The Risk Agent

by Ridley Pearson

  Knox gunned the scooter, forcing her to grab him around his waist. He weaved through oncoming traffic into the westbound bike lane.

  They caught up to the delivery man and followed the bright orange box strapped to his rear fender. He collected a take-out order from an Indian restaurant on Dagu Lu near the Four Seasons Hotel and headed northeast. His next stop was at a Thai restaurant-a second pickup. They rode behind him for another fifteen minutes. His first delivery was made in Huangpu District, the second in Changning. From there, the driver headed to Putuo District and a crumbling lane neighborhood destined for the wrecking ball.

  Knox slowed, allowing the rider a substantial lead.

  “We’re here,” he said over his shoulder.

  The old lilong’s lanes were narrow and cluttered with rusted bikes and scooters. Houses sagged, bowing to gravity. Roofs were patched together with corrugated tin and blue drop cloths. Such neighborhoods existed as islands bound within the clusters of newly erected apartment towers, the contrast startling.

  Knox and Grace putted down the lane, passing three intersections with even narrower sublanes running off to the right.

  She tapped him on the shoulder.

  Knox braked and backed up using his feet.

  “I saw him turn left,” Grace said.

  A moment later, Knox, too, swung the bike left at the end of the sublane. The delivery man was just pulling to a stop. He left his scooter and entered a rundown stairwell, reappearing briefly on the second-floor balcony.

  “We wait,” Knox said, sneaking a look at his wristwatch.

  Grace absorbed every detail of their surroundings-the hung laundry, the decrepit scooters, the timeworn faces in the open windows. A minute later, the delivery man reappeared. He drove past them, the sound of his engine growing distant.

  Knox and Grace climbed the dingy stairs. Sounds of people coughing wetly behind closed doors mixed with a baby’s crying over a background drone of Chinese soap opera.

  At the top of the stairs, a landing offered three doorways, all hanging open for ventilation. Grace thrust her hand out to block him-this was for a Chinese. She stepped through the first door.

  A woman’s weathered face looked back at Grace, a cigarette dangling from her lower lip. She said nothing, only stared. Grace bowed and left, keeping Knox back and entering the second doorway.

  “Hello, cousin!” she said loudly. “I trust you have just received the money you were due. I desired to see you received it. I am forlorn to see you so indisposed.”

  The man lay on a bamboo mat beneath an open window wearing only pale blue pajama bottoms, his battered head on a folded rag. He had facial bruises and poorly treated lacerations on his arms. The purple and black marks on his bare chest bore the distinct shape of fists.

  Knox stepped in behind her. He shut the door.

  The man asked Knox to reopen the door. He spoke a dialect of Mandarin, not Shanghainese, Knox noted.

  Knox, also speaking Mandarin, said, “I prefer to leave it closed, cousin,” his tones just right: menacing and impressively Chinese.

  The room was spare, a small tube television along the near wall.

  “We come for a simple reason,” Grace said, also in a chilling monotone. She approached the man. “We are simple people with simple needs.” She hooked a three-legged cobbler stool with the toe of her shoe and dragged it alongside the man. She sat down upon it. Every motion was confident and bold.

  “It is extremely important, cousin,” she said, “that you do not lie to us.”

  The delivery man’s eyes ticked between Grace and Knox.

  “I want no trouble,” he said.

  Reciting a proverb, she said, “‘The greater your troubles, the greater is your opportunity to show yourself a worthy person.’”

  “Please.”

  She said, “Lu Hao is my cousin.”

  The man’s already sickly face drained of nearly all color.

  Knox thought, Sometimes I love this work.

  “We know you visited him.” She glanced over her shoulder at Knox, as if she needed his assistance.

  “Seven,” Knox supplied.

  “At least seven times,” Grace repeated. “Seven is a neutral number, is it not? Could be bad for you. Let me see your hand. Let me read your lifeline.”

  She took hold of the unwilling man’s forearm. He lacked the strength to stop her.

  She held his hand in both of hers, secured by the thumb in her left, and his pinky finger in her right. She lowered her voice to a whisper.

  “This line is bad,” she said, tracing his palm with her red fingernail. She drove the nail down intentionally hard. He grimaced as tiny beads of sweat sprouted on his upper lip and forehead. He tried to withdraw his hand but Grace only tightened her grip, spreading his fingers farther apart.

  He grimaced.

  “You will please tell me where we can find Lu Hao,” she said calmly.

  His eyes darted between Grace and Knox, measuring them.

  Knox said, “I am not sure he heard you. Time is running short.”

  Grace spread his fingers farther.

  “Lu Hao! Friend!” the man said sharply.

  “What kind of friend drops off a ransom demand?” Grace asked.

  The man’s lips pursed gray.

  “We have you on security camera,” Knox lied. “Sherpa delivery to The Berthold Group.”

  “His location,” Grace said. “Think clearly before you answer.” She maintained the outward pressure on his fingers.

  I do not open food container before I deliver,” the man complained. “I pick up. I deliver. How am I supposed to know what lies inside?”

  Grace snapped his finger, breaking the knuckle. He screamed. The finger hung like a broken twig. She seized his ring finger.

  “Let us try again,” she said in an eerily calm voice. “Where is Lu Hao?”

  “Please. I beg you-”

  She threatened this finger.

  The man spit out an address so fast it was indiscernible.

  Knox did not trust it. A delivery man would not be given the hostages’ location. He was just trying to stop Grace from hurting him.

  Grace shot him an inquisitive look. Knox shook his head.

  “Slowly, now,” she said. “Speak clearly, so I can understand. But know this: you lie to me-to us-and your family will mourn your ignorance.” Grace applied pressure to his finger.

  The man carefully repeated the address in the Xinjingzhen neighborhood.

  “You lie,” she said.

  “By the gods, I speak the truth!” He repeated the address twice more.

  Grace held the man’s hand secure. She spoke English to Knox. “It is not possible the ransom delivery man would know the location of the hostages. The intellectual would keep these pieces very much apart.”

  “Agreed. And Xinjingzhen is at least thirty minutes from here. He’s trying to buy himself time to disappear.”

  “He cannot disappear with me by his side holding his hand,” Grace said, also in English. “Call me once you arrive at this place. We will get to the truth. If he should be testing our resolve, I will test back.”

  Knox did not like the idea of leaving her alone, even with her so firmly in control. “Find out who did this to him. His beating.”

  She turned and looked into the man’s terrified eyes. Holding fast to his fingers, she spoke Mandarin. “We do not take kindly to old news. ‘A rat who gnaws at a cat’s tail invites destruction.’”

  “What rat? I tell the truth!”

  “Then tell me who did this to you. You did not fall off your scooter.”

  “But I did!” he proclaimed, showing her the lacerations on his wrists and forearms.

  “Who?” she repeated.

  “They ambushed me!” he groaned. “Filthy waiguoren!”

  “Waiguoren like him,” she asked, pointing at Knox.

  “No. A northerner, cousin. Autonomous region, perhaps. North of that for all I know. The filthy invaders.”


  “Mongolians,” Grace said in English, glancing over her shoulder at Knox.

  “You gave the Mongolians this same address you have given us,” she said in Mandarin.

  “I dare not lie,” the man said. “It is true. Do not punish me!” he cried out to Grace. “I did only what any man would do!”

  “The hostages will be long gone,” Knox said in English, his disappointment obvious. “Providing they’re still alive.”

  Grace flushed behind anger. “I would like to break every last finger,” she said, not letting go of the man’s hand.

  She said threateningly, “Who took Lu Hao? Who are these people who took my cousin? These people to whom you betrayed my cousin?”

  “Do I know one face from another? I tell the waiguoren the same thing! I am told to pick up and deliver a meal. I pick it up. I deliver it. A face is a face, nothing more.”

  “You lie poorly,” Knox said in perfect Mandarin. “You knew this man, Lu Hao. You are no simple delivery man.”

  “How did the northerners find you?” Grace challenged.

  “No idea! They appeared after delivery to The Berthold Group. Arrive on all sides out of nowhere.”

  Grace shot Knox a look: the northerners had been watching the MW Building?

  “I gave you the address,” the man said. “I was to report there. This is all I know.” He cowered.

  “Who are your partners?” Knox asked. “You mean to lie to us again?”

  “Lu Hao, Lu Hao, Lu Hao,” the man chanted, dismayed. He sounded as if he was calling for his help.

  “Your partners?” Grace hollered.

  The man trembled with fear and passed out.

  Knox took the man by the chin and shook him. “Who knows? He could be out awhile.”

  “If we leave here, we will never see him again,” she said.

  “If we stay,” Knox said, “who knows what trouble the neighbors will bring us? He was pretty loud.”

  “I should have gagged him.” All business.

  Remind me to stay on your good side, he thought. “We have to leave now,” he said.

  “There is more he can tell us. I can feel it.”

  “These others-Mongolians?-are out in front of us,” he said. “I hate playing catch up.”

  She let go of the man’s arm. It bounced lifelessly against the bed.

  “The way you handled yourself,” she said. “You are part Chinese, you know?” she said.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  6:45 P.M.

  CHANGNING DISTRICT

  SHANGHAI

  Knox took precautions to identify motorized surveillance-executing four consecutive right turns; slowing down, speeding up; reversing directions. Grace kept a lookout as well.

  “Do you have him?” she asked, leaning her chin onto Knox’s shoulder, their helmets bumping. “Black shirt? Shaved head.”

  “Yes. I haven’t seen anyone with him.” Knox shouted above the roar.

  “No.”

  “Doesn’t that seem a little odd?” Vehicular surveillance nearly always came in pairs or trios.

  “Uncommon,” she said. “Yes. Maybe their numbers are small.”

  “About to get smaller. Can you drive one of these?” he asked.

  “Of course.”

  “Hang on!” He felt her hold to him tightly. He abruptly directed the scooter down the next lane. He turned right at the first sublane, and leaned over, allowing Grace to grab the scooter’s left hand-grip. Knox then slipped off the seat and his shoes met the concrete. He ran with the momentum to keep from falling.

  The scooter wobbled but Grace gained control. She continued down the sublane. Knox hid in a doorway, peering out. Breathing hard. Adrenaline running hot.

  An older Chinese couple passed, arms hooked, strolling down the lilong’s main lane.

  Grace and the scooter disappeared to his right.

  The idling bubble of a small-cc motorcycle engine grew louder. Closer. Knox ducked back into the doorway. He reached for a bamboo broom as the scooter driver goosed the throttle to make the turn.

  The man was big, with sharp, high cheekbones. Another Mongolian?

  Knox lunged and drove the broom handle through the front wheel. He slapped his hand over the rider’s and gunned the throttle. The bike lifted over its front wheel. The helmetless driver sailed over the handlebars and smashed down onto the concrete, the bike slamming on top of him.

  Knox sprang, kicking the bike out of the way. He removed a Russian Makarov 9×18mm from the man’s lower back. Knox took the man’s mobile phone, noting it was the same make and model-the same color!-as the man’s he’d attacked in Lu Hao’s apartment stairwell.

  He pulled the man free, drove his knee into his groin and watched the man recoil. He found a Resident Identity Card and some yuan in the front pocket of the man’s jeans. He kept it.

  “Where is the hostage?” Knox spoke slowly in Mandarin. “Where is Lu Hao?”

  The vacancy in the man’s eyes told Knox he either didn’t understand Mandarin, or was ignorant of the information.

  He struck him hard in the face.

  “Lu Hao!”

  The man spoke, and this time there was no question: not Russian, but Mongolian.

  “Who the fuck are you?” Knox said in English.

  “Fuck you,” the man returned in English.

  The thwap of the man’s skull smacking concrete was slightly sickening. He was out cold.

  Knox checked the man’s hands for calluses-right-handed. He broke the man’s right elbow across his knee.

  He was interrupted by an old woman’s shouts of distress. Knox looked up, his temper boiling. Looked right into a surveillance camera high on the building’s corner.

  The scooter reappeared, Grace’s timing, impeccable.

  Two Mongolians, he thought, wondering, what the hell. Private muscle? For whom? Berthold’s construction competitors? Foreign agents? Chinese cops?

  The bike sped off, Knox wrapping his arms around Grace’s tiny waist.

  7:25 P.M.

  XINJINGZHEN NEIGHBORHOOD

  SHANGHAI

  Grace steered the scooter in a U-turn across the wide, empty road and returned, having driven past the address supplied by the Sherpa delivery man. The scooter’s light found the light industrial compound’s entrance. Blocked by a padlocked steel cable, the interior roadbed was packed dirt, litter-strewn and weed-infested. It led to a group of six flat-roofed concrete-block buildings that looked decades old but had been built just five years earlier.

  The cable was there to stop cars and trucks. Grace slipped the scooter past a stanchion and into the compound. Building 3’s north side looked out on a field of weeds and heaps of rusted junk. She killed the engine, and together she and Knox listened, looked and learned.

  Knox double-checked the designation: 3-B. He stacked some cinder blocks and climbed up to have a look through a gray glass window.

  The interior space was dark, but looked empty. As Grace parked the scooter, Knox found a length of rusty wire and hooked it through the door’s gap and tripped open the lock’s tang. They were inside.

  A typical warehouse space with floor-to-ceiling metal posts. In the near corner were three plastic lawn chairs and some overturned cardboard boxes along with empty pizza boxes, beer and soda cans.

  Grace stepped forward, but Knox blocked her advance. He took photos using the iPhone’s flash.

  Wads of discarded duct tape lay on the concrete floor by a wooden chair. Knox pointed to the chair and held up a single finger, eager for quiet until they’d cleared the space.

  He hand-motioned Grace to the left. He circled around the right. They checked nooks and corners.

  “Clear,” she said softly.

  “Here, too,” Knox said.

  They returned to the area by the door, where a balled-up rag lay among the duct tape.

  “One chair,” Knox said, making his point again.

  “So they divided up,” she said.

 
“Yeah,” he said, gut-punched. They both understood the other possibility.

  “We work the evidence,” he said. “You take the food and those lawn chairs. I’ll stay here, on this.”

  “Sure,” she said, sensing his anxiety over having possibly lost Danner.

  As she worked behind him, Knox tried to make sense of the scene, to see people in the space instead of a space void of people. He put Lu Hao in the chair, bound by duct tape-confirmed by sticky adhesive on the front legs at ankle height and on both arm rests. He noted the stains and the sour smell, suggesting the hostage had urinated, soiling himself. Then he spotted a shallow plastic tub leaning against the wall-a makeshift bedpan. He put the hostage-takers in the lawn chairs, smoking and eating and killing time. Squatting, he moved like a frog around the chair, then stopped.

  What he saw caused him to reassess. Not Lu Hao in the chair but Danner. Alongside the leg of the chair were three straight-line, black smudges: Danner’s message-three hostage-takers. Knox felt a spasm of release in his chest.

  “It wasn’t Lu,” he said. “It was Danner. In the chair. Three men covering him.”

  “Three. Yes. That is what I have got,” she confirmed. “One a smoker. Another, left-handed and a vegetarian. The third, nervous and fidgety.”

  “Seriously?”

  She glared at him. “That chair,” she said pointing. “Cigarette ash and butts. Center chair: beer can on left side, not the right-left-handed. The pizza there is no meat, only vegetables-vegetarian. Last chair, napkin shredded, folded, pieces rolled up and tied in small knots. Nervous disposition.”

  “I’ll take your word,” he muttered.

  He didn’t need DNA results. He felt confident it had been Danner in the chair. He studied it more carefully, using a pencil light, paying special attention to where the man’s hands had been taped. It took a different angle to see the grooves pressed into the wood of the arm.

  “The number ‘forty-four’ mean anything to you?” Knox asked. He tried to get a photograph of it, but failed.

  Grace looked over, but didn’t speak.

  “How about forty-one?”

  Grace stepped closer, gravely. “Forty-four?” she inquired.

  Knox pointed out the impressions in the armrest’s wood.

  “What is it?” he asked.