“You know as well as I that these things aren’t mouse-fart quiet,” Yao said. “But with subsonic ammo this thing is amazing. Solid, too. Instructions don’t call for you to shoot it wet, but I’ve put a little lithium grease on the baffles and… I’ve gotta tell you, it is sweet. Jack could pop a round in the backseat and we’d think we ran over a rock.”
“Custom job?” Adara asked.
“No,” Yao said. “Made by Bowers Group. They call it the Bitty. These are the same, they just don’t have any manufacturer’s markings, in case we have to ditch them.”
Adara screwed it onto the threaded barrel of the Beretta Bobcat and hefted the little setup. “Bowers Bitty ‘Black,’” she said. “Makes the .22-caliber much more interesting.”
She passed the gun over her shoulder to Ryan, who gave it a nod of approval. “I guess the little cuss grows on you after a while,” he said.
Chavez laughed and looked back at him. “Like somebody else I know.” He turned to Yao. “There are only four. What are you going to carry?”
“I’ll make do.” Yao chuckled. “Frankly, if things turn to shit, I plan to run screaming into the woods…”
Yao knew something was wrong when the Han woman at the front desk at the Hongfu Lake Kanas Resort fanned the collected passports in her hands like a poker hand, pushing his upward to separate it from the pack. She set that one aside and then gathered the rest into a neat stack before placing them on the counter. Probably in her mid-forties, her black hair had the slightly auburn tint of a person who spent a great deal of time outdoors. The tag on her navy-blue cardigan said her name was Ming.
Absent the frown lines of someone who looked as grim as she did at the moment, she was probably a very nice woman, or she would have been had not the two hawkeyed police officers been watching from the lobby — one a bulldog, the other a whippet.
“
“I see,” Yao said. He knew full well they had plenty of rooms, but it would have done no good to call her on her lie. Instead, he gathered the Finnish passports and passed them back to their respective owners. This would have certainly been the problem if he’d tried to get them rooms at one of the hotels right next to the lake. They were notorious for telling foreigners at the last minute that they could not be accommodated. He’d hoped to mitigate it by staying in Jiadengyu fifteen minutes away. “My secretary made the reservations,” he said. “I will speak to her about the error.”
“Perhaps,” the desk clerk said. “Or perhaps it was a problem with the computer system. It happens.”
Yao started to leave, but then turned, as if struck by a sudden idea. “What if we were to upgrade the rooms for my foreign guests? Their budgets are large. I’m sure they would happily pay for any larger suites you might have available, and, of course, any surcharges such upgrades might include.”
The clerk glanced at the bulldog, who gave an almost imperceptible nod.
“Would your friends pay in cash?” she asked.
“Of course,” Yao said.
This brought nods from the bulldog and the whippet. The desk clerk took the passports again and made copies for her records. She’d saved face and Yao was able to secure the exact same rooms he’d originally reserved for a mere doubling of the cost. It was a small price to pay.
Yao moved to retrieve the passports again, but the whippet policeman walked over and put his hand on top of the stack. He looked them over one by one, examining each photo, comparing it to its owner.
“Finland?” he said to Adara in Mandarin. “I have seen photographs on the Internet. Forests and lakes like here, no?”
Of all the Campus operatives, Adara spoke the best Chinese. There was no need for them to know that, so Yao translated.
Adara smiled and unleashed her baby blues. Nodding enthusiastically, she said, “Yes, yes.”
“Okay,” Whippet said, and stuffed the passports into his pocket.
Yao protested. “They need those.”
“I have to make a report at my office,” Whippet said, pointing at the double doors with a slender chin. “One of you may retrieve them in…” He whispered to Bulldog, who thought for a moment and then grumbled something back.
“After dinner,” Whippet said. “And you must get them tonight. You will be unable to eat at a restaurant, take a boat or horse tour, or any of the other park concessions without your passports.”
“But—”
“Retrieve them after dinner,” he said again, nodding his skinny face once to show that the matter was closed.
