The general would be in Beihai Park as promised, Cole would meet with him, shake his hand, touch a couple more pressure points and then leave the area.
And an hour later, General Wu — Paramount Leader of the People’s Republic of China — would be dead.
3
Vice President Clark Mason was drunk. He’d shared the Montrachet with Lansing — although he wasn’t sure she could tell the difference between that and the cheap stuff — and had followed it up with a few too many glasses of bourbon.
He was lying naked on his marriage bed now, silk sheets strewn across the floor, his arm wrapped round the slim, sweat-slicked body of Lansing. He was spent and exhausted from their marathon session together, but he could feel her touching him again, encouraging him to go again; and what was more — despite his drowsiness — he felt himself respond to her ministrations.
‘You know,’ he said with a slight slur, ‘you never did show me that surprise you were telling me about.’
And it was true — after dinner and drinks, they had wanted each other too much and had started making love on the couch, and then the rug by the fire, before taking it upstairs to the bedroom; he had forgotten all about Lansing’s earlier teasing.
‘Mmmm,’ Lansing moaned as Mason nuzzled her ear, ‘you’re right.’ She pulled her head away, patting him gently on the chest. ‘Wait there.’
She pulled herself out of the bed and Mason watched her dark, perfectly curved body as she left the room, hearing her feet as they retreated back downstairs.
Mason wasn’t sure how long she was gone, but felt himself drifting off to sleep, waking when she returned.
‘What do you think?’ she asked him coquettishly, displaying her newly-clothed figure for him to admire.
Mason felt his pulse racing. ‘I think you look… different,’ he said.
‘Different?’ Lansing asked, pretending offense.
‘No, no — different in a good way,’ Mason said quickly. ‘I love it.’
Lansing smiled, and held up a bag that she had brought upstairs with her. Removing a set of clothes from inside, she placed the bag on the dressing table and threw the bundle over to him.
‘What’s this?’ Mason asked.
‘You’re going to love that even more,’ she said with a seductive smile. ‘It’s your costume.’ She slipped onto the bed, sliding her hand up Mason’s naked thigh. ‘Now go and put it on,’ she purred.
Mason looked from Lansing, to the clothes, then back again. So she wanted some role play, did she? He smiled; this girl was even better than he’d thought.
He opened the bundle of clothes, desperate to see what the costume was. He was surprised at what he found. ‘Really?’ he said with a raised eyebrow.
‘Oh yeah,’ Lansing said. ‘It’s always been one of my favorite fantasies.’
Mason pulled himself out of bed, kissed her cheek, and strode to the bathroom to get changed, still not believing his luck to have met a woman like Sarah Lansing.
And there was a very good chance, he decided, that after this night was finished, the fantasy was going to be one of his favorites too.
As Cole relaxed back in his room — Hoffmeyer rarely left, except for meals — he felt his mind veering upsettingly off-course.
Aoki Michiko — my daughter.
He knew he shouldn’t be thinking about her, but found he couldn’t help himself. He had been through the upcoming mission in his mind so many times now that it was almost as if he’d been there and carried out the operation already. He knew everything about it — the area, the layout, the amounts of people who were supposed to be there, where they would be standing, what the security arrangements were like, the names of the dragon boat teams and their crews; he had even envisioned the smell of the street foods, the feel of the warm air on his skin.
All that was left was the job itself.
But now his mind was being pulled away from the mission, and he couldn’t get the image of his daughter out of his mind.
His daughter — the last time he’d thought about a daughter, it had been his little Amy, killed when she was only four. He still had nightmares about her being shot in the back of the head, her blood and brains flying out to cover his own face.
He’d failed; he had taken his revenge, for her and for Sarah and Ben, but he had failed them all.
But he no longer brooded over this failure; it was in the past, and there was nothing he could do about it anymore.
And yet he was still troubled, being here in Beijing when his own daughter was by herself, sent back to Japan by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. He had decided to go ahead with the mission, leave her to fend for herself.
It was all too similar to what he had done to his last family, put the interests of the country, of the world, ahead of them. He might have saved the president and prevented a second Cold War, but he had lost the three people he loved the most in the world.
Was he making the same mistake twice?
But he knew he had to be realistic about things. He knew nothing about the girl, couldn’t even be sure that she was his. And she was returning home, wasn’t she? Surely she would be safe there. She might have to answer some questions from the Japanese authorities, but they were hardly going to kill her.
And the situation in China was real — it was happening right now, a nightmare scenario that could spell disaster for thousands or even millions of people. Cole knew what was at stake, and knew that he had a chance of stopping it.
On the other hand, Michiko would be quite safe in Japan; and what was he going to do about it anyway? He might not be able to find her there even if he looked; and if he found her, would she want to talk to him? Or would she still want to kill him?
The question of why she wanted to kill him still haunted him. What did she think he had done? She obviously blamed him for something, but what was it?
Cole shuddered as he considered the possibility that — whatever it was — she might be right. He had certainly done some horrific things in his life, any of which might have affected Michiko in some way without his ever realizing it.
But he knew he wasn’t being entirely honest with himself; if Michiko hated him enough to try and kill him, there were only a few things that he’d done that would have affected her. And as far as he knew, they all related to her mother, Aoki Asami.
He lay on the huge bed, willing himself not to think about it, knowing the memories would drag him down, make him doubt himself, jeopardize the mission. And yet he couldn’t help it, and in his mind’s eye the luxurious, brightly-lit hotel room gradually darkened, growing old and shabby until it had become a dingy little room at the Khao Sing Apartments in downtown Bangkok, eighteen years ago; a room he’d tried hard to forget; a room of nightmares.
4
Mark Kowalski had been in Bangkok with six friends from his SEAL Team Two platoon, on R&R after a six month tour of Iraq back in 2003. He had a girlfriend back home, but that was only semi-serious; neither one of them had made any sort of commitment, and so Kowalski was going to do what SEALs did best — after fighting at least — and party like his life depended on it.
It had been a long six months, and he needed the release. They all did; it had been pretty much non-stop for the entire tour, one nerve-wracking recon mission after another, several of which had turned into vicious firefights. They had won each engagement decisively, but they had all lost friends on the way; their trip to Bangkok was therefore part R&R, part memorial. It was how they dealt with loss and pain.