The Interior (Red Princess 2)

“Not at all, David,” Madeleine said. “It’s a practical move for you. More than that, I’d call it wise. You’ve finished the Rising Phoenix trials, so if you have to leave suddenly, this is a good time to do it. For the office, I mean,” she amended. “Obviously we’ll hate to see you go, but there are other things to consider. You’ve got people after you. We can surmise it’s some last vestige of the Rising Phoenix. Can we prove it? Not yet. Is there any evidence that points directly to them so that we could get a wiretap and go roust some folks? No. So what you’re looking at is uncertainty and having those Feebies following you around. You can’t tell me you like that.”

“I don’t, but should I run away to China?”

“You’re not running away,” Madeleine said. “You’re getting out of harm’s way so the FBI can do its job and find those assholes.”

“But China? The Rising Phoenix is a Chinese gang,” David pointed out.

“Based in Los Angeles,” Madeleine added as if David didn’t know. “There may be a few hotheads still hanging around the city, but there can’t be any left in Beijing.”

David knew this was true. The gang members in China had been caught. Those who’d confessed had been treated leniently with hard labor in China’s hinterlands. Those who hadn’t had been tried, sentenced, and executed.

“Even if they aren’t all dead,” Rob added, “the Chinese will be able to protect you in a way that we simply can’t.”

David hesitated. There was one more question he had to ask, but it wasn’t an easy one to ask of friends. “This isn’t some setup, is it? You aren’t trying to get me into something I don’t yet know about? We’ve been down that road before and—”

“David,” Madeleine interrupted wearily, “just get out of here. Be safe…”

The taxi’s windows were open, and hot hair blew across Hulan’s face. She gazed out over the fields, thinking of the time she’d spent in the U.S. Attorney’s Office with Madeleine Prentice and Rob Butler earlier this year, and of the life that David would be giving up to come here.

“You love being a prosecutor,” she said into the phone receiver.

“Yes, but I don’t look at that work the same way anymore.” He was referring to the case that had brought them back together. Both of their governments had played them for fools. She’d expected it; he hadn’t. She’d accepted it; he felt betrayed.

“Have you spoken to Miles again?” In her mind’s eye she conjured up Miles’s handsome face. He’d always been nice to her—he was polite to everyone—but she’d always felt uncomfortable around him, pr

obably because she’d never been able to read behind his smooth Nordic exterior.

Picking up on her tone, David said, “I’m not particularly fond of Miles either, and frankly I sense a certain ambivalence in him about this arrangement too. But the firm is made up of many people. Phil and the others have been great, but you guessed right. My negotiations were with Miles. After my meeting with Madeleine and Rob, I met Miles for lunch to go over the particulars. He said he’d give me free rein. ‘Sink your teeth into it. Run with it. The Knights are good people….’”

“The Knights?”

“Remember the factory you asked me about? The firm wants me to handle the sale of Knight to Tartan, then stay on—”

“David, you don’t know anything about those people or their business. I’ve seen things—”

“Look, they don’t need to be my friends. They sell, we buy. Hell, in twelve days Knight won’t exist anymore except as a division of Tartan. Don’t you see, Hulan? I’ll be going to China with business. I won’t just be representing Tartan, but other business the firm has lined up. Marcia, Miles’s secretary, has already set up appointments for next Monday. Don’t ask me where they’re going to be. I don’t have an office yet.”

Hulan had many questions, but David just kept talking….

It was amazing how easily he walked away from one life and into another. After lunch he’d gone back to the firm with Miles. Just as Keith had said on the night of his death, the offices of Phillips, MacKenzie & Stout hadn’t changed. The public areas were dark, plush, and conservative. Each partner was given an allowance to decorate his or her own office, which meant that there was a little of everything—from Louis XV to Early American, from mahogany to bird’s-eye maple, from cheap posters to original Hockneys on the walls. As a partner in the top echelon, David was entitled to a corner office on any of the firm’s five floors, the top of which was the acknowledged power center. But since David was going to China, he was assigned a large office between Miles’s on one corner and Phil Collingsworth’s on the other.

Under ordinary circumstances the partners would have needed to meet to vote on accepting a new partner, but, as Phil had pointed out the day of the funeral, everyone here knew David. A few phone calls to the executive committee resulted in a unanimous decision. Five minutes later Miles asked David for his passport, which he pulled out of his breast pocket. Miles laughed when he saw it and said, “I guess I should have negotiated your points a little harder.” Both men had laughed then, for there was no denying that David had wanted to go back to China from the first moment that Miles mentioned it. The senior partner gave the passport to his secretary and told her to hustle down to the Chinese consulate for a visa. After that Miles and David joined Phil and some of the other partners for an impromptu champagne toast. It had felt like old times…

“Did you ask about Keith?” Hulan interrupted.

“What do you mean?”

“About the bribery?”

David’s voice was lost in static, and she asked him to repeat his answer.

“I asked Miles, and I talked to Madeleine and Rob about it too. They all said something along the lines of you can’t believe everything you read in the papers. After what you and I have been through, I have to agree. I can’t remember the last time I was quoted correctly.”

“I don’t like it,” she said.

Even over this great distance she heard him sigh.

“What part?” he asked, the pain in his voice palpable. “Is it that you don’t want me in China?”