Free The Book of Lost Fragrances: A Novel of Suspense by M. J. Rose

scent I mentioned.”
    “In which case they could have some connection to the fragrance in these crystal bottles? Do you actually think you’ve found some sort of ancient memory tool, Robbie?”
    “Even though I believe that everything, no matter how trivial it is, is connected to everything else and that there are no coincidences in life . . . something like this . . . it seems impossible, doesn’t it?”

Seven
     
    PARIS, FRANCE
THURSDAY, MAY 19, 8:30 P.M.
     
    Warned not to be late, Tom Huang hurried across the street while scanning the long block for number eighteen. The teahouse was in the section of Paris they called Quartier Chinois, but little about the area was as appealing as the appellation. Unlike the narrow streets and charming ambiance of old Paris, the thirteenth arrondissement’s Chinatown was overpopulated and overcrowded with skyscrapers and supermarkets. There were none of the chic cafés, charming florists, iconic boutiques and authentic bakeries that made so much of the city attractive. This wasn’t Huang’s Paris, and whenever he visited here, he felt oppressed. Especially during the day, when every ugly nuance of the blocks of buildings stood out in high detail.
    At least now, at night, the blazing neon signs advertising everything from McDonald’s to traditional French fare offered some visual excitement that matched his mood. A clandestine meeting with the head of the Chinese underworld in Paris was not, even for Huang, a regular occurrence. But yesterday, after getting word through his spies that a curator at Christie’s had inspected fragments of an object purported to be a reincarnation memory aid, Huang had to act.
    He finally found the restaurant squeezed in between a bank and a laundry. The small, shabby place was just one room, crammed with yellowed Formica tabletops and cracked red leather seats. The floor was a checkerboard of linoleum, the black and white tiles stained and faded. Despite the late hour, more than half the tables were filled with groups of Chinese men, drinking tea and talking—not French but a cacophony of different Chinese dialects. Hundreds of pieces of calligraphy—black characters with occasional touches of red—hung on the walls, and the glass covering them was smudged with years of restaurant grease.
    Despite the visible signs of neglect, Huang felt reassured by the familiar incense of seeping tea, brewed flowers and spices and roasted rice and toasted barley. Huang circumnavigated the tables to the far-right corner, where a wizened man, bald and slightly hunched over, sat with his back to the wall. He was ordinary looking, wearing ordinary clothes. Yet this was the man who oversaw a network of tens of thousands of members, a sworn brotherhood engaged in a wide range of criminal activity specializing in smuggling, VAT fraud, drug trafficking, and more.
    Huang paused as the waiter set down a glazed teapot. He’d been instructed to act as if he and the man were already acquainted, so he nodded his head, said hello, pulled out a chair, and sat down. On the table in front of him were thirteen white porcelain teacups arranged in a rectangle with one cup in the middle.
    The ritual Huang was about to engage in was over three thousand years old and had been abandoned by most Hak Sh’e Wui bosses, but the head of this local black society—only Caucasians called them Triads—still engaged in the old customs. The ancient ceremony had been a way to test an unknown visitor and ascertain if he was a member of the secret society or not. It made sense in the days when there was no internet, telephone, or even a dependable mail system, but now it was just another of Gu Zhen’s idiosyncrasies.
    Huang reached for the lone cup in the middle—in the Triad’s language telling the boss he was one of them, literally an insider.
    Gu Zhen poured tea for himself and then for his guest. Huang watched, riveted by Zhen’s deliberately slow, teasing movement as he put the teapot