He plucked another blade of grass, and stroked the palm of his other hand. “In the U.S. and Europe, BRW has cornered the market on families and all their fun activities—movies, theme parks, music, TV shows, low-cost meals. We’re poised to become bigger than Disney, and it’s crucial that we break into the largest market on the globe. The toy panda deal is only half of a BRW’s two-pronged campaign to help Chinese interests in the U.S. The other is to achieve a more favorable view of China in Congress and the White House. Suffice it to say that the idea of selecting you as the U.S. friendship ambassador did not germinate in Corwith’s head, as he—or you—wishes to believe.”

“It was your idea?” The unfolding truth made her break out in sweat. “Are you saying that I didn’t ‘replace’ Madonna? That she had never been asked?”

Mauriello laughed. “It was Kong Ruiji’s brilliant appraisal of the weight our Administration would give this gesture. They are so pathetically eager to see signs of Middle Kingdom’s openness, they pounced on it.”

“What a cynical view of our government and what it is trying to do in this part of the world. I wish some of your Senate friends could hear this.”

He rattled one of the toys, and Lulu grabbed it and placed it in her mouth. “Among Sony, Disney and BRW, someone was going to pull it off big-time. Luckily, with the purchase of Phonomania

Records, we picked the right fortune cookie. Synergy packaging at its best.”

Packaging. She had been packaged one more time. The Double Happiness tour had been accompanied by the most fanfare, hurling her to the top. It hadn’t been her voice or her songs after all, but the corporation. She had come along as its star. Being chosen to represent the U.S. in China was the peak of everyone’s success but hers.

The perspiration on her exposed skin was sticky. In the silence, she heard the discordant screams of jays. A crow came peeling down from the skies and dove into the thick of the elm, raising shrieks of alarm from its inhabitants.

“You still haven’t explained why you’re here,” she said.

“You and I had a deal, my dear. And you, as they say, fucked it up.”

She scoured her brain to remember whether she had agreed to anything else in their meeting at the airport. “What deal?”