Melanie and her escort joined the throng of people heading into the main ballroom of the hotel. There were thirty round tables set for dinner, and her escort knew right where to take her, even though he was assigned to an adjacent table. He checked to see that the general’s name was on the place card to her immediate right, and then seated her as the table’s other guests found their places. The ballroom was spacious and well appointed, with a stage at one end and a wall of double doors to admit the attendees at the other. Melanie spotted Smith, dressed in a stylish tux, sitting down two tables over. She smiled when she saw him switch two place cards so that he would have a better view of Melanie’s table.
“Ah, we meet again, Miss Sloan,” General Chiang announced as an aide pulled back his chair so that he could sit down. “What a pleasant surprise.”
She turned to smile at him. “An amazing coincidence,” she murmured, and he grinned. The aide bowed and withdrew.
The general turned to his right to greet the rather large lady who’d sat down next to him, and then turned back to Melanie. A rather serious-looking Chinese man was the last to take his place at their table. He sat down directly across from Chiang and stared intently at Melanie. She was worth the look: She was wearing a Dior ensemble with spaghetti straps and a cleverly designed lace bodice. Her skirt was calf-length and fashionably slit on one side, but not so high that anyone would remark on it. She leaned in toward the general. “Your minder?” she asked softly.
He smiled again and pretended to be interested in the menu card at the center of the table. “For as long as I allow it,” he replied. “In our government, everybody watches everybody.”
She sighed. “Kinky,” she said. He snorted quietly.
The dinner service began with wine stewards pouring out reds and whites. Melanie recognized the young man who came to their table as one of the cast members from the practice sessions. As he went around the table, Melanie indicated she wanted both a white and a red. Chiang did the same. The large lady to Chiang’s right asked him a question. Once he was turned away from her, Melanie rotated the hem of the skirt so that the slit was now front and center, and then hiked it up to just the right elevation to make things interesting. She was wearing nude-colored nylon stockings that had a black lace band at the top. Then she spread her linen napkin demurely across her lap. Minette had warned her to not indulge in any casual knee-bumping contact under the table. Keep it all visual. Let him see, but not touch. Touch was for later.
Dinner proceeded uneventfully with the typical casual conversation until the dessert course was served, at which point Melanie picked up her napkin and wiped her lips. She could almost feel the general’s hot stare before she folded the napkin in half and put it back in her lap. But it was half a napkin now, and her thighs and lace-topped stockings were still just visible. She finally looked directly at him.
“Are you staying for the awards presentation?” she asked.
“Of course—our ambassador is receiving an award. Are you not?”
She shook her head, aware now that the minder across the table was trying desperately to hear what they were talking about. “I feel like drinking tonight, so I got a room. I’m going to ‘withdraw’ to the lounge.”
He looked positively crestfallen until he realized that she’d just told him she had a room, right here in the hotel. “Well, then,” he said, much more quietly than he’d been speaking before. “Perhaps I will see you there. Protocol demands, you understand.”
“Of course I understand, General,” she said, teasing him with a mildly flirtatious smile. “I’ll be sorry to miss all the speeches.”
It became clear that dinner was over. People were starting to move around, visiting other tables or heading outside for a quick cigarette. Melanie gathered herself to push back from the table. The general beat her to it, rising and sliding her chair back to one side as she got up. For an instant their faces were inches apart. The sexual tension between them flared, minder or no minder, as the general remained well within her personal space. “Hurry,” she breathed.
She visited the ladies’ room, where there were two attendants dressed in the hotel’s livery. One was tending to a woman whose dress had begun to disintegrate and who was well versed in drama. The other attendant was one of the cast. Melanie tended to business and then stood before one of the mirrors to brush her hair and touch up her makeup. She reached behind her as if to adjust the back of her dress, and the attendant came over, offering to help.
“Hook set?” she asked quietly while pretending to fiddle with the dress.
“Yes, indeed,” Melanie replied. Then she tipped the attendant and left for the lounge.
General Chiang showed up forty-five minutes later, saw her sitting alone in a corner, and joined her. The minder was ninety seconds behind him, and then there were two thirty-something Chinese “businessmen” two minutes behind the minder. The three Chinese spread out in the lounge, one to a table. The lounge hadn’t filled up yet. The noise level was low, disturbed only by a large-screen television flickering above the bar.
“You brought a crowd,” she said.
“I think the ambassador saw me leave right after his award.”
“And he knows you, doesn’t he,” she teased.
He shrugged. “He’s old and married to a niece of the president. She is something of a dragon, I am told.” He saw a waitress approaching. “What are you drinking?”
“Bombay gin and tonic,” she said. The bar had a new assistant bartender tonight. He’d fixed Melanie’s first “drink,” which had been plain tonic water with a wedge of lime. The second one, the one the general was going to order for her, would have mostly tonic water but with a dollop of the gin poured gently on top in case he checked.
He sat back in his chair and gave her an admiring look. “You are quite beautiful tonight,” he said. “But I must tell you, my minders are quite worried.”
“Let me guess,” she said. “I work for the Company and have ensnared you with my womanly wiles. Soon I’ll ask you up to my room, for some—cognac, perhaps, and then, once we have become um—involved, spring some kind of a trap, and then demand that you tell me everything you know or I’ll go to the press with the embarrassing videos captured by all the secret cameras in my hotel room. Close?”
He laughed out loud. “Very,” he said. Then he leaned in to her as if about to propose some even more complex plot. “So the trick is: Get involved, as you put it, quickly.”
She stared directly into his hot eyes. “Go fast, you mean,” she whispered. “Hard and fast.”
“Yes, go fast. That is what I like.”
She leaned back and scanned the room, as if to see who might be watching besides the now worried-looking Chinese guards. She squared her shoulders and then smiled when the minders stopped looking at Chiang for a moment. “That is what I like, too,” she said. “And besides, here’s what I think. Your wife might be offended if someone produced a video of us in bed, but every man in China would probably be saying: hell, yes, as our cowboys say. In America, too.”
He laughed again. “You are quite direct,” he said.
“And fast,” she said. “Don’t forget fast. Hard and fast. And you must of course promise to respect me in the morning.”
This time he positively shook laughing, but stopped when she turned in her chair, crossed her shiny legs, the slit skirt showing him the rest of what was on offer. A waiter brought the drinks and they paused to enjoy them. The minders all pretended to do the same. More people were coming into the lounge by now, including one couple who were also members of the cast. Pretty soon, she thought, there’ll be as many of my minders in here as his.
“How shall we work this?” she asked finally.
He finished his drink, took a deep breath, and asked for her room number. She told him.
“Go there now,” he said. “I will come after an appropriate interval.”
“Yes, you certainly will,” she said, not smiling this time. She watched him blink and swallow hard. She gathered herself to get up from the table but with enough body language to make even the minders look. She could hear Minette: Reach for your purse. Knock it off the table and into a chair. Bend to retrieve it. Stretch that amazing material across your bottom. Take one second longer than necessary. Hear them all inhale.
She stepped into the elevator and punched the number five. The doors closed, but only went up one floor before stopping. Three Chinese men got in, all wearing plain gray suits. One, who was older and had the look of authority about him, was carrying a metal attaché case. They were not the same men who’d been in the lounge and they had a hard look about them that fairly shouted security. One reached for the control panel, saw button 5 lit, and lowered his hand.
Oh, boy, Melanie thought, but then saw the tiny camera mounted in the elevator’s ceiling. Someone would be watching.
When the door opened at the fifth floor, the older man indicated that she should go first. She did and the three of them got out and then followed her down the hallway at a discreet distance. When she stopped to fish out her key card, they also stopped. She looked back at them, and all three of them did their best to smile.
“Can I help you guys with something?” she asked, sliding the card into the door slot. The moment the light turned green, the older one stepped forward. She instinctively turned the door handle but he was there in a heartbeat. The next thing she knew she was being gently pushed through the door and into her room. One man had taken possession of her elbows, while another held his hand over her mouth—firmly but not painfully. For an instant no one moved, and then the older man put his finger to his lips to indicate silence. He raised his eyebrows as if to ask, You going to scream? She took a deep breath, shook her head, and then relaxed. When he saw that, he signaled the man holding her mouth to release her. The elbow man did not move.
“Excuse,” the older man said. “We must search this room, and your person, before your ‘guest’ arrives. We will not hurt you, but we must be sure this room is—safe.”
“May I please sit down?” she asked. “And, yes, I understand what you need to do.”
His face brightened. “Good,” he said. “Yes, you may sit down. Please keep hands in sight.”
Once she was seated, hands primly on her knees, the older man opened the attaché case, punched some buttons on the console inside, and proceeded to do an electronic sweep of the room. The second man meticulously searched every part of the room—fixtures, furniture, receptacle covers, lights, the television, and even the coffee maker—for hidden cameras. The third man went to work on the interconnecting door locks between her room and the rooms on either side. He nodded to the older man when he had the locks compromised, which had taken all of thirty seconds.
Melanie knew there were cameras, but not exactly where except for one. She did know that they were so miniaturized she was pretty sure they’d never find them. The plan had taken into account the fact that wireless cameras had to transmit their images, which meant that a competent sweep kit could detect RF energy. So tonight her controllers were depending on a passive sound-source alone, with two hardwired microphones outside the sliding glass door, posing as one of those decals that keeps one from walking into the door. The actual transmitter was two floors above. Their receivers were two blocks away. The cameras would be switched to the RF mode only after the minders were satisfied that the room was “cold.”
Once they were satisfied, they proceeded into the hotel room on one side, which, from what Melanie could see, seemed to be unoccupied. The one on the opposite side was occupied, based on clothes and luggage, but apparently not a threat. The man who’d done the locks relocked them and then placed a silvery strip of metal like a Band-Aid across each door. The older man concluded his sweep and said something in Chinese to the other two. They nodded, and then went back out into the hallway, leaving the door partially open.
“And now,” the older man said. “Your person, please?”
“Please, what?” she asked indignantly, knowing full well what he wanted. Both the other men had positioned themselves in the corridor so they could see into the room while also watching the hallway.
He cocked his head to one side. “Please?” he asked again, as in, Stop wasting our time. And the general’s time.
“Oh,” she said, pretending surprise. “You want to know if I’m wired.”
“Yes. Please?”
“Okay,” she said, standing up. She peeled the straps of her gown off her shoulders and let the fabric drop to her waist. The dress was the only topside support she’d worn, so there she was. Wireless but sufficiently distracting, she hoped. The older man stared appreciatively, and then looked lower. Melanie frowned, put her top back together, and then, crossing her arms, raised the hem of her skirt as high as it would go. Then she turned around, slowly, trying not to be seductive about it, until she faced him again. He, and his minions kept staring until she slid the skirt back down and went back to the chair. Then she looked pointedly at her watch.
“The general?” she asked. “Do you like to keep him waiting?”
The older man composed his face, nodded, and then they all left. As soon as the door closed, she got up and went to the bathroom. She turned on the overhead fan, which was the signal to the controller that she was alone again. They would have the corridor on cameras, but they needed to know when to turn on the room cameras and take them online. It was now time to change. She took off all her clothes and put on a filmy, white, full-length nylon slip. Then she went back to the chair and sat down.
After five minutes she wished she’d had more than a few drops of Bombay. Her script called for her to wait in the chair until the general came to her room—or didn’t, if his security team called it off. The local control room was two floors directly above, and the room’s sprinkler-system fixture had been replaced with a wide-angle camera, presumably, she figured, to capture the action on the bed. Any time now, she thought.
She had steeled herself to go through with what would probably resemble a rape. All that talk about hard and fast had been aimed at fanning the general’s fervid expectations, but she hoped it wouldn’t turn into some painful back-alley assault. That said, it had been something of a long dry spell.
There was a click from the unoccupied room’s interconnecting door, and then it swung open. The metal Band-Aid broke, but then she saw that an even longer strip had been stuck to the other side of the door, allowing it to open without disrupting the alarm circuit. Two men who had been part of the “cast,” but whose roles hadn’t been clear, beckoned her to the doorway. A voice in her right earring told her to go with them. They then hustled her out of the room into the unoccupied room, and from there through a doorway into the next room, where she saw something that totally floored her.
Standing in the room was her doppelgänger, also sporting a full-length white slip, but wearing panties. Her face, her body, her hair—everything the same. Her almost identical twin. As she gaped in surprise, her clone got up, smiled at her, said, “Good job, Melanie,” and then went through the door with one of the other agents. The room crew closed the door, and one of them handed her a bathrobe. She put it on, almost unaware of what she was doing.
“Good job, Melanie,” he’d said.
He?
Then she grinned. The other guys saw her get it and they also grinned.
“Gonna be a good one,” one of them said. “Wanna watch?”
“Hell, yes,” she said. “Oh. My. God.”