by T. M. Parris
“Agree. They’re securing the house and loading the cars. We got five detainees and four guards.”
“Five? Who’s five? There should be four, Clarke and the hackers. Who’s the other?”
They were expecting the three Japanese students to be there, as they’d discovered that none had been seen in Tokyo for days. They all peered at the screen. The figures were only out in the open a few seconds before getting in the cars, and none of them looked up. But they didn’t really have to; it didn’t take much to figure out.
“Where did you say Rose Clarke was?” asked Zack.
“Making her own way there,” said Fairchild.
“How?” That was Rapp.
“She didn’t say.”
“Didn’t you ask?”
“I didn’t get the chance.”
“How about why? Why isn’t she with us?”
“I didn’t get that either.”
On screen, the cars had driven off.
“That was her, wasn’t it?” said Rapp. “In that car. Somehow she had a head start on us by, what? Three, four hours? Which she used to conduct some half-assed ambush that achieved nothing except tip them off and get them to move.”
“I guess she must have held onto the location for a few hours,” conceded Fairchild.
“Great,” said Zack. “And you knew nothing about this, I suppose.”
“I passed it on as soon as I got it.”
“Yeah, right.”
“I’d have tried to talk her out of it if I’d known. All she’s done is put herself into their hands and get them on the defensive.”
Some of that was at least approaching the truth. Going in alone was a risky venture and clearly it had gone wrong.
“We had a good lead and now it’s wasted,” said Rapp. “Her bosses are going to hear about this, for sure.”
“We can follow the cars, can’t we?” said Fairchild.
“By satellite? We can try but it’s not as good as a tracker on the vehicle. Which we’d have done as soon as we’d got there.”
“It’s still worth going to the house to see what’s there. They could have left something useful behind.”
“Yeah, since we’re almost there anyway.”
They carried on with few words. At the house they found very little. Walking around outside, Fairchild found footprints coming from woodland at the back and circling the perimeter of the block, all of which now seemed to be empty. Rapp wandered away and spent some time being angry with someone on her phone. Zack came over and gave him a baleful look.
“Don’t try and tell me you weren’t in on it. I know you, and I know her and you.”
“Well, what could I do, Zack? You heard them in the meeting. They don’t care about James. They’d gun him down in cold blood if he got between them and those hackers. Tell me you wouldn’t have done the same.”
“Yeah, maybe. But I’d have told you. We go back, Fairchild.”
“Fair enough. She wanted it to all stop with her, though.”
“Huh.”
That word said a lot from one of his oldest friends. Helping Rose out never seemed to be easy. Zack wandered off and walked about kicking up snow.
“More good news,” said Rapp, coming over. “The cars were heading back to Tokyo but we lost them. They went into an underpass and didn’t come out again. We’re right back to where we started. Going great, isn’t it?”
No one argued with her.
Chapter 29
The next morning Fairchild flew in to Hong Kong and got a train to Central District, where he went into a quiet, run-down restaurant and sat for four hours without ordering anything. Eventually a car drew up, almost blocking the narrow street, and he was invited to get in. The driver, exchanging no words, took him to a building site along the harbour and directed him towards the base of a half-built tower, its skeletal structure topped with cranes. There he was given a hard hat in line with site health and safety regulations, and escorted into a cage lift that climbed the outside of the building and slowed to a halt. The construction worker who got in with him pulled up the bar and they stepped over a gap into the open ribs of the building. They were thirty, maybe forty, floors up. On the far side, with a group of men who were all taller than her, was a neatly turned out woman, in her sixties maybe, wearing a skirt suit and a pearl necklace and with impeccable grey hair.
“Lovely spot for a meeting,” he said as he walked over. “What an incredible view.”
Two of the men stepped forward and frisked him, finding nothing.
“I apologise for the wait,” said Darcy Tang. “I wanted to know how serious you were. Last time we met, things didn’t go too well.” They were speaking in Cantonese.
“Last time we met it was a disaster and I apologised for that.” It was only then that he noticed another man standing with his back to them all staring out across Hong Kong harbour at the view of the Chinese mainland. The man turned round.
“My nephew. You remember,” said Darcy Tang.
“I’m afraid I do.” It was in the Hong Kong Famous Central Golden Palace, where he’d just spent four long hours of his life, that Fairchild had first met Rose Clarke, whose unfortunate intervention had caused Fairchild to shoot Tang’s nephew in the shoulder. “I hope you made a full recovery.”
This did nothing to neutralise the man’s hostility. He took a step nearer. Fairchild gave passing thought to the distance down to the ground and the general lack of walls. You could step out between any of the concrete joists, and just fall. “You do realise it was an accident, I hope?” he said mildly.
“Accidents happen,” said the nephew. “Especially on building sites.”
“That’s enough,” said Tang. “Mr Fairchild is a potential investor.” This was news to Fairchild. “I will show him around. You can wait here.”
She led Fairchild away from the others through the bones of the building.
“Office or residential?” he asked, trying to get a feel for the layout.
“Residential. Top-of-the-market apartments. People don’t want tiny places any more. Space, best facilities, and of course a view.”
The views were heart-stoppingly spectacular, uninhibited as they were by walls or glass. A fresh wind gusted straight through the structure. The boats and traffic below looked tiny and unreal. The sounds of the city barely reached them at all. Fairchild pointed at the high-rise directly to landward.
“I can’t think that the owners there were very pleased. They must have lost their views practically overnight.”
“We dealt with that,” said Tang. Fairchild wondered how, exactly. The Wong Kai clan was known for its ruthlessness, especially under its current leadership. “No one can stand in the way of progress,” she added. “If Hong Kong needs homes, we build homes. Harbour is very popular.”
“There won’t be a harbour for much longer if progress continues at this pace.” Fairchild nodded towards the Kowloon side where a land reclamation site mirrored this one. “You’ll be able to walk across soon.”
She laughed briefly. “Not in my lifetime. And I intend to live long. I’ve outlived a husband and two sons so far. How else would someone like me get to run the Wong Kai? It’s the only way. But I’m careful. I have to be.”
Fairchild heard the warning in her words. “I appreciate that. I hope we squared things off after the unfortunate incident last time. I did give you the identity of the associate who was passing your secrets to the Chinese police. That checked out, I trust.”
“It did. I am grateful for that. He did not cause any further trouble. That went some way towards repairing the damage between you and me, Mr Fairchild. What I never established is the reason for your approach last time.”
“I had a business offer. But that was a while ago and things have moved on. Now I need some information. Maybe there’s something I can offer you in return.”
Her eyes rested on him, then she walked over to the other side of what would later become a room. “View of the Peak from here, too.” She nod
ded upwards. Sure enough, the green tips of the Peak were visible over the top of the packed-in high-rises of downtown Hong Kong and the Mid Levels apartments rising up behind.
“Until someone builds in front of this one.”
“Let them try. These views are here to stay, Mr Fairchild. Our name is on this development.”
“It certainly sounds like an interesting investment. Are you taking down-payments already? It seems a little early.”
“Not too early. We have plenty of interest. Mostly from mainland China. I will bear your enthusiasm in mind.”
They were some distance away now from the others. The wind was ruffling Tang’s hair. She wasn’t wearing a hard hat. In fact, Fairchild was the only one who was. He didn’t think it would help him much.
“There was a woman with you,” Tang said suddenly. “The last time. British, I think.”
“She wasn’t with me. Actually she’d been sent to find me. But I didn’t want to be found.”
“You lost her, then?”
“Yes. Although our paths have crossed since.”
She frowned. “You see, this is the kind of thing that makes me wonder about you. I saw the way that woman handled herself. She was no tourist.”
“No, she wasn’t.”
“Then what did she want with you? I don’t like the British.” She strode off into another room-to-be, this one looking westwards along the coast. “Patronising, paternalistic, controlling, they think because they were great the century before last they can still tell everyone what’s good and what’s bad.”
“I don’t have much time for them either.”
“You’re British descent, aren’t you?”
“I haven’t been there for twenty years. I’m stateless. By choice. I have interests across the world. Sure, I know people in governments, influential people. They take an interest in me from time to time, but I’m my own person.”
“You’re a businessman. Just that.”
“Just that.” Nothing else. True, when he first walked into the Golden Palace two years ago he was on a job working for Zack, whose paymasters wanted inroads into the Wong Kai – but Tang would never know that. He was an entrepreneur, that was all. An entrepreneur with a need for information.
“I’m not precious about who I do business with,” he said. “But sometimes you get a bad feeling. I’ve been approached by a group of anonymous hackers known as Fire Sappers.”
Her face changed. She knew the name.
“They’ve made me an offer,” he said.
“I’ve heard that’s what they do.”
“It’s not a ransom demand. It’s a genuine offer. Quite an attractive one. But I’ve been told a few things about the way they operate. I understand they work with – organisations like yours.”
“Criminal gangs, Mr Fairchild. Wong Kai is a criminal gang. We can speak honestly to each other, can we not?”
“Of course.” But her eyes still narrowed when she looked at him.
They’d walked around now to the harbour side again. She stepped up to the edge and stood looking out, arms folded. Fairchild hung back. A tight sensation pinched the base of his spine. She wasn’t even that close to the edge, he told himself. There were maybe eighteen inches in front of her before the floor ended. Beyond that, a sickening drop down to the rubble-lined blue sea. He glanced round. The men were watching, arms loose by their sides. Tang started talking.
“We don’t work with Fire Sappers. On the contrary. They stole from us.”
“What did they steal?”
“Power.”
“Power?”
“Electricity. We control some power generation plants in southern China. Mainly coal fired. We supply the Chinese government. Fire Sappers broke into our systems and tapped power away. They were clever. It took months for us to notice. We lost millions in revenue.”
“Was it a hack, or a physical intervention?”
“Both. They made changes in the plants, broke in somehow, maybe paid people, then covered it up by changing our security protocols.”
“What did they do with the electricity?”
“They mined with it.”
“Mined?”
“Bitcoin. They have a huge operation. Banks of servers all over China, Asia, Eastern Europe. Making a fortune. Plus all the ransom money. But it takes power. You know, I think.”
Fairchild did. Mining Bitcoin was how the currency was created from scratch. It involved a huge amount of processing power to generate the multi-digit numbers needed to bid for winning lots out of the limited supply. The methodology was designed to be the online equivalent of panning for gold in the Yukon, but it had turned into a mass-scale energy-guzzling race to harvest as much as possible.
“So what happened?” he asked.
“We got to work.” An enigmatic answer.
“Did you get your money back?”
“Some.”
“But not all?”
She looked at him. “No, not all. What’s your problem with them really, Mr Fairchild? You come all this way and sit for hours in my restaurant to ask me about a business offer? Fire Sappers doesn’t make business offers. They have a hold on you for something. What do they have? Tell me.”
“All right,” said Fairchild. “They have a person. They’ve kidnapped someone. At least, some branch of the yakuza has, under their orders. This person is being held somewhere in the Tokyo area.”
“Tokyo? That’s all you know?”
“At this time, yes.”
She was intrigued but her face clouded with suspicion. “Who are you working with on this? The authorities?”
“The authorities are involved but they’re not getting anywhere. My interest in this is personal. Whatever you tell me, no one will know where it came from.”
She was looking closely at him again. Behind her the sky was a thin December blue and the Kowloon skyscrapers twinkled in sunlight.
“I know the name of the boss,” she said. “The guy who runs the whole empire. Online he calls himself Milo. Nationality, Hungarian. We know his real name, identity, address, everything.”
“Can you prove they’re the same person?”
“Yes.”
“You’re not tempted to pass that information to the authorities? If the FBI had it, Fire Sappers would be a lot less powerful.”
“That’s not how we do things. We have our own way of settling scores.”
“Would you be willing to share this information with me?”
“Maybe. For a price.”
“How will it help me find the hostage, though? That’s my interest in this. I’m not the FBI.”
“This person is important to you. Very interesting. But I’m not sure I can help with that. I know the firm they work with in Japan. They have premises everywhere. They could hold someone in any part of Tokyo. You cannot search for them that way. Impossible.”
“What if they wanted to hide someone on a more permanent basis, but keep them alive? Or get them out of the country?”
Tang considered. “They have some interests in shipping. Out of the Port of Tokyo. Freight. Useful for stolen goods, contraband. That’s what I’d do.”
“Can you give me the details? The shipping companies they deal with, a name maybe?”
He sounded too eager and she picked up on it. She smiled a little.
“I could.” A pause. “You know, I don’t really believe your story.” The air seemed thinner suddenly. Tang started walking around the outside edge. “Oh, I believe some friend of yours is kidnapped. But the other part. You came to me two years ago with a business opportunity which has now passed? No, Mr Fairchild. There was more to it than that. I got curious about you after last time. I did some research. You’re an extremely well connected man. Very useful to a lot of people. You could be very useful to me, too. I have an idea how. If you’re in agreement, we could help each other.”
Her tone was so even, her offer so politely made. But in reality he had no choice. Descending in the cage
lift, he looked down and felt light-headed. But it wasn’t the height. It was a gradual dawning of what it meant, the bargain he’d just struck with Darcy Tang. He didn’t know how he was going to do it. But he had to do it, and it changed everything.
Chapter 30
Landing back at Narita, Fairchild had a message from Tim Gardner asking him to call back urgently. Strange, as he’d already spoken to Gardner earlier. He’d phoned both him and Zack from Hong Kong with the name of the shipping company Tang had given him.
Tim picked up after one ring. “Fairchild! You’re back?”
“Just landed.”
“Listen. Bit of a situation. Can you come straight to the Embassy?”
“Why? What’s happened?”
Gardner expelled air in a noise of frustration. “Well, it turns out that Clarke’s wife has shown up. With kids in tow.”
“James’ wife? From the UK?”
“They came straight here from the airport and marched into reception. She’s been there for hours. Won’t budge until she gets some news. Eventually it filtered through to me and I went down. Of course she was expecting Rose, so it’s all rather difficult.”
“I see. And what are you expecting me to do?”
“Well, a little bit of hand-holding is really what they need. You know, some mild reassurance. Obviously we can’t tell them a lot, but I thought, perhaps…?”
“Me? I need to be with the team. Get up to speed with the plan and keep an eye on Rapp. Zack can’t control her on his own.”
“And I have to play nicely with the Japanese Internal Affairs minister.”
“Can’t you play nicely some other time? We have a situation unfolding.”
“That’s precisely why I need to speak to Internal Affairs. We need their approval for an op. Particularly if it’s likely to involve guns. It’s the Ambassador’s Christmas Ball tonight, the minister in question will be there, as will Barclay, and we’ll both be taking him to one side during the course of the evening and talking him through a number of scenarios. It’s politics but it’s important.”
“Did we have approval before we went after them at the house?”
“The ministry was aware, Fairchild, but not entirely happy about it. More work is needed. Otherwise we could fall over our own feet here. Besides, I need to try and smooth things over with Barclay after the actions of our friend Rose. So, I really need to hand this family situation off to someone I can trust, old chap.”