“Who says I’m with the Ministry of State Security?” she said, letting only the slightest smile slip.
Storm affected a German accent: “Ve haff vays of making you talk, Agent Xi Bang.”
“My grandfather still had party connections,” she continued. “He got me an internship in the Ministry of State Security. That seemed a lot more interesting a path than becoming someone’s wife.”
“Do you ever think about marriage?” he asked.
“Why, Agent Storm, are you proposing?”
“I thought I already did. We’re going to dance to ‘The Vienna Waltz’ at our wedding, remember?”
Fresh beers arrived on the table. A Widmer Brothers Drifter Pale Ale for her. An Arrogant Bastard Ale for him.
“Okay, so what about you?” he said. “When were you on to me?”
“Cheers again,” she said, touching her glass to his.
“Cheers again,” Storm said.
“And stop stalling. I showed you mine. You show me yours: When did you figure me out?”
“I was suspicious the moment I laid eyes on you,” Xi Bang said. “The way the other correspondents looked at you, I could tell you weren’t part of the usual herd. Plus, that jacket? Atrocious. The media actually dresses a lot nicer than that these days.”
“Well, the correspondents from Soy Trader Weekly are noted for their down-to-earth apparel,” Storm said.
“Ah, yes, Soy Trader Weekly. Nice website, by the way. But that’s how we actually made you.”
“How? That website was perfect.”
“Yeah, too perfect,” Xi Bang said. “When our techs tried to hack it, they couldn’t. It had CIA encryption on it. You want to tell me Soy Trader Weekly has access to that?”
“Amateur mistake,” Storm said, making a mental note to tell Jedediah Jones about that flaw.
They dove back into the pile of wings, doing an efficient, if messy, job of shrinking it. Storm, as usual, ate like he had an empty leg. But Xi Bang held her own. And when the waitress came and asked if they wanted seconds, they shared a half second of silent communication before deciding, yeah, that would be fine.
“So you know your reputation precedes you in the Chinese intelligence community,” Xi Bang said as they waited for the next round of wings to arrive. “From the stories that circulate, I figured ‘Derrick Storm’ was actually an amalgam of several different American operatives.”
“Nope. Just me. What made you think that?”
“I don’t know. I just assumed that all of what I heard couldn’t be true. Or that if it was true, it had to be multiple agents’ legends rolled into one.”
“I guess it depends on what you heard.”
“Were you in Morocco a few years ago?” she asked.
Storm just shrugged.
“What about ‘The Fear?’ Did you really take him out?”
He said nothing. But Xi Bang caught his telclass="underline" The corner of his mouth pulled up a fraction of an inch.
“There’s also a rumor you once killed an enemy agent with a melon baller.”
“People exaggerate,” Storm said at last, shaking his head. “It was an ice cream scoop.”
She checked to see if he was kidding. He wasn’t. She knew better than to ask for details.
“So,” he said, switching subjects with the tone of his voice, “it looks like our interests in this current case are aligned.”
“Kind of strange for two countries that act like enemies half the time, isn’t it?” she said. “But, yes, my people want Volkov stopped as bad as your people.”
“If I may ask, what are your orders?”
“Probably the same as yours: If I see Volkov, I shoot to kill,” she said. “My country still talks a big game about Communism, but the fact is there are very powerful business interests that have substantial influence on the party. Those interests have made it clear that a strong U.S. dollar is their priority. And therefore my bosses have made it clear this thing with Volkov is my priority. My role is supposed to be more investigative, but if I get a shot…”
“I understand,” Storm said. “We should work together.”
“Work together?”
“We can go back to being enemies later,” Storm promised. “I’ll even let you tie me up.”
“That sounds great, but… can we do that?”
“Sure, you just take some rope and…”
“No, I mean can we really work together? I mean, I know we’ve been doing that informally. But I’m not sure if I can formally…”
“Formal, informal — doesn’t matter,” Storm said, dismissing the thought with a backhanded wave. Sure, Jones and his superiors in the high reaches of the CIA would have a fit if they knew Storm was in bed — literally and figuratively — with a Chinese agent. But this wasn’t the first time Storm had made an alliance that the CIA wouldn’t approve of. Besides, wasn’t that why Jones hired him? To do things that Jones and the agency couldn’t do themselves? To give them plausible deniability when it all went wrong?
“All your people are going to care about is that the job is done,” Storm continued.
“Same with my people. We’ve got to figure out who hired Volkov and stop whoever is behind it. We’re going to be a lot more likely to accomplish that working together and sharing information.
“Besides,” he added, “I don’t want to have to chase you up any more skyscrapers.”
“What? Can’t a girl play hard to get?”
“I hope not, Agent Xi Bang,” he said, grinning. “I sincerely hope not.”
There were five flights a day out of the Ames Municipal Airport, none of which left after dusk. Yes, one phone call to Jedediah Jones would change that. Yes, there were other ways out of Iowa.
But Derrick Storm and Ling Xi Bang told themselves they were stuck, stranded and marooned until morning. And, in any event, they had nowhere to go — at least not until Click’s model gave them some answers or, sadly, until Banker No. 5 met his end.
So it was that they ended up at making a short stumble up the street to a Days Inn. They decamped in Room 214, then subjected anyone unfortunate enough to be inhabiting Room 212 or 216 to something that might have sounded like a TV at too high a volume, tuned to Animal Planet.
Then, after a short respite, they did it again.
Later, as they lay naked, the sheets a tumble at the bottom of the bed, Storm let his fingertips follow a meandering path across Xi Bang’s rib cage, stomach, and thighs. He was propped on one elbow. She was lying flat, her eyes fixed on some point in the darkness, enjoying his touch.
She broke the stillness by asking, “Was the cupcake story true?”
“Yeah, actually, it was,” Storm said. “Every bit of it.”
“Do you remember your mother?”
“Not really.”
“So it was just you and your dad?”
“Yeah, but it’s not like I ever felt I was missing anything,” he said. “You can’t miss what you never knew in the first place. I have a great dad. That’s enough.”
“I can’t believe he never remarried.”
“Forget remarried. He’s never even dated,” Storm said. “He acts like replacing her in any fashion would be an act of betrayal. I think his general attitude is that she was the love of his lifetime, the one and only, and that to behave otherwise would diminish that somehow.”
“I can’t decide whether that’s romantic or sad.”
“Maybe it’s a bit of both,” Storm said.
“What do you think? Is there one or are there many?”
“I believe that the human capacity to love is not a one-shot deal.”
“So that’s how it is for you, Storm? Love as a hundred-round magazine? Set the gun on automatic and spray it around?”
“I never said that,” Storm said. “Love is like a bullet, though. You know the instant you’ve been hit. And even if it’s just a glancing blow, you’re never quite the same. The bullet either buries itself deep inside you, or it takes some piece of you away with it.”
He was thinking about Clara Strike when he said it. How many chunks of him had she taken out over the years? And yet how many times did he keep returning to face the firing squad?