Hostile Takeover Page 5

  Graves just nodded.

  She smiled. “If we never see each other again, I guess that means I’ll never know for sure.”

  • • •

  Fort Hood, Texas

  It was good to be home. That’s what Fort Hood felt like now: home. In his nearly three decades in the army, Graves had learned to use that term loosely. For him, home was where the work was.

  He stepped off the transport into a wall of late afternoon Texas heat. The stifling humidity seemed to push against him as he made his way to the command center. A shower, an update on the disaster mitigation efforts, and some grub. That was the plan for the evening.

  Sergeant Ortega was waiting for him, his crisp BDUs already starting to wilt in the heat. He returned the young man’s salute. “How are our guests, Sergeant?” he said, referring to the Neos and Corazon Santos.

  “The well on the south side of the camp ran dry, sir, so we’re trucking in water. We received another eighty thousand refugees yesterday.”

  Graves whistled. Eighty thousand new refugees put the camp well past the planned limit of one fifty. He hoped again Teller knew what he was doing with this new open-borders policy. “How are we doing on logistics?”

  Ortega shook his head. “Barely keeping up, sir. The last food shipment came in late and we’re already looking at half rations later in the week. But that’s not why I needed to see you, General.”

  Graves stopped. The heat settled on him like a wet blanket. “What’s the issue, son?”

  Ortega hesitated. “She found me out, sir. When I was in the refugee column.”

  “Corazon.” They both knew who she was.

  Ortega nodded.

  Graves shrugged. “Marines don’t exactly blend in, Sergeant.”

  “She called me in today, sir, to see her.”

  Graves raised an eyebrow. “And?”

  “She wants to meet with you, General. Soon. Says she has information she needs to tell you.”

  Graves thought of his meeting yesterday with Olga. For a confirmed bachelor, he was getting an awful lot of attention from the fairer sex these days.

  “And she didn’t say what kind of information?”

  Ortega shook his head.

  “Fine. Schedule her into my morning calendar somewhere for fifteen minutes.” He turned to go.

  “You want her to come here, sir?” Ortega gestured at the command center building looming behind them.

  “Yes, I want her to come here. Is that an issue, Sergeant?” Graves felt the three days on the road and his lack of sleep making his tone sharp.

  “I—I think she meant for you to come see her, sir.”

  Graves turned on his heel. “Tell Corazon Santos to call my office and schedule an appointment like the rest of the free world.”

  He stormed into the building and climbed the steps two at a time, already regretting losing his temper with Ortega. The kid was a marine, not a goddamned secretary, and he knew how Cora could get into someone’s head.

  With a sigh, he closed the door to his quarters and rested his back against the wall, fighting the urge to lie down on his bed in his dirty uniform and just take a nap. He removed his uniform shirt and stripped off the T-shirt underneath. The silver Saint Christopher medal unstuck from his sweaty chest and swung free.

  Olga … it had been good to see her after all these years, but the circumstances were troubling. She was a bright woman with a hardheaded intellect, not one given to flights of fancy. But the idea of a transnational military corps ready to protect the planet? He considered reporting the contact. The idea seemed beyond farfetched, and she hadn’t actually asked him to do anything specific. Maybe he’d just wait and see what developed.

  He scanned his fingerprint for his three-minute ration of shower water. Technically, as commander of the Disaster Mitigation Corps he didn’t need to install a water rationing device, but he’d insisted. It was the little things that let the troops know he followed the same rules as they did.

  He cleaned his body from the top down, making liberal use of the valve to temporarily stop the flow of water so he could soap up the next part of his anatomy. He pinched some excess flesh around his beltline and resolved to restart his daily PT regimen. Olga had aged well. She was just as fit as she’d been back in Germany.

  He let his mind wander as he rinsed off and reached for a towel.

  Graves and Olga had met at an embassy party of all things. Such a spy novel cliché. He had been a captain on thirty days temporary duty to the US embassy in Berlin and she was a low-level staffer at the Russian embassy. He noticed her across the bar. Her blonde hair was short then, cut in a severe bob that showed off the defined muscles of her neck and shoulders.

  Before he knew it, Graves was standing next to her, asking her name in terrible Russian and her replying in much better English. She told him she was an FSB agent their first night together and he said he didn’t care. They spent his three remaining weeks sneaking around Berlin, screwing their brains out in a different hotel every night.

  They both knew it was stupid. They both knew it couldn’t last. Neither of them cared a whit.

  Graves stood in the center of his apartment. Naked, dripping water on the floor, towel slung over his shoulder, lost in his past.

  Now he was a gray-haired general packing a few extra pounds, reliving his glory days with the one who got away. He shook his head at his own foolishness.

  As he turned back to the bathroom, he spied his data glasses in the breast pocket of his dirty uniform on the floor. The message light blinked. He wrapped the towel around his waist and retrieved the glasses.

  The message was from Helena Telemachus, better known as H, special assistant to the President of the United States. General Graves was to report to the United Nations headquarters in New York City immediately. A White House vehicle was en route to retrieve him. No further details were provided.

  Graves sighed, remembering Olga’s caution about a new job.

  He knew one thing. If H was involved, then Teller was involved, and if Teller was involved, this job was not going to be the kind of job he wanted.

  Chapter 7

  Ming Qinlao • Shanghai, China

  If the weather was any indicator of what she could expect as a reception from her family, Ming realized she was in for a disappointing homecoming. Their shuttle broke through the cloud cover over Shanghai into sheets of rain and gusting winds. The familiar buildings of the city moved in and out of view behind walls of moisture.

  Only the most daring—or foolish—pilots were willing to fly in this kind of weather, so the traffic patterns were mostly clear. Lander eased back on the controls, letting the craft glide as he tried to get a visual on their destination. As usual, he said little, and Ming was glad for the silence.

  She caught a glimpse of the Qinlao building through a break in the rain, the stylized red QM shining like a beacon over the dimmer lights of the city. The logo was yet another change by Auntie Xi, a nod to her Western customers.

  Ming let the emotion pass through her. The time for outrage was long gone. This was the age of action. But first, there were things that needed to be done.

  “Locked on the landing beacon,” Lander called back to her.

  Ming nodded, not bothering to reply. She would miss Lander. He was probably the closest thing to a friend she’d had in the last year. Although she had never shared even the most basic details of her plan with him, he seemed to realize she was on a trajectory that he was not a part of. There were times when she caught him watching her and Echo read the micro-emotions in his face.

  Concern, apprehension, even a shade of tenderness.

  Ming’s thoughts hardened. How quaint, she chided herself. The next moves were the most critical of anything she had done thus far. There was no room for error. Too much was riding on the outcome of the next twenty-four hours.

  The ship spun and nosed up into a landing attitude, rocking gently as the pads touched down on the roof of Marcus Sun’s
office building, her lawyer and most trusted confidant. Even he didn’t know the full details of what she was planning. The roar of the rain hammering on the exterior of their ship ceased as the roof shell closed over them.

  Lander stood and stretched. “Welcome home.”

  Ming toggled the exit ramp down so she could disembark with her maglev chair. “Stay close, Lander. We’re not staying long.”

  Marcus Sun’s office smelled of old books and ink, a false scent he deliberately cultivated since all the walls were skinned with the trappings of a nineteenth-century English library. Her lawyer was a short, spare man with round glasses that gave him an owlish look. But his smile was genuine. He took Ming’s hand in both of his own.

  “Ming, it is so good to see you. Welcome home.”

  Authentic, worried, sympathetic, Echo whispered.

  She didn’t really need Echo’s coaching anymore, but the sound of another voice in her head was oddly comforting.

  “Marcus, thank you for seeing me on such short notice.”

  He waved his hand. “For Jie’s daughter, anything is possible. Let me get the contracts.”

  Ming navigated her maglev to the back of his office, where a box of clear glass jutted out into space. The lights of the city were smeared and wavy from rain running down the glass. She peered over the edge of her chair into the blackness below. She felt nothing, no fear, no clenching of her gut, just … empty.

  Marcus came up behind her but stopped at the edge of the glass. He grinned at her nervously.

  “You remember what your father said about this space?” he asked.

  Ming stared down, squinting to make out the lights of the city below. Echo told her the street was eighty-nine stories down. “He said it gave him perspective. There was a time when I agreed with him.”

  “What about now?”

  Ming spun her chair and drove past him to the table in the center of the room. “I think right now I have all the perspective I can handle, Marcus.”

  The revision to her will took only a few minutes. Ming pressed her thumb into the slot for the DNA confirmation and that was it. She was leaving everything to Sying, except for one small piece of property in one of the outlying provinces. Too minor even to garner a mention in the main document. It was captured—or, more accurately, not captured—in one of the many addenda and exhibits to the main document. A clerical error, nothing more.

  “You’re sure you don’t want her to know about this change?” Marcus asked for the third time. Echo was registering his increased concern at her erratic behavior and Ming resolved to show more empathy in her responses.

  She touched Marcus’s hand, giving the old man’s withered paw a gentle squeeze. “I’m sorry I’m so short with you, Marcus. I’m just tired. Not used to full gravity, you know.”

  To her surprise, the old man teared up. “I can’t help but feel like I pushed you too hard, Ming. I was responsible for what happened…”

  Ming squeezed his fingers again. “The other document, Marcus? I’m starting to run out of energy.”

  The old man bustled to his chair and looked up the next document, the light of the desk screen reflecting on his glasses. He spun the tablet to face Ming.

  Petition for Divorce, it read.

  “Have you told the boy yet? Or JC?” Marcus asked.

  The boy was Ken Han, a young man who was about to get his first divorce at the tender age of sixteen. His father, JC, had agreed to the match for business reasons. The family would justifiably feel used, but Ming’s severance payment on their prenup would ease the pain. The Hans had served their purpose; it was time for Ming’s next act.

  She didn’t need to respond for Marcus to know the answer was no.

  “Ming,” he said in an anxious voice, “I advise against this course of action. As soon as this document is filed, JC Han will know. You should tell him first.”

  She pressed her thumb into the DNA slot. “I know what I’m doing, Marcus. File it.”

  The lawyer did as he was told. “What’s next for you, Ming?”

  “I’m going home.

  • • •

  Her father’s apartment in the Qinlao headquarters building had been left empty since her departure almost a year ago. No wonder. Although convenient to the office, it was not the kind of luxury accommodations her Auntie Xi was used to.

  The empty rooms saddened her a little. She and Sying had made a home of sorts here—along with Ming’s contracted husband and Sying’s son, Ruben—an odd home, but a home all the same. Now it was an empty shell.

  She motored into her father’s office-workshop. No, not quite empty.

  Ming’s mother sat in the center of the room, holding a 3-D picture, waiting for her daughter. “Welcome home,” Wenqian said. Her voice was a wheezy whisper without the aid of her amplifier, but it carried in the still room.

  “Marcus told you,” Ming said.

  “Marcus told me.”

  Her mother had deteriorated since the last time Ming had seen her. The skin of her face was mottled with age spots and her cheekbones seemed to stretch her skin to the breaking point. Her eyes were bright but rheumy, and dried tracks of moisture ran down her cheeks.

  “We’re two of a kind now,” Wenqian said, dragging her nerve-impaired hand up to stab at Ming’s maglev chair.

  “I’ll get better.”

  “I don’t think so,” came the wheezy reply.

  Ming navigated her chair alongside her mother’s and plucked the picture from her hands. Her breath caught in her throat. It was a picture of Ming with her father when she was about seven years old. She’d accompanied him to a job site, and the picture showed her chasing a butterfly. Young Ming, bobbed hair tousled and dirty, reached up for the butterfly as her father looked on with a grin. It was her favorite picture.

  “Keep it,” her mother said. “It will remind you of who you are.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?” Ming said sharply. Echo was unable to read her mother’s emotions from her nerve-damaged face and failing voice. The lack of backup unnerved Ming more than she imagined it would, reminding her how much she had come to rely on her internal friend.

  “I wanted you to know the truth about your father’s death, but nothing you can do will ever bring him back.”

  Ming said nothing in reply, but clutched the picture. In the final moments before she fled Shanghai, her mother had given Ming a data file that showed the murder of her father. From that fifty-nine second video, the course of Ming’s life changed.

  Auntie Xi had lied about his death. Auntie Xi would pay for her lie. It wouldn’t bring her father back, but in Ming’s mind, the lie deserved an answer and she intended to deliver it.

  “Good night, Mother.”

  Wenqian shook her head as much as her illness allowed. “I’m just glad Ito wasn’t here to see this.”

  “Where is Ito?” Ming said.

  “Retired.” The old woman used her amplifier now and it gave her voice an odd mechanical property. “He said he was going on a pilgrimage.”

  When she left, Ming breathed in the smell of the place. Her father’s scent was diminished but still there. Pipe smoke, motor oil, ozone. She sat in the dark, watching the 3-D picture cycle over and over again.

  No matter how many times she watched it, young Ming never caught the butterfly and her father always smiled.

  Chapter 8

  William Graves • UN Headquarters, New York City

  After a full day of briefings in a windowless conference room deep in the bowels of the UN headquarters building, Graves was more than ready for a drink.

  He had been instructed to wear civilian clothes to the gathering. He hadn’t worn the suit in months and the jacket felt tight in all the wrong places—another sign he needed to spend more time at the gym and less time at the chow hall. Graves paused in the doorway of the ballroom, acutely aware he was mingling with some of the top political leaders of the day.

  He spied the President of Russia across the ro
om, a jowly man with carefully combed gray hair, speaking with the leader of Brazil. Germany, Australia, the United Kingdom, and Saudi Arabia, leaders and diplomats stood ready to attack him from all sides.

  “May I buy you a drink, General?” The woman who spoke to him was tall and elegant, with exquisitely knotted hair and red-lacquered fingernails. Graves knew he should recognize her, but his memory failed him. Putting on his data glasses for facial rec would be too obvious.

  “Adriana Rabh,” she said in a low voice, extending her hand.

  Graves smiled back as he shook her hand. “I think a drink might be a good idea, Ms. Rabh.”

  She took arm. “Please, call me Adriana.”

  Adriana Rabh … Graves was escorting the richest woman in the known universe and a member of Anthony Taulke’s Council of Corporations. People peeled away to leave a clear path as he led her through the crowd.

  “You know how to make an entrance, Adriana,” he said in a low voice.

  “I’m sure they’re looking at you,” she whispered back with a giggle.

  At the bar, he secured drinks for them both—vodka tonic for her and a whiskey for him—and started to move away. She put a hand on his arm.

  “Please, General, stay a moment. I want your opinion on something.”

  Graves awkwardly sipped his drink and tried to ignore the stares of the other people at the reception. Surely there were more interesting people in this room to talk to than him?

  “What do you think of President Teller’s plan, General?”

  Graves reflected on the back-to-back briefings he’d received throughout the day along with a group of assorted NGOs and other disaster mitigation professionals. The Marshall Plan for the twenty-first century, it was being called after the plan of the same name put into action after World War Two. A more apt description might be a Marshall Plan to ensure they’d be here for a twenty-second century. Graves wondered if she realized she was asking him to critique the signature project of the commander in chief and Graves’s boss.