clients in major cities across America and branches in most countries. Also, that she was a vice president.
They got along famously, and she was working her way toward prying information from him, when he stiffened. There was a faint vibration beneath his dinner jacket. His cell phone.
“Excuse me a moment.” No smile. No endearment. She made no attempt to follow as he walked out past hibiscus and frangipani into the garden. Far too risky and obvious. In any case, it would not matter. He was gone less than thirty seconds. “I have to leave. Rain check, okay? I’ll call your company.” Before she could respond, he marched off. She waited until he was out the door. She followed, first on foot and then by car, always at a discreet distance.
She was still tailing him when he drove down into the parking garage of his office building. She waited then parked six cars away and watched him stand in front of the elevator, foot tapping. As soon as a car arrived, he stalked inside, and the doors closed. She climbed out and rushed to the elevator. The indicator went all the way to the top. The penthouse. What had brought Mcdermid here at such a late hour? She did not like it. On the other hand, perhaps she would learn something useful. She sprinted back to her car, skirt riding up on her thighs.
Inside, she switched on the portable link to the wiretap bug. She heard Mcdermid’s voice: “Okay, I’m in my office.”
“What’s so important that we had to talk?” A man’s voice. She did not recognize it. “Please don’t tell me you allowed Smith to escape.”
“I allowed nothing,” Mcdermid snapped, “but, yes, they escaped.”
“What do you mean, ”?” The voice was not young, not old. Calm, well modulated, and forceful. A certain projection to it. “He was helped by another agent. We think she’s CIA.”
“Think? Charming.”
“Don’t get sarcastic. We need each other. You’re a valuable member of the team.”
“I’ll stay that way only as long as I’m behind the scenes.”
“It’s not as bad as you think. In the end, neither Smith nor the CIA woman damaged us or our project.”
“That the CIA may have you under surveillance doesn’t concern you?” the voice demanded uneasily. “Even if it’s not related to our deal, they’ve traced at least some of the White House leaks to you. That should bother you one hell of a lot.”
“Realistically, the leaks are of little consequence to either of us. Until someone figures out exactly which ones I’m interested in and why, I’m not going to worry. Besides, we have far larger problems.”
“Such as?” Mcdermid hesitated. Then he delivered the bad news: “Yu Yongfu’s alive. So is his wife. Worse, they still have the Flying Dragon manifest.” There was a bellow of outrage. “This is your fault, Mcdermid.
Where are they? Where’s the damn manifest!”
“China.” A lengthy pause, as if he were controlling his shock. “How? You assured me the manifest had been burned!” Mcdermid sighed and explained the details. “The two million isn’t much, just coffee money, but I won’t pay it unless I have to.”
“It wouldn’t end there anyway, and there’s no guarantee we’d get the document. ” The shock was gone, replaced by an even inflection that was almost soothing. Definitely the man was a polished speaker and on-his-feet thinker. Probably accustomed to public appearances. She was beginning to believe he was a politician, someone accustomed to the necessity of diplomatic discourse that said nothing and revealed less.
But it was definitely not Secretary of the Army Jasper Kott, on whom she had eavesdropped in Manila. “How will you handle it?”
“The way they instructed, with a few surprises. Feng should be nearly in Dazu by now.”
“If Li Kuonyi is as intelligent as you say, she’ll expect him.” There was a thoughtful pause, and when the stranger spoke again, Randi realized she’d had an eerie feeling about him since she first heard his voice. She had heard him somewhere, perhaps not long ago. “I’m not at all sure you’re well advised to continue to use Feng.”
“There’s no time to replace him. Besides, he not only knows all the players now, he spent time in Dazu on some kind of operation. He has the kind of free movement in China that’s hard to find for a Westerner.” The voice said nothing, but its familiarity continued to resonate in Randi’s mind. Where? When?
Who was he? Mcdermid continued, “There may be another problem with Feng.
An unfortunately large one.”
“What?”
“He may not be working only for us.”
“Explain.”
“Just as I paid him to work for Yu Yongfu so he could report on his activities to me … I’m beginning to wonder whether he’s reporting on our activities to someone else. Someone in Beijing perhaps. Whoever it is must have either a lot of money or a lot of power. Otherwise, Feng wouldn’t bother.”
The voice was grim, alarmed. “You had him checked.” It was a statement not a question, and Randi realized one of her problems. This was the man’s private voice, sarcastic, dry. What lingered in her mind was a public voice, but she’d had contact with so many men in high government posts that her memory was overloaded with them.
“Thoroughly,” Mcdermid said. “We know he isn’t Public Security or the military. No, it’d be a private party.”
“One with an interest in the Empress?”
“That’s how I read it.”
“Very well. Do whatever you have to. 1 don’t want to know the details.
Just make sure the president doesn’t get the manifest.”
“You want the profit not the problems.”
“That’s our arrangement.”
Mcdermid’s words were sharp, a warning: “Your hands are as dirty as mine. If I go down, you do, too.” The phone slammed into its cradle.
In the Buick, Randi sat back and closed her eyes, running the voice through her mind. She attached faces to it. She tried it out in different environments. After a half hour, she gave up. The answer would come to her at some unexpected moment, she told herself. She could only hope it would be soon.
She dialed her cell. “Allan? You heard the new call?”
“Sure did,” Allan Savage said.
She told him about the familiarity of the voice. “Did anyone there recognize him?”
“I’ve heard him before, too. But I can’t place him, and no one here can either. But then, most of our guys are electronic geeks with atrophied recall systems who don’t know who the DCI is and think the Gipper’s still president.”
“Okay. I get the picture. See that the tape gets sent to Langley in the next pouch. Have the lab boys check it against other voice prints.”
“You want me to make our report?”
“No. I’m coming in.” She would talk to the DCI directly.
Beijing The night enclosed Wei Gaofan’s office in Zhongnanhai in soft darkness, with the lights of Beijing glowing above his walls, turning the starry sky a shining pewter gray. He stood in his doorway, staring out at his courtyard and the graceful willow tree and the groomed flower beds that usually gave him a sense of tranquility. Still, tonight he was heavy with distrust. He was called the ultimate hard-liner, as if it were an insult, but his was the vision that was pure. The Owl and his fellow liberals were politically blind. They were incapable of seeing what he saw. He pitied them, but at the same time, they were his ideological enemies. China’s enemies. They were forcing the country on an unnatural path that would do more than expose it to the world. Their way invited in the three contagions — capitalism, religion, and individuality. When his phone rang, he returned inside to his desk. The call had come in on his private line, known only to his network of cronies, proteges, and spies. He had a premonition of bad news. “Yes?”
Feng Dun’s tones were corpselike, confirming the premonition: “Yu is alive. It was the woman. She tricked me.” Wei inhaled sharply. “And the Flying Dragon manifest?”
“Li and Yu still have it. Yu never burned it.”
He reported in detail. Wei fell heavily into his chair. His stomach knotted, but he kept his voice steady. “Where are they?”
“Dazu. I’m on the road now. Heading there from Chongqing.”
