“I’m out of here,” Nola told him. “Send your friends my love.”

“Ovvvvvv,” Lulu said.

The minister bowed. His smile seemed to lie outside his pitted, saucerlike face. “I’m sorry you not feeling well.”

Nola felt her eyes zapping fire. “I was feeling perfectly fine until you pulled this garbage on me. Twice.” She stepped behind the partition, where she threw away the kimono and pulled on her sweater. But before she finished straightening it, she went back to pick up Lulu off the floor. Sweat dripped down the sides of her cheeks. “Ready, Dumpling?”

Wade squeezed in past Leslie. “I see we have a syndrome here.”

“Plea-ease!” Leslie said, gesturing for him to leave.

“Millions of tickets have been sold—and posters, CDs, T-shirts, baseball caps—what have you,” Wade told Nola. “You can’t quit—”

She frantically gathered toys. “Try me.”

From the arena came the sounds of the Chinese anthem. The demonstrators’ shouts suddenly stopped. But their echoes, demanding, infuriating, loitered in Nola's head like witnesses to a brawl waiting for the drawing of a knife.

“Please, madam.” The minister put his hands together in supplication. “Everything under control. I deeply embarrassed. This not proper hospitality. I assure you unruly people being sent away.”

“Are you crushing them with tanks?”

His face reddened. “Please, madam.”

“I don’t have to be where I’m not wanted.”

“Only one thousand demonstrators,” he said. There was puzzlement in his voice as though it were self-evident. “But almost a hundred thousand people in our biggest stadium waiting to hear your nightingale voice.”

“Oh? A hundred-to-one ratio to make sure I don’t forget what you guys can do? Is this your idea of enforcing an agreement?” She sucked in her breath. “I’m sick of all this.”

He shook his head. “We’ve given you best hospitality. Gala parties, best places for concerts—and our prime minister personally sponsored the evening at the opera.”

“So what’s a bit of hostility to even things out? Keep me in my place, right? Well, guess what?” She pointed at her throat and croaked, “I’ve just lost my voice. Can’t sing.”

CHAPTER 29

CHAPTER 29

“Get Yoram,” Nola told one of his men who stood outside her dressing room door. So much for leaving the concert stadium. With so many Chinese officials around, she wasn’t about to venture out alone with Lulu.

The baby in her arms was pulling on her hair while Nola craned her neck in anticipation of Yoram’s lanky figure. She was startled to see instead Ambassador Ashford. His face was ruddy and his jowls flopped to catch up with the rest of his face as he hurried. No one had told her he would be in Shanghai.