Ridley Pearson - The Risk Agent

Her iPhone vibrated.

abort

She cursed aloud and then started snapping photographs of the room, including the empty desktop. Never mind the roommate’s claim: it appeared the room must have been searched, the most important items taken. The digital frame switched photographs: Lu Hao on a lovingly restored motorcycle and sidecar; this transitioned into Marlon Brando also on a motorcycle; then Steve McQueen in The Great Escape, followed by Harrison Ford and Shia LaBeouf in Indiana Jones-also a sidecar and bike; and finally the Shanghai skyline before revealing a new picture of Lu Jian. Grace put her hand to her mouth as she took in the photograph: this time Lu Jian was smiling widely, his arm around another woman.

She fled the bedroom quickly. The kid had returned to his place on the couch.

“Where is Lu Hao’s laptop?” she asked. “He had an address I need.”

The boy shrugged.

“Was it not here the day he disappeared?”

Another shrug.

“Has someone been here before me?” she asked. “Someone asking questions, looking around?”

“Who are you?” the boy asked.

She marched over to him. “You know what they say about a woman scorned?”

The boy appeared properly terrified.

“That’s me. You do not want to make me any more angry than I already am. So…who was here before me?”

“I told you: no one. I swear it.”

“A woman?” she said, playing her role to the limit.

“No, I promise.”

“What did she look like? What is her name?”

“I tell you: there has been no woman. No man. No one!”

“Liar! You tell Lu Hao to call Ling-Cha,” she said, making up a name, “the moment he steps through that door. You understand?”

The boy nodded.

“By the gods, I’ll have your balls in a vise if you forget.”

She marched to the door, turned and glared at the other boys-they all looked both terrified and relieved that she wasn’t haranguing them. She let herself out.

Knox stepped aside, allowing the agent to enter the elevator first. “I would like to take the stairs,” he said. “I will meet you in the lobby.”

The agent stepped toward the control panel to stop the car, but too late. The doors slid shut.

He assumed the Mongolian-for that was how he’d pigeonholed him: northern Chinese or Mongolian-would use the west staircase because, according to the agent, the west staircase was closest to the superintendent’s residence.

In the event of an abort, Grace would take the west staircase-farthest from the building’s main entrance. Knox texted:

take east stairs

…but moved quickly to intercept her in the event it was too late.

He reached the stairs and put his ear to the door: faint footfalls…approaching him. He slipped inside. Steel and concrete stairs in a concrete shaft.

Sounds from above and below: above being Grace; below, the Mongolian. He caught Grace as she rounded the upper landing, hand signaling for her to leave the stairwell.

The ascending footsteps grew louder and quicker.

Grace paused, heard the approach and left through the door.

The shoulder of a black leather jacket appeared. Knox stepped away from the railing, drawing in a deep breath to charge his system and purge the adrenaline.

Knox’s SERE training had inspired in him an interest in, and study of, hand-to-hand combat techniques. Chinese soldiers and Shanghai police were trained in sanshou, a bare-fist close-quarters fighting technique. Russians were taught sambo, a martial arts style of fighting that combined hard-fisted blows and wrestling techniques. Within the first few blows, Knox would know where his opponent was from-information that might come in handy later.

Knox flew off the landing, catching the Mongolian midstride and plastering him to the wall. The man maintained his balance and postured a wrestling stance.

Sambo. So, not Chinese and therefore unlikely he was police. A game changer. Knox could do more than push and shove.

His mind raced. Russian? Mongolian? North Chinese? A foreign agent, or private security? Good either way, as he could fight the man without fear he was assaulting a Chinese officer.

He pivoted and kicked the man’s chest. Followed with an open-fisted chop aimed for the man’s throat. But the man countered with an effective forearm block and used Knox’s forward momentum against him. He ducked under Knox’s arm and head-butted Knox’s ribs.

The wind knocked out of him, Knox teetered. The man stepped in for a headlock-again, a wrestling move.

Knox kneed him in the side and drove his elbow into the man’s face. A bone cracked. The man’s jaw looked like a jack-’o-lantern that had been dropped.

He cursed-not Chinese, not Russian. The man ran off a string of expletives. An agglutinative language. Mongolian? Knox had been to Ulan Bator only once.

In a matter of seconds, the fight was over, Knox pinning the man, pressing a knee to his groin while holding his right arm twisted to within a quarter turn of tearing his rotator cuff. His opponent remained conscious, but in a crippling amount of pain.

Knox removed a switchblade, a wallet and a cell phone from the man’s pockets. He would overnight the phone or its SIM card to Rutherford for analysis.

He considered working the man for information, but the guy didn’t look the conversational type, and Knox was pressed for time. He gave the arm a sharp twist-like taking a leg off a cooked turkey. But this was a big bird, and its cry, convincing.

Grace waited for him in the back room of Bliss, a bar on Jinxian Road decorated in 1970s retro. The cigarette smoke was thick, the recorded jazz smooth, and the waitresses very young and pretty. The sign listed twenty-two on the occupancy permit. Maybe it was a maximum age limit, Knox thought. There were five others scattered around at tables eating dessert or enjoying a drink. No one over twenty.

“Next time,” she told Knox as he sat down across from her, “please let me pick the place.”

“It’s quiet,” he said.

“I cannot breathe.”

“If you jump the wall out the back door you’re in a lilong,” he said, explaining his choice. A lane neighborhood. He ordered a beer when a clear drink arrived for her. Vodka, rocks, he was guessing.

“So? What’d we find?” he asked.

“You are favoring your right side.”

“I’m fine,” he said. “Tell me about the apartment?”

She passed him her iPhone, on which she’d been reviewing the photographs she’d taken in Lu’s room. In return, he passed her the Mongolian’s wallet and produced the SIM card from the man’s phone.

“He’s carrying a national ID, so maybe not Mongolian. But he looked Mongolian.”

“I found no medication,” she said. “Troubling. No toothbrush. No laptop or charger. No mobile, or charger. No USB or storage device for files. No accounts, no files, nothing.”

Knox looked up from the photos on the phone. “The kidnappers beat us there.”

“The roommate says otherwise.”

“How about clothing?”

“Nothing to say one way or the other. My mother was obviously mistaken.”

“Mothers are never mistaken,” he said. “Not if you ask them.” He had hoped for a smile.

“Perhaps Lu Hao keeps his medication with him.”

“Could be. But why take your laptop on a delivery run?”

She said, “In China, a laptop is a sign of prosperity. People carry them like handbags.” She pointed across the bar to two young Chinese at their laptops.

“Yeah,” he said. “I didn’t say it meant anything.”

“Your voice did.”

“Know me that well, do you?”

She worked the vodka. “Well enough.” She had the Mongolian’s wallet open and was pulling out cards. A transportation card. A Chinese Resident Identity Card. “If a forgery,” she said, “it is a very good one.”