THE FLENSE: China: (Part 1 of THE FLENSE serial)

by Saul Tanpepper

  “I’ve never taken a bribe in my life!” she snapped.

  “Apologies. I didn’t mean to imply. I was referring to the article you wrote for Newsweek this last fall, the one exposing Israel’s secret cloning program. That is just the kind of effort and focus we need right now, assertive and keen yet evenhanded, undeterred by political agendas. “He grinned at her. His teeth were yellow and badly aligned, desperately in need of orthodontic work. “Fearless,” he finished.

  Angel frowned. There was talk that the article might win her a Pulitzer, but it had also earned her enemies. She was persona non grata right now in the international Jewish community, despite the fact that she’d defended much of the group’s foundational work and believed in their stated mission to alleviate human suffering. It was the militaristic applications which she had criticized. After initially denying the existence of this arm of the program, the Israeli government tried instead to discredit her. But their efforts fooled nobody. Notably, her article had convinced Israel’s neighbors enough to unify them into a rare coalition.

  “Undeterred?” she muttered, laughing dryly. “Fearless? Like I was today?”

  “Something tells me you haven’t quite given up on Huangxia,” Mister Cheong said, still smirking. “I hope to dissuade you, at least for the time being, not to disprove my judgment of your character, but by convincing you that there is a bigger prize to be had. Huangxia is nothing but a small jewel in a very large, very intricately designed crown.”

  “You mentioned several disasters,” DeBryan said. He was feeling a little left out. It chaffed at him that Cheong included him in this conversation only as an afterthought. He felt like a consolation prize. “Which ones specifically do you mean?”

  “I have a list,” Cheong said, turning to face him. “I’ve sent it to both your phones.”

  “Which were smashed.”

  “Ah, of course. Again, my apologies.” He reached into his jacket pocket and withdrew a pair of cell phones and handed them over. They were the exact same makes and models as the ones they’d lost earlier in the day. “I also have a replacement for your missing camera. I’m afraid it was — ahem — never recovered. Oh, and I’ll have to ask for your burner phone.”

  DeBryan sniffed in surprise. After they’d been able to debark from the coast guard boat without another search, Angel had offered to give back his micro-flash card, but he’d asked her to hold onto it for the time being. “And if I refuse?”

  “I’d rather you didn’t.”

  DeBryan reluctantly reached into his pocket and handed the phone over. It quickly disappeared into Cheong’s jacket.

  The food arrived then, and they waited as the server offered them cracked pepper and grated cheese. Cheong ordered three more bottles of the water. Once more, they were delivered inside the strange black sleeve. Finally, they were left alone again.

  “The list details a series of relatively small disasters, a few dozen to a few hundred casualties at most occurring at each, which the group suspects are trial runs for a global event,” Cheong said, testing the firmness of his fish with his fork, though he didn’t take a bite. Angel gave it a yearning look before lowering her eyes to her meager salad. She grabbed another roll from the basket and wrenched it apart.

  They better have a damn good dessert menu, she thought.

  “I won’t bore you with the details tonight,” Cheong went on. He sat with his hands to either side of his plate, not eating, though he gestured for them to go ahead. “You can look at the list later and do your own cross-checking. Right now I only want to talk about the one which happened two days ago.”

  Angel glanced over at DeBryan to see if he had heard anything, but the look of consternation on his face indicated that he was just as much in the dark about it as she was.

  “There was a train wreck,” Cheong said, “a few hundred miles north of here in Inner Mongolia, near a place called Baoyang.”

  “A train wreck?” Angel repeated. “What was on it?”

  “People. Two hundred and twelve, to be precise.”

  “Just . . . people?”

  “That’s what we need you two to go and verify.” He removed a slip of paper from his breast pocket and slid it over the table to her. “There’s the name and number of a contact. I’d like you to start with him.”

  “But—”

  He waived the server over and murmured something in Chinese. Then Cheong pushed himself away from the table and pulled his coat back on. “Please, stay and finish your dinners. Order whatever you like; it’s all paid for. I’ll expect your answer in the morning.”

  And with that, without taking a single bite of his hundred dollar swordfish, Alvin Cheong excused himself.

  Chapter Six

  DeBryan stood by his door across the hall and watched her as she slid her card key into the slot in the security mechanism. Angel sensed that paternal instinct in him again, and it both irritated and amused her. The light turned green and beeped. She bade him good night, which he politely reciprocated, and entered her room.

  A long entryway preceded the suite, opening onto a large, sumptuously adorned entertainment area. A kitchenette branched off to the left. None of this was visible at the present, as she’d neglected to leave any lights on when she left, a lapse for which she now scolded herself. Behind her, the tiny circle of light from the peephole in the door offered no assistance and instead felt like an accusing eye focusing its laser sight upon her back. In a moment of pique she imagined DeBryan standing on the other side of the door looking in through it, trying to check up on her, and she chastised herself for being so self-absorbed.

  The only other light came from the glowing green digital panel on the room’s thermostat a couple meters away.

  Angel sighed and unbuttoned the top of her blouse so she could remove her traveler’s wallet from around her neck. The thin pouch held her identification papers, passport, credit cards, and a small amount of cash, mostly American bills, though she still had a handful of South Korean banknotes from her brief stay in Seoul. The damn thing had a loose stitch, and it had irritated her all evening.

  Feeling along the wall, at last her fingers settled upon the switch. The panel was one of those with the wide, low-profile buttons set nearly flush with the wall, and she had trouble flicking it on.

  She couldn’t blame the alcohol. That had worn off hours before, as she and DeBryan sat in the hotel’s smoky cocktail lounge and talked by the massive stone fireplace. She had cut herself off at dinner, after sheepishly ordering a glass of white wine to go with Cheong’s uneaten fish, which she’d helped herself to, and instead stayed with colas. Meanwhile, DeBryan ordered snifter after snifter of some sinfully expensive brandy and never seemed to show any sign of becoming intoxicated.

  After realizing that the lists on their phones required specialized software to open and read, they both decided that whatever it was could wait. Neither of them was all that eager to return to their rooms to retrieve a computer. The relaxed atmosphere in the lounge made it easy to forget the matter entirely. Or at least dismiss it for the time being. After a while, in fact, the whole 6X situation began to feel more and more like some ridiculous prank, the whimsy of a cult of spoiled and disillusioned conspiracy theorists.

  Angel found it easy to listen to DeBryan. He had one of those gravelly voices, and he spoke with an easy drawl as he vividly recounted many of his adventures in the wild. He had a way of describing his escapades in a humorous way, which made her feel warm and young and wishing she could be as carefree as he seemed to be, even though he was easily her senior by a good ten, fifteen years. He confessed a secret lifelong fantasy to document some newly discovered or poorly understood Amazonian tribe or Pacific Island culture, though he acknowledged that his opportunity to do so was permanently lost to globalization and technological advancement. “Thanks in part to Google World, I’m afraid there simply are no more great anthropological discoveries left to be made.”

  Sitting there with his drink in his
hand, deep in thought, he looked more like a philosopher than a photographer.

  He did not ask her again about her family, and for that she was grateful. It wasn’t just that it was a dark part of her life that she would rather not bring to light. After Cheong’s mention of the Newsweek article, she feared the subject might be resurrected, inevitably leading to her husband, and that was a subject she certainly wanted to avoid.

  Finally, after excusing herself for about her hundredth yawn, she forced herself out of the chair. It was warm and soft and only relinquished her with considerable reluctance. But she was exhausted. And she had to pee yet again. It was half past one in the morning and she wasn’t looking forward to the long trek to the elevator. Or getting up in a few hours. Especially since she still had no plan for what to do next.

  As they exited the elevator, she felt she needed to make herself perfectly clear regarding Cheong’s offer. They hadn’t spoken outright about it after the frustration of not being able to open the files, certainly hadn’t made any decisions. Nevertheless, she was pretty sure they’d come to some sort of unspoken agreement not to take the assignment. As a seasoned reporter, to her the opportunity just smelled wrong. Cheong struck her as an over-indulged millionaire with too much time, money, and imagination on his leather-clad hands. But she needed to make sure DeBryan was on the same page.

  “I’m going back to Huangxia,” she told him. And he nodded and didn’t look surprised in the least. “So, we’ll decide what to do in the morning.”

  “It is morning.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Yes.”

  “Goodnight.”

  “ ‘Night.”

  And that was that.

  At last the switch on the wall yielded to the pressure in her knuckles and clicked into the ON position. The entryway flooded with light. Ahead of her, the plush white couch jumped out of the shadows deeper in the room, and the lamps and vases twinkled at her. Stepping briskly forward, she found another switch and turned it on, then placed her traveler’s wallet onto the table.

  She frowned, sensing that something wasn’t right.

  Her eyes shot to the sliding door and the balcony beyond. The curtains were still drawn shut, but they fluttered slightly. Had she closed the door before leaving? She wasn’t sure she had. And as she crossed the space she found herself looking at the gap between the floor and the bottom of the curtain for the telltale tips of an intruder’s shoes. But there was no one there. She pulled the heavy curtains aside and slid the door shut, cutting off the distant traffic sounds and the other noises of Shanghai city eleven stories below.

  Everything in the room was in its place— the television on the stand against the left wall, the chairs, lamps, magazines, and fresh flowers were all there. Nothing seemed disturbed. And yet—

  She couldn’t place her finger on it exactly, but she could sense it. A faint smell, maybe. The air felt different, disturbed. Someone had been here, maybe still was.

  “Allo?”

  She turned down the next hallway and glanced quickly into the bathroom.

  Nothing. Her toiletry bag was right where she’d set it on the marble countertop. The courtesy hairdryer still resting beside the sink where she’d let it cool. A baggie with her toothbrush and tiny tube of toothpaste.

  The shower was empty. She could see that from the door, could see through the glass enclosure. The towel she’d dropped, still a wet mass in the corner, though it would be mostly dry by now.

  Across the hallway, the door to the master bedroom. She pushed it open—

  The room was in complete disarray.

  Pins prickled the skin on her palms and neck. The sensation spread down her back, breaking her out into a cold sweat. If she weren’t wide awake before, or completely sober, she was now.

  Her bag lay on the bed, its contents disgorged. She knew instinctively that her laptop was gone. The cheap little point-and-shoot camera she’d bought in the hotel lobby as a backup for the camera on her cell phone was on the floor, its access panel torn open and its insides ripped out. She hadn’t even used it. Her lithium pills had been dumped out, the plastic bottle tossed carelessly against the wall. Her clothes had been rifled through; all of the pockets had been turned inside out.

  She didn’t know what they were looking for, or even if they’d found it, though she suspected what it was. She ran into the bathroom and tore through her toiletries bag, dumping everything out in a mess into the sink. She pulled out travel-sized containers of lotion, makeup, and acne medicine, scattering them across the counter and onto the floor until she found what she was looking for. The tampon looked intact, the ends of the paper still twisted like a piece of candy. She tore at it and threw the wrapper behind her. She ran her fingers along the white cigar-shaped object and could feel the tiny disk inside, exactly where she’d hidden it. She slipped it into her back pocket.

  DeBryan!

  She was running before thinking about what she was doing, pushing her way up the hall and back into the main room, then up the entryway. She felt slow, like the air had suddenly gotten denser. She yanked the door open, stepped out and heard it click shut behind her before remembering she’d left her card key inside.

  The door to DeBryan’s room was shut. Not a sound emanated from within. Angel stepped across the wide hall and raised her fist, but the door flew open so quickly that she nearly fell in.

  A shape filled the doorway, and it took her a split second to realize it wasn’t the photographer. This man was younger, mid-twenties perhaps, Asian. His head was clean shaven. Both his scalp and face were darkly tattooed, the design a pattern of black flames which rose from beneath the collar of his gray shirt and a smattering of Chinese characters. The flames swirled around and over his eyes.

  “What—!”

  It was all she managed to get out before he grabbed her by the collar and shoved away. The air exploded out of her as she slammed into the wall beside her own door. Her head hit and stars filled her vision. The world tilted. She half-slid, half-fell to the floor, and shouted for him to stop. The attacker ran away, bypassing the elevator and slamming through the exit stairwell at the far end of the hall before she could even get back to her feet. A door opened as she stumbled past. She cried out to the woman to call the police, call security.

  She could hear him pounding down the stairs, jumping at each landing and coming down hard, gasping for air. She ran as fast as she dared to try and catch him. Down a story, then another, spinning around each flight with her hand locked onto the metal railing to keep her from losing her balance. He reached the lobby level, yet kept going. Down two more flights until he reached the garage. He was three floors ahead when he exited, and she feared she’d lose him now for sure.

  The echo of the man’s pounding feet reached her ears when she burst through the garage door and stopped. She heard no car engine, no screech of tires, just that steady drumbeat. A fist crashed into the side of her face, knocking her down again, and as she went she realized that the noise had been her own heart slamming inside her chest.

  “What do you want?” she screamed, and lashed blindly out with one hand, protecting herself with the other.

  Her attacker wheezed heavily as he kicked her in the side, grunting with the effort. It wasn’t a very strong kick, but it caught her just under the ribs and sent a jolt of pain racing up into her jaw. He coughed and spat a thick wad of phlegm onto the cement beside her. He’d run her all the way down here not to escape from her, but to quickly finish her off in private. By the labored sound of his breathing, she guessed he was sick with some kind of lung disease and knew he wouldn’t be able to outrun her.

  He tried to push away, but she had a hold of something. It took her a moment to realize it was DeBryan’s pack. He yelled and tried to wrench it out of her hand, nearly yanking her off the ground.

  “Let go!” she screamed.

  Instead, he slammed his body into hers, crushing her against the concrete wall of the parking structure.
A knife appeared in his other hand. Angel shrieked and raked her nails at him, catching his cheek and neck. And then the blade was a flashing silver arc, rising above them, ready to be brought back down and across her neck.

  “Stop!” came a shout.

  Her attacker hesitated, his dark, sunken eyes flicking away for just the fraction of a moment. Angel didn’t wait. She twisted out from beneath him and scurried sideways along the wall.

  “You there!” the shout came again. “Get away from her!”

  And now the man was running, sprinting across the parking lot. Angel tried to locate her rescuer, but the sounds were distorted as they echoed off the walls. “Stop him,” she croaked. Then again, louder. But no one answered.

  She stumbled to her feet, collected the knife her attacker had dropped, and gave chase.

  Chapter Seven

  If the streets hadn’t been as empty as they were, Angel might have lost the thief immediately, but her luck held and she guessed correctly which way he’d turned exiting the parking garage. She remembered being told once that, if given an equal opportunity to turn left or right, an individual in flight would be more likely to turn in the direction opposite his dominant side, pivoting on his strong foot. She didn’t know if it was true, but she did recall that the man had held the knife in his left hand, so she turned right the moment her feet hit the sidewalk outside. A quick glance to the left as she did so confirmed only that the street behind her was indeed empty. But so was the street ahead.

  She kept running, accelerating to as much of a sprint as she could manage in her pumps, casting her eyes into each doorway that she passed.

  She skidded to the corner and looked right again. Then left. The man was a tiny figure in the distance, running a zigzagged course, his jacket flapping at his sides and his feet smacking the pavement. He was limping slightly and straining to maintain his pace. The pack in his hand was further slowing him down, dragging on him. Adrenaline coursed through Angel’s body and she immediately took off after him. She was certain she could catch up, as long as he remained in sight.