Dragon Head

by James Houston Turner

  Penny Kwan translated for the other two women and they all nodded, although all three kept glancing nervously at Song, who was glaring at them through the glass door. Talanov looked at Song and thumbed for him to leave.

  Once Song was gone, Talanov faced the women. “Tell me about Ling Soo.”

  Penny translated and the women made remarks in Chinese.

  “Sloppy and arrogant. A rooster,” answered Penny.

  Talanov responded with a quizzical look.

  “Big noise. Small brain. Like rooster.”

  Talanov glanced over at Jingfei, who nodded discreetly that Penny Kwan was translating accurately.

  Talanov looked back at Penny. “He seems kind of messy,” he said, showing Penny a photo of Ling Soo’s desk.

  “He was. He make us keep office straight.”

  “He made you clean his office?”

  “Yes.”

  “On a regular basis?”

  “Yes.”

  Talanov began casually strolling the office, ostensibly scanning objects on shelves and on the walls, where there were a number of framed certificates, all written in Chinese. “Was Ling Soo good at his job?” he asked.

  Penny translated and the women all shrugged.

  “He thought so,” Penny replied.

  “What do you think?” asked Talanov, looking at Penny.

  Penny shrugged and did not reply.

  “Tell me about Wu Chee Ming,” said Talanov.

  Penny translated and the other two women offered brief comments.

  “Very neat,” Penny explained.

  “So, the opposite of Ling Soo?”

  Penny nodded. “Very quiet. Student of proverb. Always quoting them.”

  “Such as?”

  “Dig well before you are thirsty. A crow cannot be fooled into eating what it does want. One does not seek what one does not see. Last proverb, he say a lot.”

  “About one not seeking what one does not see?”

  Penny nodded.

  Talanov thought about that, then thanked the women and left the office. Wilcox and the kids looked at one another before realizing Talanov was actually leaving, and they hurried to catch up with him, which they did at the elevator.

  Made in silence, the elevator ride down to the street took just over twenty seconds, and when the doors finally opened, Talanov led the way through the lobby out onto the sidewalk, where he walked to the curb and signaled a taxi.

  Wilcox grabbed Talanov by the arm. “Talk to me. What did we learn?”

  “More important, what did you learn?” Talanov asked in return, his eyes panning Wilcox and the kids.

  After exchanging quick glances, everyone shrugged, not knowing what to say.

  “I know, it left me speechless, too,” said Talanov, “and what a brilliant plan it was. So brilliant, in fact, that, like Kai said, it got everyone looking in the wrong direction, which is good for us, because had it been otherwise . . . well, let’s just say, we wouldn’t be in the promising position we’re in right now, which confirms yet again why Dragon Head needs us. He needs us to do the impossible. He needs us to do what none of his people have been unable to do. Thing is, there’s one remaining piece of this puzzle, and it’s a big one, and we need to find it, fast.”

  He waved again for a taxi, but Jingfei jumped in front of him. “Quit messing with us,” she said. “What are you talking about?”

  A taxi whipped over to the curb and stopped.

  “You mean, after all of that, you still don’t know? Come on, we’re wasting time. Bill, give Alice a call. Tell her we’re coming over.”

  Talanov opened the front door of the taxi and climbed in.

  “I want to punch him, I really do,” Jingfei muttered, pulling open the rear door and climbing in while Wilcox dialed.

  Twelve miles to the west, in a private section of the Hong Kong airport, agents Delta and Zulu climbed out of their helicopter and showed their diplomatic passports to one of the uniformed guards waiting for them on the tarmac. Per instructions issued by Shaw, Delta and Zulu were to look the part of visiting diplomats. That meant dressing in suits, which both agents despised. Manners would also play an important part, so both men bowed politely before Delta greeted the guard in Cantonese.

  The guard nodded, then checked the helicopter to make sure it contained no other passengers. Satisfied, he returned their passports. Delta thanked the guard and told him why they were here, which was to inspect the American Gulfstream. The guard informed Delta that clearance for the inspection had been arranged. He then told them where the Gulfstream was parked before escorting them to a limousine with tinted windows.

  The guard noticed the small suitcases carried by the two men. He knew not to ask questions about what those suitcases contained. These men had diplomatic clearance, which meant their suitcases were beyond scrutiny.

  Once they were inside the limousine, Zulu opened his suitcase and withdrew a handheld RF signal detector, which he moved about the interior of the vehicle to see if any electronic listening or tracking devices had been installed. Nothing registered, so Zulu switched it off.

  “We’re good,” said Zulu, replacing the instrument inside his suitcase.

  Delta started the engine, made a U-turn and drove to the hangar where the Gulfstream was parked. Stopping near the nose of the aircraft, Delta took out his cell phone and dialed. Seconds later, the scrambled satellite call was answered by a switchboard operator in Langley, Virginia, who routed the call to Angus Shaw.

  After identifying himself, Delta said they were onsite. Shaw replied with instructions to find out what kind of mechanical problem was keeping the Gulfstream grounded.

  “I presume you’re fully equipped?” asked Shaw.

  Delta knew what that meant and gave Shaw the answer he wanted to hear.

  “If I give the word, you know what to do,” Shaw replied. “Start tracking them now. I’ll text you Talanov’s number.”

  “Do these orders include Wilcox?” asked Delta.

  “If that’s what it takes.”

  Delta glanced at Zulu and did not reply.

  “Will that be a problem?” asked Shaw.

  “Not at all, sir. Delta out.”

  CHAPTER 63

  Talanov tried phoning Zak twice on the way to the police station. Little did he know Zak was waist-deep in the grave he was digging in the mountains of California. Pausing in the wash of headlights, Zak could hear the phone ringing on the floorboard of the SUV. Ginie and Emily looked, too, from where they were seated on the grass several feet away. Their hands were still zip-tied behind them and the smell of freshly dug earth filled the night air.

  “Keep digging,” said Alpha.

  Talanov ended the call when he saw Alice waiting for them in front of a gleaming forty-seven-story skyscraper overlooking Victoria Harbor.

  “No answer?” asked Jingfei, reading the worried look on Talanov’s face.

  Talanov shook his head just as Alice welcomed them to Arsenal House. She gave Wilcox a kiss on the cheek, then shook hands with the others.

  “I collected the items requested,” Alice said, “but there is nothing there. Our people have examined them numerous times.”

  “But you don’t mind us looking them over?”

  “Of course not. I am happy to help. But I think you are wasting your time.”

  “Cool building,” Jingfei remarked, admiring the curved face of Arsenal House, its mirrored surface and ladder-like column of slits. “Looks like a massive computer modem.”

  Alice said the comparison was entirely appropriate, since battles today were often fought in cyberspace, with stakes that were very real in terms of information technology, identity theft, and funds trafficking for terrorist activities. “The brains behind an attack in one part of the world may be a nineteen-year-old boy in another. National borders are irrelevant, and the criminals do not stake out your house and wait for you to leave in order to steal your jewelry. They hunt you online, penetrate your firewalls and stea
l not just what you own, but who you are. Like I said, borders today are irrelevant, because you can be living comfortably in San Francisco and be robbed by a thief in Ghana.”

  “So you track criminals all over the world?” Jingfei asked.

  “I’ve helped cyber investigators – cops, I think you call them – go after criminals in virtually every country on earth. Cyber crime and security is one of my specialties.”

  After leading the group inside, Alice asked how the meeting went at Sun Cheng Financial Group. Talanov replied that he was able to access his account but that it was empty. No, he did not know where the funds went, nor did anyone at the bank know. That’s because the only two people who could have told him – Ling Soo and Wu Chee Ming – were now dead. He concluded by saying he had interviewed several coworkers of the two dead men, but no one knew anything. The money was simply gone.

  “How can a financial institution lose one and a half billion dollars?” asked Alice.

  “I asked Song the very same question,” answered Talanov, following Alice along a corridor, “and all he could do was hang his head.”

  “How could he not know?” asked Alice. “There has to be some kind of record. Every transaction leaves a trail.”

  “It baffled me, too,” answered Talanov. “And, apparently, everyone else.”

  “And you found out nothing more?”

  “Not a thing.”

  “I just don’t see how this happened,” Alice said with a shake of her head. “Someone has to know something.”

  Jingfei looked inquisitively at Talanov, and when Talanov noticed her looking up at him, intensified her expression as if to say, “Have you forgotten about those offshore accounts?”

  Talanov discreetly shook his head.

  Alice led them into a stairwell and up two flights of stairs, then along another corridor to a conference room. The room was separated from the hall by a bank of windows. Across the corridor were more windows that looked into a room filled with desks that were typical of police stations everywhere: computers, mugs, stacks of manila folders, papers, sticky notes, pens, pencils, yellow pads with lots of scribbled notes.

  Through the window, Talanov could see five men and two women on the far side of the room, huddled around a computer. Several of the men and one of the women were in uniforms of pale blue shirts and dark blue slacks. The others were in plainclothes. Several were armed with pistols.

  One of the men in plainclothes was a computer specialist. Talanov could tell because his fingers were flying across the keyboard at an extraordinary speed. He was bridging keys and executing quick successions of commands while everyone else looked on. The specialist, however, was not having a lot of success. Talanov could tell that, too, by the movement of his lips, which were muttering words of frustration. Before stepping into the conference room, Talanov noticed several monitors on other desks. Their screens were all blue, which usually meant a crashed system. The desks had all been abandoned, no doubt by the people who were now huddled around the specialist.

  Alice opened the door of the conference room and led the way inside. On top of a worktable was a file box. On top of the file box was a large brown envelope.

  “Here you go,” said Alice. “The contents of Wu Chee Ming’s suitcase.”

  “Thank you, Alice,” said Wilcox. “I owe you . . . again.”

  “It’s a list that is growing,” answered Alice with a smile.

  An officer tapped on the window and summoned Alice with a wave of his hand. “I’ll be right back,” she said, stepping into the hallway and closing the door. Because of the window, Alice remained visible while talking to the officer.

  “What are we looking for?” asked Jingfei.

  “Anything that doesn’t fit,” answered Talanov.

  “What does that mean?” asked Kai.

  “It means we take note of everything and how it fits with what we would expect a man on the run to be carrying. We then assess whether or not there is something that doesn’t fit. And not just if there’s an item that’s out of place, but also ordinary items that are not out of place, although something about them is.”

  “I still don’t know what that means.”

  “Sometimes items can be altered to conceal a message. I know of one instance where a man encoded information on a certain page of a novel using tiny holes above certain letters.” He reached into the box and withdrew two mass market paperbacks and a newspaper. The novels were in Chinese and had karate figures on the cover. The newspaper was also in Chinese and was only a few days old. “Are these ordinary items?” he asked. “Or items that a man on the run wouldn’t be carrying?”

  “They’re ordinary items,” answered Kai. “Do you think Wu Chee Ming hid his access code in, say, one of those novels?”

  “That’s what we need to find out,” Talanov replied, handing one of the novels to Kai and the other one and the newspaper to Wilcox.

  “What about me?” asked Jingfei.

  “Go through his clothing. Check hems, seams, and patterns in the material. Look for anything that might conceal or communicate an account number, PIN, or other hidden message, such as the tiny dots and dashes of something in Morse Code.”

  “What’s Morse Code?” asked Kai.

  “Don’t worry, I got it,” said Jingfei just as Alice opened the door and came back into the room.

  “Like I said before,” Alice continued, “my people have examined those items. They’ve assured me nothing is there.”

  “I simply want to get a feel for what Wu Chee Ming might have been planning,” Talanov replied. “I notice, for instance, that he was not carrying any cold-weather gear.” He gestured at the various items of clothing that Jingfei had spread across the table.

  “Obviously, he planned on buying whatever clothing he needed once he reached his destination,” Alice responded.

  “Possibly,” agreed Talanov, “but if that were the case, why carry anything at all? As it is, we find three changes of clothes, all warm-weather. All I’m saying is that it’s a clue about where he might have been going.”

  “I still don’t understand why you are focused on Wu Chee Ming when Ling Soo confessed to the crime.”

  “I’m not convinced that he did it.”

  “Do you suspect Wu Chee Ming?”

  “Possibly.”

  Alice scrutinized Talanov, whose expression remained noncommittal. “On what basis do you draw this conclusion?” she asked.

  “It’s not really a conclusion. I guess you could call it a possible hunch.”

  “A possible hunch?” asked Alice, looking at Wilcox, then back at Talanov. “Is that how the CIA runs its investigations? On possible hunches?”

  “I can’t speak for the CIA,” said Talanov, “since I’m not part of the club, but, yes, possible hunches are part of my highly honed set of investigative skills.”

  Wilcox suppressed a smile just as Talanov picked up Wu Chee Ming’s passport and began flipping through its pages.

  “There is nothing in his passport,” declared Alice. “No visas and no visits abroad, and our computer records concur.”

  Talanov smiled his thanks and laid the passport aside. He then picked up Wu Chee Ming’s toiletry kit.

  “We’ve already looked through those items,” said Alice.

  “Are these ink dots?” asked Jingfei, who had been examining the hem of a shirt.

  The remark drew Alice’s attention while Talanov handed the toiletry kit to Kai.

  “When you’re finished with the novel,” said Talanov, “do the same with everything in this kit.”

  “I’m done; the novel was clean,” Kai replied. He laid the book aside and emptied the contents of the toiletry kit onto the table. There were several throwaway razors, a tube of shaving cream, a tube of toothpaste, a toothbrush, some floss, a tube of ointment, some eye drops, tweezers, a small pair of scissors, and several small bottles of herbal supplements.

  While Kai began scrutinizing each item, Talanov opened the envelo
pe of photographs that Alice had supplied. After looking through them, he singled out the one of Ling Soo’s desk and held it alongside the photo of Wu Chee Ming’s desk. “Wu Chee Ming was neat to the point of being anal,” remarked Talanov. “Ling Soo: a dog’s breakfast.”

  “A what?” asked Alice.

  “An Aussie expression. Dog’s breakfast. A sloppy mess. Which I find very curious.”

  “Meaning, what, exactly?” asked Alice just as three men and a woman hurried past the window and entered the computer room across the hall. They hurried over to the computer specialist, who began pointing to his screen while explaining something to the new arrivals.

  “Computer problems?” asked Talanov.

  Alice did not reply.

  “If it’s a virus, be very careful.”

  The remark drew a sharp glance from Alice.

  “I’m not trying to make whatever’s happening over there my business,” Talanov explained, “but Dragon Head has already managed to slip a virus into the computer network of Diane Gustaves, as well as on my cell phone so that he could track our movements and record our conversations. Be careful, is all I’m saying. He may come after you.”

  Alice acknowledged the warning with an appreciative nod just as her cell phone rang. Excusing herself, Alice stepped into the hall to take the call.

  Kai was sorting through the toiletries when he picked up the toothpaste, turned it over in his hand, then began examining it more carefully. It was a small travel size, no longer than a man’s finger. “Look at this,” he said, handing Talanov the tube and pointing to its label.

  Talanov was examining the tube when his cell phone suddenly chimed. Handing the tube back to Kai, he fished out his cell phone and checked the screen. It was an email from Straw Sandal. With the swipe of a finger, Talanov opened the email and read it.

  “It’s from Straw Sandal,” he announced. “The escrow account has been opened and she sent me the number.”

  “How are we supposed to deposit money that we don’t have into an escrow account?” Jingfei asked, her frustration evident in the tone of her voice. She tossed the shirt she had been examining on top of Wu Chee Ming’s other clothing. “There’s nothing here. What are we going to do?”