Ridley Pearson - The Risk Agent

He nearly drove off the road as she finished him off, his right hand down her shirt, his left choking the steering wheel.

She collected herself and then it was as if it had never happened.

“You will direct me to within a quarter mile of the tannery,” he said. “I will park someplace out of the way. You will stand watch and notify me of anything out of the ordinary.”

“It is a deserted area,” she said. “After the tannery closed, other companies moved out as well.”

Land, any land, was too precious to abandon. “Why would they do this?”

“Local committee declared the area a future park.”

“What was the real reason?” he asked. There was no point in building a park on a sparsely populated island.

“This was the only reason I ever heard.”

“Tell me, how did your uncle meet his end?”

She said nothing for a moment. “Illness. Cancer of the blood.”

“Was he alone in this?” Shen Deshi said.

“You’ll turn left soon,” she said, pointing.

He swung the car left.

“This road leads to River Road. Then right on River Road.”

“I see I picked the right partner,” he said. “You have done well.”

She flushed with anger and embarrassment.

“I am glad for the chance to work with you,” he said. “Cooperation between departments is to be rewarded.”

“Take the next right.”

He traced her jawline. “We work well together, is it not true?” he said.

She shivered. Looked as though she might be sick.

“Pull over please!” she called out softly.

Shen Deshi yanked the car to the side of the road.

The woman threw open the door and vomited.

6:00 P.M.

CHONGMING ISLAND

Through the haze, the air over Shanghai bulged as a pink smudge on the horizon. Nearing the confluence of the Yangtze River and the China Sea, the shipping traffic spread out; low-slung barges lumbered alongside towering container ships. Jets floated on final approach into Pudong International.

Grace drove the Toyota, now sporting a third set of license plates. She turned the car off the River Road onto a rutted mud drive, entering an area of dirt and weeds and abandoned warehouses. A gravel yard’s towering equipment was silhouetted by the last vestiges of the sunset.

“It’s a ghost town,” he said, climbing out. Grace joined him.

“National Day holiday.” Cinder-block walls separated the abandoned buildings. Grace kept close to one as she led them away from the gravel yard.

“I suggest you take up position there, on the sand pile,” said the former army officer, pointing to the gravel yard. “From there you will be able to see all the buildings. It is good cover.”

“Agreed,” Knox said. “But you’ll be the one standing guard, not me.”

“A Chinese woman wandering around these places will be treated much more gently than a waiguoren.” She stopped, too small to scale the wall.

“But I can climb the walls without someone’s help,” he said, smugly.

Knox helped her over the wall, then followed. They cut across a mucky, foul-smelling stretch of saw grass and mud and scaled a second wall into the gravel yard. The sun sank into the layer of smog. Night fell quickly, dusk lasting all of five minutes.

Together they crawled up the sand pile, winning an elevated view of the industrial buildings to their left.

“Third building over,” Knox said. “That’s not dirt.”

“Asphalt. I cannot read the sign from here.”

“If you could, it would be the same sign as in the Mongolian’s video.”

“Speculation.”

“If you climb that conveyor, you’ll have an even better view.”

“You have an extra phone or two.”

“So what?”

“Give one to me and call me from up there if you see anything.”

Knox smiled at her. “Nice try.”

“As a woman,” she said, “and a native of this island, I have much better chance of talking my way out, if caught.”

“As a man, I don’t talk my way out,” Knox said.

“My point, exactly. Should talking fail, neither will I. If I need help, I have you.”

“And how do you intend to get over the walls?”

“There is only the one wall,” she said, pointing. “You see? The second wall is crumbling. Not a problem.”

“Then we go together,” he said.

“You are a waiguoren.”

“I noticed.”

“It would be asking for trouble. Be reasonable.”

“Don’t ask the impossible.”

“Help me over that first wall. If I am not approached, we will investigate together.”

It was a compromise he could live with-though reluctantly. Knox handed her the phone. Minutes later, he helped her over the wall and then watched as she climbed the conveyor that rose on a steep angle into the sky.

Reaching the freshly paved compound, Grace stayed in shadow, close to the wall. Her chosen route screened her from Knox but was preferable to crossing the yard out in the open.

As she worked around the interior perimeter, the building’s faded blue sign became not only legible but also recognizable: CHONGMING TANNING. Only the first word had been captured in the video.

She bided her time in a dark corner and watched. Five minutes stretched to ten. In the background she heard the rumble of passing ships, the slap of river water, the steady roar of frogs and night insects. Finally, she positioned herself to match the angle of the video, wondering about the late-night paving. She crossed the asphalt, trying to do so casually, not sneaking up on the place, but just out for a walk, in case she was spotted.

She felt Knox’s eyes on her back.

A pair of huge sliding doors formed the center of the structure. They were padlocked with a new lock. A second door for people was to the right. It, too, was padlocked, all the windows barricaded with a grid of welded rebar.

She returned to the center doors and found a few centimeters of play in the assembly. She improvised a pry bar out of a section of discarded pipe. With upward pressure, the door on the right pulled off its track, revealing a gap at the bottom. She rested and then pried a second time. When she leaned hard on the pipe, the door swung out a foot at the bottom. If she could block it there, she thought there might be enough room to crawl through. A two-person job. No doubt Knox was watching her, thinking the same thing.

She resented needing him. To ask for his help was to invite him to join her, and she did not want that.

The phone he’d given her vibrated in her pants pocket. She made no effort to retrieve it. She didn’t need his cynicism and sarcasm.

She spotted a pile of discarded cinder blocks. Ingenuity, she thought. Focus. Commitment. Her army training returned effortlessly.

Minutes later, she heaved once again on her pry bar and simultaneously shoved a cinder block into the gap with her foot.

She lay flat and crawled through the narrow space, elated that Knox would never have made it.

She was inside.

Perched on the exoskeleton of the conveyor’s steeply angled arm, Knox willed Grace to answer the damn phone. He’d lost a pair of headlights coming up River Road from the direction of Chongming. Of the many explanations he considered, the most likely was that the vehicle had pulled off the road and switched off its lights-a pair of teenagers seeking back-seat romance; a cop settling into a speed trap; or something much worse.

As if to confirm her independence, she wouldn’t answer her goddamned phone. Never mind that he’d been impressed by the ingenuity of her entering the building, he’d have gone after her if he’d thought he might squeeze under those doors as she had. But there was no way.

Instead, he concentrated on locating the vehicle belonging to the missing headlights. A minute passed. Two. Three. Nothing.