Ridley Pearson - The Risk Agent

“You cannot possibly be considering removing him from hospital.”

“Can’t I?”

“We cannot care for him! The way you described his condition-”

“Don’t get your panties in a knot.”

“Excuse me?”

He didn’t translate it for her. “At some point they’ll determine he’s an American. His teeth-dental work-will tell them that much. X rays. Tattoos. There are ways.”

“We must focus on Lu Hao and Mr. Danner.”

“Sarge was the source for the ransom money.” He relived their conversation in the wet market, including the pickup in Guangzhou. A pickup that would not happen. “No Sarge, no ransom drop.”

Grace hesitated before speaking. “Extraction.”

“Right,” he said. “As if.”

He looked over at her. She needed sleep. They both needed food.

“Okay. One step at a time,” he said. “Maybe the frame has Lu’s files. Maybe the numbers tell us something we don’t know.” He no longer believed it. He suddenly saw them instead as a means to an end. “We’re looking at this wrong.”

“How so?”

“Everyone seems to want Lu’s accounts, right?”

“It is possible,” she said. “Yes.”

“So whoever possesses his files has power over the others. Power means leverage.”

“The numbers always reveal more than anyone suspects,” said the forensic accountant.

Knox yawned. “You’re missing the point.”

“Which is?” she said angrily.

“We need to raise money in order to pay the ransom.”

“I am aware of that predicament.”

“So now maybe we have something to sell,” Knox said.

Twenty minutes later, he sat in a wheelchair outside a changing room in a boutique clothing store.

“Do you know the expression, ‘Take no prisoners’?” he asked, as Grace tried on clothes on the other side of a black silk curtain. He could see her bare feet. The petite woman who ran the store was in the front dealing with a customer.

“I have heard it before.”

“Tie up every loose end.”

“Yes,” she said, impatient with him.

“That’s why the change of clothes for both of us, and my condition.” His hands on the wheelchair’s wheels. “In case any of those cops are still watching the building.”

“The police,” she said.

“We don’t know who they are. State Security? Private muscle?”

Grace drew back the curtain. She wore a gray business suit with black pinstripes, and a sheer white blouse unbuttoned to show a good amount of skin. She looked older. She carried a tote over her shoulder. Just right, Knox thought: slightly slutty.

She said, “How do you know those men who attacked us are not because of this woman you slept with?”

They both knew Grace’s carelessness had led Yang’s men to them in the alley, but he kept his mouth shut.

“How do you know Lu Hao isn’t a blackmailer?” Knox said. “That he wasn’t blackmailing some Beijing minister who then sicced the Mongolians on him to clean up loose ends?”

She studied him. Disappointment and disdain mixed with a hint of curiosity.

“Not Lu Hao,” she said.

Knox rode in the wheelchair head down, a blanket across his lap. He wore a woven bamboo hat and a collarless blue cotton jacket typical of retirees, his shoulders hunched, his head drooped against a lightly falling rain. Wheelchairs were rarely seen on the streets of Shanghai. Wherever Shanghai’s elderly or handicapped were kept, it wasn’t on the busy sidewalks. But Knox fit the mold for those that were occasionally seen-old and decrepit, sad testimonies to the ravages of age.

Guiding him was an upscale office worker, a woman with a nice figure wearing high heels. She pushed the chair with one hand, and with the other clutched her purse over her head against the rain.

Grace said, “Pushing this is a lot more difficult than it looks.”

Knox barely heard her. For the past several hours he’d brooded over the loss of Dulwich, intent on rescuing him from the hospital. He wished he’d secured the man’s iPhone and its ability to track the Mongolian.

Now, less than thirty yards from Lu Hao’s apartment building, Knox peered out from under the hat, looking for signs of the police and surveillants they’d encountered their last time here. They reached the entrance to Lu Hao’s apartment building and Grace backed him through the door.

Inside, they acted quickly, having talked through it. For the sake of any cameras, Grace pushed Knox and the wheelchair into the elevator. She reached in and touched “7.”

Then she headed toward the stairs, leaving him behind.

Down the hall she found a door marked BUILDING SUPERVISOR in both English and Mandarin. She descended the stairs into a dank-smelling but well-lit basement. The seconds ticked off in her head.

Knox’s former assault of the Mongolian in the stairway meant the police had questioned the supervisor, residents and the real estate agent. Grace needed to take the supervisor’s attention off her face, despite her attempts to disguise herself. She paused on a landing, bent down and tore her skirt. She did the same to her blouse, popping buttons and revealing her bra. She wet her finger and smeared her eye shadow. Hyperventilating, she approached the partially opened door that discharged cigarette smoke and the strains of a Chinese television melodrama. She knocked loudly and pushed inside without invitation.

“Help me!” she cried out in Mandarin.

Knox’s plan was designed to work no matter what the manager’s gender. By exposing herself, there wasn’t a man alive who wouldn’t jump to his feet to come to her aid; and the implication of sexual assault would bring sympathy from any woman. If a married couple-often the case for building supervisors-Grace would have her work cut out for her.

It was a married couple.

Early forties. He, with thinning hair and a bad complexion, all skin and bones; she, in a blue jumpsuit, her face oily, her hair clumped and pulled back in a bun.

Grace entered a small space, every inch used efficiently. A narrow futon, two stools with an improvised table between them. A small cathode-ray color television flickered between neat stacks of clothing on a shelf. To her right, another smaller black-and-white television sat next to two VCRs. Exactly as Knox had described.

She plopped down on the empty bed without invitation.

“He…I…he tried to…” She pleaded with her eyes to the woman. “Please.”

She saw the gravity register on the man’s face. Unless he could quickly control the story, he would be out on the street looking for work. There had already been one assault in his building in the past few days. Another would be the end of him.

“Tea, my dear,” the woman said, shooting a look at her husband telling him to do something. The kitchen was behind a maroon blanket. With the clatter of pots and pans, Grace went to work.

She reached for the perplexed building superintendent. To her relief, he reached back for her.

6:40 P.M.

Seven Swans-Lu Hao’s apartment.

Knox, wearing the hat to screen his face from the security cameras, used his knuckle to ring the doorbell, avoiding fingerprints. He kept watch on the glass peephole in the center of the door. As it briefly flashed dark-indicating its light source was blocked-Knox kicked open the door, taking the doorjamb with it.

As it swung open, he hit it again with a shoulder, making sure to crush the man caught behind it. He took two great strides into the center of the room, dispatching a greasy punk who rose up from the couch, and a second, sturdier kid who was apparently slow off the mark. Neither was unconscious, but they’d be wishing they were for the next several minutes.

Knox pivoted on his right heel. The man behind the door held up his hands in resignation.