The rain in Shanghai didn’t fall so much as it dissolved into the neon haze of the Bund, coating the heavy plate-glass windows of the Mandarin Oriental in a greasy, multi-colored film. By two in the morning, the heavy container ships on the Huangpu River were nothing but distant, rhythmic horn blasts cutting through the low-hanging smog.
Elias Hawthorne sat on the edge of the low, unmade king bed on the thirty-second floor, his fingers tracing the cold, sharp edge of his temporary titanium data key. The room was sterile, smelling of industrial carpet cleaner and the dry, recirculated air of a luxury high-rise that could have been in Frankfurt, London, or Chicago. His name wasn't on the guest register downstairs; he had checked in under a secondary corporate travel alias that the Hawthorne
