Ridley Pearson - The Risk Agent

“I trust you will enjoy yourself,” Yang said to Grace.

“The rest of the evening will pale by comparison to these few minutes in your company,” she said.

Yang bowed ever so slightly. Together, he and his assistant moved toward the bar.

“Had enough?” Knox said.

“You can leave any time you would like.”

“If I want permission, I’ll ask,” he said.

She indicated her own chin and passed him a napkin from the table. Knox wiped off Amy’s lipstick.

“Part of my cover.”

“You do not have to explain yourself to me,” she said, sarcastically. “I wish to stay a while longer to see if I can get our host alone once more. I worry for Lu Hao. I do not doubt a man like this could be behind it.”

“Did he offer to negotiate the ransom?” he asked, aiming for specifics.

“Leave when you wish. Perhaps we make a small scene and I am left on my own. Men can be so predictable.”

“You could slap me,” he said.

“Happily,” she whispered.

“Six A.M.?” he asked.

“I don’t forget so quickly,” Grace said, her eyes lingering a little too long on the smudge still clinging to the corner of his lips.

“The corner of Huaihai and Maoming,” he said. “Near the entrance to the Metro station.”

She cracked him across the cheek, everyone nearby interrupted by the slap.

Knox nursed it and moved away, cutting through the crowd. She had a hell of a right hand.

9:10 P.M.

Knox took repeated precautions to avoid being followed, including arriving at the Jin Jiang Hotel, where he was officially registered. He went through the motions of riding the elevator to his room, both for the sake of his cover, and to try to trap anyone behind him he might have missed.

Once inside the room, he stopped short at the sight of a brown padded envelope on his bed. He felt through it before opening-something hard, slightly smaller than a paperback book.

He spent a minute giving the room a lived-in look. Kept one eye on the package, which was both stapled and taped shut.

Finally, he tore it open and slid out the contents revealing the smooth aluminum of an Iomega portable hard drive. He double-checked the envelope. No note.

Kozlowski. Had to be. Before calling Dulwich to deliver his daily briefing and inquire if the delivery of the hard drive was somehow his doing, Knox pulled out the GPS and listened to Danner’s seven voice notes. Used as a dictation device, the notes were brief and cryptic, unemotional and nearly without personality. But Knox held on to the sound of the man’s voice, replaying several of the messages just to hear him speak. He suffered nostalgia, a condition he thought he’d been cured of permanently following his contract service with the military. The last real friendships he’d forged had been in Kuwait, now too many years ago to count.

He needed to listen to the last voice memo several times to decipher Danner’s verbal shorthand.

“Late addition to route. Heavy duffel left behind. Choke point. Civi guard took off, leaving two Huns as gatekeepers.”

Huns…Mongolians? On Lu Hao’s payout route? Added late in the game?

Knox mulled it over as he rode the elevator to the mezzanine and used his card key to enter the empty business office. Connected the hard drive by USB cable and studied the drive’s directory. He tried search strings for “Lu,” “bribes,” “payoffs,” “incentives,” “Berthold.” Nothing. The most recent Word files were letters written to his wife, Peggy. Reading the letters stirred guilt and anger in Knox. He owed Peggy a call. Something reassuring but vague. He found the most recently opened Excel files, also of little use: expense accounts. Nothing that pointed at Lu. Maybe Grace could find some files of significance, but at first blush, Knox doubted Lu Hao’s books were anywhere on Danner’s drive.

He disconnected the drive, hit the street and bought a second external drive and had the teenage clerk copy it. It took forty-five minutes; he tipped the kid a week’s salary. He returned to his room and placed a call.

“Go,” Dulwich said.

“Are you behind the package I found on my hotel bed?”

“Negative. What kind of package?”

Knox explained the package. Dulwich knew nothing of any hard drive, but clearly wanted to get his hands on it.

“I can’t see Kozlowski helping me out,” Knox said. “Too big a risk for him to take.”

“Consider that he wants Danner back as much as, maybe more than, any of us. FYI: I was about to call you. DNA is a match. Good work. But listen, an American gone missing? This is on Kozlowski’s watch, don’t forget. If you get Danner back before the ransom’s paid, the kidnapping will never be officially recorded. No black marks on anyone’s service record. The government escapes a tricky one. The Party, and Kozlowski and the consulate, too.”

“But I have no doubt-zero-that he’s connected me to you and Rutherford. So why not just overnight it to you directly?”

“There would be records of that. You, on the other hand, just discovered something on your bed. He probably paid off a chambermaid or doorman. No legs. Now you’re the one in position to do something with whatever’s contained on there. He knows that. And if he found something on there, it makes all the more sense because his hands are tied. You become the sacrificial lamb. You say he’s made the connection to us. He knows who we are, knows we’re major players. Knows we specialize in kidnapping resolution and extraction. If you’re him, who would you want on your side?”

“I suppose,” Knox said.

“And consider this: that laptop was encrypted. Count on it. So your consulate buddy broke the encryption. That means he’s got whatever you’ve got. He might have even removed a few files before giving you a copy. But who knows? Maybe it’s a matter of making sense of it. Maybe there’s something on there but he needs a second set of eyes.”

“I can pass it on to Grace,” Knox said. “But with two days to go, I’m not putting my nose into a computer screen.”

“Understood.”

“Is the date still firm?” Knox said.

“Yes.”

“And?” Knox could hear it in the man’s voice.

The line remained open, but Dulwich wasn’t speaking.

“Sarge?”

“A finger.”

The open line sparked with static.

“Whose?” Knox said, knowing already.

“Look on the bright side,” Dulwich said. “We know Danny was alive as recently as yesterday. And within city limits.”

The finger had retained warmth-the only explanation. Knox swallowed dryly. “Which finger?”

Silence.

“Which finger?” Knox repeated.

“Middle finger, right hand.”

“Oh…shit.” The kidnappers had seized the opportunity to send a message within the message. Knox’s stomach turned. No DNA swab this time. He tried for air. “I’ll kill these guys,” he said.

“You and me both.”

“Peggy?”

“No need to bother her with details.”

“She has a right to know he’s still alive. That is not a detail.”

“This is what we do, buddy boy. We’re on it.”

“Any renegotiation?” Knox asked. Ransom sums were always reduced the closer to the drop.

“Marquardt handled it very well. It’s down to a quarter million USD.”

“Two-fifty K? For two hostages including one American? Are you shitting me?”

“We’ve adjusted our game plan to consider them amateurs,” Dulwich said. “Berthold was prepared to go as high as ten million.”

Knox filled him in on the Sherpa delivery man knowing a valid address and how this supported the amateurs theory.

“Game changer,” Dulwich said. “If not a Triad, then maybe a co-worker or a competitor. But our modeling continues to suggest one of the bribe recipients. We need those people identified. You need to bring me Lu Hao’s accounts.”