5
Morgan breathed in the tropical air of Macau, an island city in the Pearl River Delta across the bay from Hong Kong and Shenzhen, a region of China that had expanded rapidly in the last decade of staggering economic growth.
It was good to be out in the open air after fifteen hours flying on a cargo plane. She had slept easily, a trick picked up during her years in the Israel Defense Force, but Morgan was grateful that the journey was quicker than the many months of open sea that the Portuguese traders would have faced.
Portugal had leased Macau for hundreds of years, establishing it as a trading post in 1557 before finally transferring it back to China in 1999 when it became a Special Administrative Region. Gambling was forbidden on the mainland but encouraged on Macau so the island b
