Remembering that conversation made him feel on edge. Sometimes people thought that murder was easy.
Justin closed out the windows on Abby and moved on to Evan's father. There were probably a thousand pages of available material on Herbert Randolph Harmon. Justin printed up just some of the highlights. H. R., as he was often referred to, had used his family connections-his wife's money and his father-in-law's business, a leather tannery that he ran after the father-in-law's retirement-to become both wealthy and a political force in New England. He had never been perceived as being interested in the public at large or being interested, in fact, in anything but adding to his own wealth and prestige, but he surprised everyone who knew him when he turned thirty-five and ran for the New Hampshire congressional seat being vacated by the Republican who'd held it for eighteen years. H. R. served two terms in Congress, neither distinguishing himself nor embarrassing himself, then his higher aspirations took over and he ran for the Senate. It was a close race and, in the end, one that turned bitter and nasty. What public reputation H. R. had was largely based on his seemingly unshakable decency and civility. But when it looked as if he was going to lose the election, he had no compunction about diving into the political sewer. Or, rather, getting his handlers to dive in for him and take care of the dirty work. The tough-guy strategy backfired, however. As the campaign grew mean, H. R.'s jovial facade crumpled and a nastier foundation was exposed. That didn't sit well with voters. It also exacerbated the fact that underneath that facade was very little substance, at least when it came to issues that mattered with the voters. The voting was close, but H. R. lost the election. As 1982 ended, at age forty-seven, he was back in the private sector, but it didn't take long for him to become one of those hard-to-define political hangers-on. For years he had no real connection to Washington other than his ability to rouse other rich political hangers-on and spur them into financial action. He supported conservative candidates who came up to campaign in his state; raised money for national figures; began to be quoted in local newspapers and then national magazines, espousing conservative causes; and eventually emerged as a party spokesperson. By the mid-eighties he was back in the inner circle and in 1985 was appointed the U.S. representative to the United Nations. For three years he threw elegant parties and was briefed on the politics of many countries he'd previously never heard of, and then in 1988 became the president's choice for secretary of commerce. His main order of business was helping to develop trade relations with China, which he did efficiently and seamlessly. In 1992, when his party was voted out of office, H. R. returned to the business world. He was lured to Wall Street by Lincoln Berdon, the venerable head of the even more venerable firm of Rockworth and Williams-there it was again, Justin noted-which is where H. R. was ensconced for most of the next decade, his wealth quickly soaring to another level. While he was reading, Justin couldn't help but think of John Huston's line in Chinatown, about buildings, whores, and millionaires all becoming respectable when they get old.
In 2001, H. R. Harmon left his cozy corner office and became the U.S. ambassador to China. In 2003, while he was in Beijing, his wife, Patricia-Evan's mother-died. She succumbed to a several-year battle with cancer at a Boston hospital. H. R. had not seen her in four months. He returned to Boston for the funeral, stayed three days, went back to China.
Herbert Harmon stayed in his ambassadorial position until mid-2005, when he suffered a minor heart attack. And thus ended his political career and globe-trotting ways. Since the attack, he'd been based in New York City and been a consultant for his son's hedge fund company, Ascension. His name stopped appearing in the papers on a regular basis. His face stopped showing up on television interviews. The only thing he seemed to do consistently was play golf. Every afternoon, weather permitting, at his Westchester country club, he teed off at 4 p.m. The time rarely varied because he was both punctual and a creature of habit and because the course was empty then. Sometimes he would take a business associate, sometimes a friend. But mostly he went by himself. H. R. Harmon didn't like to play with friends. He liked to play alone, with just a caddy. It's easier to cheat, Justin thought, if the only person watching you is someone you're paying to walk along beside you.
And that, Justin decided, was all he was going to learn that morning. He didn't know exactly where he was headed, but he had some names and places with which to start. And he had a few patterns. They were vague and tenuous at best, but they were there. Now he just had to figure out what they meant.
At 6:30 a.m., Justin Westwood left his computer and stretched out on the living room couch. At 6:35 he was sound asleep. He stayed asleep for all of twenty-five minutes. As tired as he was, he couldn't ignore the urgent ringing of his telephone. And at 7 a.m., when he stumbled back toward the small table that served as his desk and spoke to the person on the other end of the line, he wasn't tired anymore. He was, in fact, as wide awake as he could be.
6
Li Ling waited in the shadows without moving.
It was not difficult for her to wait. She had long ago been trained to view time as something that could be mastered. That was unimportant. Time was something that, for her, did not really exist except as a way to put chains around anyone weak enough to bend to its will.
It was also easy for her to stay completely still. The position was called Silent Oak. They had taught it to her when she was three years old. It had been torture to remain so unbending at such a young age. Her tiny body had wanted to wiggle and squirm and run free. But with every little spasm, every minute tic, came punishment. By the age of five, she could remain perfectly rigid for four hours at a time. At seven, she knew she could stand without moving all day and night if need be. When she reached the age of ten there was no longer even a thought of movement or of freedom. Restriction was freedom by then. Freedom from her body. For with her training came the knowledge that the body was merely a tool of the brain. It was there to do what it was told. By itself it could feel nothing: no pleasure, no discomfort, no pain. It felt only what she decided it would feel.
She had worked with her master before she could even walk. He taught her many variations of the martial arts, always making sure she understood that it was indeed art she was learning to create. The art of movement. The art of power. The art of violence. The ultimate art of both life and death.
The discipline she gravitated toward was shin yi, for she loved its short, precise moves. There was no waste of motion or energy and no room for error. Much of its art was in knowing when not to move. It reinforced what she had, nearly from the beginning of her life, instinctively understood: in stillness there was also beauty. And it was beauty, above all, that she learned to crave. Beauty in any form. Beauty that could match her own.
She had known that her appearance was not ordinary from the time she was able to stand so silent and unmoving. She saw the looks in men's eyes when they stared at her. In women's eyes, too. The eyes of others revealed alclass="underline" desire, envy, submission, rage. She saw all that when people looked at her. She saw it and she began to crave it the way she did beauty. She wanted all of it.
As she grew older, her form became even more exquisite. Her body lengthened and became lithe and hard. Her fingers could flutter like graceful butterflies, her hair was thick and dark and seemed alive in its own movements. Her skin was smooth and unblemished. Her eyes-light brown-were captivating, capable of overwhelming and luring others into her lair as irresistibly as any siren, capable, too, of cruelly dismissing anyone who dared to venture, unwanted, into that same lair. As she went through her teens, her expertise in shin yi became even greater. She exalted in the most difficult moves: The Pouncing Lion, The Twisting Grasshopper, The Stinging Wasp. She mastered it all. Everything she touched, everything she tried, she mastered. And when her own master decided that she had become arrogant, that she was not in proper control of her pride and her emotions, she mastered him, too. She remembered the movement she used to break his spine: it was her own creation, her first work of original art, and she named it Shattering Glass. She could still see the look of surprise on his face. And she could still conjure up the enormous feeling of pleasure it gave her when he pleaded silently for her to end his pain by ending his life. She obeyed him one final time. A quick jab: The Kiss of the Scorpion.