fifty, was possessed of the long, elegant face of a conductor or a choreographer. His black hair was slicked back from his wide, intelligent forehead. His hands, long and spidery-thin, were as carefully groomed as his hair and face. As he answered his mobile, he stared at a photo stapled to the inside cover of the dossier. He waited patiently as Li Wan’s call was routed to one of his phones. He held the phone to his ear without letting his gaze leave the photo, which was a black-and-white surveillance snapshot made with a long lens.
As soon as the encrypted connection opened, he said, “Speak.” His voice was high and keening, like that of a child being punished.
“Minister Ouyang, there has been a significant development.”
Ouyang’s eyelids dropped halfway. He was imagining the room his agent was calling from. It was five in the morning along America’s East Coast. He wondered whether Li Wan was alone or with his longlegged girlfriend.
“This could have a positive or negative impact on my evening, Li. What is it?”
“Through the auspices of stupidity, we have been given an extraordinary opportunity.”
“With Mr. Thorne?”
“Yes.”
“He and his coven of executives at Politics As Usual have been caught in a phone-hacking scandal that netted them some extraordinary exclusives over the past nineteen months, boosting their bottom line, but leaving them open to investigation by the American Justice Department.”
“This is not unknown to me.” In fact, Ouyang had a contact inside Justice. “Please continue, Citizen Li.”
“From day one, my mission in establishing a mutual conduit with Charles Thorne has been to get to his wife.”
“As chair of the newly formed Homeland Strategic Appropriations Committee, Senator Ann Ring is of extraordinary importance to us.” Ouyang kept staring at the photo, as if trying to unlock the secrets inside the brain of the man caught by one of his surveillance teams. Then he said pointedly, “So far, however, you have failed to engage her on any level apart from the superficial.”
“That time is at an end,” Li said. “Thorne’s back is against the wall. He needs my—our—help. I believe now is the time to extend our hand to support him in his hour of need.”
Ouyang grunted softly, delicately. “In return for what?”
“In return for Senator Ann Ring.”
“I was under the impression—an impression you gave me, I might remind you—that Thorne’s marital relationship is not all it might be, all it should be.”
The insane implication, via the stressed word, was that the couple’s personal troubles were somehow Li’s fault. This was Minister Ouyang through and through. Li set his mind to navigating the increasingly choppy waters.
“That slight estrangement will now work in our favor,” Li said.
Ouyang, running his fingertips ever so lightly over the face of the man in the photo, said, “Please explain.”
“If Thorne and Ann Ring were closer, I feel certain he would have confided in her about the impending investigation. He has told me nothing could be further from the truth. But if I—we—can provide him with a way out, a method of inoculating and indemnifying himself against implication, he would be grateful—and so would she.
“Senator Ring has an exemplary congressional record. Any hint of scandal—even from her husband—could be devastating to her position as chair of the Homeland Strategic Appropriations Committee. If she is disgraced and steps down, we will be back to square one. We will have lost valuable time. We cannot afford to start all over.”
No, Minister Ouyang thought, we most certainly cannot.
“I despise stupidity,” he said.
Li wisely held his tongue.
“There is danger in exposing ourselves to the extent required to extricate Thorne from his predicament.” At the moment, Ouyang appeared to be talking to himself, trying to work out the pros and cons of Li’s suggestion. “As you know, Li, there is a very thin line between an asset and a liability.”
His eyes never left the face he now knew so well, a face he saw in long, drawn-out nightmares to which he returned again and again, an endless repetition that infuriated him.
“I understand, Minister. But I have trained Thorne. He is our unwitting conduit.”
“The best kind,” Ouyang acknowledged.
“Precisely.”
The face had a name, of course, and he knew it as well as he knew his own—a name that was hideous, a name he was determined to eradicate as if it had never existed.
“I have worked long and hard cultivating this conduit. He can be saved from the oncoming storm,” Li said with the full force of his conviction.
“As long as you aren’t exposed, as long as