Excerpt from Too Bad to Die by Francine Mathews, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

"Why do you ask?" Schwartz persisted.

Roosevelt drew a lungful of smoke. "There's an RAF observation post on the summit of the Great Pyramid. Wasn't there yesterday."

The Secret Service chief smiled faintly. "That must've ticked off a few pit diggers."

"And see the snipers? Positioned at intervals on the rest of the pyramids? Winston's got wind of something."

Schwartz's smile faded. His eyes strayed from the snipers to a single telephone, connecting Churchill's villa with their own.

"Fleming," Roosevelt said thoughtfully. "Young Hudson's friend. He'll know."

—

MAY-LING WAS drinking tea in the drawing room of the Royal Suite, shoes kicked off and her slim legs tucked beneath her. Unlike the Western potentates, she and her husband were lodged in Mena House itself. They commanded a drawing room, several bedchambers and baths, quarters for their personal servants, a private dining room, and a kitchen, where she could prepare her husband's opium pipe at night. No one but the two of them knew she did this. There was a dressing room filled with Western and Chinese clothes where her personal maid presided over several Louis Vuitton trunks—one just for hats, another for shoes. She had brought twelve handbags and thirty pairs of gloves to Cairo. The dust, she'd heard, was terrible.

During the past year, May-ling had toured the length and breadth of the United States, which was like her second home. Correction. Her only real home. And she had shopped well. Only the most elegant and exquisite clothing adorned her body, because she was the face of a civilization.

Madame Chiang. The uncrowned empress of China.

While the Generalissimo fought his own people and the Japanese—months of losses, of vicious and brutal death—she had addressed both Houses of Congress. She had raised her glass to well-meaning patrons in Poughkeepsie and Detroit and Sioux Falls and Menlo Park. Americans hated the Japanese after Pearl Harbor and were desperate to find an Asian they could trust. May-ling spoke English with a southern accent. Her brief childhood was misspent among the mosquitos and missionaries of Georgia. Unlike her Buddhist husband, she was a Methodist, and a graduate of Wellesley College. Americans were fascinated by her exotic beauty and her obvious smarts. She'd collected millions of dollars for the Kuomintang cause.

"And what have you spent it on?" she demanded, as her husband fitted a cigarette to his lighter and crossed one perfectly creased trouser leg over another. "Payoffs to your cronies. Rivals whose loyalty you have to buy. And women, of course. There are always women."

"Just as, I understand, there have been men."

She did not answer him; he had the best possible sources and he was uninterested in protest or denial. She merely held his gaze and refused to think of what might incriminate her.

"You will sit next to Churchill tonight," he instructed. "Distract him. Bring his daughter into the conversation. She watches me too closely for my taste."

"If you knew anything about women, you'd realize Sarah is unimportant," May-ling flung back at him. "When the old man wants something, he trots out the other one. Pamela." She uttered the English name with distaste. Her husband had danced with the girl last night and enjoyed it. He was a connoisseur of women, but Round Eyes with red hair and pillowy breasts were rare in his experience.

"The Golden Devil is a fool," Chiang Kai-shek said mildly. "And you are jealous."

"You are a fool." She took a delicate sip of tea. They had found green leaves for the celebrated guests and her maid had brewed the pot herself; still, the result was disappointing. "Wasting the Americans' money. What will you say when they ask what you've done with it?"

"Tell them I need more." He gazed at her through his cigarette smoke, amused. "That's how these things work. That's why we're here, to demand that Roosevelt bomb the Japanese from bases in China he'll pay us to build. With materials he will provide. And American engineers. The bombs will be American, too, and so will the planes and pilots. We'll let the Round Eyes defeat our enemies—and pay us for the privilege."

Excerpted from Too Bad to Die by Francine Mathews. Copyright © 2015 by Francine Mathews. Excerpted by permission of Riverhead Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.