by Ed Kovacs
But before Wheeler could dial, his cell phone rang. He looked over to Rice, who nodded. “Go ahead,” he said into the phone.
“Where are you?” came Hernandez's voice.
Rice pressed her cell closer to her ear as she exchanged a quick look with Wheeler.
“I'm safe for now—let's leave it at that,” said Wheeler, doing a good job to sound nervous. “Which is more than I can say for my partner—the redhead. My control pumped three slugs into her while I was in the next room. And that's what I'll get if they find me. I want to meet, and I mean right now.”
“Who’s your control?” asked Hernandez.
“No names, no info until we have a deal. You sell me on a plan to get my butt safely out of here, and I'll sing the Hallelujah Chorus for you.”
There was a pause on Hernandez's end. “I'll send you a text in thirty minutes.”
###
The business part of their conversation about allowing her family's wines to be imported duty-free into China lasted only as long as it took Nicole Grant and Zhao Yiren to duck out of the reception in the Island Ballroom and ride the elevator up to his condo. He apologized for the heavy security presence and wrote it off as a sign of the times. Having now spent the last twenty minutes with him, she realized the tai tais had been right—the man dripped machismo.
Manly or not, Zhao was drunk. He concealed it well, but Grant picked up some of the telltale signs: glassy eyes, occasional slurred speech, and diminished motor coordination. The Chinese were legendary drinkers—it was a matter of great pride—and she hoped he was a happy drunk. As they rode the elevator she used the excuse of needing a breath mint to root around in her purse and surreptitiously check her tablet computer. The KCS tracking site indicating the location of her laptop was up and running. She then minimized the tracking page.
When they entered his condo it was crowded with more security people. “It looks like a bodyguard convention in here,” he cracked.
“You must be terribly important,” she teased.
“Think about it,” he said slurring his words slightly. “It's like being in prison.”
“But such a nice prison,” she said, looking around the handsomely furnished condo, much of it with an Art Deco and Machine Age design theme. A tall, muscular Chinese man in his early thirties approached them.
“Good evening, sir.”
“Ariana, this is Security Chief Lin, head of my personal protection detail.” As soon as he made the introduction, Zhao took a cell call and faced away from the security check.
“Nice to meet you Chief Lin.” The man looked like a stone killer to Grant. Under his fake smile hid the cold face of a butcher. She actually felt a shiver as he came near. A three-inch scar ran across his chin, and his nose had been broken so many times it would never look right again. His black eyes were a dead pool of muted hate. She instantly disliked him, an uncommon reaction for her.
“I'm sorry, miss, but would you be offended if I looked into your bag?”
It sounded like a request on the surface, but it wasn't, it was an order. “Perhaps embarrassed, but not offended,” she said, offering her fake Celine bag. She forced herself to keep smiling, even though she worried that if he kept her electronics, then this was all for nothing.
After what seemed like an eternity of going through her things, he held up the tablet. He turned it over in his large hands whose knuckles bore many scars. He tapped the screen, bringing it to life, and was presented with the unlock pattern. Surely he wouldn't ask her to unlock the device.
“Would you mind unlocking this for me?” he asked without smiling. An unfriendly arrogance permeated his demeanor.
Nicole blinked. She felt like she was about to come unglued. She hadn't imagined the contents of her tablet would be checked by security. It would only take seconds to learn it belonged to Nicole Grant, the woman they wanted to kill. After everything she'd been through today, to just waltz in and announce who she really was, via her tablet, well, could she have made it any easier for them? She could only think to somehow make light of the situation. “Do you need to send an e-mail?” she joked.
He held the tablet tightly and looked at her more closely, as if trying to see something under her surface. “No, I just have to check.”
He was pushing. That's the kind of man he was, someone who pushed others around. She wouldn't let him do it to her. “Chief Lin, you have confirmed I have a functioning tablet. If you want to examine the contents, my private information, I have to say 'no.'” She said it firmly, without a smile. She looked to Zhao and tapped him on the shoulder. He turned to her and ended the cell call. “Perhaps it was a mistake to come up here, darling,” she said to Zhao.
She reached for her purse, but Lin held on to it. “I will hold your purse for you, miss.”
“No you won't, I'll be leaving now.” Grant flashed a challenging look.
Impatient, Zhao came to the rescue, looking irritated. “Thank you Chief Lin, that will be all.”
Lin bowed slightly, returned the tablet to her purse, and handed the bag back to her. His thin smile made her skin crawl.
“Forgive them, my security people are on edge. Want to escape with me?” whispered Zhao, as he led her across the room, deeper into the condo.
“To where?” said Grant, trying to shift back into a relaxed, flirtatious state. Inside, she felt like a dishrag that had just been wrung out.
“A quiet place in the back with a full bar. We'll be able to talk privately there.”
“Could you give me a quick tour first? I love your interior design.”
Zhao hid his impatience, but Nicole had her own agenda, she needed to find her laptop. “There's not that much to see,” he protested.
She let him lead and kept her fake Celine bag on the side away from him so she could sneak peeks at her tablet screen checking the location arrow indicator. After looking into a few rooms they entered the huge soundproofed master bedroom area. She stole a glance into her purse. My laptop is in this room! She barely noticed as Zhao closed and locked the bedroom door behind them.
“Such a wonderful flat. Do you spend much time here?” she asked as her eyes flitted around the room, searching.
“Not as much as I'd like. Champagne?” He crossed to the sitting area where he'd earlier sat with General Ma.
“Only if you'll join me,” she said. She followed him and then almost lost her breath as she neared two antique French lounge chairs facing each other. Her laptop leaned against an attaché case sitting on the floor next to one of the chairs.
He moved to the small bar with his back to her.
She quickly sat down. She had two options to power up her laptop, both supplied by Jaffir: a standard power cord, or an external battery pack. The battery pack could only provide power to her laptop for a short time, so Nicole glanced around for an electrical outlet to use with the power cord.
“Champagne is one of my bad habits,” said Zhao, selecting two clean champagne flutes from a shelf.
“Champagne is a good habit,” she said, keeping the conversation going as she scanned the area for a three-holed British-style electrical socket. Crap, she didn't see a socket and couldn't very well get on her hands and knees to go looking for one. So she retrieved the external battery pack from her purse.
But then Zhao turned around with a huge smile and looked at her. “You're right, it's a good habit.” He winked, and then turned back to his task.
Good thing he was drunk. From a distance a battery pack could be mistaken for a cell phone, but he didn't seem to notice one way or the other. A loud pop startled her as the cork shot into the air and hit the ceiling, but then she leaned over and plugged the battery pack into her laptop. She tucked it out of sight between the computer and the attaché case and sat up just as he turned around holding two glasses of bubbly.
Her heart raced, her throat constricted, but she forced a smile, reached out to take the champagne and managed to say, “Grazie.”
“To smart,
funny, sexy, beautiful blondes.” They clinked glasses.
“But darling, what if I wasn't a real blonde?”
“Then I'd say you were the same as most of the other 'blondes' I've known.” Zhao stood there and burst out laughing.
His laughter put her immediately at ease. Okay, he's a happy drunk. With a rakish swagger he drained his entire glass, then reached out, took her hand and pulled gently so she stood up. Using an unforced smoothness he swept her into his arms and they kissed. She went along with his passion, at least for now. All she needed was a minute or two on her tablet computer and she could download the Holy Grail–the keys for the files hidden on the Darknet. She broke off the kiss and pushed slightly away, grabbing her purse. “I have to freshen up. I'll be right back.”
She pressed her fingers to his lips. He bit them playfully. A happy, horny drunk, she thought, correcting herself. As she started to move away, he grabbed her and threw her onto the bed. He was all over her and strong as a bull. She was at a loss for what to do.
The foreplay was hot and heavy when she rolled on top of him. Her purse was above his head on the pillows, out of his sight. Without thinking, she sensuously rubbed her body over his. She snaked one hand into her purse and removed her tablet computer. The battery pack she'd connected to her laptop was designed to charge smaller electronic devices, not big units like hers, and might only provide ten minutes of power. Meaning she had to act fast.
She fought her own arousal—maybe from the danger of it all?—and focused on enabling her tablet as a Wi-Fi hotspot. She was terribly nervous, but somehow, calm. What a marked change from earlier this afternoon! Zhao lay relatively still as she kissed his cheek and tongued his ear.
She'd prefer to get out now, before the sexual thing went too far. She'd make an excuse, and leave. Take the elevator up one floor to safety and get the files remotely. But all of that could easily take ten minutes, and by then, the battery pack might be exhausted, putting her right back to square one.
And since the Chinese had imaged her laptop, what if they'd broken her encryption? What if they had the digital keys and were right now requesting her files from the Darknet? What if the race to the Darknet files was still on? That meant she had no time to waste.
She sneaked a look at the tablet. Her laptop had finished booting up and had recognized the phony Wi-Fi signal. She had access! There was no choice but to go for it, right here, right now. It would only take a few minutes, and a few minutes was all she had.
CHAPTER 26
22:09
Kate Rice approached the Songshan Room holding the red Nikon Coolpix camera and a black cable that her assistant had just given to her. The camera held photos of the blonde that Zhao had left the party with. She was irritated only because he'd done it at her very own event, so it was like a slap in the face. In spite of that, she felt like a large weight had been removed from her shoulders, because she'd just turned the entire charity event over to the assistant. Rice had walked away from her own party.
Her obsessive need to control her creation had blinded her to the larger picture. That asshole Berry Bergman had been right; she needed to be in the field, giving 100 percent to any issue that would interfere with Zhao's ascendance. Hernandez was on a baited hook; Israeli, South African and German freelance agents she’d secretly hired were standing by all over Hong Kong to eliminate him once and for all, since the Chinese seemed incapable of doing the job themselves. Only a couple of minefields remained to be maneuvered through tonight, and then she could relax.
Unfortunately, she'd just learned that the waterboarding of William Snedeker back in the States had produced no intelligence of any value, but had sent him into a seizure. He was barely alive and in a coma. Meaning she had no idea whom he might have told about her operation, nor did she know who had alerted him to it.
And that whanker Chuck Wheeler was in the room she was about to enter, eating her food, acting like king of the hill. He wouldn't live to see the morning, but right now he held the upper hand.
Additionally, she'd just sent freelancers to track down someone named Jaffir Khan, a local friend of Hernandez and a likely candidate to be lending support. She just wished she'd made the connection sooner. So there were both negative and positive last minute developments, typical to the closing of huge deal, the deal being putting Zhao into the supreme seat of Chinese power. Looking back with a bluntly honest appraisal, Rice admitted to herself she'd made a number of key errors, but the mistakes would stop, starting now.
She entered the Songshan Room and crossed to Wheeler. Before she said a word, he handed her the cell phone. “This text just came,” he said.
Rice looked at the screen. “GO TO THE POOL AT THE CONRAD IN PACIFIC PLACE. LOOK UNDER THE TOWELS ON THE COUNTER.”
She checked her watch. “Good, he's early. Do us all a favor and go kill that SOB.”
As soon as Wheeler was out the door, she made a cell call to an Israeli operative. “The pool at the Conrad.” She ended the call and took a sip of her drink, then put it down, remembering the Nikon camera. She connected it to her smartphone using the black cable and found the photo of the blonde who left with Zhao. Then she logged-in to a CIA database.
###
Zhao Yiren lay on the bed with his eyes closed as Nicole Grant lay on top of him. His hands were under her black cocktail dress and he was grasping her buttocks.
This man will be the next president of China, she thought. A corrupt, amoral man who wanted her dead, who had ordered the murder of eighteen Americans, the man who would probably give almost anything to find her right now and put a bullet in her head. And here she was, reduced to serious sexual foreplay with him, something she never engaged in lightly, to say the least. But if she was going to win, to survive, she needed to become a different person.
Fighting to stay focused, she looked up at her tablet leaning against a pillow just above his head. She gently moved her right hand to open the software which allowed her to control her laptop remotely. In only fourteen seconds she'd downloaded the digital keys from her laptop to her tablet. But there were nine of them. Nine digital keys! It would take a number of minutes to make nine individual requests to the Darknet to obtain the drone op files.
What am I doing! Am I crazy!
Nicole felt panic rising in her chest. She could get up and run right out of the condo. But then she remembered Hernandez's dead brother. Was someone going to hold the guilty accountable, or not? She logged onto the Darknet and started submitting the requests, asking for the highly sensitive files to be sent to simple e-mail accounts, as Zhao tried to slip his fingers inside her panties.
###
The rectangular outdoor pool was on a lower floor of the Conrad. A dozen burgundy-colored chaise lounges lined each of the long sides, while six enclosed cabanas stood at the far end. Ten or so guests, including children, were either swimming or relaxing poolside as Chuck Wheeler stopped at the counter that had a stack of towels resting on top. Trees and shrubbery surrounded the pool on all four sides, creating an incongruous effect since the pool area was nestled in the concrete canyons of Pacific Place and dwarfed by steel-and-glass high-rise towers.
Thousands of glowing lights softened the black sky. Muted, submerged lighting made the pool seductively inviting. Wheeler smiled. Hernandez could be watching him from countless vantage points—terraces, overlooks, patios, balconies, office or hotel windows, rooftops, or even using video cams. But sooner or later tonight, they'd come face-to-face. He took a deep breath of the moist, salt-tinged, slightly cool night air and felt invigorated. Having to kill Hernandez was unfortunate, but there wasn't much choice. Going on the run from the CIA would eventually result in his being gunned down, just as Roberts had been earlier today. So he reached under the stack of towels and found a two-way radio. Talk about low-tech. He pushed the talk button. “It's me.” He released the button and waited.
After a few seconds, Ron Hernandez's voice came through loud and clear. “Don't take anything out of
your pockets. Jump into the pool. Swim to the other end. Go into the second cabana from the right.”
Wheeler smiled, walked over to the end of the pool and jumped in.
###
Kate Rice spoke into an encrypted satellite phone as she stood pacing in front of the makeshift bar in the Songshan Room. She had two devices on the table in front of her: a smartphone connected to a red Nikon Coolpix camera via a small cable, and an orange-colored remote bomb detonator switch that used the cell phone network.
“What do you mean he disappeared into a cabana?” asked Rice into the sat phone.
“He picked up a two-way radio, said something, jumped into the pool fully clothed, swam to the other end, got out, and went into the cabana. That was two minutes ago,” said the male voice with a thick South African accent.
Rice furrowed her brow as she bit a fingernail. “So the Zippo lighter GPS tracker is useless?”
“Yes.”
A rage surged from inside Rice and flowed into her head. Her cheeks flushed deep crimson and her lips formed into a snarl of malice. “What about the bomb mechanism? Is that worthless, too?” she asked sharply, as the anger poured out.
“It's supposed to be waterproof.”
“Supposed to be?” she mimicked acidly. Rice held the phone to her side as she took a deep breath and struggled to keep her emotions under control. She had Pacific Place surrounded by a dozen freelance operatives waiting to pick up Wheeler's tail. When he met with Hernandez, they would both be killed. But everything had been set to pick up Wheeler as soon as he left Pacific Place. If they couldn't track him then her plan was in the toilet, and maybe her life, too. “Is it waterproof or not?” demanded Rice.
“Are you suggesting I should have personally tested it?!” snapped the man, over the sat phone. “Was I supposed to have blown up something underwater in the miniscule amount of time you gave me to rig up a bomb in a bulletproof vest?”
