Forbidden City. Alex Archer

the Silk Road, and made off with incredible treasures. He’d imagined streets paved in gold and jewel-encrusted houses. As he’d grown, he scaled the visions of treasure back, but he still believed there were hidden rooms filled with gold, silver and fantastic gems.

      Ngai had spent a small fortune ferreting out information about the City of Thieves. It was also sometimes referred to as the City of Assassins for the men emperors and warlords had hired to kill their enemies. For a time in the second and third century, while all the turmoil of the Yellow Turbans was taking place and the Han Dynasty was collapsing, the thieves had struck hard and fast, claiming vast treasures.

      Then—they’d disappeared. And no one knew the reason why. Hong had said that the thieves had gathered enough gold to set themselves up as kings in Africa or the Middle East.

      Ngai didn’t believe that. He had hired historians to track the tales he’d been able to find. Although the history of those periods was spotty at best, there’d been no mention of the thieves leaving China.

      “Even if the stories of the City of Thieves are true,” Hong said, “have you forgotten the curse?”

      “I choose not to believe in the curse.” Ngai knew the story well. There had been an emperor’s tax collector who had killed an old man and his wife. Before the old woman had died, she had cursed the tax collector. He and the emperor’s gold had disappeared. One of the guards had survived long enough to talk about the fox spirit that had descended upon the carriage and killed all the guards.

      According to legend, the emperor’s greed had summoned vengeance from the celestial plane. Divine retribution for the old woman’s death had come in the form of the fox spirit. The stories told that the fox spirit had grown aware of the City of Thieves and had destroyed it.

      “You can’t simply choose to believe whatever you wish.” Hong sounded put out.

      “How many fox spirits have you seen?” Ngai asked the question in a mocking tone.

      “None,” Hong assured him. “I have been fortunate.”

      Ngai made himself a drink. “Spirits don’t exist. They are myth only.”

      “How are they any less believable than the City of Thieves?”

      Ngai turned to face the old man. “In the studies that I have undertaken, and paid others to do on my behalf, I became aware of two objects that could lead me to the City of Thieves. One of them is Ban Zexu’s belt plaque. The other is the map that Suen Shikai has.”

      “If either man knew where the City of Thieves lay, don’t you think they would have gone there?”

      “A man has to be strong enough to hold on to his treasure. Doubtless, these men were not. Neither were their fathers before them.”

      “Unless their fathers spent what little gold there was before they were born,” Hong said.

      “No!” Ngai spoke more sharply than he wanted to. Emotion was weakness, and he hated to let the old man know how much what he said bothered him. “They were not strong enough to get the gold. It’s still there.”

      “And if it’s not?”

      Ngai didn’t reply. He couldn’t fathom the gold not being hidden somewhere near the archaeological dig sites around the old city of Loulan.

      “If it’s not there,” Hong spoke softly, “then you will have killed your father’s friend for no reason.”

      “He defied me,” Ngai replied. “That’s reason enough.”

      “S HIKAI , DO YOU HAVE ANY good fish?”

      Suen Shikai pulled his small fishing boat onto the shore of the Huangpu River, then looked up at the woman standing on dry land. He was wet from the waist down from walking the boat to shore.

      “I do have good fish, Mai.” Suen took a handkerchief from his shirt pocket and mopped his face. The weather was particularly humid along the river.

      Mai was overweight and in her forties. She had a husband and three children to care for, and that took all of the hours of her day. She lived in a tenement building not far from where he kept his fishing boat. Whenever he went fishing she came out to offer to buy fish.

      Mai’s efforts to buy fish amused Suen. She knew he taught music at the university, but she looked at the simple life he chose and felt certain that he wasn’t making enough money to feed himself. Mai blamed his state of disrepair on Suen’s generosity toward his daughter, Kelly, who had gone to school in the United States. The woman believed that Suen gave all his money to an ungrateful daughter who was ashamed of her father’s poor ways.

      But he also knew that Mai figured she could buy fish from him more cheaply than she could anyone else on the river or in the local markets. She had never matched market prices, and Suen had never expected it. She had a hungry family to feed.

      “I would like two fish.” Mai cautiously opened her worn purse and reached inside for coins.

      Suen smiled at her. He liked her. In the mornings, sometimes she would bring him a cup of tea and rice cakes when she came to buy fish and they would talk for a time. She liked his stories about people he had met and of the places he’d seen. He’d been to the United States nine times.

      “You’re in luck. I caught four.” Suen reached into the boat and brought out a stringer of fish. He loved fishing and spent hours at it when he could. While he was out on the water, he listened to the sounds of the city all around him.

      Some days he read books of poetry or he would reread some of his favorite letters from his daughter. Mostly, though, he took his guitar and practiced his music. He was currently going through what he called his Bob Dylan phase. Kelly laughed at him when they talked over the phone whenever he mentioned that.

      Mai examined the fish, then frowned in disapproval. “You were unlucky. These are small.”

      “Not too small to eat.” Suen didn’t take affront at the comment. Mai was always trying to find ways to defray the cost of the fish.

      “Not too small to eat, but two will no longer do. I must have three.”

      Suen shook his head. “I’m sorry. I can only let you have two.”

      “You’re going to eat the other two?” Mai looked at him suspiciously.

      “Yes.”

      Frowning again, Mai said, “You’re going to get fat.”

      Suen didn’t think there was a chance of that. He was not quite six feet tall and had always been thin. His hair and beard had gone solid gray ten years or more ago.

      “I’m not going to be eating them by myself,” Suen said.

      Suspicion and resentment knitted Mai’s eyebrows. “Oh, then you have a girlfriend?”

      “No.” Since his wife had died four years earlier, there hadn’t been anyone that Suen had been interested in like that. He had his teaching job and he had his music. Perhaps it wouldn’t have been enough for someone else, but for him it fit perfectly. “My daughter is going to join me tonight.”

      “Ah,” Mai sniffed. “This is the one who went to live in America?”

      “Yes.” Suen only had one child.

      “Why is she coming here?”

      “To visit.”

      “Hmmph. She doesn’t do that very often.”

      Suen shrugged. “She comes when she can. Her work keeps her busy.”

      “A good daughter would find a way to visit her father more often. There is no excuse. She should be here. To take care of you in your final years.”

      Suen smiled. “Truly, Mai, I hope that I am not in my final years.”

      “You’re not getting any younger.”