by Blake Banner
“I imagine so.” I gave a small laugh. “That’s a dangerous business!” I said. “A guy like you who’s a little bit awake could pick up a lot of useful gossip on the airwaves.”
He gave me a careful smile. “Dangerous is the word, sir. Gossip is a double-edged sword. You’re not wrong that there are clients who are willing to pay serious bucks for snippets of information. But you start playing that game and in no time at all you start losing people’s trust. And then you’re screwed, if you’ll forgive my French.”
“Sure, I get that. Trustworthiness is one of the five most valuable commodities. But it is, at the end of the day, a commodity that can be bought and sold. And a guy who knows how to work the market can choose his customers and sell them his loyalty and trustworthiness. Am I right?”
I was watching him carefully. There was only one thing I was really interested in right then, and it was whether he looked uncomfortable. He didn’t. He looked wary, but he didn’t look uncomfortable at all. He had been here before and he had negotiated these particular rocks with success.
He gave a small shrug with his eyebrows. “I guess that’s true, sir. For me personally, it would take a lot for me to betray a confidence, or something I had overheard from a customer. I’m no saint and I guess if the price was high enough… But the price would have to be very high, or it would have to be a matter of national security or something like that. It’s not just that I could lose my job, there is also the issue of self-respect, right?”
I nodded and tried to look sage while I did it. “I hear you.” I pointed at him like my hand was a gun. “And I like what I hear. National security is never more at risk than when it is in the hands of diplomats.”
He nodded, and there was a hint of resignation and obedience about it. “Yes sir.”
I leaned my backside against the desk that was up against the wall and folded my arms.
“Diplomats,” I said, “and big business interests, like the big pharma and petrochemical companies. I, personally, have seen senior management and CEOs of large multinationals, who would have sold their own mothers down the river for a lucrative contract, and these guys were already worth several million dollars apiece.” I gave a short, dry laugh and his eyes told me he really wanted to get back to his job. I ignored what his eyes said and drove on. “They would have sold their mothers, but in some cases they actually did sell their country down the river for huge payoffs from hostile nations. You know what line of work I’m in, kid?”
“I have no idea, sir, but I am guessing it is something patriotic.”
“You’re not wrong. You’re a bright kid. What’s your name?”
“Bobby, sir.”
“Well, Bobby, I won’t tell you what my job is because then I’d have to kill you…” I laughed noisily and he made a real effort to laugh with me. When I was done I made a real serious face and told him, “But you should know that I am involved in issues of national security and I am here precisely for what you observed, this hotel’s proximity to the United Nations. Now, I am well aware of how useful an ambitious young man like you, who cares about his country, can be. So I would like to make an ally of you…” I knew damned well that buttons in luxury hotels have high expectations and don’t work for peanuts. So I peeled another fifty bucks out of my wallet and handed it to him. “…and ask you, if you see or hear anything, anything at all, that you think might be of interest to me, let me know.”
I held up both hands and made a motion like I was slowing him down. “Now, I am not going to ask you to make an evaluation of intelligence and decide what is useful and what is not. That is not your brief, and it is not a skill I would expect you to have. You just give me anything that comes up concerning Heilong Li and Yang Dizhou: change of schedule, heightening of security, sudden change in his breakfast menu, a call girl who stayed the night…” I spread my hands. “You hear me, right?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And not only will you get to feel good about yourself, young man, but you will also find that Uncle Sam can be very generous when he is grateful.”
“I have nothing right now, sir. But I will keep my ear to the ground and let you know if I hear anything.”
“Addaboy.”
At the door he hesitated a moment and turned back to me.
“There is one thing, but I don’t know if it’s of any importance.”
I had my wallet halfway to my jacket pocket. I paused. “Let’s find out.”
“Well.” He made a face of uncertainty that was almost a wince. “We’re pretty used to a high level of security here at the Mandarin, as I’m sure you know, sir. But the setup in the Oriental Suite goes a little beyond what you would expect.”
“Yeah, how’s that?”
“Well, inhouse hotel security is pretty tight. We have the latest in alarm systems and video surveillance, plus security guards and detectives. Most people who are security conscious add to that a bodyguard and, or, a couple of men at the door.” He shrugged. “If you’re on the top floor of a Manhattan skyscraper, nobody’s going to come in through the window, right? Not unless it’s Ethan Hunt.”
“OK, so?”
“So Professor Li has two men on the outside of the door, two men on the inside of the door, plus his personal chauffeur and bodyguard, and then he has two men on the roof above his suite. And that is all in addition to the hotel’s own electronic security system, which is cutting edge.”
I thought about it a second, then nodded. “OK.”
His face told me he didn’t want me to miss the point so he went on.
“I mean, that’s a lot of security, right? But the vehicles he uses are part of the hotel’s own fleet. They’re top of the line and bulletproof glass, but I’m pretty sure he could get something more…”
I smiled. “I get it. It’s a good observation.” I pulled a C note from my wallet and handed it to him. “Anything else, keep me posted.”
“Of course, Mr. Winchester.”
The door closed and I sat a while with my ass against the desk staring at a point six inches above the floor, but seeing only Heilong Li’s two guards outside the door, two inside the door and two on the roof. And Ethan Hunt, what film was it? I shifted my gaze to the dark window, with the sparkling lights of the city outside the black glass, and tried to remember for a while.
It didn’t really matter. The important thing was the six guards, and where they were placed: two outside, two inside and two on the roof. I smiled to myself, then went and had another shower, and dressed for dinner.
At eight thirty I went down to the cocktail bar, stopping briefly for a chat with Bobby the buttons, and ordered myself a martini, dry. Just for the heck of it I told the barman I wanted it shaken, not stirred. He must have heard it before because he didn’t flinch. He just said, “Naturally, sir,” and went ahead and shook me a martini dry. By the time he’d finished I had located Heilong Li and Yang Dizhou. They were sitting at a table in the corner with two men and a woman, none of whom looked Chinese. The woman was in her forties, attractive, blonde, well-dressed in an expensive, dark blue suit with diamonds that appeared to be real around her neck and in her earlobes. Her eyes were a pale blue that looked dangerous and her makeup was discreet but effective. I figured that probably summed her up. She was quiet, watching, listening, holding a gin and tonic but not drinking it.
On her right was a big man, six two or three, running to fat. His head was big and enhanced by jowls. His eyes peered suspiciously from pouches and his large lips moved constantly, like he was savoring the air. I estimated his weight at an easy three hundred pounds. Even his thousand-dollar suit couldn’t make him look elegant. For all I knew, he might have had a beautiful soul, but he looked like a greedy, arrogant slob. Make that a greedy, arrogant, dangerous slob.
The third guy with them was in his sixties and you could see he worked out and ran his two miles every morning before breakfast. He was lean, well-dressed and wide awake. His gray hair had cost as much to cut as I’d spen
t on my handmade shoes. And his handmade shoes had probably cost as much as my suit. He had ruthless and predatory written all over him and I had a bad feeling that what was going down among cocktails at that table, among those five people, might have wide-reaching repercussions for a lot of other people, other people who could not afford thousand-dollar, handmade shoes.
As I pretended to read messages on my phone, a waiter from the restaurant entered the bar, approached Heilong Li and bent to mutter in his ear. Li’s only acknowledgment was a brief nod. Then he smiled at his guests and said something, and they all rose and left the bar.
Chapter Four
I sat at a table close enough so I could eavesdrop, but far enough away to be inconspicuous. I ordered a salmon, beetroot and avocado salad to start with, with a glass of dry Manzanilla, and a T-bone steak with a half bottle of claret which I told the wine waiter to recommend for me. While I waited I had another martini and sat and pretended to read The Glass Key, while I listened carefully to my prey.
For a moment I was back in the hills above Sulfur Springs, lying motionless in the shadows of the pines, smelling, watching, listening, while the bull elk grazed peacefully unaware that death was grazing with him in the meadow.
But it was a moment, no more, and I put the thought out of my mind. You can’t think that way when you’re putting together a hit. Your thinking has to be here, and now.
Heilong Li was doing most of the talking. He had the calm authority and arrogance that comes with believing you are invulnerable. His English was almost accent free. He was saying:
“What we can offer you is a license limited by territory. And the territory must be within the geographical and jurisdictional limits of the United States. You are free to set your own price, but CF Inc. takes a cut of between ten and twenty percent. The higher your price, the higher the percentage, with fifteen percent falling somewhere in the mid range.”
The fat guy laughed noisily and drained his cocktail. As he set his empty glass down on the table he belched. “And China comes in playing hardball. You’re dreaming and you know it. For starters, why the hell should you limit us geographically? Why the hell shouldn’t we have Western Europe too? We can distribute there as easily as anybody. In the second place, fifteen percent, kiss my sweet fanny. You’ll take seven percent and be grateful we don’t just go right ahead and develop our own vaccine.”
Heilong Li and Yang Dizhou exchanged a few inscrutable words, and though they were expressionless and incomprehensible, the contempt was palpable. Once he’d allowed the fat guy to palpate it for a while he turned to him and spoke.
“Mr. Gutermann, we are of course delighted to entertain you as our guest. However, our purpose tonight is to speak about business, and the time we have at our disposal is limited…”
He left the words hanging and smiled amiably as he watched Gutermann’s cheeks flush red. The woman stepped in by rattling the ice in her glass and, before sipping, then said, “Mr. Heilong, Peter raises a reasonable point as far as I can see. Our resources are among the best in the world. There is nothing to stop us developing a vaccine ourselves, with no need to pay what are, after all, exorbitant license fees.”
Heilong Li screwed up his face in what turned out to be a silent laugh.
“Exorbitant. My English nanny used to say, ‘Is as does!’ ‘Is as does!’ I would say to her, ‘Nanny! That is not fair!’ She would reply, ‘Fair is as fair does!’ I would complain, ‘Nanny! This food is not good!’ She would reply, ‘Good is as good does!’ I never did know what it meant! Then, one day, after she was dead, I realized what it meant…” He leaned forward, leering at the woman. “You know what it meant, Ms. Goldbloom? It meant, ‘I have the power, so fuck you!’”
His laughter was shrill and startling, like the spasmodic shrieking of a parrot in a tropical rainforest. In a curious echo to Gutermann’s reaction, Ms. Goldbloom’s cheeks colored a delicate pink. The third guest’s voice was quiet and measured.
“Don’t you think you’re overstating the case, Mr. Heilong? After all…”
But Heilong Li was already shaking his head, holding out the palm of his left hand in front of the man’s face in a bizarre, “talk to the hand” gesture.
“Please, Mr. Browne, let’s not waste any more time. The big issue here, which you are carefully trying to ignore, is the fact that I can develop my products a thousand times more quickly than you, because I have experimental resources that you have not. I have the vaccine, and I know, as you know, that it will take you years to develop it to a point where you can get FDA approval and start marketing it. So what you need to be asking yourselves is not how much money will you lose with my licensing agreement, but how much will you lose if you don’t jump on the wagon right now? It is a simple choice. You have to choose between losing fifteen percent and losing one hundred percent.” He gave another one of his parrot shrieks. “We can sit here and pretend to argue, but you know that in the end either you accept my terms, or somebody else does.”
Two waiters approached my table. One carried my salmon and avocado salad, the other a chilled glass and a bottle of Manzanilla. He set down the glass, poured and went away. Meanwhile a gang of waiters had descended on Heilong Li’s table and the conversation had died away.
I carefully set my bookmark in my book, smelled and sipped my wine and set to on the salmon, then returned to reading while I chewed and sipped. By the time I had got halfway down the page there was a pop and a moment later the flock of waiters had left and the table of five was tucking into a bottle of Pol Roger and five dozen oysters. They ate in silence and I phased out everybody else in the dining room until all I could hear was the clatter of shells on china, the desultory slurp of oysters being sucked from those shells and the clink of crystal flutes.
I ate too. If camouflage in the mountains was remaining motionless in the shade and undergrowth, here it was eating and drinking as one of the herd. Eventually, Mr. Browne leaned back in his chair and dabbed his mouth with his handkerchief.
“We are familiar with your…,” he hesitated a moment, then gave a small shrug before picking up his glass, “your exceptional facilities, Li. And I for one am not going to pretend that we have anything comparable on this side of the Pacific. I will say, however, that I am by no means sure the FDA will approve your vaccine…”
Li didn’t let him finish. He restrained a splutter of amusement into his champagne flute and waved his left hand at Browne across the table.
“My dear Browne, please, that is the least of your worries. The FDA will approve it. The president himself will take care of that.”
Browne arched an eyebrow at him. “Yours or ours?”
Li said something to Yang Dizhou in Chinese and they both laughed. Shortly after that three lobsters were brought to the table along with two more bottles of champagne. My plate and glass were cleared away and my T-bone steak was delivered with a bottle of La Fleur de Petrus, Pomerol, 2014, which he had opened earlier to allow it to breathe. He poured me half an inch which I swirled around like I knew what I was doing, sipped, thought about it and nodded. He poured me another two inches, bowed and went away on quick, silent feet.
I stroked the T-bone with my knife and it opened up, succulent and slightly bloody on the plate. It was exquisite and I sat back to savor it and the wine while Li started to talk again.
“It is very rare, Browne, very rare, that a person should find himself completely out of options.” He nodded a few times. “But it happens. The man who falls out of a window twenty stories above the ground is out of options. The woman who is in the path of a high-velocity bullet is out of options. If that asteroid the doomsayers are always talking about ever shows up, we will all be out of options.” He laughed, but nobody else at the table did. “The fact is that sometimes karma catches up with us and becomes fate, destiny, whatever you want to call it. And when that happens, we run out of options. This…” He opened his hands like he was opening a large book and gestured at them all around the table
. “This is where you are at right now. You are not completely out of options, not exactly. But you have only two options left. Only two. They are, accept my terms, or walk away.”
Gutermann had been lost in his own fat world of sloppy, oral delight, chewing and sucking on hunks of lobster which he held with short, conical fingers. Now he picked up his napkin and wiped his face with it.
“And if we walk away?”
Li shrugged. “It makes no difference to me. I have cornered the market. Your antitrust legislation does not affect me. You are convenient to me so that I can break into the North American market, but if you do not like my terms somebody else will.” He suddenly leaned back and let out his strange, parrot-like laugh again. “Yesterday Hillary was on the phone to me, begging for a piece of this action.” The laughter faded from his face and he reached for another piece of lobster. “But they are a spent force. I would rather work with you. So I offer you this opportunity. However, if you will not work with me, she will.”
It was the woman, Goldbloom, who answered. She sighed loudly and shook her head. “There’s only one thing I hate more than getting screwed over, and that’s wasting time. That’s what we’re doing here right now. I don’t know if we are out of options, but I am damn clear what our best option is. We will take over distribution of your vaccine in the USA and Canada, on your terms, but there is one condition I will impose, and this is not negotiable.”
Li didn’t answer, but he looked at her with the kind of inscrutable expression that usually precedes a great deal of pain. She held his gaze for a count of three while she sipped her champagne. Then she told him what her condition was.
“We need access to your testing labs.”
“No.”
“Think long term, Li. Make long movies in your head. You have the upper hand today in this negotiation, but you know that down the line, someday, you will need our good will. We need access to your testing fields, and that is the condition. Otherwise I will personally make sure the FDA does not approve your vaccine. Take it or leave it.”