Grigor checked his watch. Half past noon. He was hungry from traveling thousands of miles and briefly considered room service. But after a minute he decided to wait. Instead, he took his laptop out of the suitcase to review some files that he had hesitated to open on the plane, where it might have caught the eye of some bored and prying fellow passenger.

At the desk, he brought up one of the files, a dossier gathered from both confidential and open sources. FBI Field Agent Amenjot Musil had gained international attention after the cyberattack on New York. He was the heroic rescuer of a helpless child, the man who chased down the president’s would-be assassin. His face had been everywhere in the media, and a fair portion of the file’s contents was public record. His home address and the names of his wife and children were from hacked FBI personnel files.

Grigor studied all the photographs and read all the information and committed it all to memory. Within minutes he had learned enough to get started hunting Musil.

People’s Republic of China

The Hongqi H7 limousine was China’s answer to the Rolls Royce Phantom 300 or the Mercedes-Maybach S-Class Pullman Guard. A fancier of luxury automobiles, Wei had been told the president commissioned its antique design after seeing his Russian counterpart primp through Red Square in the Mercedes-Maybach. He thought the rumors were likely true.

Whether General Huang had sent it for him in gratitude for a successful mission, he couldn’t say. The Committee certainly hadn’t indicated any such feelings until now. In fact, he had been asked to travel to Fiery Cross Reef as if it was a routine errand for a man of his senior rank.

Still, he mused, old military hounds like Huang weren’t prone to random gestures, and the fleet of H7s was usually reserved for honored officials. So he chose to take a sanguine view and label it a compliment. Provisionally speaking.

CMC headquarters was about ten miles from the airport, and his driver took the 4th Ring Road west across the city. Its three wide traffic lanes were mostly clear at that late hour, and the limousine skirted the technological parks and expansive campus of Beijing Medical University, sailed onto the western ring, and then dipped down south and glided off the exit less than a mile above the Ministry.

The car had turned onto the dark street running up to its gate when Wei’s phone rang in his pocket. Huang, he thought.

A glance at the display proved him correct, but it was hardly supernatural prescience. He had lived alone since his wife died of breast cancer half a decade ago. His daughter was grown and married and the mother of three children. No one was waiting for him at home. And it was well after one in the morning. Who else would it be?