Ridley Pearson - The Risk Agent

Grace held the man’s hand secure. She spoke English to Knox. “It is not possible the ransom delivery man would know the location of the hostages. The intellectual would keep these pieces very much apart.”

“Agreed. And Xinjingzhen is at least thirty minutes from here. He’s trying to buy himself time to disappear.”

“He cannot disappear with me by his side holding his hand,” Grace said, also in English. “Call me once you arrive at this place. We will get to the truth. If he should be testing our resolve, I will test back.”

Knox did not like the idea of leaving her alone, even with her so firmly in control. “Find out who did this to him. His beating.”

She turned and looked into the man’s terrified eyes. Holding fast to his fingers, she spoke Mandarin. “We do not take kindly to old news. ‘A rat who gnaws at a cat’s tail invites destruction.’”

“What rat? I tell the truth!”

“Then tell me who did this to you. You did not fall off your scooter.”

“But I did!” he proclaimed, showing her the lacerations on his wrists and forearms.

“Who?” she repeated.

“They ambushed me!” he groaned. “Filthy waiguoren!”

“Waiguoren like him,” she asked, pointing at Knox.

“No. A northerner, cousin. Autonomous region, perhaps. North of that for all I know. The filthy invaders.”

“Mongolians,” Grace said in English, glancing over her shoulder at Knox.

“You gave the Mongolians this same address you have given us,” she said in Mandarin.

“I dare not lie,” the man said. “It is true. Do not punish me!” he cried out to Grace. “I did only what any man would do!”

“The hostages will be long gone,” Knox said in English, his disappointment obvious. “Providing they’re still alive.”

Grace flushed behind anger. “I would like to break every last finger,” she said, not letting go of the man’s hand.

She said threateningly, “Who took Lu Hao? Who are these people who took my cousin? These people to whom you betrayed my cousin?”

“Do I know one face from another? I tell the waiguoren the same thing! I am told to pick up and deliver a meal. I pick it up. I deliver it. A face is a face, nothing more.”

“You lie poorly,” Knox said in perfect Mandarin. “You knew this man, Lu Hao. You are no simple delivery man.”

“How did the northerners find you?” Grace challenged.

“No idea! They appeared after delivery to The Berthold Group. Arrive on all sides out of nowhere.”

Grace shot Knox a look: the northerners had been watching the MW Building?

“I gave you the address,” the man said. “I was to report there. This is all I know.” He cowered.

“Who are your partners?” Knox asked. “You mean to lie to us again?”

“Lu Hao, Lu Hao, Lu Hao,” the man chanted, dismayed. He sounded as if he was calling for his help.

“Your partners?” Grace hollered.

The man trembled with fear and passed out.

Knox took the man by the chin and shook him. “Who knows? He could be out awhile.”

“If we leave here, we will never see him again,” she said.

“If we stay,” Knox said, “who knows what trouble the neighbors will bring us? He was pretty loud.”

“I should have gagged him.” All business.

Remind me to stay on your good side, he thought. “We have to leave now,” he said.

“There is more he can tell us. I can feel it.”

“These others-Mongolians?-are out in front of us,” he said. “I hate playing catch up.”

She let go of the man’s arm. It bounced lifelessly against the bed.

“The way you handled yourself,” she said. “You are part Chinese, you know?” she said.

“Thank you,” he said.

6:45 P.M.

CHANGNING DISTRICT

SHANGHAI

Knox took precautions to identify motorized surveillance-executing four consecutive right turns; slowing down, speeding up; reversing directions. Grace kept a lookout as well.

“Do you have him?” she asked, leaning her chin onto Knox’s shoulder, their helmets bumping. “Black shirt? Shaved head.”

“Yes. I haven’t seen anyone with him.” Knox shouted above the roar.

“No.”

“Doesn’t that seem a little odd?” Vehicular surveillance nearly always came in pairs or trios.

“Uncommon,” she said. “Yes. Maybe their numbers are small.”

“About to get smaller. Can you drive one of these?” he asked.

“Of course.”

“Hang on!” He felt her hold to him tightly. He abruptly directed the scooter down the next lane. He turned right at the first sublane, and leaned over, allowing Grace to grab the scooter’s left hand-grip. Knox then slipped off the seat and his shoes met the concrete. He ran with the momentum to keep from falling.

The scooter wobbled but Grace gained control. She continued down the sublane. Knox hid in a doorway, peering out. Breathing hard. Adrenaline running hot.

An older Chinese couple passed, arms hooked, strolling down the lilong’s main lane.

Grace and the scooter disappeared to his right.

The idling bubble of a small-cc motorcycle engine grew louder. Closer. Knox ducked back into the doorway. He reached for a bamboo broom as the scooter driver goosed the throttle to make the turn.

The man was big, with sharp, high cheekbones. Another Mongolian?

Knox lunged and drove the broom handle through the front wheel. He slapped his hand over the rider’s and gunned the throttle. The bike lifted over its front wheel. The helmetless driver sailed over the handlebars and smashed down onto the concrete, the bike slamming on top of him.

Knox sprang, kicking the bike out of the way. He removed a Russian Makarov 9×18mm from the man’s lower back. Knox took the man’s mobile phone, noting it was the same make and model-the same color!-as the man’s he’d attacked in Lu Hao’s apartment stairwell.

He pulled the man free, drove his knee into his groin and watched the man recoil. He found a Resident Identity Card and some yuan in the front pocket of the man’s jeans. He kept it.

“Where is the hostage?” Knox spoke slowly in Mandarin. “Where is Lu Hao?”

The vacancy in the man’s eyes told Knox he either didn’t understand Mandarin, or was ignorant of the information.

He struck him hard in the face.

“Lu Hao!”

The man spoke, and this time there was no question: not Russian, but Mongolian.

“Who the fuck are you?” Knox said in English.

“Fuck you,” the man returned in English.

The thwap of the man’s skull smacking concrete was slightly sickening. He was out cold.

Knox checked the man’s hands for calluses-right-handed. He broke the man’s right elbow across his knee.

He was interrupted by an old woman’s shouts of distress. Knox looked up, his temper boiling. Looked right into a surveillance camera high on the building’s corner.

The scooter reappeared, Grace’s timing, impeccable.

Two Mongolians, he thought, wondering, what the hell. Private muscle? For whom? Berthold’s construction competitors? Foreign agents? Chinese cops?

The bike sped off, Knox wrapping his arms around Grace’s tiny waist.

7:25 P.M.

XINJINGZHEN NEIGHBORHOOD

SHANGHAI

Grace steered the scooter in a U-turn across the wide, empty road and returned, having driven past the address supplied by the Sherpa delivery man. The scooter’s light found the light industrial compound’s entrance. Blocked by a padlocked steel cable, the interior roadbed was packed dirt, litter-strewn and weed-infested. It led to a group of six flat-roofed concrete-block buildings that looked decades old but had been built just five years earlier.

The cable was there to stop cars and trucks. Grace slipped the scooter past a stanchion and into the compound. Building 3’s north side looked out on a field of weeds and heaps of rusted junk. She killed the engine, and together she and Knox listened, looked and learned.