by Alex Ryan
Smirking at the thought, she picked out a black skirt and a low-cut silk tank top printed with a purple snakeskin pattern. For undergarments, she selected a black thong and push-up bra with extra padding. For shoes, she went straight for the most expensive thing she owned—a pair of Christian Louboutin Luciana black leather pumps. Her hair and makeup took her thirty minutes—fifteen of those minutes she spent on the eyes. She always went dark and bold with the eyes.
Her eyes were her secret weapon.
Dressed and made up, she barely recognized herself in the mirror. Were she to walk by Qing on the street tonight, he would not know her as his wife. He would stare, and he would gawk, but he would not recognize her. She suddenly thought of Commander Zhang. Would Zhang, with his elite training, be able to recognize her? If he could, what would he think of her as she was now?
She forced Zhang’s image from her mind, locked the footlocker, and shoved it back under the bed. She placed the key back into the puzzle box and retrieved the third and final item inside—a white plastic clamshell container holding twenty-eight colored pills. Using her thumb, she pressed today’s birth control tablet through the foil backing and into the palm of her hand. She popped the little pink pill into her mouth and swallowed. Betrayal, she mused with a wry smile, one dose at a time. It was a remarkable feat, if she really thought about. For seven years, she had managed to keep this dark secret from her husband. For seven years, she had kept herself barren because of him.
Thirty minutes later, she was standing outside Club Vic’s waiting for Jamie Lin. Just as she was beginning to wonder if her friend was not going to show, she felt a tap on her shoulder. Dazhong turned to find Jamie Lin, dressed to kill and grinning ear to ear.
“You look hot, Chen,” Jamie Lin said, looking her up and down. “Love that top.”
“Thanks. You look, um, strong,” she said, noting the lean cords of muscle showcased by her best friend’s bare arms and midriff.
“Eye of the tiger, baby,” Jamie Lin purred playfully.
Jamie Lin was not your typical Chinese girl. She was outspoken, wild, and obsessed with fitness. On the surface, the two women were total opposites—Jamie Lin seemed superficial, obsessed with clubbing, money, and curating her “Beijing Babydoll” Weibo feed. But over the last few months, Dazhong had begun to catch glimpses of a different side of her friend. In fact, she was beginning to suspect that there was a passionate and deeply cerebral soul caged behind the makeup and the muscles. This person was the woman Dazhong wanted to know, and the more Jamie Lin resisted her attempts at platonic intimacy, the more insatiable Dazhong’s curiosity to truly know her friend had become.
Both women had been born in Beijing, but Jamie Lin’s family had moved to the United States when she was seven. Jamie Lin had only moved back to China three years ago, and Dazhong could still pick out Western-accented undertones in Jamie Lin’s Mandarin. True to form, Jamie Lin worked in corporate finance—her boss was some big shot in international tech. Whenever Dazhong asked Jamie Lin about her job, Jamie Lin played dumb, pretending her boss did all the work and she had been hired as corporate eye candy. Dazhong knew better; she’d overheard Jamie Lin on the phone with work colleagues enough times to know the girl had a formidable grasp of the complex world of international business, finance, and technology. Sometimes, Dazhong wondered if Jamie Lin was in fact the “the boss,” because she always sounded like the one giving instructions.
“Are we gonna stand here all night, or are we gonna dance?” Jamie Lin said coyly, one hand propped on a hip.
Dazhong smiled. “Big Mac has a crush on you, not me, remember? Go do your thing.”
Jamie Lin grabbed her by the hand and tugged Dazhong toward the front of the line. “Big Mac,” the club’s lead bouncer, smirked as they approached. Jamie Lin walked straight up to the thick, heavily tattooed Asian and kissed him on the cheek, flattening her breasts against his chest while slipping cash into his front pants pocket. Big Mac nodded a stoic, wordless approval and waved them inside.
Jamie Lin dragged Dazhong through the crowd to the bar and ordered them a pair of cosmos. While they waited, they watched one of Vic’s famous bartenders put on an aerial mixing show—juggling and flipping bottles of hard liquor in the air as a circle of inebriated spectators looked on, hooting and hollering. Jamie Lin paid for the first round, and the two women quickly drained their glasses so they could head to the dance floor. Jamie Lin pushed her way into the middle of the gyrating crowd and carved out a little cylinder of space to groove as DJ QQ mixed Aphex Twin’s album Syro from the stage.
Dazhong lost herself in the music and rhythm for the next hour, letting her mind go carnal, but eventually, thoughts of Kizilsu, Qing, Major Li, and the mysterious killer-disease conspiracy crept back in.
“What’s wrong?” Jamie Lin shouted over the booming techno beat, zeroing in on the shift in mood.
“Nothing,” Dazhong shouted back, forcing a smile.
“You look upset.”
“I’m fine.”
“Wanna talk about it?”
Dazhong considered her friend’s offer but shook her head. “No, really, I’m fine. Cosmo is wearing off, that’s all.”
Jamie Lin flashed her a Cheshire grin. “In that case, I’ll be right back.”
While Dazhong waited for her second cosmo, she danced alone, letting the world blur around her. Boys and men tried to talk and dance with her, but she looked through them like rain and let them dribble away. She was inside herself, alone with her thoughts and her worries. Jamie Lin was right, she did need to talk to someone, and that person was Nick Foley. Maybe with a little liquid courage, she could make it happen.
The second cosmo tasted even better than the first, and by the time her cocktail glass was empty, Dazhong was buzzing pretty hard. She looked at her friend and smiled.
“What?” Jamie Lin said, grinning back.
“You’re a good friend, you know that?”
“Why, because I make you dress like a slut and get you drunk?”
“No,” Dazhong said with an inebriated giggle. “Because you remind me the secret to life is to take chances and have fun.”
Jamie Lin shrugged. “It’s not a secret, Chen. It’s my dogma.”
“Did you learn that in America?”
“Sort of. I learned it from an American boy I knew.”
An image of the American Navy SEAL sitting across the interrogation table from her in the Artux People’s Hospital popped into her mind, reminding her of what she needed to do.
“I’ve gotta go,” she said, suddenly stepping forward and hugging Jamie Lin.
“Wait, what?” Jamie Lin said, halfheartedly hugging her back. “We just got here.”
“I know. I’m sorry,” she said. “There’s just something I’ve got to do.”
“Right now?”
Maybe it was the alcohol, or maybe it was something else inside her, but whatever it was, Dazhong knew she needed to act before the opportunity was gone.
“Yes, right now.”
“Text me later,” Jamie Lin said. “Let me know when you get home.”
“I will,” Dazhong said, turning away. “Bye bye, Babydoll.”
Jamie Lin smiled, held up two fingers in a V, and blew her a kiss.
Dazhong pressed her way through the crowd, a little unsteady on her Lucianas, and left the club. Outside, on the sidewalk, the cool night air licked at the perspiration on her skin and sent a chill running down her arms and back. She retrieved her mobile phone from her handbag and looked up the “NF” contact entry she had made earlier that day. She stared at Nick Foley’s phone number and felt her nerve waning.
Where should I meet him?
She scanned the buildings around her, looking for someplace close and suitable. Across the street, the neon sign for the popular Club Mix beckoned. Loud, crowded, and warm—perfect. She looked back at the glowing LCD screen in her hand, took a deep breath, and pressed the dial icon next to Nick Foley’s mobile phone number.
Chapter 16
Nick woke with a start, confused and in the dark.
A loud, rhythmic buzzing punctuated the silence.
“Where the fuck am I?” he mumbled as he jumped out of bed. He scanned the space around him. No enemy gunfire, no Hellfire missiles, no burning bodies—just city lights winking at him through the oversized plate-glass windows of his hotel room.
I’m in the Four Seasons, he reassured himself. In Beijing.
The buzzing was coming from his mobile phone on the wooden nightstand beside the bed. He picked up the offending device and checked the caller ID. He didn’t recognize the number. He answered the call anyway.
“Nick Foley.”
“Yes, hello . . . maybe you don’t remember me,” a nervous woman’s voice said on the line. “We ran into each other in the hotel lobby the other night in Kizilsu.”
Nick’s pulse rate jumped.
“Yes, I remember. Hello.”
“I am sorry to call you so late at night. Am I disturbing you?”
“No, no, of course not.”
“Okay, good,” she said. Then, awkwardly, she asked, “Can you meet me? I would like to ask you a few questions.”
Nick’s mind started racing. Was it really her, Dr. Chen, on the line? Or was it a confederate? Was this a trap? Was this conversation being recorded? Is that why she didn’t say her name?
“Hello? Are you still there?” she said, tension rising in her voice.
“Yes, I’m here,” he said. “When and where?”
“Club Mix,” she said. “I will be waiting for you.”
“Okay, I can leave immediately.”
“Very good . . . oh, and please come alone.”
“Understood.”
She ended the call without a good-bye.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” he said, shaking his head. “I did not expect that . . .”
Thirty minutes later, Nick was standing inside Club Mix looking for the beautiful doctor whose name he could not pronounce. The pounding music and flashing lights were already giving him a headache, reminding him why it had been so long since he’d been in a club like this. And yeah, the last time gave him a headache, too.
He scanned the crowd, looking for a captivating pair of almond eyes, but after an exhaustive sweep, he admitted defeat. “This is pointless,” he grumbled. “Every girl in the joint has almond eyes.”
If she actually did show up, the burden was on her to find him.
He headed to the bar, took a seat at the counter, and ordered a beer. All around him, girls gyrated across the lighted floor in tight, impossibly short skirts. After a few minutes, he stopped watching. In stark contrast to the party girls and club-hopping hipsters—laughing, flirting, downing fancy cocktails and neon shooters—Nick sipped stoically at his beer, waiting to be found. As the minutes ticked by and his beer glass got empty, that hope began to fade. He checked his phone to see if he had missed a call or text. Perhaps he should dial the number she had called him from. Would she answer? On the phone, she had sounded nervous. His mood darkened.
This is a setup, he told himself. Don’t be an idiot. This is how the game is played. She’s Zhang’s honey trap, and I’m the mark.
Across the bar, an inebriated teenage girl pointed at him and whispered into the ear of her blue-haired friend. Then they both blew him a kiss, and the blue-haired girl motioned for him to join them on the dance floor. Nick smiled politely, shook his head no, and looked down at the multicolored, lighted tiles shining up through his beer.
He took a long pull on his drink.
“Hello,” said a woman’s voice just behind him.
He swiveled to the right and came face to face with a girl who looked to be in her midtwenties. She wore the same heavy makeup as the other girls giggling in the booths and bouncing on the dance floor, but this girl had presence about her. He stared at her, hypnotized by the perfect jawline, delicate nose, and sensuous smile.
“No thank you,” he said before she could ask him for a dance or a drink. “I’m meeting someone.” With great effort, he redirected his gaze into the depths of his beer mug.
Undeterred, she placed her hand gently on his arm—igniting carnal urges in the primitive part of his brain. He’d never been with a girl this beautiful before. His imagination went to work, and he felt a stirring.
“Nick Foley?” she said.
His chest tightened.
How did this girl know his name? Was she the one who had called him?
He turned and locked eyes with the girl. If he ignored the heavy eye shadow and mascara . . .
The features were eerily familiar. Could it really be her?
“Dr. Dash?” he said, then blushing, he added, “I mean, Dr. Chen?”
“Yes, it’s me,” the woman said, rescuing him.
“I . . . I didn’t recognize you,” he stammered.
The corners of her lips curled into a knowing smile. “Perhaps you can accompany me to a quiet booth? Somewhere we might have a conversation in private?”
Her voice wasn’t slurred, but he could tell she’d had a few drinks.
“Of course,” he said and grabbed his beer from the bar, wondering where in a club with music this loud they could possibly find a quiet booth. He followed her—his gaze trained on the backside of her tight, black skirt. She led him through the crowd, descended a short set of stairs, and weaved through the modern, white-top tables until they reached an area populated with intimate, high-back booths. He noted that most of the booths were already occupied by other couples engaged in their own private conversations—the type of conversation just shy of intercourse.
They slid into one of the neon-green leather booths and the noise level dropped significantly. She sat opposite the cozy bistro table from him and crossed her legs at the knee and her hands at the wrists.
“You did not recognize me at the bar?” she said, toying with him straight out of the gate.
“No, I didn’t,” he said. “You look different than I remember.”
“I should hope so. Last time we met, I was wearing a mask.”
“And there’s that,” he said, flashing her his best self-deprecating smile.
“But you thought I was someone else? Some other girl?”
“Well, yes . . . er, I mean no . . . I wasn’t sure.”
“You called me a different name?”
“Oh, that was nothing. Just me badly mispronouncing your name.”
“Dr. Chen is easy to say,” she teased.
“Actually, I was trying to say your given name: Dash-ing,” he said, his cheeks flaring hot. “Or is it Dash-ong? I’m sorry, my Chinese is horrendous.”
She smiled broadly at this. “It’s a good try, but that’s not how to say it. My name is pronounced Da-Chung.”
He tried to mimic her intonation, but from the way she wrinkled her nose at him, clearly he’d failed miserably.
“It’s okay. Most Americans have a hard time saying Chinese names. If you like, you can call me Dash,” she said, smiling at him with her eyes. “I think it’s nice.”
“Yeah, me too.”
“Then it is decided. Dash will be my American nickname with you.”
“Just between us?”
“Just between us.”
Nick reminded himself that she was probably still working with Commander Zhang, who may well still suspect Nick was involved in the events in Kizilsu. She’d probably played him from the beginning. CDC doctor my ass, he thought. He waited a beat for her to redirect the conversation. When she didn’t, he decided to extend the small talk and see where things went.
Keep it casual. Let her think her flirting and smiling is working, then you can turn the tables on her.
“Cool club,” he said, gesturing around them. “Do you party here often?”
“Not really,” she replied without a hint of judgment or embarrassment. “I have a Western friend—an American in fact—who is a very bad influence on me.” She looked out at the crowded dance
floor and her lips curled into that same knowing smile. “My husband would kill me if he found me here with you. He would say I have been corrupted by the West, like so much of China.” She looked back at him with eyes that seemed more focused now. “Perhaps he is right,” she said, leaving him to wonder if she thought that was a good thing or a bad thing. “But,” she added quickly, “I would never betray him, or break my marriage vows.”
“Of course,” Nick said, unsure what else to say.
Message received. And I don’t pursue married women—especially those working for the Chinese government—so let’s get down to business.
A waitress approached the table, wearing a skintight silver dress and carrying a lighted tray that seemed to change colors in rhythm to the music. She said something in Chinese, then looked at Nick and tried again in English. “Something to drink?”
“No thanks,” Nick said, holding up his half-empty beer.
“A cosmopolitan,” Dash said. She waited until the waitress had gone before leaning in to say, “I would like to ask you some questions.”
“Of course,” Nick said. A preemptive strike was needed. “But first I should probably ask, is Commander Zhang okay with us meeting like this?”
She blushed and shook her head, unable to hide the embarrassed, conspiratorial look on her face.
She’s conflicted, he thought. Either this girl is one hell of an actress, or she’s flying solo.
“Commander Zhang does not know I am here,” she said, as if reading his mind. “I could get in much trouble for meeting you like this.”
“I understand,” he said. “It’s a risk for me, too. Commander Zhang is still holding my passport. If he finds out that we met . . . well, let’s just say the remainder of my stay in your country might become most unpleasant.”
She nodded pensively at this. “That is not my wish, Nick Foley. Maybe this is not a good idea.”
“No,” he said, a beat too quickly. “You said on the phone you have questions for me. Well, I have questions for you, too.”