Free Tell Me No Lies by Elizabeth Lowell

woman he had manipulated the FBI into using. Then Stone would want to know why Lindsay was in danger. It was a question that had occurred to Catlin at least once a minute since he had seen Yi's sad smile.
    I above all, dragon. I above all.
    None of the possible answers that had occurred to Catlin had been comforting.
    "Why did he choose you?" asked Stone.
    "I've done some consulting for mainland Chinese businessmen. He could have heard of me through them."
    That, at least, was true. It just didn't happen to be a truth that applied to the specific question Stone had asked.
    For a moment Stone stared into Catlin's nearly yellow eyes and wondered if the man owed allegiance to anyone or anything. Even himself. People who lived in deep cover for much of their lives… changed. That was why the FBI had resisted having undercover agents at all until a few years back, when circumstances had forced the Bureau into it. Stone wasn't comfortable with the type of man who could vanish without a ripple into another, usually crooked, culture. To survive with his true identity intact, such a man would have to be very strong.
    Or very weak. A moral chameleon able to fade into anyone's background, no matter how degraded or vicious.
    Stone shifted uneasily and looked away from Catlin's eyes, wondering which category he fell into. Then Stone shrugged and accepted what he could not change: he had been ordered to work in close, to get all the counterintelligence information he could from both Catlin and Chen Yi. The true state of Catlin's morality didn't have a damn thing to do with Stone's job.
    "What if I told you that Chen is a spy?" asked Stone.
    Catlin smiled. "Are you telling me that he is?"
    "We have to assume it."
    "So?"
    Stone's color heightened. "You don't mind working for a spy?"
    "Do you?" Catlin asked smoothly.
    Red washed Stone's cheekbones. "I didn't volunteer," he snarled.
    "Neither did I." Catlin set his empty beer bottle down on the table with a distinct snap. "Look, Stone. I'll save you the trouble of hinting around that if I don't play your game, the U.S. government will shut down the Pacific Rim Foundation. It won't happen."
    Stone didn't argue. It was the first ploy he had tried with his boss. It had been shot down without a prayer. The Pacific Rim Foundation was one very sacred cow, in and out of the intelligence community.
    "You're a smart man," continued Catlin, settling back into his chair, watching the older man with eyes that gave away nothing. "You've figured out by now that you're not going to intimidate, blackmail or insult me into going along with your program, whatever your program might be."
    "Would flattery have worked?" Stone asked curiously.
    Catlin laughed, enjoying the agent's determination. "We'll never know, will we?" Then all humor faded from Catlin's face. "But we do know this: Yi is an important man in China. America very badly wants China opened to trade. If the question of the Qin bronzes isn't cleared up, U.S.-Chinese relations are in the toilet. And so are you."
    "Maybe. And maybe the bronzes never were missing." Stone leaned forward. His light blue eyes were intent and his voice was hard. "Maybe this is all just an elaborate lie so that the Chinese can get a guided tour of the internal security apparatus of the CIA overseas and the FBI's counterintelligence operation in America."
    Catlin nodded. That kind of intelligence gambit was the first thing that had occurred to him when he had heard Chen Yi's stated reason for being in the U.S. There was no way to prove or disprove Chen's honesty. There was simply trust. And lack of it.
    "Christ," Stone continued in a disgusted voice. "I'm being ordered – goddam ordered – to tell Chen anything that our informants in and out of the Asian communities turn up. The same goes for overseas operations, from what the guys at Langley said when we screwed pieces of your file out of them. They're as pissed as we are."
    Catlin nodded again, understanding the dilemma of