attracted far less notice than one starting suddenly.
He climbed into the backseat, which was empty. The sergeant closed his door, got behind the wheel, and drove the car off. Bored by the poverty- stricken scenery of greater Manila, Jasper Kott settled back, crossed his arms, and considered how he would handle the afternoon’s tasks. Once a highly successful executive in private industry, his last position was CEO of Kowalski and Kott — K&K, Inc. — mass supplier of artillery gun mounts to arms manufacturers around the globe. It was true he had grown wealthy and influential, far more wealthy and influential than most of his competitors realized. Still, numbers were useful only in keeping score, not in judging satisfaction.
He was a fastidious man in all ways, from dress to personal habits, from social relations to business deals. He had used his meticulousness as a tool to disarm competitors. In today’s rough-and-earthy corporate climate, he simply did not fit the mold. Who would suspect his raging ambition? Who would credit him with a razor-sharp coldness that allowed him to cut his losses without ever looking back? While others ignored him as too prissy to be strong, he rose. By the time they noticed, they were too far behind to hurt or stop him.
He had never had a. business opportunity to match the potential of this new one. With pleasure, he contemplated what success would mean … untouchable wealth, power beyond the imagination of his colleagues … a guaranteed future of more deals, each bigger than the last–
On a quiet street, the sergeant pulled into the driveway of an imposing house on a large lot in one of the better parts of Manila. A high hedge rimmed the property. On the rolling green lawn, palms grew tall against the sky, while tropical flowers in a rainbow of colors spread against the white- plastered walls. It was a hacienda from the Spanish era, stately and secluded.
Kott leaned forward. “Give me a few hours, Sergeant. You have your cell with you?”
“Right here, sir.” The sergeant patted the shirt of his uniform. “Take your time.”
Secretary Kott marched across terra-cotta tiles up to the long porch.
The front door was massive — rich mahogany, while the fittings, including an ornate knocker in the shape of a coiled snake, were polished brass.
He knocked and sensed rather than saw a peephole open and close. The door swung open, and a tiny Filipina bowed. She was no more than sixteen and stark naked, except for a pair of high-heeled purple shoes and a purple lace garter as high on her thigh as it could get. Kott’s expression did not change.
She ushered him inside to a heavily furnished room where some twenty other women of various ages in various stages of undress stood, sat, and lounged. A well-stocked bar stretched along a wall. The teenager continued on through the room, Kott following, the twenty pairs of eyes assessing him. They climbed a sweeping stairway that could have been in a noble house in Madrid. On the second floor, she led him down a maroon- carpeted hall to the last door. The naked girl opened it, smiled again, and stood aside.
Kott entered. The room was spacious, with gold-flecked maroon wallpaper, gilded woodwork, a comfortable upholstered sitting area, a small bar, and a giant four-poster bed. Still unspeaking, the girl closed the door, and her footsteps faded away.
“Enjoy your usher, Jasper?” Ralph Mcdermid asked from his easy chair. He was grinning from ear to ear, his joviality on display. His round body and round face looked thoroughly relaxed.
“She’s my daughter’s age, for God’s sake, Ralph,” Kott complained. “Did we have to meet in a place like this?”
“It’s excellent cover,” the chairman and CEO of the Altman Group said, giving not an inch. “I’m known here. They protect me. Besides, I enjoy the company, the merchandise, and the services, eh?”
“Everyone to their own taste,” Kott grumbled.
“How broad-minded and egalitarian of you, Jasper,” Mcdermid said. “Sit.
Sit down, dammit, and have a drink. Loosen up. We both know you’re not the old grandpa you want everyone to think. Tell me about Jon Smith.”
“Who?”
“Lieutenant Colonel Jon Smith, M. D.” Mcdermid pressed a button on the table beside the armchair where he sat, and a white-coated Filipino materialized behind the bar.
“An army officer?” Kott shook his head. “Never heard of him. Why? What’s he to us?” He called to the barman, “Vodka martini, straight up with a twist.”
“He’s dangerous, that’s what he is. As for why he’s important … ”
Mcdermid related the events from the time Mondragon was killed to Smith’s extraction from the Chinese coast.
“He’s got a copy of what the ship’s actually carrying? Holy?”
“No,” Mcdermid interrupted. “He nearly had a copy, but we took it back.
I don’t know whether he saw it, or understood it if he did. But Mondragon definitely did, which no longer matters since that bastard is dead. However, here we walk a fine line: We want them to know what The Dowager Empress is carrying, but not be able to prove it.”
The barman arrived with Kott’s martini on a sterling tray. Kott sipped appreciatively. “So there’s no problem. We’re go then?”
“We’re all-go, but I wouldn’t say there’s no problem.” Mcdermid held up his empty highball glass and angled it toward the barkeep, who immediately went to work to replace it. “I doubt Smith, or whoever employs him, is going to give up.”
“What do you mean, whoever employs him? He’s got to be CIA. They recruit army personnel sometimes.”
“I meant exactly what I said. As far as my people, and apparently the Chinese secret police, can figure, he doesn’t belong to the CIA or to any of the other of our intelligence agencies.”
Kott scowled. “You said he works for USAMRIID, and that’s the excuse he used to enter China. So he’s probably a one-time CIA asset. But he failed to get his job done. So now he’s out, and he’s probably out of our hair, too.”
“Perhaps. But my people say he’s very skilled and hardly sounds like a one-time recruit.”
Kott drank more deeply. “Some competitor of yours looking to hurt you?”
“That’s possible, I suppose. Some renegade agent. FBI maybe, considering how they’re getting around these days. But whatever he is, all of us had better be extraordinarily cautious … for a multitude of reasons.”
“Of course.” Kott drained the martini, set the glass down. “But for now, we’re on course?”
Mcdermid nodded. “The frigate Crowe is already shadowing the Empress in the Indian Ocean.”
“Excellent.”
“Any more news about military appropriations?”
Kott related the military appropriations meeting in the cabinet room in greater detail. “As I said, Brose and Oda were the only ones willing to give Secretary Stanton full support, and Oda’s unimportant. Everyone else has a weapon in development they don’t want to lose. It was an edgy meeting.”
“And the president?”
“He’s worried, and we know why, don’t we? It’s the Empress and a potential blowup with China. If that happens, he’s got to have everything activated, whether it’s in our arsenal or on the drawing board. If we’ve got the weapons for a big war in a big area, that’ll scare the crap out of the Chinese.” Kott sat back, smiling. “I’d say our plan’s going smoothly, wouldn’t you?”
“But we still have to be careful. If the doves in Zhongnanhai have gotten wind something’s up, and if they compare notes with President Castilla, we’re as good as dead. That real manifest can’t fall into anyone’s hands.”
Kott was growing impatient. “So eliminate all the copies.”
“It’s not that easy. We’ve gotten rid of the one in Shanghai that Flying Dragon had. But there’s still one in Basra. The Iraqis think no one can penetrate their security, so they refuse to destroy it, because they don’t trust us to deliver if they do. Anyway, they claim to be fully confident the Empress will make it through. There was a third copy in Hong Kong, but I’ve ordered it destroyed.”
“The Empress will never pass the Strait of Hormuz. So what’s really worrying you?”
“Yu Yongfu — the Flying Dragon president. He was vain, ambitious, unpredictable, nervous, and would never hold up under pressure. You know the type. He had delusions of empire, but a backbone of jelly.”
“Had?” Kott asked.
