As for the good General Wei... Zhou would not want to be in his shoes when he returned to the capital.
He took another drink of water and shot his message off to its recipient. Then he yawned, stretched his arms and neck, and yawned again. His tiredness had suddenly caught up to him. He supposed it was the release of tension. A click of the mouse under his fingertip had ratcheted up the game to another level. A two-sentence email, and pieces would move over the board. He supposed that was it. The tiny click like a mental exhale.
Zhou switched off his computer. He stood up, carried the half-empty glass to the kitchen and set it down in the sink. Then he went to the bathroom, urinated, hung up his robe and got into bed.
Three minutes after his head touched the pillow, he was sound asleep.
Russia
Two o’clock Tuesday morning on Fiery Cross Reef was ten o’clock Monday night in Moscow’s Sadovoye Koltso suburb, where Urban was out walking his Caucasian shepherd when he heard the email alert. He jerked the dog’s leash, and it obediently heeled beside him in the neat public garden. He had just recently set the unique tone on his smartwatch.
Urban glanced at the screen and saw the message was from Zhou Kexin. He did not open it. The coded subject line told him it was strictly need-to-know, and he was a man of faithful and exacting discipline. The position he occupied in the Directorate was a high one, but some things were still above his head.
He tapped the touch screen and forwarded the email. It would jump through several proxies over the next forty-three seconds before popping into a secure cloud vault, which in turn triggered the next alert tone fifteen hundred miles to the southwest.
Crimea
The alert sounded for Koschei while he was in his armchair sipping a nightcap of Grand Marnier. At the familiar beep pattern on his computer, he set his tulip glass down on the stand beside him, lifting his tablet off it with his free hand. Then he opened and scanned the email, raising a dark, bushy eyebrow.
Moments later, he called Grigor Malkira on his satphone.
“We need to meet tonight,” he said when he answered. “Midnight sharp. At the usual spot.”
“I think you enjoy these last-minute appointments.”
Koschei laughed. “Habit, I suppose. I’d almost forgotten the last time.”
“I don’t forget anything.”
“Yes. You are ruchnaya lisa. A tame fox.”
“Not my favorite term.”
“Blame the scientists,” Koschei said. “At any rate, you can expect to see a third person there.”
“Who?”
“A very untamed Wolf,” Koschei said and disconnected.