Wake Me When It's Over

by Cheryl A Head

  “Hi, Charlie,” Judy answered.

  “Hi. Can you give me Lin Fong’s location? He hasn’t reported to work. Cynthia’s looking for him.”

  “Okay. Hold on a sec. I’m looking at the app. That’s strange,” Judy said.

  “What is?”

  “The tracking device shows Lin is here at Cobo, or at least the Berry is,” Judy said.

  “Wait, I’m putting you on speaker; Cynthia’s with me. Repeat what you said.”

  “My app shows Lin’s unit is at Cobo. Did you check his desk?”

  “I didn’t open his drawer, or look under the desk, but I will,” Cynthia said.

  “Okay, Judy, thanks. I’ll call you back.”

  Charlie picked up her Berry, and punched in a number. The other phone rang until the voice mail was triggered. “Lin, it’s Ms. Mack. I need you to call me. It’s very important.” After disconnecting, Charlie glanced over her shoulder at Cynthia and for fifteen seconds touched her fingers to her face, imitating Mr. Spock’s mind meld. Charlie then shoved her notes to the side, stood, and paced to the conference room door, and back to her desk. Cynthia watched.

  “What are you thinking, Charlie?”

  “What if something’s happened to him? I got him into this.”

  “Let’s not jump to conclusions. I’ll check his cubicle again and the studio control room. Maybe he left the BlackBerry behind after the teleconference, and he’s just running late.”

  “No. I’ve talked to him since then. Remember? He called me about seeing Heinrich.”

  “You don’t think it has anything to do with that?”

  Charlie sat again. “Wait. Have you talked to Heinrich about Lin being late?”

  “No. I can’t reach him either.”

  Judy’s phone rang. Another call from Charlie, and Judy had three drivers waiting impatiently for her to stamp their paperwork.

  “Will you check Lin’s location again?”

  “Charlie, remember, he’s just a kid. Maybe he overslept,” Judy offered. “Maybe he went to visit a girlfriend last night and couldn’t pull himself together. Maybe he went to his aunt’s house.”

  “He would have called me,” Charlie said emphatically.

  “Okay, I’ll look at the program again, but I’ll need to get back to you.”

  Judy sorted the paperwork in front of her. Two deliveries were on hold; the other had been cleared by Carter. “Okay, you’re good to go, young man,” she said to a baby-faced driver as she stamped his shipping order. She smiled at the other two. “I’m sorry, but we’re still waiting for a manager to come and sign off on your cargo. I promise it’ll just be a few more minutes.”

  Judy turned away from the drivers, and typed into her laptop. When she didn’t see what she expected, she called BlackBerry technical assistance. “I’m calling about our unit 3567. Is there any way to get more detail on location, like what floor? Or what quadrant of the building? Okay. Please call me with the information as soon as you have something.”

  Amy Wu arrived at the Guí Motors suite at noon. The exterior door was locked, which was not unusual, but the door to the inner office was ajar. She listened at the door for the murmur of Mr. Kwong’s voice in a meeting or phone call. Sometimes Kwong slept at the office on the black leather couch at the rear of the room, but there were no signs of his occupancy. The suite was eerily quiet, and his office was immaculate as usual. He did not rely on Cobo janitors to clean his suite; instead, he used a company that had been recommended by the consulate. Amy had seen the cleaners only once when she’d returned to the office late to retrieve her gym bag. The three-man crew had worn white, starched coveralls and white coverings on their heads and shoes. They were carefully dusting Kwong’s prized dragons and other office fixtures with long-handled feather dusters. They’d acknowledged her intrusion only with blinking eyes above their dust masks.

  This morning, Kwong’s desk was wax-polished to a hard shine. Amy checked the cabinet that held the expensive liquor. There were two full bottles of Dewar’s, and a half-dozen bottles of other kinds of spirits. There was another teleconference with Beijing that evening, so she opened Mr. Kwong’s presentation to begin the editing and formatting.

  Lin regained consciousness in a semi-dark room with high ceilings and a cement floor. His hands were cuffed behind him to a metal chair, and his ankles affixed to the legs by plastic ties. He wore only his T-shirt and khakis, and no shoes. His head ached dully, and his tongue felt like sandpaper. The cold from the floor made his teeth chatter. In front of him was a pull-down aluminum door where a sliver of outside light streamed in from the bottom edge. A narrow metal door was on the wall to his left, and the right wall was lined with six-foot storage cabinets. He couldn’t move the chair enough to see behind him without knocking it over. He listened intently and made out a distant whirring sound like that of machinery. He spotted the blinking red light of a camera in the rafters. “Hey. Let me out of here,” he hollered. He waited, heart pounding through his chest, but there was no response. That car with the two men. One guy grabbed me and forced me into the back seat. Too close to fight, but I gave him a head butt. Then he put me in a choke hold, Lin remembered.

  Lin considered overturning the chair. He wouldn’t be able to brace himself, and it would hurt like hell, but he might be able to inch toward the door. He eyed the camera. Whoever was watching might get their jollies from letting him squirm to the door for twenty minutes before they intercepted him. The blinking light dared him to try. He was suddenly aware of something in his back pocket. The BlackBerry. How could they have missed that? The men had probably focused on his jacket, his backpack, and the cell phone on his belt and didn’t notice the bulge in his back pocket. For once his skinny ass came in handy. For the next half hour, he tried subtle maneuvers to reach his phone. By lifting up on his toes, his fingertips brushed the tip of his pants pocket. He almost tipped over the chair when the instrument vibrated against the base of his spine. He looked up at the camera. Only Ms. Mack and her team had this number; it meant they were looking for him. Lin heard a door behind him open and close, and then the thud of hard soles on the cold floor. He tilted his chin against his chest so his eyes wouldn’t give away the hope he felt. Legs in black jeans and boots stopped in front of his chair, and when Lin looked up, he saw the man who had been with Heinrich last night.

  Heinrich watched the interrogation on the monitor. The contents of Lin Fong’s flash drive were inconclusive, but his phone contacts clearly showed a connection to Charlene Mack. The logs indicated a half-dozen calls that began five days ago and ended when Fong was employed by Spectrum. Dudiyn was being tough on the kid because the head butt had broken his nose. After two hard slaps, the boy was crying and admitted he was staying at Mack’s condo. Dudiyn hit the boy again.

  “That’s enough,” Heinrich said through the console.

  Dudiyn sneered at Lin Fong. He was only a few years older than this soft boy, but he had grown up in Chechnya’s impoverished countryside where crying was a sign of weakness met with harsh beatings. Some people mistook him for a skinhead, but his real allegiance was to a fat paycheck. He lifted his boot and kicked over Lin’s chair, leaving the boy stunned and shivering on the cold concrete.

  “You didn’t have to do that,” Heinrich said. “I told you just to scare the boy.”

  “He is scared.”

  Dudiyn was a man for hire, who got jobs based on word of mouth. He was considered efficient and methodical in carrying out orders. He had worked with a variety of criminal types throughout Europe: small-time crooks and syndicate bosses, even paramilitary groups in Syria. Heinrich studied him a moment.

  “How’s the work going at the warehouse?”

  “Those Chinks are working around the clock with their faces pressed against their computer screens. They don’t talk or eat; I haven’t even seen one of them take a pee break.”

  “It’ll only be a few more days,” Heinrich said. “The new components will be in tonight. Once we’ve done
our work, the Chinese will have to fend for themselves.”

  “What about that Kwong guy?”

  “I’ll worry about him. Blindfold the boy and take him to the warehouse. Make sure the others see you bring him in. It’ll make a good impression.” Heinrich’s tone was icy.

  Lin sucked on his upper lip; it was swollen but no longer bleeding. He was afraid and ashamed. The bald man’s blows hurt like nothing he’d ever felt before, but his tears were more from fear than pain.

  Dudiyn cut the ties on Lin’s ankles and then unlocked the handcuffs, leaving one dangling from his left hand. He yanked Lin from the floor and pressed his fist into the small of his back, shoving him through the narrow side door to a graveled lot where Lin saw the van used to kidnap him.

  “Get moving.”

  It was raining hard, and when they reached the van, the man Lin had decided to call Baldy pushed him aside roughly and moved close to the rear of the vehicle to manipulate the combination lock. Lin swiftly stuck a hand into his back pocket and out again. The man snatched open the van door.

  “Get in and turn around,” he ordered.

  Lin lifted himself into the van and swiveled to face forward.

  “Put your hands behind your back,” Baldy said in an accent Lin didn’t recognize. He clicked the handcuffs closed, and covered Lin’s head with a pillowcase. “Lay on your side, and put your knees together.”

  Lin braced himself with his elbow as he lowered himself to the van floor. Then new plastic restraints were tightened around his ankles until he was trussed like a steer in a rodeo. As the van moved, Lin felt the gravel surface turn into a solid roadway. He was wet and freezing cold, and his ankles and shoulders hurt with every hole the tires found. In no more than ten minutes, the surface under the van returned to gravel and stopped. When the double doors opened, he was dragged out by his ankles. He couldn’t keep his balance, and landed face first on the crumpled rock. The binding was removed from his ankles and he was jerked to his feet, and the pillowcase snatched from his head. Lin looked into the sinister eyes of his captor.

  “Did you hurt yourself, crybaby?” Baldy said before undoing the handcuffs and retying Lin’s hands in front with a plastic band.

  A warehouse was in front of him, and Lin had only a second to glance at his surroundings before he was pushed from behind. “Get going.”

  Inside a massive room, at a span of work stations, three dozen Chinese men and a few women worked furiously at keyboards. Natural light poured through high windows, and Baldy pushed Lin, dripping water, along a carpeted aisle next to the desks. If Lin hadn’t known better, he’d have said the fifteen-minute van ride had taken him across the Pacific to mainland China.

  A few of the workers glanced up at him, and Lin’s eyes pleaded for help, but they quickly looked away. “Help me,” Lin said first in Cantonese, then Mandarin.

  “Shut up,” Baldy said, pulling his arm. “Just keep walking.”

  They reached a door on the right wall of the warehouse, and Lin was shoved through. They passed through a dim anteroom to a larger room awash in fluorescent lights, which held a long, heavy table with a half-dozen chrome chairs around it. Boxes and palettes were stacked everywhere, and along the far side of the wall was an old-fashioned drinking fountain. Lin touched his tongue to his lower lip.

  “Can I have a drink of water?”

  “Sit down.” Baldy pointed to one of the chairs.

  “Where am I? What do you want with me?”

  The man rubbed at his nose, which had a wide bandage across it, and stared at Lin. “Don’t be stupid. You want me to smack you again?”

  Lin sank into the nearest chair. His left ear, nose, and mouth hurt where he had taken blows. He was tired, his throat was parched, and he was cold. The room’s heat began to warm his feet and legs, and he longed to rest his head on the table, but he didn’t dare sleep.

  Baldy sat at the end of the table looking at his phone. He wore all black, as he had when he and Heinrich walked into Grant’s Lounge the day before. He used a sausage-like index finger to punch a number into his phone, pushed his chair back from the table in a noisy display, glared at Lin, and rose, striding to the open door to the anteroom. Lin couldn’t make out his conversation, but was glad for the chance to be away from the man’s attention for a moment. The fingertips of Lin’s bound hands grazed the BlackBerry. He prayed that Ms. Mack would find the clue he’d left behind.

  Charlie, Don, Gil, and Tyson had convened for the noon meeting. In just a few days, six thousand journalists from around the world would descend on Cobo, taking pictures of the best design, technology, and innovation of the world’s automakers. Meanwhile, their problems were piling up. A secret service advance team was on-site; the Metropolitan police were insisting on an increased role in the investigation of Josh Simms’ murder; and now Lin Fong was missing.

  “This is a no-brainer for me,” Charlie said. “My priority has to be to find Lin.”

  “DADA won’t see it that way,” Gil said.

  “I don’t care about that. I think Lin’s in trouble, and I think it has something to do with him seeing Heinrich yesterday.”

  “Heinrich wouldn’t actually harm Lin,” Gil said.“He doesn’t strike me as the type.”

  “Yeah, but what about his henchman, this Dudiyn guy?” Don said. “Didn’t Lin say he looked like a tough guy?”

  “Yeah. Dressed all in black, boots. No coat. A knit cap over a bald head.”

  “I know who you’re talking about. I’ve only seen him a couple of times. Muscular guy, cold eyes. He tries to give the stare-down,” Ty said. “I’d say he’s a guy who could hurt someone.”

  “If they’ve touched Lin, I’ll hurt them,” Charlie announced.

  Ty’s eyes grew wide. He heard the resolve in Charlie’s voice and saw the look on her face. He turned toward Don and Gil for a determination on her ability to carry out the threat.

  “Charlie’s a fourth-degree black belt,” Gil responded.

  Ty’s eyes grew wider, then squinted as he gave Charlie another appraisal. Finally, he smiled his admiration, which Charlie responded to with a grim face.

  “So, what do we do about finding him, Mack?” Don asked.

  “I’m going back to my apartment and start there. Maybe somebody saw something. Judy is still working with the BlackBerry techs to get a fix on Lin’s phone. For a variety of reasons, a phone can be shielded from satellite detection, and it will ping to a recent location.” Charlie stood. “I’m going to get started. I’ll call you in about an hour.”

  “You really think Heinrich might have taken this Lin Fong kid?” Ty asked Gil and Don. “I don’t understand. Why would he do that?”

  “We haven’t been able to share everything with you, Ty. But, we put Lin in Heinrich’s office to keep an eye on things for us inside Spectrum,” Gil said.

  Ty looked at the two men for a few seconds, and then nodded. “I get it. It makes sense to have someone like him embedded in Spectrum since Heinrich is tied to the hip with the Chinese delegation.”

  “I told you he was a smart cookie,” Don said to Gil.

  “Does Cynthia know?”

  “It’s a long story, but yes, she knows now,” Gil said.

  “Okay. Well, if you’re sure he’s not just AWOL, I know one place Heinrich might keep the Chinese kid.”

  “What do you have in mind, Pressley?” Don asked.

  “Spectrum has a storage space not more than five minutes away. Heinrich had it built.”

  “What do you mean? Why didn’t you show it to us before? What’s in there?” Don barraged Ty with questions.

  “It’s an out of the way place, and I don’t know for sure what’s in there. None of us has access. It has a retina-scanning system for entry. I always imagined Heinrich had a tank or something in there.”

  “We better take a look,” Don said, leading the way out of the conference room.

  They traveled by golf cart to the loading dock area, and then down a ramp to the
access road. Don and Ty snapped down the plastic rain guards, and at the end of the road they continued along an unmarked street going west.

  “So Ms. Mack really has a black belt?” Ty asked.

  “She does,” Gil said. “I was there when she took the test.”

  “I saw her break a man’s leg once,” Don said with no attempt to hide his pride. “She had knocked him down, and when he got up he picked up a pipe and came at her. Before I could get to her, she had already taken the pipe from him. I had to pull her off the guy.” Don smiled at the memory.

  “Wow. She doesn’t look the type.”

  “You really don’t want to make her mad,” Gil said matter-of-factly.

  “Charlene Mack,” Charlie answered, using her car’s hands-free system.

  “Hi. It’s Cynthia. Where are you?”

  “On the road. I want to backtrack Lin’s movements from this morning.”

  “Heinrich is definitely involved in his kidnapping.”

  “Kidnapping?”

  “Or abduction. Whatever’s the right term. Look, I’ve been video recording Heinrich’s office. I probably should have mentioned that to you.”

  “Yeah, you probably should have.”

  “I had a small camera and microphone placed in his office. It records nonstop. I usually check the footage at night, but I looked at it just now, and he was in this morning. Early. He was using his private cell phone and told whoever was on the other end to put the kid in storage and he would meet him there.”

  “Where’s Heinrich now?”

  “I don’t know. He’s not here.”

  “Don just called, and said Spectrum has some sort of off-site storage area. Could he have taken him there?”

  “That’s our weapons vault, a garage really, near one of the overflow parking structures. Assault-type weapons are stored there, along with ammunition and bulletproof vests— to be used in the case of a riot situation at Cobo. You want me to check it out?”