The Panda House was a small restaurant in New York’s Chinatown–with chipped Formica tabletops and folding metal chairs. It was also a window into the Chinese underworld. The building was owned by the largest Triad in the US, a gang that called itself the Flying Dragons. It housed the gang leaders, and many of the prostitutes who were periodically shipped to massage parlors throughout New England. The restaurant provided a way to launder money and communicate with pimps, dealers and escorts. The Dragon leaders knew law enforcement tapped their phone lines, so they often communicated with messages hidden in the Panda House’s fortune cookies.
Lotus Luo looked out of place in the restaurant. A beautiful tall Eurasian woman with long black hair and a perfect complexion that required almost no makeup, she wore a maroon evening dress with a diamond-studded brooch for her upcoming date at the Metropolitan Opera that evening. But she was an escort working for an agency operated by the Dragons. For lunch, she ordered a bowl of wonton and received her usual fortune cookie. But when she read the paper message she froze—it said ‘KILL HIM TONIGHT.’ She ate the message, pounded the cookie with her fist into a pile of fragments, slumped across the table, and burst into tears.
Lotus didn’t want to kill anybody. Least of all, she didn’t want to kill Kingsley Wilson, whom she affectionately called ‘King.’ He was the British ambassador to the United Nations in New York. During the year or so she had been dating him, Lotus had become very fond of King. He treated her as a real escort, taking her to concerts, theater, opera and night clubs.
Wilson’s career included roles as both an MI6 agent and a diplomat. Most of his recent activities had been diplomatic, but he still carried a high MI6 rank. The Dragon leaders didn’t have a beef with Wilson. But they had a very lucrative contract from Chinese intelligence—which wanted to kill Wilson with plausible deniability. MI6 agents in China had identified the Chinese hackers who had cracked the Pentagon. And Wilson was scheduled to meet with top CIA leaders to negotiate what action to take.
Lotus knew that if she didn’t kill King, the Dragons would kill her. After agonizing for a while, she decided to tell Wilson everything, so she got a cab to his apartment in Gramarcy Park.
She buried her head in his chest:
“They want me to kill you, King.”
“I know I have a dangerous job, but I didn’t want to drag you into it. Why don’t we get married, Lotus, then I can protect you as a British citizen with diplomatic immunity?”
“You don’t want to marry a whore with underworld connections. That could get you fired–or worse.”
“Don’t worry about it, Lotus. I’ve done weirder things than that in my checkered career.”
Kingsley then took Lotus to the British consulate. He made a succession of phone calls, pulling all the necessary strings. Then they got married in a registrar’s office using the chauffeur and a street hooker as witnesses.
But there was no honeymoon.
“I have to meet with the CIA leaders tomorrow, so I’m going to send you to London tonight and I’ll join you there later in the week, “he explained.
A limousine with tinted windows then left the British consulate, carrying Lotus but not King, and headed for the charter section of JFK airport. Meanwhile, the Dragon leaders had figured out that Wilson was still alive. They didn’t want to expose their people in the Customs and Immigration Service at JFK–they were essential to the gang’s drug smuggling and human trafficking operations. But the Dragons had no alternative to using them as it appeared to be the last opportunity to kill Wilson.
The Dragon-controlled agents at JFK commandeered a CIS wagon and some weapons. When they saw the British limousine enter the airport, they wanted to make the assassination look like an accident. So they started firing automatic weapons at the vehicle’s tires. But the AR-15’s weren’t accurate enough. Then they unleashed all their firepower–but the limousine was armored and bullet proof. In desperation, they pulled a launcher off the rack and fired an RPG at the limousine. That was the kill shot. The limousine overturned, skidded into the front of a hanger and exploded in a ball of fire.
***
Next day, Wilson met with top CIA and FBI officials in the Carnegie Endowment building across the street from the UN. He was very angry.
“Last night the US Customs and Immigration Service killed a brave woman who just happened to be my wife. You people should get the gangsters out of your government before we try to get the hackers out of China.”
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