Ridley Pearson - The Risk Agent

He tapped the driver’s forearm. “Slowly, cousin,” he said, speaking Shanghainese. “Straight on.”

“Excuse me. The car-”

“Straight,” Knox repeated. “Turn around and pull to the curb.”

“But-”

“Kuai, kuai, kuai!” Fast.

The Volvo had slowed and taken two successive rights. Evasive action to check for tails. Knox was betting it would take two more, returning to its former route. The pause to look for tails was a good sign: they were getting close.

He’d had the taxi turn around so he could see through the Volvo’s windshield in order to confirm its passenger had not left the vehicle. The sleight-of-hand trick with the duffel weighed heavily upon him.

Knox checked his watch, forgetting it had stopped hours ago. The moment that money was delivered, Danner and Lu Hao would be killed. Close wasn’t going to cut it. The stopped watch suddenly seemed prescient.

The driver, his face animated, waited for him to say something. Knox could hardly think.

Too long! The Volvo hadn’t been trying to lose surveillance; the two consecutive rights had been the result of a missed turn or one-way streets. It was nearing its destination.

He texted Randy.

need location

A moment later a text returned:

soon

Knox directed the driver in the direction they’d last seen the Volvo. Recalling Grace’s mention of broken glass in the background of the video, he realized they were in the wrong neighborhood.

“Abandoned building or old lilong near here?” he asked the driver. “Broken windows?”

The driver’s face contorted. “Power station by river, many years,” he said. “Made new most recently.”

“New does not work,” Knox said. He pointed for the taxi to take another right, the Volvo nowhere to be seen.

His phone buzzed:

south of Kunming Rd, east of Dalian

Knox defined the area for the driver.

“We are close!” the driver said, accelerating and crossing Dalian Road two blocks later. “Is large area.”

“Yes,” Knox said, peering through the smeared windshield.

The driver offered a thumbs-up, then pointed out his side window.

It wasn’t the Volvo he’d spotted, but a brick fortress set back from the curb.

With hundreds of broken windows.

HUANGPU DISTRICT

Rabbit had lost the woman in Xintiandi, leaving Melschoi wanting to break something, starting with Rabbit’s head.

He called his source inside Feng Qi’s group.

“What can you tell me?”

The line went dead. The man couldn’t talk.

Minutes later the man called back.

“We are monitoring police radio. The foreigner has been spotted in People’s Square Metro station.”

“Tell me something I don’t know!”

“Our people are headed there.”

“You’re too late! He’s gone.”

The eBpon would suffer for this-if he ever found him again.

HONGKOU DISTRICT

Knox faced a pair of crumbling four-story brick blocks. The roof and windows were riddled with holes. Given the location provided by Randy, and the description, by Grace, it was a strong candidate.

Danner’s time clock was quickly expiring. Knox had to test the waters.

The compound was set back from the street across a patch of bare dirt and weeds and surrounded by high brick walls that met at an elaborate archway where a wrought-iron gate hung open. Inside the archway were aluminum lawn chairs occupied by a handful of overweight women, smoking and cackling in Shanghainese.

Electric wires had been strung through several of the second- and third-floor windows in the building on the left. The structure on the right appeared fully abandoned.

A nail-house by all appearances-a residence condemned to demolition where a few determined squatters had “nailed” themselves down, refusing to be relocated.

He had no great desire to confront a group of Shanghainese matrons; they were considerably more frightening to him than the Mongolians, but they would know everything going on in those buildings.

He crossed the street and approached them. Soaking wet now.

The woman closest to the street wore an armband symbolizing her affiliation with the government as a neighborhood observer. Only in China, he thought, could a squatter hold a community position.

On the dry concrete protected by the archway, he saw fresh wet tracks leading into the compound. The security guard, he thought. Or a courier who had met the Volvo and taken possession of the duffel.

He was tempted to follow the tracks and ignore these women. But he knew they could be paid sentries. No time to shorten Danner’s time clock.

“Heavy rain!” he said in English.

The youngest of the five women-mildly attractive-nodded faintly, though the one in charge shot her a penetrating look, apparently not wanting a language bridge between this waiguoren and their group.

“Rain,” Knox said, in intentionally poor Mandarin.

The head matron cocked her head. He tried again, improving only slightly.

She nodded, and then rattled off in Shanghainese that waiguoren spoke with rocks in their mouths. The other women chuckled-all but the youngest. Knox had an ally in her.

“You live here?” Knox asked, sticking with intentionally poor Mandarin. “These building?”

The lead woman stared at him through suspicious eyes. In Shanghainese she let him know it was none of his damn business, her language so foul that one of her friends looked to the brick walkway demurely.

In Shanghainese the younger woman said, “Be polite, you old witch. He is guest in our country. He and his kind bring commerce and prosperity.”

“They bring the avian flu and KFC. To hell with them all,” the older said, carrying on the national rhetoric that had pinned the avian flu’s origin on the United States.

“Indeed, we live here,” the younger woman said to Knox, in slow, halting Mandarin spoken so that he might understand.

“Any young men, men my age or younger, recently join you?” he asked her.

In rapid-fire Shanghainese the lead woman said, “Shut your mouth, pretty flower, or I will report you and your tribe as running a brothel and have you imprisoned for generations. Do not test me.”

Her admonishment sobered the others, while telling Knox all he needed to know. He caught the eye of the young woman, who was blushing.

“What floor?” he asked in English, knowing the matrons could not understand him. “Show me with your fingers. I will not betray you.”

“What does he say? What does he say?” snapped the old bitch. “You will not speak! You will not answer him!”

But Knox had already turned away from them having seen the young woman’s left hand, resting on her knee, touch thumb to pinky-the Chinese hand signal for “three.”

He took two steps, stopped and turned, now back in the rain. Addressing the lead woman, speaking perfect Shanghainese, he said, “You are a bitter old cow with the brains of a potato. I had five hundred yuan I was prepared to offer you to help me with the magazine article I am writing. Now it remains in my pocket, and you remain in the chair, poorer for your rudeness.”

He tromped off through the standing puddles. Immediately, the women were on their leader with vicious crude remarks and admonishments. Knox knew the arguing would continue for a good fifteen minutes. With luck, time enough for him to get in and out without detection. Ironically, the only one of them he worried about was the youngest, fearing she might see through to his intentions.

At the end of the compound was a wall shared with a five-story apartment building. Wet to the core, Knox turned at the apartment building and went up and over the wall. He slurped through mud to the far edge of the brick tenement, finding an opening where a door should have been.