Dance with the Dragon (24 page)

“I don’t think he’s interested in you any longer,” McGarvey told her.

She smiled. “If he knows, or suspects, that you are on his trail, then he’ll take steps to cover himself.” She looked McGarvey in the eye. “He’s a very smart man, you know. A genius, even, except that he’s
fou.
” She tapped a forefinger to her temple. “But he will almost certainly look over his shoulder to see what he has missed, and then send someone back to repair the damage.”

“I don’t understand,” McGarvey said.

She seemed amused. “What is your name again?”

“Kirk McGarvey.”

“Don’t be dim, Mr. McGarvey. When he finds out that I have talked to you, he will send someone here to kill me.”

“I can take you out of here and hide you—”

She waved him off. “Doesn’t matter where I’d go, he’d find me. And if you do not comprehend that simple fact, then you don’t know the man.” She shook her head again. “I’ve lived under that fear for a very long time.”

“The FBI came here to talk to you a couple years ago. Why didn’t you ask for help then?”

“I’m what your media call an illegal alien. There is nothing for me back in France, and such as this was, I wanted to remain here, anonymous. Until now.”

THIRTY-SIX

THE APARTMENT

Monique cleared a place on the couch for McGarvey to sit, then took her place in the easy chair. A mason jar on the small lamp table was filled with red, blue, and green pencils and a square magnifying glass on a long bone handle. It was where she did her translating, alone and frightened.

“When did you first meet General Liu?” McGarvey asked.

“Ten years ago,” Monique replied. “But then he was only a major.”

McGarvey was startled. “You told the FBI it was only two years ago, when he was here at the UN.”

“That was the second time, and by then I had lost my looks and my figure, and he was no longer interested in me.” She shrugged, the gesture Gallic in its indifference. “Pierre was gone, I was no longer working at the UN, and I didn’t even know he was back in the city until I saw something online about a reception at the Chinese mission. His name was mentioned.”

McGarvey glanced over at a table in the corner on which more books were piled. A surge protector was plugged into the wall, a telephone cable still connecting it to an outlet. Monique followed his gaze.

“Unfortunately my computer developed a problem, and when I could not afford to get it fixed or purchase a replacement, I threw it in the dustbin. In any event I work better by hand, and I needed the space.”

“Why did you lie to the FBI?”

“I’ve already explained,” she said. “Anyway, it was only one young man, and his manner was rude and irritating. I wanted to get rid of him, and he seemed to believe that Liu had only been here for less than a year.” She smiled faintly. “I told him what he expected to hear.”

“Are you being honest with me?”

“Of course.”

“Why?”

“I’ve explained that as well. It is too late now. The damage has already been done by your coming here.” Her eyes narrowed a little. “I lived with the man for over a year and a
demi,
I know how he operates, Mr. McGarvey. Do you?”

“No.”

She sat forward. “Have you ever done something that you were ashamed of, even as you were doing it?”

“We all have,” McGarvey admitted. “Do you want to tell me about it?”

She looked across the room at the window again, an oddly wistful expression on her puffy face, as if she wanted to rise, throw back the curtains, and finally revel in the clean sunlight.

The apartment was utterly still. No televisions or radios blared, no one’s voices were raised in anger down the corridor; not even traffic sounds penetrated the thick curtains.

“You must understand how it was when I met him,” Monique said, her thoughts and her voice turned inward. “I was young, just married for less than one year, and we were very ambitious. Pierre was a rising star with Michelin, and when I started work for the UN it was as if I had stepped into a maelstrom. Every day, it seemed, was some new crisis.” She focused on McGarvey. “I have a natural gift for languages. English, Spanish, Italian, a smattering of Japanese and Russian and Arabic, plus of course Mandarin. It’s what brought me together with Liu.”

Rencke had not mentioned anything about Liu being here as long as ten years ago. But if the man had not been involved in any criminal or intel incident, his name would not have come to anyone’s attention. It was either that or Monique was lying. But he didn’t think that was the case. She was no Shahrzad; she was merely a sad woman whom circumstances had aged beyond her years.

“Captain Liu was the military adviser to Mr. Jintang, who was a deputy ambassador, and the first time I was called to translate Mandarin to Spanish it was at a meeting between Mr. Jintang and Liu and their counterparts on the Mexican delegation.” She shook her head. “I don’t remember the substance of the meeting—it didn’t last very long—but I’d done a god job, because Liu asked me to attend another meeting, this time between him and the Mexican military adviser and no one else, other than the translator the Mexican brought with him.” She smiled. “They met the same night, this time at Liu’s apartment just down First Avenue from the UN. There were dozens of people there, mostly Mexican and American military officers and diplomats, but a lot of women too. Some of them very young. And Liu kept introducing me as his secret weapon. He told everyone that I was a genius and beautiful.”

It was the same sort of story that Shahrzad had told. Liu’s methods had apparently not changed in ten years. “What did you think about that?”

“Nothing at the time, except that it was exciting,” Monique admitted. “You have to understand that I was a young farm girl. All of this attention and glitter was new to me.”

“And you loved it.”

“Naturally.” She looked inward again, a sudden dark thought coming to her. “It seemed as if Pierre was gone all the time, and when he was home and I told him what was happening he encouraged me. ‘It is a way in which we will get ahead. In a few years we will be able to return to France and buy your parents’ farm and vineyard. It will give us all a chance to rest.’ I wanted to argue, but he convinced me that he didn’t like his job any better than I liked mine.”

“But you did like your job,” McGarvey prompted.

“Yes,” she said in a small voice. “At first. Was that so wrong for a young girl?”

McGarvey had no answer for her. Shahrzad disgusted him, but he felt nothing except pity for this woman. Yet, both of them had apparently been seduced by Liu, whom Shahrzad had described as an urbane, handsome man with money, power, influence, and impeccably good taste. Every woman’s dream. What had happened to them wasn’t strictly their fault, yet like a small child who reaches out to touch a flame and gets burned, they should have learned a lesson from the start.

“I think I got a little tipsy that night. Too much champagne. I have a weakness for it.”

“Did you translate for Liu with the Mexican?”

“
Mais oui,
all evening,” Monique said. “I think it amused him to have me at his side the entire time.” She drifted off for a few moments; when she focused again on McGarvey, her brow furrowed and she scowled. “It wasn’t what you’re thinking. At least not then. He was a perfect gentleman, and so were all the other men.”

McGarvey nodded understandingly. “‘At least not then’?” he prompted.

“I did a few other translation jobs for Liu, once with an Italian deputy ambassador, but usually with Mexicans, or sometimes Colombians or Venezuelans. He told me that he had been instructed by his government to open relations with Mexico and South America, which was foolish because he didn’t speak more than a word or two of Spanish.”

“I thought he was a military adviser,” McGarvey said.

Monique nodded. “He was a major in their army, though I saw him in uniform only one time, and that was when he took me to Washington. There was a reception at the Mexican embassy for the new ambassador. But that was three or four months after he’d hired me to be his personal translator.”

“How’d your husband react to that?”

“Pierre was over the moon. I was earning twenty-six thousand dollars a year at the UN. Liu was offering twice that. We were going to send the difference home to our bank in Paris. At that rate, Pierre figured, it would take only a few years to get everything we wanted.”

“And what was that?”

She thought for a moment, but then shook her head. “I don’t know if I remember what we were really working for, other than the farm. I don’t know if I ever really knew. But it was important to my husband, and I felt important for the first time in my life.”

“And then you fell in love with him,” McGarvey suggested.

Monique closed her eyes and nodded. “Head over heels,” she answered softly. “I’d never known a man like him. He was
chic, dans le vent, et très débonnaire.
Always charming, always thoughtful, pleasant.” She opened her eyes and gave McGarvey a frank look. “He was the sun and moon to me for a long time.”

“You must have been gone evenings and weekends.”

“All the time.”

“Your husband didn’t object?”

“Not at first,” Monique said. “But when he did, I no longer cared. Pierre became nothing to me. Just another Frenchman for whom a wife was nothing more than a business necessity. It’s one of the reasons he left me, I think. I refused to go to his stupid cocktail parties that were boring.”

“That was then. What about now?” McGarvey asked. When he’d identified himself at the door as her husband she had buzzed him in without hesitation.

“Ah, now,” she said wistfully. “Now I understand what I gave up and can no longer reclaim.” She smiled. “We wanted children. Two. A
fils
and a
fille.
Do you have children?”

“Did you sleep with him?” McGarvey asked, ignoring her question.

A spike of anger crossed her features, but then she shook her head. “I wanted him to make love to me, and I told him so every chance I could get. But he kept telling me that he didn’t want to spoil our relationship just yet. It didn’t matter. I loved him and I was willing to wait.”

“What happened at the reception for the Mexican ambassador?”

She looked away. “It’s where I discovered that Liu spoke perfect Spanish.”

THIRTY-SEVEN

THE APARTMENT

At one point during the well-attended reception, Monique went in search of the ladies’ room. When she was finished, she stopped in the hallway around the corner from the main room to take a glass of champagne from a passing waiter, and she heard two men speaking beautiful Castilian Spanish. One of them was Liu.

“It’s the language of poets and scholars,” Monique explained. “And if you weren’t born to it, only a gifted scholar could speak so well.”

“What’d he say when you confronted him with what you’d heard?” McGarvey asked. Just as he’d done with Shahrzad, Liu had hid many aspects of his life from Monique.

Monique shook her head. “I never did.” She shrugged. “If he wanted to hide from most of the world the fact that he could speak perfect Spanish, he must have had his reasons. In fact, I think I was a little flattered. He didn’t need me as a translator, but he’d hired me at a very good salary. It made me believe that he found me attractive and that there was hope after all that I could make him fall in love with me.”

McGarvey held his silence.

“I simply had to try harder.”

“What do you mean?” McGarvey asked. “Try harder, how?”

“He was an extremely social man. Practically every evening either he was out somewhere at a party or reception for someone important, or he had a crowd at his apartment. But he was single. And at some of the important functions it was almost a requirement that a man bring a woman with him. I made it a point to be more than simply a translator. I became his companion when he went out, and his hostess when he entertained at his apartment.”

“And you were getting paid to do it.”

She smiled. “It was nice for the first few months. He’d laugh and say that he wasn’t paying me a salary, he was just giving me an allowance. In fact, just before Mexico he gave me a credit card to use for household expenses. Food and liquor but not wine. He did that himself.”

“All of this was ten years ago,” McGarvey prompted when she trailed off. “But you said ‘before Mexico.’”

She nodded. “That’s when the honeymoon ended and the nightmare began. I still don’t really know exactly how it happened, or why. Of course the rest of that year and most of the next are hazy in my mind, but I know the results because I still live with them.”

“Had you moved in with him by then?”

“That never happened, though I wish it had. Maybe things would have turned out differently. Better.” Her lips pursed. “Each night, no matter how late we were getting back from a party or how late into the morning the parties at his house lasted, and that was sometimes until dawn, one of his drivers would take me home.”

“Didn’t your husband ever question you, try to stop you?”

“At first he did, but not later. I think he was probably having an affair with a woman he worked with at Michelin.” Monique shrugged. “But then after Mexico he was gone.”

“Did you try to find out where he’d gone?” McGarvey asked. “Try to contact him?” He was trying to get a handle on exactly how strong Liu’s grasp had been. For Shahrzad the relationship had been clouded by her love for Updegraf, who had forced her on Liu. But for Monique the opposite had been true.

She looked away. “If he’d left me
before
the first Mexico trip, I think I would have done something to find him. It might have been enough of a shock to wake me up. But after Mexico it was too late for us. It was too late for just about everything.”

McGarvey figured he knew what had happened to Monique in Mexico, but what astounded him even more than the Svengali-like hold Liu apparently had on women was the timing. The Chinese had been setting their ducks in a row down there as long as ten years ago, and we’d had no inkling until recently. “Tell me about it,” he said.