Ridley Pearson - The Risk Agent

“Let’s just say I’m playing percentages,” Dulwich said. “Marquardt seems like the real thing to me, but who knows? These fuckers are in it for the money. Right? Danny is not expendable. Not to me. Not to you. That’s why you’re here. Am I right? What do I know? As to why I risked being here? My boss, Primer, raised the ransom cash for Marquardt. The two-fifty USD. It’s coming into Guangzhou by container ship tomorrow. I’m the courier. Primer will not trust freelancers with that kind of cash. Who put the free in freelance?”

“You could have headed straight to Guangzhou,” Knox said.

Dulwich bristled. “Coulda, shoulda. But Danny’s hard drive’s a priority.”

“You got the SIM card I sent?”

Dulwich nodded. “Yeah. Your guy made repeated calls to another pay-as-you-go China Mobile phone. At first, we thought it might be the intellectual fielding those calls.”

“The Mongolians aren’t the kidnappers. They’re on the receiving end of the incentives.”

“Interesting,” Dulwich said.

“Added on late in the game.”

“Well, whatever all that means, the guy taking those calls appears to report daily to someone in Beijing. A Party member? Government? A businessman? Who the fuck knows? But he’s a priority to you and me both.”

“These Mongolians are muscle for some Beijing bureaucrat?”

“Or middlemen for the incentives,” Dulwich proposed.

“That works for me.”

“We’ve been following GPS locators on both phones-the Beijing guy, and the Shanghai phone that apparently reports into him daily.”

Knox thought they were getting closer to the truth of why Dulwich had made the trip.

“You’re tracking them? Nice of you to tell me.”

“I’m telling you now. Right? The Beijing guy is smart enough to turn it off, and leave it off most of the time. Making tracking sporadic. The Shanghai guy, not so smart. You want to meet him?” Dulwich handed Knox his iPhone. “The blue dot. That’s him. He’s up the block from us.”

Knox studied the moving map. “You’ve got a bead on the Mongolian? When exactly were you going to tell me?”

“He came straight here the moment you arrived. I watched the dot cross the city.”

Knox tried to make sense of it. “He must have followed you. Is that possible?”

“You took a cab,” Dulwich stated, as if Knox had committed a crime.

Knox explained, “I was short on time.”

“We know this guy is connected to Beijing, right? You’ve actually helped us out by confirming the level of that connection. He didn’t follow you, Knox. He just headed over here. That tells me this Beijing guy swings a big enough stick to have the Shanghai cabbies looking out for you.”

“The run-ins with the Mongolians,” Knox said. “The cops contacted Kozlowski at the consulate about an American wanted for assault.”

“So they’ve been onto you. Makes sense. They lifted your face off camera footage, fed a photo to city cab drivers, and here you are. I’d keep my hat low from now on.”

An elderly Chinese man entered the small space, scooped up some live eels into a plastic bag and left.

“What about him? I’ve got to lose him,” Knox said, pointing to Dulwich’s phone.

Dulwich grinned. “I thought you’d never ask.”

1:20 P.M.

KINGLAND RIVERSIDE LUXURY RESIDENCE

PUDONG DISTRICT

“I wondered if you’d taken your lunch?” Grace said over the secure iPhone, knowing Marquardt’s assistants rarely took a lunch break beyond a baozi from the corner.

She considered her lunch with Marquardt and Song a draw: not a total failure but not the results she had hoped for. With any luck, Selena could be manipulated to correct that discrepancy. Grace had learned from the best: her manipulative mother.

“Not yet,” Selena Ming said. “Quite busy today.”

“I thought you might enjoy a look at my apartment.”

A moment’s hesitation, then Selena replied, “Yes! Very much!”

“I am taking my afternoon here in order to focus on some accounting personally requested by Mr. Marquardt. Do you like sushi?” An extravagant meal for an office worker like Selena was KFC. Because of its price, sushi was considered fine dining-take-away or not.

“My favorite!”

“I will order some take-away.”

“I can pick this up on my way.”

“Would you? How kind of you!” Grace supplied the name of a shop less than a block from her Pudong apartment.

“Oh!” she said, as if just thinking of it. “Mr. Marquardt would like me to check the EOY financials. End of year. I may have mentioned that before.” She knew she had, and Selena had been reluctant to help her obtain them. But now she came at it from a better angle. Selena had seen Grace win on the apartment issue. Her impression of Grace’s power within the company would have greatly improved. “I left them on my office computer,” she lied. “I wonder if I gave you my password, if you could bring me a thumb drive? I do not wish to trouble you.” As Marquardt’s executive assistant, Selena would be able to obtain nearly anything. Grace did not have the files on her machine, but knew Selena would never agree to access another employee’s computer.

“We have a printout here in our files, if that would suffice? I would be most happy to deliver these for you, Miss Chu.”

“Call me Grace, please.” The final hook: first name basis with a junior executive. “Mr. Marquardt would like me to complete the work as quickly as possible. You know how he is.”

“I will bring them with me,” Selena said.

“Thank you. And I would just as soon he not know how forgetful I can be.”

“Of course.”

“See you soon, then,” Grace said. She chortled upon disconnecting the call, proud of herself. Keeping in mind that her apartment was likely bugged, she and Knox planned to use Selena’s visit to ferret out whoever was behind the surveillance-to offer up just enough juicy content to tease a reaction from either Yang Cheng or Allan Marquardt.

Grace fetched a scarf from her bag and covered her head. She entered a sister tower to her own residence and rode the elevator to the tenth floor where a sky bridge connected the two. If anyone was watching her tower, they would not have seen her enter.

Once into her apartment, she was mindful of the electronic ears and eyes. Eventually, Grace was buzzed by lobby security and Selena was announced. Marquardt’s secretary failed to conceal her reaction to the apartment’s opulence. She covered her mouth, moving room to room, her eyes giving away her astonishment. Following the tour, the two sat at the dining table and shared the sushi that Grace had put out on a plate. Grace positioned them both with their backs to the room as if to admire the view. In fact, it was for the sake of the possible cameras, hoping the open drapes would place them both in silhouette and make them less easy to read.

“I was unable to download the spreadsheets you requested,” Selena said.

Grace’s shoulders slumped in disappointment. “I see.”

“But I was able to bring you these.” Selena withdrew a pair of heavy binders from her backpack and slapped them onto the table. “I cannot give them to you, but I can leave them with you for a day or two. You can perhaps look them over and return them to me at that time?”

“Yes. Of course.” Grace did her best to contain her excitement. These binders and the end-of-year accounts they contained represented a complex numeric crossword puzzle, as entertaining to her as it was challenging. She flipped open the first of the two, delighting at the sight of all those numbers. Somewhere in these pages was a record of every cent paid out as bribes through Lu Hao. Dates. Internal transfers of funds. Budgeting.