Colonel Dominika Egorova of the SVR was an alien being to Rainy—the leggy, busty Slav with the high cheekbones might as well have been from another planet. His English, learned at MSS Officer’s school, was just fluent enough to discuss strategy with her in the operation to trap the American. Rainy Chonghuan had, however, immediately seen that this Russian was held in high esteem by General Sun and MSS leadership, which meant he would butter her remorselessly. He moreover saw that she had long experience working American targets. Her suggested amendments to the entrapment-phase plan, including tweaking Zhènniǎo’s personal history to appeal to the Yankee’s operational instincts, were impressive. Anything that would ensure success and bring him credit and promotion was welcome. Rainy provided a translated copy of Zhènniǎo’s service docket for Colonel Egorova’s review, and suggested the two women meet to discuss nuances of the nectar bait. To his surprise, the Russian demurred, explaining that Sparrows in the Russian Service operated most effectively with fewer distractions. Rainy hurriedly agreed, complimenting the colonel on her foresight and wisdom.
Zhen Gao’s personnel file was fascinating to Dominika. The autobiography she had recited to Nate was mostly fiction, with some nuggets of truth. She had not lost her parents, she was not adopted, and she never went to hotel school. She was never taught yoga by a wizened yogini when she was twelve, she learned it only later, as a way to stay in shape and help her seduce targets.
Zhen Gao was the daughter of a minor State-school teacher from Anxin, in Hebei Province, on the reed-choked shores of Lake Baiyangdian. Already a stunning beauty at age sixteen, Zhen caught the eye of a provincial administrator who appraised the woman’s body under the schoolgirl’s smock. He used his influence to install the young girl as a housekeeper in a State-controlled villa, took her virginity, and occasionally shared her with other municipal jacks-in-the-office to curry favor. When Zhen was eighteen, the administrator was caught taking bribes and was tried, convicted, and executed for corruption. With no patron, and an undeserved reputation as a “pleasure girl,” she was sent to Tianjin, a teeming city of fifteen million on the northeastern coast two hours south of Beijing, and enrolled in State School 2112, a training academy run by the MSS that, the file obliquely explained, trained young women in “intelligence techniques,” which included seduction, elicitation, recruitment, and blackmail. Graduates were known as Yèyīng, Nightingales.
Based on academics, performance, and an assessment of ideological aptitude, a handful of Nightingales were chosen for continued study at Institute 48 in Beijing, a classified facility in the northeastern Shangjialou District where students were trained in the use of firearms, exotic weapons, and poisons. At age twenty, Zhen was sponsored by a storefront Sino-Anglo friendship society controlled by MSS for study in the United Kingdom, both to master English and to be exposed to Western ways. Four years later, she graduated as a full-fledged seductress-assassin of the State, known as a Zhènniǎo, the poison-feather bird. Because of her excellent English and British manner, Zhen was quietly placed in a cover position as assistant general manager at the Peninsula Hotel in Hong Kong, available for assignments as required.
Bozhe, thought Dominika, reading the file, a young girl defiled by a swine, passed around the pigsty, then forced into the Chinese version of Sparrow School. Her pulse raced as she read Zhen’s life history—it was like her own. But Russian Sparrows don’t kill people, Dominika told herself, but you have, haven’t you?
Throughout the second volume of the file, Zhen now was referred to as Zhènniǎo. Dominika asked Rainy what a poison-feather bird was, and he haltingly described the mythological bird, with coal-black plumage, that fed exclusively on serpents, and whose feathers as a result were highly poisonous. One could stir a glass of wine with a single such feather to make it mortally toxic, he said. Only in China, thought Dominika.
The file documented fourteen assassinations credited to Zhènniǎo—the most recent being a drug-dealing Burmese police chief who had been poisoned with a distillate of the monkshood bloom. There had been no witnesses and no blowback connection to Beijing. Dominika turned to a pharmacological annex in the file that listed monkshood as a poisonous plant that produces aconitine, a lethal tetrodotoxin readily absorbed through the skin. Even slight contact with the delicate, purple bell-shaped flower would, between two and eight hours later, induce cardiac arrhythmia, ventricular tachycardia, ventricular fibrillation leading to respiratory paralysis or cardiac arrest. Zhènniǎo had applied the poison on the skin of the police chief blended with ylang-ylang, a fragrant essential oil used in aromatherapy.
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As she watched Zhen’s Kundalini demonstration on the surveillance monitor—the entire apartment was covered by cameras and microphones in the fixtures, woodwork, and ceilings—Dominika’s heart stopped when she heard Zhen tell Nate her perfume was called ylang-ylang. That’s how they would do him. Zhen would dab him with fragrant oil spiked with the monkshood toxin during some yoga tryst, which would kill him by the next morning.
Would Nate sense the danger? Why would he? He was an operations officer on the hunt, intent on recruiting a beautiful Chinese girl. Benford and CIA had no idea of the threat; they couldn’t warn him. Dominika herself was in a screamingly perilous position. She couldn’t call CIA; she was in China. She couldn’t throw a package over the wall of the US Consulate as it was surrounded by MSS lookouts. She was constantly accompanied by MSS escorts, and the diminutive Rainy Chonghuan was always at her side. They had put her in a luxurious guest apartment one floor up, directly above this one, which Dominika had no doubt, was also humming with multiple digital microphones and lenses, making it exceedingly risky to try to leave the building and somehow make street contact on the fly with Nate who, she also assumed, was under MSS surveillance.
If she acted to save Nate and made a mistake, the Chinese would report it to the Kremlin, and she would be lost. Dominika had tried to send Nate subtle warnings. She had advised the MSS that Zhen must not seem overly inquisitive, and ask no personal questions, the mark of an intelligence officer. She recommended that Zhen downplay her UK university years by simply saying they were paid for by a “scholarship.” Dominika told her hosts it was “safer to be vague,” but in reality these were inconsistent notes that she hoped would be the silent dog whistle in Nate’s head to get him to start smelling a trap. She also strongly advised that Zhen should mention Fernando’s Restaurant in Macao to shock the American into blurting something actionable, really knowing it would be a premature and aggressive note, sure to alarm Nate. She feared these would be too subtle, too diffuse warnings. Would Nate pick up on them? She couldn’t try any more subtle sabotage, for the Chinese were too smart. Dominika didn’t know how else to confound MSS plans to kill Nate.
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Grace had invited Nate back to her apartment for a home-cooked meal, in repayment for the dinner at the China Club. She opened the door, smiled, and pulled him by the hand into the apartment. She wore a beige shirtdress that came to midthigh, with floppy sleeves rolled up past the elbows. She briefly pressed up against him—he could feel the softness of her breasts under the shirt—and kissed him lightly. She padded barefoot through the living room—the air was thick with ylang-ylang—around the corner, and into a small but modern kitchen done all in white tile and stainless steel. On the counter were a number of ingredients, and a small black-handled Chinese cleaver.
“I’m making a Burmese tomato salad,” said Grace. “The word for salad in Burmese is ‘lethoke.’ It means mix by hand.”
“Were you ever in Burma?” said Nate. “What’s it called now?”
“Myanmar,” said Grace. “Only as a tourist. But a Burmese woman there taught me how to make the salad. Her name was Kyi Saw.” Grace chopped the ingredients skillfully, whisked lemongrass vinegar, canola oil, and fish sauce, then fried sliced onions and garlic in a small pot of oil. Nate watched how she moved effortlessly around the kitchen, her hands quick and deft. She assembled the salad in a large wooden bowl, lightly tossed it with her hands until everything was incorporated, and handed Nate a fork. He tried a thin slice of tomato. The taste was salty, sweet, and pungent, with a slight crunch of crushed peanuts.