White Tiger Read Free

Beretta 92 pistol into a shoulder holster.
    Manning didn’t bother to smirk back, just pushed past the two men and walked into the living room. The drapes had been closed; Manning opened them slightly.
    “Don’t do that!” Chen Gui shouted in English. “They can see us in here!”
    Manning looked back at him. “This is the only room with closed drapes,” he said. “That’d be a pretty big clue right there, don’t you think?”
    Chen Gui wiped his face with his kerchief. “You saw them?”
    “Four on the street. One downstairs in the lobby.” Manning pulled his phone and showed the pictures to Chen Gui. “Recognize them?”
    Chen Gui scrolled through the photos, looking at them carefully. “Yes, all of them. All Fujianese.” Manning reclaimed his phone as Chen Gui stalked to the cream-colored sofa and threw himself onto it.
    “Damned Fujianese! We Shanghainese are too charitable — I should have had them killed years ago!” he said, holding his face in his hands.
    Manning checked his watch. Chen Gui looked up at him from the couch as Chen Song slipped into the matching love seat. His movements were as sinuous as a cat’s.
    “How did they find us?” Chen Gui asked.
    Manning pointed at Chen Gui. “Wearing a flame red suit probably wasn’t such a good idea,” he said. And it was true; Chen Gui, lover of all things ostentatious, was indeed wearing a red suit. It looked ridiculous, especially to a Westerner like Manning. But to a Chinese, red was the most auspicious of colors, the color of good fortune.
    Chen Gui looked down at his suit, and his face hardened. “How dare you make fun of me at a time like this!”
    Manning waved for him to be silent. “Keep your voice down.”
    Chen Song looked up at the taller American with hard eyes. “Watch how you address my uncle,” he said.
    Manning looked directly at him. “I don’t work for you, dipshit.”
    Chen Song got to his feet, facing Manning. His eyes flashed with anger; Manning did nothing more than cross his arms.
    “Stop!” Chen Gui hollered in Chinese. “No fighting now!”
    Chen Song looked from his Manning to his uncle and back again. After a moment of internal debate, he slowly settled back into the love seat’s embrace, but his thin smirk said it all: This is not yet over.
    Manning remained unperturbed. He knew it would infuriate Chen Song more than anything else; like his uncle, he was a vain man, but his vanity centered on his masculinity. Not being taken seriously would bug him. Manning liked that.
    “How will we get out of here?” Chen Gui asked.
    “The first thing you need to do is change out of that damned suit. You too, Chen Song — both of you have to dress more, ah, casually.”
    “I have other clothes with me,” Chen Gui said crossly. “What about the men in the street? And the one in the lobby?”
    “There’s only one way out of here, and that’s down the driveway. We could make a break for it and try to get to one of the Azabu Juban stations, but frankly, I’d rather not be tied to public transportation.”
    “Agreed. You have a car?”
    “I do.”
    “Good.” Chen Gui was placated for a moment, then suddenly remembered his original questions. “But the men — ”
    “The men on the street are less important to me than the one in the lobby. He’s the trip wire. The elevators come out right in front of him, and there’s no way for him to miss you.”
    “So what to do about him? Can’t you just kill them? Isn’t that what we pay you for?” Chen Gui was becoming agitated again.
    Manning looked at the smaller man. His face was still composed into a placid mask, but there was steel in his voice when he spoke.
    “I kill when I have no other options,” he said. “And the reason I picked this place as a safe house is because they can’t move on us. The Russian embassy is right up the street, and so is a police station. There are cameras everywhere, and people of all races mix here. But the things that make this