The manager left. I reached into my bag of tools and found a large pipe wrench to turn the water off with. Then I took out a small RotoZip and started cutting through the Sheetrock near the computer closet.

The sound of the tool brought the manager running. I had just enough time to slosh over to the toilet area before he came in.

"What are you cutting? What are you cutting?" he demanded.

I curled my lip at him.

Cho Lim glanced over at me, then back at the manager.

"Do you speak English?" she asked in English.

"English? Why?" he answered in Chinese.

"Because he doesn't," she said in English. "My father is very temperamental. If you question him, he may just leave. Last week, he was working for Premier Zhu, and one of the men wanted to stand with him in the kitchen as he fixed the pipe. He was at the other side of the room. This was very reasonable, for security, but my father-"

"He worked for the premier?" asked the manager in Chinese.

"Speak English," hissed Cho Lim, "or he will know what we are saying."

"He does work for Premier Zhu?"

"No, that is just it-he walked out. Premier wanted to watch. My father said, 'Fix your own d.a.m.n sink,' and handed him the wrench. He has not gone back. The premier himself called to apologize, but he would not change his mind. My father is very stubborn."

The manager turned white.

"Isn't he worried that the premier will become angry?"

"Have you tried to get a good plumber in Beijing?"

The manager nodded solemnly.

As he did, Cho Lim slapped him across the face.

"What was that for?"

"I will tell my father you asked for a date. Otherwise he will be suspicious."

"Yes, yes, thank you, thank you. Please carry on," he said, bowing and backing out of the restroom.

Five minutes later, I had a hole large enough to see into the back of the computer closet. I located the network connections, plugged in, and fired up the laptop I'd brought in the other case. Within a few minutes, I was looking at a screen showing Yong Shin Jong's account.

He had, it turned out, been here three months before: twice, with two days in between.

His account also had several credit card numbers, as well as phone numbers of people he'd called from his room. I saved them all, disconnected the laptop, and taped the hole I'd cut in the wall.

Cho Lim, meanwhile, was clanging away at the toilet. I thought she was just making noise to make it seem as if we were working hard, but as I packed up she looked over and smiled.

"Toilet is fixed, Mr. d.i.c.k."

"Great, Cho Lim," I told her. "Maybe you and I will go into business someday."

[ III ].

WHILE WE WERE playing plumber, Doc and the others added to our reconnaissance capabilities near the compound. They set up the parabolic mike in the trees, aiming it at one of the second story windows. Then they tapped the telephone wire running up the street, giving us a way to listen in to any landline phone calls made from the compound-and, unfortunately, the small housing complex down the road, which meant Lo Po's people had to do a lot of extra work trying to isolate the proper circuits.

Mongoose crawled through the brush on the hill behind the compound, trying to find a place where we could set up a long-range camera to watch the rear courtyard that I'd traipsed back and forth through the night before. But the compound had been arranged so that this was impossible. The only way to watch the patio would be to put a camera on the wall, and after all our adventures, the risk didn't seem worth it.

"We can take the place down, no sweat," said Doc that evening as we reviewed the situation. "It's the only way we can be sure Yong Shin Jong is or isn't there, short of staying here indefinitely."

"The problem is, once we do that, we'll have to leave Beijing for a while," said Trace. "So it's a Catch-22."

"More a coin flip," said Doc.

"Whatever. If we're wrong, we're screwed."

"I'd like to know who the people in the Mercedes last night were," said Lo Po. "That would tell us a lot."

I got up from the table where we were sitting and walked into the other room, where Cho Lim and one of Lo Po's people were monitoring the video and audio from near the estate. The microphone was picking up ambient noises-people moving around the house-but no conversations; the compound was simply too big for us to hear much unless the conversation was in or very close to the room the mike was aimed at. There hadn't been any traffic on the road, let alone visitors, in the past two hours.

I took out my sat phone and called home. The twelve-hour time difference meant it was just going on 8:00 A.M.-Karen would be getting ready to leave for work.

"Hi, lover, I really miss you," she said, picking up.

Love that caller ID. I'll spare you the gushy stuff, of which there was plenty, and concentrate on business.

"Matthew has some information for you on the credit card numbers," Karen told me. "I think you'll be interested."

"Already?"

"He's been working the whole night. I think he's even more committed than Shunt."

Committed is a dangerous word to use in connection with Shunt. In Matthew Loring's case, however, it was only a compliment. I'd sent the data we'd taken from the hotel in an encrypted file via e-mail just a few hours before. Loring, apparently working through the night, had used it to obtain a list of all the transactions the credit cards had made over the past six months.14 In and of itself that information was useful, but Loring managed to use the account data to ferret out three other credit cards, including an American Express Black Sapphire, which also belonged to Yong Shin Jong. His probe turned up an alias we didn't know about, which yielded a little more information as well.

Kim's Korean son hadn't used the cards in the last three weeks; the last transactions were all in Singapore. There was a charge for the first-cla.s.s ticket for an air flight there besides the one that the CIA knew about. He had registered as a Mr. Wong on another flight. A Wong had apparently flown on the plane, though it was impossible to tell if Yong Shin Jong had actually been the person on the plane.

"Possibly, there are other cards and more ident.i.ties," added Karen, who'd gone through the data as she had her morning coffee. "But this almost looks as if Yong Shin Jong or someone wanted to give the impression that he left Singapore, yet really didn't. You say he didn't stay at the hotel when he came back."

"Not according to the records. He was there before Singapore, not after. At least not as Yong Shin Jong."

"He wouldn't use an a.s.sumed name there. They know him," said Karen. "Easier to stay somewhere else."

You see why I love her. Plus she's beautiful, and she comes the closest anyone ever has to keeping me in line. Those are a few of the reasons I call her "Pocket Rocket!" We theorized some more, talked mushy again, then returned to business, this time to the people who had been tying up my computer network by bombarding my server with port scan attacks, among other things.

"Matthew has tracked the Web attack back to the source," Karen told me. "Guess where it originates?"

"Pyongyang."

"Not quite. Alexandria."

"Virginia?"

"That's right. He hasn't found out who's paid for the accounts yet, but he's working on it. We should have it by the end of the day. Our day, not yours."

Across the room, Cho Lim suddenly sat straight up.

"Karen, I'm going to have to call you back," I said.

I hung up and went across the room to see what Cho Lim had heard. She had her hands pressed hard against the earphones, as if she wanted to push the tiny speakers into her ear ca.n.a.ls. When she turned around to look at me, she had a painful expression on her face, as if she'd just been punched in the stomach. She handed me the headset without a word, then hit the control to replay the audio.

A man's voice, cursing. A loud noise, maybe of someone falling against furniture. A crash. Shouts and then a kind of whimpering noise, followed by shuffling and silence.

"Yong Shin Jong," she said softly.

[ IV ].

WE NEEDED TWO helicopters for the operation. Lo Po could fly one. Even though Trace was far enough along in her training to take the other, I preferred to have her on the ground with me. That meant we needed another pilot-I couldn't trust a Chinese rental, since nearly all Chinese pilots are also members or former members of the military, sometimes moonlighting while actually on duty. Lo Po knew a man he trusted in Hong Kong, but the man had been hired for another gig and wouldn't be available until the following week. I didn't intend on waiting that long.

"We'll have to bring someone in from j.a.pan," said Doc. "Maybe Tosho can get us someone."

"What about Ike?" said Trace, volunteering her boyfriend.

"What about him?"

Trace's usual response to that kind of question would feature a string of four-letter words. But she got a real sincere, almost dopey look in her eyes, and proceeded to tell me what a great pilot he was. She'd spoken to him just a few hours ago via satellite phone; his job had finished early and he was waiting in Kyoto for her.

"He's volunteered to help any number of times," she said. "He'd do it."

"What about our no fraternization rules," said Doc.

"What rule is that?" shot back Trace, glaring at him.

Doc glared back. The two of them have a generally close relationship; in some ways Trace is like the daughter he never had. But there was definitely an edge in his voice.

"I think we can count on Trace to keep things professional," I said. "All right?"

"Absolutely," said Trace.

Doc frowned, but nodded.

I left Lo Po and Doc to lease the helicopters and make the other logistical arrangements while I took Shotgun and Mongoose toy shopping.

When I told them, they thought I meant we were going in search of weapons, and practically knocked each other over heading for the car. But I meant it literally-I had one of Lo Po's drivers take us over to Honggiao, a big manufacturing district in Beijing (what isn't?). Beijing is basically Toys "R" Us east; pretty much every toy sold in America these days comes from China, and the toy market near Honggiao has samples of everything. Mongoose looked at me as if I were crazy as I started examining displays. Shotgun was in heaven.

"d.i.c.k, look at this-Boba Fett Legos!"

"It's a toy, Shotgun," sneered Mongoose.

"Geez, no s.h.i.t," answered Shotgun. "You think the real Boba Fett is made out of plastic?"

"Boba Fett is not real. I can't believe I'm having this conversation."

"You think it's a knockoff?"

"Probably."

"Hey, d.i.c.k, action figures!" said Shotgun, moving over to another display. "You think there's a Rogue Warrior doll here somewhere?"

There probably was, especially since Blue Box Toys in Hong Kong produced three versions of the Rogue Warrior Collector figures a few years ago, marketing them under the Legend series. The figures were twelve inches tall, with weapons, etc., all to scale. As I frequently jest, now every woman can have a twelve-inch d.i.c.k.

But I hadn't come to indulge my inner child-or Shotgun's outer one. We bought a pair of radio-controlled toy airplanes, picked up a few more useful items-and a Boba Fett for Shotgun-then found a field outside the city where we could practice until nightfall. After grabbing something to eat, Shotgun and I engaged in a midnight dogfight over Yong Shin Jong's compound. It was a fierce but brief battle-both of our planes ended up crashing into the drink.

Upon which, we returned to the house and consoled ourselves by crashing into our own drinks, straight from the medicine cabinet of the good Dr. Bombay.

"SOMETHING'S UP AT the compound," said Lo Po when I went in to check on the monitoring team the next morning. "They just called a fish expert. Their carp are dying."

Copper-sulfate will do that to a fish, especially when the pond they're in has been dive-bombed by a remote control toy airplane the night before.

Lo Po canceled the emergency call, calling the vet and pretending to be Yong Shin Jong's valet. Meanwhile I took a long shower, emerging with a white beard and hair.

"You get older every time I look at you," said Lo Po, amused.

I bowed solemnly.

A half hour later, I used the same bow as Lo Po and I presented ourselves to the video camera at the main gate to Yong Shin's compound. A road crew had set up shop on the roadway nearby, and their jackhammers made it difficult to hear through the tinny intercom speaker attached to the gate. But Lo Po's gestures, along with the sign on the front of the truck, featuring a large fish, apparently was sufficient: the gates swung open.

Lo Po and I drove the panel van up the driveway. We were escorted by the dogs, who yapped and growled as we drove up the cutbacks to the main house. Two women appeared at the front door; both wore red dresses similar to those I'd seen on the woman the other night. I'm pretty confident these women didn't have machine guns with them, however; there would have been no place to hide them. A whistle from one of the women sent the dogs running to a small concrete shed near the side of the yard. The other woman was holding a metal-detector wand in her hand.

"Ready, d.i.c.k?" whispered Lo Po.

"Let's do it," I said, opening my door.

I was beginning to like playing the role of grouchy ancient. With the help of a Chinese work cap pulled low over my face and a p.r.o.nounced slouch, I shuffled to the back of our truck, where I donned a long white lab coat embroidered with our company motto on the back. ("The best swim with us." In Chinese, of course.) Then I retrieved a fishnet and a small toolbox filled with jars of potions. Lo Po put on a similar coat, then took out a large coil of rope from the truck.