The last thing he saw was a photo of Evan Harmon, dated two years earlier. It showed Evan playing in the yearly Hamptons celebrity softball game. The game was played every July in East Hampton. Writers, artists, musicians, and rich people who had muscled into the celebrity crowd got together to raise money for medical research into leukemia. Each year the game raised about fifty thousand dollars, but it had become a competitive sports event. The rich and famous slid hard and ran fast, and the occasional fight even broke out over an umpire's call. The photo showed Evan at home plate, swinging at a pitch. His stance was good, his balance looked professional. He looked like an athlete. Most of all he looked alive.
Justin didn't feel great about it, but he also ran a search on Abby Harmon. Most of the clippings had to do with Abby's impact on the social scene-raising money for charities, being seen late at night in clubs without Evan but with some rich or famous tabloid star, hosting politicians busy raising money and wooing votes in the Hamptons or in Manhattan. He knew some of her history but read carefully what was on the screen. He knew the reason for his scrutiny, and he felt a little guilty about it-he wanted to see how much of what she'd told him of her past jibed with what was on the record in front of him. He told himself that he was just looking to verify that she'd been honest with him about the past as a way of justifying his trust in the truthfulness of her version of the previous night's events. But somehow that didn't make him feel a whole lot less guilty.
As he read, he nodded, pleased, because there was nothing in print that went against what she'd told him of her history. Abigail Marbury had grown up in Chicago and had come from money. Her family probably had more money than the Harmons but not nearly the same social standing. Abigail's father had started as a salesman, working the floor of a small store that sold household appliances. The owners were elderly and no longer interested in increasing their fortune so, after a few years, they sold the store to Regis Marbury and happily retired. Regis was anything but satisfied with his lot. Aggressive and savvy and educated about the latest advancements in the field, he made a minor name change and turned one Appliance Heaven store into a string of Heaven Hardware outlets. It took him a little over a decade to have the biggest hardware chain in the Midwest. It took him two years after that to have a massive coronary and drop dead at the blue-ribbon opening of his latest store in St. Louis. He was forty-nine years old when he died; his only daughter was seventeen. Abigail tried college after her father's death, the University of Michigan, but lasted only two years before she dropped out and came to New York City. She was beautiful and adventurous and didn't have much trouble getting work as a model. She spent those years doing drugs and hanging out with rock stars and actors and getting photographed in every hot spot imaginable. Justin and she had talked about those days because she'd been reminiscing with a mixture of fondness and distaste. He'd asked her how she could have spent so much time doing little but fucking and drugging and being mindless. She'd looked up at him and said, "I liked fucking and drugging and being mindless. I still like it," and Justin had to agree that it wasn't all bad. But then he said, "But that's all you were doing," and she said, "I know. It's why I stopped. My life got boring. My friends got boring." The way she said it-a distance and coldness in her eyes and voice-made Justin wonder when it would be that she looked at him and said, "You bore me now, too." He decided that she probably would say that to him at some point. And he also decided he didn't really care; he didn't bore her now and that was fine with him.
The material on her marriage to Evan was fairly standard: the ceremony was tabloid fodder and the honeymoon was bliss, and Justin knew from their talks that within six months they were both having affairs and going their own separate ways. Evan Harmon and Abigail Marbury never seemed to actually be in love with each other. They'd crossed paths at a moment when both were bored with the lives they were leading and both thought the other person would provide some combination of excitement and stability. Neither happened. But neither did divorce. It was easier to stay together. And Abby told him once that, no matter the arena or the situation, she and her husband were both people who tended to do whatever was easiest.
Remembering that conversation made him feel on edge. Sometimes people thought that murder was easy.
Justin closed out the windows on Abby and moved on to Evan's father. There were probably a thousand pages of available material on Herbert Randolph Harmon. Justin printed up just some of the highlights. H. R., as he was often referred to, had used his family connections-his wife's money and his father-in-law's business, a leather tannery that he ran after the father-in-law's retirement-to become both wealthy and a political force in New England. He had never been perceived as being interested in the public at large or being interested, in fact, in anything but adding to his own wealth and prestige, but he surprised everyone who knew him when he turned thirty-five and ran for the New Hampshire congressional seat being vacated by the Republican who'd held it for eighteen years. H. R. served two terms in Congress, neither distinguishing himself nor embarrassing himself, then his higher aspirations took over and he ran for the Senate. It was a close race and, in the end, one that turned bitter and nasty. What public reputation H. R. had was largely based on his seemingly unshakable decency and civility. But when it looked as if he was going to lose the election, he had no compunction about diving into the political sewer. Or, rather, getting his handlers to dive in for him and take care of the dirty work. The tough-guy strategy backfired, however. As the campaign grew mean, H. R.'s jovial facade crumpled and a nastier foundation was exposed. That didn't sit well with voters. It also exacerbated the fact that underneath that facade was very little substance, at least when it came to issues that mattered with the voters. The voting was close, but H. R. lost the election. As 1982 ended, at age forty-seven, he was back in the private sector, but it didn't take long for him to become one of those hard-to-define political hangers-on. For years he had no real connection to Washington other than his ability to rouse other rich political hangers-on and spur them into financial action. He supported conservative candidates who came up to campaign in his state; raised money for national figures; began to be quoted in local newspapers and then national magazines, espousing conservative causes; and eventually emerged as a party spokesperson. By the mid-eighties he was back in the inner circle and in 1985 was appointed the U.S. representative to the United Nations. For three years he threw elegant parties and was briefed on the politics of many countries he'd previously never heard of, and then in 1988 became the president's choice for secretary of commerce. His main order of business was helping to develop trade relations with China, which he did efficiently and seamlessly. In 1992, when his party was voted out of office, H. R. returned to the business world. He was lured to Wall Street by Lincoln Berdon, the venerable head of the even more venerable firm of Rockworth and Williams-there it was again, Justin noted-which is where H. R. was ensconced for most of the next decade, his wealth quickly soaring to another level. While he was reading, Justin couldn't help but think of John Huston's line in Chinatown, about buildings, whores, and millionaires all becoming respectable when they get old.
In 2001, H. R. Harmon left his cozy corner office and became the U.S. ambassador to China. In 2003, while he was in Beijing, his wife, Patricia-Evan's mother-died. She succumbed to a several-year battle with cancer at a Boston hospital. H. R. had not seen her in four months. He returned to Boston for the funeral, stayed three days, went back to China.
Herbert Harmon stayed in his ambassadorial position until mid-2005, when he suffered a minor heart attack. And thus ended his political career and globe-trotting ways. Since the attack, he'd been based in New York City and been a consultant for his son's hedge fund company, Ascension. His name stopped appearing in the papers on a regular basis. His face stopped showing up on television interviews. The only thing he seemed to do consistently was play golf. Every afternoon, weather permitting, at his Westchester country club, he teed off at 4 p.m. The time
rarely varied because he was both punctual and a creature of habit and because the course was empty then. Sometimes he would take a business associate, sometimes a friend. But mostly he went by himself. H. R. Harmon didn't like to play with friends. He liked to play alone, with just a caddy. It's easier to cheat, Justin thought, if the only person watching you is someone you're paying to walk along beside you.
And that, Justin decided, was all he was going to learn that morning. He didn't know exactly where he was headed, but he had some names and places with which to start. And he had a few patterns. They were vague and tenuous at best, but they were there. Now he just had to figure out what they meant.
At 6:30 a.m., Justin Westwood left his computer and stretched out on the living room couch. At 6:35 he was sound asleep. He stayed asleep for all of twenty-five minutes. As tired as he was, he couldn't ignore the urgent ringing of his telephone. And at 7 a.m., when he stumbled back toward the small table that served as his desk and spoke to the person on the other end of the line, he wasn't tired anymore. He was, in fact, as wide awake as he could be.
6
Li Ling waited in the shadows without moving.
It was not difficult for her to wait. She had long ago been trained to view time as something that could be mastered. That was unimportant. Time was something that, for her, did not really exist except as a way to put chains around anyone weak enough to bend to its will.
It was also easy for her to stay completely still. The position was called Silent Oak. They had taught it to her when she was three years old. It had been torture to remain so unbending at such a young age. Her tiny body had wanted to wiggle and squirm and run free. But with every little spasm, every minute tic, came punishment. By the age of five, she could remain perfectly rigid for four hours at a time. At seven, she knew she could stand without moving all day and night if need be. When she reached the age of ten there was no longer even a thought of movement or of freedom. Restriction was freedom by then. Freedom from her body. For with her training came the knowledge that the body was merely a tool of the brain. It was there to do what it was told. By itself it could feel nothing: no pleasure, no discomfort, no pain. It felt only what she decided it would feel.
She had worked with her master before she could even walk. He taught her many variations of the martial arts, always making sure she understood that it was indeed art she was learning to create. The art of movement. The art of power. The art of violence. The ultimate art of both life and death.
The discipline she gravitated toward was shin yi, for she loved its short, precise moves. There was no waste of motion or energy and no room for error. Much of its art was in knowing when not to move. It reinforced what she had, nearly from the beginning of her life, instinctively understood: in stillness there was also beauty. And it was beauty, above all, that she learned to crave. Beauty in any form. Beauty that could match her own.
She had known that her appearance was not ordinary from the time she was able to stand so silent and unmoving. She saw the looks in men's eyes when they stared at her. In women's eyes, too. The eyes of others revealed all: desire, envy, submission, rage. She saw all that when people looked at her. She saw it and she began to crave it the way she did beauty. She wanted all of it.
As she grew older, her form became even more exquisite. Her body lengthened and became lithe and hard. Her fingers could flutter like graceful butterflies, her hair was thick and dark and seemed alive in its own movements. Her skin was smooth and unblemished. Her eyes-light brown-were captivating, capable of overwhelming and luring others into her lair as irresistibly as any siren, capable, too, of cruelly dismissing anyone who dared to venture, unwanted, into that same lair. As she went through her teens, her expertise in shin yi became even greater. She exalted in the most difficult moves: The Pouncing Lion, The Twisting Grasshopper, The Stinging Wasp. She mastered it all. Everything she touched, everything she tried, she mastered. And when her own master decided that she had become arrogant, that she was not in proper control of her pride and her emotions, she mastered him, too. She remembered the movement she used to break his spine: it was her own creation, her first work of original art, and she named it Shattering Glass. She could still see the look of surprise on his face. And she could still conjure up the enormous feeling of pleasure it gave her when he pleaded silently for her to end his pain by ending his life. She obeyed him one final time. A quick jab: The Kiss of the Scorpion.
No, Silent Oak was not difficult at all. Not for her.
She was Li Ling.
She could do anything.
Several hours before dawn was due to break, she felt the breeze rustle past her. She smiled-and only her lips moved; even her forehead did not crease-because she knew it was not the breeze. It was another perfect and beautiful form of nature. It was Togo.
Ling had not seen him, but she had felt his presence. He would not be seen unless he wanted to be seen. Togo lived in the shadows. He moved as if carried by air. So she waited, knowingly, confidently, to see how he would reveal himself. And then the shadows moved and he appeared before her, as if created from a sliver of smoke.
She looked into his eyes. There was no need for words. They did not communicate with words. They communicated with their souls. Sometimes with their bodies. Always with love. But rarely with words.
They had been trained together. Neither ever knew their parents or where they had come from or why they had been picked for such an honor. They were taught that the past did not matter. Nor did the future. All that mattered was the present and their training and their obedience. When she was a child, she thought of Togo as her brother, but when she turned fourteen, she looked at him as if seeing him for the first time and realized he was as beautiful as she was and as well trained. Their minds had been as one for many years, and then one day she no longer thought of him as a brother and their bodies joined together as well. She loved Togo fully and completely; he was the only person in the world to whom she was truly attached. Sometimes the mere thought of him caused an onrush of desire that could make her dizzy. At night they would lie together naked, entwined, and he would whisper how great their power was, how magnificent their strength was now that it was combined. He would tell her that the two of them made one whole being. That they were equal halves forming something perfect.
She knew that what he said was, in part, true.
But she knew one other thing, too: They were not equals. She had no equal.
She knew well that she would never love anyone the way she loved Togo.
And she knew even better that one day she would destroy that love when she revealed her superiority. The time would come when she would kill her other half to prove that she was indeed a whole all by herself.
Ling saw Togo's eyes move now, just a shift-no one else would have even noticed-and then he was gone again. For a moment she thought she had only imagined his presence, that he hadn't ever appeared, but she could sniff his fragrance lingering in the wind, and she knew that he had not been an apparition. He had been real.
The smile was gone from her face now and she was all but invisible again in the shadows. Time was once more standing as still as her rigid body.
And then she knew she had to move.
The door to the house was opening, just as they had been told it would. It was hours before the break of dawn and the only brightness on the street came from the stars above. When the man stepped out of the house, a crack of light escaped from inside. She saw his features for a moment, the pale skin, the glint of rust in his brown hair. She saw the fear in his eyes and the weakness he wore like a mask.
He had an overnight bag strapped over his right shoulder and as he stepped toward the street, he looked left and then right, as if this cursory search would somehow guarantee his safety. It was safe to smile again, silently, so she did, knowing that he would see nothing and that his safety was far from guaranteed.
He crossed over onto her side of the street, was only a few feet away from her. He
stopped, as if sensing something. But still he saw nothing. She willed herself to be invisible and her will was strong because he looked right at her, shrugged as if taking himself to task for imagining things, took one more step forward…
And that was when his world melted.
Pain did that to people, she knew. Although she couldn't imagine the kind of pain he was experiencing so rapidly and unexpectedly.
Togo came up behind him, unheard and unseen, and his right leg kicked out in an exquisite variation of The Hissing Cat. His heel connected just above the man's right heel and Ling knew bone and tendons were immediately shattered. The man had enough strength left to scream and he began to, but that's when she moved, one elegant, long finger jabbing down into his carotid artery. It was a graceful movement, and she allowed herself to feel pleasure from its perfect execution. She took satisfaction, too, in his immediate silence. The scream that was going to force its way through his lips was strangled in his throat, unable to escape. His eyes bulged, and for a moment she felt like giggling because he looked like a frog about to explode. Ling whirled and her foot snaked out, a foot as sculptured and lovely and smooth as her perfectly shaped hands. And just as deadly. It was a wondrous quick jab the foot made, clipping the man's back. If she had kicked harder, he would be paralyzed. Instead, he was just filled with white-hot flashes of extraordinary pain. She could render men helpless with her beauty, she knew. But she much preferred doing it with pain. She gloried in his agony.
It didn't take long for Togo to pull the van alongside the man's prone body. She was able to lift him effortlessly into the back. Togo questioned her with his eyes: Is he still alive? The wordless question hurt her. And made her angry. Of course he is still alive, her eyes answered back. I do not make mistakes.
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