Midas raised his hand. “I am Spartacus.”
The others spoke all at once, each taking their share of the blame.
Adara leaned back, pounding her head against her seat, staring up at the ceiling.
“No,” she said. “It was all me, Ding. Okay? Don’t get pissed at them, they were just following my lead—”
Chavez chuckled. “Then you get all the credit — which means I’m buyin’ you dinner at Smith and Wollensky next time we’re in New York.” A sudden thought occurred to him, and he looked up at Clark. “Were you in on this, Mr. C?”
“Nope,” Clark said. “Wish I had been, though.” His cell began to buzz and he sat up, fishing it out of his pocket. “Clark…” He closed his eyes, listening, nodding, giving a polite grunt now and then to let the caller know he was still on the line. After three minutes, he exhaled slowly through his mouth and said, “Thank you for letting me know… Yes. Me, too. I appreciate it.”
“Everything okay?” Ding asked.
“Good to go,” Clark said, offering no further explanation.
“Hey,” Adara said, obviously sensitive to Clark’s need for some emotional space. “Maybe we can call ahead and get some poke brought out to the plane when we land in Honolulu. There’s a good place not too far from the airport.”
Ding shrugged. “If you’d rather have raw tuna and soy sauce than a Smith and Wollensky steak…”
“Nice try, mister,” Adara said. “One doesn’t have anything to do with the other.” She settled in beside Dom. “I love Hawaii. A shame we’ll only get to see the airport.”
Caruso leaned against her shoulder. “Don’t worry, hon, Indonesia is a tropical paradise, too. Just a hell of a lot more people who’ll want to kill us. It’ll be fun.”
The Gulfstream bounced a little as it rolled down the taxiway. Clark had never been much of a talker anyway, but he’d turned inward from the time he’d gotten the last call.
Chavez caught his eye and gave him an “Okay?” signal like scuba divers used, a circle with his thumb and forefinger.
Clark gave him a quiet nod and then shut his eyes, following up with an involuntary shake of his head. He’d known Pat West, so he was already upset about that. But this was different. Clark wasn’t just upset. He was shaken — which had a way of making Ding doubt the things he took for granted, like gravity. John Clark was as solid as they came. When something was bad enough to bother him, it was either very bad — or very personal.
Peter Li kissed his wife hello as soon as he walked in the door, and then immediately said good-bye. He felt a mixture of pride and giddiness every time he saw her radiant face and swelling belly. Most men his age were playing golf and looking at motor home brochures. Here he was, married to a woman more than ten years his junior, preparing for a new baby. It would either keep him young or kill him, but he decided he’d enjoy it either way.
Sophie was crestfallen. “You’re leaving again?”
“It’s just for a couple of hours,” he said, rubbing his eyes from jet lag. “I had an odd encounter on my trip and I have to let the security folks know. It’s a clearance thing. We have to disclose contacts with foreign governments.”
“Sounds secret-agenty,” Sophie said.
“It was, a little,” Li said, his mind elsewhere. “It’s odd for a man of my age to be approached by an attractive woman…”
Sophie gave him a wary side-eye.
“Present company excepted.”
“Sounds like you have some disclosing to do right here at home, mister.”
Li kissed her on the nose, gave her boob a gentle squeeze, and then turned for the door, completely exhausted from a day and a half of flying, but driven to put this encounter aboard
Dexter & Reed occupied sixty-two acres on three separate tracts, thirty miles north of Chicago. Each was parked out with jogging trails winding through greenbelts and wildlife sanctuaries between the massive brick-and-glass buildings. The Security and Human Resources departments were on the same campus as Li’s shop, but two buildings over. Isaac Santos met Li at the front doors to the main building, where Li’s office suite was located. The chief of D&R security wore a white hard hat, reflective safety vest, and lineman’s belt with assorted pole-climbing equipment. He was rolling down the sleeves of his denim shirt when Li walked up.
“Peter,” Santos said, shaking Li’s hand, eyeing him with the benign mistrust law enforcement held for everyone who wasn’t one of them.
“Isaac,” Li said. “Thanks for seeing me on short notice.” The security chief was a good enough guy. Approachable, always telling stories, less taciturn than what Li would have expected from a former FBI supervisory special agent with the counterintelligence squad in the New York Field Office.
“No worries,” Santos said. He nodded toward the budding hardwood trees that lined the main road to the employee parking lot. “I was out here anyway. Setting the trap for this bastard we’ve been watching for.”
