“I said you might not die. Get the dork on the plane and a plane for us to leave on, and you’ll live. We won’t take off without you.”

“What if I can’t get Bo Minh to meet me? What if he tells his brother and the plane is intercepted?”

Dewey stared at Borchardt, his blue eyes as cold and blank as a winter sea. He held up the remote detonator and placed his thumb on the button.

“Then it’s hard-count time. We all die.”

55

LAKESIDE GOLF CLUB

TOLUCA LAKE, CALIFORNIA

Lacey James leaned over his Big Bertha driver, staring at the golf ball that was perched on a tee.

“So what’s the answer, Lacey?” said a tall dark-haired man standing behind him, his agent, Chris George. “I need to get back to them this afternoon.”

“I told you,” said James in a clipped, aristocratic British accent. “I want ten million and some points. You figure out the points.”

“Iger is not going to give you any points,” said his agent. “It’s fucking Star Wars, for chrissakes.”

“Then tell them to find someone else.”

“They don’t want anybody else.”

“Which is why I want the points, especially if I have to deal with those miserable communists at Disney.”

James’s large, rotund belly dangled over his belt as he stood still, trying to concentrate.

“By the way,” added George, eyeing his gut. “That P90X is really working wonders on you.”

James’s bushy beard itched and he wanted to scratch it. Instead, he raised his middle finger off the club.

“Some of us don’t need to be good-looking in order to get laid,” said James.

“It helps though.”

Lacey James didn’t look like an Eton-educated Oxford grad. He also didn’t look like someone worth millions of dollars, but he was that too.

James was universally considered the foremost special-effects makeup man in the film industry, with more than two hundred film credits to his name. He could make a donkey look like a Sports Illustrated swimsuit model, and vice versa, as one actress had said before handing James his second Oscar.

“I’ll tell you what,” said James, getting ready to hit. “If I drive the green, I’ll do it for twelve, no points.”

James pulled his club back. As the head of the driver reached its apotheosis in the sky, George let out a loud, wet belch, booming from his throat for at least three seconds, right as James started his swing at the ball. His club came down awkwardly, he skulled the ball and sent it flying into the parking lot. A pregnant moment of silence was followed by the sound of a windshield shattering, then the siren from someone’s car alarm.

James turned and stared at George.

“I’ll try for the points,” said his agent.

James felt a vibration in the pocket of his shorts. Technically, he wasn’t supposed to have a cell phone at Lakeside. He looked at the number, glanced about nervously, then put the phone to his ear.

“Hello?”

“Lacey,” came the voice, British, confident, unmistakable: James’s uncle, Derek Chalmers. “It’s Uncle Derek.”

“Hi, Uncle Derek,” said James. “Is this about my mother?”

“No,” said Chalmers. “It’s about you. We need your help.”

“Who’s we?”

“The agency. I’m texting you a photo. I need to know if you can make someone look like this man.”

James examined the photo. It showed a Chinese man.

“The short answer is yes, of course. It’s a fucking Chinese guy.”

“It needs to hold up under scrutiny,” said Chalmers.

“What do you mean by ‘scrutiny’?”

“Close inspection,” said Chalmers. “The consequences of it not working would be quite negative.”

“Understood,” said James. He turned from the tee box and started walking back toward the pro shop. George tried to get his attention, but James ignored him. “How much time do I have?”

“I don’t know. At most, a few days.”

James crossed the parking lot, walking by a good-looking silver-haired man and his friend, who were examining the broken windshield of a brand-new Porsche Panamera. James pointed back toward George, who was walking down the fairway, indicating to the owner of the car that George was the one who’d put the golf ball through the windshield.

James climbed into a red and white Bugatti Veyron.

“I’ll do it, Uncle Derek,” said James, turning on the car. “Send me more photos if you can.”

“Will do,” said Chalmers. “Thanks, kid. By the way, what will this cost us?”

“Nothing,” said James, firing out of the Lakeside parking lot.

56

BEIJING

Bo Minh was already up when the phone rang. He looked at the caller ID. The number was blocked. He pressed a small device that looked like high-tech wire cutters to the phone line. He squeezed the teeth of the device lightly against the phone line. The identity of the dialer appeared.

BORCHARDT, R. H.

“Hello?”

“It’s Borchardt.”

“Mr. Borchardt. It’s nice to talk to you. What can I do for you?”

“I’m upset with you, Bo. I pay you a lot of money.”

“What exactly are you referring to, sir?”

“The documents that were sent last week.”

“What is the matter with the documents?” asked Minh. “Those are highly classified. It’s a system that the army plans to spend more than ten billion dollars on. I thought you would be pleased.”

“You’re telling me about a missile defense system more than a month after the decision has been made?” said Borchardt. “This is what I pay you for? What’s the point?”

Minh looked out the window. Borchardt had always been kind to him. He felt himself becoming upset. He shut his eyes.

“I don’t know what to say, Mr. Borchardt. I sent the documents immediately after I received them. I even helped to design the specifications.”

Minh waited for Borchardt to respond, but he said nothing.

“I don’t know what to say, sir,” continued Minh.

“There still may be time, but I’ll need your help,” said Borchardt. “Can the specifications be amended during the bidding phase?”

“Yes, yes, absolutely. I can’t promise—”

“I leave Shanghai in a few minutes. I could divert to Beijing if you could meet me.”

Minh considered the two agents outside the door to his apartment, sent by Ming-huá. He couldn’t bring them; Ming-huá couldn’t know about his relationship to Borchardt. Of course, evading them would be simple enough. His deck attached to a neighbor’s deck, who lived in a duplex. He would go next door, then take the elevator from the floor above.

“When would you like to meet?” asked Minh.

*   *   *

Borchardt looked at Dewey, who was leaning over, cheek to cheek with him, holding the SAT phone between them, eavesdropping.

Dewey held up a single finger.

“One hour,” said Borchardt, into the phone. “The private terminal, near Terminal Three.”

When Dewey heard Minh’s phone click, he stood and hung up the phone.

“Not bad,” he said to Borchardt. “You’re an unusually good liar. Almost like you’ve done it before. By the way, you need a shower, dude.”

“I thought that was you.”

“It could be,” said Dewey. “Who knows. Maybe we can take a shower together when we get back to London? My back could use a nice loofah.”

Borchardt started giggling.

“You’re not funny.”

“Everyone always says that but then they laugh at my jokes.”

The plane abruptly arced left and one of the copilots came on the intercom.

“Buckle up, we’re on approach to Beijing. We land in about fifteen minutes.”

Dewey used the restroom, then sat down across from Borchardt.

“You need to uncuff me,” said Borchardt.

“Why?”

“How will I get off the plane?”

“That’s not my problem, Rolf,” said Dewey. “If I untied you you’d run screaming from the plane like a little girl.”

“What the hell do you expect me to do?”

“Honestly? I expect you to blow up. Then again, I haven’t used SEMTEX in a while. For all I know I made a chocolate soufflé down there.”