"I actually feel very old compared to you and the other women here," Sonja replied.

Cherry t.i.ttered and put a hand in front of her mouth. "Ngo likes his women . . . sorry."

"Old?"

"I was going to say, white," Cherry said. "Where is Irina?"

"She"s not well. I"m a friend."

Cherry lowered her voice. "I hope she warned you about Tran. Be careful. Irina told me Tran can be violent, especially if business is not going his way."

"Why are you telling me this?"

"I think maybe this is why Irina decided to be sick tonight. Maybe she thinks he will be kinder to a stranger, not take it out on her. If you are lucky, all he will want is s.e.x, and not to hurt you."

Sonja sipped her champagne. "Thanks for the warning." With this new information her revenge would be even more satisfying. Sonja had hit her own father, just before she"d left home, after seeing him beat her mother. Much later she"d reconciled with the old man, who had done his utmost to atone for his earlier sins, but the day she had knocked him to the floor and walked out on him had been one of the best of her life until they"d made amends.

Tran and the other man came over to them. "Forgive me," Tran said in English, "some boring business to attend to. I hope you ladies are enjoying yourselves."

"Of course," Sonja said.

A young man threaded his way through the small party of guests and stood beside Tran, who eventually acknowledged his presence. Tran said something to the man, who nodded.

"My personal secretary," Tran said to Sonja. "I have a small presentation to make to our esteemed guests. Afterwards, we celebrate."

Tran called for everyone"s attention and Sonja and Cherry drifted to the fringe of the group. The young Vietnamese girl translated, quietly, as Tran held court.

"He"s thanking all the men here for their support during this challenging time for him, developing his new hotel and apartment complex."

Tran concluded his speech then nodded to the young man Sonja had seen him speaking to before. The young man went to a table at the edge of the lounge room and began ferrying gift-wrapped packages to each of the men in the room.

Sonja finished her champagne and set her gla.s.s down on a side table as the first of the gifts was unwrapped. There were soft murmurs of surprise as each of the elongated boxes was opened. From the first box, and then the others, the owners each held aloft a pointed horn.

"Rhino," Sonja said softly.

"It"s the only income stream he"s got these days," Cherry whispered. "The Americans are shutting down his drug shipments and his property development is failing due to oversupply. These gifts are worth a fortune; they say he"s been stockpiling rhino horn."

Sonja had to put a hand on a wing-backed armchair to steady herself. It was not like her to let emotions affect the execution of a mission. She had prepared for this moment, mentally and physically. Hours and hours spent in the gym had helped her to shed the few extra kilos an easy life in LA had brought on, and she"d closely examined the chain of events that had led her here as well as researching the trade in rhino horn. In between she had fired hundreds of rounds at the pistol range to blow off steam. She was ready, completely, for what had to be done.

"Are you OK?" Cherry asked.

"Fine. I don"t usually drink champagne."

The six horns being fondled, pa.s.sed from businessman to concubine and back again, had a combined value of close to a million dollars. It was just a commodity to them.

Sonja gravitated to the edge of the room. She thought of the blood spilled in Africa to make this moment happen, animals and humans slaughtered in a war over something with no medicinal properties at all. Just as it sickened her, it steeled her.

She needed fresh air. Sonja walked briskly to the front door and down the stairs. She rested her hand on the bal.u.s.trade and willed herself to stay calm. She was in control of her feelings. It was what made her good at her job. Sonja despised weakness in others, yes, but most of all in herself.

"Miss Kurtz?"

Sonja forced herself to stay still, to not turn.

"That is your name, isn"t it? Or do you prefer Ursula when you"re working undercover?"

She looked around then and Tran"s chauffeur was there, an iPhone in his left hand, held up. He snapped a picture of her. "What are you doing? My name is Ursula Schmidt, not Kurtz."

The man"s other hand moved inside the left lapel of his suit jacket and drew out a small-calibre semi-automatic pistol, a .32 by the look of it, with a silencer attached to the end.

The man"s face was impa.s.sive, his tone deadly. "I don"t like a change in the routine. I went to Irina"s villa complex. She"s not there, not home ill as she told Madam Nhu. I spoke to the security man on the gate; Irina went out for her normal Tuesday appointments this morning and never returned. He was concerned."

Sonja held her hands up, palms out. "All right, the truth. She"s sick of Tran, tired of the way he beats her. He"s not worth the money but she was too scared to confront him. She has another lover. I am Ursula Schmidt."

"Your name is Sonja Kurtz. You are here in Vietnam to a.s.sa.s.sinate Mr Tran."

"Rubbish. Where would you get such a ridiculous story?"

The man used his thumb to select the gallery icon on his phone"s camera. He tossed the iPhone to her and Sonja caught it. "Have a look."

Sonja had taken her mother"s nationality when she left Africa and joined the British Army. She had seen dead bodies in Northern Ireland, where she had served in a special intelligence surveillance unit, and she had witnessed mayhem and ma.s.sacre from Sierra Leone to Afghanistan as a mercenary. She was, some of her male counterparts would have grudgingly admitted, hardcore, unshockable. Now, though, the air was stolen from her lungs and she felt as though she was sinking, sucking in water as she gazed at the naked, tortured and lifeless body of Ross c.o.o.nan.

She swallowed back bile. Ross was a good man who had risked and now lost his life to save the rhino. She would not give this pig the satisfaction of seeing her puke. "Irina?"

"I took her to Madam Nhu. We"ll finish her, slowly, later. The boss owes a favour to one of the triads."

"How did you find them?" She was in shock, still trying to digest the news that Ross was dead.

"The journalist has been sniffing around the boss for a long time. We are not stupid. We have informers who have been monitoring his movements. I asked around my network after I dropped you here. A street-side noodle vendor said c.o.o.nan had been seen with a woman who fitted your description. You think you"re smarter than us, but you are not. You are a stranger in this land and we Vietnamese have been killing foreign invaders for centuries."

"You"ve told Tran Van Ngo all of this?" Sonja asked.

The chauffeur shook his head. "I called his a.s.sistant."

The young man who distributed the rhino horns, Sonja thought.

As if on cue the immaculately groomed man appeared on the doorstep. He conversed rapidly in Vietnamese with the chauffeur.

The driver turned to Sonja. "I will take you somewhere secure. He will tell the boss you were unwell, having caught whatever Irina had. The boss will be displeased, but there will be no messy scene in front of his guests and he will be happy when he learns we have disrupted your mission."

"I"m going to kill you," Sonja said evenly.

The man chuckled. "Going to scratch me to death with those fake nails? I frisked you, remember?"

"Get her out of here," the secretary said.

"No." Sonja put her hands on her hips. "You"re right, my mission"s over. In fact, my life"s pretty much over. Shoot me here. Hopefully the sight of a dead body will cramp Ngo"s business deal."

"Come with me, you stupid, insolent woman."

"I"m going to scream. Ngo"s going to lose so much face he"ll be the invisible man." Sonja took a breath and opened her mouth. The chauffeur aimed between her eyes.

"Shut her up," he said.

The young secretary moved behind her and clamped his hand over her mouth. Sonja was ready for him. She raked her shoe down his shin and drove her stiletto heel into his foot. At the same time she grabbed his arm, dropped and rolled him over her shoulder. The chauffeur fired, a double tap, and the secretary"s body took one of the rounds as she flipped him into the bodyguard. Sonja had figured she could take one of the bullets and carry on, as long as it didn"t sever an artery or take out a major organ.

The three of them fell to the ground. Sonja smashed her fist into the gunman"s face and knelt on the wrist of his gun hand. She reached to the back of her head. The long, pointed hatpin she"d used to pin her hair up came free. She put one hand over the man"s mouth and drove the pin into the side of his neck. In and out, half a dozen times, she gouged around under the skin, shredding the carotid artery. The secretary didn"t move; the other man"s bullet had been a lucky shot, for Sonja.

"You"re not going to call a woman stupid again, ever." Sonja held her hand over the chauffeur"s mouth until he died. When he was still she grabbed him under the armpits and dragged his body into a thicket of bougainvillea by the entrance of the mansion. She did the same with the secretary.

Satisfied the men were hidden she washed the blood from her hands at a garden tap against an exterior wall of the villa. She walked back into the house, pausing at the mirror in the foyer to put her hair up again and check her makeup. She"d worn red for a reason; the few dark spots hardly showed. Killing the two men had settled her; she no longer felt incapable of dealing with the sight of the rich businessmen fondling the rhino horns like phallic compensators.

Inside, the horns had been cast aside in favour of Johnnie Walker Blue Label and Courvoisier cognac. She still felt sickened but her pulse was slow, her vision clear. The red mist had come and gone. She vectored towards Ngo.

He stopped a waitress and took two gla.s.ses of champagne from her. "I was told you were ill." He handed Sonja one of the gla.s.ses.

"Some fresh air helped. I"m still getting used to your climate."

He looked at her and reached out his free hand. It took all her courage not to flinch. He tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear. None of his guests were nearby. "You"re beautiful, Ursula."

She sipped her drink. "You told me you didn"t do sentimental."

He smiled. "I lie for a living. This is all a charade, and to tell you the truth, I am tired of it."

"The property development?"

"That, and the expensive gifts. I am throwing good money after bad, as the English say. You think me foolish, I"m sure."

She regarded him dispa.s.sionately and spoke the truth: "I think you"re a man."

"You should have been a diplomat, but I suppose a woman in your line of work is just that."

His eyes were not those of a predator; they were tired. He looked small, as if his tailored suit would have to be taken in because he was shrinking. She forced a smile at his joke, in reply, but he saw through it.

"You look sad," Ngo said.

"I am not." The image of Ross"s body haunted her.

"I didn"t mean to offend."

She took a breath. "Sorry. No, look, I"ve had a very good time so far. Very rewarding."

Ngo raised his eyebrows. "Really? How so?"

She caressed the side of the gla.s.s, collecting the condensation brought on by the warmth of the night, then licked the cool wetness from her fingers. "I"ve met a man of power, of intelligence, and humility." She glanced around. "How long will this go on?"

He looked over his shoulder. "I must work the room some more. This is my last chance to save the development, Ursula. I won"t lie to you; I was hoping Irina would be here as she is very important to me, but in the same vein I will tell you, honestly, that I am also glad you are here instead of her. I am thinking that I very much want to be alone with you, sooner rather than later." He stared into her eyes.

Sonja ran her tongue quickly over her glossy lips. "Me too."

"Give me thirty minutes. Circulate, look pretty."

She winked at him. "I"ll try."

Cherry found Sonja again and, despite Sonja"s reluctance, took two cold rice paper rolls from a waiter"s platter. "You should eat something. Are you OK now?"

"I"m fine," Sonja said. "Never better." Her gaze drifted to the gifts of rhino horn scattered about the room.

Handing out the rhino horns had been an ostentatious gesture, Sonja thought. It told the other men that Ngo was not on the ropes, financially, which he apparently was. Horn was only worth what someone had paid for it. The Mozambican poachers who had risked their lives to shoot the animals from which the matted lumps of keratin came had been paid a pittance compared to what the substance would fetch once ground and sold on. Ngo could have made serious money out of trading the horns, but he"d used them as currency, instead, to curry favour. It was a b.a.l.l.sy move, and one that would cost him dearly if these other men did not bankroll him.

Sonja wondered what else the gifts signified. Was there something bigger going on here than a last-ditch attempt to sh.o.r.e up an overdue hotel and apartment complex? Was there something Cherry didn"t know and that she and Ross had missed in their research?

She had been trying not to think of him, at least not until after the mission, but visions of Ross"s tortured body scrolled yet again across the inside of her momentarily closed eyes. Ross had told the chauffeur everything. She was not surprised in real life most people told everything they knew under torture, believing the lie that they would be spared if they revealed the truth. Ross was one more casualty in this war, one more reason for her to do what she had to. She spared a thought for Irina, more collateral damage.

"Looks like we"re leaving," Cherry said, breaking into Sonja"s thoughts.

"Oh, yes."

"It was nice to meet you, Ursula. Perhaps we can have coffee some time."

"Yes, perhaps."

Cherry took her hand and looked into her eyes. "Good luck, whatever it is you"re here to do."

"What do you mean?"

Cherry glanced behind her, nervously checking for her partner. She lowered her voice. "I hate this life, these men. The things they are involved in, that Irina is involved in, are terrible. There are drugs, guns, even children being traded by these men in their smart suits. They kill, Ursula, often for fun. Be careful."

"Of course, but you"ve nothing to worry about."

Cherry opened her Gucci clutch bag and took out a tissue. She reached up to Sonja"s face and dabbed at her left temple. "You missed a spot of blood."

Cherry snapped her purse closed and rushed to answer the beckoning wave of her man. A chill ran down Sonja"s back. Evil was good; the worse this man was then the more satisfaction she would have in bringing him down. Sonja went to Ngo"s side, near the entrance to the mansion. He was farewelling another man and a woman. The man, much older than Ngo, took Sonja"s hand. "h.e.l.lo," the man said.

"Ursula, allow me to introduce General Nguyen. The general was a great hero of our liberation war against the Americans."

"You"re still in the army?" Sonja asked.

"Formerly. Ngo indulges me with an honorary t.i.tle. You"re German?"

"Yes, though I"ve lived overseas for many years."

"I"ve only been to East Berlin, and that was in the bad old days, before the wall came down," Nguyen said.

"I would have thought for Vietnam that the old days were good, with East Germany as an ally against the capitalist west," Sonja said.

General Nguyen smiled. "I"m something of a progressive socialist. East Germany was a failed state, but in Vietnam we value free trade and entrepreneurial spirit. That"s something some of our Russian friends have also embraced, eh, Ngo?"

"Yes, quite," Ngo replied.