Ridley Pearson - The Risk Agent

Knox kissed her on both cheeks. “Help,” he whispered. They held arms tightly as he introduced her.

“Amy Xue, this is Mr. Yang’s assistant, Katherine Wu. She is showing me the view.” He faced Ms. Wu. “Amy is one of my original trading partners,” Knox said, “and a close friend. She has the finest pearls in all of Shanghai. But often, too expensive.”

“Americans always want cheap, cheap, cheap,” Amy said. “Like sound of bird.”

“Sounds as if you two have been trading together for a long time,” Katherine Wu said, intentionally impolite.

“As I said: old friends,” Knox said, having not taken his eyes off Amy. Glad she’d confirmed his occupation without prompting.

“You may be old, John Knox, but not me. You come to my city, not tell me in advance?” Amy said. “How am I to hold best pearls for my best customer?”

“If you don’t mind,” he said to Wu, taking Amy by the elbow and leading her away.

Katherine Wu allowed them a fifteen-foot lead and then followed on a leash. Knox steered Amy toward the bar and finally caught sight of Yang and Grace at a table in the far corner of the cocktail lounge to the right. He felt an enormous sense of relief.

Amy didn’t miss much. “Friend of yours?”

“My accountant.”

“I’ve always thought spreadsheet a dirty word.”

“Not like that, Amy. You know better than that.”

“I know my favorite customer when I see him. I know you did not send e-mail telling me you were coming.”

“It was a last-minute decision, this trip.”

“Tell that to your accountant.”

He ordered drinks for them both. A kir for her. Beer for him. The smoking at the bar bothered her, so they moved closer to a marble slab holding satay, egg rolls, pot stickers, bao and fruit. Knox ate the pot stickers and satay. Amy stuck to the fruit.

He thought about Danner. What he was eating, where he was sleeping. He felt shitty about his own present surroundings in the lap of luxury. The GPS burned a hole in his coat pocket. He’d slipped it from Grace’s purse as they’d boarded the elevator. He hoped she wouldn’t discover it missing before they separated for the night.

“Did you like last shipment?” she asked. What he liked was the way she slipped the chocolate-dipped strawberry between her lips and sucked on it.

“We could use more of the stone boxes and the black pearls. We’re getting squeezed on the cultureds by other online sites. Fewer of those.”

“We will give you what you want,” she said, making him suffer through another strawberry.

“More of the custom designs. We can’t compete on unstrungs. It’s your beautiful designs that separate us.”

“You flatter me, Knox.”

“The bracelets are popular. More bracelets.”

“Black pearls. More bracelets. Not a problem.”

He considered asking Amy what she’d heard about the kidnapping. Rumor spread fast on the street. But self-preservation was about containment. Loyalties changed here as quickly as the weather.

“Amy, would you help me with something. Kind of like translating,” he said, thinking about the GPS.

“You speak better than most Chinese.”

“Your beauty is exceeded only by your exaggeration,” he said in Mandarin. Then, returning to English. “Shanghai neighborhoods. Which are trickier than others for waiguoren. These are business addresses for possible suppliers. As safe as this city can seem, I don’t want to end up somewhere I don’t belong.”

“Suppliers?”

“I promise: no pearls. No jewelry.”

“You know this city well, Knox. You do not need me.” She’d teed one up for him to ask about Lu Hao and Danner.

“I hear the city has become more dangerous for a waiguoren in recent days.”

“Is that so?” she said, her voice as smooth as the surface of a fine pearl. She offered no way for him to judge her knowledge.

Knox spotted Bruno, the bar and restaurant manager, and signaled him. Bruno’s size and comportment befit his name: he had a wide, serene face and a boyish smile, all tucked into a six-foot-one, two-hundred-and-eighty-pound body.

At Knox’s request, Bruno led them into his back office and left them alone.

Knox took out the GPS and showed Amy the bookmarked locations.

She worked through descriptions of some of the areas where a waiguoren would stick out. “Not that there is any risk to you. No physical risk. This is Shanghai.”

Knox memorized the map with her comments in mind. He wondered if she had possibly not heard of the kidnapping. She gave no indication otherwise. He thought all of Shanghai knew.

“You saw this, yes?” Amy asked, pointing to a tiny red dot the size of a pinhead alongside the character notation.

“I might have missed that,” he said, having no idea what it was.

“It is a voice note.” She scrolled along the bookmarked route. “Each location, a voice note.”

Knox studied the device, thinking: Voice notes?

“Friend in International Pearl City try to sell me this same GPS,” Amy said. “Gar-min,” she said, making it sound Chinese.

She worked the device through some menus and Knox’s breath caught as Danner’s voice-calm and restrained-spoke. He had trouble concentrating on the actual message.

“Second floor, second door from the south corner. Husband and wife. Mid-forties-out of shape. No children.”

Knox wanted to replay it just to hear Danner’s voice.

“A note for each location?” he said, rhetorically.

“Evidently.”

“Okay, then.” He accepted the device back and pocketed it. A note for each location. It might prove a shortcut to nearly the same information they sought from Lu’s accounting of the bribes: the precise location of each bribe recipient.

She said nothing more about it, showed no outward sign of interest or curiosity-as discreet as one could ask for.

“Here,” she said, kissing him just off his lips, and catching his hand as it came up. “Do not wipe it off.”

“Who’s going to see us?”

“Everyone already has. If you do not want them asking the obvious questions, then leave it.”

She was testing him. Her way of asking him what this was about while saving herself face.

He searched her exquisite eyes. “What are the obvious questions?”

“Xing xing zhi huo ke yi liao yuan,” she said. A single spark can start a prairie fire.

“Shu dao hu sun san,” he returned. An equally well-worn proverb. When the tree falls, the monkeys scatter. He warned of fair-weather friendship.

“I am no monkey,” she said. “You must be careful, John. You never fail to surprise me. This makes me warm for you.”

“It’s not what you think,” he said. All waiguoren were considered spies first.

“Have you no idea what I am thinking about?” She placed his thigh between her legs and pressed, letting him feel her heat. She craned up and whispered, “Maybe you can guess.”

They kissed.

“Enjoy your accountant,” she said, pulling away from him, making a show of her muscular backside.

Reentering the bar, he was hyperaware of the dozen eyes that found him-including Grace’s.

He arrived at her table and addressed Yang. “If you are seducing my date, I will have to cry foul. As the host of such a perfect party-the drinks, the food, the guests-you outclass any man in attendance and play to an unfair advantage.”

“The older the ginger, the hotter the spice,” Yang answered. “He who pays the piper calls the tune.” He glanced over to Grace.

“Only a fool would argue with such wisdom,” she said.

“We were just wrapping up,” Yang said. He moved to draw Grace’s chair back. Grace stood, thanking him.

Katherine Wu appeared, seemingly out of nowhere. Knox noted how well she’d been trained, and kept his mind partially on Yang’s security man, wondering if that training spilled over to him; wondering if he happened to know some Mongolians.