from the chair and let Benny take over. We sent follow-up emails containing pictures of one of the soldiers, the yellow jade disk, the gold bracelets, and the gold jewellery. We asked them to get back to us as soon as they could. We also asked them to advise us as to what local regulations we would have to comply with before we brought the items into Singapore, provided that we decided to sell.
We were in the internet café for more than an hour. It was fiddling with the pictures which took most of the time. One of our problems was that either the floor or one of the walls of the tomb featured in most of them. Benny had to work some computer magic and cut the pictures down so that all they showed was the item itself. Isolating a picture of one of the soldiers was the most difficult. We selected one which showed the least area of the tomb in the background, but Benny still had to cut off one side of the figure. Part of one of the murals in the tomb would have been clearly obvious otherwise. The pictures were a bit messy, but they would have to do.
It wasn’t possible to send pictures of the other items. It was too obvious that they had been photographed in the tomb. We had to describe them as best we could, and neither of us was very good with words. My legal training hadn’t equipped me with the skills necessary to be able to rave on about the beauty and fineness of ancient porcelain and jade.
“Do you think they’ll get back to us before the ship arrives in Singapore?” Benny asked.
“I hope so. I’d at least like to talk face to face with one of them if a sale is a possibility.”
We wandered about Ho Chi Min City for the rest of the morning. I wasn’t too keen on having lunch in one of the many restaurants. I still didn’t trust Asian food, but Benny had no problems. I wanted to get back to the cabin and make certain that the suitcases were still under the beds.
“Don’t worry, Charlie. I’ll make certain they don’t poison you.”
I picked at the food, ignoring the supposed chicken and just nibbled on some of the noodles, but Benny dived straight in.
“You don’t know what you’re missing,” he said, smiling, and stuffing another load into his mouth with a pair of chopsticks.
I was anxious to get back to the ship and pushed my plate aside.
“How about we go back to the Rose?” I said. “I could do with a decent cup of coffee. We could relax in one of the lounges for a while.”
“It’s all quite safe, Charlie. Nobody’s going to touch the cases. Don’t worry about it. Take it easy. Relax. Enjoy the atmosphere.”
“Atmosphere! Just because this place is full of bloody Asians you think it’s got atmosphere? For all we know those two guys at the far table could be getting ready to grab us just as soon as we leave. The buggers have been looking at us the whole time we’ve been here.”
“Charlie, they are Vietnamese, not Chinese, and they are only looking at you because you keep staring at them. And the other thing you seem to have forgotten is that they were in here before we arrived, so there is no way they could have been following us!”
“Well, we’re just wasting time here. The place is getting me down. It’s hot and it’s sticky. I’d much rather be back in the air-conditioning on the ship.”
Even though it was what they call winter in Vietnam, the temperature was still a good ten or so degrees higher than what we had been experiencing in China.
I got up off the chair and started to make a move towards the door of the restaurant.
“Do you think maybe we should check the email again?” Benny asked as he pushed his chair back. “It will only take a few minutes.”
“Probably a good idea,” I reluctantly agreed. “Although if one of them has replied, I’ll be surprised. I reckon we won’t get an answer today, but I’d prefer not to use the ship’s internet service tomorrow if we can help it. Yeah, let’s go and see if we’ve got anything.”
We found our way back to the place we’d been to before, crossing streets buzzing with motor-cycles and fending off locals trying to sell souvenirs. Benny paid the money to the person in charge and booted the computer up.
“Well, what do you know!” he exclaimed.
“What?” I asked, expecting problems of a nasty kind.
“We’ve got two replies already!”
I leant over his shoulder. Two of the more well-known houses had replied within an hour of our having sent the emails.
“Open that one,” I said, pointing to the one I knew who’s London auction house had sold some of the ancient Chinese artefacts I had seen on the internet.
They didn’t ask where the items had come from and said that at the moment they were presuming that the items were part of an established collection. They said that the greenish-yellow jade disk was a most exciting piece and they knew of several buyers who would be interested, providing that it was genuine. The other pieces of which we had sent pictures were also believed to be quite important items, but the one they would like to know more about, one which we had described with mere words, was the ugly pottery old man. They were certain from our description that it was a most unusual piece. They went on to say that they would also like more details about the jade pig. Our descriptions had been a bit vague, they said. They wanted more pictures, pictures of all of them, and more than just one picture of each item. They needed pictures taken from all angles.
“Will I send them the extra pictures?” Benny asked.
“Let’s finish reading what they have to say first.”
They went on to tell us that there was no restriction on importing Chinese antiques from Australia into Singapore, nor from any other country for that matter. There was no import duty. They quoted their normal sales commission.
“My goodness, Charlie! That’s a bit steep.”
“Yeah, but they reckon it’s subject to negotiation,” I replied. “They’ll get their biggest cut from the buyer.”
“They haven’t asked whether the stuff had been looted,” Benny said.
“I don’t think they want to know,” I replied. “Anyway, what does the email from the other mob say?”
They said much the same and asked for the same pictures. They didn’t mention anything about dropping their commission.
“So,” Benny said. “If there’s no restriction on bringing the stuff into Singapore, we could still unload it in Australia and then export it to Singapore after we’ve decided exactly what we want to do with it.”
“Maybe,” I replied.
I wasn’t so sure that was a good idea. There was still the risk of someone taking it from us before we got home.
“Well, what do you think?” I asked Benny after a minute or so. “Do you think we should see these people when we berth in Singapore and maybe take the stuff off, or should we wait until we get home to Melbourne and then fly out to Singapore? There are still risks involved if we wait until the ship reaches Australia before taking the stuff off. On the other hand, if we get off now and see these people then we will be committing ourselves. They’ll know what we’ve got and who we are.”
He got up from the chair and strode to the door of the internet café and back again.
“I think we should probably see them now,” he said. “If we can get everything off the ship and into the hands of these people once we reach Singapore, it’ll be a lot less messy and nowhere near as risky. If we wait until we get to Melbourne, we’ve got to smuggle this lot off the ship as we originally planned. We risk getting caught and fined, and risk the whole lot being confiscated if they refer it to the Chinese Government.”
“Okay,” I replied, breathing a silent sigh of relief. “I’ll go along with that. We’ll tell them both that we’ll be there some time on Tuesday and we’d like to meet with them.”
“Do we send the extra pictures now?” Benny asked. “It’s going to take a lot of work to wipe out the background behind the pig and the ugly old man, and I don’t reckon I can get rid of all of it in any case.”
“No,” I replied. “Tell them we’ll bring the pictures with us. That way there’s nothing in an email to indicate where the goodies might have come from, what style of tomb they were in, and maybe even the part of China where the tomb is located.”
“Anyway,” Benny said, holding up the small camera. “We don’t need to show them these pictures. We can unload the suitcases and take some fresh ones.”
“Yeah, good idea,” I replied. “It’s a pity we didn’t think of it before. We’ve had plenty of time to do it over the past few days.”
Benny sent off a quick email announcing our imminent arrival, by air, and we hurried back to the ship, bolted the cabin door behind us, placed a chair against the door handle as an added measure, and unpacked all of the cases. It took a couple of hours. I posed each of the pieces using one of the clean white towels from the bathroom as a background. Benny took the pictures.
“What about our keepsakes?” Benny asked. I turned my head towards the safe in the cupboard beneath the television set where Benny’s double jade ball and my pendant with the blackened jade teardrop lay.
“No,” I replied. “They’re ours, and the less anyone knows about them, the better and safer they are. No pictures. Don’t put anything in the camera.”
Benny nodded and smiled. The precious items the general had clasped in his hands were ours. They were part of the treasure that nobody but the two of us would ever see or know about. They were our secret.
“In fact,” I added. “It might be wise if you copy all of the pictures onto one or two of those memory-sticks you can buy from the photography section on deck seven, and delete everything that’s in the camera. That way, if you lose the camera, or if someone steals it, there’s nothing to lead them back to us.”
Two days later we arrived in Singapore. I wanted to take one of the pieces of gold jewellery with me, but Benny was against the idea.
“Why not?” I said. “At least it’ll show them that we’ve actually got what we’re talking about.”
“But if you take it on shore, Charlie, you’ve only got to get it back on board again. My nerves suffered enough when we brought this stuff onto the ship in the first place. I don’t want to have to do it again!”
“Okay then,” I shot back at him. “But what about the jade beads? They look just like ordinary beads. Just let me take the beads, okay?”
“Oh hell, Charlie!” He ran his hands through his hair, frustration and nervousness boiling just beneath the surface. “Alright, okay, but just the beads, nothing else.”
The ship had arrived at eight in the morning and wasn’t due to leave until seven that evening, so we had the whole day. We were amongst the first off the ship and grabbed a taxi into the centre of Singapore.
“Which one do we go to see first?” I asked.
“The one that replied first, I guess,” was Benny’s reply. It seemed fair enough. At least they had offered to negotiate their commission.
“Okay, but first we’ve got to find an internet café and see what else has come in.” We didn’t want to use the internet on the ship. We didn’t want to link our dummy email address with the ship’s internet service.
There were further replies from the first two who had answered our original email, advising that they would be pleased to see us when we arrived in Singapore. There were also replies from the two others we had emailed from Ho Chi Min City, telling us that they were interested and asking for further information. We decided that we would get back to them if we drew blanks with the first two. We didn’t bother to acknowledge their replies. There would be time enough for that later. We were both anxious to see what the reaction would be at the auction house which had offered to lower their commission.
We grabbed another taxi, only to find out that we were within two or three hundred metres of their building, but we took it anyway.
The office was a dignified affair, with no expense spared. We announced ourselves to the pretty Asian secretary on the front desk. She busied herself on the phone, then turned to Benny and said: “Mr Johnson will be with you momentarily.”
Benny smiled and we both moved across to the plush leather seats on the other side of the reception area.
“Hey,” Benny said, nudging me in the ribs. “She’s a bit of alright.”
“We’re here on business, Benny. Save it for later.”
We had only been seated for a minute or so when a door opened and out strode Mr Johnson, also Asian, presumably Chinese, wearing a well-cut suit, white shirt, tie, and a broad smile. I felt a bit underdressed and noticed Benny trying to straighten the collar of his shirt.
“Gentlemen, welcome to our establishment. I trust that you had a pleasant flight.” He shook Benny’s hand first and then mine. “Come into my office, please. This way, please.”
We followed him into a large room even more beautifully and richly furnished than the reception area outside. He pointed to several deep armchairs surrounding a low antique Chinese table made of some dark wood. Benny and I settled ourselves into the deep suede leather cushions.
“Where are you staying?” he asked, removing his jacket before sitting down.
“Ah,” Benny replied. “We, ah.., we haven’t booked in to anywhere yet. We just arrived this morning.”
I had been worried for a second that he was going to mention that we had only just arrived by ship.
“Well in that case,” the smiling Mr Johnson replied. “Perhaps you would allow us to arrange something for you, as our guests of course.”
It was at that moment I realised that what we had under the beds back on the ship was not the normal everyday cache of looted Chinese artefacts, and that something about them had proved their authenticity.
“That won’t be necessary, Mr Johnson,” I replied quickly, seeing the flustered look on Benny’s face. “We’re booked out on this evening’s flight. If our various appointments run over, then we may take you up on your offer.”
At least he now knew that there were others with whom we might do business.
“Well,” he replied. “If you should require accommodation, please let me know. Oh, and my name is Lee, Lee Johnson, spelt in the Chinese way.”
“Thanks, Lee,” I replied politely. “That’s very kind of you. We’re Charlie Lawson and Benny Yee. I’m Charlie.”
“Well gentlemen. As you can imagine, we are quite interested in the pieces you referred to in your email.”
“We thought you might be,” Benny replied.
“Yes, well, ah.., did you happen to bring those other pictures with you?”
It was obvious that he was more than eager to get down to business. Benny produced the pictures which we had downloaded and printed in the ship’s self-service photographic department. Lee took out a magnifying glass and poured over each one whilst we sat and waited. His head was bent over the pictures, moving from one to the other as he spread them out over the intricately carved table, making small humming noises as he did so.
“Oh, my goodness,” he said suddenly, raising his head and smiling. “Where are my manners? Would you like some coffee, or perhaps tea? We have some very good Chinese tea if you would prefer.”
I opted for coffee. Benny went for the Chinese tea. Lee went back to the photographs. The coffee and tea were brought in a few minutes later by the attractive Asian receptionist. She smiled at Benny, and Benny grinned back. I poked him in the ribs.
“Business first, Benny,” I said quietly. “There’ll be plenty of time for that later.”
Lee finally bundled the pictures together and placed them on the table.
“Please forgive me,” he said. “I always get excited when something of quality and rarity is brought to my attention.”
Benny’s smile lit up his face. I was trying to wipe mine away.
“They look that good do they?” I asked.
“If they are genuine, they are not just good, Mr Lawson, they are excellent.”
“Show him the beads, Charlie,” Benny said quietly.
I was wishing we had brought some of the gold jewellery, but all I had were the beads. Two of them were probably gold, although in the tomb their reddish colour had made them appear to be jade. A number were definitely jade, and several were carved from stones that were outside my limited knowledge. I pulled the small plastic bag from my pocket and placed it on the table.
“They didn’t come with the piece of fishing line,” I said.
Lee carefully upended the plastic bag and emptied the beads into the palm of his hand.
“Did these come from the same place?” he asked, and then looked up from the pile of beads. “From the same collection?”
“Yes,” Benny replied. “The beads and the rest of the items were all collected from the same location.”
“Do you mind if I call one of our experts in to have a look at them?” he asked.
“Not a problem,” I replied.
A minute later there was another Chinese man in the room. He was introduced to us but his name slipped straight past me. Benny might have caught it.
“Oh yes,” this expert said five frustrating silent minutes later, his eyes shining. “They are genuine, they are most definitely genuine. They were all made by the same hand. You can see it in the detail. Exquisite, most exquisite.”
The expert left. Lee waited until the door was closed and then turned to us.
“Gentlemen, we would very much like to sell them for you.”
“The beads?” I said.
“We would like to sell everything that you have listed in your email.”
“There are a few other items which we didn’t mention in our email,” Benny replied.
“There’s more?”
“We have eighteen of the soldiers, and several other pieces,” I said.
“Eighteen?”
“Yes,” I replied. “Eighteen. Is that a problem?”
“Most definitely not!”
“Okay,” I said. “You’d like to sell them, but you’re not the only auction house interested. We’ve spoken to Hong Kong and to two others here in Singapore. You’re the first we’ve spoken to face to face. We’ve only had telephone conversations with the others.”
Benny looked a little puzzled when I mentioned Hong Kong, but quickly covered it up.
“Well then,” Lee said. “How can I convince you to avail yourselves of our services?”
“Your commission, for one thing,” Benny said, a little louder than was normal for him.
“Have you spoken about commission to any of the other houses?” Lee asked.
“Yes,” I replied, stepping in before Benny could say anything further. I was a much better liar than he was. “They’ve both offered a considerable reduction, and I’m certain they’d go even further if we pushed them.”
“Hmm,” he said. “Let me see what we can do. Would you excuse me for a few minutes please?”
“Bloody hell, Charlie,” Benny said as soon as the door had closed behind Lee. “Why did...?”
“Benny,” I interrupted. “Just leave it.”
I pointed to my ear and to the corners of the room. For all we knew they could have a listening device and be picking up everything we said, hoping to hear something which might give them a negotiating advantage.
“Let’s discuss it later, okay, Benny?”
“Okay, Charlie. Sure.” His eyes drifted around the room, trying to spot any device that might have been concealed. We sat and twiddled our thumbs and tried to keep our nerves in check as we waited for Lee. He returned with a smile on his face, but it had taken him ten minutes to come to a decision and not just one or two.
“Gentlemen,” he said. “Mr Yee, Mr Lawson, ah.., Benny, Charlie. I have discussed this with my principals overseas and they are allowing me to do something that has seldom been done before.”
“What’s that?” I asked, figuring that he was going to offer to drop the commission by five or so per cent.
“There will be no commission.”
“None?” Benny asked, sitting up straight in the chair.
“Yes, gentlemen. There will be no costs on the sale as far as you are concerned. There will be no commission, no advertising costs, and no other associated costs. And we would like you to stay in Singapore as our guests.”
“So, how do you get paid?” Benny asked.
“We normally charge a fairly hefty buyer’s commission. But don’t tell anyone that I described it like that.” He smiled. “So, gentlemen, what do you say? May we have the pleasure of selling your collection for you?”
“What do you reckon, Charlie?” Benny asked.
“I’d like to think about it for an hour or so if you wouldn’t mind, Lee,” I said. “I think Benny and I need to talk it over in private. We’ll take a walk and get back to you within the hour, maybe half an hour. Is that okay with you?”
“Certainly, certainly! I look forward to seeing you both shortly.”
As soon as we were outside and around the corner Benny grabbed me by the elbow.
“Charlie! It’s a great offer! Why don’t we grab it with both hands?”
“I agree with you, Benny. I just didn’t want to be seen to be too eager. But don’t you think we should go and see one or two of those other auction houses before we accept his offer?”
“No, I’m happy with this fellow. I like him, and they’ve got a great reputation.”
“Yeah, Benny, and he’s got a great-looking receptionist, with nice long legs!”
“Leave it, Charlie! Forget the receptionist.” He stopped walking and turned to me. “Lee seems a genuine kind of person. I don’t reckon we can do any better. What do you say? Do we go with him?”
“Okay,” I said. “You’ll get no argument from me on that score. Let’s find a toilet, have a pee, and then go back.”
“Well, gentlemen?” Lee asked once we were seated in his plush office again.
“We’ll go with you,” Benny said.
“Excellent, excellent. We’ll get some paperwork organised, but, in the meantime, I have some questions.”
“Go ahead,” I replied.
“How long before you can get the items packed and shipped to Singapore?”
“They’re already here,” I said.
“I don’t quite understand.” He looked puzzled.
“They’re on board a ship,” Benny said. “We didn’t come by air, we came by ship.”
“Which ship?” he asked.
I looked at Benny and there was a moment of silence as the question hung in the air between us. We’d crossed a line from which there would be no going back. I nodded to him and he turned back to Lee.
“We’re on board the Rose Princess,” Benny said quietly. “It’s alongside the cruise-ship wharf.”
“Are the pieces comfortably secured in the ship’s strongroom?” Lee asked.
“No,” I replied, smiling. “They’re under our beds in the cabin.”
“What? You’re joking!”
“Under the beds,” Benny said. “In our cabin.”
“Yes, I heard that,” Lee replied, his face going pale. “But they’re not safe!”
“They’re fine,” Benny added. “Nobody knows they’re there.”
Lee sat back in his large leather chair looking a little shell-shocked.
“So they haven’t just come from Australia?” he asked.
“No,” I replied. “We boarded the ship in Hong Kong. Is that a problem?”
“No, but I think I would perhaps prefer not to know exactly where the items did come from. I presume you purchased them from someone somewhere in Asia and that person didn’t tell you how they came by them?”
“Correct,” I said.
It was obvious that he was concerned about dealing with objects which might have been looted. Any auctioneer would have preferred that they had been in our possession, or the possession of someone outside China, for the last hundred years or so. But it was also obvious that he wasn’t going to let it stand in the way of making a large commission from the ultimate purchasers.
“So,” he continued. “I presume that you won’t have any written provenance for the items?”
“Also correct,” I said. “Apart from those pictures, and the originals taken on site before they were photo-shopped.”
“So, we will just have to auction them on their own merit. Fortunately they are so unique that there is no chance that they could be fakes. Some might try to allege that the soldiers are reproductions but even just from the pictures it is easy to see that they are the genuine article.”
“So you’ll still sell them for us then?” Benny asked.
“Oh yes. They will be listed as the collection of a gentleman.”
“How do we get them off the ship?” I asked.
“I will send some of our people to help you pack and carry them off.”
“They’re already packed,” Benny replied. “How do we get them through Customs?”
“Leave that up to us. It will not be a problem. When does the ship leave?”
“Seven o’clock tonight,” I said.
“That gives us plenty of time,” he replied, smiling. His colour had come back again.
It all went like a breeze. We read and signed the authorisation to sell. Lee met us at the ship two hours later with a sheaf of papers and two people from the auction house, together with a security van and some kind of Customs agent. Benny and I went on board and carried the three suitcases and my back-pack off the ship and down the gangway, handing them to Lee’s people on the wharf. There were questioning looks from the ship’s personnel, but they were left unanswered.
Later that afternoon we all met back at the auction house. By that time Lee had arranged for everything to be unpacked and placed in his office so that an inventory could be made.
“Well?” I asked Lee. “What’s the verdict? Do you think they’ll fetch a good price?”
“Most certainly,” he replied. His face was lit up, excited. “With a proper written provenance they would fetch a little more, but probably not a great deal more. As I said before, they stand on their own. If they had been Tang figures, then without provenance they wouldn’t fetch much more than half of their real value. But these are different, and they are not Tang. And they give provenance to each other.”
“What do you think they will bring?” Benny asked.
“At the moment I can’t give you any hard and fast estimate. We need to examine them further. We need to compare them with items of a similar age and type which have been sold before. It will also depend on which collectors we can draw in, on which collectors we can get who will come and examine the pieces, and then on which collectors we can interest who are prepared to purchase items the provenance of which is simply described as: the property of a gentleman.”
“Well,” I said. “What’s the least we can expect?”
“The least?” he asked.
“Yeah. Just give us a rough estimate. We won’t hold you to it.”
“Half a million,” he finally replied after considering the question for a few moments, twisting his right hand from side to side.
“Half a million,” Benny echoed. “Is that Aussie dollars, Singapore dollars, or US?”
“United States dollars,” Lee replied. “Although the collection should go higher than that.”
“Will our names go on the catalogue?” I asked.
“Not unless you want them to. It’s probably best if you keep yourselves anonymous. If your names go into the catalogue you will be contacted by persons who will want you to withdraw certain items and sell privately. I wouldn’t recommend it. You will almost always get a better price at the auction.”
“Almost always?” I asked.
“If the price doesn’t reach the reserve we have put on it, with your agreement of course, we will not sell. You can always negotiate with a potential buyer afterwards.”
“Are there any other reasons why we shouldn’t have our names in the catalogue?” Benny asked.
“Yes. If buyers know who you are, you will be asked for details as to where the items were sourced. They will be very persistent. They will probably then make their own enquiries. I gather that you would rather the source be kept confidential?”
“Yes.”
“So,” he replied. “It will be as I have said. We will be selling the Property of a Gentleman.”
“Make that Two Gentlemen,” Benny said, laughing nervously.
We shook hands and were driven back to the ship in the auction house’s Mercedes, escorted by the lovely receptionist. Much to Benny’s disappointment she sat up front with the driver, with us in the back seat.