Melanie Sloan sat back at her table in the Residence bar and enjoyed the warm buzz from her first drink since dinner with Allender. She’d spent the last week at the cultural indoctrination school on the Farm, getting acquainted with all things Chinese. She’d made it a rule not to drink during the workweek, which made Friday evening at the Residence bar even more appealing. The bar itself wasn’t that large, and it looked like the bar in just about any military officers’ club, which it had once been. Subdued lighting, an actual mahogany bar stretching across one entire wall, mementos and military plaques on the walls, with waitresses wearing black slacks and white shirts flitting efficiently among the tables, keeping the all-important booze flowing. The ratio of men to women was about four to one, but she didn’t recognize any of the men. She herself was wearing jeans and a lightweight Harvard sweatshirt, and drinking a double Bombay gin over crushed ice with a lime wedge. Mark in Portugal had introduced her to Bombay, telling her it was the perfect antidote to the heat of Portugal’s summers, among other things. She’d elicited a gratifying number of interested looks when she’d come into the bar, but after a week of fairly intense schooling, she was mostly just tired. Besides, she was here to meet with Allender.
The week had been interesting. A variety of so-called old China hands had walked her through the bewildering strata of modern Chinese society, pointing out the formidable number of dialects, the cultural norms and taboos, the way that Communism skewed political, personal, and economic perceptions in China, the rigidly bureaucratic government power structure cladding them all in the dialectic of Marxism and Socialism while pretending not to notice how much the entire nation-state resembled the days of the emperors. As in all crash courses on China, even those conducted by genuine experts, the net result was a sense of being totally overwhelmed, a feeling shared apparently by most modern-day Chinese themselves. The sheer size of the Chinese population practically guaranteed that no one individual could grasp the scale of it. The lecturers had emphasized that the sole purpose of the government and all its Communist BS was to control its vast population. Not understand it, not improve it, not educate it, but control it. Any analysis of Chinese government policy had to be viewed through that lens and that lens alone. It became obvious to her after just a week that the Chinese government was, at the most elementary level of political theory, afraid of its vast population.
There’d been only one disturbing element to her first week with the Chinese experts. The course director, a stocky Chinese woman whimsically named Mary Jones, asked Melanie why she was attending the course. Melanie said that Dr. Allender had arranged it. The woman asked if Allender was going to be her controller. Melanie said she didn’t know; in fact she didn’t know what Allender had planned for her. The woman then asked if Melanie was married or in a relationship. No, again. “Good,” the woman said, because if you’re getting involved with Allender, it will be intense and, to all intents and purposes, you will disappear until it’s over. And maybe even after it’s over.”
The offhand way she’d said that, as if just making an observation about the weather, had unsettled her. That said, she found herself getting a little excited about meeting up with the spooky doctor and his fiery eyes again. Like coming face-to-face with a tiger—a blend of being frozen in fear and an intense desire to look back at him.
She became aware of a change in the room’s atmosphere, a sudden dampening of the hum of casual conversation. She looked up to see Preston Allender himself gliding across the room toward her table, those wolf eyes shining in her direction like headlights, while everyone else in the room was pointedly looking somewhere else.
“Ms. Sloan,” he said, in his best undertaker’s voice. “May I join you?”
“Absolutely,” she replied, her voice perhaps a bit louder than normal. Bombay gin, she thought, will do that to you.
He slid into the chair across from hers without appearing to have moved anything, but then again, she was looking at his face and wondering if he was seeing right through her. For a second she longed for those smoky glasses. He was wearing a suit that looked really expensive, which reminded her he was senior executive service and she was just barely past her apprenticeship.
“How was your week?” he asked. “What did you learn?”
The hum of conversation around them had resumed except for the people at the nearest tables, who now seemed to be concentrating on not attracting his attention. A waitress sidled up to the table with a refill for Melanie and a glass of white wine for the doctor.
“China is—complicated?”
He laughed, a surprisingly warm sound. “You think?” he said. “On the other hand, often Chinese are entirely predictable. Your course will get to that aspect, eventually. But in the meantime, I have another course set up for you. You’ll do China in the mornings, and in the afternoons, a bit of boudoir France.”
“Oka-a-y,” she said. “I assume there’s no point to questions yet?”
“You assume correctly,” he said. “But I’ve got one: Have you ever heard the term ‘black swan’?”
She thought for a moment, but her brain was just a little fuzzy. Should have eaten something, she thought. Damned gin. And those disturbing eyes. It was like sitting at the table with an eagle. A hungry eagle. “Yes,” she replied, finally. “Something to do with Wall Street. But I can’t remember what.”
The waitress arrived at that moment and deposited a plate of fried calamari with some marinara sauce. “You should eat something,” he said. “Bombay gin is rather fast-acting sometimes.”
She stared at him. He’d done it again—echoed the thoughts in her mind. She grabbed a calamari ring and tried not to look right at him.
“A black swan is an event,” he said. “A totally unexpected event, that usually has some kind of dire consequence that seems to be out of all proportion to the actual event. A single, unimportant bank fails, and then everyone discovers that this bank had so many interlocking ties to many other major banks that now they’re all going to fail, and maybe the entire financial system is going to collapse.”
“Two thousand eight,” she said. “Suddenly the whole world was scrambling.”
“Yes,” he said. “Exactly like that. Two more things: It’s not a new concept—the Romans used the term. And, second, when a black swan appears, everyone searches frantically for a cause. A reason why this happened. It’s human nature; big bad surprises like this can’t just—happen.”
“Why is that important?” she asked, having some more calamari and not yet touching that second Bombay gin.
“Because if one is in the business of causing a black swan, one has to take care not only to make it effective but to then provide a plausible ‘cause’ when the victims go looking. A cause that doesn’t point right back at the person instigating the swan.”
“I don’t get it,” she said.
“Well, suppose I wanted to precipitate a black-swan event in order to do some damage. Wouldn’t it make sense to also orchestrate that inevitable desperate search for a cause or reason for it to have happened? If you can implicate yet another target, you can double the damage, yes?”
She quit trying to avoid his eyes. They took possession of hers for a moment and she suddenly couldn’t speak. She felt a hot, numbing sensation that blazed from her belly to her brain. Not the gin, she thought. She felt as if she was being probed. She found herself blinking. He did not blink. Then he relaxed and sat back in his chair, casually looking away as he finished his wine. Jesus, she thought. What was that?
“China indoctrination in the morning, boudoir France in the afternoon. And do not speak of black swans. To anyone.”
“Boudoir France?”
“Yes, and here she comes now.”
Melanie blinked again, but then realized that a woman was approaching their table. She looked, and then looked again, just as she realized that all the men in the bar were also looking. Staring, even. Allender stood up and made introductions. “Melanie Sloan, I’d like to introduce Minette de LaFontaine, from our psychological analytics division. Minette, this is Melanie Sloan.”
The woman who’d materialized at their table was five-six and somewhere between thirty-five and forty-five years old. She was, Melanie thought, absolutely gorgeous, with luminous dark eyes, a perfect complexion, a figure to die for that was accentuated by clothes that seemed to cling to all the important bits while overtly revealing nothing, and a mouth that was both an enticing smile and a direct sexual challenge. Melanie felt that challenge in a way that entirely surprised her, and she realized that, as with Allender, it had nothing to do with Bombay gin.
Minette sat down in the chair that Allender had just vacated and gave Melanie an appraising look. “A pleasure, Ms. Sloan,” she said finally, her voice a velvety mix of French accents and the raspy sound of an habitual smoker. Melanie could almost feel the hot stares coming from around the room and then detected a whiff of some expensive scent.
“Well, then,” Allender said. “Regrettably, I must go. Ms. Sloan is drinking Bombay gin, Minette. Can I get you something?”
“A Goose martini would be lovely, Doctor,” Minette said, shedding the sleeveless silk sweater onto the back of her chair with a fluid shrug that made her exquisite breasts shiver. A young man whose blue-edged badge identified him as a candidate agent was locked on to Minette with a mildly stunned expression on his face. Minette turned in his direction and gave him a smile that probably provoked a near orgasm.
Minette arched her eyebrows at the calamari but apparently decided against it. Melanie was ready to wolf down the whole plate if only to give herself some breathing room from this—she couldn’t come up with the word. The waitress brought Minette’s martini, which contained a single, large stuffed olive on a toothpick. Minette fished out the olive and delicately licked the gin off its surface, all the time looking directly at the young candidate, who slowly turned bright red before he turned away.
“You must be important,” she said, after devouring the olive and letting the suffering candidate off the hook. The word “important” came out in three distinct syllables. “That one is rarely seen in here.”
“Beats the shit out of me,” Melanie said, eyeing her second gin. Minette gave a tiny smile and then offered to touch glasses in a languid salud, forcing Melanie to pick up that second glass. Oh, shit, she thought. She took a sip and quickly had some more calamari.
“That is often the case,” Minette said. “It is said that the doctor plays a close game at all times. How did you come to his attention?”
“Again, I don’t really know,” Melanie said, enjoying the brain-sweetening wave of that first sip. “I get the impression that he’s got a mission planned, and that I’m somehow a part of it.”
“Lucky you,” Minette said.
“Maybe,” Melanie said.
“Well, yes,” Minette said. “With him, always the ‘maybe.’ Although he is not operational. It is more likely that the operations directorate needed him for some part of what they are planning. A consulting specialist, if you will. I am also a specialist, and, no, we will not be talking about France. To begin with, we will be talking about lingerie, and how to use it.”
“Um—use it?”
Minette rolled her eyes. “I forget,” she said. “You are an American.”
Melanie bristled. One thing she did not like was a European insinuating that because she was an American, she was some kind of hopeless naïf. Minette caught her reaction and raised a hand.
“Please,” she said. “Let me explain. Most women get up in the morning and put on their clothes: clean, basic underwear, a brassiere, pantyhose or perhaps stockings, and then a dress, blouse, or slacks and a blouse. Functional clothing, yes? We’re going to work. Then we come home and if the day is over, we shed all of that for jeans and a sweatshirt, as you are wearing now. Then later our nightclothes. But: Suppose we have a date? A date with definite possibilities. What then?”
“Okay,” Melanie said. “We ditch the workday clothes and then we put the play clothes on. Panties from Vicky’s Secret instead of Hanes for Her. Maybe stockings instead of pantyhose, with a belt to hold them up. A lace bra instead of a cotton slingshot. Perfume. I get it—what’s your point?’
“The point is that you anticipate your special someone seeing what you’ve got on underneath that pretty evening frock, while in the morning, headed for the office, that thought does not cross your mind.”
“Right,” Melanie said, impatiently. “And?”
“And, well, ‘seeing’ is the operative word. No heterosexual man can resist looking at your legs and underwear if you happen to expose them to him, whether intentionally or by accident.”
“Right, guys will always stare when a woman forgets to keep her knees together, just like our mommies told us. I get all this. It’s called teasing.”
Minette smiled, ignoring Melanie’s obvious impatience. “Yes, indeed, teasing. But here’s the thing: Men see with their eyes and with their imaginations. That is what you’re teasing when you let them get a look—bits of nylon, a flash of lace. Not your actual naked body. His imagination does the rest.”
“Again, I understand,” Melanie said. “But what does this have to do with operational tradecraft?”
“Permit me to demonstrate,” Minette said. “See the young man two tables over who can’t keep his eyes off our table?”
“Yes,” Melanie said, “but he’s looking at you, not our table. And you’ve been encouraging it.”
Minette rolled her eyes. “I’m going to the ladies’ room,” she said. “When I come back I’m going to sit back down in such a way as to give him an eyeful. You watch what happens next.”
“O-k-a-ay,” Melanie said, still mystified. The last time she’d talked to another woman about boys’ obsession with girls’ panties had been in junior high school. But after a few minutes, Minette returned, pulled her chair out, and sat down in a swirl of fabric, only to “discover” that there was something wrong with one of her shoes. As she bent to take care of it, she indeed gave the young man an eyeful, at least if his expression was any clue. Melanie then saw a woman sitting at the table next to the young man get up, extract an overly large, stainless-steel revolver from her purse, walk over behind the young man, and push the barrel into his neck. He practically jumped out of his skin when he felt the cold steel and heard the cylinder rolling. Other people in the lounge who saw the big gun froze in place as the young man now also went rigid. The woman with the gun nodded at Minette, who nodded back as she straightened up and realigned her skirt. The woman put the revolver back in her purse and walked out of the lounge as if nothing had happened. The rest of the people began to relax and look at each other as if to ask, Did you just see what I saw?
Minette turned in her chair to look at Melanie, who was still swallowing her own surprise. “Ordinarily,” Minette said, “he would have noticed her standing up, and he certainly would have seen her pulling that gun. But he did not, because he was totally focused on looking up my skirt, especially since I made it look like an accident and not a deliberate, I-dare-you-to-look challenge of some kind. The point is that almost every woman has the power to make a man look at her for at least a second or two, and that is long enough for her accomplice or teammate to take him out. Just by what you Americans call ‘flashing.’ Okay?”
“Got it,” Melanie said, looking around at the rest of people in the room, who now seemed to have forgotten the little drama they’d just witnessed. It was after all, the Farm, where training vignettes could take place anywhere and at any time. The young man himself had left the room, still blushing like a beet. “It’s like they’re hardwired to look.”
“Yes, they are, especially since they’ve been told repeatedly, since childhood, even, not to look. This is an especially valuable distraction technique, especially if your target happens to harbor a fetish involving women’s underwear. According to Doctor Allender, your target does.”
“Now how in the world could he know a thing like that?” Melanie asked.
Minette took a thoughtful sip of her martini. “The doctor,” she began. “He knows things in the most unusual ways. Some say he reads minds. I hardly credit that, although…” She paused, as if searching for words. “My point is he is the most frightening interrogator we’ve ever had, because he appears to see and hear at some subliminal level the rest of us cannot achieve.”
“Yes,” Melanie said. “I’ve actually experienced that, or I think I have. He will say something—a phrase, or a thought—that I was thinking just a little while ago.”
Minette gave her a long, almost concerned look. “That is very interesting, Ms. Sloan,” she said finally. “He is probably measuring you. Or perhaps probing. He was not wearing the glasses this evening, and that tends to upset people.”
Melanie shrugged, trying to be nonchalant. “And now you, too, are going to tell me to be careful around Doctor Allender?” she asked.
Minette gave her an almost affectionate look. “I would say that it’s much too late for that, my dear. So: Tomorrow, after Chinese culture, we will go shopping, yes?”