He wriggled out of the chair, went to his desk, and picked up a computer printout. “The news wire. Let’s see.” He put on his glasses as though reading the printout for the first time, then glared at her over the rim. “Eleven a.m. today. Did you make some public derogatory statement against the Chinese government? Hmmm.” He read slowly. “Did you say to the press, ‘It’s the orphanages you should be looking into. And take pictures—?’ ”

PART TWO

The Phoenix Bird

Do not thrust your finger through your own paper lantern.

—A Chinese proverb

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 13

The embassy doors closed behind Nola. She stood on the large marble steps. The old dread that had roped her ribcage when she was a child, fearing the catastrophe that was sure to befall her parents, now barreled down upon her again. Ashford’s words, “…in a year or so, maybe get her back,” and “…public derogatory statement against the Chinese government,” pulsated in her head.

She forced one foot down, then another, and halted next to one of the giant twin temple lions guarding the mansion. Bees buzzed in and out of the flowers in the front garden with a metronomic busyness. In full daylight, the exotic flowers looked carnivorous and conceited, their tangy aroma ferocious. Nola clenched her fists. For a moment, she forgot where she was or that she was supposed to walk. She unclenched her fists and looked at them as though they belonged to someone else. Her nails had imprinted white crescents in her palms.

There was no way she could face Yoram and his deputy, waiting in the security booth, or the driver in the limousine outside, or Wade at the hotel. She skulked around the building to the small back gate Daniel had led her through. Two American guards were at the sentry post, and after verifying with Ashford’s secretary that she had had legitimate business there, they let her leave. She found herself in the alley. There was no sign of either the limousine or Yoram.

Raw and numb at the same time, she wandered through wide, tree-lined streets until she was lost. All the foreign embassies seemed clustered in one district, occupying mansions surrounded by lush gardens, brass plaques on their gates announcing their nationalities. Nola was unaware of the tears that rolled down her cheeks until she was no longer able to read the names.

After the silence of pain, the nearest she could come to expressing the inexpressible was music. “Flower Babies” stirred inside her. She stopped in the quiet street and mumbled the lyrics, testing new words as the music built up in her. She raised her head, letting the melody shape itself around her refusal to lose Lulu. “Flower babies bloom unseen, Flower babies die unloved…”