“Our guy will bring the general to Hac Sa Beach, on the south end of the island,” said Bunty. “There’s a secluded little Portuguese restaurant right on the water, Fernando’s, where you can have a quiet dinner meeting—try the red honeyed chicken, by the way. I’ll be at another table across the room, just in case. It’s just the two of us, and we’re on our own.”
“How do you think the general will react?” said Nate.
“She’ll be right,” said Bunty. “I mean, it will go fine. My canary has been talking to the general for months, softening him up. He’s scared and desperate, and he begged for help in replacing the official funds he lost. My guy told him he knew a Russian official who could get him out of his jam, and the general believes the Russians will keep it quiet. Our general’s quite the drongo—that’s ‘idiot’ in Australian; he’s
A woman entered the bar, and nodded to the barman who snapped to attention. She stopped briefly at a table to greet a Western couple, obviously tourists. She then walked over to their table and shook Bunty’s hand, smiling faintly. She turned to Nate and nodded while Bunty introduced her as Grace Gao, assistant general manager of the Peninsula Hotel. With studied indifference, she categorized Nate in the manner of all hoteliers, assessing in three seconds his financial, social, and professional status. She didn’t blink.
Nate’s case-officer instincts quivered like a spider on a hot rock. Grace Gao was one of the most beautiful women he had ever seen. She had a high forehead and straight brows over almond-shaped brown eyes. Her black hair was done in a braided bun at the back of her head, tendrils falling loose on both sides. Morning-after cheekbones framed the oval face and a chiseled mannish chin. An incongruous straight nose, a Roman nose with a slight bump, accentuated her most remarkable facial feature: a china-cup mouth with pink lips. She was Chinese, to be sure, but with the long-ago blood of a Portuguese sailor or a Dutch trader in her veins, that Eurasian hint of cardamom and cloves.
Behind the beauty, but not because of it, her face radiated diffidence, impatience, disdain. She chatted easily with Bunty, ignoring Nate. She was short and thin, dressed in a black skirt and soft black jacket with wide lapels, over a stretchy black camisole that did more than hint at a prodigious figure more commonly encountered in Manhattan or Malibu. She wore expensive black pointy-toed pumps. Nate noticed that blue ropey veins showed through the skin on top of her hands and slim feet, suggesting frequent physical activity and cracking good health. She shook Bunty’s hand, ignored Nate again, turned, and walked out of the bar displaying tennis-ball calves that pulsed as she walked.
“Welcome to the club, mate,” said Bunty.
“What club?” said Nate.
“The Grace Gao fan club,” said Bunty. “Half the expats in Honkers want to snorkel in Lake Gao, and several billionaires from Singapore and Shanghai have offered her the moon. As far as I know, no one’s gotten into the garden, much less through the front door. She works sixteen-hour days at the hotel, then goes home to a little unit in Grenville House on Magazine Gap Road—incidentally not far from where you are.”
“How do you know where she lives?” said Nate. Bunty’s face was deadpan.
“Out of curiosity I did a little checking on her.”
“Curiosity?”
“Her only hobby is yoga; you can see how fit she is. She studies with some ancient crust of bread in Kowloon, and occasionally gives private lessons for guests at the hotel. She apparently is quite good; a level-three yogini, whatever that means.”
“And no men in her life, at all?” asked Nate.
“Mate, every man in the room cracks a fat when she walks in the door, but she’s unapproachable,” said Bunty.
“If I guessed that ‘crack a fat’ means ‘get an erection’ would I be far off?” Bunty checked his watch.
“For a Yank, you learn fast. Just don’t tell Marigold.”
