Chapter 154: The tour.
After dinner, the delegation split up. Some returned to the hotel, and others went out to tour the city. In order not to seem suspicious, Liwu’s team also went out on a tour of the city in the night. They visited wide boulevards, bought many souvenirs and tried every nice looking desert they came across.
The city glowed under the night lights, its history whispering from every stone. To sell the idea that they were in the city without suspicious intentions, they had even hired a tour guide.
Weijun, however, was competing with the guide on who had the more accurate information. He was pointing out landmarks as if he had always lived in the city.
The tour guide, a young man that took pride in his job was quite irritated, and he cursed Weijun out softly, in the German language.
But Weijun didn’t care. "Look, Liwu! That’s a St. Stephen’s Cathedral, one of the oldest churches in the world. It DATES back to the fourth century. I can’t imagine how much history it has seen. How many weddings it has witnessed. How many funerals___"
"You are drooling, Mayor daddy." Xuanji cut in.
Weijun put his arm around Liwu’s waist, drawing her closer. "Anyone into architecture would drool."
In a thick accent, the tour guide started, "Opposite the church is___"
"The Vienna Puccini Opera house." Loudly, and excitedly, Weijun finished for the guide.
The guide continued, "Built...."
"Built in 1869." Weijun cut him off, again. "Imagine the music!"
The tour guide mumbled curses again.
Liwu pinched Weijun’s waist. "Dear, you need to tone it down. Instead of imagining the music, imagine the suspects. We have sixty embassy employees and one is a double agent. That’s our opera."
Weijun chuckled softly. "I know, but this is more thrilling. I bet our spy has made some deals in the church or the opera house. If those walls could talk___" He stopped because he heard the word strudel. "Did I hear strudel?"
"Yes." All the team members said, in what were clearly tired voices.
They entered a diner for a second dinner, and when it was over, they returned to the hotel. After dropping them off, the tour guide returned to the very church Weijun had been drooling over. He met with someone in a large black cloak and a hat over the head.
"Did they do anything suspicious?" The cloaked figure asked.
The guide shook his head. "Apart from annoying me, and eating too much, nothing stood out."
The two spoke for another twenty seconds and then went their separate ways.
***
Back at the hotel, Weijun seemed to be lacking sleep. Instead of joining Liwu in bed, his face was pressed to the window, like the tourist he was. Everything was fascinating to him, from the people to the taxis and the air.
"Come to bed." Liwu called out to him.
He crossed his arms over his chest. If he went to bed, her lust would take over and they would end up with five babies before he knew it. "You should come over here, instead. I just saw someone walking a lama as if it is a dog!"
"You do realize that the person we are after could have snipers in the next building watching you right now." She mentioned. "The tour guide who led us through the city was obviously a spy. His movements were too soft, he cloned all of our phones...or what we pretended were our phones and he avoided shaking hands with Linlin, as if he knew that she was a system host that could predict parts of someone’s future. We are being watched." It was why she had scanned the room for bugs six times do far.
Weijun raised his neck. Quickly, he backed away from the window and closed the curtains. With the speed of a fly, he rushed to the bed and threw himself down, landing on top of her.
With equal speed, Liwu wrapped her legs around his waist and put her arms around his neck. A sly smile visited her lips. "If you wanted to be on top, all you had to do was say so."
Weijun blinked. His actions had been taken way out of proportion. All he had tried to do was avoid a sniper bullet, just in case. He wriggled and she made a playful moan. This made him go stiff. "I am not moving anymore," he blurted out.
Liwu chuckled deviously. "That’s okay, we can still talk in this position. Did I scare you with the sniper talk?"
He nodded. "I had forgotten the dangers of this mission for a moment. Thank goodness that your mind is sharper than mine."
She took her hands off his neck, and he quickly fell back beside her. His face turned her way. His mind entered a state of confusion. Why had she released him? Hadn’t she been plotting to kiss him?
"I think it’s a woman." She said, crossing her arms behind her head. "In my experience, most double agents tend to be women. I hate it when people call us the weaker sex, but from what I have seen, we are manipulated more easily emotionally."
Weijun replied slowly, "Until you come across a woman like Manman that can convince a perfectly wise and brilliant CEO of a major company to buy her a necklace worth a billion. I have never considered women the weaker sex. I think they are the more manipulative sex."
She could not argue against that when he used a perfectly sensible example. "I would love to hear more of your views on my gender. Do you think a woman makes a worthy sacrifice if she gives up her job to take care of her family as a full time housewife?"
The question seemed so random, it came out of nowhere. But for Weijun, the answer was not far. "Yes, it is a worthy sacrifice. You should have seen my mother wrangling three daughters and four sons. We did not make it easy for her. It didn’t help that my uncle was scheming against the family and were always on guard. I once saw her crying by herself in the kitchen at night after my father found himself a new love interest. It killed me so much that I sought him out, punched him and told him to choose between our family and that woman."
Liwu sat up abruptly, gasping. She grabbed his arm, nearly breaking it. "What? Your father that barely speaks at the table and behaves like a hostage around the house actually had an affair! How? Where did he even get the guts?"