by Lee Goldberg
As for Ian Ludlow, the file on his computer simply rehashed conspiracy theories that had been swirling in the American media for years and been ignored. The American public didn’t care who owned companies. All they cared about was money and convenience.
It was possible that Ludlow was a spy, but it was more likely that his assistant was. She used his trip to Hong Kong as an opportunity to feel out Wang Mei’s interest in sharing knowledge of her father’s activities. Yat Fu’s clumsy and violent effort hastened a defection that might otherwise not have happened. He was also inviting attention at the exact moment China didn’t want any. Wang Mei’s flight didn’t jeopardize anything. It was merely an embarrassment that would soon be overshadowed by events that would shake the globe.
Nobody from the US was asking about Ludlow and French. The only screaming was coming from the American movie studio, desperately seeking reassurance that Wang Kang’s financial investment in Straker wouldn’t disappear along with his daughter. But the money was already gone. Pang had seen to that himself, transferring the cash to the secret accounts that financed the Ordos operation.
Pang entered the office building, took the elevator down to the subterranean control center, and took Yat Fu’s high seat in the rear of the room. There was already a female operative, Shek Jia, sitting at Pang’s former console. Nobody showed any reaction to his silent announcement of a new hierarchy.
He turned to Shek Jia. “Suspend the search for Ian Ludlow, Margo French, and Wang Mei immediately.”
She nodded with a severe jerk of her head, as if she were head-butting someone instead of confirming a command. “What about the intelligence they might have?”
“It’s of no concern,” Pang said. “What do we hear from France?”
“Everything is going smoothly.”
“Excellent,” he said and started imagining what his exalted place might be in the new world order that would soon be coming.
CHAPTER FORTY
Somewhere in the South China Sea. July 4. 10:00 p.m. Hong Kong Time.
Ian and Margo sat at the banquette table eating sandwiches, drinking beer, and playing backgammon by candlelight. The container was ventilated, but it wasn’t air-conditioned. The air was blistering and thick enough to chew. Ian was shirtless and Margo had stripped down to her camisole.
Margo glanced at the closed door to the master suite. “She’s been back there crying for hours.”
“She got away,” Ian said. “But her parents didn’t. They’ll pay the price for her freedom.”
“Mei still has a price to pay.”
“There’s no hurry.”
“Yes, there is,” she said. “The information she supposedly has goes bad in five days. We’ve used up one already and we’ll use up three more on the journey. And we don’t even know when, where, or how we’ll get it.”
“There’s nothing we can do to act on the information in here anyway,” he said. “So you might as well take it easy and bask in your success. You just pulled off your first exfiltration.”
“That’s true.” Margo leaned back in her seat and smiled. “Maybe now Healy will let me trade in my learner’s permit for a license.”
“You don’t have a driver’s license?”
“I’m talking about a license to kill,” she said.
Ian was incredulous. “Is that really a thing?”
That’s when Mei shuffled out of the bedroom, her eyes bloodshot, wearing only her bra and panties. She went to the refrigerator and took out a bottle of water.
“How are you feeling?” Ian asked, trying not to stare at her perfect body and suddenly shamefully aware of his own pudgy nakedness.
Mei sat down in a captain’s chair across from them. “Adrift. Heartbroken. Triumphant. But mostly filled with sorrow for everything that I have lost.”
“But you have a purpose,” Margo said.
Mei drilled her with a harsh look. “That’s all you care about, the secrets that you were promised.”
Margo met her gaze with one that was just as hard. “We aren’t doing this for fun.”
Mei looked at Ian. “What about you?”
Ian crossed his arms under his chest, hoping it would have the effect of bulking up his soft pecs. “I wasn’t given a choice. I don’t know you or what you’ve done. I have no idea if you or your family deserves saving or sympathy. I engineered our escape to save myself and Margo.”
Mei mulled his answer for a bit, then got up, opened a drawer in the galley, and pulled out a steak knife. Ian and Margo immediately tensed up.
Margo leaned forward, and Ian wondered if she was calculating how fast she could get out from behind the table and grab Mei’s knife.
“What are you doing?” Margo asked.
“Giving you what you want.” Mei sat down in the captain’s chair and spread her legs apart.
Ian’s eyes were inexorably drawn between her legs and he noticed a tiny scar on her left inner thigh. And just as his gaze landed on the scar, Mei used the knife to slice open the old wound in a spurt of blood.
The unexpected action made Ian jerk back, but he couldn’t tear his eyes away from what she was doing with cold efficiency. Grimacing, Mei used one hand to splay open the wound and her other hand to insert the tip of the knife into the cut and pry up something with it, blood dripping onto the floor.
What she retrieved from her flesh was a flake of plastic, about the size of a fingernail, coated with blood. She wiped the object on an unbloodied part of her leg and passed it to Margo in the palm of her hand. The object was a microSD card in a tiny clear case.
“Jesus,” Margo said. “You’re hard core.”
“This is definitely going in my next book,” Ian said.
Mei got up, blood streaming down her left leg, tossed the knife in the sink, took a dish towel from the counter, and pressed it against her wound. If she was in any pain, she wasn’t showing it.
Margo opened the case, removed the microSD card, and went to the large flat-screen TV mounted on the wall. She peered at the many inputs on the back of the screen, found a microSD slot, and inserted the card.
Ian searched several nearby drawers, found the TV remote, and turned on the TV, scrolling through the various external input options until the menu of the SD card came up on-screen. There was only one file, a 2GB MP4 video, but the name was written in Chinese characters. Ian glanced over at Mei for more details. She sat in the chair, holding the towel to her thigh, and gave him a blank poker face.
“Play it,” Mei said.
Ian did.
The picture was in crisp high-definition and filled the entire screen. The camera was pointed at a king-size bed in an upscale bedroom with silk wall coverings, fresh flowers on the end tables, an empty bottle of champagne in an ice bucket, and three naked Chinese women writhing around a naked man.
All Ian could see of the man were his pale, hairy legs and the bottoms of his curled, dry feet. A woman with her back to the camera was straddling him, moaning and thrusting rhythmically, while the other two women were on either side of his body, kissing and stroking him.
So far, it could have been any porn movie downloaded from the internet. But then the man let out an enormous fart, startling the women, particularly the one on top of him. Even before the woman practically leaped off the man, Ian knew the face he was going to see. Because the fart, with its volcanic bass and sonorous cadence, was as instantly recognizable as it was infamous, one that had been replayed, analyzed, and mocked on countless news programs and talk shows. It was the historic fart that rocked the vice-presidential debates.
“Pardon me, ladies,” Vice President Willard Penny said, sitting up, a sheepish expression on his red face. “I guess I had a little too much bubbly.”
But his embarrassment didn’t dim his desire. He reached for the nearest woman and clapped her on the butt.
“Bend over,” he said.
She smiled slyly and got on her hands and knees. He grabbed her by the hips, his wedding ring catching
a glint off the lights, and entered her from behind, his flabby belly slapping against her firm butt as he went at it.
“Yuck,” Margo said. “That’s something I can never unsee.”
Now that Ian had a good look at Penny, more than he would have liked, he noticed that the grunting vice president’s hair wasn’t entirely gray and that his double chin wasn’t nearly as pronounced as it was these days.
“How old is this?” he asked Mei.
“This was shot ten years ago in a Beijing hotel owned by my father. He was following an order from President Xiao, who wasn’t president yet but everybody knew that he soon would be,” she said. “It’s just one of many videos Xiao has of Penny indulging his desires with multiple prostitutes.”
“I thought Penny and Xiao were friends,” Margo said.
Mei smirked at that. “Xiao’s idea of a friend is someone he can use to grab, retain, or expand his power. My father and Xiao were friends since childhood and Xiao still betrayed him.”
Ian used the remote to turn off the TV. They’d seen enough. “Your father must have known betrayal was a possibility or he never would have kept a copy of this for himself.”
“You don’t become a billionaire without intelligence, foresight, and cunning.” Mei removed the towel to examine her gash. The blood had congealed, but the cut was still wide and moist, the skin around it a deep red.
“It runs in the family,” Ian said.
Margo stepped forward to inspect the wound. “You’re going to need disinfectant and stitches. There must be a first aid kit in here somewhere.” She started rooting around in the cupboards for it. “How long have you had that disc under your skin?”
“Years,” she said.
“Jesus,” Margo said. “Did you put it in your leg yourself?”
“My mother did. She said it would keep me safe.”
“Did you know what was on the disc?” Ian asked.
Mei shook her head. “My mother told me after my father was kidnapped and jailed.”
Margo found the first aid kit under the bathroom sink, came back over to Mei, and got on her knees beside the chair to tend to the wound. “What about Penny? Does he know these videos exist?”
Mei laughed ruefully. “He’s been doing China’s bidding since he was governor of Ohio.”
Ian and Margo shared a look. He said, “Do you know what this means?”
“Hell yeah,” Margo said, soaking a cotton swab with disinfectant. “The vice president of the United States is a traitor.”
“No, not that,” Ian said. “I finally have the inciting incident that propels Straker into action in my next book.”
“Oh good, now I can finally sleep at night,” she said, and started gently dabbing Mei’s wound with the swab. But despite her sarcasm, her curiosity soon got the better of her, as Ian knew it would.
“So what’s his mission going to be?”
“The same as ours,” Ian said. “Saving the president of the United States from assassination.”
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
Jules Verne Restaurant, Eiffel Tower, Paris, France. July 4. 6:00 p.m. Central European Summer Time.
The man who called himself Warren Fung in Hong Kong and Simon Chen in Turkey was now Maurice Kwok in Paris. He’d used so many names in his life that he’d forgotten his real one. If he had to pick a name, though, it would be Death. And tonight, Death had a reservation for two at the Jules Verne, the exclusive restaurant wedged between the girders of the Eiffel Tower like a bird’s nest, forty stories above the City of Light.
His date for the night was Chinese spy Tan Yow, who affectionately held his hand as they emerged from the restaurant’s private elevator into the elegant chocolate- and amber-hued dining room. The only French people in the restaurant were the staff. All the diners were tourists who’d reserved tables weeks in advance for the panoramic view of Paris, framed by the distinctive belle époque lattice of the Eiffel Tower’s wrought-iron girders. The gourmet cuisine was an added benefit, though Kwok believed that most of the diners would have been just as satisfied with Big Macs.
Kwok and Tan were greeted by a young French hostess in a crisp Lanvin 15 Faubourg suit who led them to a coveted window table. The chairs were custom made in carbon fiber with orange leather by Pininfarina, the Italian car designer, allowing tourists to experience what it might be like taking a Ferrari to the drive-through window of a French restaurant.
The table had a spectacular view across the Champ de Mars, a grand carpet of grass lined with elms, to the fifty-eight-story Tour Montparnasse, the only skyscraper in central Paris, sticking out of the historic fifteenth arrondissement with the vulgarity of a beggar standing outside the window and flashing his erection.
“Does the table meet your expectations?” the hostess asked.
“It’s perfect,” Kwok said, pulling out Tan’s seat for her.
“It’s also presidential,” the hostess said.
“I don’t understand,” Kwok said, taking his seat.
“This is the view the president of France and the president of the United States will have at dinner,” she said proudly. “They’re eating here in two days.”
Tan reached across the table and took Kwok’s hand. “You told me this was a special place, darling, but I had no idea how special.” She looked up at the hostess. “Will they be sitting at this table?”
“Not this exact table, but in this general area. Are you celebrating a special occasion?”
“We are,” Tan said, sharing a smile with Kwok.
“The end of a major project,” he said. “One for the history books.”
“That’s wonderful,” the hostess said. “We’re always glad when people make lasting memories here.”
“That’s definitely our intention,” Kwok said.
The hostess walked away.
Tan kissed Kwok’s hand. “Excuse me for a moment, I need to freshen up.”
She rose from her seat and went to the restroom, where she washed her hands and pretended to check her makeup. On her way back to the table, she paused in front of a wall and several banquettes that faced the windows. She sprayed some perfume on her neck but most of the mist went on the wall, coating the surface with microscopic RFID particles. When she returned to the table, a bottle of champagne was waiting. The waiter popped the cork, filled their flutes, and walked away.
Kwok raised his glass to Tan in a toast. “To a killer view.”
Somewhere in the South China Sea. July 4. Hong Kong Time.
Margo wasn’t a nurse, but as part of her CIA training, she’d been taught how to treat wounds, particularly her own, while in the field. Having a first aid kit handy to clean and dress Mei’s self-inflicted wound almost felt like cheating.
“The Chinese are going to kill the president,” Ian said. He was repeating himself but it had been several minutes since his dramatic revelation, and Margo hadn’t responded.
“Yeah, I heard you,” Margo said, focusing her attention on treating Mei’s ugly gash. “But I’m a little busy right now. It sounds great.”
“No, I mean really. That’s what they are going to do. They are going to assassinate the president unless we can stop them.”
“Relax,” Margo said. “You’re not God. Not every story you come up with becomes reality.”
“Don’t you see? Killing the president makes perfect sense.” Ian stood up and walked over to her. He didn’t want to talk to her back about something this important. “Now they’ll own the one thing left that they need to take over the United States: the White House.”
“An assassination may be the missing piece you need for your novel but there’s no evidence that it’s going to happen in the real world.” Margo glanced up at Mei, looking for an expression of agreement, but got nothing. The actress was lost in her own thoughts.
“You’re right,” Ian said. “All I have are my novelist’s instincts and a strong sense of story, both of which have proven right so far.”
“Let’s be realist
ic about this,” Margo said. “You don’t know if Chinese intelligence read your story, or if your story is true, or if that’s how or why they were onto us from the get-go. I know you want it all to be true, but that doesn’t make it so.”
“Why would I want it to be true?”
“So you can save the world,” she said.
“I don’t want to do that,” he said. “I’m a writer, not a spy. I want you to do it.”
“You want me to tell CIA Director Healy that the Chinese are going to assassinate the president of the United States because that’s what they’d do in your book.”
“What good is owning the vice president if you can’t put him in the Oval Office?”
“There’s a lot you can do with a vice president in your pocket,” she said.
“Like what?” Ian asked.
“Influence the president, influence Congress, influence public opinion in favor of legislation, trade deals, and military actions that help China. He could eventually use his position to get himself elected president.”
“Why would the Chinese wait for him to be elected president when they can make it happen now?”
Margo stood up and looked down at Mei, who had been sitting quietly throughout the conversation and the bandaging of her wound.
“What do you think?” Margo asked. Mei didn’t reply. Her eyes were staring off into nothing. So Margo leaned forward and snapped her fingers in Mei’s face.
“Hello? Anyone home? I asked you a question. What do you think?”
Mei blinked, met Margo’s gaze, and sounded very tired when she spoke. “None of it matters. Whether Penny becomes president or not, China doesn’t own him anymore. You do.”
That aspect hadn’t occurred to Ian. Now they also had leverage over the vice president. But the Chinese didn’t know that and it didn’t change the fact that the president’s life was in danger. So that meant Mei was implying something else, something truly insidious. “You’re suggesting that we should let the president get killed.”
“You may not want to,” Mei said, “but perhaps the CIA would like it. That way they can own the Oval Office.”