White Ghost

by Steven Gore

  The Chinese trucks headed south toward the highway.

  The North China Produce truck headed east toward Qidong and Ferrari fell in seventy yards behind it.

  Gage’s phone rang.

  “We lost the chips,” Cobra said, his voice tense and hard. “We got cut off at an intersection and the Volvo got away. Zhang is going crazy.”

  “Can he hear you?”

  “No, he’s pounding the table and yelling at people on the phone to spread out and look for it.”

  “In about two minutes he’s going to decide to forget the chips altogether and just make a move on the heroin. As soon as you think he’s made his decision, you know what to do.”

  “I can take him, but what do we do after that?”

  “If we find the chips, no problem. If we don’t, I’ll hold him while you and Kai get out of China.”

  “No way. We’re not leaving you behind.”

  “Then I guess we’ll have to take him with us.”

  “What should I tell him?”

  “Say we think the chips will end up at one of the companies his people identified. We have no proof, but at least it may buy you some time.”

  COBRA RODE ALONG listening to Zhang yelling directions to his driver and working his phone. They raced first toward the business compound Lew had visited, then to the Enterprise Tower.

  No Volvo. No chips.

  At the second disappointment, Zhang fell silent. He leaned over the table and stared at the map. Cobra watched his eyes scan from the city in the west to the port in the east, and then pause.

  Cobra reached into his pocket and turned off his cell phone, then pulled it out.

  “My battery is dead. Let me use yours to call Gage.”

  When Zhang reached out with his phone. Cobra yanked on his forearm and lapel and pulled him out of his seat and onto the top of the table. He then grabbed the back of Zhang’s jacket, yanked it up over his head, and ripped the 9mm out of his shoulder holster.

  The driver slammed on the brakes and reached over the seat to grab at Cobra, but missed.

  Cobra threw the coat back over Zhang’s head and stuck the gun barrel in his ear. The hard steel of the muzzle froze Zhang in place, splayed on the table.

  The driver raised his hands.

  “If you lift up, it’ll be the last thing you do,” Cobra said, then reached for his own phone and turned it back on.

  “Graham, I had to take him.”

  “As long as we find the chips he won’t care. Remind him he’ll get five hundred thousand dollars at the end of this. Maybe that’ll keep him quiet, at least for a while.”

  “We checked the business compound and Enterprise Tower. The Volvo wasn’t at either one.”

  “Stand by. I’ll work on it.”

  Gage called Alex Z.

  “Annie has got an idea. I’ll put her on.”

  “No guarantee, but it might be Huang Medical,” she said. “What threw me off was that Ah Tien wrote W-O-N-G next to the coded number, assuming that was how the company spelled its name in English. It’s the same Chinese character for Huang, H-U-A-N-G. Wong is Cantonese and Huang is Mandarin. Remember? Ah Tien’s parents wanted him to marry someone who spoke Cantonese, like them. Same character, different pronunciation, and different spelling in English.”

  “Can’t be. Zhang already checked the Huang Medical office. The Volvo we were following wasn’t there.”

  “There were two coded telephone numbers for Huang Medical in Ah Tien’s book. One is the office. The other is the factory. I called that number. It’s in the Nantong Special Economic Zone.”

  Gage visualized the positions of the SEZ, Nantong, and the port. An offset triangle: north, south, east. He couldn’t use Cobra because he had to control Zhang, and Ren was gone. It had to be Kai.

  “Call Huang Medical back,” Gage told Annie. “Have Alex Z run the call through a Nantong exchange. Tell them you’re in the city. Say you’re leaving town tonight and want to visit their plant. Tell them Mao at the trade bureau recommended them. Give your name as Chen Mei-li, that’s Kai’s Chinese name. Try to find out as much as you can about what they do and how they do it. Give whatever you learn to Alex Z.”

  Gage called Kai and told her to start driving to the Special Economic Zone, then sent her the photos he’d taken outside of Tongming Tiger of the Volvo and the two men.

  Gage called Cobra back. “We have a lead. Huang Medical has a plant in the SEZ. Kai is headed that way. Is Zhang behaving?”

  “So far.”

  “He knows all he has to do is make a phone call to grab the heroin. It would take all of ten seconds, so be careful.”

  “Mai pen rai.”

  Gage followed the North China Produce truck back to the Efficiency Trading warehouse. Bags of garlic were added. The heroin was now buried again. The truck then pulled away, heading farther east toward the port.

  Annie called with the results of her contact with Huang Medical. “They said they have visitors all the time. The whole point of the SEZ is to generate foreign business. They’ll leave my—her—name at the main gate. I told them I’d be there within the next forty minutes. Apparently it’s a long drive to the SEZ, then to their factory inside.”

  “Let me talk to Alex Z.”

  “What can I do?”

  “Play professor,” Gage told him, “Make Kai sound like she knows what she’s talking about. A wrong word and . . .”

  BY THE TIME KAI ARRIVED AT THE SEZ GATE, Alex Z had trained her in the role of a medical equipment retailer from Bangkok looking to create a Thai brand name using equipment manufactured by Huang in Nantong. The guard directed her driver to the plant. She examined all of the vehicles as she drove through the lot to park, but didn’t see the Volvo.

  A young account manager greeted her. He seemed to her geeky enough to be believed on technical matters, but not so much as to be unable to cut a deal.

  “What we sell,” Kai said, repeating the speech Alex Z had given her, “are computer workstations for hospitals and medical clinics.”

  He nodded, then she saw his eyes holding on her like he was a hunter and she was the prey.

  “We’ll handle the software development in-house, but we’re looking to outsource the manufacturing.”

  He nodded again. “Of course.”

  Nothing more.

  His eyes moved from her and he gazed down the hallway. She could hear a low hum coming from the factory floor.

  “Would you mind if—”

  He shook his head. “I’m sorry, we can’t let visitors in there.” He pointed upward. “But we have an observation area. It has a good view of the production line.”

  He guided her to an elevator and up what counted as two floors but felt like six. They stepped out into another hallway leading to a glassed-in booth, overlooking acres of workers, equipment, and assembly stations. He gestured toward an area almost below them. “In this section we assemble control panels for x-ray machines. In the distance, you can see where we build workstations. That’s where your work will be done.” He turned toward her. “We build them for Chinese companies like Lenovo, Interon, NetForce, ChinaCom, and CompEast and for foreign companies as far away as Germany and Russia. The entire range of bandwidth and processor speed. What are you aiming for?”

  Kai’s heart raced at ChinaCom, but crashed at speed. She remembered that Alex Z said something about bandwidth, but she thought that was only a network concept.

  She evaded the question by answering: “The fastest you can handle.” And then changed the subject. “You mind if I take a look at your shipping and receiving facilities? We have something of a bottleneck.”

  “We have no bottleneck here.”

  The self-satisfaction in his voice combined with his predatory glare made her want to deck him.

  They rode the elevator back down and he led her on an angular route, pausing over and over at windows and glass doors along the way to point out various elements of the shipping process. Kai could feel her nerves
vibrating with urgency. Finally, he opened an exit door and she found herself at the loading dock overlooking dozens of trucks and trailers. She walked to an open roll-up door. The rain had subsided, but the air was thick and humid. She scanned the yard, beginning to her left and working in and out. She caught movement to her right. A hand bringing a cigarette upward toward a face so huge and bizarre that she almost failed to notice the Volvo truck he was leaning against.

  Almost.

  Kai reached for her cell phone as she backed up into the loading area and gave the appearance of refocusing her attention on the account manager.

  “This is a tremendous operation,” she told him. “Would you mind if I made a call to my partner at the hotel?”

  He nodded, but he held his place as Kai rested her thumb on the “send” button, his eyes once again locked on her. She held the phone to her ear and stared at him until he turned and walked away.

  “Graham,” Kai whispered, “they’re here. The Volvo is in back and they do work for ChinaCom. And the giant is next to the truck. He’s huge. The biggest Chinese guy I’ve ever seen and even bigger than he looks in the photo. A body like a Sumo wrestler and a head like a watermelon.”

  “So I’ve heard. Now get away. I’m not sure Alex Z taught you enough to bluff for very long.”

  “Right now, I’m trapped between a giant and a prick, I think that’s the word, but I’ll talk my way out of here.”

  “Let Cobra know when you’re past the gate, then he’ll tell Zhang the name of the company.”

  Gage called Cobra. “Tell Zhang we’ve found the Volvo and to get someone moving toward the SEZ.”

  “What if he starts to say anything else?”

  “Tell him you’ll blow a hole in his head, then remind him that he’s forty-five minutes away from cashing in. And don’t let him go until the heroin is beyond the area patrolled by the PLA station at Qidong. Zhang isn’t crazy enough to bring in PLA units outside this area. He’d lose control of it.”

  “How will he figure out which of the chips at Huang are the stolen ones?”

  “Tell him I’ll have the serial numbers tomorrow. Which means he’ll need to keep the company locked down overnight.”

  Gage and Ferrari followed the North China Produce heroin truck back to the fishing boat at the Qidong port. The tide was going out. Gage knew that if the boat was going to make it, they’d have to load fast. And he was certain they wouldn’t miss it.

  As Gage watched the furious loading of the cargo, Kai called to say she was out of the SEZ.

  Gage then gave Cobra the name and location of Huang Medical to pass on to Zhang

  Thirty minutes later, Cobra called back to say that Zhang was satisfied that the men he’d sent to Huang Medical had found the Volvo and were now searching the warehouse.

  “But don’t give him back his gun,” Gage said, watching the boat sail into the fog-shrouded Yangtze, “until I tell you to.”

  CHAPTER 64

  Lew and Wu drove back to Wu’s house. They sat on facing couches and drank to each other. They didn’t have to say the words aloud, but they knew they shared the feeling: it was a young man’s game, but they’d played it and played it well.

  Maybe I was wrong about Wu, Lew thought. Maybe he could be a friend.

  It had been many years since he had someone he could trust. When he was young, everyone betrayed him, and after he fled, he slipped into work he could never talk about.

  But with Wu it was different. They could talk. They were in it together. Lew was in it with Ah Ming, too, but that was different. Ah Ming was his boss, and Ah Ming was no one’s friend.

  They finished their bourbon and drove to a pay phone from which Lew called Ah Ming.

  “All is well,” Lew told him, “but I’ll take a short vacation,” then hung up.

  Wu took Lew back to his home and led him into the dining room where the two sat down to a meal intertwined with glasses of wine. They were two businessmen who just finished a deal.

  This, Lew thought to himself, wasn’t the China he’d left.

  AS FERRARI DROVE THEM BACK FROM THE PORT, Gage woke up Sylvia at her home in South San Francisco.

  There was groggy expectation in her voice. “What’s going on?”

  “We’re getting close to the end and it looks like we’ll recover the chips.”

  “Thanks. My police-trained mind hates to see anyone get away with anything.”

  “Ask Casey to e-mail you a list of the serial numbers, then forward one to Jack Burch for his records and one to me on the Doris Day e-mail account.”

  “Does that mean you’re coming home?”

  “I’ll head back to Shanghai tomorrow morning and catch a flight.”

  Gage disconnected and began making plans to tie things up. Cobra and Kai would want him to come back to Bangkok to celebrate their success, but it wasn’t possible. He had to get back for his chemical dip. He noticed he’d been feeling better for the last forty-eight hours and wasn’t sure why. Maybe it was just because he was doing something, no longer the bystander he’d been in Bangkok. Maybe because that’s just the way cancer is: there are good days and bad.

  His cell phone rang.

  It was Kai.

  “I am at Wu’s house and I’m not the only one watching.”

  “You think it’s the enforcer from Taiwan?”

  “Must be. He showed up a few minutes ago.”

  “The deal’s done. What’s he hanging around for?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Unless something went wrong and we don’t know about it.” Gage felt a tightness in his stomach. He still didn’t know for certain whether the chips really had been delivered to Huang at the SEZ. “I’ll tell Cobra to head your way. I’ll do the same.”

  As Ferrari drove, Gage realized the irony of what he’d been doing. From the start, he’d been trying to protect drugs and stolen chips and now he’d moved on to trying to protect the criminals themselves.

  Kai interrupted Gage’s musings.

  “We’ve got trouble. Big trouble. Taiwan just grabbed Lew.”

  Gage overheard Kai snap an order in Chinese to her driver.

  “What happened?”

  “Lew left the house like he was going to catch a taxi. The guy put a gun to his head and pushed him into a car.”

  “What direction are they going?”

  “East toward you.”

  “How fast?”

  “Not too. I think he could be looking for a place to try to lose anybody who might be following him, but he can’t make any slick driving moves and still keep his gun on Lew. If he gets stuck in traffic, Lew might escape.”

  “Has he spotted you?”

  “Could be. Maybe. I don’t know. He keeps checking his mirrors, but he’d be doing that anyway.”

  “Have your driver call mine. Tell them to work together. But you can’t stay with him too long before he notices you. Cobra and I will have to replace you.”

  “Where are you now?”

  “Still heading in from the port. Maybe fifteen or twenty minutes from the city.”

  Gage called Cobra. “Lew’s been kidnapped. Has to be Ah Ming’s guy from Taiwan. Kai is behind him, but I’ll need you to take over for her.”

  “Where are they?”

  “Heading east through town.”

  “I’m south-central. We can intersect her in a few minutes. What should I do about Zhang?”

  “The boat is probably still in the Yangtze and he could send out a cutter to grab it. And he still hasn’t gotten proof—we still haven’t gotten proof—that the chips are at Huang Medical. He’ll have to stay with you for the ride. Call Kai. Have her guide you to her. We’ll decide what to do about Zhang later.”

  “What should I tell him?”

  “That we’re after Lew. We need to find out what went wrong.”

  Kai called back a few minutes later to report that Lew and his kidnapper were still on the main road east out of Nantong, but hadn’t yet tried to los
e her.

  Within a few minutes Cobra spotted her.

  “I’m about twenty meters behind Kai,” Cobra told Gage. “I can see the car Lew is in.”

  “What’s the road ahead look like?”

  “It’s turning into highway. Scattered businesses and undeveloped property.”

  “Look for a wide place in the road and ease on past Kai, she’ll slow for you.”

  As soon as Cobra’s and Taiwan’s cars had passed her and were out of sight, Kai accelerated again.

  Cobra followed as Taiwan crossed the eastern city limit, still on the road toward the Qidong port.

  “I’m at the crossroads between Nantong and Qidong,” Gage told Cobra. “I don’t think he’ll keep going east. My guess is he’ll turn off, and head south to Shanghai or north to Rudong. He’ll want to dump Lew some place where no one will connect the body with either Nantong or the port. Can you get ahead of him?”

  “Sure. He’s still moving carefully.”

  “Pass him just before the north-south turnoff, then head north a few hundred yards. If he follows, stay in front of him and I’ll come up from behind. If he heads south toward Shanghai, I’ll get ahead of him and you catch up from behind.”

  “I’m about five minutes away.”

  “I’ll call Kai and tell her to go straight through toward Qidong in case he doesn’t turn off either way.”

  Gage had Ferrari turn south from the crossroads, drive for a hundred yards and then pull off by the side of the road.

  Cobra called to give his position.

  “I’m making my move to pass him. We’re pulling away . . . more . . . more . . . He’s maintaining his speed . . . Okay. Can you see us? We are making the turn north.”

  “I have you. I don’t see him yet. The fruit trees along the side of the road don’t give me much of a view . . . There he is. He’s waiting for traffic to clear . . . Get going before he sees you’ve slowed . . . He’s turning your way.”

  Gage grabbed Ferrari’s shoulder and made a circular movement with his right index finger. Ferrari made a U-turn and drove north. He blew the stop sign at the crossroad and shot through the intersection. Tires squealed behind them. They were a half-mile behind Cobra, the two-lane road shouldered on each side by rain-soaked rice fields. He called Kai to tell her they were heading north and to follow them, then called Cobra when Ferrari had gotten him and Gage up to about thirty yards behind Taiwan’s car.