Quinn entertained the fleeting thought that she might be setting him up to be shot during an attempted escape.
“You must trust me.” She looked at her watch. “I will meet you in one hour in front of the Blue Sky Hotel. It’s on Jiefang Road alongside the park.”
“You said we are after the same thing.” He slipped on a new pair of Nike running shoes as he spoke, keeping an eye on the woman.
“When you questioned Hajip, you asked him about the Feng brothers,” Song said. “Like you, I am trying to forestall a war between our two countries.”
“So, you’re Army?” Quinn asked.
“MSS,” she said. Both an intelligence and enforcement organization, the Ministry of State Security was China’s version of the KGB — with the same reputation for being heavy-handed toward their own citizens. Her lips set in a tight line. “Now hurry. But make no mistake, if my assessment of you is wrong — and you try to run, the combined forces of the police and the People’s Liberation Army will hunt you down and kill you.”
“And what if you’re right?” Quinn asked, looking over his shoulder after a quick peek into the empty hall. “What if we are after the same thing?”
“Then many of those same people will be hunting us both.”
Chapter 22
Ronnie Garcia set her espresso on the table beside a folded copy of the Gettysburg Times crossword and watched Congressman Mike Dillman pause outside the shop across the street. He wore a baseball hat pulled low over sandy gray hair. Even from her vantage point a hundred feet away, his large handlebar mustache made it easy to identify him. He studied the crayon mark on the sidewalk just long enough to make Ronnie uncomfortable before ducking into the coffee shop.
Sue Gorski walked close behind him. A slender woman with the short, well-styled hair of someone used to the public eye, the senator from Alaska was dressed much like Ronnie in a crisp button-down oxford blouse and light slacks. She wore dark glasses, likely for the same reason Dillman wore the cap, though they looked less like a disguise and more like a fashionable piece of her normal wardrobe. Looking up and down the street, she ducked into the shop behind the congressman.
Garcia waited ten more minutes as tourists flowed back and forth in front of the espresso shop. Six patrons came and went, each carrying a cup of something they’d purchased inside. Garcia hit the tiny Bluetooth bud in her left ear and called Miyagi.
“How does it look out there?”
“Clear as of yet,” the Japanese woman said. “But any followers could merely be waiting.”
“I’ll give it five more minutes,” Garcia said, noting the time on her Aquaracer. “Let me know if you see anything odd.”
“Of course,” Miyagi said, ending the call.
Ronnie felt stupid even as she said the words. Emiko Miyagi had been her teacher at The Farm. There was no doubt she would let Garcia know if she saw something out of place.
Five minutes clicked by with no screech of tires or scream of IDTF sirens. Ronnie took the time to take what Thibodaux called a combat pee and get rid of all the coffee she’d been downing during her wait. Finished, she grabbed the newspaper from her table and stepped back out into the summer heat and flow of pedestrian traffic. The smell of someone grilling hot dogs made her stomach growl and she realized she hadn’t eaten in hours. Instead of heading directly over to the waiting delegation, she walked down the street, crossing at the corner and window-shopping her way back to the espresso shop, keeping a weather eye open for surveillance.
Knowing she was at the point where she’d have to commit or walk on by, Garcia took a deep breath and walked inside. The harsh clang of a cowbell gave her a start as she stepped through the door into the air-conditioned shop. She half expected to be surrounded the moment she walked in but was greeted by a pert little barista with fuchsia hair and a nose ring.
Full to the gills with coffee and feeling more than a little jittery, Garcia ordered a peach Italian soda and approached the waiting congressional delegation. She’d never met either of them, but was happy they’d chosen a table in the back corner near the door to a small kitchen, under the dusty mount of a deer head.
Cool drink in hand, she put on a broad smile and walked up to the table.
“Mind if I sit down?” she said, sipping on the soda through a straw daubed with her wine-colored lipstick.
Congressman Dillman, ever the gentleman, stood and pointed an open hand to the empty chair with its back to the wall. “I thought we’d save you the gunfighter seat,” he said.
Senator Gorski smiled. She had a kind face but Garcia could see the tension around her normally laughing eyes and mouth. She was not cut out for this sort of meeting.
“Thank you for meeting me,” Garcia said, keeping her tone and actions light, even as the topic of her conversation turned to treason.
Ten minutes later Senator Gorski looked up from the diagram of terrorist connections Ronnie had sketched on her napkin.
“Well then,” she said, demonstrating the poise under pressure that had earned her three terms in the senate. “Everything you say sounds plausible. The President’s support is waning, but even those who would believe the charges would need hard proof to convict. A photo with a known terrorist is damaging, but I’m not sure it constitutes a high crime or misdemeanor. Too easy to explain away. I think we might get more mileage with charges of warmongering.”
“I understand,” Garcia said, turning to Dillman. “Congressman, do you think you have a majority?”
He smoothed his mustache and nodded. “Enough for an impeachment? Yes, I’m sure we do.”
“The people I work with believe that will be the shot across the bow we’d need,” Ronnie said. “It will let the Chinese know that not everyone in this country is quite so eager for war.”
“Not to mention putting the administration on the defensive,” Gorski mused. “Even if they aren’t convicted.”
“Not that it makes a difference,” Dillman said, “but having these particular men on the defensive is bound to be extremely dangerous for the people that put them there.”
“No doubt,” Garcia said. “This is dangerous for all of us, but the alternative is unthinkable.”
Gorski stood, pushing the napkin back across the table at Garcia, smart enough not to carry something so damning on her person. “Please tell Mr. Palmer that he has our support.”
Mike Dillman stood as well. “And tell the old warhorse when this is over he owes me a beer.”
“When this is over—” Ronnie said, as Miyagi’s voice crackled over her earbud.
“You have visitors,” she said through the electronic crackle. “Two SUVs rolling up in front—”
“Roger that.” Garcia pointed her open hand toward the kitchen entrance. Jaw set and scanning for options, she repeated Miyagi’s warning to Dillman and Gorski. “You understand I cannot let them arrest me,” she said.