Death Wave (6 page)

“So … you speak German?” Feng asked her.

“Some,” she admitted.

“You seem unusually well versed in the language for an American.”

“
Danke
. I’m interested in people, Mr. Feng, and in their stories. Urban legends like that Kennedy story fascinate me, because of what they tell us about people.”

“Oh? And what does I-am-a-doughnut tell you about people, Ms. Lau?”

“That too often they jump to conclusions or generalizations, or rely on outright bad information, without checking the source. One of the biggest challenges I face working in PR is cleaning up the mess after someone important puts his foot in it—usually because that someone spoke first and checked his sources later.”

The waiter appeared with the cappuccinos Feng had ordered. After he paid the man, Feng’s gaze dropped to her chest again, and she leaned forward just a bit, “accidentally” giving him a better view. The idiot could
look
all he wanted—and if he cared more about that than her experience and her brains, so much the better. It just gave her another weapon in her arsenal.

“Diane … may I call you Diane?”

“It’s Ms. Lau,” she told him. “At least for now.”

“Don’t alienate him, Lia,” Blake said in her ear. “You’re supposed to be swooning all over the guy.”

She ignored the advice. Sometimes it was better to play hard to get, and her legend, the fictitious background created for her by Desk Three, emphasized that she was a hard-nosed professional.

“Of course, Ms. Lau,” Feng said, and he smiled. “For now.”

Lia glanced down into her cup, then looked up, bemused. The barista had expertly poured the steamed milk to create an incredibly delicate image of two intertwined hearts surrounded by lace. Had that been Feng’s idea? Or a misinterpretation of the meeting by the barista? She wondered if Feng had the same picture in his cup, but she wasn’t going to lean closer for a look. Instead, she stirred the picture away, then took a cautious sip. The cappuccino was strong and slightly bitter.

“I very much liked your résumé, Ms. Lau,” Feng said after a moment. “A double major in public relations and communications from Berkeley,
and
a minor in anthropology. I
like
smart women.”

She said nothing, and he pushed ahead. “It says you live in San Francisco. You would be willing to relocate?”

“Yes. Where did you have in mind?”

He sidestepped the question. “The position would require a great deal of travel.”

“I’m aware of that. Your interviewer in Honolulu told me as much.”

He nodded, smiling. “And you were willing to meet me here in Berlin this afternoon. I appreciate that.”

“I travel a lot in the job I have now,” she told him. It was the precise truth. “I’m here on business in any case. It seemed like a good opportunity to meet you …
personally
.”

Again, the truth. When Feng’s agents checked up on her, as she knew they would, they would find a solid background for her. Phone calls to any of several numbers she’d provided, including that of her supposed company’s HR department, would be answered by people who would swear she worked in the PR firm of Farnum, Pfizer, and Smith.

“Indeed.” He took a sip of his cappuccino. “Well, my people in Honolulu would have told you I need a good public relations specialist. But there’s considerably more to this position than that. How much do you know about COSCO, Ms. Lau?”

She was well prepared for this one. “I know it’s the second-largest dry cargo shipping company in the world. You have a hundred and thirty vessels of over three hundred and twenty thousand TEUs, and over six hundred merchant vessels with a total cargo capacity of thirty-five million metric tonnes, DWT. The COSCO group includes six listed companies and over three hundred subsidiaries, with facilities in over a hundred ports worldwide.”

“Nicely memorized, Ms. Lau. Do you know what ‘TEU’ stands for?”

“Twenty-foot equivalent unit,” she told him. “It refers to the standard twenty-foot intermodal containers carried by container ships, by rail, and by truck.”

“And DWT?”

“Deadweight tonnage. That’s the total weight a ship can carry, including its cargo, fuel, ballast water, fresh water, provisions, passengers, and crew.”

“Its displacement, yes.”

“No, displacement is something else entirely. That refers to a ship’s
total
mass, how much water it displaces when it’s fully loaded, which equals the deadweight tonnage plus the weight of the ship’s structure itself.”

Feng nodded. “Very good. You’ve obviously done your homework.”

“Of course,” she told him. She decided to give his ego a tweak, a small one. “After all, it was important that I impress you.”

He smiled again. “And you have been quite successful.” He sipped his cappuccino, leaning back in his chair. “Ms. Lau, to be quite frank, I need someone beautiful, charming, smart, and extremely, ah, well informed, someone like
you
, in fact, to travel with me as a kind of personal, ah, secretary. I want someone who can inform me of local customs, idiosyncrasies, background culture, language, that sort of thing.” The smile faded, and he looked at her intently—looking into her eyes this time. “For instance, if I did this …” He held up his hand, thumb and forefinger touching in an “okay” gesture. “What would you tell me about it?”

“That you’re fine if you use it in the United States or England. It just means ‘okay.’ But do
not
use it here in Germany—or in Brazil, or much of Africa, or in parts of Spain or the Mediterranean either, I think. There, it means you’re calling someone an asshole.” She chuckled. “I read once about a U.S. businessman who’d gone to Rio de Janeiro to work out a business deal down there. Everything was going great, everyone was friendly and happy … and then just as they were about to conclude the deal he said, ‘Well, okay, then!’ And he made the okay sign with his hand like that. The room went cold, and the deal fell through.”

He nodded, as if satisfied. “Excellent, Ms. Lau. I think you will work out very well for me. Very well indeed.”

“I’m glad to hear it.” The okay sign had obviously been a test, as had been the questions about shipping. She wondered if the same had been true with the Kennedy story. Feng might be a sexist pig with a smooth line and a lot of girlfriends, but he had some depth to him, at least. It was possible that some of the testosterone was out there just for show, a means of getting others to underestimate him.

“You are staying over there at the Adlon?”

“Yes, sir.” Now that she’d agreed to work for him, he was her boss and she would use the appropriate honorific.

He didn’t seem to notice. “I will send a contract over later this afternoon.” He considered her a moment longer. “When would you be willing to begin in my employ?”

“Whenever you say, sir. I’m free now.”

“No, Diane, I would say you are very, very expensive.” He chuckled at his own pun. “And your employers at Farnum, Pfizer, and Smith?”

“This project in Berlin was my last trip for them, sir. I gave them two weeks’ notice three weeks ago.”

“Ah.”

“They know I was going to interview with you today. You can call them and check, if you like.”

“I’m sure that’s not necessary.” He appeared to think about it a moment. “I’ll tell you what. I am flying to Spain tomorrow to meet a … client. An
important
client. He’s Arab, from Pakistan, and it would be
most
useful for me if you could be there to tell me what I need to know about his people.”

“Well, I can tell you right now that he’s probably not Arab,” Lia told him. “Not if he really is from Pakistan. He’s almost certainly Muslim, of course—but linguistically he’ll be Indo-Iranic, and ethnically he’ll belong to one of several groups. Punjabi, Sindhi, Pathan. The Arabs are Semites.”

“Well, there … you see? You’ve begun earning your salary already.”

“Where will you be going in Spain, sir?”

“To Alicante, and possibly on to the Canary Islands later. I have … business interests there.”

“Palm trees. Sand. Sun. Bikinis.” She nodded. “Such a tough job.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I meant that it sounds like fun.”

“Excellent. I’ll send a car for you tomorrow.” He swallowed the last of his cappuccino. “Until tomorrow, then?”

“Yes, Mr. Feng.”

He stood, shook her hand, and walked off, swallowed in a moment by the swirling crowds on the Pariser Platz.

Lia glanced at CJ and saw she’d taken a seat at another table close by. She was still reading her tourist brochure, but Lia heard her voice in her ear as she murmured, “Nice job, Lia.”

“Mm-hm,” she murmured, then finished her cup, stood, and walked away. It was important to clear the area of operation immediately, especially before she began discussing things with CJ or with Desk Three. There was a distinct possibility, no, a
probability
that, just as Desk Three had been covering the meeting from several angles, one or more members of Feng’s operation were watching as well—possibly with long-range shotgun mikes or a tiny listening device stuck to the bottom of the Starbucks table.

You couldn’t stay in this job for a week without becoming hopelessly paranoid.

“Where the hell did you get that stuff about Kennedy and the jelly doughnuts?” Blake asked her as she walked back toward her hotel. “We have an archived copy of the
New York Times
here—dateline April 30, 1988—that claims Kennedy screwed up!”

“Check some of your other sources,” Lia told him quietly. “Actually, CJ and I were talking about it when we got in yesterday. She knows German, and we happened to be talking about the Kennedy story. So we can thank her.”

“Thank you, CJ,” Blake said. His voice was touched by just a hint of sarcasm. Lia didn’t know Blake well, but she knew he didn’t like being shown up in front of others. Too bad.

“Any time, luv,” CJ’s voice replied.

“Although I sometimes wonder why we’re online for you guys when you obviously already know all the answers.”

“Just check out the urban legends better, Tom,” Lia told him. “Anyway—did anyone listening in get the idea that Feng was putting on a major show for my benefit?”

“What do you mean, Lia?”
That
voice was William Rubens.

“The guy is smart. Speaks perfect English. Educated in Oxford, according to his bio data. The thing about the okay gesture was clearly a test. So were the questions about deadweight tonnage and all. And … I don’t know. Maybe he didn’t have a reason to know about Kennedy and the doughnuts. But his slip about Pakistanis being Arabs was kind of … obvious, don’t you think? The guy is a high-ranking officer in one of the largest shipping corporations in the world,
and
a major in Chinese intelligence. He should already know stuff like that.”

“I think he was surprised Lia knew so much,” CJ put in. “Okay, I have two security types sitting at other tables. They just got up and followed Feng. No one’s following Lia.”

“Good,” Rubens said, “but don’t relax. There may be others in the area.”

“The job offer seems genuine,” Rubens said, “although given what we’ve uncovered about Feng already, we suspect he primarily wants Lia for eye candy.”

Lia snorted. “A pretty girl on his arm to impress his customers?”

“Exactly.”

“The job offer is for eighty K a year. That’s expensive candy.”

“He can afford it. COSCO can afford it. Why, Lia? Are you worried?”

“As a matter of fact I am.”

“You can still change your mind about this, Lia,” Rubens told her. “This op was always volunteers only.”

“No,” she said, walking past several maroon-jacketed bellhops and through the tall doors of the Adlon Hotel, entering into the magnificently appointed lobby. “Hell, this is exactly the sort of break we were looking for. The guy has me flying to Spain tomorrow, to meet someone he says is from Pakistan. Depending on who this business associate is, it might be our link between COSCO and al-Qaeda.”

“Yes, and it also might be a bit
too
neat,” CJ put in.

“CJ’s right,” Rubens said. “Feng’s contact in Spain could be perfectly legitimate.”

“Well, we’ll know tomorrow,” Lia said brightly. “Won’t we?”

Nevertheless, she wondered just exactly what it was that she was getting herself into.

RUSSIAN MILITARY HOSPITAL
DUSHANBE, TAJIKISTAN
WEDNESDAY, 1825 HOURS LOCAL TIME

Dushanbe was a teeming, sprawling, bustling place.

The name of the city, Charlie Dean had been told, meant Monday—literally “two-Saturday,” meaning the second day after Saturday. Originally, the place had been a Monday market village, and there were still extensive bazaars and countless street vendors and stalls that continued the commercial spirit of the place.