Leung didn’t even bother with small talk. “Dr. Kelson, the government of China did not take the data, and they do not have it now.”
Chanda didn’t flinch. “Are you a diplomat?”
The older woman smiled, revealing the most perfect set of white teeth. “You could call me that.”
“She has my job,” I told Chanda. “We’ve bumped into each other on occasion.”
“Yes,” Leung said, still smiling. “As I said, it’s always a pleasure.”
“Uh-huh,” Chanda said slowly. “And what is your job, exactly?”
Leung crossed her legs at the knees, allowing her miniskirt to ride up a little more.
“People,” I told Chanda. “Our job is people.”
“In this case, I’ve been asked to assure you that the Chinese government isn’t involved in the theft of your data,” Leung said. “My employers would not take this step, except for the involvement of Agent Glassman.”
“Involving anyone from OACET tends to raise the stakes,” I explained.
Chanda might not be a political animal herself, but she was adapting beautifully. “I would never accuse anyone, especially a foreign government. Not without absolute proof,” she said to Leung, as she sipped her mimosa. “But you have to admit, it’s logical to think that China’s government might want the data.”
“Logical,” Leung said, nodding. “What an interesting word. Especially as you are aware the chain of custody for the fossil cannot be verified.”
“Are you aware the fossil could be a singular discovery?” Chanda’s anger had broken through the oddness of sitting in a limousine in her bathrobe. “That it could be unique in the evolutionary record? At the very least, another strong evidentiary link in the transition between dinosaurs and birds?
Leung nodded. “My employers should have been more proactive about its rescue,” she said. “It wasn’t until you had come and gone from China that they realized what we had lost.”
“You mean, they didn’t realize it was worth saving until they tore the top off an entire mountain—”
“Here.” Leung reached over, and lifted two large gift bags from the empty seat beside here. “Consider this a peace offering from my employers. They feel that, despite the circumstances, you have done admirable work in preserving the microraptors.
“Scientific knowledge is of great importance to them,” she added, as she handed the gift bags to us. “They want you to know that they will do what is in their power to help you.”
“Please convey our thanks to your employers,” I said, as I slid the contents of the gift bag out on my lap. Inside was a set of couture clothing: a crisply pressed shirt in light gray, a pair of dark gray pants, and black shoes. There was even a set of clean underwear. I grinned at Leung. “And thanks to you, as well.”
“A change of clothes seemed practical, considering,” Leung said, as she crossed those legs of hers again. “I regret that I had to guess at Dr. Kelson’s sizes, but I hope the outfit is appropriate.”
I slipped out of my boxers and t-shirt, and started to change. Chanda looked around the limo, as if checking for hidden cameras, but then shrugged and removed her bathrobe.
Leung watched, sometimes asking me to turn one way or the other. I obliged. The woman had just given me some very nice clothes, after all.
“Mrs. Leung, you’re a wonder,” I said, as I held up a thick packet of condoms. “You even remembered my brand.”
Leung lifted her own glass to me. Then, she said, “Oh, what a shame.” I turned to see what was wrong, as Leung was shaking her head sadly. “Dr. Kelson’s shirt is too tight.”
Chanda’s outfit was a rich floral print shirt in shades of pink over a pair of khakis. It fit her perfectly, except the front of the shirt was just a little too tight. Or maybe the bra that Leung had chosen for Chanda gave her breasts a little too much lift. Either way, Chanda was showing off some spectacular cleavage.
“Such a shame,” I said, as I downed the rest of my mimosa to drown the sudden urge to reach out and bury my face in Chanda’s breasts.
“A tragedy,” Leung agreed.
Chanda snorted.
When we were done dressing, Leung topped off our drinks. “Do you have any last questions for me?” she asked.
“Dr. Kelson has several colleagues in China,” I said. “She hasn’t been able to get in touch with them.”
That was something of a white lie. Chanda had reached out to the paleontologist who had snuck her into and out of Tibet, but she hadn’t expected a reply. Chanda said her colleague lived in the field, and only returned to civilization when she needed to check her email or file her research. Several others that Chanda knew, however, seemed to be woefully slow in replying to their messages. It most likely meant nothing other than time zones and the weekend slowdown, but Chanda was worried.
“Would you like me to make some inquiries, Dr. Kelson?” Leung asked, as she handed Chanda a pair of pumps with kitten heels.
“Yes, thank you,” Chanda replied, as she slipped on the shoes. They fit perfectly. “It would be appreciated.”
Leung nodded. “I would have thought that Agent Glassman could help you locate your colleagues. Tracing someone by their smartphone number is a talent that OACET Agents claim to have.”
“Mrs. Leung, you’re better than that,” I said, grinning. Chanda glanced at me, so I added, “You know as well as I do that I can’t help Dr. Kelson,” I reminded Leung. “Not in any professional capacity as a representative of OACET. We have a strong policy against snooping around in foreign territory, even if we are only trespassing via band wave.”
“Perhaps you have received clearance from your own government,” Leung said.
“Perhaps,” I allowed. “Except OACET refuses to be used as our government’s surveillance device. We want to be trusted, and to do that, we must be transparent and play by the rules. If we fail in this, we fail as an organization.”
“That’s how it is?” Leung asked.
“Well,” I said, “that’s how it is…today.”
Leung nodded. “As I’ve told my employers, it’s a wise decision to make friends with OACET today, so we all can be sure we will be friends in the future.”
“I’m glad you took us out for drinks,” I said. “Opportunities to keep good friends are difficult to come by in this city.”
“I agree.” Leung pressed a button beside her. “They’re ready, Brian.”
The limo swept up to the curb. A moment later, the driver opened the door. Chanda and I looked out on an unfamiliar area of the city.
“It was a pleasure meeting you, Dr. Kelson.” Leung nodded to Chanda. “I wish I could be of help in recovering your dinosaur, but I believe you will hear from your colleagues very soon.
“Oh, Agent Glassman? Here,” Leung said, as she pressed a fifty-dollar bill into my hand. “Take Dr. Kelson out for coffee on me.”
I accepted the money with a nod, and asked, “Will I see you at the Embassy event next weekend?”
Leung brushed her long hair from her shoulders, sweeping it away in a salt-and-pepper curtain. As she did, I caught the hint of a pink tongue moving along her lips. “It’s on my schedule,” she said.
“Excellent,” I said. “I’ll be looking forward to it.”
We stepped out of the limo, and Brian shut the door behind us, closing Mrs. Leung away.
Chanda waited until the limousine has turned the corner before she asked, “What the fuck just happened?”
“We made polite conversation, and she promised to make sure your colleagues in China don’t suffer any personal or professional harm.” I said, as I looked around. “She said I need to take you for coffee. You see a coffee shop around here?”
“Coffee? What?” Chanda shook her head. “Josh, I’m confused. No. Confused doesn’t begin to describe it! I just learned the Chinese government has been spying on me, and I’m trying not to freak out about that. I don’t even know where we are!”
I reached out through
my implant and did a quick search for coffee shops. The closest one was halfway down the street—
“Josh!”
I turned and planted a soft kiss on Chanda’s lips. “We’re in the same city as we were this morning, wearing some very nice new clothes, and that was the best mimosa I’ve had in months. Oh, and Leung just told us where we should start looking if we want to locate your data.”
“Seriously?” she asked, her dark eyes going wide.
I grinned at her. “Seriously.”
She threw herself into my arms and gave me a kiss which sent shivers down my entire body. When she pulled away, she was shaking. “I was so worried,” she whispered. “You really think we can get it back?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted, as we started towards the coffee shop. “Mrs. Leung isn’t directly associated with the Chinese government. She’s a fixer who works behind the scenes, where their government can’t go without starting an international incident. By sending Mrs. Leung, the Chinese government is telling us they’re aware of the situation but they aren’t involved.”
“Are you sure they aren’t involved? She could’ve lied.”
“It’s possible. It’s even possible that someone in her government is running a job, and she doesn’t know about it. She would have been able to tell her version of the truth without lying to us.” I shrugged. “But she didn’t show up and pretend that she didn’t know anything about the theft. They’ve probably been monitoring you and your work pretty closely since you got back to D.C.”
“Is that legal?” We had reached the coffee shop. Chanda’s white-knuckled grip on the door handle looked strong enough to yank the door apart and use the metal handle as a weapon. “That can’t be legal! That…that isn’t legal!”
“On the bright side, they probably have a fairly recent copy of your data.”
“How is that…fuck it,” she said, and opened the door for us. “Yes. Bright side. A fixer for the Chinese government knows who I am and what I do and what size clothes I wear, the Chinese government itself is spying on me… Yes. Sure. Why not?!”
“There are no easy answers in international diplomacy,” I admitted. “If it makes you feel better, I’m being spied on all of the time.”
She glared at me before she went to place her order with the barista.
“Look at it this way: if I ever go missing, a lot of folks will be involved in the search and it’ll be over quickly.” I thought about that, and added, “Or it’ll be so clean that I’ll have disappeared forever.”
The barista looked up at me, rolled her eyes, and went back to making our drinks.
“All right,” I said, once Chanda had gotten enough coffee in her to calm down. “Let’s see why Mrs. Leung dropped us off in this neighborhood.”
We went over to the huge glass windows. I began to search the street, looking from sign to sign for something familiar.
“There,” Chanda said, pointing.
Directly across from us was a small apartment building. The ground floor appeared to be occupied by a non-profit organization and its fair-trade store. All of it looked extremely ordinary.
“What am I missing?” I asked.
“In the window,” Chanda said. “See those flags?”
I nodded. A string of brightly colored rectangular flags had been hung as decoration. “What about them?”
“Those are called Tibetan prayer flags,” she replied. “In the United States, they’re sometimes displayed as a symbol of resistance to the Chinese occupation of Tibet.”
“Seems like a good place to start,” I replied. “Except for that guy.”
Chanda immediately knew what I meant. The man sitting on the front steps had the look of a minimum-wage private security guard, and he was bored out of his skull. He’d be all too happy to find any excuse to throw us out of the building if we started asking nuisance questions.
“You just had to be famous, didn’t you?” Chanda grumbled.
“Come on,” I said, grinning. “You expect me to believe you can’t get rid of him?”
“Well…” She smirked. “…I didn’t say that.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
I stayed in the coffee shop as Chanda walked up to the corner, crossed the street, and started down the sidewalk which ran in front of the nonprofit’s building. I had been watching how Chanda carried herself for the last sixteen hours with deep appreciation, but now she had added something to her steps which was utterly captivating. The way she moved was less a woman out for a Saturday afternoon stroll and more a piece of art.
It wasn’t predatory. It was in no way predatory! If she was merely a predator, then that implied the man was prey, and nine out of ten times the predator misses their prey.
As she walked past the nonprofit, she smiled at the guard.
He stood and followed her as cleanly as if she had inserted a hook in his mouth.
I tossed my coffee cup in the trash, and got moving. Across the street, up the stairs, and into the small office. It had been divided into two sections, with a large gift shop on one side, and a reception area with a young woman behind an overladen desk on the other. The woman was in her early twenties, and her hair was clipped into a friendly blond pixie cut, with streaks of pink and purple here and there.
And her blue eyes were slightly touched with red.
“Can I help—oh!” She pushed herself to her feet and leaned over the desk. “Josh Glassman? You are Josh Glassman, right?”
“Yes.” I smiled at her, and offered my hand. “Nice to meet you, Ms…?”
“Call me Blue,” she said, clasping my hand as if it offered a connection with another world. “Like the color.”
“Hello, Blue,” I said, and brushed the fingers of my free hand against hers before I let her go. “A friend recommended I come down here and check out your organization. Can you tell me what you do?”
“Yes, yes, of course!” She came around the desk, eager to help. “We’re an international outreach agency…”
She kept going. It was a canned speech, and she had obviously given it enough times to overlook the holes in it. No nonprofit organization helped refugees, acted as a travel agent for Americans, and also functioned as a local gift shop for imported goods. As she gave me the tour, I idly wondered if the owners of this tiny scheme trafficked in illegal drugs, antiquities, or just the many straight-up variants of human misery.
I love people. Love them. Cannot live without them. But sometimes certain segments of humanity can go fuck themselves.
Now, to figure out if Blue was aware of her employer’s shenanigans, or if she was simply a pretty face that they had hired to sell the occasional scented candle.
I did something that some of the other folks in OACET’s management might consider a slight no-no…I sent a ping to her phone. As soon as her phone vibrated, she jumped and spun, and checked the display. I had used a fake number, so she stuffed it back into her pocket.
“Boyfriend?” I asked her.
“I…no,” she said quietly, rubbing the corners of her eyes. “Not a boyfriend.”
“Ah.” I smiled. “Want to post a selfie and show your friends what you’re up to today?”
Those eyes lit up. “Really?”
“Really,” I said, and bent at the knees so we’d be at the same height as she positioned her phone.
I wasn’t going to push it any further. Not when the poor woman had obviously just gone through a heavy heartbreak. We had already reached a point where she wouldn’t call the security guard when I started asking the questions that her employers didn’t want answered. But a few seconds after she sent the selfie out into cyberspace, she got a text. Her mouth fell open as she read it. “Asshole,” she whispered.
Then she grabbed me and started kissing me.
Oh well. I know when I’m needed.
I pulled her into my arms, and returned her kiss.
Her hands were small and fierce, fumbling at the buttons on my shirt like she was an actress in a bad movie and sh
e needed to get me naked as quickly as possible for the cameras. As she tore at the fabric, she dragged me to the back room, which was twice the size of the front, and full of filing cabinets and packing crates. Small pieces of ancient-looking clutter were everywhere, knick-knacks ripped a couple hundred years out of time. A massive wooden worktable in the center of the room was decently clear of everything except stacks of paper, and Blue swept these to the floor with one arm.
“Here,” she said, as she finally got my shirt off. “Here!”
She didn’t need anything slow, anything that would give her time to think about an ex-boyfriend who dealt in text messages, but I paused to ask, “Are you sure?”
She pushed me onto the table and started to yank my pants down.
I sighed quietly to myself, and resigned myself to one of those blowjobs, all rooting around and spit. A blowjob is never bad, and Blue seemed to be…enthusiastic…but there’s an enormous difference between enthusiasm, talent, and technique.
It was a relief when I realized the door to the back room had opened, and that Chanda was watching the process.
“Oh, honey,” she said to Blue, shaking her head.
Blue sat up, alarmed. “Who are you?”
“Chanda, meet Blue,” I said, propping myself up on my elbows. “Blue, meet Chanda.”
Over the girl’s head, Chanda mouthed, “Blue?”
I shrugged.
“Hello, Blue,” Chanda said. “Would you like to learn a few tricks that’ll make a man remember you until he’s on his deathbed?”
“She’s not lying,” I promised. “I’ll remember Chanda until I’m dead.” I thought about that for a few moments, and amended that to: “Probably long after I’m dead.”
“Mmmm,” Chanda purred, as she knelt on the table beside me. “You say the sweetest things.
“Tell me, Blue,” Chanda said to her, as she lifted my cock to her lips. “Do you have control over your gag reflex?”
The Dinosaur Heist Page 5