Ridley Pearson - The Risk Agent

“You were followed,” he said.

“By a Chinese. Late twenties. Scooter. Neatly dressed.”

“That’s him, yes.” Impressed she knew of the tail, Knox said, “Certainly not Mongolian.”

“Han,” she said, naming the race of Chinese that accounted for over ninety percent of the population.

“You allowed him to follow you?”

“Of course. That way, when I need to lose him, he won’t be ready for it.”

“I copied and mailed the SIM,” he said, speaking quietly. “One number was called six times in a row.”

“To the intellectual,” she said. She answered his curious look: “Our term for the leader.”

He nodded. “Yes. The brains. You see the Chinese and Americans aren’t so different.”

“You want to call the number,” she said. A statement.

“Of course I do. But once we make that connection, he won’t answer it again. The phone will be tossed. We lose any chance of any contact or tracking. I think we keep that one in our back pocket.”

“Agreed,” she said.

He was about to point out he didn’t require her approval when she spoke, interrupting his thought.

“Some interesting leads in Lu Hao’s receipts,” she said, lowering her voice. “I found these in his apartment.” She passed a stack of receipts across the small table.

He studied the receipts. “Sherpa’s?” he said. “What’s so strange about that? Half the city orders from Sherpa’s.” The Sherpa catalog of restaurants participating in take-out service was in the kitchen drawer of every expat in Shanghai.

“You have not seen photographs of the ransom demand?”

He remembered Dulwich sitting across from him in Ban Lung. “The letter. The ransom demand. Yes.”

“They were delivered by a Sherpa’s delivery man to Allan Marquardt at The Berthold Group. Please notice the chop,” she said.

Chinese used chops as their personal signatures: small, individualized stamps. Knox had one. He examined the square red stamp at the bottom of the receipts. “They’re identical.”

“All nine receipts, the same chop,” she said. “The same Sherpa’s delivery man.”

“Nice catch.”

“This cannot be coincidence. Impossible odds.”

“A friend betrayed Lu?” Knox said. “Lu Hao places orders with Sherpa’s so he and a friend who works for them can hang out. Someone gets to the friend?”

“More likely, the Sherpa’s driver is a new friend.”

“That’s more interesting,” Knox said. “This guy befriends Lu, gathers enough information to pull off a kidnapping.” He worked it around in his head. Maybe they didn’t think so much alike. “I like it.”

“We must interview the Sherpa. There were all sorts of take-away food containers in Lu Hao’s apartment. Maybe this man has been back to the apartment since the kidnapping. Maybe he took Lu Hao’s laptop and medication.”

Knox now recalled Dulwich saying something back in Cambodia about the take-out food carton used as the ransom delivery. He fought his fatigue.

“Notice the bigger chop on back of the same receipts,” she instructed.

He flipped over one of the receipts. The chop carried the Sherpa’s logo along with an address. He inspected several more: the same chop and address.

Grace said, “There are a dozen Sherpa’s dispatch offices throughout the city. Yet all these deliveries issued from the same office.”

“This driver is assigned there,” Knox said.

She pursed her lips, staring at Knox.

“It cannot be a waiguoren asking questions at a local Sherpa’s dispatch,” she said. “Therefore, I must do this.”

“I’m going with you. If this guy betrayed Lu, who’s to say there aren’t others there working with him? Maybe a bunch of Sherpa’s guys.”

“I can handle it.”

“I’ll keep my distance. We will be connected by the iPhones so I can listen in to what’s going on.”

Grace said, “I must return to the office. I will change clothes-so I may leave the building undetected. I do not wish to be seen trying to lose someone. Not at this early stage. We must be careful.”

“Agreed.”

“We’ll meet in one hour,” she said, “outside City Shop on Shaanxi Road.”

“Take those with you,” he said, pointing to his company’s accounts. “I’d like you to look them over.”

“As you wish,” she said, gathering the pages.

3:15 P.M.

HUANGPU DISTRICT

SHANGHAI

Grace’s change of clothes provided her a disguise so that as she left the MW Building her surveillant missed her entirely. To confirm her success, she took her time reaching Huaihai and Shaanxi and then spent five minutes in the aisles of the subterranean City Shop supermarket before ascending back to street level.

Precisely on time, Knox pulled up on a motor scooter that had seen better days. She accepted a scuffed-up helmet from him and climbed on. Hiding within the helmets assured them of anonymity on the streets.

“Did you steal this?” she asked.

“Borrowed. A friend of a friend,” he answered in Shanghainese. “No worries.” The scooter belonged to Fay’s bookkeeper, who had rented it to him for what to him was a song, and to her a fortune. His to keep as long as he needed.

“Good friend,” she said.

“You don’t have to sound so surprised.”

The traffic lanes were jammed, but the bike lane moved well. At a stoplight, Knox lifted his visor and turned toward her.

“Rehearse what you’re going to say,” Knox instructed. “It must not raise eyebrows.”

“Eyebrows?”

“Suspicion.”

“You believe me so incapable?”

“You went a little wild in Lu Hao’s apartment. A mirror on the ceiling?”

“As only children, we Chinese are privileged. Pampered, even. We get what we want, when we want it. The agent expected such demands from this kind of girl. A mistress to a waiguoren. Leave all things Chinese to me, please. I know what I am doing.”

The slow-moving river of vehicles flowed on. Ten minutes passed. Knox dropped her off.

“Call me. Now. For the connection.”

Grace placed the call, strung the white ear buds and microphone around her neck-she needed only its microphone-and headed down the sidewalk toward the cluster of motor scooters and electric bikes bearing orange Sherpa’s crates strapped above the rear fenders.

“If you do not hear me,” she said, Knox hearing her clearly through his ear buds, “nothing we can do about it.”

She paused in front of an unmarked storefront with gray, rain-streaked glass.

Knox waited her out.

“Ni hao,” he heard Grace say.

“Ni hao,” came the faint reply of a male voice through the ear buds.

Speaking rapid Shanghainese, Grace appealed to the manager to help her right a wrong. She claimed to have short-changed one of his drivers and did not want to get the man in trouble. The phone offered enough clarity that Knox could actually hear her proffering a receipt.

The manager thanked her and offered to accept the money on behalf of his driver. Grace apologized profusely, citing her own inadequacy and stupidity, while firmly insisting she pay the driver directly herself.

“It is most unfortunate,” the manager said, speaking more slowly. “Afraid this is not possible. Lin Qiu has had misfortune, I am so sorry to say.”

“Is he ill?” Grace asked. “Perhaps balancing his debts might cheer him up.”

“An accident, I am so sorry to say. Badly injured. Many broken bones. Bad luck.”

“I see.”

“You will be kind enough to allow me to pass along your generosity.” The manager was no longer asking. His patience had worn thin.

“I would so like to apologize in person.”

“Not possible.”