Free Death Wave by Stephen Coonts Page A

door.
“Sounds like opportunity knocking, Lia,” CJ told her.
Lia was alone in her room. CJ was still watching from down on the street, while Castelano and Daimler were in their room up on the seventh floor, but all three—as well as the Art Room crew—were linked in through her communications implant. She was careful of what she said while in the room. Though a sweep earlier had failed to turn up any electronic listening devices, Feng’s people might have still managed to bug it.
“Coming,” she called out. She’d changed out of her heels, skirt, and low-cut blouse in favor of more comfortable—and practical—clothing: blue jeans, a black pullover, and tennis shoes. Her hat, however, rested on the hotel room desk, its hidden camera set to provide Desk Three with a clear view of the entire room. Swiftly, she pulled her weapon from her open suitcase—a 9 mm SIG SAUER P226 Blackwater Tactical—and tucked it into the waistband of her jeans at the small of her back, tugging the pullover down to conceal it.
She unlocked the door. “Yes?”
It was one of the maroon-jacketed hotel bellhops. “Fräulein Lau?”
“Yes.”
“I have two packages for you,” he said in passable English. He handed her a manila envelope—that would be the promised COSCO contract—and a small white box tied with red ribbon.
“What’s this?” she asked, accepting the box.
“I don’t know, fräulein. I was told to give you both of these. And I’m to wait for you to sign something and return it.”
“Wait a moment.”
Closing the door, she took the envelope back to the desk and opened it. As expected, it was from Feng, three copies of two close-spaced printed pages—more of a letter of agreement than a full-blown contract. She scanned through it quickly, murmuring aloud the pertinent paragraphs for the benefit of the Art Room.
“Looks good and as promised,” she said, completing the document. She picked up a pen and signed all three copies. Two went back into the envelope for return to Feng. She looked at the white box for a moment, then decided to wait until she’d given the envelope back to the bellhop.
She opened the door and handed him the envelope and a generous five-euro tip. “Here you go. Thank you.”
“ Danke , Fräulein Lau!”
Lia returned to the desk and picked up the box. “So, is Mr. Feng making a play for me already?” she asked. “Too big for a diamond ring.”
“He doesn’t strike me as the sort to propose marriage,” CJ said. “Are you going to open it?”
“It’s also too small to be a bomb,” she added.
“But not too small to be a listening device of some sort,” Tom Blake said. “Be careful what you say, Lia.”
She didn’t reply, but she set the package in front of her hat, directly beneath the camera, and began opening it.
A moment later, she pulled the contents out and dangled them for Desk Three’s inspection. “Oh, my.”
There was a handwritten note inside the package. For the beach tomorrow , it read, and it was signed Jiu Zhu .
“Are you actually going to wear that?” Marie Telach asked.
“What is it?” CJ said. “I’m blind out here, you know.”
“A bikini,” Lia said. “A very small bikini.” She frankly had her doubts that she would fit into that top. It was electric blue, what there was of it, three triangles of rather sheer blue cloth with black borders and some spaghetti-thin black string.
“It’s too small to hide a listening device, at least,” she said. “Too small to hide much of anything .”
“Another fine item of female apparel from Testosterone Fantasies Are Us,” Marie put in. “You’re not actually going to wear those postage stamps in public, are you?”
“I’m not sure yet,” Lia said. “I’ll have to see if this sort of thing is in my new job description.”
In fact, she knew, in a sense it was, since keeping Feng happy—being “eye candy,” as Rubens had described it—was as precise a description of the job as was possible.
She knew one