“I’m sure we would not know how to reach them, sir.” The young man sounded offended. This American oaf expected all Chinese people to know one another.
“No, of course. But Mr. Chen may reach out to you. Most likely to your section in charge of business affairs. Mr. Chen Li is chairman of Jiangsu Special Manufacturing. He will have made your consulate aware of his important visit to the United States.”
“Perhaps.” The consular officer sounded slightly mollified.
“Would you be good enough to let your section head know of my request, on the chance Mr. Chen should call?” Shaw realized how much he sounded like Wren when she slipped into overly correct phrasings.
“Your name, please?”
“Van Shaw. Here’s an e-mail where I can be reached at any time.” Shaw read him the address. The young man repeated it back, letter by letter, as if afraid he might get it wrong.
“Thank you,” Shaw said. “I’m certain Mr. Chen greatly appreciates your assistance.”
A Hail Mary pass, Shaw thought as he hung up. But no harm in trying. If Chen and Zhang were Chinese agents, his inquiry would find its way to them. And if Chen’s assignment was as important as Shaw suspected, whatever section chief at the consulate acted as their messenger boy for spies might be on the horn to his higher-ups right this minute.
Deceptions upon evasions. Dono would have rolled his eyes at all the chicanery these intelligence firms and foreign operatives got up to. The old man liked his crimes simple and direct.
Shaw stayed in the train corridor watching the trees and rocks of the Utah mountains speed past the windows. Even at night the terrain had a kind of grandeur. Shaw liked the mountains. The terrors and trials of the Afghan peaks hadn’t spoiled that for him. He’d spent most of his life near the water, but when he thought of building a home somewhere, a place to stay for more than the length of a lease, he always imagined it at elevation. Where he could see the snow and smell the evergreens in his retirement.
Of course, he’d have to have a job to retire from. And he’d have to live to reach old age.
The land outside became flatter. The Zephyr was pulling in to Salt Lake. Shaw watched from the darkened corridor as the train slowed and stopped. At well past midnight, the station was quiet. A few passengers disembarked. A luggage carrier not much larger than a golf cart pulled alongside and began to load bags onto the train. Conductors and other Amtrak personnel walked the length of the cars, talking quietly so as not to wake people aboard. After ten minutes the group split up to go to their individual cars or back into the station. Readying to go.
Two men walked quickly from the station to the waiting train. They wore long rainproof coats and carried duffel bags over their shoulders.
Shaw had seen the larger of the two before. That bushy black Viking beard was unmistakable, even though he’d only glimpsed it for an instant through the open driver’s window of the Jeep Cherokee that had tried to run him to ground in Youngstown.
The Viking’s brawn was apparent even through the raincoat. He rolled a little as he walked.
His partner’s movements were more fluid, even snakelike, bobbing his head to unheard music as he walked. As Shaw watched, the partner adjusted his heavy-framed dark eyeglasses and looked up to the second level. Shaw faded back from the window.
The men boarded their car. Shaw had the SIG in the pocket of his jacket. He kept his hand on it as the train doors closed and the Zephyr began to pull away from the station.
A minute passed. Then five. No one came up the stairs.
Shaw removed the tag with Steven Ingram’s name on it from their compartment door and walked silently down the corridor to place it on the empty room three doors down. He drew the room’s curtain and used his picks to lock the door. Then he retreated to their room and kept an eye on the stairs as he reached in to shake Karla’s foot until she woke and stared at him confusedly.
“Get up,” Shaw said in a whisper. “We’re in trouble.”
FIFTY-SEVEN
Shaw recalled the map of the Zephyr’s route. Elko, Nevada, would be the next stop. Five hours away. If the two killers wanted them alive, that would be where they’d force Shaw and Karla off the train. Likely making their move just before the train hit the station so they wouldn’t have to hold their captives at gunpoint for hours.
If the plan was to kill them, the men would still strike in the minutes before Elko. Shaw and Karla were alone on the upper level. No witnesses. The killers could off them in their compartment and make a quick exit before their corpses had cooled.
Better to guard the stairs—the only approach from the lower level of the car—than to wager on the two killers being cautious. Shaw stayed near the luggage rack and watched the corridor while Karla packed their things. Then there was nothing to do but wait.
“You’re sure?” she whispered. She had her shoes and jacket on and her shoulder bag over her back, poised as if to sprint from the room.
“I’m sure. They tailed me from New York. Maybe from the Paragon offices. I lost them in Ohio.” Shaw described the two. “You know them?”
She shook her head. “God. I’d remember men like that.”
He nodded. The bigger one with the beard looked like he could make a fair attempt at benching the train car. The other might slide right under the wheels without a scratch.
“Sit,” he said. “Rest. Odds are we won’t move for four more hours.”
“If they come sooner—”
“I’ll stop them.”
“How will we get past them?”
Shaw didn’t answer. He knew they wouldn’t. There was no way off the train without the two knowing. The killers would be watching as closely as he was.
At four o’clock in the morning, Shaw moved down the corridor to the center of the car. The narrow stairwell to the lower level was empty. He motioned to Karla, who walked with their bags down the row of bedrooms and past Shaw, into the nearest roomette in the front half of the car. She shut the roomette’s door and drew the curtain. Shaw stepped into the public toilet and hooked a finger over the handle to pull the metal door shut, but not latched.
He waited in the dark. The tight space smelled of antiseptic cleanser and a plug-in air freshener doing a sickly imitation of gardenias.
After forty minutes the sound of the train changed. Or its surroundings had changed. Closer to the tracks. Buildings instead of open air.
Shaw let the door ease open a millimeter. He could see only a dim sliver of the corridor, a line of light gray in the black.
Outside, the train rushing by the buildings created a hollow moan. Shaw remained as he was.
They had made no sound as they came up the stairs. Shaw’s only warning was the slice of gray light from the corridor going black and then gray once more, as someone moved past his door into the row of bedrooms. A second person passed.
Shaw opened the door another finger’s width. He found himself looking at the broad back of the Viking, still in his long coat, standing at the top of the curving stairwell. Visible over the Viking’s shoulder was the killer with the eyeglasses, moving silently away, toward the room where Shaw had placed the Ingram ticket tag.
Shaw stepped out from the bathroom. He put his left palm on the right side of the Viking’s head and his other hand holding the SIG against the man’s bowling-ball shoulder and heaved to his left with all his strength. The Viking toppled into the stairwell, a gun in his hand striking the wood-veneer wall and clattering to the floor at Shaw’s feet. The big man crashed into the side of the landing six feet below with an almighty bang. Shaw aimed his SIG at the one with the glasses, who had spun at the sound.
“Don’t,” Shaw said as the killer’s hand moved toward his jacket. “Turn around.”
The man complied. His expression had hardly changed.
“Back up to me,” Shaw said. Below him the Viking was clambering to his feet, not an easy maneuver in a stairwell barely half his width. When the one with the glasses reached him, Shaw quick
ly frisked him and removed a pistol from his raincoat pocket. He handed it to Karla, behind him.
“Cover that one,” he said, tilting his head toward the Viking, who had regained his feet on the tiny stairwell landing below them. His blueberry eyes, incongruous over the rage of black beard, glared murderously. “If he twitches, put four in his center mass.”
“You all right?” a voice called from the floor below.
“Yeah, thanks,” Shaw called back. “Just dropped my bag.”
“Easy, buddy,” said the guy with the glasses, craning his neck to keep Shaw in his peripheral vision. “Just a mix-up. We’re here to talk.”
Shaw rabbit-punched him in the back of the neck. The glasses flew off and the man dropped to all fours.
He saw what the Viking had fumbled by his feet. A KRISS Vector submachine gun. A squarish black chunk sixteen inches long without the stock and probably capable of killing every person in the train car with a single clip, doors and walls be damned.
Shaw scooped up the gun with his left hand. He looked at the Viking and motioned to his dazed partner. “Get him up.”
The man lumbered to the top of the stairs. Shaw stepped back, out of reach. He waited as the Viking placed his hands under the other man’s arms and hefted him to his feet with ease. The train was slowing now. Drawing into the station at Elko.
Shaw nodded to the toilet. “In there. Both of you.”
“Fuck off,” the Viking rumbled.
Shaw pointed the SIG at the man’s right leg. “Door Number Two earns you a prosthetic knee.”
The Viking sneered but moved. He and his partner squeezed into the toilet room, chest to back, like a compacted conga line.
“Romantic,” Shaw said. “Don’t fucking blink.”
He shut the metal door. As Karla covered it, Shaw used his picks to lock the toilet’s dead bolt through the access keyhole, there for the train staff in case some toddler locked himself in. He jammed the slim pick inside the lock’s workings and bent the metal until it snapped. He tried the handle. It barely budged.
“Let’s go,” he said, stuffing the submachine gun into his rucksack. Karla followed him downstairs. They were the first passengers off the train when the doors opened, and they beat the dawn to the streets of Elko, Nevada.
FIFTY-EIGHT
Putting distance between themselves and the town was the top priority. The train had pulled away from the station with the two killers still inside; that didn’t mean Shaw and Karla were safe. Once they were freed, the two might spin a story to the Amtrak people that would set cops on their asses.
Searching on Shaw’s phone, they found a large new-and-used-car lot less than half an hour’s walk away. They crossed the Humboldt River at a fast clip. Shaw felt uncomfortably exposed on the wide, empty road. He swiped the license plates off a Dodge parked on the gravel curb outside a housing development, and when they reached the auto dealer, he compounded the crime by boosting a used Toyota 4Runner from a row of half a dozen of the same model on their back lot.
Within five minutes they were on Interstate 80 with the sun at their backs. The morning was clear and promised heat. The tall piles of clouds in the endless sky looked as clean as angels’ dreams.
Shaw called Hollis on speaker. “Where are you?”
“I just passed—hold on—Chemult, Oregon. Making good time in the Caddy.”
“You’ll have to make it in a different direction. Sorry. Our plans are shifting.”
Karla held up Shaw’s laptop with the map on it for him to see. He nodded.
“Turn around and go back up 97 and cross Oregon on Route 20,” he said to Hollis. “We’ll be coming straight north out of Nevada. Probably meet you somewhere around Steens Mountain in four hours.”
If we don’t get busted for grand theft auto for a damn 4Runner, he thought.
“Never dull with you, Van,” said Hollis.
“I do what I can. See you soon.” He hung up.
“A friend?” said Karla.
“Best kind,” said Shaw. “I hope you like him, too, because he’s going to host you aboard his boat for a couple of days while I work things out. If I can convince him. And maybe his lady friend. Do you get seasick?”
“Not much.”
“Good. The safest place to be is offshore.”
“Your friend is right. You are not boring.”
“After the gruesome twosome on the train, boring sounds great right about now.”
His phone pinged. A new e-mail on the address he’d created specifically for Chen Li.
Thank you for your interest. Please contact the number below soon.
A number with a western Washington area code followed. He wondered why Chen hadn’t simply sent the number on its own and concluded that the key word was “soon.” Maybe Chen was under some pressure. The polite tone implied a willingness to discuss terms.
Shaw would have to let Chen bite his nails for a while. He checked the rearview. Nothing in it but the morning sun. Before it set again, they would be home. And then he’d see what kind of storm he could create for Chen, and Rohner, and especially James Hargreaves.
FIFTY-NINE
Hollis had stashed the Francesca in a friend’s empty moorage slip in Tacoma, along with Shaw’s speedboat, which Hollis and his lady friend, Dr. Paula Claybeck, had towed from Shilshole. When the Cadillac returned from its long road trip, the doctor told Hollis that he’d received three calls from Ephraim Ganz that day. The criminal defense attorney had refused to specify what he wanted, just that he’d call again.
Hollis had looked at Shaw. His pink face had unfamiliar bags under the eyes. He’d been in one seat of his Cadillac or another for nearly twenty-four hours. “Trying to reach you, I’ll wager,” he’d said.
And being cautious about it. Shaw was still a fugitive and a murder suspect.
He had bid Karla and Hollis and Paula farewell and driven his speedboat north of Seattle, to dock in a little-used boatyard. The yard smelled faintly of rancid seaweed that had been stranded in the barnacles and splinters of the older, shorter dock, which had been left to rot when the new one was built above it. Tiger stripes of rust streaked the corrugated-steel walls of the boathouse, two decades of gutter wash.
Home and hiding place for a few days, while he made preparations.
He called Ganz’s office. It was after business hours, but that rarely meant much for the energetic attorney.
“Ephraim Ganz,” the receptionist said.
“Hey, this is Mr. Ganz’s plumber. We’re looking at the house now, and we’ll have to tear out most of the second-floor bath to get to the problem. If Mr. Ganz can call me back quick, we might be able to save the Jungle Room.”
“Oh, my. Yes. What is your number?”
Shaw gave it. His phone rang within five minutes.
“How is it you announce yourself without ever leaving your name?” Ganz said.
“I figured it was supposed to be a secret, you talking to me.”
“It is. Just like I’m supposed to tell you to turn yourself over to the authorities. But before you rush out and do that, Sofia Rohner has been calling me every day. Trying to reach you. She insists she knows something that can help your case. Given it might encourage you to do the right thing, legally, I felt bound to pass the news along.” He read off a phone number to Shaw.
“Thanks. And, Ephraim. I didn’t get the chance to say before, I’m sorry about Linda.”
“Not your doing. You’re a maniac of the first order, but you aren’t that kind of crazy. I should never have gotten you involved in this, kid.”
“I walked in eyes open. Ignoring every red flag. Next time we’ll know better.”
“Sure we will,” Ganz said.
Shaw stepped away from the boat to call Sofia Rohner. Restless. He needed to move. To engage with the enemy.
“This is Sofia,” she answered.
“You wanted to talk to me,” he said.
“Yes,” she said without pause. Maybe she had reserv
ed this number solely for his call. “Thank you. Can we meet?”
“You said you had information that could help me.”
“I do. But I would prefer to speak with you in person.”
Shaw was about to tell her how much her preference was worth when he realized that an in-person meeting might have another advantage.
“Have Rangi drive you south of downtown tomorrow at ten,” he said. “I’ll call this number and tell you where to meet me. And I want you to give me something for my risk and trouble.”
“I see. How much did you want?”
“Not money.” He told Sofia what he wanted her to bring. After a moment’s surprised hesitation, she said she would see him in the morning.
Shaw sat on the railroad ties that edged the high dock, looking out at the water. The wooden pilings that had once served as tie-ups for ships awaiting dock space had rotted and splintered, their jagged tops poking above the water like the spiny hide of some gigantic submerged crocodile.
A sliver of Shaw’s heart yearned to talk to Wren, to hear her voice and her laughter. But the colder part of him prevented it. He knew why. He’d had the same inclination before deployments. Not going out on the town, not visiting the fighting gyms that were his usual hangouts off base. Limiting human contact. Removing himself, bit by bit, from the comforts and distractions of the civilian world.
Narrowing his focus to what was to come. And how best to survive it.
SIXTY
Shaw talked Rangi through the turns as the big man drove Sofia Rohner through the lot of a giant Home Depot and onto a side road that ran parallel to the railroad tracks. The silver Lexus sedan circled and crossed the tracks on Hanford to turn at a skate park where Shaw had taken Cyn a few times. The sedan followed a line of freight companies until it came to where Shaw waited at a repair shop for big rigs.
A winding enough route to reassure him that the Lexus hadn’t been followed. If the police should show, his speedboat was waiting a quick sprint across Route 99, on a side pocket of the waterway. He wouldn’t be caught. Not now, not when he was so close.
Island of Thieves Page 34
