Hour of the Rat

by Lisa Brackmann

  “Well, no, it’s still worth something, it’s … you know, like, a deduction.”

  “A deduction?” Sidney asks, looking confused.

  Wait, that’s not right, I think. It would be a deduction for me, or for our foundation or something. Maybe.

  “Well, I mean …”

  I struggle to think. But even though I really tried not to have too much of the wine and the port and the rum, I’m either plastered or so fucking wasted from everything that’s happened that my thoughts are going all over the place.

  “So what happens with this collection when you die?” I blurt. “I mean qu tai.” Which is a nicer way of saying that.

  Sidney leans back in his chair. Sips his rum. “I leave to my children. I have three,” he confesses. “I can afford this.”

  Yeah, if anybody can afford to dodge China’s one-child policy, it would be Sidney Cao.

  “How do you know they’ll keep it together? The collection, I mean.”

  “If I tell them to, they will,” he huffs.

  “But … how do you know? I mean, they could totally decide to sell off pieces of it after you’re gone.”

  Sidney’s eyes narrow. “Of course I can make this a condition of their inheritance,” he says, and he sounds pretty pissed off.

  It’s another one of those times when I feel like I really stepped in it.

  What can I say? There’s got to be something. Think, I tell myself. Fucking think. Dude built a giant mall that looks like a pyramid. Or ziggurat. Whatever. In the middle of wherever we are, in some place that no one cares about.

  I’m flailing around, and what I finally grab onto is this: “But … if this is your life’s work, don’t you want other people to maybe … you know, see it?”

  Sidney seems to think about this. Puffs on his Cuban cigar. “Yes,” he finally says. “My plan is someday build a proper museum. For the future, when Xingfu Cun is established as a business and cultural center for this region.”

  Weirder-ass shit has happened, I guess.

  “Okay,” I say, “so then it makes sense for you to … uh, create that museum plan now. As a nonprofit. And we can donate a Zhang Jianli piece to, to help support that. It will be a way to … to teach people about art. And to appreciate your life’s work. For the future.”

  There’s this silence that’s as heavy as if someone tossed a boulder into the room.

  Sidney takes another puff on his cigar. Sips his rum.

  “Very interesting idea,” he says.

  AFTER SPENDING THE NIGHT in a bedroom that’s bigger than my entire apartment, where almost everything in it is white—white carpets, white walls, white furniture, and a white baby grand piano (and I have to say, it’s better than another bedroom suite I passed, which looked like a Disney-princess store exploded inside it)—I turn down Sidney’s offer to stay and relax a few days in beautiful Xingfu Cun. “Many fun things to do!” he tells me over breakfast. We’re back in the dining room, where a buffet’s been laid out featuring a Chinese breakfast, an omelet station, fruit, pastries, and, for some reason, pizza. “We can ride horses or play golf. And of course we have karaoke and, if you like, paintball.”

  Karaoke or paintball, with Sidney Cao—I’m not sure which prospect creeps me out more.

  “Thanks, Sidney, that’s very … you know, sounds like fun. But I still have some … some business I need to deal with.”

  He looks disappointed. I don’t know, maybe he’s bored here and I’m a distraction. Or he just likes showing off all his stuff.

  “Of course, of course,” he says.

  THEY’LL FLY ME WHEREVER I need to go, he tells me. At this point I’m not really sure where that is. I don’t even know where I am, actually.

  I could go back to Beijing. We’ve arranged to meet there in a week, Sidney and Vicky and me, after I’ve had a chance to talk to Harrison about the agreement I made. He may not like it, but I figure if no money’s changing hands, at least we won’t get ourselves any deeper in shit with the government.

  “And as soon as we get our … our new business license taken care of, if there’s other work you’re interested in buying …”

  Even as I say that, I kind of shudder inside. I mean, what would Lao Zhang think, about this guy buying up all his art and stashing it in his basement?

  Sidney picks up his croissant with his chopsticks, takes a bite. “If you have any problems with the license, just let me know. We can help with that.”

  Which is another thing I need to talk to Harrison about.

  “How about Shanghai?” I say.

  SIDNEY HIMSELF DRIVES ME to the airport, in his Lamborghini.

  “You like this kind of car?”

  “Yeah. Sure. It’s … very fast.”

  I’m plastered against the seat. The engine sounds like a cloud of hornets on steroids, and we’re going so fast that I’m really glad there aren’t any other cars on the road.

  By the time we get to the airport, I’m drenched in sweat.

  The jet waits for us on the tarmac.

  “See you in Beijing.” Sidney clasps my hand at the foot of the boarding ramp. “But please come and visit again soon.”

  “Thanks,” I say. “I’ll do that. And, uh … thanks, for …”

  How to put it? “Picking me up. And everything.”

  “My pleasure.”

  WHEN THE FLIGHT ATTENDANT leads me to my seat, I see my duffel bag, rescued from the Guiyang hotel, sitting on the couch across the aisle.

  IN SHANGHAI I CHECK into this crazy old hotel, the Astor House, built in the nineteenth century, on the north end of the Bund. I’ve stayed here before, and I like it because it’s actually not very expensive and the wood floors are so old that they’re slightly sunken from a century and a half of footsteps.

  I don’t know that many people in Shanghai. My main connection here is Lucy Wu, and she’s in Hong Kong. Or who knows, maybe Vancouver. But Shanghai is a big rail hub and air hub. I can get just about anywhere from here pretty easily. And there are so many foreigners that no one is going to notice me.

  I was guessing Xingfu Cun is maybe in Anhui, since that’s where Sidney’s company was based originally. Wherever it is, it’s a short flight to Shanghai. We left Sidney’s mansion at 11:00 A.M., and I’m already settled in my hotel room at just past 2:00 P.M.

  There are things I need to do. Things I need to figure out.

  I start by calling my mom.

  “Oh, hi, hon! Where are you?”

  “Shanghai. I’m … uh, finishing up some business.”

  “Just so you know, the toilet’s all fixed now, and everything else is fine. Andy says he knows someone who can work on the ceiling in the guest room. You know the plaster’s falling down?”

  “Yeah.” I hesitate. “So … uh, did my friend John bring a dog over?”

  “He did! She’s so sweet! He said you found her on the road?”

  “Something like that.”

  “You know, he really is nice. I think he really likes you.”

  “Maybe,” I say. “But the dog, the dog’s okay?”

  “She’s fine. I’m giving her the antibiotics like I’m supposed to. And John recommended a vet here to check on the wound, so we’re doing that. I’m taking her in tomorrow.”

  “Great,” I say.

  AFTER THAT I SPEND some time on the Internet. Check my email.

  I check a few other things, too. I have an idea, about that American guy, Buzz Cut. The one from the warehouse.

  I find out what I need to know. And when I’m done, I know who I need to call next.

  I stall for a while, go downstairs to the hotel bar, have a beer and think about it. Because this could go very wrong and leave me in a worse situation than I’m in right now.

  Here’s the thing: Those guys, the American guy and the Chinese guy who left me in that warehouse in Guiyang, they wanted me dead. And by now someone’s found those bodies, the two guys that Sidney’s men killed.

  They know I’m a
live.

  And the American guy knows who I am.

  Companies like Eos hire private security. Some of them even hire private intelligence. Like GSC, the company my ex-husband works for.

  I’ve tangled with those guys before. Some of them, they’re connected.

  Private contractors. OGAs. “Other government agencies.”

  You try to figure out, are they government? Are they private? And what I finally decided was it doesn’t really matter anymore. They’re all part of the same fucking thing.

  Last year those kinds of guys—contractors, OGAs, whatever you want to call them—got me in a lot of trouble. And they warned me. Told me if I stepped out of line, there’d be consequences.

  A company like Eos is so powerful that it can buy anything it wants.

  We will be watching you. We’ll be listening to you. There’s no place you can go where we can’t find you. So don’t try to run. There’s no such thing as running.

  Living in China, where you know you’re being watched, I sort of accepted it. Okay, fine. Most of the time I pretended surveillance wasn’t there.

  When I found out it was my own people too … well, that pretty much sucked.

  You better be smart. You start acting stupid, there’s not much I can do.

  It’s not like I meant to be stupid. I was just trying to do a favor for a friend, right?

  Yeah. Right.

  “DOC MCENROE. I WASN’T expecting to hear from you.”

  “Yeah, well, I wasn’t expecting to be making this call.”

  I hear Carter cough on the other end of the line. He always seems to have some kind of cough. I don’t know whether it’s because he smokes or just because he’s living in Beijing, where air is sort of a solid.

  “So what do you want?”

  I have to hand it to Carter: he doesn’t pretty things up.

  Carter works where my ex does, at GSC. I wouldn’t call him a friend. At one time he was the opposite of that.

  “I need a favor,” I say.

  I lay out the situation. What I need to know.

  A pause. A phlegmy cough. “And I’m supposed to do this for you why?”

  Because you helped me before, I think. Because you acted like you were on my side, at least a little.

  Because you know what you and your buddy did was wrong.

  But I don’t say any of that.

  “Maybe I’ve got something to trade,” I say.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CARTER WANTS TO MEET face-to-face. I don’t like that idea. Sure, I called him. But I don’t exactly trust him.

  It didn’t take him long to find out what I wanted to know. At least that’s what he claims.

  “You pick the place,” he says. “I’m not having this conversation over the phone.”

  “When you get to Shanghai, call me. We’ll pick a place then.”

  If he’s going to fuck me over, turn me over the Eos people, I’m not going to make it easy for him.

  “Fine. I’ll be down tomorrow.”

  He calls me around 4:00 P.M. the next day. “Okay. Where?”

  There’s a fancy bar down on the Bund that I went to once with Lucy Wu. Not really my thing, but unlike the expat dive bars I generally go to, it’s the kind of place where you’d have a hard time causing trouble.

  Besides, now I even have the outfit for it.

  I TELL HIM 6:00 P.M. and make sure I’m there first. It’s a bar/restaurant on the first floor of one of the restored European buildings that line the Shanghai riverfront. Sunk a little below ground level, so it’s got that dark, almost speakeasy vibe. I scope out the place. I mean, it looks okay, but what do I really know about this spy shit? There’s some foreign businessmen having cocktails and overpriced scotch. A couple of elegant Chinese women wearing little black dresses. Accent lights glow against the black-and-red walls.

  I seat myself at a little table against the wall, where I can see the entrance and I’m not too far from the back exit, then order a beer—some new Chinese microbrew made by an American and an Australian. It’s not bad.

  I don’t have to wait too long before Carter shows up.

  He spots me pretty fast. Comes over to the table and looks me up and down.

  “You’re looking kinda fancy,” he says, pulling out the chair opposite and sitting down heavily.

  I shrug. “Yeah, well, don’t get used to it.”

  He looks the same. Middle-aged. Ginger hair going grey. Freckles. Blocky body in a cheap suit.

  “How much am I gonna overpay for a tequila in this place?”

  “Too much. It’s on me.”

  He chuckles. “You’re really moving up in the world, Doc.”

  “If you say so.”

  He pounds his tequila and orders another one. I sip my beer. I’m trying to be smart.

  “So tell me,” he says after the second tequila arrives. “What’s your take?”

  “My take?”

  “Tell me what you think is going on. And then I’ll tell you what I know.”

  I sigh. I mean, I could be wrong.

  Here goes nothing.

  “I think this guy Han Rong worked for Hongxing Agricultural Products, like he said. But I don’t know that he really quit because he was all … outraged or whatever by what Eos and Hongxing are doing.”

  Carter stares at me with a neutral expression. Drinks some tequila. “How come you say that?”

  “Because … I don’t know, the dude’s a weasel.”

  He nods. “Okay. So then what?”

  “Could be a lot of stuff. Like maybe he’s helping to fuck up Eos here in China so whoever’s paying him, some other company, can get a leg up with all this GMO crap. Or he’s still working for Hongxing, even. Hongxing decided they wanted to fuck over Eos and steal the patents for whatever it is they’re working on together, raise enough shit about Eos in the international press that Eos just gives up on whatever it is they’re doing here. Make them the bad guys. And whoever, Hongxing or some other company, can take over the market here, for now.”

  All the while Carter stares at me, eyebrows half raised, expression a blank. I feel myself flush.

  “Something like that,” I mutter.

  “Not bad.” Carter lifts his hand to call the waitress. “Go on.”

  “Okay. I’m not sure about this next part. Well, I figure Eos knows what Han Rong knows. About the three seed companies.”

  “What do you mean?”

  I sip my beer. “The American guy said, ‘We know the source of the leak now.’ ”

  Carter nods, fractionally.

  “The place in Guiyu, maybe that was for real,” I say after the waitress leaves. “I mean, as an address for a fake business. Or a place they could drop shipments to distribute to other stores or to farmers. It’s not like officials or whoever would probably check up on them, right? Who’d go looking for a seed company in Guiyu? Nobody goes there unless they have to.”

  I think about the camera at the storefront in Dali. They were waiting for someone. Someone like me.

  “The store in Dali, it was a setup. A trap. They were just waiting to see who took the bait. When I showed up at the warehouse in Guiyang, they were expecting me.”

  “What about your pal Jason?”

  “He’s not my pal,” I snap. “I never even met him.”

  “Jesus, you’re touchy,” he mutters. “I mean, how far do you think he got?”

  And this is where it gets tricky. Because even if I can trust Carter not to screw me over, I bet he’d love to get his hands on Jason. To collect the bounty on his head.

  “I’m not sure. I’m guessing that he got as far as Dali,” I said. “But if he went to Guiyang, he never visited the warehouse. That’s what they wanted to know when they caught me. If I knew where he was.”

  “And do you?”

  “Like I said, no.”

  “Okay.”

  Our drinks arrive. Mine’s a Coke. For once.

  “Well, I gotta say, Doc, from what I
found out, you’re pretty close. I can’t tell you for sure whether it was a faction in Hongxing or some other group of assholes who wanted to fuck over Eos. Whichever it was, Hongxing closed ranks and they’re sticking to the original agreement with Eos. Who knows why? Maybe they’re scared of Eos’s firepower. Or maybe they think they can make more money working with Eos than competing with them. You know these Chinese companies. Most of them can’t innovate for shit.” He tosses back his tequila. “So whaddaya got for me?”

  I sip my Coke. “I already gave it to you.”

  His face gets that mean look I remember. “Nice. Here all this time I thought you might be playing fair.”

  “Hey, I did some checking. You guys work corporate security for another big biotech company. Maybe you might wanna fuck with Eos a little. Help secure some market share here.”

  “What if we don’t?”

  I shrug. “Up to you. I still told you some useful stuff. You wouldn’t have known where to look if I hadn’t. Besides, you didn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know.”

  At that he chuckles. “Okay. So you knew it already. Then what is it you really want?”

  The way he’s looking at me, with that little smirk, arm draped over his chair back, he’s not going to help me. I’m pretty sure I’ve wasted my time, or worse.

  But I already took it this far.

  “Those guys, those guys from Eos. They were gonna kill me. I’ve already got enough people on my ass. I don’t want to be looking over my shoulder for them, too.”

  “And you think I can do something about that?”

  “I think you know them. You or somebody else at GSC. That’s how you got your intel about Eos. And, I mean, they knew me. Where’d they get that from? Somebody at GSC, right? What was it, a couple of you getting together in a bar, swapping stories? You tell them about that fucked-up head case you threatened and bullied and beat up last year? Or was it … I dunno, a little horse-trading? Like you like to do.”

  Silence. Carter’s doing that stare again, trying to psych me out, I figure. Well, fuck him. I can play that game, too.

  He blinks first.

  “You still haven’t told me what you want,” he says.

  “I need for you or somebody to tell them that I’m not going to cause them any problems. That this isn’t my fight. I was just trying to do a favor for a buddy. That’s it.”