Leaning forward in his chair, Canning said, “But you aren't old enough to have lived through that.”
“I'm twenty-nine,” she said, her eyes never wavering from his. There was a thread of fear woven through those black irises now. “I wasn't born until well after the war. That's true. But I was raised in an emotionally torn hoursehold. My parents were quietly proud of their Asian ancestry, but after their ordeal in the camp they were anxious to prove themselves 'native' Americans. They became over-Americanized after that. They even stopped writing to relatives in the Old World. They taught me Chinese and Japanese in the privacy of our home, but they forbid me to speak it outside the home. I was to speak only English when I was out of their company. I was twenty-four before anyone but my mother and father knew I was multilingual. And now I seem to have this need to prove how American I am.” She smiled. “About the only good thing to come of it is a very American drive to achieve, achieve, achieve.”
And she had achieved a great deal by the age of twenty-rune. While she was still twenty she had graduated from the University of California. By twenty-five she'd obtained a master's and a doctorate in sociology and psychology from Columbia University. She had done some speech-writing for a successful Vice-Presidential candidate, and it was in that capacity that she had met and become friends with Bob McAlister and his wife. When she was twenty-six she had applied for a position with the CIA, had passed all the tests, and had backed out at the last minute when she'd accepted a proposal of marriage from one of her professors at Columbia. The marriage had failed a few months ago, and she had been more than available when McAlister had asked for her help in the Dragonfly investigation.
“I took the oath and signed the secrecy pledge the first time I applied for work with the agency,” she said. “So there was really no technical reason why Bob couldn't tell me everything and ring me in on this.”
Canning stood up and said, “Another drink?”
“Please.”
When he came back with two more vodka atrocities, he said, “I'm damned glad he did ring you in. You're the most efficient partner I've ever worked with.”
She didn't blush or demur, and he respected her for that. She just nodded and said, “That's probably true. But enough about me. Let's talk about you.”
Canning was not the sort of man who liked to talk about himself, and especially not to people whom he had just met. Yet with her he was talkative. She sat with her head tilted to the left and her mouth slightly open as if she were tasting what he said as well as listening to it.
Around seven o'clock they stopped drinking and talking long enough for her to order their dinner from room service. While she did that, he took a hot shower, brushed his teeth, and shaved. When he came out of the bathroom in fresh slacks and a T-shirt, the room-service hot cart was set up and the food was ready.
While he was in the shower, she had changed into a floor-length silk lounging robe which had a peaked hood after the fashion of a monk's habit. The silk was forest-green, with a decorative gold zipper all the way down the front. She was striking, exotic.
They ate mizutaki, the white meat of the chicken stewed in an earthenware pot and flavored with many herbs. When the chicken was gone, they drank the excellent broth. This was accompanied by piping hot sake which was delicious but which — Lee Ann explained — tasted like a spoiled sauterne when it was cool. For dessert, there were mandarin-orange slices and shredded almonds. To finish the meal and stretch out the evening, there were six small bottles of Kirin, the excellent lager that was an equal to the best European beers.
At some point, they adjourned to one of the beds, where they stretched out side by side, each with a bottle of Kirin. The conversation continued nonstop, and Canning found that the sound of her voice was like a tranquilizer.
Shortly before ten o'clock she went to use the bathroom, and when she came back she was nude. She was exquisite. Her breasts were small but perfectly shaped, upthrust, with nipples as dark as baker's chocolate. Her stomach was as flat as that of a young boy. Her navel was convex rather than concave; a sweet, protruding nubbins. Her pubic thatch was thick and dark, and her legs were as smooth and sinuous as any he had ever seen in Las Vegas showrooms or in the Crazy Horse Saloon or in the airbrushed pages of Playboy. Yet for all of this, there was something childlike and vulnerable about the way she stood before him.
He said, “Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“Maybe it's the wine.”
“No.'
She switched off all but one light.
“I'm too old for you.”
“You're younger than you are. And I'm older than I am.”
“It's so fast.”
“That's the American way. I'm an American woman, and American women get what they want. I want you.” She knelt on the bed beside him. “Relax. Enjoy. Remember that we could be in Peking when Dragonfly is detonated. We could be dead tomorrow.”
“Is that the only reason for this?” he asked.
“No. I like you.”
He reached for her.
She stretched out on top of him.
He tasted her mouth.
After a while she undressed him.
His erection was like a post. When she touched it he felt a quick flash of guilt and remembered Irene. But that passed, and he slipped into a pool of sensation.
Afterward, she got two fresh bottles of Kirin. They sat up in bed, drinking. They touched one another, gently, tentatively, as if to reassure themselves that they had been together.
At some point in the night, after the Kirin was gone, when she was lying with her head upon his chest, he said, “I told you about my son.”
“Mike.”
“Yes. What I didn't tell you was that he thinks of me as a murderer.”
“Are you?”
“In a sense.”
“Who have you killed?”
“Agents. The other side.”
“How many?”
“Eleven.”
“They would have killed you?”
“Of course.”
“Then you're no murderer.”
“Tell him that.”
“The meek don't inherit the earth,” she said. “The meek are put in concentration camps. And graves.”
“I've tried to tell him that.”
“But he believes in pacifism and reason?”
“Something of the sort.”
“Wait until he finds most people won't listen to reason.”
He cupped one of her breasts. “If I told him about Dragonfly, Mike would say the world has gone mad.”
“I think poor Bob McAlister feels that way. At least a little bit. Don't you think?”
“Yes. You're right.”
“And of course, it hasn't gone mad.”
“Because it's always been mad.”
She said, “You know why I wanted you?”
“Because I'm handsome and charming?”
“A thousand reasons. But, maybe most of all — because I sensed violence in you. Death. Not that you're fond of death and violence. But you accept it. And you can deal it.”
“That makes me exotic, exciting?”
“It makes you like me.”
He said, “You've never killed anyone.”
“No. But I could. I'd make a good assassin if I believed the man I was to kill had to die for the good of mankind. There are men who need to die, aren't there? Some men are animals.”
“My liberal friends would think I'm an animal if they heard me agree with you,” he said. “But then, so would some of my conservative friends.”
“And your son. Yet without you and a few others like you, they'd all have fallen prey to the real animals a long time ago. Most men who can kill without guilt are monsters, but we need a few decent men with that ability too.”