Hadia felt the buzz against her leg and quickly checked the message. She almost dropped the phone when she read it. Leaning into her date she whispered in her most sultry tone, “Abort mission.”
“How’s going with you and the industrialist’s wife?” Harry asked.
“It isn’t. There’s something off about her.”
“You mean, besides the fact that she is married?”
“It’s never been a problem before,” Mark replied
“She could simply be in love with her husband. It does happen.”
Mark thought about it for maybe half a minute. Which, for someone with his processing powers, was a thorough mull. “No. It’s not just that she’s not interested in me. Their body language was wrong. There was trust, even intimacy, but no passion.”
“Not every marriage, not every love, is based in passion.”
“They are when you are built like she is. Besides, we had chemistry. No way she’s not into me.”
The lady in question was standing on the side of a frozen Patomac River, still wearing an evening gown. Her contact showed up handing her a much welcomed hot tea.
“They won’t remember me.”
“They’ll remember him.” Her escort, the general, was one of a scant handful of dark skinned Black men at a party of over 300.
“They’ll be able to narrow it down,” Hadia admitted. “But there were two other Black men in uniform there.” They shared a glance. “Anyway, that’s the Pentagon’s problem.”
“What happened?”
“I don’t know. It should have been impossible for Mark to locate me through that account.”
“Bugged?”
“Possible. But it doesn’t explain the account. It’s encrypted.”
“We could take him out.”
“A bit extreme.”
“Not if he is working for the Chinese.”
“With his family’s history it would make far more sense for him to work against them.”
“Long time to carry a grudge.”
“Long time to feel allegiance,” she countered. “He’s brilliant and connected. Why haven’t we recruited him?”
“An option. Either way you need to fix this.” He hands her tickets to Hong Kong.
“I don’t know why we’re going to this thing.” Harry lounged in a chair in Mark’s Manhattan apartment.
“Grandmother wishes it.”
“Yeah, and I still don’t get it. I mean, I could understand if it was my great-grandmother. She actually remembers living in China. But your family’s been here since the 1800s. Her grandmother wouldn’t remember China. She’s not even running the company anymore.”
“Like that matters to me.” Mark had leveraged the already generous trust left to him by his grandfather into several tens of millions of dollars. It may not have seemed like a lot compared to his family’s billions but it allowed him a certain level of freedom. Usually. “Grandmother is being unusually insistent. She raised me. You know I try to indulge her in the small things.”
“Going halfway around the world to the wedding of a cousin so distant you could marry her yourself seems pretty big. At least they finally finished the London to Hong Kong tunnel.” What used to take well over a week and require multiple train changes now took less than forty-eight hours. In the dark. “Travel has been been a pain in the ass since they grounded all nonessential flights.”
“How would you know? That was over fifty years ago.”
“I read!” Harry replied, indignantly.
Hadia got on the train and made it to her suite with no issues. At the moment there was no economy option on the tunnel train but her assumed identity meant leveling up. Her three room suite, the smallest available, took up half a train car. It consisted of a sitting room, bedroom, bathroom (not counted in the room count) and small bedroom and bath for her human servant. Hiring humans was an indulgence in the modern times.
Instead of windows there were screens showing landscapes from whatever region they were passing under or through. Hadia set up a personal privacy field. Expected from someone with her background though any hacker would find hers more sophisticated than most. Instead of a block it was designed to ensnare.
“I’m still not sure why your private stalker merits a mission. Just kill him already,” Aimee, the agent posing as her servant commented. Unlike in the past human servants were strongly unionized and highly regarded. Most coming from gentrified backgrounds.
“He is the beloved grandson of Marjorie Chiu, scion of Chiu Conglomerate. A two hundred year old company with interests spanning the galaxy. Supposedly retired.”
Aimee shrugged, “Make it look like an accident.”
“We try not to piss off people with net worths larger than a few European countries. Unless, of course, we have to.” Hadia picked up her bag and gave herself one last check in the mirror. “Time to get this party started.”
In the dining car one could choose a private table or to be sat at random with fellow travelers. Hadia had ensured she and Mark would be sat together. It wasn’t subtle nor was it meant to be. She had less than two days.
