This, he knew, would involve some romance. Perhaps even physical contact. It was hard work, sure, but for the good of national security, Derrick Storm would make the sacrifice.
They found a small café a block in from the Seine. The evening was warm enough that they dined al fresco, allowing them to see the spires of the nearby Notre Dame illuminated against the night sky. He ordered a bottle of Domaine Viret and offered a toast to “our two great cultures.”
They touched glasses and began a free-ranging discussion. He talked about the chemistry that made glycine, found in abundance in soybeans, the best-tasting of the nonessential amino acids. She told stories from the finance minister’s trip to Indonesia, where she attended the ritual sacrifice of a water buffalo. They laughed. They lied. They drank wine in great volumes.
As they spoke, their legs kept brushing. She touched his arm and laughed when he told jokes. Through it all, there was a small part of Storm’s brain that remained wary. He knew he was not being as faithful to his cover story as he needed to be. Yes, he kept inserting details about soybean cultivation that he had gleaned from his crash course during the plane ride across the Atlantic. But she was getting too much Derrick Storm, not enough Cleveland Detroit.
He even told her the cupcake story. It was his sixth birthday, toward the end of the school year. He was just finishing up an otherwise wonderful time in full-day kindergarten. Except he had this lingering sense of dread. His teacher, Mrs. Taylor, kept a poster with everyone’s birthday on it. All school year long, he had watched as class mothers showed up after lunch on their child’s birthday with gorgeous platters of fresh-baked cupcakes. But he didn’t have a mom anymore. He had a dad who didn’t even know how to turn on an oven. He was sure his birthday was going to pass with no cupcakes. There was a hope, but… Mostly, he already could just taste the shame of being the only kid who didn’t have cupcakes on his birthday.
The big day came. Lunch came. Lunch went. Sure enough, no cupcakes. He was crushed. Then, just before recess, there was a knock on Mrs. Taylor’s door. And there was his old man, with a lopsided grin and the ugliest, sloppiest, most wonderful pile of cupcakes anyone had ever seen. He had not only overfilled the cups, he had put on twice as much frosting as the recipe called for. It made for a delicious mess. Everyone in Mrs. Taylor’s kindergarten agreed they were the best cupcakes of the year.
“I can tell you love your father very much,” Xi Bang said, patting his hand.
“In his own way, he was the best dad a kid could have,” Storm confirmed.
Storm was saved from further sentimentality when a wandering street musician with a violin set up shop nearby. His first song was “The Vienna Waltz,” one of Storm’s favorites. He couldn’t help himself. He swept Xi Bang up in his arms and satisfied his previous suspicion that they were more than suitable as dance partners — to say nothing of their potential ability to partner in other, more aerobic activities.
“This song,” he said as he twirled her across the sidewalk. “We’ll dance to it at our wedding.”
“Will we now?” she said. “Who says I don’t get to pick the song?”
“Because this one doesn’t need a full symphony. It sounds beautiful when played by a small string quartet. That way, we can keep the ceremony small and intimate. Is that okay?”
“Yes,” she said, burying her face in his chest. “Intimate is good.”
They danced some more, drank some more. When the check came, he told himself it was time to recover his wits. The walk home, he knew, would be the dangerous part. If she had sniffed out his lies the way he had hers, it would be easy to lead him into a trap. If Storm wasn’t careful, Chinese agents could easily kill him, dump his body, and turn Cleveland Detroit into a conundrum for French authorities.
And, sure enough, as they staggered drunkenly home, leaning on each other the whole way, he felt his internal alarm bells ringing as she dragged him into an alley. His body tensed. His eyes cast furiously about. He readied himself to fight. Or flee. Whichever seemed most appropriate.
Then she planted her lips on his and pressed her body tight against him, fairly slamming him into the wall of a brick building. It was around that time that Storm realized that the only people in the alley were two lovers, one American, one Chinese, bathed in Parisian moonlight.
“I’ve got a suite at the hotel all to myself,” she said when they surfaced for air. “Come back with me.”
He answered with another long kiss. And so it was that a suite at the Hotel de la Dame became witness to the collision of two great cultures.
The next thing Storm knew, his phone was ringing. It was morning. The other side of the bed was empty. It took him a moment to remember where he was and, more importantly, who he was.
Then it finally clicked in. He answered the phone with: “Cleveland Detroit.”
“Storm, it’s me,” said the rough-hewn voice of Jedediah Jones.
“Go ahead,” Storm said. Wherever Xi Bang was — the bathroom, perhaps? — she was likely out of earshot. But caution was still called for.
“We’ve got another dead banker missing a whole lot of fingernails,” Jones said. “Volkov has struck again.”
“Where?”
“London.”
“And?”
“You’re my nearest boots on the ground. Get over there. Check out the scene. Learn what you can learn about the victim. I’m arranging an escort for you to London.”
“E-mail details,” he said. “I’m on my way.”
“Just make sure you’re free of tails when you leave the city.”
“Got it,” he said, then turned off the phone.
Storm began collecting his clothes, which were strewn in various rooms of the suite. He already had a lie prepared for Xi Bang: He was being called to London for breaking soy-related news and would have to rejoin the Finance Ministry at some later time to finish his story.
He kept expecting he would find Xi Bang somewhere, perhaps reading the paper or sipping coffee. Perhaps there would even be time for a brief but rewarding reconnoitering of any territories that had been left unexplored the previous evening.
But she wasn’t in the sitting room. She wasn’t on the balcony. She wasn’t in the bathroom, either.
As Storm found the last of his clothing, he acknowledged what he should have known the moment he saw the empty bed:
Ling Xi Bang was gone.
CHAPTER 10
NEW YORK, New York
rom its burnished walnut lockers to the portraits of its past presidents that hung on the walls, the Trinity Health & Racquet Club smelled like old money.
With good reason. Everyone there had it. Lots of it. On the rare times when the club actually accepted a new member, he — and all but two members were male — had to put up a nonreturnable fifty-thousand-dollar bond in order to gain access to its indoor and outdoor tennis courts, its racquetball courts, its squash courts, its fitness center, and its dining and locker room facilities, which included the best sauna in lower Manhattan. The fifty grand requirement was not because the club particularly needed the cash. Its endowment was now somewhere over thirty million dollars, enough to run the club for nearly three years without collecting a single dollar in dues. It was just to keep out the riffraff.
G. Whitely Cracker V was a legacy here — the third generation of Crackers to belong. His grandfather, Graham W. Cracker III, had been one of the founding members. His portrait hung on the wall just outside the dining room. Whitely’s father, G. W. Cracker IV, had served three terms as president. His portrait was near the bar.