Ridley Pearson - The Risk Agent

The Mongolian looked back at Knox, cocky with his achievement.

Knox had lost sight of Grace. He grabbed his phone but there was no signal.

He looked to his right: the security guard pushed closer to him, a walkie-talkie held to his mouth.

His memory replayed like film: her leaving the boutique carrying a knock-off duffel; beating her through the turnstiles and watching her go through security; following her to the platform…

He rewound the film: the boutique, the knock-off duffel, the platform, a different knock-off duffel.

It hit him: Security.

His mind replayed that part of his visual memory: his attention had been on Grace and her orange shirt. She’d deposited the duffel onto the X-ray machine’s black rubber conveyor belt.

She’d picked up the duffel on the other side amid a dozen people grabbing and fighting for their handbags.

A different duffel had come out the other side.

The switch had been made inside the X-ray machine-the original duffel trapped, a second duffel released and allowed to pass through the machine.

Knox turned and fought the tide of bodies, heading straight for the guard, who wore his surprise openly on his face. Knox grabbed him, kneed him and slammed him into a concrete pillar. He stole the man’s walkie-talkie and released him, leaving him to slump to the platform.

He lowered his head like a running back and parted the sea. Once that money was delivered, Danny was a dead man.

3:48 P.M.

Melschoi’s phone intercom beeped.

“The woman boarded a train, Line Two,” Rabbit said. “I am in the next car back.”

“Excellent. And the eBpon?”

“Unable to board. I left him on the platform.”

“Line Two,” Melschoi confirmed.

“Yes.”

“Watch for him,” Melschoi warned in an ominous tone.

“I left him behind, I’m telling you!”

“Watch for him, Rabbit. I’m telling you: chances are, you did not.”

4:00 P.M.

XINTIANDI SHOPPING AREA

SHANGHAI

Xintiandi, a high-end commercial development set in a renovated Shanghainese lane neighborhood of the 1920s, occupied eight city blocks, its buildings and now wide concourses home to luxury retail stores and four-star restaurants. An important tourist destination, it was also a home for the Platinum Card set. On the start of the National Day holiday it looked like a mosh pit at a rock concert.

Into this chaos arrived Grace, claustrophobia already wearing on her. The shoves; the cigarettes; the body odor; the perfume all served as catalysts for her anxiety.

She bullied her way forward, the heavy duffel slowing her down as it collided with others in the crowd. A light rain began falling. She pushed for the Cold Stone Creamery around the corner, fighting the dense crowds.

She arrived at the ice cream parlor, gripping her phone tightly in her hand, waiting for the next call.

And waited.

And waited.

The phone’s screen remained blank. She mentally urged it to ring.

Silence.

The rain fell harder.

Had she been too late?

She glanced around, immediately spotting two uniformed police moving methodically through the throng.

Had the kidnappers spotted the police? Canceled the drop?

The isolation from Knox was killing her. She wondered when she had allowed herself to become dependent upon John Knox.

She dropped the heavy duffel to the concrete, clinging to its strap tightly.

No call.

No contact.

She looked down at the duffel. The two zipper tabs met dead center in the bag; this was not right! She had pulled them both to one side, having had experience of heavy bags coming open when the zippers were centered like this.

She distinctly recalled pulling the zippers to one side.

She knelt, the rain beginning to pour down. She hardly felt it.

There, in the middle of the crowds flowing around her, in the middle of an all-out downpour, soaked to her bones, Grace nervously grabbed hold of the zippers and separated them. Hesitated only briefly before tugging the two sides apart.

She saw a bag filled with stacks of newspaper bundled together with twine. Unable to breathe, she looked up into the rain as if expecting answers. When? Where? How? She had put the money into this duffel herself-her reaction went far beyond bewilderment to outright denial. This was impossible!

Impossible or not, it was. She dug through the newspapers just to make sure.

The two cops were closing in on her. The Mongolian was back there somewhere. She had but a matter of seconds. The orange shirt gave her away.

She abandoned the bag.

She had no money, only a travel card with twenty yuan left on it-about three dollars. She hurried away from the police, approaching a T-shirt kiosk.

She stole a shirt, not by lifting the hanger off the peg, but by bending over and pulling the shirt down, off the hanger. Ten yards later, down on one knee, she delighted a pair of high school-aged boys by peeling off the orange top and donning the stolen T-shirt.

She returned to the Metro entrance, passing within a few yards of the police, who seemed to be looking for her.

Behind her, lying wet atop the plaza’s concrete pavers, they would soon come across the orange tank top, trod upon, dirty and already torn.

4:00 P.M.

HUANGPU DISTRICT

Knox prodded the taxi driver to stay with the blue Volvo sedan sandwiched in traffic up ahead.

He’d returned to the Metro security station in time to catch the four P.M. shift change, had watched as one of the uniformed security men had left carrying a heavy black duffel with the oversized, smudged Nike logo on its side.

The guard cut through People’s Square indifferent to the steady rain and the gloom it produced. Knox skillfully avoided being seen, reveling that the shoe was on the other foot. The guard continued two blocks on foot until meeting the blue Volvo.

The first decent break of the past week came as a woman and her daughter disembarked from a taxi heading the same direction on Dagu Road as the Volvo. In the rain. In Friday rush hour.

Knox took it as an omen.

Now his taxi driver ran a light as its timer expired. The man used the right lane to pass two vans, nearly paving two cyclists in the process.

“Hen hao!” Very good! Knox called out from alongside the driver. They’d caught back up-less than a block separating them from the Volvo.

The driver smiled widely, his few remaining teeth cigarette-stained and crooked.

4:04 P.M.

XINTIANDI

A defeated Grace descended into the Metro station. Her legs burned; her throat was dry; the soaking wet green T-shirt stuck to her like unwanted skin. Acutely aware of the probing electronic eyes and the possibility of a Mongolian still following, she hung her head and attempted to blend in with the hundreds-thousands!-of Chinese swarming the underground station.

The operation was blown. Her face was known to police. She’d lost Knox. She’d lost the cobbled-together ransom money. One of the Mongolians was following her.

Lu Hao would be killed. Danner, along with him. She’d come to believe the switch had been made in the X-ray machine back in People’s Square. It was the only place she’d been removed from the bag. It was a devious, clever deceit.

She knew there was only one person to blame for it coming off so flawlessly.

4:20 P.M.

North of the confluence of Suzhou Creek and the Huangpu River, Knox’s taxi sped through the area northeast of the Garden Bridge that in the past 160 years had been home to American traders, Russian refugees, Japanese merchants (and then military occupiers) and the European Jews whom the Chinese required to live in squalor during the war. An uninspiring and neglected part of the city for decades, it had recently undergone gentrification, and was now home to hotels, coffee shops and office buildings.