Colin Harrison: The Finder

"All right," his voice came to her, low and mean and firm, "I'm taking you out. Don't fight me."

She wanted to fight but didn't have it in her.

"Nod your head to show me you understand."

She did this, the bucket hitting her chest.

She felt his big hands grab her like a piece of cargo and drag her awkwardly across the metal floor of the van.

Then he picked her up and flopped her over at the waist, his shoulder in her stomach. He was carrying her- down, she thought. She heard a creaking noise. A strange abrasive chemical smell filled her nostrils, sickened her.

He put her down on something, a bed or sofa.

"You're pretty light," he said. She didn't know what this meant. "Now hold still, I got to do something to you."

She tensed, expecting the worst. But he was only wrapping something metal and heavy around her waist that settled against her hips. She heard a key click.

"I'm going to take off the bucket."

She felt the tugging of the tape at her clothes and hair, and when the bucket came off she no longer heard herself breathing through her nose.

His fingers touched her face and she started to struggle and cry.

"Hey! I'm just taking the tape off your mouth!"

She forced herself to be still. The chemical smell really bothered her, made her want to vomit, actually. Or maybe it was him-how close he was to her. She felt his fingernails picking at the end of the tape and the tape itself pulling away from her left cheek, her lips, then her right cheek. Stung as it was pulled away. She worked her face muscles a bit.

"Here's a bottle of water."

Something touched her lips. She shook her head violently.

He cuffed her. "Drink it. Don't be stupid."

She did, opening her mouth blindly, trying not to choke. It was regular water, so far as she could tell.

"All right," he began. "I know your name is Jin Li, however it gets pronounced. But who are you, anyway?"

She cleared her throat. She wished she could see him. "Why should I tell you?"

"Because I fucking told you to tell me!"

"Who are you?"

"Me?" He followed the question with a snort.

In that one word she heard an entire philosophy: a combative pride, utter disbelief that the universe so ignored him, and beneath that, the unmoored fury of self-hatred.

"Yeah, who are you?" she said brazenly.

"Me, I'm one who wins. That's what my name literally means, in fact."

"What is it?"

He hit her, hard. "I'm asking the questions. Don't forget that."

Her head spun and she fell backward, expecting to be hit again. But she did not forget what he'd said, not for a moment.

"All right, I got some questions. Were you in that car with the Mexican girls?"

I don't want to be hit again, Jin Li thought.

"No."

He hit her again. "Yes, you were. Now I know you are a liar and now you know that I know it. Got that? Okay? Don't fuck with me, right? All right-the limousine. Who were the Chinese guys in the limousine looking for you?"

Oh, Jin Li thought, he knows things. I'm going to have to be careful about everything I say.

He didn't suspect yet. Still thought he was enjoying a social visit. Still thought this was a polite mating ritual between wealthy men. Brandy and cigars. Bragging about China's economy, its foreign-currency reserves, its deep-water navy, its planned moon shot. Well, this wasn't a mating ritual, but one of them was certainly going to get fucked. And it's not me, thought Martz. They were sitting out in teak lawn chairs, the Manhattan skyline blazing around them. Fifth Avenue, Rockefeller Center, the Chrysler Building, the Empire State, the bridges to Brooklyn, the lighted windows far and near both intimate and grand. Even Chen, with his pumped-up self-importance, seemed impressed.

"How much does this kind of building cost?" Chen asked.

An amazingly ill-mannered question. "The whole building?" said Martz evenly. "Tough to answer."

"I am having-I have apartment in Time Warner Center."

"Yes, I hear those are very good." Martz made sure he didn't appear to be mocking Chen. "The best in the city."

The elevator doors opened. The men filed out, one by one, carrying their briefcases.

Chen, surprised, looked back at Martz. "Who are these people?"

"Friends of mine."

"Yes, I see." But Chen had risen in his seat, sensing trouble.

And at that, in the moment that changed the tone of the evening, Martz leaned forward and ever so gently pushed him back down.

Chen froze.

"My friend," said Martz, "we have now arrived at the part of the evening that is most meaningful to me."

Chen sat quietly, senses alert, hands gripping both arms of the chair. His bodyguards were sitting around in the aforementioned Time Warner building, drinking beer and watching American cable TV, probably. He'd let Martz send a car for him and hadn't wanted his men to come along. A mistake, he seemed to understand now, a mistake that a genuinely rich man in America would never make.

Martz turned back to him. "Chen, you are here tonight for only one reason. Through my company I am a major investor in a small, very promising drug manufacturer called Good Pharma." He beckoned to the translator, a slim Chinese-American doctoral student at Columbia University, to come join them. The other men sat at a table near the elevator opening up laptop computers. "Start translating everything I say. I don't want any misunderstandings. I want him to get to know your voice and I want you to get to know his."

The translator greeted Chen with formality. Chen's eyes cut back and forth between Martz and the other man.

Martz resumed. "My friend Hua here has worked for me for eight years. He knows your regional accent. He will translate. You have recently been trading in Good Pharma, short selling it and driving the price down. And by you, I mean you and all the Chinese investors you advise. Very impressive, except that you did this using stolen information."

The translator repeated this.

"I am listening," Chen said in English, as if looking for a chance to negotiate.

"Tonight, you are going to call your fellow investors in China, one by one, and tell them to buy Good Pharma when it starts trading at ten a.m. local Shanghai time. They are going to buy in Shanghai, Beijing, Hong Kong, and everywhere else they do business."

"Why would they do that?"

"Because you will tell them to."

Chen shook his head. "That would not be enough."

"I suspect that you will make a convincing case."

"How?"

"Very simple. You will tell them that you have more inside information. Very good information that will make them a lot of money."

Chen said nothing.

"Hua will be sure that you tell them what you say you are telling them. In fact, we have a device here that creates a ten-second delay in spoken telephonic conversation. It was developed by radio stations for the purpose of blocking any accidental transmission of FCC-prohibited language." Martz pointed at the translator. "Got that? Did he understand that? This device is also used by unscrupulous traders to front-run major trades ordered over conventional telephone lines. It's illegal because it is so effective. Hua will listen to everything you say and if he feels that you aren't speaking exactly to them as we have instructed, then he'll hit a button on the unit and your voice will disappear.

"Furthermore, Mr. Phelps, one of the men at the table over there by the barbecue range, will be watching your voice on a stress analyzer, and if he feels that your voice sounds like you are lying, he will knock out the tones at the high end so that a stress analyzer on the other end, or the human ear, which in my opinion is just as good, will not hear any suspicious tones in your voice. Mr. Phelps had twenty-three years with the CIA and is well versed in these techniques. Mr. Phelps?" he called.