They walked through the Peninsula shopping arcade, past windows filled with cashmere, leather, and gold, to the private elevator to Felix Restaurant. The interior walls of the elevator were covered in dark wood panels carved in fantastic undulating ridges. As the elevator rose to the twenty-eighth floor, the normal lights dimmed as spots of blue, purple, and red slowly came on, as if they had ascended into an inky mesosphere. The doors opened onto a narrow corridor also dimly lighted with colored lights and they walked into the restaurant, a soaring room with massive anthracite columns, luminous Lucite stairways to upstairs bar levels, and floor-to-ceiling windows with a magnificent view of Victoria Harbour, the ziggurats and obelisks of Hong Kong Island ablaze, the reflection of a million lights shimmering on the dark waters of the harbor.
Marigold Dougherty was sitting at a table near the window and waved to attract their attention. She was about thirty years old, short and slight with a mass of shoulder-length blond hair in ringlets, bushy blond eyebrows, and square-framed hipster eyeglasses. Also a former surfer, she was irreverent and sassy, with an infectious laugh that showed straight white teeth. She shook Nate’s hand firmly and pointed to the chairs at their table.
“Whose face do you want to lean on?” said Marigold. The tubular steel chairs in the restaurant all were covered in white fabric, and on every chair back was the silk-screened likeness of a smiling Peninsula employee, including the face of the acclaimed chef of Felix. Nate laughed.
“Is there a chair with Grace Gao’s face on it?” said Bunty. “That’s the one Nate wants.”
Marigold turned toward him. “Oh no, Nate,” she said. “Don’t tell me you, too.”
Nate shrugged. “We just met her in the bar, but Bunty’s confusing lust with operational interest,” said Nate. “An assistant general manager in this hotel could be a useful asset. Hasn’t anyone ever tried to sign her up?” The Australians looked at each other as they sat down. A waiter opened a bottle of wine.
“A Pommy from the MI6 station three or four years back had a go,” said Bunty. “What was his name?”
“Nigel. Nigel something,” said Marigold.
“But no progress was made,” said Bunty. “Our girl Grace reportedly went to university in the Land of the Dry Towel. She loathes England,” said Bunty. Nate looked over to Marigold for an explanation.
“Dry towel because Pommies bathe once a week,” she laughed.
“Well, she must come from money to have gone to school in the UK,” said Nate.
“No one knows. The Brits took a close look at her, and so did we, but we didn’t find much,” said Marigold, the analyst. “She might be from Foshan, close to Macao, which may account for her Eurasian looks.”
“Which may in turn explain why she’s so standoffish,” said Bunty, the case officer. “The Chinese are funny about mixed-race women, call them
“What’s her Chinese name?” asked Nate. It was customary for Chinese who deal with Westerners to choose a more easily pronounced Western name.
Marigold shook her head. “It’s something strange, but I can’t recall. I can look it up tomorrow,” she said.
“Enough about the Pearl River Delta,” said Bunty. “You’d be wasting your time on her. We have to give you a bit of the drum on this Macao lark. All unofficial, mate, if you please.”
Nate nodded. “We’re partners on this op,” he said. “Shoot.”
“The Blunt End has just had the Winter Web,” said Bunty. “And our greedy PLA general topped the agenda.” Marigold anticipated the question.
“The Web is a quarterly budget and planning session in ASIS headquarters. As in ‘the tangled webs we weave,’ ” she said. “And we lovingly refer to our headquarters in Canberra as ‘the Blunt End.’ ”
“We call Langley the Puzzle Palace,” said Nate. “Blunt End is better.”
“Annual budgets for the service rise and fall according to operational successes,” said Bunty.
“Not to mention the careers of the tall poppies who take credit for what happens in the field,” said Marigold. “We’ve had a long line of tossers over the years—The Cumquat, Spud Ben Gurion, Captain Dirty.”
“We have that particular species in our Headquarters too,” said Nate.
“Just so you know, there’s considerable pressure to make our Macao outing a success,” said Bunty. “The chief of the section that manages Hong Kong and Macao—we call him FIGJAM—hopes one day to become director general. He’s bricked it—shitting bricks, sending ten telegrams a day, second-guessing our plans and, since you’ve arrived, questioning your expertise, proficiency, and competence.”
“And your lineage,” said Marigold, batting her eyelashes at Nate, chin in her hand. “But we told him we don’t know the bastard well enough yet.”
“This looks like the beginning of a beautiful friendship,” said Nate. “Will your service fly me to Canberra for the medal ceremony after we bag the general?”
