Her tongue felt thick. “Thank you for your hospitality,” she said to the prime minister, with a slight tilt of her head. The rehearsed words must have come out of someone else’s throat. “I’m honored that you dedicated the evening to me.”

The prime minister kissed the back of her hand. He said something, but she saw his lips moving as though through a glass wall. Only his ensuing laughter told her he had made a joke. This was the man who could find Lulu—if only she could ask for his help.

Fighting the loud thumping of her heart, Nola forced a smile. He said something else. She was searching her mind for another appropriate response when two CEOs she had met at the embassy gala stopped at a respectful distance. The prime minister invited them to join his circle, but Nola had nothing to contribute, and the three men slipped into a chat about a golf game they had played on some private Pacific island. She waited until it was polite to move on, bowed her head in a show of respect, and glided away.

How could she get through the evening? The opera would be a four-hour ordeal! Just then George Mauriello arrived. With his salt-and-pepper hair slicked back from his V-shaped hairline and his athletic build in an Armani tux, Mauriello presented an impressive figure. Yet he looked too full of himself to be trusted. Nola was certain that his good looks, projected on election posters and in television commercials, accounted for his being elected twice to the U.S. Senate. Since his divorce soon after leaving office, she had seen photographs of him with a succession of leggy models. His access to screen tests at StarVision and auditions at Phonomania Records no doubt contributed to his charm.

“Sorry things didn’t pan out.” He caught Nola's hand and pressed it against his chest in a gesture more intimate than their relationship warranted. “The show must go on. Don’t let me down.”

Her brain was melted lava. “Let you down? How?” She remembered having toyed with the idea of pitching BRW a corporate sponsorship of new, decent orphanages.

He caressed her cheek with the back of his fingers in a gesture so condescending she wanted to bite them. So much for Wade’s claim that Mauriello wouldn’t interfere with the inner workings of his business units. She had never missed Keith Schwartz more. Keith had been without guile; he had been a friend.

Thirty minutes later, after Ashford and Kong Ruiji had exchanged toasts, a bare-chested man hit a giant gong with a mallet. Nola spotted Daniel as she and Wade settled down in the theater between the Ashfords and the Chinese prime minister and his diminutive wife. The second Valium had fully kicked in, and Nola felt herself floating outside her skin.