The Risk Agent

by Ridley Pearson

  “Sarge wouldn’t do that to me,” he said. “Marquardt wouldn’t do that to Rutherford Risk. It doesn’t make sense.”

  “Please, John. We must find out how Marquardt’s visit to Chongming Island fits into this. I believe this is the key to the kidnapping.”

  “No time,” he said. “The accounts give us all the leverage we need. A bird in the hand. We go with what we have. We’re going to dangle the accounts. I promise that neither Lu Hao nor Danner will suffer for it.”

  “To suffer, one must be alive,” she reminded.

  “We need Randy to make two copies,” he said. “Encrypted copies on thumb drives. You will see to that. When he’s finished, Amy and Randy will leave separately, Randy by the back, Amy out front. We must make it abundantly clear to them that they need to leave the city immediately. No returning to work or their apartments. They must go, now.”

  “The Mongolian,” she said. She, too, had spotted the surveillance.

  “Yes. I’ll handle him. But that’s why they must leave now.”

  “Understood.”

  Five minutes later, with everyone in place and briefed, Knox left by the back door, taking the sublane behind the shop to a dead end where he climbed a wall and up into a tangle of bamboo scaffolding. He moved through a work crew repairing a tile roof to where he had a view of the street, including the Mongolian, who hadn’t moved from his post. Knox searched the street carefully for others, eventually spotting a second Mongolian at some distance.

  The closest Mongolian carried a policeman’s arrogance, almost daring his mark not to spot him. The intimidation factor. Had the Mongolian relocated over the course of the past hour, Knox might have missed him. So why make Knox’s job so easy? What could the man hope to win?

  Knox texted Amy, and a minute later she left the salon’s front door, walking confidently. Neither Mongolian moved.

  Knox sent a second text and Grace left, screening herself with an umbrella. Surprising him, she stood at the curb attempting to hail a taxi, scarce because of the light rain. They had agreed to avoid taxis following the Dulwich setup. But, as it turned out, the ruse was simply to give the Mongolian a good long look at her, as she turned and hurried toward a bus stop. The Mongolian slipped onto his motorcycle.

  Knox sent a third and final text, this time to Randy’s mobile:

  go

  6:45 P.M.

  For Melschoi, staying with a bus was child’s play. The simplicity of the exercise lulled him into complacency-it was like trying to spot an aircraft carrier amid the barges on the Yangtze River.

  The flow of bikes and scooters maintained its usual controlled chaos. Melschoi’s attention remained divided between the bus and his rearview mirror.

  When a helmeted rider closed from behind him, Melschoi slowed, testing. Had this man been watching the hair salon as well?

  The bus gained, pulling away in the flow of vehicles to his left. The helmet behind him kept coming-it did not slow with him as a surveillant would. Melschoi jockeyed for position in order to stay with the bus, knowing the move would also give him a better view of the approaching helmet. He checked his outside mirror: nothing. The rider must have turned or pulled over.

  He happened to glance over to his inside mirror. Too late. The helmeted rider had jumped the sidewalk to pass the slow mass of bikes. The rider reentered the bike lane now only feet from Melschoi, who instinctively swerved right toward the curb, knocking some bikes out of his way. The resulting crash worked against him-he gave the scooter a virtually empty space to navigate. Impressively, the scooter rider leaned heavily to his right and came alongside of Melschoi, avoiding any collision. But Melschoi had the advantage: a slight nudge from him and the scooter would be thrown into the traffic.

  Only then did he catch sight of the construction barricade blocking the bike lane. The rider had distracted him, and had boxed him in. The bike lane was narrowing and being forced into the traffic.

  That split-second of realization cost him. The rider raised his leg like a dog pissing on a hydrant and kicked out.

  Melschoi attempted to block the effort, but lost control as his front wheel tangled with a bike. He went down hard, wheels forward. His front rim caught the curb, catapulting him and the bike airborne. The last thing he saw was a plywood barricade.

  7:35 P.M.

  HONGQIAO DISTRICT

  SHANGHAI

  Amy Xue climbed the concrete back stairs of the International Pearl City market, navigating past the litter abandoned by lunchtime employees. Knox be damned! There was no way she could leave the city without some money. She cursed the trouble Knox brought her, though did not dismiss his warning entirely: she’d entered through the back of the mall. Her jewelry store was one of only two that had stair access.

  She surprised Li-Shu and Mih-Ho, two of her best stringers, at work knotting custom-designed necklaces. Unaccustomed to their boss using the back stairway, they sat up. Amy greeted them and headed directly to the safe.

  Her back to them, Amy said, “Has anyone asked after me?”

  Mih-Ho answered, “Some regular customers, of course.”

  “Strangers?”

  “No.”

  “If they should, you have not seen me. Understand?” The safe opened. She slipped off a necklace and used the two keys hanging from it to open an inner door.

  “Yes,” both girls answered.

  “You will text me immediately if you see anyone suspicious or asking after me. Is that clear?”

  “Yes. Certainly,” Mih-Ho answered for them both. “Is everything okay?”

  “Does it look like everything is okay? I am not kidding around.”

  “So sorry.”

  Neither girl had ever seen their boss in such a fit. Li-Shu caught a glimpse of the stacks of yuan Amy transferred into her purse-forty thousand or more. A fortune!

  “Store hours as normal,” Amy instructed, relocking the safe, and then closing and securing its outer door. “If anyone asks, I am with a client appraising an estate collection. You do not know the location. You will offer to call me, only if necessary, and then report that you were unable to reach me. I am gone for the National Day holiday.”

  “Very well.”

  “Tell the others exactly as I’ve told you.”

  “Of course.”

  “And no wagging tongues.” She directed this at Li-Shu. “This is not a game, Second-cousin’s Daughter. Lips sealed. Pure mind, pure heart. Your rumor-mongering could do me great harm.”

  Li-Shu blushed, embarrassed to be so easily read. “Yes, Auntie. I promise.”

  “Lock this door behind me. Why was it not locked? What kind of fools leave this door unlocked? Lock it and leave it locked!”

  According to the sign, it was never to be locked. Neither woman said a thing.

  Amy slipped out the back of the shop and into the stairway. Hearing the lock turn behind her, she began her descent, her senses on immediate alert. An offensive cologne she hadn’t noticed before now permeated the air. Superstitious by nature, and on edge because of Knox, she hurried down.

  Damn the maintenance men for allowing so many lights to be burned out. Had it been so dark a moment ago? she wondered.

  Rapid footfalls came from behind her. She arrived at the next stairway landing and encountered a man standing there. She gasped involuntarily.

  The man grabbed her wrist, spun her and slapped his hand over her mouth.

  She tried to call out, but only groaned. The shop door is shut and locked, she thought. No one will hear me.

  She reared back to hit him, but was no match. He lifted her off her feet like a rag doll and carried her down the stairs.

  Paralyzed with fright, she fought to keep from passing out. It felt like swimming for the surface when deeply underwater.

  Her feet bounced down the steps. Another man caught her legs.

  They arrived at the ground level to a set of doors. She kicked free, caught the door as it came open and smacked it into the forehead of the man at
her feet. He dropped her. The one behind her let go of her right arm. She elbowed this man in the throat, and fell to the stairs as he dropped her completely. The door to the outside thumped shut. She scrambled to her feet and ran into the building, a grid of aisles and shop stalls.

  Amy knocked shoppers aside, trying to distance herself from her pursuers. She had the advantage of familiarity. She knew these shops and their keepers.

  The two coming behind her split up, taking parallel aisles. They were attempting to box her in. She hurried, dropped to her hands and knees, and crawled into a clothing stall to her left.

  “Cousin!” she called out, moving for the back wall. “Muggers! Thieves! You must help me! The door! The door!”

  The woman shopkeeper did not hesitate. She raced to the back wall, slid some dresses aside and popped open the hidden door to the storage room. Most shops had such hidden doors.

  “Not a word!” Amy said, still crawling. The door clicked shut behind her.

  7:40 P.M.

  At the intersection of aisles the two men met with a silent exchange-they’d lost her. The leader waved his partner forward and together they began a search, stall by stall.

  They tipped over racks, pulled down shelves and cursed at the top of their lungs.

  7:41 P.M.

  Amy heard the shopkeeper cry out, followed by the sound of destruction. A smack silenced the woman. Then a rake of hangers.

  The door to the hidden room broke open.

  Amy struck the first man with the tine of a metal hanger, punching a hole in his chest. He screamed and jumped for her, but she ducked and avoided him, smacking the second man. She ran her nails down his neck and let go.

  Squeezing past and out into the shop, she ran. Just as she reached the first intersection of aisles, she was tackled from behind. Her arm was twisted behind her and she found herself being carried out the back.

  At the moment she was struck by the fresh air, there came a sound like a melon hitting the kitchen floor. Warmth speckled her face.

  Blood.

  The men dropped her. One lay on the concrete, out cold and bleeding.

  A monster with half his face scraped off-a Mongolian, or northerner-brutalized the second man.

  Before she fully came to her feet, someone grabbed her from behind and dragged her into a van. She was thrown inside and her abductor followed in behind her. The door slid shut. The tires squealed.

  A flurry of Shanghainese cursing. The driver said something to the man hovering over her about “going back for him.” More cursing. A rag was stuffed down her throat, followed by duct tape across her face.

  She blacked out.

  7:53 P.M.

  Melschoi dragged the man deeper down the alley, already softening him up by kneeing him repeatedly in the chest. The man bounced away from him like a puppet.

  “Who do you work for?” Melschoi asked in passable Mandarin.

  “Feng Qi.”

  “Yang Cheng’s man?” Melschoi said, holding him tightly.

  “Dui.”

  Melschoi contemplated the angles like a mathematician.

  “Where have they taken her, these men?” The road rash on his face had not had time to scab, leaving him looking like he’d made out with a cheese grater.

  The man’s eyes rolled back in his head. Melschoi was losing him. Melschoi lifted him off the ground and kneed him in the groin, jolting him awake.

  “Where?” Melschoi said, his hand now clenching the man’s throat.

  The man volunteered an address on Moganshan Road, a former warehouse district that had been partially gentrified into art galleries.

  Melschoi knew the area. He leaned in close to the man. “You work for me now. We always have eye on you. You try to run or double-cross me and I will cut off your manhood.”

  Melschoi took the man’s mobile phone one-handed and dialed in his own number in order to save it into the man’s phone.

  “Whatever you hear, you will pass along to me immediately,” Melschoi said. “If I do not hear from you regularly, you will hear from me.” He held up the man’s wallet so he’d be sure to remember Melschoi possessed it.

  He let him fall. “If you try to warn your associates, I come back for you.”

  8:40 P.M.

  Amy Xue vaguely recalled swallowing something bitter. Her limbs were numb. She tried to speak, but her words were slurred. She took a moment to place herself in her surroundings. Two men: one bruised and beaten. Her shirt hung open, exposing her breasts and belly. She could see she wasn’t wearing pants, but couldn’t feel anything. Her wrists were held to a bamboo pole with plastic ties, the pole tied between pipes.

  A man’s low voice spoke Mandarin close to her ear. “The American and the Chinese woman. Names. Mobile numbers. And where to find them.”

  She perceived a need to lie, but surprised herself.

  “John Knox,” she answered. “The woman is called Grace.”

  “We have your phone. Which are their numbers?”

  He held her mobile phone up in front of her, but she couldn’t focus. The room was swirling and fuzzy. She felt physically numb and mentally empty-as if all resistance had been bled out of her. Her tongue had a mind of its own.

  “The top number,” she said, finally seeing the screen, though dimly, “is his.”

  She considered herself such an expert liar-perhaps the best bargainer in all the pearl market. She didn’t know this woman she heard speaking.

  The lighting changed as if a door had come open. A gray hue spread along the ceiling. Whatever it was, it caused the man in front of her to turn around, for which she was extremely grateful.

  Do something, she willed her body. But it was gone. All sensation, gone.

  Melschoi recognized the minivan from the abduction at the pearl market. Amateurs. It was parked in a muddy lot on the back side of a storage building that, according to the sign, was leased to Yang Construction. Idiots.

  Melschoi climbed atop the van and had a look inside. No guns. Three men without so much as a knife between them, he guessed. They’d stripped the woman naked, which offended Melschoi. He thought back to the rape of his dead brother’s wife. He gained a newfound energy.

  He kicked in the door, shouted, “Police!” and headed straight for the one whom he’d seen was in charge. The announcement bought him enough time to cross the space without being attacked. Their expressions changed as Melschoi’s torn face caught the lights. Two of them had just met him an hour earlier.

  He grabbed an electric drill off the wall and swung it by its cord like a chain mace.

  One of the men made for the door. The drill clubbed him at the base of the neck and he fell.

  “Next,” he said in Mandarin, moving inexorably toward a man who hoisted an office chair. Melschoi used the flying drill to break his ribs and then club the side of his head.

  The third produced a knife.

  Melschoi stepped onto the fallen man’s back, using him like a doormat. He swung the drill in a figure eight in front of him.

  “Be certain she is worth it,” he said.

  His opponent circled to his right.

  “Tell your employer he should leave this to others. It is a cemetery for those who stay.” He motioned an invitation toward the open door.

  The man backed out of the warehouse slowly. Moments later, the van started and raced away.

  Melschoi tied up the fallen pair with electric cords. He faced her, having noted the spilled pills and Gatorade on the desk.

  Mandarin did not come naturally when his adrenaline flowed.

  “I can leave you here,” he said. “Maybe they return. Maybe someone else comes along. We both know what they will do with you.” He ran his eyes over her. She stared into space, unblinking. “I know you can hear me. It must be agony, not to be able to move. So, where do I find the foreigner?”

  He started the drill swinging again.

  “I do not know,” she said.

  He trusted her answers, knowing the effects
of Rohypnol.

  “The hair salon,” he said.

  “Computer files.”

  “What kind of files?” he asked.

  “Spreadsheet.”

  “The foreigner has the spreadsheet?” he said.

  She stared off into space; he was losing her.

  “His name?” He stepped closer, knowing she could hear. He raised his voice. “His name?” The words reverberated in the space.

  “John Not.”

  “‘John Not’?”

  He could see the light go out. He closed her eyelids for her. Touched her carotid artery and felt a weak pulse. He picked up her discarded pants and purse from which a pile of money spilled. He took the purse. Cut her down and carried her like a sack over his shoulder to his bike.

  He drove her up the road to a bus stop and sat her down on a bench, covering her lap with her pants and buttoning her shirt. He patted her on the cheek, half-tempted to thank her.

  16

  10:15 P.M.

  HONGQIAO DISTRICT

  SHANGHAI

  “This had better be good!” Allan Marquardt declared, glaring at Grace as she stood at his front door.

  Elegant Gardens, a gated expatriate compound in the Hongqiao District, was home to several dozen three-story McMansions on small, manicured lawns.

  Grace had announced herself at the compound’s main gate, forced to wait to see if Marquardt would admit her. Now, his eyes irreverently inspected her.

  “My apologies, Mr. Marquardt,” she said. “It is urgent.”

  Reluctantly, he showed her inside. A television played somewhere within. A thin and beautiful middle-aged woman in white linen pants and an aquamarine silk top approached. Marquardt introduced his wife, Lois. He introduced Grace as an employee.

  “Tea, please, darling,” Marquardt said.

  He led Grace into a sitting room filled with crowded bookshelves and Asian art. The yin-yang love seat he offered was more than two hundred years old. He sat in a leather chair, facing her from across an Indian elephant-saddle coffee table.