All good but nothing to show for it. Heading to the coast tomorrow. Will check in after I get there.
He heard Maria, Liliana, and Tomasz at the end of the hallway. The door was open to Tomasz’s bedroom. They were praying in Polish. He wondered if it was the same prayer his folks prayed with him at bedtime when he was a little boy. He was glad he wasn’t asked to join them—he hadn’t prayed like that in years.
But then again, why would they?
They finished up about the time Jack had cleaned out his inbox. Liliana and Maria came into the living room. Jack stood.
“Something else to drink, Jack? A brandy? A vodka?”
Jack patted his stomach. “I don’t have another ounce of room in me. Dinner was fantastic. Thank you so very much for inviting me into your home and for the wonderful evening.”
Maria hugged him. “It was a pleasure meeting you as well. Take care of yourself, Jack, and I hope you find whatever it is you’re looking for.”
“Maybe we will.”
“And, please, you must come by again if you’re ever in Warsaw. Our home is always open to you.”
“Tomasz says good-bye, too,” Liliana said. “He doesn’t want you to leave.”
Maria leaned in close and whispered to Jack. “I think you remind him of his father a little. Or at least, his picture.”
Jack wasn’t sure what to do with that. But he had to admit, the kid really got to him.
“I’m so sorry for his loss, Maria. But at least he has the two of you, and that makes him one fortunate young man.”
Liliana buttoned her topcoat. “Ready?”
“Yeah.”
47
BEIJING, CHINA
Chen Xing was a devoted Party man. All power came from the Party, and if one wanted power, one belonged to the Party. It wasn’t an ideological conviction; Mao’s commitment to the world Marxist revolution died with him. All that mattered now was furthering the national interests of China. If Chen had a religion, it was this.
The Great Chairman himself taught that all power flowed from the barrel of the gun, and the gun in the hand of the Party was the Ministry of State Security, where Chen flourished.
His uncle taught him the rules of the Party game as a child: “Mandarins in peasants’ jackets,” he called it. Petty egos, group consensus, deferred responsibilities. He played the game well but rose above the inevitable inefficiencies of any large bureaucracy. Unlike most Party hacks, Chen was supremely talented. Dogged efficiency and ruthless execution of his assignments within the ultrasecretive International Counterterrorism Division led to swift promotions, a division he now led. His underlings feared and admired him.
So did his superiors.
Few men or women in China had his power or influence. Some of the ones who had more of both were on the other side of the conference room door.
He’d been waiting for more than an hour. A flurry of encrypted text messages with his staff filled in a few needed details. The last was a toxicology report.
The security man held a finger to his earpiece, then nodded toward Chen but dared not look him in the eye. Chen stood and buttoned his suit coat. The guard opened the wide door leading to the conference room and Chen marched in.
* * *
—
Chen was not invited to sit, nor was he offered a bottle of water.
A hi-def color photo was displayed on the widescreen on the far side of the room. It was the close-up image of the charred remains of one of the workers killed in the NFLA attack. The blackened corpse lay on its back in the smoking ashes, its shrunken arms clawing at the air.
The men and women comprising the Lobito Working Group sat around the long mahogany table stone-faced and silent. Chen knew them all, at least by name. The room was choked with clouds of cigarette smoke, as acrid and foul as the hazy air outside the seventh-story window of the green-glass-and-steel tower.
Chen stood before them, his guts knotted. There were moments in every life that changed everything in an instant. A car crash, a winning lottery ticket, the birth of a child. Today’s meeting was one of those moments. Chen’s career hung in the balance.
So did his life.
He surveyed the room. Empty bottled waters and butt-choked ashtrays stood on the table. It had been a long meeting, apparently. The chairwoman of the Silk Road Fund sat at the head of the table. The deputy foreign minister,