Hong Kong Read Free Page B

Carmellini noticed that Grafton's gray eyes smiled before he did. His face was tan and lean, although the nose was a trifle large. The admiral had a jagged, faded old scar on one temple.
    "Few things these days are exactly what they appear to be," Carmellini agreed. "As I recall, when I met you last year you were wearing a navy uniform and running a carrier battle group. Of course, the agency is going all out on cover stories these days."
    Jake chuckled. "I was pushing paper in the Pentagon when they were looking for someone to send over here to snoop around. Apparently my connection to Cole from way back when got someone thinking, so ... Anyway, when they asked me about it, I said okay, if my wife could come along. So here I am."
    Carmellini frowned. "How did I get dragged into this mess? I had a pair of season tickets to see the Orioles and a delightful young woman to fill the other seat."
    "I asked for you by name," Jake replied. "The new CIA director tried to dissuade me. Carmellini is a thief, he said, a crook, and last year when someone murdered Professor Olaf Svenson, Carmellini's whereabouts couldn't be accounted for. Seems that you were on vacation at the time, which is not a felony, but it made them do some digging; of course nothing turned up. No one could prove anything. Still, your record got another little smirch."
    "He said that?"
    "He did. Apparently your personnel file is interesting reading."
    "You know how football players talk about adversity?" Tommy Carmellini remarked. "I've had some of that, too. And smirches. Lots of smirches."
    "Uh-huh."
    "So if you know I'm smirched, how come you asked for me?"
    "My aide, Toad Tarkington, suggested you. For some reason you impressed him."
    "I see."
    Their breakfast came. After the waiter left, Jake said, 'Tell me about last night. Everything you can remember."
    Carmellini talked as he ate. 'They have me working with this woman from SIS, a Brit named Kerry Kent. She's a knockout and speaks Chinese like a native. I've known her exactly three days and an evening."
    "Uh-huh."
    Carmellini explained about the party, about how Kent got two invitations and took him along as her date. Two hours into the evening, he explained, he saw his chance and sneaked upstairs.
    "I was pretty spooked when I found China Bob all sprawled out. I got the tape out of the recorder and installed a new one, so anyone checking the machine would think the original tape didn't work. That was my thinking, which wasn't very bright on my part. I did have the presence of mind to turn the recorder off, so maybe anyone finding it will buy that hypothesis. Then again ...
    "By the time I got downstairs the thought occurred to me that I didn't know beans from apple butter. Anybody in Hong Kong could have killed China Bob, for any conceivable reason. Including, of course, my companion for the evening, Kerry Kent. She spent fifteen minutes in the ladies' just before I went upstairs, or so she said. Just to be on the safe side, when I got downstairs after retrieving the tape I told her it wasn't in the recorder."
    Jake Grafton looked up from his coffee. "And..."
    "And damn if she didn't frisk me when we were outside waiting for the valet to bring the car around. Gave me a smooch and a hug and rubbed her hands over my pockets."
    "You sure she was looking for the tape?"
    "She patted me down."
    "Maybe she was trying to let you know she was romantically interested," Jake suggested with a raised eyebrow.
    "I had hopes," Carmellini confessed. "She's a nice hunk of female, tuned up and ready to rumble. But she had me take her straight home. She didn't even invite me up for a good-night beer."
    "I thought secret agents were always getting tossed in the sack."
    "I thought so, too," Carmellini said warmly. "That's why I signed on with the agency. Reality has been a disappointment." Another lie, a little one. Carmellini joined the CIA to avoid prosecution for burglary and a handful of other felonies. However, he saw no