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animal, had tried to kill him. “Murder seems to bring us together.”
    â€œIs he dead?” The bland look dropped from Les Chung’s face.
    â€œNo, but he may soon be—they’re not hopeful. It was attempted murder.”
    â€œIt wasn’t—what do you call it?—a drive-by shooting? A random attack?”
    Madame Tzu might have been asking if the Premier had been attacked by a wasp. It was impossible to tell her age within ten years either side of the true figure; but whatever it was, she wore it well. She had a serenity that was a sort of beauty in itself; men would always look at her, though not always with confidence. Men, particularly the natives, tend to be cautious with serene women: it is another clue in the feminine puzzle. She wore a simply cut gold dinner dress, a single strand of black pearls and an air that didn’t invite intimacy.
    â€œNo, Madame Tzu, it wasn’t a random shooting. They knew whom they were after. You and General Wang are staying here at the hotel?”
    General Wang-Te had sat silent, not moving in his chair. He was a bony man on whom the skin was stretched tight. Last time Malone had met him he had worn cheap, round-rimmed spectacles that appeared to be standard government issue in China then; tonight he wore designer glasses, rimless with gold sidebars, Gucci on the Great Wall. As he looked up at Malone the light caught the lens, so that he appeared sightless.
    â€œThe general is,” said Madame Tzu. “We’re directors, remember.”
    â€œOwners,” said Wang-Te, speaking for the first time.
    â€œWhere are you staying?” Malone asked Madame Tzu.
    â€œI still have my apartment in the Vanderbilt. I’m not a hotel person.” She made it sound as if five-star hotels were hostels for the homeless.
    Clements spoke to Chung. “Have you had any threats against the hotel, Les?”
    Chung was one of the richest men in the city, but the two detectives knew his past history. Years ago, before Clements had joined Homicide, he had arrested Leslie Chung on fraud charges. Chung had got off, but ever since he had been Les and not Mr. Chung. Arrest doesn’t breed friendship but it makes for a kind of informality. It is a weapon police officers always carry.
    Chung shrugged as if he had been facing threats all his life; they were dust on the wind. “One or two. The usual nutters—anti-development, anti-foreign investment, that sort of stuff. But they don’t go around shooting people.”
    â€œThen you’d say this had nothing to do with the hotel? Or the whole Olympic Tower project?”
    â€œNothing,” said Chung, and Madame Tzu and Wang-Te together added a silent nod.
    â€œDo you have any enemies in China?” Malone asked them.
    They didn’t look at each other; it was Madame Tzu who said, “Of course. Who can claim that in one point two billion people all of them are friends?”
    She’s smothering her answer with figures . “So, eliminating all the nutters and the one point two billion of your countrymen, would you say the shooting was political?”
    The three Chinese gave him a blank stare: the Great Wall of China, he thought. He wanted to scrawl the graffiti of a rough remark on the Wall, but that would be racist. Not, he was sure, that any of them would care.
    At last Les Chung said, “I think it would be politic to say nothing.”
    Madame Tzu and General Wang-Te, like intelligent puppets, nodded.
    Malone grinned at Clements. “Wouldn’t our job be easy if cops could be politic?”
    â€œLet’s go home,” said the big man. “I’m tired.”
    When the two detectives had gone, Madame Tzu said, “If Mr. Vanderberg dies, what happens?”
    â€œNothing that will affect us,” said Les Chung. “Our bookings are solid till after the Olympics. By then the whole complex will have established itself.”
    General Wang-Te was