The Tears of Autumn - Charles McCarry [69]
Yu Lung rocked back in his swivel chair with a faint squeal of metal springs and folded his hands on his stomach. “Would you care for some tea,” he asked, “or a glass of scotch whiskey?” Yu Lung’s face was circular like his charts—a small pursed mouth, a broad nose that moved when he smiled, arched eyebrows.
“It’s the other man in whom I am interested,” Christopher said.
Yu Lung laughed. “I thought it might be. You haven’t the look of a man who pays five hundred dollars out of idle curiosity.” He pulled Scotch tape from a dispenser and stuck the torn American bills together. “Have you chosen between tea and scotch?” he asked.
“Nothing, thank you. I may say you work swiftly from very limited information.”
Yu Lung shrugged. “It’s a settled science. One learns the principles, and if one has the gift, the situation opens itself very quickly.”
“One would almost think that you had dealt with these particular horoscopes before.”
“Ah, perhaps,” Yu Lung said. “They are unique. All horoscopes are.”
“Then you’d remember if you had done them before?”
“Yes, I’d remember. You say you are a friend of Lê Thu. How did you come by that name?”
“By chance,” Christopher said, “though I suppose your philosophy would not accept that explanation.”
Yu Lung waved a pudgy hand. “Chance is an accurate word in your language. A geomancer would call it the function of feng shut—the geomantic conditions. What you’d describe as being in the right place at the right time. These beliefs are ancient. Your people once held to them, like everyone else. They’re preserved in your language, though you no longer hear the real meanings in what you say.”
“You know something of Lê Thu, do you not?”
“I?” Yu Lung said. “It’s a common Vietnamese name, quite a sad one—they might give it to a second child if the first had died, in order to discourage the bad spirits from taking this child as well.”
“I was also a friend of Vuong Van Luong,” Christopher said. “I believe you spoke to him a couple of nights ago.”
“Luong. Yes, he came here.”
“And asked about Lê Thu.”
“I could tell him nothing of importance.”
“He was shot dead after he left you,” Christopher said.
“Not for that name, I think,” Yu Lung said. He had a habit of widening his eyes when he lied. He held Christopher’s money in his hands, counting it over and over again.
“What are the ethics of your profession?” Christopher asked. “Your consultations are secret, I suppose.”
“Oh, yes, absolutely. These are intimate matters.”
“Do you keep records?”
“Of course. Clients come back. One keeps a complete profile of the case. Principles are fixed, but conditions change. One wants to see how forces have behaved in the past, so as to apply their logic to the future.”
Christopher smiled at the man. “What is the maximum period of time over which a horoscope may be kept?”
“It’s quite indefinite, but of course one can compute in terms of an adult lifetime. Thirty years. Say ten thousand days —that has a certain ring to it.”
“I should think five thousand days would give one a complete picture.”
“Fairly complete. Not all, but enough.”
Christopher put a thick envelope on Yu Lung’s desk. The fortune-teller kept his eye away from it. He drew one of the horoscope sheets toward him. With a red pencil he drew circles around groups of ideograms that ran down the edge of the paper. “The system I use is uniform,” he said. “The top group is the date, place, time of birth. The next group is the name of the individual, if I have it. All the Chinese characters below are the description of the individual’s fate. Do you see?”
“Yes.”
Yu Lung straightened the pages, squaring their edges by tapping them on the glass top of his desk. He went to his file cabinet, unlocked it, and inserted the papers in a file so that a corner protruded from the top. Christopher’s envelope still lay on the desk top.
“And now,” Yu Lung said, “I must insist that you take a glass of scotch with me. It’s quite an extraordinary bottle of Chivas Regal. I had it from