The Risk Agent

by Ridley Pearson

  “Can do. I won’t let him be taken,” Knox stated.

  “Settle down,” Primer said. “We’ve managed a lot worse than this.”

  “It was intended for me. The crash.”

  “Knowledge or speculation?”

  “I spotted an adversary in the area. Both drivers fled the scene.”

  “Good to know. Then I’d keep my head down if I was you.”

  “I want him out of there.” He paused. “I need the ransom money.”

  “I said: settle down. This is what we do. Let us do it. You handle your end. The accounts?”

  “A work in progress.”

  “And is there progress?”

  It struck Knox that this was Primer’s focus. “Guangzhou?” Knox said. He wondered if Primer would authorize a quarter million dollars in cash to be picked up by a relative stranger.

  “That drop required Dulwich. We’ll figure something out. Not to worry.”

  “Worry? We’ve got two days! Less, now. I can get him on a plane. A boat.”

  “You handle the accounts. The exchange.”

  “There won’t be an exchange without that money!”

  “Then extraction. We’ve got Dulwich covered.”

  Sure you do, Knox thought, wondering how expendable Dulwich was to a man like Brian Primer.

  “Keep this phone close.” The line went dead.

  Knox had reached the street corner. Looking left, he saw the blockish white buildings of Huashan Hospital. In the first few hours of care it would be difficult to get to Dulwich. But after that…

  He kept vigil, waiting for the arrival of police that never came. An hour passed. Primer was right: Dulwich’s “accident” was being treated as just another civilian casualty.

  For how long remained the question.

  6:20 P.M.

  CHANGNING DISTRICT

  SHANGHAI

  “The wheels are coming off this thing,” he told Grace, having returned to the safe house apartment. “We have to get Sarge out of there. Priority one.”

  “The company will take care of Mr. Dulwich.”

  “The company will pretend he doesn’t exist.”

  “Not Mr. Primer.”

  “Believe it,” Knox said. “In truth, Sarge probably doesn’t exist. He’s probably an independent contractor, like you. Like me, now. Nowhere on their payroll despite his working there. It’s an insidious arrangement set up exactly for moments like this.”

  “Like Lu Hao,” she said solemnly.

  “Yes. Like that,” he agreed. “It all depends how good his documentation is. There are ways.”

  “You cannot possibly be considering removing him from hospital.”

  “Can’t I?”

  “We cannot care for him! The way you described his condition-”

  “Don’t get your panties in a knot.”

  “Excuse me?”

  He didn’t translate it for her. “At some point they’ll determine he’s an American. His teeth-dental work-will tell them that much. X rays. Tattoos. There are ways.”

  “We must focus on Lu Hao and Mr. Danner.”

  “Sarge was the source for the ransom money.” He relived their conversation in the wet market, including the pickup in Guangzhou. A pickup that would not happen. “No Sarge, no ransom drop.”

  Grace hesitated before speaking. “Extraction.”

  “Right,” he said. “As if.”

  He looked over at her. She needed sleep. They both needed food.

  “Okay. One step at a time,” he said. “Maybe the frame has Lu’s files. Maybe the numbers tell us something we don’t know.” He no longer believed it. He suddenly saw them instead as a means to an end. “We’re looking at this wrong.”

  “How so?”

  “Everyone seems to want Lu’s accounts, right?”

  “It is possible,” she said. “Yes.”

  “So whoever possesses his files has power over the others. Power means leverage.”

  “The numbers always reveal more than anyone suspects,” said the forensic accountant.

  Knox yawned. “You’re missing the point.”

  “Which is?” she said angrily.

  “We need to raise money in order to pay the ransom.”

  “I am aware of that predicament.”

  “So now maybe we have something to sell,” Knox said.

  Twenty minutes later, he sat in a wheelchair outside a changing room in a boutique clothing store.

  “Do you know the expression, ‘Take no prisoners’?” he asked, as Grace tried on clothes on the other side of a black silk curtain. He could see her bare feet. The petite woman who ran the store was in the front dealing with a customer.

  “I have heard it before.”

  “Tie up every loose end.”

  “Yes,” she said, impatient with him.

  “That’s why the change of clothes for both of us, and my condition.” His hands on the wheelchair’s wheels. “In case any of those cops are still watching the building.”

  “The police,” she said.

  “We don’t know who they are. State Security? Private muscle?”

  Grace drew back the curtain. She wore a gray business suit with black pinstripes, and a sheer white blouse unbuttoned to show a good amount of skin. She looked older. She carried a tote over her shoulder. Just right, Knox thought: slightly slutty.

  She said, “How do you know those men who attacked us are not because of this woman you slept with?”

  They both knew Grace’s carelessness had led Yang’s men to them in the alley, but he kept his mouth shut.

  “How do you know Lu Hao isn’t a blackmailer?” Knox said. “That he wasn’t blackmailing some Beijing minister who then sicced the Mongolians on him to clean up loose ends?”

  She studied him. Disappointment and disdain mixed with a hint of curiosity.

  “Not Lu Hao,” she said.

  Knox rode in the wheelchair head down, a blanket across his lap. He wore a woven bamboo hat and a collarless blue cotton jacket typical of retirees, his shoulders hunched, his head drooped against a lightly falling rain. Wheelchairs were rarely seen on the streets of Shanghai. Wherever Shanghai’s elderly or handicapped were kept, it wasn’t on the busy sidewalks. But Knox fit the mold for those that were occasionally seen-old and decrepit, sad testimonies to the ravages of age.

  Guiding him was an upscale office worker, a woman with a nice figure wearing high heels. She pushed the chair with one hand, and with the other clutched her purse over her head against the rain.

  Grace said, “Pushing this is a lot more difficult than it looks.”

  Knox barely heard her. For the past several hours he’d brooded over the loss of Dulwich, intent on rescuing him from the hospital. He wished he’d secured the man’s iPhone and its ability to track the Mongolian.

  Now, less than thirty yards from Lu Hao’s apartment building, Knox peered out from under the hat, looking for signs of the police and surveillants they’d encountered their last time here. They reached the entrance to Lu Hao’s apartment building and Grace backed him through the door.

  Inside, they acted quickly, having talked through it. For the sake of any cameras, Grace pushed Knox and the wheelchair into the elevator. She reached in and touched “7.”

  Then she headed toward the stairs, leaving him behind.

  Down the hall she found a door marked BUILDING SUPERVISOR in both English and Mandarin. She descended the stairs into a dank-smelling but well-lit basement. The seconds ticked off in her head.

  Knox’s former assault of the Mongolian in the stairway meant the police had questioned the supervisor, residents and the real estate agent. Grace needed to take the supervisor’s attention off her face, despite her attempts to disguise herself. She paused on a landing, bent down and tore her skirt. She did the same to her blouse, popping buttons and revealing her bra. She wet her finger and smeared her eye shadow. Hyperventilating, she approached the partially opened door that discharged cigarette smoke and the str
ains of a Chinese television melodrama. She knocked loudly and pushed inside without invitation.

  “Help me!” she cried out in Mandarin.

  Knox’s plan was designed to work no matter what the manager’s gender. By exposing herself, there wasn’t a man alive who wouldn’t jump to his feet to come to her aid; and the implication of sexual assault would bring sympathy from any woman. If a married couple-often the case for building supervisors-Grace would have her work cut out for her.

  It was a married couple.

  Early forties. He, with thinning hair and a bad complexion, all skin and bones; she, in a blue jumpsuit, her face oily, her hair clumped and pulled back in a bun.

  Grace entered a small space, every inch used efficiently. A narrow futon, two stools with an improvised table between them. A small cathode-ray color television flickered between neat stacks of clothing on a shelf. To her right, another smaller black-and-white television sat next to two VCRs. Exactly as Knox had described.

  She plopped down on the empty bed without invitation.

  “He…I…he tried to…” She pleaded with her eyes to the woman. “Please.”

  She saw the gravity register on the man’s face. Unless he could quickly control the story, he would be out on the street looking for work. There had already been one assault in his building in the past few days. Another would be the end of him.

  “Tea, my dear,” the woman said, shooting a look at her husband telling him to do something. The kitchen was behind a maroon blanket. With the clatter of pots and pans, Grace went to work.

  She reached for the perplexed building superintendent. To her relief, he reached back for her.

  6:40 P.M.

  Seven Swans-Lu Hao’s apartment.

  Knox, wearing the hat to screen his face from the security cameras, used his knuckle to ring the doorbell, avoiding fingerprints. He kept watch on the glass peephole in the center of the door. As it briefly flashed dark-indicating its light source was blocked-Knox kicked open the door, taking the doorjamb with it.

  As it swung open, he hit it again with a shoulder, making sure to crush the man caught behind it. He took two great strides into the center of the room, dispatching a greasy punk who rose up from the couch, and a second, sturdier kid who was apparently slow off the mark. Neither was unconscious, but they’d be wishing they were for the next several minutes.

  Knox pivoted on his right heel. The man behind the door held up his hands in resignation.

  He wasted no time getting into Lu Hao’s bedroom. He grabbed the digital frame.

  In and out of the apartment in less than a minute, he rode the elevator down, willing it to fall faster.

  6:42 P.M.

  Grace took the supervisor’s hands, allowing him to help her up from the bed. As she came to her feet, she spun him and threw a chokehold, silencing him until he went slack and unconscious-the man’s wife less than ten feet away. Grace eased him to the floor.

  She hit Eject on both VCRs and they discharged their cassettes. They could not afford to be identified; Knox had been adamant about this. She took these as well as other cartridges from a neatly ordered stack and filled the tote.

  The wife came from around the curtain, pulled by the sound. As her face filled with horror, Grace slapped a hand over her mouth from behind.

  “He is fine. You do not move. No police. This never happened.”

  Knox’s plan counted on the couple not wanting another report against them.

  “The problem upstairs was drunken tenants. The usual youngsters. Do you understand?”

  The woman first shook her head, then nodded, tears running onto Grace’s hand.

  “I regret the intrusion,” Grace said. “Please accept my apologies.”

  She was back up the stairs in a matter of seconds.

  6:44 P.M.

  Knox wheeled himself out of the elevator, counting down the seconds. He would give her another minute, no more; then, he would go after her.

  Grace arrived with her shirttails crossed and tucked in at the waist, her torn skirt rotated so that the slit ran all the way up her leg revealing the thin black band of her bikini underwear. She said nothing, only nodded at him before pushing his chair out the doors.

  Knox reached over and deposited the digital picture frame and power supply into her bag.

  Two blocks later, an empty wheelchair and a damp blanket collecting rain won the attention of the occasional pedestrian. It looked sad, as if it held a disheartening story.

  Fifteen minutes later, it was gone.

  An hour later, it had already been resold, twice.

  THURSDAY

  September 30

  1 day until the ransom

  15

  4:00 A.M.

  HUASHAN HOSPITAL

  SHANGHAI

  “Can you hear me?” The rugged-faced man standing by the hospital bed cupped his hand, shielding the patient’s eyes from the overhead tube lighting. “My name is Kozlowski. U.S. Consulate.”

  David Dulwich looked around the hospital room without moving his head or neck, which was held in a foam collar. He wanted a way out. There were slings and weights and pulleys attached to him; he felt stretched.

  “You happen to be in luck,” Kozlowski said, a little too cheerily. “Believe it or not, you have Formula One racing to thank for it. Ten years ago, the city wanted to bring in Formula One for a sanctified event. But event organizers require the availability of top-shelf Western medicine before authorizing an event. The result is this,” he said, sweeping his hand, “umpteen millions of dollars spent on a state-of-the-art, fully staffed hospital ward for expats. You, my friend, are the beneficiary. From what I’m told you’re lucky to be alive. If you’d been wearing a seatbelt, maybe you’d have walked away from it, but then again show me one Shanghai cab in which you can find the back-seat seatbelts. Am I right?”

  He walked slowly around the bed. “In case you’re wondering: it was the pins in your ankle that stamped you ‘Made in U.S.A.’ Though don’t ask me how.”

  In a convincing Australian accent, Dulwich said, “They got the work right, mate, but not my country of origin. I’m Aussie. And it’s ‘sanctioned event,’ not ‘sanctified.’”

  Kozlowski didn’t look like a man who tolerated correction. “There was a time in my career when a guy like you would have confused me, or maybe even fooled me completely.” Kozlowski held up a small white 4 × 6 card with boxes across the top. Each box contained a fingerprint.

  “The Australian passport is good,” Kozlowski continued. “Very good. Too good. Maybe even authentic. That tells me more than you want, believe me.”

  Kozlowski moved to the end of the bed, hoping for eye contact. Dulwich wouldn’t give him any.

  “Both drivers walked. One car was stolen. The nephew of the registered cabbie drove the taxi. On the outside, it looks like a U.S. citizen in the wrong place at the wrong time. But the passport; and iPhone the likes of which my tech guys have never seen; a plane ticket from Hong Kong booked an hour before takeoff yesterday morning; a first-class train ticket to Guangzhou?”

  “Yesterday?” Dulwich said, trying to sit up. No use. “The date?”

  “It’s September thirtieth.” Kozlowski pulled up a chair. “Mean something to you?”

  “I never like losing track of time.”

  “By the end of the day I’ll have confirmed your identity. I’m not going to get all Law and Order on you and tell you you’re better off talking to me now than later. We both know that’s bullshit. You’re better off not talking to me at all. You’re better off walking the hell out of here when no one’s looking. But in your condition, I don’t think that’s even possible. Maybe you could crawl. Honestly, I probably don’t want to know why you’re here. You smack of a ton of paperwork just waiting to happen.”

  Dulwich winced painfully again as he tried to sit up.

  “There are plenty of individuals like you in this city. Don’t think you’re all that special. Trouble is, Americans like you
are my responsibility. I’m supposed to keep your nose clean. Or at least mop up the snot after it’s spilled. Maybe you’re here stealing somebody else’s secrets, keeping track of his sins, looking for a missing person, or trying to lead a revolution. I don’t care. I need you gone. There is only one way you can gain my favor.” Kozlowski withdrew and unfolded some photocopies. He held the first in front of Dulwich’s face.

  “No,” Dulwich croaked out, seeing a photo of Lu Hao.

  “Strike one. Him?” Kozlowski said, producing a second photo from under the first. Clete Danner.

  Dulwich swallowed dryly. “No.”

  The medication belied his intentions.

  Kozlowski noted the twitch, but said, “Strike two.” He proffered the third of three: a security photo of a Chinese man. “And?”

  Dulwich said, “He looks nasty, mate.”

  “You think you’re going to outsmart the Chinese?” Kozlowski asked. “They’re all over this.”

  “All over what?”

  “Really?”

  Dulwich had the twitch under control, giving away nothing. He was thinking: the Iron Hand. The missing cameraman. Kozlowski could easily be part of that investigation, could easily believe Dulwich was involved in that investigation.

  “You’d better have some serious support in play, friend. Because from what the doctors tell me, you’re not going anywhere soon. You’re a sitting duck here-that’s an American expression, but I think you’ll figure it out. If you want help-protection, maybe a transfer, that’s all there for the asking. If there’s a bone in your body that isn’t broken, they haven’t found it.” He waited. “Nothing? Seriously?” Kozlowski took a deep breath and stepped back. “Enjoy Chinese prison. I hope you like rice.”

  9:20 A.M.

  CHANGNING DISTRICT

  Knox and Grace spent the night working in the safe house. Grace reviewed Berthold’s financials with special attention given to Marquardt’s travel expensing, while security video of Lu Hao’s apartment building ran in the background. If the Mongolians had a prior relationship with Lu, maybe they’d be seen. Or if the kidnappers had returned for Lu Hao’s medication and laptop, perhaps they could be identified.