The Risk Agent

by Ridley Pearson

  Knox didn’t deny it. “All you do is make the introductions, Koz. We look over the inventory. If I return another day, I return another day. No dealing with you in the room, I promise. And for the introduction you get the pick of the litter.”

  “I don’t accept gifts.”

  Righteous motherfucker, Knox thought. “At cost, then.”

  “I’ll think about it.”

  “You know what you’ll think?” Knox asked. “You’ll think you died and went to heaven when you see it buffed out and rebuilt. The 750 has a sidecar, Koz. Think of you and Liz on a Sunday afternoon humming down Changle Lu. It’s a thing of beauty.”

  Kozlowski admonished him with a look. But it wasn’t a full dismissal. Knox’s eyes wandered, searching for what might be Lu Hao’s laptop. He saw nothing that qualified.

  “So,” Kozlowski said, “you arrive in Hong Kong from Cambodia on a private jet leased to Rutherford Risk, and reenter the country commercial the same day. And you’re telling me that kind of urgency is all about antique bikes gathering dust?”

  Knox fought for composure, surprised by the man’s knowledge. “Do I look urgent? I’m flattered you looked me up.” Neither Knox nor Dulwich had considered the ramifications of Dulwich having flown on the Rutherford jet into Cambodia. If Kozlowski could uncover such records, so could the Chinese.

  “You’ve entered China six times in the past year and a half. You’re constantly on the road in South America, Europe and Eastern Europe. A man busy building a company. Or a corporate spy.”

  The two men remained locked eye to eye.

  “Wouldn’t a guy like you,” Knox said, “know if a guy like me was a spy?”

  “You aren’t a U.S. spy, but there are all sort of spies these days, Knox. What we see the most here is privatized industrial espionage. It’s rampant.”

  “I thought the shoe was on the other foot,” Knox said. “Consulate employee. Head of Security.”

  “Not hardly,” Kozlowski said.

  “Listen, I’m in the Laotian jungle bidding on hammered bronze and swatting mosquitoes the size of sparrows and the lightbulb goes on in my head: motorcycles! Picture this: Liz with a scarf tied on tightly, the wind ruffling her shirt. You with your sleeves rolled up. A trip to Suzhou on a warm, late fall afternoon. Tell me that isn’t perfect.”

  “So you call Rutherford Risk for a ride.”

  “Ran into a friend.”

  “In Cambodia?”

  “That’s right. David Dulwich, an old buddy of mine. We both worked for a private contractor that served Rumsfeld and George the Second. He was my paycheck for two years. A good paycheck. He pops up in Ban Lung, sightseeing for all I know, and offers me a ride as far as Hong Kong on the company G5. What would you have done?” He didn’t dare lie about the details; Kozlowski could know anything.

  “You would have thought up a better story if you’d had the time.”

  “If it were a story, believe me, I could have done better.” Knox waited. “Tell me you’ll help me with gaining access to the impound. Like today, for instance.”

  “I’ll consider it. But I’m warning you: no business discussed in my presence, and I want no gifts, no deals.”

  “I’ll be a Boy Scout, promise.”

  “Uh-huh. Right.”

  Knox lowered his voice. “One other favor?”

  Kozlowski’s eyes hardened. “I doubt it.”

  “What if a friend of mine lost something-something important-and I came up with a SIM card, some phone numbers, that might help him find it?”

  “I can’t help.”

  “I can’t believe you’d want the Chinese looking for my friend’s lost package. An American package. That’s bad for everyone.”

  Kozlowski’s eyes found the folder containing the severed hand. He slid back his chair and stood. “That’s it. That’s all the time I have.”

  They walked out together. Knox took his time, letting Kozlowski digest his Rutherford Risk connection, and hoping they might get around to talking about Danner’s missing laptop, as Knox had tried to instigate. But it had to come from Kozlowski.

  Not wanting to push any harder on the Danner front, he slipped Kozlowski the national registration card carried by the Mongolian. “Run this past your boys and see if it’s legit.”

  Kozlowski accepted the card and pocketed it. “Don’t overestimate our relationship, Knox. I can’t work miracles.”

  “Who’s asking for miracles?”

  “You go down that road, you may need a miracle.”

  “Which road is that?” Knox slowed to a stop, sensing they were close to actual trust.

  “Rutherford Risk is forbidden from doing their kind of business here, just as my office is. Has it occurred to you they’re using you?”

  “It was a plane ride, nothing more.” He hesitated. “But my friend’s laptop would help.” It just came out. He wished he could have it back.

  Kozlowski’s nostrils flared, but he maintained his composure. “Remember what I said.”

  “Vehicle impound,” Knox reminded, wearing his disappointment openly.

  “I heard you the first time.”

  10:15 A.M.

  Knox walked up Huaihai Middle Road, rather than take a bus or taxi. He marveled at the traffic sorting itself out, the birdsong in the middle of such a large urban landscape and the beauty of its women. He stopped on a wide-open plaza in front of a bank, took a look around and placed a call using the secure iPhone.

  Dulwich answered before the second ring. “Go ahead.”

  “You got my package?”

  “I did. I’d have called if we had anything. Goddamn labs.”

  Knox said, “Were any body parts included with the ransom demand?”

  “Negative. There’s a video. A proof of life.”

  “Why didn’t I see it?” Knox asked.

  “It arrived at Berthold today. We haven’t seen it either.”

  “I need to see it.”

  “We’re on it.”

  Knox said, “I saw a photo of a hand just now. I was in the U.S. Consulate. It was not pretty.”

  “None of our business that I know of, but I’ll look into it.”

  “A college ring: OSU.”

  “Got it.”

  “Turns out your jet comes back registered to Rutherford Risk, LLC.”

  “It’s Flight Options. So what?”

  “So, I’m made.”

  Silence. “My bad.”

  “You wouldn’t happen to have someone keeping an eye on me?”

  More silence. The phone made subtle sounds each time it switched carriers. Knox wondered why Dulwich was taking so long to answer.

  “Negative,” Dulwich said.

  “A Chinese or Mongolian the size of a Sub-Zero?”

  “Same answer.”

  “I’ve sent you a second package. A SIM card. I could use the three Ws on caller-ID coming and going.”

  “We’ll try. No promises.”

  “I’m getting a lot of that.”

  “So see a doctor,” Dulwich said. “You’ve met the girl?”

  “Piece of work.”

  “I know it’s against your nature, but trust her.”

  “There are a lot of moving parts,” Knox said. “We’re after his records. We get that, maybe it tells us who did this. We get that, then extraction.”

  “Keep it simple.”

  “TIC.” This is China.

  “That all? I’ve gotta be someplace.”

  Knox laughed. “The girl mentioned some competitors. We’re going to look at them as well.”

  “Makes sense.”

  “The Mongolian, or whoever he is, is troubling,” Knox said. “There was one guy trying to look undercover by pushing a trinket cart around. A cop for sure. But a Mongolian? Is this thing international? Is he private muscle for one of the competitors?”

  “We’ll look at the SIM card and tell you what we find out.”

  “Any more contact?”

  “These things a
re fluid, Knox. We know what we’re doing.”

  “We need more to go on.”

  “There’s a surprise.”

  Knox ended the call, frustrated. Dulwich, with all his resources, and no one seemed to know anything.

  Sichuan Citizen, only a few blocks from the MW Building, served a mixed clientele of Chinese and expats in a hip, urban atmosphere that included canvas paddle fans and a long-legged hostess in a form-fitting black silk pantsuit. The aroma was a pleasing combination of hot peppers, exotic spices and sesame oil. Mandarin mixed with English in a singsong of language, interrupted by French and Dutch.

  Knox, who’d entered by the back door, sat down across from Grace at a small table for two. He laid down spreadsheets in front of her and anchored the corners with steaming black bowls of rice noodles, eggplant and ginger-glazed pork.

  “You were followed,” he said.

  “By a Chinese. Late twenties. Scooter. Neatly dressed.”

  “That’s him, yes.” Impressed she knew of the tail, Knox said, “Certainly not Mongolian.”

  “Han,” she said, naming the race of Chinese that accounted for over ninety percent of the population.

  “You allowed him to follow you?”

  “Of course. That way, when I need to lose him, he won’t be ready for it.”

  “I copied and mailed the SIM,” he said, speaking quietly. “One number was called six times in a row.”

  “To the intellectual,” she said. She answered his curious look: “Our term for the leader.”

  He nodded. “Yes. The brains. You see the Chinese and Americans aren’t so different.”

  “You want to call the number,” she said. A statement.

  “Of course I do. But once we make that connection, he won’t answer it again. The phone will be tossed. We lose any chance of any contact or tracking. I think we keep that one in our back pocket.”

  “Agreed,” she said.

  He was about to point out he didn’t require her approval when she spoke, interrupting his thought.

  “Some interesting leads in Lu Hao’s receipts,” she said, lowering her voice. “I found these in his apartment.” She passed a stack of receipts across the small table.

  He studied the receipts. “Sherpa’s?” he said. “What’s so strange about that? Half the city orders from Sherpa’s.” The Sherpa catalog of restaurants participating in take-out service was in the kitchen drawer of every expat in Shanghai.

  “You have not seen photographs of the ransom demand?”

  He remembered Dulwich sitting across from him in Ban Lung. “The letter. The ransom demand. Yes.”

  “They were delivered by a Sherpa’s delivery man to Allan Marquardt at The Berthold Group. Please notice the chop,” she said.

  Chinese used chops as their personal signatures: small, individualized stamps. Knox had one. He examined the square red stamp at the bottom of the receipts. “They’re identical.”

  “All nine receipts, the same chop,” she said. “The same Sherpa’s delivery man.”

  “Nice catch.”

  “This cannot be coincidence. Impossible odds.”

  “A friend betrayed Lu?” Knox said. “Lu Hao places orders with Sherpa’s so he and a friend who works for them can hang out. Someone gets to the friend?”

  “More likely, the Sherpa’s driver is a new friend.”

  “That’s more interesting,” Knox said. “This guy befriends Lu, gathers enough information to pull off a kidnapping.” He worked it around in his head. Maybe they didn’t think so much alike. “I like it.”

  “We must interview the Sherpa. There were all sorts of take-away food containers in Lu Hao’s apartment. Maybe this man has been back to the apartment since the kidnapping. Maybe he took Lu Hao’s laptop and medication.”

  Knox now recalled Dulwich saying something back in Cambodia about the take-out food carton used as the ransom delivery. He fought his fatigue.

  “Notice the bigger chop on back of the same receipts,” she instructed.

  He flipped over one of the receipts. The chop carried the Sherpa’s logo along with an address. He inspected several more: the same chop and address.

  Grace said, “There are a dozen Sherpa’s dispatch offices throughout the city. Yet all these deliveries issued from the same office.”

  “This driver is assigned there,” Knox said.

  She pursed her lips, staring at Knox.

  “It cannot be a waiguoren asking questions at a local Sherpa’s dispatch,” she said. “Therefore, I must do this.”

  “I’m going with you. If this guy betrayed Lu, who’s to say there aren’t others there working with him? Maybe a bunch of Sherpa’s guys.”

  “I can handle it.”

  “I’ll keep my distance. We will be connected by the iPhones so I can listen in to what’s going on.”

  Grace said, “I must return to the office. I will change clothes-so I may leave the building undetected. I do not wish to be seen trying to lose someone. Not at this early stage. We must be careful.”

  “Agreed.”

  “We’ll meet in one hour,” she said, “outside City Shop on Shaanxi Road.”

  “Take those with you,” he said, pointing to his company’s accounts. “I’d like you to look them over.”

  “As you wish,” she said, gathering the pages.

  9

  3:15 P.M.

  HUANGPU DISTRICT

  SHANGHAI

  Grace’s change of clothes provided her a disguise so that as she left the MW Building her surveillant missed her entirely. To confirm her success, she took her time reaching Huaihai and Shaanxi and then spent five minutes in the aisles of the subterranean City Shop supermarket before ascending back to street level.

  Precisely on time, Knox pulled up on a motor scooter that had seen better days. She accepted a scuffed-up helmet from him and climbed on. Hiding within the helmets assured them of anonymity on the streets.

  “Did you steal this?” she asked.

  “Borrowed. A friend of a friend,” he answered in Shanghainese. “No worries.” The scooter belonged to Fay’s bookkeeper, who had rented it to him for what to him was a song, and to her a fortune. His to keep as long as he needed.

  “Good friend,” she said.

  “You don’t have to sound so surprised.”

  The traffic lanes were jammed, but the bike lane moved well. At a stoplight, Knox lifted his visor and turned toward her.

  “Rehearse what you’re going to say,” Knox instructed. “It must not raise eyebrows.”

  “Eyebrows?”

  “Suspicion.”

  “You believe me so incapable?”

  “You went a little wild in Lu Hao’s apartment. A mirror on the ceiling?”

  “As only children, we Chinese are privileged. Pampered, even. We get what we want, when we want it. The agent expected such demands from this kind of girl. A mistress to a waiguoren. Leave all things Chinese to me, please. I know what I am doing.”

  The slow-moving river of vehicles flowed on. Ten minutes passed. Knox dropped her off.

  “Call me. Now. For the connection.”

  Grace placed the call, strung the white ear buds and microphone around her neck-she needed only its microphone-and headed down the sidewalk toward the cluster of motor scooters and electric bikes bearing orange Sherpa’s crates strapped above the rear fenders.

  “If you do not hear me,” she said, Knox hearing her clearly through his ear buds, “nothing we can do about it.”

  She paused in front of an unmarked storefront with gray, rain-streaked glass.

  Knox waited her out.

  “Ni hao,” he heard Grace say.

  “Ni hao,” came the faint reply of a male voice through the ear buds.

  Speaking rapid Shanghainese, Grace appealed to the manager to help her right a wrong. She claimed to have short-changed one of his drivers and did not want to get the man in trouble. The phone offered enough clarity that Knox could actually hear her proffering a
receipt.

  The manager thanked her and offered to accept the money on behalf of his driver. Grace apologized profusely, citing her own inadequacy and stupidity, while firmly insisting she pay the driver directly herself.

  “It is most unfortunate,” the manager said, speaking more slowly. “Afraid this is not possible. Lin Qiu has had misfortune, I am so sorry to say.”

  “Is he ill?” Grace asked. “Perhaps balancing his debts might cheer him up.”

  “An accident, I am so sorry to say. Badly injured. Many broken bones. Bad luck.”

  “I see.”

  “You will be kind enough to allow me to pass along your generosity.” The manager was no longer asking. His patience had worn thin.

  “I would so like to apologize in person.”

  “Not possible.”

  “And to think just yesterday I saw him riding on Nanjing Lu. It reminded me of the debt, you see?”

  “Yesterday?” the manager inquired.

  Knox was impressed that she attempted to nail down the date of the driver’s injuries.

  “I am afraid that is impossible, cousin,” the manager said. “The accident occurred Thursday.”

  “Thursday?” she repeated.

  “Exactly so. Late afternoon.”

  “But I was so sure.”

  “I think not,” he said.

  “Here, then,” she said. “The debt plus a little something for his troubles.”

  “Generous, indeed.”

  “You will see he receives it?”

  “By my honor, of course. I have someone going that way now. You needn’t trouble yourself with it a moment longer.”

  Grace exited the storefront along with the manager, who leaned over to one of his riders and handed him what had to be the money.

  Knox rocked the scooter off its stand and rode past, making sure Grace had a chance to see him. They met minutes later at the far corner. She climbed onto the back of the bike, saying, “The driver’s wearing a green tam.”

  “Saw him.”

  “Headed west on Xincun.”

  Knox steered the bike around the block.

  “Hurry!” she said. “We’ll lose him!”

  “Seriously? Do you think I’ll lose him?”