Don Pendleton - Lethal Risk

But Edward Carstairs was well prepared to handle just about anything that might happen; three years in the US Army had seen to that. He would have gone into Ranger School but for the accident that had blown out his knee; however, his ASVAB score had allowed him to move to intelligence. After his four-year hitch was up, his flawless command of Mandarin made him a top recruit of the State Department, and Carstairs soon found himself swimming in the murky waters of international diplomacy on the other side of the world.

With a lurch, the traffic knot untangled itself and as quickly as they’d been blocked, the nondescript sedan sped up and took the next exit to the neighborhood and the address Carstairs was heading to. As they left the jam-packed main streets behind and entered the rarified neighborhood, his breathing quickened. He already knew that this was more than just a simple pickup—whoever he was going to collect was important to the United States, which meant there could be trouble before the night was over.

His sedan motored down wide, empty streets with homes built like Italian villas on either side. He stared, eyebrows raised, at the Western-style grounds that made the neighborhood even more surreal. To buy a house out here took real money, even considering China’s artificially inflated economy. Whatever was going on, it was bigger than anything in which Carstairs had previously been involved.

In a few minutes the car stopped in front of a more modest, Tudor-influenced house several blocks inside the neighborhood. His driver pointed to the home. “This is address.”

Carstairs looked up from his smartphone, which had confirmed his driver’s words, and down the block. There was no one else in sight. His car was the only one here. “Keep the engine running. I’ll be back with three other people very soon.”

His driver nodded and grunted a response. Edward slipped his paper mask over his nose and mouth, then stepped out into the night air.

It was a little easier to breathe out here. Glancing up he was surprised to be able to barely make out the night sky amid the smog and light pollution. Carstairs trotted up the flagstone-inlaid walk to the large, double front doors made of some sort of exotic wood he didn’t recognize, complete with a small, inset door for seeing who was outside. Scanning the area one last time, he noticed there were no lights on inside as he raised his fist and knocked on the door. There was no answer at first and Carstairs was just about to knock again when the viewing portal cracked open. A woman’s eyes stared at him.

“Good evening, Mrs. Liao,” Edward began, “My name is Edward Carstairs, and I am from the United States Embassy—”

He had only gotten to “United” when the portal closed and he heard locks being opened on the other side. The door cracked open just wide enough for him to enter, and a woman’s hand shot out, grabbed his arm and pulled him inside.

Before he could react, Carstairs found himself standing in an opulent vestibule. The floor was white marble, and an unlit, massive, blackened-iron candelabrum hung overhead. The woman who had yanked him inside was also wearing a breathing mask, and dressed all in subdued gray and black. She was younger than he expected, somewhere around thirty years old, and clutched a dark green leather Hermès satchel purse, her only apparent nod to fashion. Two children stood in the doorway, a girl of about ten years old and a boy about eight, both wearing backpacks. The boy stared at him silently. The girl had her nose buried in some kind of portable game console.

“You are American,” she said. “From the embassy?” The second sentence was practically a statement, with the barest upward inflection at the end to hint at uncertainty.

Carstairs nodded. “Yes, I’ve been sent to get you and your family and to take you back to our compound.” He looked over the children’s heads into what appeared to be a richly appointed dining room.

“Where is your husband?”

“He is—not home.”

The pause in her words told him more than she could have possibly known. He was most likely the real target, but the United States was securing his family so the Chinese couldn’t get to them and use them as leverage. “Are you ready to go?”

She nodded then turned to check her children. “Zhou, put that away. I need you to pay attention to me now.” To Carstairs’s surprise, the girl tucked her game into her backpack and regarded her mother and him steadily.

“All right, here’s what’s going to happen.” Turning to the portal, Carstairs cracked it open enough to see up and down the block. His car, idling at the curb, was still the only one outside. “I’ll go out first. You give me three steps, then take the children’s hands and follow me. If anything happens, get them inside the car. The driver will take you to the embassy. Understand?” She nodded tightly. “All right, let’s go.”

Slipping his right hand into his pocket as he opened the door, Carstairs swept his practiced gaze left then right as he strode confidently outside and down the walk. Even while sending a brief, coded text to the embassy telling them he’d made the pickup, every sense was on overwatch, searching their surroundings for the slightest hint of a threat. Carstairs was aware of the woman and her children two steps behind him as they walked toward the idling car. Five steps away, four, three—

Headlights bloomed down the street as a large sedan with government plates rounded the corner and headed toward them.

“Keep moving,” he said as he stood at the rear of the car, shielding her and the kids with his body. “Get inside.”

Mrs. Liao did exactly that, efficiently shuttling her two children into the backseat, then sliding in after them. The sedan pulled to a stop in front of Carstairs’s vehicle, and a man got out of the passenger’s side. He was dressed in a simple black suit with a white shirt and black tie, and screamed government intelligence to the American. Not local police—probably someone from the Ministry of State Security.

Carstairs casually slipped his hand out of his pocket and held it at his side, fingers loosely curled to conceal what he was holding.

The man had no doubt spotted the diplomatic plates on the embassy car—and Carstairs knew that if they wanted Liao’s family that badly, the plates wouldn’t mean dick. Even so, he tried feigning innocence; it was possible, although improbable, that these guys had spotted the diplomatic plates and were just out for an evening shakedown.

“Can I help you?” he asked as the man walked up to him.

The man didn’t answer for long seconds, his gaze raking the sedan as a tendril of smoke curled up from his crooked butt. Carstairs waited patiently, already aware that the men knew who he was and why he was there. “You are from the US Embassy.” He didn’t even try to make it a question.

“Yes.”

“What are you doing in this neighborhood at this hour?”

Carstairs had had more than enough time to come up with a plausible cover story for this trip—as long as his accuser didn’t know what was really going on. The problem was that in China, even one wrong word could be misconstrued as an insult, or even worse, evidence of something improper or illegal occurring. “I’m helping a friend of mine—Mr. Liao. He asked me to look in on his family while he’s away. We’re going to dinner.” It was about as simple as he could make it, and reasonably plausible. The fact that he was an American might raise an eyebrow or two, but usually the weight of his being with the embassy silenced any questions.

Not, however, this time.

The man shook his head curtly. “These three are wanted for questioning by the Ministry of State Security. They will have to come with us.” He turned to the car door even as Carstairs interposed himself between the man and the vehicle.