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The incredibly intricate and exquisitely painted interior was ablaze, the gilt chandeliers illuminating the host of cherubs that spilled across the domed ceiling. Ma
He possessed the pallor and demeanor of a ghost, speaking so softly Bourne and Rebeka were obliged to lean forward to hear him. “You come from Constanza Camargo.” It was not a question. “Follow me.”
As he turned to go, he pushed up the wide sleeves of his ecclesiastical robe, revealing forearms knotted with muscle and ropy veins, crawling with tattoos of coffins and tombstones, beautiful and horrific.
It was almost 4 am by the time the Aztec awoke, according to his unerring internal clock. He was hungry. No matter. There were thirty million reasons to ignore the gnawing in his stomach. Finding a rubberized waterproof flashlight, he took it topside.
Outside, Washington glittered, seeming far away across the water. Don Tulio looked across to where the Recursivelay tied up at slip 31. No one was visible. In fact, the entire marina appeared deserted. Still, the Aztec stood on the boat, aurally cataloguing the night noises—the slap of the wavelets against hulls, the creaking of masts, the pinging of rigging against those masts—these were all the normal sounds of a marina. Don Tulio listened beyond those for any anomalous sounds—the soft tread of feet, the low sound of voices, anything that would indicate the presence of human beings.
Finding none, he was at last satisfied. He climbed onto the dock, first looking to the darkened harbormaster’s hut, then swiftly and silently made his way to slip 31, stepping, at last, aboard the Recursive.
He went immediately to the second bumper on the starboard side and felt under it with his fingers. The nylon rope was still there! Heart pounding, he pulled in the rope, hand over hand. The weight felt just as it should; with every foot he reeled in, he became more and more certain that his thirty million was safe and secure at the nether end of the rope.
But when he had pulled it all in and switched on the flashlight, what he saw tied to the end was a lead weight.
“Looking for this?”
Don Tulio whirled, saw jefeMarks holding up the watertight satchel, deflated, empty, the thirty million and his life gone. Engulfed by the final wave of his murderous rage, he leaped at his tormentor, heard the explosion rocket through his ear, felt the bullet enter, then exit his left biceps. He kept going, a full-on bull-rush that took both Marks and him over the railing, both plunging down, the chill black water robbing them both of breath.
Chinatown? Really?” Charles Thorne sat down at the Formica table opposite the tall, slender man, dressed in one of those shiny Chinese suits that imitated the American style, but none too well.
“Try the moo goo gai pan,” Li Wan said, gesturing with his chopsticks. “It’s really rather good.”
“Christ, it’s four in the morning,” Thorne said with a sour face. There was no point in asking Li how he managed to get a restaurant to stay open for him in the waning hours of the night when nothing, not even the cats, was roaming Chinatown’s streets. “Besides, it’s not really a Chinese dish.”
Li Wan shrugged his coat-hanger shoulders. “When in America.”
Thorne shook his head as he unwrapped his chopsticks and dug in.
“I suppose you were expecting beef sinew and fish maw,” Li said with a visible shudder.
“My friend, you’ve spent too much time in America.”
“I was bornin America, Charles.”
Thorne lapped a slick of MSG off his chopsticks. “Exactly my point. You need a vacation. Back to the homeland.”
“Not myhomeland. I was born and raised right here in DC.”
Li, a prominent intellectual rights lawyer, had graduated from Georgetown University, which made him wholly homegrown. Still, Thorne couldn’t help needling him; it was part of their relationship.
Thorne frowned. Despite what Li had said, he didn’t like the moo goo gai pan at all. “As an outsider, you’re privy to an awful lot of their secrets.”
“Who said I’m an outsider?”
Thorne regarded him thoughtfully before hailing a passing waiter, who stopped and stood before him with the air of someone who, despite the hour, had many things better to do. Picking up the greasestained plastic menu, Thorne ordered General Tso’s chicken. “Extra crispy,” he said, though it’s doubtful the waiter heard him or, if he did, cared, until Li spoke to him in the withering Cantonese only a Mandarin could manage. Off the waiter went, as if Li had lit his tail on fire.
After pouring them both chrysanthemum tea, Li said, “Really, Charles, after all these years it would behoove you to learn Cantonese as well as Mandarin.”
“What? So I can intimidate waiters in Chinatown? That’s all it’s good for these days.”
Li regarded him again with his patented inscrutable look.
“You do that deliberately,” Thorne complained. “You know that, don’t you? I’m on to you.”
The waiter set down a platter of General Tso’s chicken, and, after giving Li a questioning look and receiving an answering nod, beat a hasty retreat.
“Is it extra crispy?” Li said.
“You know it is,” Thorne replied, piling some into his bowl of rice.
The two men ate in companionable silence amid the sizzle and steam of the open kitchen behind them. The usual bustle, shouting, and shoving, however, were missing. The unaccustomed hush lent the place a forlorn air.
At last, when the first frenzy of shoving the food into his mouth had abated, Charles said, “I’ve known you a long time, Li, but I still can’t figure how an outsider like you is trusted with—”
“Hush, Charles.”
Their waiter, wiping his hands on his filthy apron, walked past them to the men’s room.
Li pointed at Thorne’s dish. “There really was a General Tso, you know. Zuo Zongtang. Qing Dynasty. Died in 1885. From Hunan. Odd since the dish is mainly sweet, not spicy like most Hunan dishes. It’s not indigenous to Changsha, the capital of Hunan, nor Xiangyin, the general’s home town. So what is its origin? There’s speculation that the name of the dish was originally zongtangchicken.”
“Meaning ‘ancestral meeting hall.’”
Li nodded. “In that event, nothing to do with the good general.” He swirled some tea around his mouth and swallowed. “Of course, the Taiwanese have claimed they created the dish.” Li put down his chopsticks. “The point being, Charles, that no one knows these things— no one can.”
“Are you saying that it’s impossible to know how you became such a trusted guardian of—”
“Listen to me,” Li said, abruptly and finally. “I’m saying that in Chinese culture there are many reasons for many things, most of them too complicated to comprehend fully.”
“Try me,” Thorne said with a mouthful of food.
“I can’t go into my lineage. It would make your eyes pop and your head spin. Suffice it to say, I am among the elite residing outside of Beijing. As to your suggestion of returning to the motherland, I’m far too valuable to the powers that be precisely where I am.”
“‘The powers that be.’” Thorne flashed a lopsided grin. “One of those opaque, distinctly Chinese phrases.”
“As they say,” Li said, returning the lopsided grin like a forehand over the net, “Beijing is composed of equal parts quicksand and cement.”
“What do ‘the powers that be’ think of your bedding Natasha Illion?” Li and Illion, a supermodel of Israeli background, had been a breathless item for over a year, something of a record for that rareified, hothouse species.