Girl Goes To Wudang (An Emily Kane Adventure Book 7)

by Jacques Antoine

“How’s he supposed to get in touch? He doesn’t even know my number… and besides, I’m not even sure I want to see him again.”

  “But isn’t he sure to be at this reception? It is his father’s house, after all.”

  “That’s his problem, if he is. After all the briefings, I’m not sure I’ll have a chance to say anything that hasn’t been vetted by a team of suits downstairs, and small talk with Wu Wei’s wastrel son is definitely not on their agenda.”

  “I’m so envious. Three years, and I’ve never done anything exciting… just the usual round of embassy dinners. I haven’t even been to a Marine Happy Hour in over a year.”

  “Maybe you should come with me, you know, as my liaison officer or something.”

  “Liaison to what? Don’t tease me like that. Besides, Diplomatic Security has already assigned a team to escort you over there. There won’t be room for me in that party… and what would I do with myself anyway? My Mandarin isn’t that good.”

  “You know what my father used to say: don’t talk yourself out of an adventure.”

  “I don’t think I’m the adventurous type.” Margie’s phone vibrated with a message from the Deputy Chief of Mission’s office. “They’re looking for you downstairs.”

  “Oh, crap. I almost forgot… another briefing.”

  Nyquist’s office, if that’s what it should be called, was in the basement, down a corridor from the room she shared with the other deputy attachés, and on the far side of the secure-comms installation. Emily caught a glimpse through an open door once, a few days ago – a pair of desk chairs, but no desk, only a folding banquet-table and a half empty bookcase under a photograph of the Lincoln Memorial. CIA, NSA, it didn’t matter which agency employed him, Emily assumed all spooks’ offices were as non-descript as his, and reminding herself of this in the elevator made it easier to imagine how she wasn’t going to let him try to run her as an asset. The door was ajar, and she heard voices, two or three besides Nyquist’s, arguing, or so it seemed, not quietly enough.

  Two men in light gray suits noticed her standing in the doorway, and Nyquist waved her in. His tan suit fit the usual drab pattern – the agency types seemed not to realize they’d practically developed a uniform, recognizable all over the world.

  “Come on in, Capt Tenno. Have a seat.” He unfolded another chair and set it up by one end of the table.

  “Give us a minute,” a familiar voice intoned from the corner. A tall figure, she hadn’t noticed initially. Had he been lurking in the shadows on purpose, like Jiang Xi the other day? Or was this just one of the survival instincts of a veteran spymaster? She knew not to ‘recognize’ him in front of the others.

  “Why are you here, Michael?” she asked, as soon as the door clicked shut. “Is something wrong? Is everyone okay?”

  “They’re all fine, don’t worry. That’s not why I’m here.”

  “Then is it this dinner party?”

  “In a way, yes. Obviously, the DCI thinks this is some sort of opportunity, and while I couldn’t risk opposing it openly, I can’t allow them to use you in that way.”

  “In what way? You’re beginning to scare me.”

  “They think there’s an opportunity to develop an asset in Wu Wei’s household.”

  Emily felt her cheeks growing warmer, and her breath getting short. “Who the hell do they have in mind… and if it’s Wu Dao…”

  “You had to expect they’d register the attention he paid to you at the state dinner, and when you left with him…”

  “Goddammit… is my apartment wired, too?”

  Michael eyed her with a new curiosity. “Why? Should it be? Did you…” The intensity of Emily’s glaring eyes made it impossible to finish this sentence. “You’re right, it’s none of my business. But this invitation is just too… peculiar… for the agency not to take notice.”

  “Jiang Xi said…”

  “He’s contacted you… that’s good news.”

  “Yes, all cloak-and-dagger, hiding in the shadows, under a bridge… you know, sort of like a troll.”

  “What did he tell you? Did he arrange for the invitation?”

  “Maybe. I’m not sure. He says General Yang added me to the list, but…”

  “Yang, you mean the chairman of their joint chiefs? How did you even come to his attention?”

  “Yeah, I guess that’s him. It was the usual bullshit. A wu shu demonstration at the National Defense University, and he ‘invited’ me to spar with their women’s champion.”

  “Okay, now it’s beginning to make sense. I can imagine how that turned out. What else did Jiang say?”

  “It’s just… I can’t use this dinner party to develop an asset, first of all because I have no intention of joining the agency… but also because Jiang arranged the whole thing, whether Yang realizes it or not, to introduce me to his fiancée. I’m supposed to help him decide if it’s safe to bring Li Li over. And there’s no way I’m ever gonna turn Wu Dao into an asset… just so we’re clear on that.”

  “Andie and your mom are not gonna like this. Did he tell you her name?”

  “So you can check her out, you mean?”

  “Of course, I mean to check her out. You do realize who we’re dealing with, right? Your mom and my wife… you know how they can be… and they will want to know everything about someone who might end up having custody of their girl.”

  “Fine. Guo Jie Yi, though she’s from Hong Kong, and in that part of the country they don’t follow the pinyin rules for transliterating into English. Everything is breathier, so they hear Gs and Js more like a soft K.”

  “Okay, so Kuo rather than Guo?”

  “Probably more like Kwok, but you must have people who can figure that out. He says she’s a mid-level official in the Ministry, on the domestic side, I think, and he’s worried about making her a target for ambitious types, you know, if he brings Li Li over.”

  “Well, he’s right to be worried. With all the purges, after Diao’s coup, denouncing someone is the quickest way to advancement, especially in the Ministry of Public Security.”

  “Okay, then do your thing, and reassure Andie and my mom back home.”

  “Actually, they’re a bit closer than that.”

  “How close?”

  “Right at this moment, you mean? I think they’re probably touring the Meiji Shrine, or maybe shopping in Harujuku… depending on how much patience Stone has for that sort of thing.”

  “You brought the kids to Tokyo?”

  “If you could have seen the look on their little faces… I mean the kids. It’s a lot more persuasive when Andie says it.”

  Emily pondered Michael’s words, which she’d initially been prepared to respond to in the mode of exasperation, since this had been a week full of exasperating things. “I guess that’s not so bad. Maybe I can wangle a leave to fly over and meet up with them.”

  “That ought to be easy to arrange. In the meantime, we need to let Nyquist back in to brief you on Wu Dao, his foibles, his passions, anything a handler could use to manage him. Listen like you’re willing to give it ‘the old college try’, okay? Try not to get offended when he does his job.”

  “I don’t care what the staffers on the diplomatic side say, Captain.” Jepsen had stepped around his desk to thunder down at Emily, though it seemed not as gratifying as he’d hoped. Maybe Emily should have cringed. “You are not authorized to wear that medal on a dress-alpha uniform.”

  “Are you ordering me not to wear the medal, sir?”

  “No, Captain… and now that Madeira is stateside, you are the MARA, however briefly, and you should know regs a little better. Absent a letter of authorization signed by SECDEF or SECNAV, or at least General Lukasziewicz, you cannot legally wear that medal. There is simply no general order that would allow you to wear a damn Chinese medal.”

  Emily watched a vein pulsing in the vicinity of Jepsen’s temple, and a brief silence was on the verge of becoming uncomfortable, but for the sound of high-heeled shoes cl
icking along the corridor.

  “It’s here,” Margie cried out from the door, waving a sheet of paper. “The letter, they just faxed it over.” She paused to catch her breath and held the letter out.

  “Let me see that,” Jepsen growled, snatching it away. He turned away and scanned it, and then began to crumple the paper, before thinking better of it.

  “Sir?” Emily tilted her head to the side as she waited for some sort of response.

  “You’ve got your authorization, Captain. Go, wear your damned medal. Dismissed.”

  Out in the corridor, Margie wanted to chatter about how startlingly rude she thought Jepsen had been, but Emily hustled her away from his door.

  “That’s how the chain of command works, Margie. It’s not always about being polite.”

  “I don’t know how you do it. I couldn’t handle it, I’m sure.”

  “Do you remember the scars on my back and shoulders?” Emily held Margie’s arms to fix her attention. “I can handle a chewing out by a bad-tempered superior officer. Look, he’s just annoyed at me for being dumped on him out of the blue, and he thinks I pulled some strings to get a plum assignment. This latest dinner party must feel like the last straw to him.”

  “You mean since he wasn’t included in the invitation?”

  “As the ranking attaché, he ought to have been.”

  By the time they’d made it to the elevator, Margie was mostly reconciled to the brusque manners of military protocol. Emily pressed the button for the third floor and reached down to give the smaller woman’s hand a squeeze. How strange that she should be the comforter of someone several years older than herself – and how the tables had turned since the other night when Margie had provided cover for her.

  Back at Margie’s desk, a single-suit garment bag was draped over a chair. “I forgot to tell you – your uniform came back. Is it okay if we take a look?”

  “Sure,” Emily said. “You can help me figure out how to arrange the medals. This is all sort of new to me.”

  Margie had already unzipped the bag and removed it – a midnight-blue jacket and sky blue trousers. “That’s surprising. I expected you to have a skirt instead of pants. I guess with your …” She caught herself before this line of thought could escape her mouth and take the form of a slighting observation on Emily’s lack of curves.

  “It’s okay, Margie. I didn’t end up in the Marines because of my girlish figure. I’ve always been a tomboy.” Emily rummaged in her pack for the various decorations. “It used to be just a few ribbons, and positioning them was pretty simple. This is all new territory for me.”

  Margie ran a web search on “order of decorations, marines,” and found an official site. “Here’s a picture… maybe that will help.”

  Emily consulted a dog-eared pamphlet. “The sequence of ribbons is straightforward, and the medals go roughly here, left to right in order of importance. But where should this one go?” She hefted the Chinese medal, which seemed almost garish with its bright red and gold design, compared to the Purple Heart and the relatively somber Navy Cross – a dull, bronze-colored ‘cross pattée’ suspended from a blue and white ribbon.

  “Try it on,” Margie said, once they’d positioned everything to Emily’s satisfaction. “Let’s see how it looks.”

  15

  Rubbing Elbows

  The detail supplied by Diplomatic Security consisted of two men in gray, driving an SUV, and judging by the way they filled out their suit jackets, Emily figured they were ex-military, probably from one spec-ops unit or another. Tom Donaldson and Jimmy Chow, neither one spoke much Mandarin, she learned during the ride over to Wu Wei’s estate, though Chow spoke another dialect, Minanyu, since his family had emigrated to the US from Taiwan.

  Located in an exclusive suburb north of the city, the entrance to Wu Wei’s estate stood out for its reserve compared to some of the garish mansions visible along the way. Large gates opened to admit the vehicle, and a winding gravel drive led to an unprepossessing block-like structure with few windows facing the initial approach and little adornment beyond a red tile roof. On closer approach, this façade turned out to be only the outer edge of a sprawling complex, and having passed through an imposing wooden door, a large courtyard garden opened before her. Three structures formed a rectangle enclosing the entire area, and the main house dominated the far end, opposite the entrance, and accessible through one of several garden paths, or through symmetrical covered walkways that ran along the outbuildings on either edge, useful in inclement weather, Emily supposed.

  A young man dressed in red with white gloves ushered her party into the main building, and showed Donaldson and Chow to a side parlor where other bulky men in suits had also been accommodated. This structure seemed older than the rest of the compound, perhaps a converted shrine or a monastery, and consisted of a spacious central court enclosed by two-story walls, including a second floor balcony on three sides, with doors suggesting bedrooms or maybe offices. On the back wall, a mosaic of the Great Wall snaking off into the misty distance framed a three-tiered fountain, and as Emily stepped further in it occurred to her that it appeared, rather improbably, to be carved entirely from jade.

  “This is a whole new you.” Emily felt a hand on the back of her neck and turned quickly enough to bump noses with Wu Dao, who must have been trying to kiss her ear.

  “Please don’t embarrass me. I’m way out of my depth here.”

  Wu Dao took a step back, but slipped her hand into his, and then raised it to his lips, until Emily jerked it away and turned to scan the room. Several dozen men and women, all Chinese nationals, some in business suits, some in various uniforms of the PLA General Staff, but no one in a tuxedo or an evening gown, and no one seemed to have noticed her yet.

  “I was hoping you’d be in a gown,” he said, after clearing some sort of catch in his throat.

  “Then, isn’t it strange that you’re not in a tux?”

  “Did I mention that I come from a long line of Daoists?”

  Emily glanced up at the vaulted glass ceiling of the inner court, which seemed not to be supported by anything other than the wind. A string quartet bowed the final chords of the allegro movement of a Mozart serenade off to her left – at least they were wearing tuxedos and gowns.

  “Were it up to me, I think I’d have dressed rather differently, but… I wear the uniform to display the medal. My superiors did not wish to offend Liang zhuxi… and the word came down to my desk, which is in the back of a basement room with no windows.”

  “I still miss seeing you in a gown. Any gown would do, even your improvised bed sheet gown.”

  “Please… please behave… and tell me how to enter this room.”

  Wu Dao turned and gestured to a familiar, well-dressed man, who had been chatting up two women next to the fountain. A moment later he was by her side.

  “Zhi Zhi, Capt Tenno needs to make an entrance.”

  “An unobtrusive, very polite… very much not embarrassing entrance,” Emily added.

  “It would be my honor, Captain, to introduce you around.” Zhizheng held out his arm. “You know, I don’t get to say that very often. It’s an intriguing sensation.”

  “Can we start with General Yang?”

  “Start at the top. I like your style.”

  Yang expressed some cool satisfaction at Emily’s presence, which had the effect of making the invitation that had brought her there feel rather like a summons. Fortunately, the other men who had collected around Yang, his counterparts in the air force and navy, must have already heard his first impression of her, since they offered somewhat warmer observations on the events of the past week.

  “I think you charmed them, General Chen especially,” Zhizheng whispered, as he pulled her away to continue her circumnavigation of the room.

  “But not Yang, apparently, and I thought he was the one who arranged my being here in the first place.”

  “Those guys stand on constantly shifting sands, and they have to be
at least as shifty to survive. Also, that medal on your chest may be freaking some of them out, since none of them has one like it, and it’s hard not to think Liang is using it to send a message.”

  “How do you know so much about these people, Zhi Zhi?”

  “Family history.”

  Emily squeezed his elbow and considered the insouciant gleam in his eye. “Do tell.”

  “My father used to hold the position Yang holds now. After Deng Xiaoping’s ‘Four Modernizations’, he retired and started a company manufacturing glass.”

  “Really, glass?”

  “Special glass… you know, light, strong… aerospace applications. All the generals were getting rich in those days on military contracts. When he died…”

  “I’m sorry, Zhi Zhi.”

  “Thanks, Captain… it’s okay. Anyway, my mother took over the company, and that’s why I didn’t go into the military. My sister and I had to help her run the business… and when she started… forgetting things.”

  “Forgetting things?”

  Zhizheng nodded grimly. “… the other major shareholders, by which I mean, six other retired generals, forced her out.”

  “I’m sorry, Zhi Zhi. I didn’t mean to pry.”

  “I didn’t really want a career in high finance, and we did very well in the buyout.”

  “What career do you want?”

  They’d made most of the circuit by this time, and Emily had been introduced to people from various ministries, and already forgotten at least half of their names. Zhizheng pointed her toward a large group in the center of the room and said, “This is the big one. Are you ready to take the plunge?” Before she could reply, or turn and run, he tugged her arm and found a gap in the circle of bodies to wedge Emily through.

  “Wu Wei, if you would grant me the indulgence, I would like to introduce…” Emily followed the convolutions of Zhizheng’s extravagantly polite address to their host for as long as she could, and was almost relieved when Wu Wei cut him off.

  “Thank you, Miao Zhizheng. Is this the Meiguoren?”