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women filled the tables, chain-smoking, rubbing talismans of good luck, trapped here as much by addiction as hope. Twelve stylized dragons hung overhead, clutching glowing balls of changing colors. Sadly, two globes had gone dark, speaking to the lack of maintenance.
    Still, Seichan found herself relaxing, enjoying the cutthroat nature of the place, appreciating the lack of pretense. She felt a black camaraderie with this space.
    “The elevators are over there,” Gray said and pointed to a bank of cages along the wall to the left.
    Their destination lay above this floor, deeper into the shadowy fringes of the complex, into its maze of VIP rooms, where the true wealth flowed through Macau. The quantity of tables hidden away in those private spaces outnumbered those on the main floor.
    Inside the elevator cage, Gray hit the button for the fourth floor. The upper-level VIP rooms were run exclusively by junket operators, private companies who would fly in high rollers from mainland China or elsewhere and lavish their customers with every extravagance, meeting any desire. Even the basement shopping arcade of the casino doubled as a prostitutes’ mall, where a young woman could be ordered on a whim.
    Twenty different companies did business among those rooms, including several run by organized crime syndicates, where money laundering was commonplace. Such anonymity and discretion suited Gray and Seichan’s objective. They had come here posing as two high-stakes gamblers. The payment to their informant would be washed away by the junket operator, keeping their hands clean. Their goal was a simple one: get the information, pay the man, and leave.
    The elevator cage opened into a hallway decorated in a faded attempt at opulence, all in reds and golds. Doors lined the halls, many with burly men standing guard.
    Kowalski eyed them like a testy bull.
    “This way,” Seichan said, taking the lead.
    With the end in sight, she hurried now. This was her last chance to discover her mother’s fate; all other leads—one after the other—had dried up. Seichan struggled to keep her anxiety at bay. For the past four months, she had leaned on her training, staying hypervigilant, keeping her focus away from that knot in her gut, that tangle of hope, despair, and fear. It was why she had held Gray off at arm’s length, despite his plain desire to explore something deeper with her.
    She dared not lose control.
    Their VIP room lay at the end of the hall. A pair of large men with bulges under their jackets flanked its door, bodyguards supplied by the company who had booked this space.
    Reaching them, she showed her false I.D.
    Gray and Kowalski did the same.
    Only then did one of the guards knock on the door and open it for them. Seichan stepped through first and quickly sized up the space. The walls had been painted gold, and the carpet was woven in a pattern of crimson and black. A lone green baize baccarat table stood to her left, a nest of red-silk chairs and lounges to her right. The room was empty, except for a single occupant.
    Dr. Hwan Pak.
    His presence was the reason for so much precaution and subterfuge. He served as the lead scientist at the Yongbyon Nuclear Scientific Research Center in North Korea—a facility known for enriching uranium used by the country’s atomic program. He also had a severe gambling addiction, though that was known only to a few intelligence agencies.
    Stubbing out a cigarette, Hwan Pak rose from a couch, standing only a few inches over five feet and thin as a cane. He bowed slightly in greeting, his eyes on Gray, as if sensing the one in charge, already dismissing her, a mere woman.
    “You are late,” he said politely but firmly, his accent barely evident. He reached to a pocket and removed a cell phone. “You have purchased one hour of my time. For eight hundred thousand as agreed.”
    Seichan folded her arms, letting Gray type in the transfer code arranged by the junket organizer.
    “Four hundred