When she arrived, she left instructions that she was not to be disturbed and went directly upstairs to the second-floor study overlooking the wintry garden out back. Locking herself in, she kicked off her shoes, lit the stacked logs in the fireplace, and absorbedly poured herself a splash of brandy. Not to drink; the glass was a mere prop. Somehow, simply cupping the snifter in her hands seemed oddly reassuring, an end in itself. Gave her something to do with her hands besides fidget.
She sank into an easy chair by the fire, lost in deep thought.
'Doesn't really change things.'
Sir Ian's words replayed themselves in her head like an ominous recording.
The hell it doesn't! she thought angrily, exhaling a long, shuddering growl. What do they take me for? It changes everything!
She stared into the cheerfully crackling flames. Despite the heat, she couldn't seem to get warm, and kept shivering. It was impossible to shake the sense of chill dread and foreboding that engulfed her.
'Terms're the same . . . Time comes, we'll work on rescheduling.'
She desperately wanted to believe that, but some sixth sense, an intuition she'd long learned to trust, told her to beware. Pan Pacific was an unknown element; she'd never dealt with them before. Hell, before today she'd never even heard of them!
Know Thine Enemy. It was the first rule of business.
Dorothy-Anne made a mental note to learn what she could about Pan Pacific. She'd get Derek Fleetwood on it right away.
Meanwhile . . .
She sighed heavily. Meanwhile, a fifty-million-dollar payment was due in May. And the whopper—the notes for $750 million—came due on the twenty-first of August.
In exactly two hundred and fifty-two days.
What if, at that time, Pan Pacific didn't reschedule the loans? What if, despite Sir Ian's vague assurance, they exercised their right and demanded the $750 million in full? What then?
But Dorothy-Anne knew the answer to that. I'd be up shit's creek. The Hale Company was her collateral. I'd lose everything.
Suddenly a steely resolve came into her eyes.
No. She wouldn't lose everything—for the simple reason that she could not, would not, must not stand by and let that happen! The Hale Company was more than just a corporation. It was her great-grandmother's legacy.
Through sheer determination and strength, Elizabeth-Anne Hale had built the company from a single motel into a globe-girdling giant. No war nor family calamity nor outside enemies had ever been allowed to breach its defenses.
Elizabeth-Anne hadn't permitted it. She had been a strong leader.
I have to be just as strong, Dorothy-Anne told herself. Only strength will see me through this crisis. I've got to fight!
She squared her shoulders.
And I shall fight—and fight to win! No one was going to take her great-grandmother's legacy—nor her own children's—away from them! No one!
August twenty-first . . .
Two hundred and fifty-two days . . .
She was aware of a soft but constant internal ticking, as though the timer on a bomb had been activated.
And it had been.
The countdown had begun.
BOOK TWO
THE HOUNDS OF SPRING
27
Dr. Wo Sheng Yi, Director of Bacteriology, was in his cinder block laboratory burning the midnight oil. As a department head who preferred lab work over paper pushing and budget scrounging, this was especially precious time, and he always tried to make the most of it.
But try as he might, he was for once unable to concentrate on the microorganisms to which he had devoted his life's work.
Finally, resigning himself to the fact that his personal demons were hampering his thought processes, he switched off his electronic microscope, took off the black-framed glasses that made him look like I. M. Pei, and massaged the red impressions they had left on the bridge of his nose.
Then he just sat there, gazing around abstractedly, as if he had suddenly been transported from the familiarity of his lab to some utterly alien environment.
Which, in a way, he had.
It was astonishing, he thought, truly astonishing and awesomely frightening how quickly —how obscenely suddenly! —the carpet of one's life could be yanked out from under one's feet.
Dr. Wo Sheng Yi was no stranger to upheaval. Indeed, since his birth in Shanghai, forty-eight years earlier, he had suffered more than his fair share of turmoil.
But now Dr. Wo Sheng Yi was living the American Dream, or had thought he was, until a short time ago when a request—no, a demand— had come.
Whatever the reason, his nephew, 'Little' Wo, could not go through official channels to leave China, nor could he wait for the requisite paperwork. The message had been quite clear on that point. It had stressed urgency; had emphasized that it was a matter of life—Wo hugged himself with his arms—and death.
He quailed at the undertaking demanded of him, felt outrage at the very idea. But what choice did he have? Like it or not, he had to do it, consequences be damned.
And the smugglers of human cargo, with whom the underground banker in New York had put him in contact, were determined to turn him into no less than a sneak and a thief and a traitor to his noble profession. They refused to accept money for Little Wo's passage, had demanded bacteria from the CDC's vast stock of frozen specimens instead.
Bacteria!
Common bacteria, Dr. Wo, nothing contagious . . . The smuggler's words. A calm voice on the telephone, nobody he'd ever met—just salmonella, nothing exotic or ordinarily life-threatening . . .
And they wanted it tonight. Tonight! Little Wo's safe passage in exchange for a disease.
Wo slumped in his government-issue chair. God help me, he thought queasily, hugging his stomach even tighter. God have mercy on my soul. . .
'Hey, Doc? Doc!
With a start, Wo snapped back to the blurry present. He looked up and blinked owlishly, then slipped his thick glasses back on.
The fog focused, and he seemed surprised to find himself in the familiar confines of his office, and startled to see Dottie Stoller standing in the open doorway.
Dottie was the tropical disease whiz of his department, a petite, gamine woman with an Audrey Hepburn neck and silver hair snipped in a youthful pageboy. You had to get up close before you realized she was in her sixties.
'What's the matter, Doc?' she cracked. 'Clarice finally come to her senses and throw you out? Or don't you realize what time it is?'
'Time?' Wo looked bewildered.
He was aware of himself as all clumsiness and guilt. What was it with him? Surely she couldn't miss his nervousness, his uncharacteristic furtiveness and the smell of his fear?
Consciously avoiding her eyes, he quickly consulted the Swatch watch on his wrist. A Christmas gift from his youngest daughter. It was vervy and with-it—and made him feel each of his forty-eight years, but he wore it daily. 10:26.
'Goodness!' he murmured. 'How did it get so late?'
He decided he'd better get moving if he was to do what he must do.
'See you tomorrow.' Dottie waved, disappeared, then poked her head back around the door frame. 'And don't forget to go home!'
He nodded, then sat there a moment and listened. The building was quiet. He could hear its sounds—the creaks of its joints, the hum of the overhead fluorescents, the bell of the elevator Dottie had summoned.
Sighing to himself, he rolled back his chair and pushed himself reluctantly to his feet. It was now or never.
Now . . .
And sighing out misery, Dr. Wo Sheng Yi, world-renowned researcher and director of the CDC's Bacteriology Department, left his office and trudged down the worn linoleum hallway, his destination the maximum containment lab.
It's only a bacterium, he told himself, locking a mental door on all but the immediate present. It's merely salmonella, which is rarely fatal.
He nodded to himself. He was reaching, yes. But he needed the balm of a placebo.
&nb
sp; It's not as if they'd demanded something truly lethal, a virus, for instance.
He'd never have gone for that. God, no!
'Hey, Doc,' Sonny Fong said amiably. 'Thanks for the present.'
Dr. Wo Sheng Yi stood silent and motionless on the dark country road.
Sonny placed the container in his car, then drew his gun. 'Now, Doc,' he said, 'get back in your car. You're going for a little ride.'
Three hours later, an encrypted E-mail message streaked its way to the other side of the world. Decoded in Kuo Fong's Italianate villa high above Hong Kong, it read:
Greetings, most honorable fifth cousin twice removed. I am honored to report that I am in possession of the product we required. My business here is completed and our local employee has received his severance package. Due to airline security baggage checks, I am driving to my destination by car. I estimate my travel time shall take four to five days. I will confirm the success of my humble endeavor upon completion. May the gods of fortune attend you. Your dutiful fifth cousin twice removed.
28
The calendar said spring. The weather said winter.
Flurries of snowflakes swirled in the air as the smartly uniformed guard waved the chauffeured black Infiniti through the gates.
With a burst of speed the car swept smoothly along the landscaped drive, its destination the red brick building set atop a slight incline so that it dominated the surrounding acres and appeared to lord it over the vast parking lot.
Built a mere eight years earlier of weathered antique bricks, the imposing, three-story facade with its octagonal, weathervaned cupola looked as if it had been uprooted from colonial Williamsburg and set down here, intact, a half hour's commute from midtown Manhattan, in White Plains.
In reality, it was the world headquarters of the Hale Companies, the parent corporation of Hale Hotels, and the brain center of a polyglot empire whose various subsidiaries had tentacles in every conceivable service industry.
Each red brick building had its own particular function. One was devoted exclusively to managing the hotel chain; another housed the offices of Hale Lines, the corporation's seventeen-ship luxury cruise line; yet a third contained the administrative staff of the worldwide Vacation Village resorts. Others functioned as the headquarters of the Hale Companies' vacation time shares program, or marketed specific services such as catered in-flight meals for airlines, or cleaning crews for independently owned hotels. There was even a hotel, motel, and restaurant management school.
And then there was the nerve center for FLASH, the Hale Companies' airline, hotel, and rental car reservations system—the most extensively used hookup of its kind in the world.
All told, each subsidiary was a billion-dollar-a-year industry in and of itself. And each was accountable to one person: the passenger in the Infiniti.
A spread like this had never been necessary in Great-Granny's day, Dorothy-Anne was thinking. Seated in the plush rear seat of the car, she stared out at the beautiful complex. Back then two floors of a high-rise office building at Park Avenue and Fifty-first Street had sufficed. But that was back then, and this was now. Times had changed, and the Hale Companies had had to change with them.
And will keep on changing, Dorothy-Anne thought, recognizing flexibility and swift adaptation as her greatest assets. If only they could help me now . . .
The main building's reception area was like the lobby of a cozy hotel, with comfortable sofas and club chairs, a fire in the grate, and a receptionist behind the desk. Security guards in well-cut suits frowned at clusters of reporters who had disregarded their suggestions and had decided to camp out on the sofas, hoping to catch Dorothy-Anne upon arrival.
They could have saved themselves the bother. Dorothy-Anne wasn't using the lobby. Her Infiniti drove around the back of the building, then dipped down into an underground parking garage, where a uniformed guard was waiting.
Here a smaller, private elevator required the use of a special key. It was to this that Dorothy-Anne, briefcase in hand and wearing a long, black, open cashmere coat, made a rapid beeline. Slowing but not stopping, she greeted the guard by name, then swept into the elevator, the door to which he had unlocked and was holding open.
He pushed it smartly shut, and the press of a button whisked her up, past the lobby, to the second floor and the privacy of her inner office, the elevator having been designed expressly for this purpose, to bypass her staff and impatient visitors in general, and members of the press in particular.
The atmosphere of Dorothy-Anne's spacious inner office was welcomingly warm and deliberately cozy, as unoffice-like and anti-technoid as a workplace could possibly be, so that upon entering she would usually feel immediately and comfortably at home. In here it was perpetually, unseasonably summery, as if to give lie to the dervishes of snow swirling on the other side of the windows.
'Morning,' Venetia, sipping from a demitasse, called crisply from a sofa across the room.
Dorothy-Anne looked over at her. 'I notice you left off the 'Good,' ' she observed wryly, tugging at the fingers of her black kid gloves.
'Yes, child. That is because there's nothing good about it. This girl is drowning in a public relations trauma. Yes. I am seriously distressed.'
Dorothy-Anne whirled a finger at one of a pair of Karelian birch armchairs in front of her rosewood desk. Then, while Venetia, demitasse and saucer in hand, moved forward to take the indicated chair, Dorothy- Anne prowled restlessly, like an agitated, fault-finding hostess inspecting her premises before a party.
Normally she would have drawn delight from this sprawling room, been cheered by its eclectic exuberance.
Not for her the icy perfection of the sleek executive suite. On the contrary. Floral chintz from Lee Jofa covered walls and sofas and framed the windows in lush folds. Underfoot, the wall-to-wall sisal was scattered with a profusion of nineteenth-century needlepoint rugs. A convivial fire fluttered in the marble fireplace, morocco-bound volumes filled the built- in bookcases to bursting, and lamps shaded in green silk cast soft pools of light.
Silver-framed photographs abounded. They were tucked among the shelves and scattered atop beautifully veneered tables piled with books and bibelots—photographs of herself with presidents, prime ministers, and celebrities; of the children at various ages; the children with Freddie; and most painful of all, the snapshots of herself with him.
As if to counteract the painful memories, the air was hypnotically fragrant: terra-cotta pots of blooming paperwhites had been placed here, massive vases with branches of flowering quince there, little beakers of tightly bunched roses everywhere.
Neoclassical chairs, casually flung cashmere shawls, framed floral still-lifes, the odd Moroccan table inlaid with bone—everything had been arranged with a wizard's studied haphazardness, lending the office that often emulated but rarely successful English country house air, so easy and reassuring that all it lacked was the requisite brace of dogs napping in front of the fire.
Indeed, the only concessions to this last decade of the twentieth century were the laptop computer and the multiline telephone on the graceful Regency desk; the fax machine tucked discreetly out of sight; and an executive's best friend—an ergonomic monstrosity of a high-backed, leather-upholstered swiveling chairman of the universe armchair.
It was to this that Dorothy-Anne gravitated after her circumference of the room. 'So,' she murmured, standing there, hands clutching the chair back while she stared off into space. 'I take it this outbreak's genuine.'
'Just like the outbreak of Legionnaires' disease back in December, the only differences being the bacteria and the location.' Venetia, seated on the Russian armchair, put down her cup and saucer and nodded. 'The Federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention calls it, and I quote, 'symptoms of salmonella poisoning.' The four private, independent labs we've consulted concur—except they left off the 'symptoms of.' ' Her voice gentled. 'Baby, it's the real McCoy, all right. Two hundred and forty-nine cases, all guests at the Hale
Hotel and Beach Resort in Huatulco, Mexico.'
'Damn!' Dorothy-Anne shoved the chair aside and slammed a hand down on her desk. 'How could someth—' She broke off and looked up as the door to the outer office opened.
Cecilia Rosen came marching in with a silver tray of freshly brewed cappuccino, grapefruit juice, and a plate of tiny, fat-free Danish. She nudged the door shut with a practiced cock of her hips. 'Don't let me spoil the fun,' she said dryly.
Rail thin, unflappable, and severely chic without trying, Cecilia Rosen was on the other side of fifty, and had spent a third of her adult life as Dorothy-Anne's personal secretary. 'A secretary of the old school,' she'd sniff proudly, head held high, whenever confronted by the lesser executives' legions of 'administrative assistants' or self-proclaimed 'associates.'
'Better dig in,' she advised now, setting the tray on the desk. 'You'll need that energy boost.' She shot Dorothy-Anne a significant look. 'But I wouldn't tarry over breakfast too long. The conference room is packed, and let me tell you, those poison pens are poised.'
'And a good morning to you, too,' Dorothy-Anne said sourly.
'What's good about it?' Cecilia retorted. 'This office is the only oasis of calm in this entire complex.'
'Is it now?'
'Try being Out There.' Cecilia pointed her chin at the door. 'From the way everyone's reacting, you'd think World War Three had been declared. The phones are ringing off the hook. If it's not the CDC, it's reporters. And if it's not them, it's attorneys, or relatives of the sick, or travel agents or tour operators canceling in droves—and that's not taking the crank callers into account. Everybody and his brother is flooding the switchboard.'
'Just like back in December,' Venetia muttered quietly.
'Why, yes!' Cecilia's eyes widened perceptibly. 'Come to think of it, it is almost an identical replay of Singapore!'
Dorothy-Anne stared at her. 'Too identical, perhaps?' she voiced aloud, tapping her lips thoughtfully with an index finger. 'I wonder . . . '
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