The Risk Agent

by Ridley Pearson

  “Give it a rest. That’s beneath you.”

  “If PSB get Danner, that’s where he’s headed. For an eternity. You know the laws. He’ll be considered a spy. We need to beat them to it, and we need to move quickly.” The Public Security Bureau-the Shanghai police-was nothing to mess with.

  “And if I slip up, it’ll be the same thing for me. I’ve got Tommy. No go.”

  “We’ve put a woman into Shanghai. An accountant who knew the hostage personally. She’ll pose as a new Berthold employee and go after the bookkeeping with you. She can interpret it once you’ve got it. The hope is, those docs will help lead us to the kidnappers in time. Meanwhile, we’ll be preparing to negotiate the ransom and the drop.”

  “Dangerous to play both sides like that.”

  “Yeah, but what are you gonna do? If a Triad took Lu Hao and Danner, what do you think they’ll do to the American once the ransom is paid?”

  “Don’t lay this on me.”

  “It’s not about you. It’s about Danner. He’s facing prison or death. You know I wouldn’t ask you otherwise.”

  Knox shook his head. “Bullshit you wouldn’t.”

  “Look, you have a legitimate reason to be in Shanghai. Pretend like it’s a business trip. Meet up with the woman we’re putting in place. Support her. Help find Lu’s accounts. We’ll supply you with whatever we can on the sly. And if we find Danner, you bring him out.”

  “And what if I don’t get out?” Knox snapped, realizing as he said it that his mouth had betrayed him. “What happens to Tommy then?”

  “We’ll pay your fee to him,” Dulwich said, sensing his progress. “We’ll double it. Deep pockets on this one.”

  “I don’t like it,” Knox said.

  “Tommy says you’re bored.”

  “Tommy talks too much. Enough with the cheap shots.”

  “You know what I think?” Dulwich said.

  “I don’t remember asking.”

  “You once said pulling me out of that truck changed everything. Remember that?”

  “Yeah. That’s about the same time I decided not to go to Afghanistan and to get out of the contracting business.”

  “Peggy is eight months pregnant with their second,” Dulwich said of Danner’s wife. “She went hysterical when I told her he’d gone missing. She’s forbidden from flying. Stuck in Houston.”

  Shit. Knox should have known about the pregnancy. Should have stayed in better touch.

  “I can’t put any of our guys into China right now,” Dulwich said. “We’ve had inquiries-formal inquiries asking if one of our employees is missing. They’ll be watching Immigration. But since you do business there on a regular basis, you go in as you. Just another buying trip. You meet up with the woman and together you find the books, find Lu Hao and Danner.”

  “I don’t babysit,” Knox said.

  “You won’t have to. She’s former Red Army, very, very smart, and a looker.”

  “Shit, shit and shit.”

  “We have to leave tonight,” Dulwich said. Checking his wristwatch, he said, “Wheels up in ninety.”

  Knox drummed his fingers on the rattan tabletop. “And what if they do kill him?”

  “Then we deliver the wrath of God upon them. You and me. Whatever it takes.”

  Slowly, Knox stood and stretched. “Do I have time for a shower?”

  “God,” Dulwich said with a smile, “I sure hope so.”

  4

  5:00 P.M.

  HUANGPU DISTRICT

  SHANGHAI

  The waiting area of the Guangdong Road PSB was a gray, tube-lit room with a poster warning of avian flu, hung thickly with cigarette smoke. The officer-of-the-month photo hadn’t been changed since June. A black-light bug-killer sparked randomly above the door.

  Into the station strode a wide-shouldered Chinese man, Shen Deshi. He had cropped hair, a crushed nose and thin lips. He wore a black leather jacket, a gold chain around his neck and tinted glasses that partially hid searching, distrustful eyes.

  He proffered his credentials to the receptionist, who worked to disguise her alarm. The People’s Armed Police was the most high-ranking, the most respected and feared in all of national law enforcement. An armored division of both military and police bureaus, PAP officers carried concealed weapons and were free to use them at their discretion. Officers of the elite corps were often referred to by the nickname “Iron Hand.”

  Shen Deshi leaned onto his forearms on the countertop. His fingers were blunt, wide, and bent awkwardly, each having been broken multiple times.

  “May I help you?” she inquired in Shanghainese to test his origins.

  “I am Shen Deshi,” he said, also in Shanghainese. “I will speak with your most senior officer on duty. I do not wish to be kept waiting.”

  She glanced toward the phone, but then thought better of it. “One moment please.”

  Shen Deshi took a seat between two women waiting in chairs against the wall. He gave the younger of the two a slight smile as he appraised her from ankle to chest. Then he looked straight ahead, as if alone in the room.

  The desk officer returned with a slight man in a captain’s uniform. He was in his mid-fifties, with hollow cheeks and cheap eyeglasses.

  “Officer Shen,” the captain said, “this way, please.”

  In the captain’s tiny office, Shen Deshi brushed off the chair, unnecessarily, before sitting.

  “We are honored by your visit,” the captain said.

  The two men exchanged business cards, proffering them held at the edges by both hands and with a slight bow of the head.

  “The honor is all mine, I assure you,” Shen Deshi said flatly, wanting the formalities out of the way.

  “May I offer you some tea?”

  “I would be delighted but do not wish to trouble you or your staff.”

  “It is no trouble at all, I assure you.” The captain worked the intercom and ordered some tea. There was no further conversation until the tea arrived some five minutes later.

  Shen Deshi accepted the cup and immediately set it aside.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  “It is my pleasure,” the captain said behind clenched teeth.

  “I need everything you have on the severed human hand that was fished from the Yangtze. You will withhold nothing.” He sat back, eyed the steaming cup of tea one more time, but did not reach for it. “I’m waiting.”

  The captain worked the intercom to request the evidence and all documentation.

  “An unusual case,” the captain said.

  Shen Deshi offered only a disapproving look.

  “We followed procedure, of course.”

  “Then I am sure to write a glowing report.”

  The captain swallowed dryly.

  “Such discoveries are to be reported quickly,” said Shen Deshi.

  “The skimmers-the trash skimmers at the mouth of the Yangtze-snag bodies on a regular basis,” the captain reported. “Maritime accidents.”

  “Of course.”

  A Utopian society did not foster suicide.

  “I did not know how to report this severed hand,” the captain said carefully. “Its existence implied a violent crime or accident but one having taken place well upstream of Shanghai.”

  “A difficult situation,” Shen Deshi said, though his face said otherwise.

  “I checked the reports.”

  “Of course.”

  “Saw nothing that might connect.”

  “Of this, I am sure,” Shen Deshi said. “The Ministry”-the Ministry of State Security, the Chinese intelligence agency-“is interested in this hand. A quick resolution to this investigation could benefit all concerned.”

  “It has my full attention.”

  “The movement of certain members of an American film crew are at the heart of it.”

  “Indeed?”

  “Let us say they may have strayed from the parameters set forth in their visas. The Ministry is intent on knowing where they have be
en, and more importantly, why.”

  “To cancel the visas.”

  “Perhaps,” Shen Deshi said. His eyes warned the captain not to get ahead of himself.

  The minutes stretched out. The captain complimented his guest on the strength of his name: Shen, the family name, meant “don’t yield.” Deshi, “virtuous.” The combination of the two was outstanding. It had obviously brought the man much yunqi-luck.

  Shen Deshi avoided pointing out the captain’s name was weak, his family name sounding too much like the number five, which was bad yunqi.

  The captain reached for the phone as a knock sounded on his office door. A uniformed officer entered with a fogged plastic bag containing the human hand, along with an assortment of photographs and paperwork.

  “We have kept it at a constant temperature of two degrees,” the captain explained.

  Shen Deshi looked it over through the plastic, handed it back to the messenger and told him to keep it frozen. He then studied the photographs, all properly scaled, and a sheet of partial fingerprints. He read the paperwork carefully.

  “The ring?” he asked.

  “Oklahoma State University,” the captain replied.

  Shen Deshi leveled a look on the man. “You see? Not so difficult. An American. It is a fortuitous start.” Burned into his eyes was the fact that the captain had failed to notify anyone of the apparently dead foreigner.

  The captain picked up on this and quickly defended his actions. “It was our intention to complete the preliminary investigation before troubling our superiors.”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Third document. We have faxed a copy of the fingerprints to the Ministry and are awaiting a response.”

  “You covered yourself properly,” Shen Deshi said, his voice grating, barely able to contain his temper. “The hand was cleaved cleanly at the wrist. There is either a one-handed American out there looking for his school ring, or a dead American butchered on Chinese soil, his body parts floating down the Yangtze-the rest of him long gone by now. The Americans must be notified.”

  “Right away.”

  “The evidence-all of it-must be shared with them.”

  “I will see to it. I will contact the embassy myself. Personally. I will do so immediately.” The captain reached for the phone.

  “Not the embassy,” Shen Deshi said, finally venting. “Your idiocy is a pox on us all. You bring us great shame.”

  The captain recoiled. This was the gravest insult one could deliver. Great shame obliterated careers. Great shame could lead a man to the noose.

  “Let me think a moment.” Shen Deshi reached over and took up the teacup and sipped. “Nice tea,” he said, suddenly pleasant. “I thank you for it.”

  “My pleasure.” The captain was sweating.

  “The better course is to deliver the evidence to the consulate here in Shanghai,” Shen Deshi said. “You will notify the U.S. Consulate.”

  “Humbly begging your pardon, honorable Shen, but it would be faster to-”

  “Faster, yes. But that’s the point. It will take the consulate time to determine exactly what they have. I need that time to further my investigation and get ahead of them. I must be able to answer the obvious questions they will have. You will quietly make inquiries if any upstream districts are reporting any assaults, murders or disappearances involving foreigners.”

  “Right away.”

  “I will need duplicates of all of this.”

  “Immediately.”

  “We must not lose face with the Americans. Bad yunqi for us all.”

  “I will make the calls.”

  “Quietly.”

  “As a mouse. And I will deliver the information to a low-level bureaucrat I know at the consulate. And even then, not all the evidence. Not until they officially request it. That may factor in another day or two for you.”

  “This is very good thinking, captain. There’s yet a chance that you can undo these mistakes that were no doubt made by your subordinates.”

  “You are gracious.”

  “Perhaps,” said Shen Deshi, smiling grimly, “some discipline is in order to set the proper tone.”

  Hey, there.” Skype video challenged Knox, not for the technological issues but because his brother looked so normal. Boyishly handsome. A kind face. One would never suspect the problems that lurked behind the man’s warm eyes.

  “You haven’t called me in a long time,” Tommy said. The child-like singsong to his voice gave him away.

  How long had it been? Knox wondered. Tommy was prone to exaggeration.

  “I’m heading to China for a week or two.”

  “I thought you were in Cambodia?” Tommy didn’t miss much-the doctors got that part wrong, time and time again.

  “En route to Hong Kong. Then on to Shanghai.”

  “More pearls? I think our inventory is okay, Johnny.”

  “There’s always something good in Shanghai.” Like a paycheck that might begin to endow Tommy’s future medical costs. Their partnership gave them a reason to work together. It was something Tommy not only could handle but was good at. It kept Knox traveling. It was never going to make them rich. “It could be good for us.”

  “I thought you were coming home?” Pouty.

  Knox rarely went home. He made a million excuses to himself, all of them convincing, but the truth nibbled at the edges, stinging.

  “I am, buddy. Just need to get this out of the way first.”

  “Business first,” Tommy said, sounding like a mynah bird.

  “You got it.”

  “I’ll tell Eve.”

  Evelyn Ritter, their bookkeeper. Tommy had a crush the size of Texas.

  “Good idea.”

  “What’s wrong?” Tommy asked.

  That was the thing about Tommy: what he lacked in academic intelligence he compensated with intuition. Maybe he’d learned to read Knox’s expressions, though Knox was well practiced and tried not to send conflicting signals. Maybe he’d heard something in his voice. Or maybe it was far more subtle: Knox’s timing; his choice of short sentences. Maybe his kid brother just got him like no one else.

  “It’s a side job, Tommy. Moonlighting.” He wasn’t going to lie. Talking down to Tommy resulted in regression, a lesson long since learned. “Something for Dave Dulwich.”

  “Mr. Dulwich?” Excitement. “The soldier you rescued?”

  Dulwich had been a soldier once, but not when Knox had pulled him from that truck.

  Knox said, “You know Mr. Dulwich.”

  “Can I speak to him?”

  “I think you already did,” Knox said, not meaning to.

  Silence. He’d stung him with that. Tommy lived to please his older brother. Any sense he’d inflicted something on Knox would burrow down deep inside him and come out later as something far more vile.

  “I wouldn’t have gotten this offer,” Knox said, “if it hadn’t been for you.”

  “You think?”

  “I know. Are you kidding? You’re taking care of me. I thought it was supposed to be the other way around?”

  Tommy’s laughter coughed static across an otherwise surprisingly clear connection. Knox, at forty thousand feet in a private jet; Tommy on a smart phone in Detroit.

  He leaned to get a good look out the window at the chunks of land and water so far below. From somewhere within came the urge to refuse Dulwich’s offer. Or was it too late?

  Knox laughed along with his brother as a cloud pulled the blinds and the space inside the plane grew mildly claustrophobic.

  SATURDAY

  September 25

  6 days until the ransom

  5

  2:00 P.M.

  PUDONG DISTRICT

  SHANGHAI

  Knox arrived at Shanghai International’s sprawling new terminal wearing a khaki-colored ScotteVest windbreaker with most of its fifteen concealed pockets occupied by his passport, cash, documents and electronic devices. He wore a pair of white earbuds, the wires from w
hich disappeared into the jacket’s collar and connected to an unseen white iPhone provided by Dulwich. The iPhone was apparently one of Rutherford Risk’s newest toys. During calls, it switched cellular carriers every ten seconds, limiting any electronic eavesdropping to a few spoken words here and there.

  Customs let out into an L-shaped gauntlet of web-strap retainers beyond which stood hundreds of Chinese holding signs or waving frantically. Loud and chaotic, just how Knox liked it.

  He blended into the crowd heading for the Maglev train-a frictionless marvel, the envy of the engineering world. The thirty-kilometer train trip took only seven minutes, bypassing what would have been forty minutes of congested highway traffic. He determined he likely wasn’t being followed, though video surveillance was another matter. China employed seven million closed-circuit surveillance cameras and the world’s fastest computers for face recognition. Shanghai operated half a million of those cameras.

  Knox boarded the Number 2 line and switched trains at People’s Square, arriving at a busy corner on Huaihai Middle Road. The sidewalk was jammed, a light rain falling. The colorful umbrellas moved like a dragon dance beneath an awning of plane trees, a throwback to the French Concession’s storied past when, in the mid-nineteenth century, an outlying part of the burgeoning city had been given to the French to keep the foul-smelling foreigners in their place.

  A weary Knox reached the four-star Jin Jiang Hotel with wet hair and damp jeans. He paid a discounted price in cash, part of a long-standing deal with the manager. This was not the first time he’d created a double-blind to hide his place of residence; twice before, in the thick of difficult negotiations with black market traders, he’d feared for his safety and had created a false residence at the Jin Jiang which, like all hotels, registered their guests-foreign and domestic-with local police.

  He entered his fifth-floor room-as a general precaution, he never stayed above the fifth floor of a hotel-and placed his bag on the desk, then tore back the bedding, ran the shower and dampened a bath towel to mimic a person’s use of the room. He tore the housekeeper’s V from the toilet paper roll, removed a bar of soap from its wrapping and passed it under the faucet. Poured some shampoo and conditioner from the complimentary bottles and flushed it down the toilet.