He grimaced. “I want to fly to Chicago tonight and give you a proper tossing, but you know it’s not that easy. I have to prepare my papers. My new identity must be solid.”
“Please?” She hated the pleading in her voice. It reminded her of her teenage years. She was always desperate for approval, letting boys use her for cheap make-outs and the occasional hand job or blow job.
“Don’t beg,” Patrick said. “You’re better than that. So much better.”
The heat fled her cheeks. “I’m sorry.”
“You don’t have to be sorry, darling. You know I care for you.”
“Here,” she said. “Just watch.” She clicked play on the shared video and waited for Patrick’s response.
There was a moment of silence after the video ended, and then Patrick’s face reappeared. “What was that?”
“You tell me,” she said.
“It looked like a man jumping out of a building.”
“The sixth floor.”
Patrick rubbed his palms together. “He was… holding something.”
“I think it was a drone.”
“A drone?”
“A heavy-duty drone.”
His mouth dropped. “A man jumped out of the sixth floor of a hospital holding a drone? Where did you get the video?”
“The hacker may have deleted the admitting files, but I found a video feed from a camera across the street. If I back it up, you can see two ambulances arrive at the ED, but after the hacker deleted everything, it showed one ambulance. One ambulance that contained a man named Holzinger. He was DOA.”
“Holzinger?”
“Yes. I Googled him. He was the CEO of a company called Dynoson. It’s—”
“—an oil company,” Patrick finished. “If that ambulance delivered the dead body, what about the second ambulance? The man who jumped from that window was in the second ambulance?”
She nodded. “I think so.”
“Smart, Lila. You’re such a smart girl.”
“Why would he jump from the window?”
“Because he wants to get away from something,” Patrick said. “But what?”
“I have more video.”
She played a short clip from another camera, and they watched as a man in a tan trenchcoat entered the hospital. “He appeared shortly after the ambulances.”
“A spy,” Patrick said.
“What? How can you tell?”
“He looks like a spy.”
“And how do spies look?”
Patrick laughed. “Like assholes.”
“I wonder who he works for.”
“Does it matter?”
“If he was there to help,” Lila said, “why would that man have jumped from the window?”
“He must work for the Americans. The man in the trenchcoat must work for the Swiss government.”
“The Americans don’t have permission from the Swiss government,” she said. “They’re operating without the Swiss government’s help.”
“This is what we been looking for,” Patrick said.
“There’s more.”
“More?”
She typed furiously. On the screen, a camera showed a van approaching an intersection and turning left. “See this?”
He squinted at the screen. “You’re joking.”
“I’m not.”
Patrick licked his lips. “You’ve captured their faces?”
“I can only sharpen the picture so much,” she said, “but I did manage this.” A picture of the van’s front displayed a license plate, and she zoomed in on it. “You can read a few of the numbers. I’ve run all the possible combinations. There’s no match.”
“Their faces, though…”
She zoomed in on the black man in the driver’s seat and the woman in the passenger seat. “This is the best I could do.”
“That’s at least a three-person crew of US personnel. Think of the implications, darling.”
“We should release this.”
Patrick’s smile faded. “We can’t. Not yet.”
“Why the hell not?” Lila demanded. “They killed a man and ran from the Swiss authorities. This is the kind of thing we’ve been talking about. This proves the United States military is operating outside of international law—”
“That’s probably true,” Patrick said, “but it’s not enough. We need ironclad proof.”
“We have proof.”
“We have grainy images,” he said. “It’s not the same as financial transactions. We’re dealing with government-sponsored terrorism by the biggest military power in the world. You understand the kind of danger this puts us in?”
Her stomach sank, but she took a deep breath and soldiered on. “What have we been fighting for? You always said Wall Street was just the beginning. We have the Armageddon file—”
“We do, my darling, but we have to be safe. These people won’t just ruin us. They will silence us any way they can.”
There was fear in his voice, and she leaned back in her chair, her skin growing cold. “What do you want me to do?”
“Give me some time to think about how to handle this. Lila? This was fantastic work. I could kiss you.”
She stuck her tongue out at him. “Oh, you will.”
Chapter Six
Lee Chen sipped delicately from his teacup. The complex flavor was almost overwhelmed by the stench of the laundry’s industrial solvents.
Over the years, he had learned to close down his thoughts. Then, when he had achieved a trancelike state, he sank back into the memories of his youth. In those memories, his mother smiled back at him, her warm eyes fixed on his while he did his schoolwork, sliding the abacus beads back and forth and carefully penciling in his sums.
His mother’s face faded, only to be replaced by that of a beautiful young woman with smooth olive skin and long black hair that shone in the sun. Her lips were thin but still full. She watched him with awe as he told her about his selection for a very important position in the government. He would be gone for months, perhaps a year, then would return home so they might marry.
He snorted, and it broke him free of his trance. His teacup was nearly empty, and he stared at the dregs.
Did I know, then, that I was never going home?
He had hesitated at the chance to marry, those many years ago. Perhaps a part of him had known.
Footsteps clunk-clunked down the metal stairs, and he turned and offered a polite smile to the young man joining him.
“Mr. Chen,” the young man said in greeting, waving for him to remain seated. “Thank you for meeting me.”
Several thoughts ran through Chen’s head. Wang Hu was almost thirty, but traces of baby fat still remained on his round face. Hu had graduated from Tsinghua University with a degree in electrical engineering before his recruitment, and his rise in the Ministry of State Security was unprecedented.
He made several other observations about the young man. Hu failed to bow in respect. Bowing was rare in China, but it was still customary when dealing with people in certain positions.
Perhaps the youth in the MSS aren’t taught such things.
Hu had spoken in English rather than Chinese, and while they were in the United States, it was still customary to speak in Chinese when on official business.
Hu’s dark blue suit was custom-tailored. His hair was neatly trimmed, and the complexion of his rather chubby face was spotless.
Where did the time go?
He took a deep breath and let his tension ebb. “Mr. Hu,” he said in English, standing and offering the young man his hand. “Such a pleasure.”