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“Stay put,” the e
He could not allow the trail to end here This was his only route to Cassiopeia Thetohere the alley connected to another busy street A constant stirring of people passed back and forth at the intersection
He stood, fifty feet away, and watched
Then the ether, they ran away
NI ASSESSED PAU WEN, REALIZING THAT HE’D FALLEN DIRECTLY into the trap this clever man had set
“And what is best for China?”
“Do you know the tale of the crafty fox caught by a hungry tiger?” Pau asked
He decided to indulge Pau and shook his head
“The fox protested, saying, ‘You dare not eat me because I am superior to all other aniods If you don’t believe er followed the fox into the woods and all the anier, not realizing that he was the cause of their alaro” Pau went silent for a moment “Which are you, Minister, the crafty fox or the unwitting tiger?”
“Seems one is a fool, the other a manipulator”
“Unfortunately, there are no other contenders for control of China,” Pau said “You and Minister Tang have done a ers”
“So do you say I am the fool or the manipulator?”
“That is not for me to decide”
“I assure you,” Ni said, “I ahout our People’s Republic My duty is to rid us of that disease”
Which was no small task in a nation where 1 of the population owned 40 of the wealth, much of it built fro Party members—he’d arrested them all Bribery, ee seeking, sht theft were rampant
Pau nodded “The system Mao created was littered with corruption froovernment is accountable only from the top down, dishonesty becomes insidious”
“Is that why you fled?”
“No, Minister, I left because I cahtered SoChina, then and today, is a failure There is no other way to view it We are home to sixteen of the world’s twenty most polluted cities, the world leader in sulfur dioxide e our land We pollute the water with no regard for consequences We destroy culture, history, our self-respect, with no regard Local officials are rewarded only for more economic output, not public initiatives The system itself assures its own destruction”
Ni cautioned himself that those observations could all be a deception So he decided to utilize some misdirection of his own “Why did you allow that woman to steal the lamp?”
Pau appraised hilare that aze that he’d once respected
“That is a question to which you should already know the answer”
MALONE TIPPED THE TRASH BIN OVER, FOUND HIS GUN, THEN bolted down the alley
He should have known
The courier was no victim Just an accomplice who’d messed up He came to the alley’s end and rounded the corner
His two adversaries were a hundred feet ahead, running toward bustling Holmens Kanal, its lanes jammed with sp
eeding vehicles navigating toward Copenhagen’s busiest square
He saw the two dart left, vanishing around a corner
He stuffed the gun away and mixed force with polite phrases to bump his way past the crowd
He cahted intersection The Danish Royal Theater stood across the street To his right, he caught sight of Nyhavn, busy with people enjoying theth His two targets weretraffic and a busy bicycle lane, heading toward the Hotel d’Angleterre
A Volvo eased to the curb just before the hotel’s entrance
The ht for the car’s open rear door
Two pops, like balloons bursting, and theto the pavement
Another pop and the woman fell beside him