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  It was at this point Todd realized she was a “working girl,” and she was working.

  He asked her if he could buy her a drink, and the bartender refilled her wineglass.

  Again, Todd Wicks did not do things like this, but she was so far beyond stunning that, he told himself, he would have to make an exception, just this once.

  Before Shanghai, Todd was a nice guy with a nice life. At thirty-four years old, he was the Virginia/Maryland/D.C. territory sales manager for Advantage Technology Solutions LLC, a California-based IT company. He owned a nice-sized home in Richmond’s desirable West End, where he was dad to two good-looking children and husband to a wife smarter, better looking, and more successful in her field, pharmaceutical sales, than he was in his.

  He had it all, he bore no complaints, and he had no enemies.

  Not until that night.

  Later, when he thought back on the evening, he blamed the vodka tonics he had been drinking since dinner with colleagues, and he blamed a slight light-headedness from cold medicine he had been taking since coming down with a sinus infection on the twenty-hour flight from Dulles.

  And he blamed the damn girl. Bao, the precious treasure who fucked up his life.

  * * *

  Just before midnight Todd and Bao stepped out of the elevator on the eleventh floor of the Sheraton Shanghai Hongkou Hotel. They were arm in arm, Todd reeling a bit from drink and his heart pounding with excitement. As they walked to the end of the hallway, Todd felt neither guilt nor remorse for what he was about to do, only some concern about how he was going to hide the ATM withdrawal of 3,50 °Chinese yuan — more than $500—from his wife. But he told himself he’d worry about that in the morning.

  Now was not the time to stress.

  Her suite was the same as his, a king-size bed in a room off a sitting area with a sofa and a large-screen TV, but hers was illuminated with candles and scented with incense. They sat on the sofa and she offered him another drink from the bar, but now he was worried about his ability to perform while intoxicated, so he declined.

  The small talk reeled Todd Wicks in every bit as much as the young woman’s beauty. A story about her childhood was disarming; her questions about him and where he grew up, about his brothers and sisters, and her asking him about whatever sport it was that he played that kept him in such peak physical condition — all served to further mesmerize a man who was already more than willing to throw caution to the wind.

  He loved her voice; it was small and halting but intelligent and confident. He wanted to ask her what a nice girl like her was doing in a place like this, but it didn’t seem to fit. This was a nice place, and his lowered inhibitions made it hard for Todd to see anything wrong with what was going on. He couldn’t see anything, for that matter, past her sparkling eyes and her plunging neckline.

  She leaned forward to kiss him. He hadn’t even handed over the 3,500 yuan, but he had the strong impression that she wasn’t thinking about the money right now.

  Todd knew he was a catch, surely ten times better than any other john she’d been with. Bao was into him, falling as hard as he, Todd had no doubt in his mind.

  He kissed her deeply, put his hands on either side of her little face, and held her for more.

  In minutes they slid off the couch onto the floor, and in minutes more her dress and heels were still there on the floor of the sitting room, but the two of them had moved to the bedroom. She lay on the bed; he stood naked above her.

  He knelt down, his moist hands slid up the outsides of her legs, made their way to her underwear, and he tugged on them slightly. She was compliant, and he saw it as more evidence of her lust matching his. She lifted up to allow him to remove her silk panties from her narrow hips.

  Her stomach was flat and toned, her alabaster skin radiant in the soft candlelight of the room.

  Though Todd was on his knees he felt them shake under him. He rose slowly and unsteadily, and then he lay down on the bed.

  In moments they were one. He was on top of her, he was seven thousand miles from home, and no one would ever know.

  He moved slowly at first, but only for an instant, and then he moved faster and faster. Sweat dripped from his forehead onto her clenched face, her eyes tight with what he took as ecstasy.

  He picked up the pace even more, and soon his eyes locked on her beautiful face as her head rolled from side to side in orgasm.

  Yes, this was a transaction to her, it was her job, but he felt her feel him, and he could tell with absolute certainty that her orgasm was real and her flushed skin was hot from a feeling inside her unlike the other men that she’d been with in the past.

  She was awash with emotion just the same as he.

  He kept up his movements for a short time more, but in truth his stamina was not what he had hoped, and he came quickly.

  As he gasped and panted on top of her, their bodies now still except for the movement of his lungs and the pounding of her heart, her eyes opened slowly.

  He gazed deeply into them; golden sparkles flickered in the candlelight.

  Just as he was about to tell her that she was perfect, her eyes blinked and then refocused on a point over his right shoulder.

  Todd smiled, turned his head slowly to follow her gaze.

  Standing at the edge of the bed, looming over Todd’s naked body, was a severe-looking middle-aged Chinese woman in a matte gray pantsuit. In a voice like a knife being sharpened on a whetstone she said, “Are you quite finished, Mr. Wicks?”

  “What the fuck?”

  As he leapt off the girl and spun from the bed, Todd saw other men and women in the suite. There had to have been half a dozen strangers who had somehow slipped in while Todd was lost in the throes of ecstasy.

  He fell on the floor, naked, and he scrambled on his hands and knees, looking for his pants.

  His clothes were gone.

  * * *

  Ten minutes later Todd Wicks was still naked, though the woman in the gray pantsuit had brought him a towel from the bathroom. He sat on the edge of the bed with the towel pinched around his waist; he had to hold it tight because it was not large enough to cover him properly. The overhead lights were on and the candles had been blown out, and it was as if all the strangers around him had forgotten him. He sat there seminude as men and women in black and gray suits and raincoats milled about in the suite.

  He had not seen Bao since she’d been hustled out the door in a robe, seconds after the intrusion.

  On the fifty-two-inch flat-screen TV in the sitting area, well within Todd’s view at the edge of the bed, a pair of men watched the playback of a recording they had obviously made from a surveillance camera. Todd glanced up at it when they turned it on, and he saw himself sitting on the sofa, making nervous small talk with Bao. They advanced the recording a few minutes and the angle changed; a second camera had apparently been secreted in the bedroom high in the corner by the bed.

  Todd watched himself take his clothes off, stand there naked and hard, and then kneel down between Bao’s legs.

  The men advanced the recording again. Todd grimaced as his very naked and white backside began gyrating at cartoonish speed.

  “Jesus,” he muttered. He turned away. Watching this in a room full of men and women, a room full of strangers, was killing him. He wouldn’t have had the stomach to watch himself having sex even if he was alone. His heart felt like it had been tied in a knot and the muscles in his lower back had cinched tight at the midline of his spine.

  Todd felt like he was about to puke.

  One of the two men standing at the television turned to him. He was older than Todd, maybe forty-five, and he had sad hangdog eyes and narrow shoulders. He took off his raincoat as he walked closer, hung it over his forearm, and he pulled a chair from the desk up to the edge of the bed before sitting down directly in front of Wicks.

  The sad eyes stayed locked on Todd as the man’s right hand came out and patted him on the shoulder gently. “I am sorry about all this, Mr
. Wicks. This is very intrusive of us. I can’t imagine how you must feel.”

  Todd looked down at the floor.

  The man’s English was good; he spoke with British English inflections slightly clipped in the Asian style.

  “I am Wu Fan Jun, detective with the Shanghai Municipal Police.”

  Todd kept his eyes lowered to the floor, the embarrassment and humiliation unbearable. “For the love of God, can I please put my pants back on?”

  “I’m sorry, we have to log them into evidence. We will have something brought down from your room: 1844, is it?”

  Wicks nodded.

  To his right in the sitting room, the fifty-two-inch plasma kept going. Todd glanced at it and saw himself from another angle.

  It was no more flattering than the previous one had been.

  What the hell? Did these guys edit this in real time?

  Todd heard the sounds of his own grunting and groaning.

  “Can they turn that off? Please?”

  Wu clapped his hands as if he himself had forgotten, then called out in Mandarin across the suite. Quickly a man rushed to the television and fiddled with the remote for several seconds.

  Finally, mercifully, the screen went blank and Todd’s own moans of lust left the otherwise silent room.

  Wu said, “There we are. Okay. I don’t need to tell you, sir, that we have a delicate situation here.”

  Todd just nodded, eyes on the floor.

  “We have been investigating certain… untoward activities here in the hotel for some time. Prostitution is not legal in China, as it is unhealthy toward women.”

  Todd said nothing.

  “Do you have a family?”

  Wicks started to say “No,” a reflexive response to keep his family out of this, but he stopped himself. I have fucking pictures of me and Sherry and the kids in my wallet, all over my fucking laptop. He knew he could not deny they existed.

  He nodded. “A wife and two kids.”

  “Boys? Girls?”

  “One of each.”

  “A lucky man. I myself have a wife and one son.”

  Todd looked up at Wu now, into the hangdog eyes. “What’s going to happen, sir?”

  “Mr. Wicks, I am sorry about the situation you find yourself in, but I did not put you here. You provide us with evidence that we need in our case against the hotel. Their promotion of prostitution is a cause of great concern here in the city. Just imagine if it was your young daughter who had turned to a life of—”

  “I’m really, really sorry. I don’t ever do this sort of thing. I have no idea what came over me.”

  “I see that you are not a bad man. If it were my decision to make, we would just record this as unfortunate, a tourist who got caught up in something unpleasant, and leave it at that. But… you must understand, I will have to arrest you and charge you with engaging a prostitute.” Wu smiled. “How can I charge the hotel and the woman if I have no one else, no one to provide the third corner of the triangle that is this sad, sad crime?”

  Todd Wicks nodded distantly, still not believing this was happening to him. But then he had a thought, and he jolted with excitement as he looked up. “I could provide a statement. I could pay a fine. I could promise to—”

  Wu shook his head, and the low bags under his eyes seemed to droop even farther. “Todd, Todd, Todd. That sounded like you were trying to offer some sort of bribe.”

  “No. Of course not. I would never consider—”

  “No, Todd. I would never consider it. Here in China there is some corruption, I can acknowledge that. But not as much as the rest of the world insinuates, and, if I may be so intemperate to say, much of the corruption comes from Western influences.” Wu waved a small hand around the room, indicating that Todd himself had brought corruption on his poor nation, but he did not say it out loud. Instead he just shook his head and said, “I don’t know if there is anything I can do to help you.”

  Todd said, “I want to talk to the embassy.”

  “There is a United States consulate here in Shanghai. The United States embassy is in Beijing.”

  “Then I would like to speak with someone at the consulate.”

  “Of course, that can be arranged. I will mention, however, as a family man myself, that notifying American consular officials of this situation will make it necessary for my office to provide our evidence to the consulate. It is important for us to show them that this is not some sort of unfair charge against you, you understand.”

  Todd felt a glimmer of hope. Having the U.S. consulate know that he had cheated on his wife with a Chinese hooker would be even more humiliating, but maybe they could get him out of this.

  “And please don’t think the consulate can sweep this matter under the rug. Their involvement in this will be chiefly to notify your loved ones back in the United States about your situation, and to help you find a local attorney.”

  Fuck that, thought Todd, and his glimmer of hope faded in an instant.

  “What if I just plead guilty?”

  “Then you will be here for some time. You will go to jail. Of course, if you fight the charge against you”—Wu scratched the back of his head—“although I don’t know how you would make that claim, as we have video and audio recordings of the entire… the entire act, but if you do, there will be a trial, and that will receive some publicity, certainly back in the States.”

  Todd Wicks felt like he was going to be sick.

  Just then, Wu raised a finger into the air as if he just had a thought. “You know, Mr. Wicks, I like you. I see you are a man who has made a serious mistake by listening to his prurient desires and not the wisdom of his brain, yes?”

  Todd nodded vigorously. Was some sort of a lifeline coming?

  “I can talk to my superiors to see if there is another way out of this for you.”

  “Look… whatever you need me to do… I’ll do it.”

  Wu nodded thoughtfully. “I think, for the benefit of your wife and your two small children, that would be best. I will make a phone call.”

  * * *

  Wu stepped out of the room, but he did not make a phone call because, in truth, he did not need to talk to anyone. He was not Shanghai police, he was not a family man, and he was not here investigating the hotel. No, these were all lies, and lying was an integral part of Wu’s job. He was MSS, the Ministry of State Security, and Todd Wicks had just been caught in his honey trap.

  Normally Wu attempted to lure targets of opportunity into his traps, but Todd Wicks of Richmond, Virginia, was different. Wu received an order from his superiors with a list of names of technology employees. The Shanghai Hi-Tech Expo was one of the largest in the world, and it was no great surprise that three of the men on his superior’s wish list were in attendance. Wu had struck out with the first man, but he’d hit a home run with the second. As Wu stood in the hallway, he knew that in the suite on the other side of the wall he leaned on was an American man who would jump at the chance to spy for China.

  He did not know what his leaders needed this Todd Wicks for, it was not his job to know, and it was not his way to care. Wu lived like a spider lives; his entire life, his complete being, was tuned to feel the twitches in his web that told him a new victim was approaching. He had wrapped Todd Wicks up in his web as he had done so many others, but already he was thinking about a Japanese salaryman in the same hotel, a target of opportunity Wu already had on the edge of his web, and a man Wu expected to wrap up before dawn.

  Wu so loved the Shanghai Hi-Tech Expo.

  * * *

  Todd was still naked, though through the use of persistent hand gestures he’d persuaded one of the cops to bring him a towel that he could actually wear without pinching it together with one of his hands.

  Wu entered the room and Todd looked to him hopefully, but Wu just shook his head sorrowfully and then said something to one of the younger officers.

  Handcuffs appeared, and Todd was lifted off the bed.

  “I have spoken
to my superiors, and they would like me to bring you in.”

  “Oh, Christ. Look, I can’t—”

  “The local jail is awful, Todd. I am personally and professionally humiliated to take an educated foreigner there. It is not up to the standards of your country, I can assure you.”

  “I’m begging you, Mr. Wu. Don’t take me to jail. My family can’t know about this. I’ll lose everything. I fucked up. I know I fucked up, but I am begging you to let me go.”

  Wu seemed to hesitate for a moment. After a tired shrug that conveyed noncommitment, he spoke softly to the five others in the room, and they quickly filed out, leaving Wu and Todd alone.

  “Todd, I see by your travel papers that you are to leave China in three days’ time.”

  “That’s right.”

  “I may be able to prevent you spending time in jail, but it will require some help on your part.”

  “I swear to you! Anything at all and I will do it.”

  Wu still seemed to be vacillating, as if he could not decide. Finally he stepped closer, then said softly, “Go back to your room. Tomorrow, return to your normal routine here at the trade fair. Speak to no one about this.”

  “Of course! Of course. Oh my God, I can’t thank you enough!”

  “You will be contacted, but perhaps not until you return to your country.”

  Todd stopped his proclamations of thanks. “Oh. Okay. That’s… whatever you say.”

  “Let me give you a warning as a friend, Todd. The people that will ask a favor of you will expect you to repay them. They will retain all the evidence against you about what happened here.”

  “I understand,” he said, and it was true, he did understand. No, Todd Wicks was not particularly worldly, but at this point he had the distinct impression that he’d been set up.

  Damn it! So fucking stupid.

  But set up or not, they had him. He would do anything to keep that video from getting to his family.

  He would do whatever Chinese intelligence asked him to do.