Edge of War

mailbox. There was no business name, no phone number or address, but the logo, a needle and thread, was the same.

The number 3 was written on the wall next to the card.

Jing Yo went up the stairs and knocked on the door. A young woman, maybe sixteen or seventeen, answered.

He froze as soon as he saw her. She could have been Hyuen Bo’s cousin. Slim, long black hair, breasts that seemed to pull him toward her.

“Yes?” she asked.

He told her in Chinese that he had been sent by Mr. Wong for a new set of clothes.

“I don’t speak very good Chinese,” she told him in English. “You want my father?”

“Mr. Wong sent me,” he said.

“Come in.”

Where Hyuen Bo would have been warm and accommodating, this girl was cold and distant. But that was a blessing. He couldn’t afford to think about his dead lover. He needed to stay far from the memories, away from the longing.

The front room was as small as any of the shops Jing Yo remembered from Hanoi. Old newspapers were stacked chest high against one wall. Fabric samples were scattered in loosely organized piles everywhere. Two wooden chairs, their white paint chipped away, sat on either side of the window. An orange curtain made of velvet hung over a door to the rest of the apartment.

A large oscillating fan stood in the corner. The girl bent to plug it in before leaving.

The shape of her body as she bent was so like Hyuen Bo’s that Jing Yo closed his eyes.

When he opened them, the tailor had shuffled into the room. He wore gray cashmere pants and a blue denim work shirt whose tails hung below his waist.

“Up,” he said in English.

Jing Yo rose. A measuring tape appeared in the man’s fingers. The man was as old as Wong had been, and much more frail, but he worked quickly, silently taking Jing Yo’s dimensions. His hands opened and closed, spreading the tape and reeling it in like a magician manipulating cards. He wrote nothing down, and said nothing until he’d finished.

“Three hour. You come back.”

“Three hours?” said Jing Yo.

“Three hour. Done.”

* * *

Jing Yo used the time to get dinner. He had a hamburger in a small combination bar-restaurant two blocks from the tailor. Jing Yo had had hamburgers before, but this was unlike any of those. The meat had a different taste — bloodier, it seemed to him. And definitely fresher. It tasted as if the cow had been slaughtered in the back. It was also much cheaper than it would have been in Asia.

The Americans did have this advantage. They wouldn’t have it for long. And perhaps it explained their arrogance — if you were able to eat like this, you must think you were better than everyone else.

A television was on in the bar, set to a news program. When Jing Yo finished his burger, he watched the report, trying to see what news there was on the war.

To his great surprise, there was nothing. The news was about sports, movie stars, and crime. There were three different stories about robberies in Manhattan. “Home invasions,” the reporter called them.

“Serves those rich bastards right,” said a man sitting on a stool. “They got all our goddamn money. I’d shoot ‘em all. The Wall Street bastards.”

* * *

When Jing Yo returned to the tailor’s shop, he found the door ajar. He pushed in slowly, suspicious and unsure.

A pair of suits, one blue, one pin-striped gray, were sitting on a black suitcase.

“Hello?” said Jing Yo. He put his hand on the curtain and pulled it back a few inches. “Hello?”

There was no answer.

He took the blue suit jacket and pulled it on. It fit perfectly, as did the other.

There were more clothes in the suitcase: underwear, socks, shoes. There was also a map of the city, and a tourist guide. A small traveler’s wallet contained several MetroCards, along with two debit cards and several hundred dollars in different bills.

Jing Yo’s phone rang as he was sorting through the wallet.

“Mr. Srisai, I am calling for Mr. Wong. A taxi will meet you downstairs. It will take you to a new hotel. There’ll be an envelope in the backseat of the taxi. In it will be a key for the room. The room number is 1203. You are not to go back to the old hotel. You will receive further instructions shortly.”

“Thank you,” said Jing Yo, but the caller had already hung up.

16

Washington, D.C.

“Damn it!”

Greene slammed the phone down, releasing a small portion of the anger he’d kept in check during the conversation.

A very small portion. The only way to release it all would be to throttle Senator Phillip Grasso.

Then cut him into little pieces with an ax.

And he was a member of his own party!

Greene got up and began pacing around the office. What he really should do was go down to the gym and work out a bit. Or even go upstairs and hit his bike. But he had too much to do. He was supposed to be on the phone right now, sweet-talking Congressman Belkin into voting for his health-care appropriation.

Belkin would ask for a few more dollars in one of the highway allocations. Greene would bargain a bit, but in the end he would have to relent.

Everything was a deal. Everything required some sort of quid pro quo.

And Grasso —

His phone buzzed.

“Yes, Jeannine?” he snapped.

“I’m sorry, Mr. President. Um, you have, uh, Mr. Jablonski is on three-four.”

“I’m sorry I yelled,” Greene told the operator. “My bark is worse than my bite.”

“Yes, sir.”

He picked up the line. “Billy, what the hell is going on?”

“All good,” said Jablonski. “The scientist is a little, uh, well, scientific. Stiff. But he’ll be okay.”

“That’s in our favor, right? Shows he’s authentic.”

“I guess.”

“Did you get him clothes?”

“I sent him to a friend of ours. Same guy I had cut you the suit.”

“You don’t think Anna or someone like that would have been better?”

“You said you didn’t want him to look like a movie star.”

“All right. It’s in your hands. How’s Ms. Duncan?”

“That’s why I’m calling. She doesn’t want to go on.”

“What?”

“If she goes public, she loses her cover.”

“This is more important than her goddamn cover,” said Greene. “The hell with her cover. Who the hell cares about her cover — what does she think she’s going to do, sneak back into Vietnam after the Chinese take it over?”

Jablonski didn’t say anything. But that was reproach enough.