Noble Man

by William Miller

  Eric Tsang played for keeps. He didn’t make threats, and he didn’t bother hiding behind a nickname. He killed anyone who crossed him, simple as that. Krakouer would not be able to throw his weight around against a heavy hitter like Tsang. Getting Bati back was going to require more than tough talk. Just getting close to a man like Tsang would prove next to impossible. He kept a low profile, rarely leaving his secure high-rise office on Canton Road. Rumor had it he slept there most nights. Fortunately his little brother was a flashy punk with too much money and not enough sense.

  Tiger Tsang owned a Mahjong parlor on Ning Po Street above a shop that sold knockoff wristwatches to gullible tourists. The Mahjong parlor was Tiger’s de facto base of operations.

  Krakouer woke a few minutes after noon, ate a large lunch, and then took the subway into Kowloon. He found the Mahjong parlor without much trouble. Getting inside was easy enough. He passed himself off as a bored American businessman with money to burn. He offered the proprietor of the watch shop a C-note and said that a friend of a friend had told him about the game.

  The old man scrutinized the American bill with rheumy eyes and then waved Krakouer through a curtain at the back of the shop. Boxes littered the stockroom shelves with names like Rolex, Omega, and Tag Heuer. The forgeries looked identical to the real thing.

  At the back of the stockroom was a steep staircase. Krakouer climbed to the second floor and found a door protected by a barrel-chested man in a cheap suit. He weighed roughly three hundred pounds, had the blunted knuckles of a street brawler, and a neck the size of Krakouer’s thigh.

  Krakouer related his cover story, forked over another C-note, and the bruiser opened the door for him.

  The floor was covered in a thin green carpet littered with cigarette butts. Cocktail waitresses in short red dresses and high heels shuttled drinks back and forth to smoking men gathered around poker tables. Several heads turned to look at the gwai lo.

  Krakouer brought out a pack of cigarettes and shook one out. He flicked his lighter, took a drag, and waved away the cloud of smoke. He instinctively liked any place where he could light up. The politically correct weenies in Washington DC had managed to outlaw smoking in public. It was illegal to walk down the street and smoke a cigarette in the beltway, but he could go to Denver and fire up a joint. Go figure.

  He scanned the floor. Tiger wasn’t here, but it wouldn’t be long before he made an appearance. Krakouer inserted himself at a table without any trouble. Gamblers are predictable. You can play as long as you have money to lose. Krakouer knew the rules of Mahjong, but like poker, knowing how to play and playing well are two different things. Thankfully, he was betting his employer’s money.

  He played for several hours, lost more than he won, drank six beers, and smoked half a pack of cigarettes before Tiger finally showed up.

  Foreigners at the club must have been common enough. Tiger didn’t spare Krakouer a second glance. He went to a table, accepted a cigarette offered by one of the other players, and joined in.

  Krakouer brought out his cell phone, pretended to send a text, and then placed the device on the table in front of him. He was already bored with the game and the Chinese girls in their short dresses. But placing himself in the same room as Tiger was only half the job. The next part needed a little skill and a lot of luck. Another hour ticked slowly past until Tiger’s phone rang.

  It was Krakouer’s turn. He made a bad play that would cost him the game and then picked up his cell. Under the guise of sending another text, he opened an app and tried to angle the microphone over his right shoulder at Tiger.

  One of the benefits of working for a multi-millionaire was that it gave him access to all the best toys. Krakouer was a low-tech kind of guy in general. He believed you could do more with a well-placed kick to the balls than you could with all the high-end gadgets employed by law enforcement. However, this was one situation where technology proved useful.

  The application he used was a high frequency receiver designed by defense contractors to remotely capture phone conversations. The development team had envisioned an application that would allow field agents to capture and translate conversations up to fifty yards away. In reality, the low quality microphones installed in commercial mobiles severely limited an agent. It only worked reliably from a few yards and only when it was pointed directly at the target, which made it difficult to remain inconspicuous. Krakouer aimed the phone at Tiger and moved his thumb like he was texting.

  Tiger answered. He talked a little but mostly listened. The call ended. He rolled his eyes, punched in a second number, and waited for someone to pick up. The second conversation was brief. When it ended, he shook his head and went back to playing.

  Krakouer’s phone gave him a loading icon. He put the mobile down and smiled at the other players at his table. “Business,” he said by way of explanation.

  Thirty seconds later, the phone finished its work. Krakouer left it on the tabletop and casually scrolled through the dialog to text translation. It was far from perfect. The application first had to capture the conversation and then translate into English. Any words that the microphone failed to capture or the program could not translate appeared as a series of jumbled characters.

  Caller: …@XX in tonight. I need &*## to go down there and check on the ^&*&. %$$^* to be fed and watered

  Receiver: I B@R&L in %XL middle of a game

  Caller: ##Q give a %$!!VG about your $BT@ Lot of money on that boat. ^!WWL want you and three of +*?/@ *(!$ on that ship before midnight

  Receiver: Fine

  END CALL

  The second call read:

  Caller: *@B& Tiger. Take three men and G%##L to the pier on Stonecutters Island. The cargo X@@ food. I will %^> there before midnight. Do not &UX$# this time.

  END CALL

  And just like that Krakouer had a location. He stayed long enough to lose a few more rounds, finished his drink, and excused himself.

  44

  Noble and Samantha took the Wan Chai Ferry across Victoria Harbor to Kowloon and located a car rental company. Sam gave the man behind the counter her credit card number. He gave her the keys to a gray BYD F3. The F3 was a Chinese knockoff of a Toyota Corolla. The vehicles were so close in design you could pull the BYD symbol off the front grill, slap on a Toyota badge, and drive it down any street in America. No one would look twice. This particular car had been smoked in, often. The rental company had tried to cover it up with a half dozen cardboard air fresheners shaped like giant cherries. The first thing Noble did was crank down all four windows.

  According to Manny’s file, Tiger ran an underground Mahjong parlor near the corner of Ning Po and Woosung Street. It catered to low-level triad enforcers and was the one place where Tiger, ever in his brother’s shadow, could play big man on campus.

  Sam wedged the F3 into a parking space between a flat paneled delivery truck and a row of motor scooters. The Mahjong parlor was three doors down on the opposite side of the street. It was a bad neighborhood, made worse by the gangs. Clotheslines stretched overhead, weighed down with damp laundry. There was a Circle K on the corner. The rest of the storefronts sold knockoff electronics, cheap jewelry, and pornography. Noble counted four trading companies. Triads used them to launder dirty money.

  Sam turned off the engine but left the keys in the ignition. “What do we do now?”

  “Now we wait,” Noble told her. “This is Tiger’s haunt. He’ll show up sooner or later. Every organization has a weak link, one guy that’s a little too flashy, likes to party too much, or has a soft spot for the ladies.”

  “Like Diego’s gambling problem?”

  “Exactly. You find the weak link and then use it to climb the chain of command. In the case of Eric Tsang, it’s his younger brother. This is the one place where Tiger gets to call the shots. He’ll turn up sooner or later and then we follow him to Eric. If we are lucky, he’ll lead us directly to Bati.”

  They propped the black-and-white surveillance photo
of Tiger on the dash and settled in. Noble reclined his seat and laced his fingers together behind his head. Sam sat up straight, drumming the steering wheel with nervous fingers and watching the front of the shop.

  As a Special Forces operator, Noble had spent days lying on dank jungle floors while waiting on a target, smelling the fetid vegetation with insects feasting on his flesh. Surveillance in a parked car was an easy day at the office by comparison. Not a lot of fun but not unpleasant either. It beat the hell out of being hip deep in rotting sewage or wedged into a rocky crevice.

  Sam did all right for the first hour but grew increasingly restless. She added heavy sighs to her drumming fingers. Noble tried to keep the conversation interesting, but she was too worried about her friend to make small talk.

  A parade of gangsters came and went. Two hours dragged by before a red Ducati roared to a stop in front of the watch shop. The driver wore a matching red helmet, a silk shirt, and leather pants.

  “That’s him,” Noble said.

  Sam sat up straight.

  He reached across and laid a hand on her arm. “Relax and don’t look directly at him.”

  She slouched. “Are you sure?”

  Noble only nodded as the biker switched off the Ducati, swung his leg over, and pulled off his helmet. He had long hair, dyed red, and a pair of clunky headphones around his neck. Tiger hung the helmet on the handlebars and entered the shop, utterly unconcerned that someone might steal either helmet or bike. Everyone in this neighborhood must know who owned the Ducati. Tiger could probably leave a roll of bills on the seat and it would still be there when he came out.

  “How did you know that was him?”

  “You don’t know much about motorcycles.”

  “Expensive?” she asked.

  “Very.”

  Sam turned to face him. “I’ve got an idea.”

  “I can’t wait to hear it.”

  “I go in, flirt with him, and lure him outside. Then you can question him.”

  “Or,” Noble said. “We can wait.”

  She hammered the dash. “Bati could be dying! Tiger knows where she is. We’re just going to sit here?”

  “You want to walk into the middle of a triad operation and flirt with the boss?” Noble jabbed a finger at the watch shop. “Those are cold-blooded killers in there. They look like gangsters. They’ve got scars and tattoos. You know what you look like? You look like a Yale graduate.”

  She started to say something, and Noble held up a hand. “Tiger will come out,” Noble told her. “When he does we’ll follow him and confront him in a location where we have the advantage.”

  Sam crossed her arms under her breasts and stewed. Inaction was eating away at her. Fifteen minutes later she put her hand on the door latch. “I’m going for a coffee. Want one?” She said it with the same tone she might use to tell someone to burn in hell.

  “Black, no sugar,” Noble said.

  She got out, and Noble watched her in the rearview mirror until she reached the Circle K. She came back ten minutes later with two Styrofoam cups and a bag of milk candies. They tasted exactly like what they were—milk, dried and hardened into a shape about the size of a tootsie roll. Sam held the bag out to him. He shook his head. He had tried one his first time in China. Once was enough. He peeled back the plastic lid on his coffee, blew, and sipped.

  He pulled a face. It was scalding hot and so weak it could pass for water. When it came time to extract information from Tiger, Noble would make him drink Circle K coffee. He punished himself with another sip, pulled an identical face, and set the cup on the dash.

  Sam straightened up in the driver’s seat. Noble looked up and recognized the driver of the dark sedan who had been parked in front of Diego’s building. His bald head and scar were hard to miss. He turned east on Ning Po Street.

  Sam narrowed her eyes. “It’s him.”

  “You know that guy?” Noble asked.

  She nodded. “I think his name is Krakouer. He works for Bati’s dad. I saw him in Manila too.”

  Krakouer stuffed both hands into the pockets of his black windbreaker, checked for traffic, and crossed the street, then continued east. He was a block away now.

  “When were you going to tell me about this?”

  “I got duct-taped to a chair and it slipped my mind,” Sam said with an edge to her voice.

  Noble put a hand on the door handle. “Stay with Tiger. If he leaves before I get back you follow him, but not too close. Hang back a block or two. Call me on your cell and let me know where he leads you.”

  “Wait…” Sam started to ask questions, but Noble was already out of the car and moving east on Ning Po Street.

  45

  Noble took long strides and closed the gap between them to fifteen meters, then slowed his pace. He hooked his thumbs in his pockets and peered into shop windows as he passed. Krakouer reached the intersection at Ning Po and Nathan Road. If he knew how to play the game, he would use the corner to check for a tail. Just in case, Noble stuck his head in the open passenger side window of a parked taxi. He told the driver he wanted to go to Victoria Park.

  Cabbies in Hong Kong were supposed to run the meter, but it seldom worked that way. Instead, the driver assigned a price based on distance and how much the customer looks like they can afford to pay. If the customer has a white face, the fee automatically triples. The hand signs used to negotiate price made things more confusing for the hapless foreigner. The practice arose because of the sheer number of regional dialects in mainland China. A man from Nanjing, in the north, could travel south to Guangzhou and not be able to understand the local speech, but he could buy and sell using hand signals.

  The cabbie made a cross with his forefingers. Noble countered with his thumb and pinkie. He watched Krakouer from the corner of his eye while haggling over the fare. Sure enough, the big bruiser glanced over his shoulder as he made the turn onto Nathan Road. Noble went back and forth with the cabbie until Krakouer disappeared around the corner and then said he had changed his mind. He hurried to the end of the street and followed Krakouer onto Nathan Road.

  It didn’t make sense for Ramos to pay a hired gun to find his daughter when he could have relied on the training and recourses of the CIA. If Sam was right and Krakouer worked for Ramos, then the diplomat had more to hide. And Noble was willing to bet Krakouer could shed some light.

  He tailed Krakouer eight blocks north to Man Ming. Krakouer took the stairs to the Yau Ma Tei subway station. Noble muttered a curse under his breath. If he fell too far behind, he would lose the mark and if he got too close he would be spotted. Keeping the appropriate distance in a cramped subway station is next to impossible. If he had a team of trained operatives, Noble would hand off the target to the next watcher. Since he was alone, he had no choice but to follow Krakouer down the steps to the platform. His only saving grace was rush hour traffic.

  It was a little after six, and the subway was packed with people on their way home after a long workday. The cacophony of voices echoed off the tile walls, sounding like a gaggle of geese around the shores of a lake. Krakouer swiped a metro card, pushed through the turnstiles, and joined the crowd waiting on a train. The ticket vendors were swamped. There was no way Noble would make it to the front of the line before the next train. He went to a map of the Hong Kong underground tacked to the station wall and scowled, acting like a confused foreigner.

  The act would only work for so long. Hong Kong is not very big. The subway system is well laid out and easy to navigate. To buy time, he dug his cell phone out of his pocket and pretended to have a conversation while puzzling out the map.

  One of the things Noble loved most about Chinese people is that they are so damned helpful. They understand their country can be a confusing place to outsiders, and most of them will make heroic efforts to help. Unfortunately, Noble attracted the attention of a well-meaning Chinese man eager to offer assistance. He approached Noble with a friendly smile. “Hello. I speak English.”

&
nbsp; Heads swiveled in Noble’s direction. In a few moments he would have a crowd of people asking if he spoke Cantonese, how long he’d been in Hong Kong, where he was from, and what he was doing here. He had to diffuse the situation quickly.

  He took the phone away from his ear, threw an arm around the man’s shoulders, and pulled him close. Dropping his voice to a whisper, Noble asked, “Do you know where I can get a hooker and cocaine?”

  The effect was instantaneous. The poor working stiff suddenly decided he did not speak English after all. He slipped away from Noble’s grasp, apologized in Cantonese, and hurried to join the rest of the crowd on the platform.

  Noble fought down a grin and went back to studying the map. Five minutes later, screaming tracks heralded the arrival of the train. The commuters shuffled to the edge of the platform. Krakouer towered head and shoulders over the crowd. The train burst from the dark tunnel with the spontaneity of a magician pulling a rabbit from his hat. The doors opened with a pneumatic sigh.

  Noble pocketed his cell phone, jumped the turnstiles, and raced for the train. He wasn’t alone either. Three teenagers leapt the turnstiles as well. All four piled onto the last car before the doors hissed shut. One of the kids grinned at Noble. He had spikey hair and a ring in his nose. Noble held out a fist. The kid bumped it.

  Krakouer was two cars up. Noble worked his way forward until he could see his mark through the small window in the adjoining doors. They rode all the way to Rodney Road where Krakouer stepped out along with a flood of passengers. Noble waited until the doors started to close and then slipped through the gap.