Millie Martindale boarded a plane in Washington, D.C., Thursday afternoon and was finally seeing the end of the trip more than twenty-four hours later as her CIA-chartered private plane landed in Macau. She sat at the back of the small plane. The rest of the seats were full of older white men representing both branches of Congress as well as the U.S. Department of Commerce and the U.S. Department of Justice. She took the final sip of her bottled water, poured the rest of her trail mix into her mouth, then followed the others off the plane.

They moved quickly to another area of the Macau Business Aviation Center where they watched a larger private jet than their own land. A man, who looked almost exactly like the other men in her group, stepped off and joined them in the waiting area. Arrow Donaldson was the head of a giant telecom conglomerate, as well as the owner of a professional basketball team in Los Angeles and a casino conglomerate in China.

The testimony was scheduled to be given at the U.S. Consulate General Hong Kong & Macau building, forty-five minutes away in Hong Kong, but their base of operations was in Macau due to unrest in Hong Kong. Millie also believed a big part of it was Arrow Donaldson wanting to show off the power and prestige he wielded in Macau. Arrow shook hands and patted backs with the government delegation, ignoring Millie.

Millie stuck out her hand and smiled pleasantly.

“I’m Millie Martindale. I work with Lance Cabot. He sent me to meet you.”

“Where’s Lance?” Arrow asked, not taking the hand Millie was offering.

Millie dropped her hand but kept her smile pasted in place, her eyes on Arrow.

“We’ve met before. I’m sure you don’t remember, but I was the lead on the initiative at your casinos with the Chinese government officials,” she said.

Arrow quickly moved in close to Millie, glaring at her.

“Shhhh. You never know who’s listening around here.”

“I know exactly who’s listening. That’s the point. I’m with the CIA.”

“I only ever talked to Lance about what we were doing at the casino. He never mentioned you.”

“Lance is the face of the operation, of course. He’s the director of the CIA. I’m the one who handles the details behind the scenes. Millie Martindale.”

Millie had been working with Lance Cabot on a task force in one of Arrow’s Chinese casinos to identify Chinese government workers with gambling problems and recruit them as U.S. spies. But Lance had reassigned her to this detail when Arrow approached Lance about bringing Li Feng to the U.S. to give testimony that could impact a new trade deal in the works between China and the U.S..