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Ryder had been on the job for a week already, enough time to make him more than a little antsy. He was never one to hurry—he was nothing if not meticulous, an essential requirement for success in his line of work—but that didn’t mean he wanted to waste time, either. There were places he’d rather be than the front seat of an ’06 Taurus, and things he’d rather do than drink lukewarm McDonald’s coffee while watching a middle-aged Chinese man negotiate with hookers.
Officially, Li Jinping held the position of Cultural Attaché in the Washington, D.C., embassy of the People’s Republic of China. He spent his days overseeing the loan of endangered giant pandas to various zoos across the United States, as well as organizing tours of the Shanghai Acrobats and Beijing Opera.
Unofficially, Li was a colonel in the Second Department of the People’s Liberation Army—PLA—and the head of all human intelligence gathering operations in the United States. In other words, he was China’s top spy in North America.
Li wasn’t a very good spy—he had only successfully recruited one American: a disgruntled line cook working in the White House mess—but that never dampened his enthusiasm for the job. He fancied himself as the Chinese James Bond, despite his receding hairline and expanding waistline. He would likely have been fired for incompetence long ago, had he not gotten lucky during his previous posting in Beijing, a posting that had allowed him to gather some juicy intel on select Politburo members and high-ranking officials in the Party.
Li loved life in the U.S. He ate like a trencherman and drank like a sailor. He had not one but two mistresses—in addition, of course, to his doting wife back home in Beijing. He was the very picture of ill health, but he didn’t care. He was master of his domain in Washington and would only leave when he dropped dead of the inevitable heart attack.
If only Li Jinping were a better spy. Or perhaps if he had been more modest in his appetites. Or, most of all, if he hadn’t hired a room service waiter at the Beijing Hilton to secretly take pictures of the vice chairman of the National People’s Congress while he was rendezvousing with his much younger boyfriend, a gymnastic star predicted to make a fine showing at the Olympics. But he had. And that was why he was going to die.
Jason Ryder didn’t really care about the reasons. Li Jinping’s misdeeds, outsize appetites and poor judgment were of no concern to him. He could have been screwing the giant pandas instead of renting them out to American zoos and Ryder still wouldn’t have cared. He had only one reason to kill Li—and it came with five zeros after it.
Ryder had been hired, via a circuitous path involving two diplomats, one general and a transsexual Korean bartender, to eliminate Li, through whatever method proved most convenient. The vice chairman of the National People’s Congress hadn’t specified any requirements, other than that Li had to die, soon if possible, painfully if it happened to work out that way.
The vice chairman had also promised a bonus of an additional $50,000 if Li’s elimination could be handled in a particularly embarrassing way, but Ryder hadn’t quite figured out how to handle that one yet. He’d been giving it some consideration, however, and had purchased a size XXL pair of frilly undergarments from a plus-size women’s store at the mall. He didn’t relish the prospect of undressing Li in order to paint him as a cross-dresser—but when the time came, he thought he’d be able to persuade himself with the hefty bonus. Even so, he was keeping an open mind to the possibilities, just in case a better opportunity presented itself.
Ryder didn’t anticipate that Li’s removal would be particularly difficult. For a man in the intelligence business, Li was surprisingly dumb, taking u
Even so, the job had to be handled carefully. There was always significant risk involved in eliminating an official of a foreign government; a risk made even greater when the individual was a member of the clandestine community. Ryder was unaware of the identity of the client who had hired him, but even if he had known that he was a senior member of the Chinese Politburo, it wouldn’t have changed the equation any. Just because one man in the PRC government wanted Li dead didn’t mean they would turn a blind eye to his murder. All the more reason to make his death appear to be something it wasn’t.
Ryder had been tracking Li’s activities and movements for over a week now. He’d had what turned out to be a golden opportunity to complete the job two days before, but he hadn’t been ready to pull the trigger. Li had met his number-two mistress, an exotic dancer at a gentleman’s club just over the D.C. border in Arlington, at a run-down hotel on Capitol Hill. Ryder had followed them into the lobby where he observed them having a heated disagreement of some sort. The girl had stormed away in anger, leaving Li to head for the elevators by himself. Ryder assumed that Li was going to make use of the room one way or another, a fact apparently confirmed when a busty blonde decked out in whore’s garb arrived thirty-five minutes later and headed up to Li’s floor.
Patience was something Ryder had amassed in abundance over the years, so he wasn’t overly concerned about the missed chance. He was, however, starting to get a little a
The trail that evening had brought Ryder to the parking lot outside a Szechuan restaurant in northwest D.C. One of the area’s frequent summer squalls had risen up awhile before, pelting the car with a torrent of rain. Ryder welcomed the weather, as it provided excellent cover for his activities. No one was likely to linger in the parking lot and wonder why the man in the dark sedan had been sitting there for the past hour.
Li had gone in alone, but Ryder’s quick peek in the front door while studying the menu had revealed that he was not dining solo. He had a woman with him—yet another too-tall, too-obvious blonde who would surely tower over the diminutive Li like an NBA all-star. Clearly the man liked his women large and blond—and for sale.
After he spotted Li with the pro, Ryder wondered if being found dead with a hooker would be enough of an embarrassment to earn the bonus payment. Of course, that would require him to eliminate the woman, as well, something he wasn’t willing to do. A working girl has a hard enough life without some random guy offing her because she signed on for a trick with the wrong john. Ryder was a man of flexible ethics, but even so there were lines that he drew, and that was one of them.
Still, the situation presented potential opportunities. If Li took the girl back to another anonymous hotel for a quick wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am, the circumstances would be ripe for action. All Ryder would have to do was wait for the pro to leave, then he could dispatch the target at his leisure. Two nights before, under similar circumstances, Li had stayed the rest of the night after his date left. Apparently he didn’t mind staying in less-than-luxury accommodations, even though the mere thought of what the sheets were like made Ryder’s skin crawl.
Ryder was in the middle of trying to decide if he needed to relieve himself bad enough to urinate in an empty coffee cup when the door to the restaurant opened and Li and the woman emerged. Ever the gentleman, Li opened an umbrella to shield himself and hurried ahead, leaving his companion to fend for herself. Li’s Corvette was parked four cars away from Ryder, but the Chinese spy never even glanced in the direction of the Ford. Ryder shook his head. The man’s tradecraft was appalling. It was surprising that nobody had eliminated him before. Li was so careless it seemed a miracle he hadn’t been killed simply by accident.