The foreign minister loosened his red silk tie. There was no reason to stand on ceremony now. He was among friends—friends who would stand beside him in front of a firing squad if they were ever discovered—even by members of the party who essentially agreed with them.
Secretary Deng spoke next. “Public approval for Zhao is waning, as you predicted,” he said. “But his supporters in the politburo appear steadfast. I have even heard it said that he has the brains to hold the same progressive economic policies as disgraced President Wei, but the balls to implement them.”
“That may be true,” General Ma said. “But I know more than a few in the party who find themselves gravely concerned with Zhao’s misguided corruption probes. It is as if he is completely blind to the origin of his support.”
“Blindness is among the least of his disturbing qualities,” Deng said.
“He is quite intelligent,” Li said. “We should not underestimate him. General Xu, I believe—”
A metallic chime sounded at the study door, cutting him off. The foreign minister raised his hand to quiet everyone. A moment later, Madame Li appeared with her arm around the shoulders of a handsome boy in his early teens.
“Qin’ai,” she said. The term was akin to “dear” or “darling.” “Our son has had a long day and would like to say good night to his father.”
Li put the cigar in the ashtray beside his chair and took the boy’s hand, holding it in his. “Good night, my son. Rest well.”
The other men in the room looked away, embarrassed by this uncustomary outpouring of emotion from the leader they’d respected for his cruelty and cunning.
“I will leave you men to talk your treason,” Madame Li said, smiling as she escorted the boy out.
Secretary Deng winced before the door was shut and they were alone. “Does she know?”
Li took up his cigar again, then picked a fleck of tobacco off his lip. “Of course not. It is merely something she says. Women chatter about the household and men talk treason.”
“Well,” Deng said, “it is a dangerous term.”
Li’s eyes narrowed. “Any disrespectful talk of my wife would be dangerous. Of that you may be quite sure.”
General Ma held up his hand. Had it really fallen to the military man to try and make peace? He decided to change the subject rather than appeal to either man’s decency. “It is such a shame that Chinese interests must be harmed in order to attain our goals.”
Li snatched up his cigar, took a few puffs, then snubbed it out in the ashtray. The veins in the side of his neck bulged with tension.
“Make no mistake,” he said. “Chinese interests are not our only targets. Before we are finished, President Ryan will be ready to fly Air Force One to Beijing and shoot the fool Zhao himself.”
The foreign minister sat for a moment, composing himself before turning to General Xu. “Your man Huang, Zhao’s chief bodyguard. Will he bend?”
“The colonel?” Xu shook his head. “From what I have seen, he is endowed with a set of iron principles that will prove quite troublesome.”
“I assume you have considered a remedy,” the foreign minister said. “Principles are to be lauded, so long as they align with ours. One man with the wrong ideals . . . Do I need to spell it out?”
Xu puffed on his cigar until the coal glowed red, illuminating his face.
“I can assure you, Mr. Foreign Minister,” the general said. “Colonel Huang will not be a problem.”
23
Four hours after the call from Gavin Biery, Ding Chavez slouched in an uncomfortable fake-leather chair in the lounge of an FBO off Lemmon Avenue. He munched stale popcorn for breakfast and thumbed absentmindedly through an aviation magazine while he tried to stay awake enough to remain aware of his surroundings. He never understood why every fixed-base operator he’d ever seen had a popcorn machine, but they did, and he’d learned to take advantage of the fact when there was nothing else salty to eat.
Chavez was dressed for travel in a pair of gray sweatpants and a pullover hoodie. The sweats made him look like Rocky Balboa getting ready for a training run, but they were comfortable—and he’d sleep better. Lord knew he needed sleep. He had plenty of training for lack of it, having been screamed at by drill sergeants in the Army, SAS operators in Hereford, instructors at Camp Peary—hell, even his own father-in-law. Sometimes you just had to suck it up and deal with it. He was pushing fifty years old, but he kept telling himself that if Clark could keep going, so could he. That wasn’t really a fair comparison, because Clark was a machine. Fortunately, Mr. C was getting older and now possessed only the grit and stamina of two normal men. But Chavez still worried about him. Clark had taken the idea of captive girls hard—and seemed to focus on it now even more than the mission at hand. Feng had said Matarife was connected to Chen—but they had Chen located now. There seemed little reason not to let Special Agent Callahan and her CAC Task Force handle the search for Matarife. They would sure be able to use Dom and John for the eventualities that would come up in Argentina. When Chavez had asked about it, Clark just raised a gray eyebrow and looked at him. Anyone who spoke the language of John Clark realized this unspoken action translated as “Step the hell back!”
Chavez, being exhausted and generally absent a filter anyway, unwisely pressed the issue. This only served to earn him an earful of all the reasons why Clark did not have to explain himself to the likes of Domingo Chavez, someone who was still “shitting yellow” when Clark was up to his chin in brown water in the godforsaken jungles of Southeast Asia. Ding was no stranger to harsh language, even from his wife’s dad, but the rest of Clark’s tirade would have melted the ears off a lesser man. Still, Ding couldn’t help but love the guy. They’d been through too much together.
Chavez pitched the magazine back on the glass coffee table. There was nothing he could do about it, anyway.
The whine of the approaching Hendley Associates Gulfstream was a welcome sound. It meant forward progress in this operation. More important in the near term at least, the flight to Argentina would give the team a few uninterrupted hours of much-needed rest.
Chavez hadn’t gone to sleep, staying up instead to scour the Internet for possible events that might be important enough to take Vincent Chen to South America. A simple meeting could have occurred anywhere. No, Buenos Aires was a hell of a long way away. Something was happening there that required Chen to make the journey. Four cups of coffee and three hours deep into his search, Chavez stumbled over an obscure three-line post on the Liniers cattle auction website that mentioned a meeting between Argentina’s minister of agriculture and his counterparts from several other countries, including Thailand, Japan—and China. Beef exportation, among other things, would be discussed. According to the website, the Chinese foreign minister deemed the meeting important enough that he would also make an appearance.