Intrusion (A Chris Bruen Novel Book 2)

by Reece Hirsch

  When a normal person, like the journalist he’d murdered, died violently, it seemed abnormal. Unexpected. For someone like Tao, who had the blood of so many on his hands, it was merely a matter of when and by whom, and even the answers to those questions weren’t all that interesting.

  No, death didn’t perplex him. Instead, he wondered at what he’d become.

  In the beginning, taking assignments as a hit man had seemed a fair exchange for his brother’s freedom. He had been willing to enter into that transaction, but only now, as he bled out on the warehouse floor, did he realize the extent of the collateral that he had put at risk.

  He had done wicked things, but he had considered those deeds a weight that, while heavy, could be borne. But evil wasn’t really something that you did; it was something that you were. Perhaps if he had stayed rutted in the routines of an ordinary life, he would never have discovered the thing inside him. He might have been able to maintain the illusion that he was a good man.

  But he was long past that point now.

  Bruen spoke loudly, seemingly repeating himself. “Can you hear me? What’s the number?”

  Tao recited by heart the number to the prison’s main office. “Ask for Li Chen. Tell them his brother is dying and wants to speak to him.”

  Bruen dialed the number, then set the phone next to him on the ground, wincing at the pain from the bullet wound in his shoulder. “You have to leave it on speaker,” Bruen said. “We need to know you’re not calling in another killer.”

  Tao nodded. “Hello?” he asked in Mandarin.

  “Who is this?”

  Tao explained.

  “Li Chen does not have a brother.”

  Tao was confident that every member of the prison’s staff knew who among the inmates were substitute criminals. Using his brother’s assumed identity should not confuse anyone.

  “Please just put him on the phone. Please. I think you know who I am.”

  “Whoever you are, Li Chen is gone. He was released a week ago.”

  Tao couldn’t believe that he had heard correctly. “That can’t be.”

  “Actually, it can. I gave him back his belongings myself. I called him a taxi. I’m positive.”

  Tao told Bruen, “I need another call. My brother wasn’t there.”

  Bruen bent painfully, picked up the phone, and keyed in the digits as Tao told him Wenyan’s cell number, then left it next to Tao’s head.

  Tao listened to the phone ring and ring, and then Wenyan’s voice.

  “Hello? Who is this?”

  “It’s Tao.”

  “Brother! Where have you been?”

  “What are you doing out of prison?”

  “I was paroled. I thought the hearing was just a formality, but it was for real. One of my friends inside told me that the government is embarrassed by the practice of substitute criminals and is trying to get them off the books.”

  “Did anyone say anything to you about me when they released you?”

  “No. What do you mean? Why would they?”

  “I did some things that I thought would help secure your release, but it looks like I didn’t need to after all.”

  “What things?” Wenyan paused. “What did you do, Tao?”

  “It’s not important now.”

  “Who were you dealing with?”

  “I thought I knew, but I guess I was wrong.”

  The sickening realization came to him that perhaps he had not been contracted by the PLA through Silk Road. Someone else had played him, hiding behind the anonymity of the website’s onion routing. He had always felt like a pawn, but now he didn’t even know whose hand had been moving him across the board.

  “You don’t sound well. Are you under the weather?”

  “A bit. Nothing to concern yourself with. Where are you right now?”

  “I’m walking along the Bund. It’s a beautiful day. But you know that, right?”

  “I’m not in Shanghai today. I’m traveling. So tell me what you’re looking at.”

  “Since I got out of prison, I just can’t get enough of the sky and open spaces.”

  “Tell me.”

  “I just sat down on a bench beside the Huangpu, and I’m watching the river run.”

  “What color is it today?”

  “It’s green, almost jade. A smoky jade.”

  Wenyan carried on describing the scene, and it sounded so lovely that he felt transported to the seat next to his brother on that bench beside the Huangpu. He could almost feel the breeze off the river stirring his hair. Wenyan’s voice became steadily fainter, like the fade-out at the end of a record. There was a breeze, and the sun was bright, impossibly bright.

  Then it became brighter still.

  Chris leaned down and checked for a pulse with two fingers to Tao’s neck. The movement sent another spasm of pain through his shoulder.

  “He’s gone.”

  Zoey massaged her wrists where they had been bound. “You two speak Mandarin. What did he say?”

  “He spoke to his brother,” Chris said. “Mostly small talk.”

  “Do you think he sent a signal? Is someone else coming here to finish the job?”

  “No, I don’t think so,” Chris said.

  Zoey was drawing fast, shallow breaths and gripping the nearest iron shelf with white knuckles. Chris recognized a panic attack when he saw one.

  “Take deep breaths,” he said, inhaling deeply by way of example.

  Zoey took a gasping breath, following Chris’s lead.

  “Do you have any medication for this?”

  After another gasp and a nervous glance at the FBI agent, Zoey replied, “Not with me.”

  They continued the breathing exercises while Jefferson looked on. Gradually, Zoey’s breathing and heart rate returned to normal. As she sat on the concrete floor and regrouped, an ambulance siren began to bay in the distance.

  “So what are you doing here? Looking out for us?” Chris asked. “How did the FBI get involved?”

  “It started when you went to the State Department. We’ve been watching you ever since you left their offices on Market Street.”

  “So the government never really cut us loose.”

  “No, of course the FBI recognized what was happening, but the State Department was not going to take action against the PRC government on this in any official, public way. And we didn’t want you two going around suggesting that you had the backing of the State Department or that they believed your story.”

  “So you preferred to treat us like we were nut jobs,” Zoey said.

  “Yeah, basically.”

  “So where were you when he came hunting for us in Stinson Beach?” Chris asked.

  “That got a little off the leash,” Jefferson said. “Our guy should have been closer to the situation. But that wasn’t me; it was another agent.”

  “That man who ran the grocery store was killed,” Chris said.

  “We would have prevented it if we could,” Jefferson said. “At least I was here when I needed to be.”

  “I’ll give you that,” Chris said. He extended a hand to brace himself against a shelf, feeling light-headed from the blood loss.

  The door to the warehouse banged open as the police rushed in, followed by a team of paramedics. After quickly establishing that Tao Zhang was dead, the paramedics made Chris lie down on a gurney and wheeled him away.

  Chris stared upward past the looming paramedics at the rusted tin ceiling of the warehouse. A host of Chinese dragons paraded past overhead, grinning at him with toothy, open-mouthed smiles and glaring popeyes.

  One paramedic stayed behind with Zoey, who was clearly still in shock.

  “I’m going with him,” she said, pushing past and running after the gurney.

  When she caught up with them, o
ne of the paramedics said, “Sorry, there’s no more room in the ambulance.” He was heavily tattooed, wore a two-day stubble with his sweat-stained green scrubs, and looked like he was comfortable giving orders.

  Zoey slapped a hand on the inside of the rear door to keep it open and, without an invitation, climbed inside, sitting down on the floor beside the gurney. The paramedic glared at Zoey, and she glared back. It was a standoff worthy of Sergio Leone.

  “I’m bleeding here, guys,” Chris offered through clenched teeth. Then to the paramedic, “And she’s not going to back down. You don’t know her.”

  “Believe it,” she said.

  “Let’s go,” the paramedic shouted to the driver.

  51

  Two days later Chris was already out of the hospital and back at work in the law firm’s computer forensic lab. There was a bulge under his shirt where the gunshot wound was bandaged. He had been lucky. The bullet had gone cleanly through his left shoulder, tearing some muscle but not doing any major damage.

  Chris had spent the morning catching up on emails and phone calls from clients but found that he wasn’t quite ready to launch himself into a new project. He couldn’t stop thinking about what had happened in the Chinatown warehouse and something that didn’t make sense.

  “You’ve been quiet this morning,” Zoey said, peering over her array of monitors. “You’re still thinking about it, aren’t you?”

  “Yeah. Lying in that hospital bed, I just kept turning it over in my head.”

  “It’s only natural. I can’t stop thinking about it either. We both came pretty close.”

  “It’s not just that,” Chris said, taking a sip of coffee.

  “Well, what is it then?”

  “I didn’t tell you everything that Zhang said to his brother. It’s been bothering me.”

  “So tell me.”

  “Well, with that first call to the Chinese prison, Zhang asked for his brother by the name Li Chen. But he referred to him as Wenyan when they were speaking directly.”

  “Maybe Wenyan was a nickname, a term of affection.”

  “No, Wenyan is a proper name. I believe that was his brother’s correct name.”

  “So what do you think that means?”

  “I think Wenyan may have been serving a prison sentence under another name for another person.”

  “That sounds a little farfetched.”

  “I know, but there is a practice in China known as substitute criminals, where wealthy families pay someone to serve a prison sentence for one of their own.”

  “And you think Wenyan Zhang was a substitute criminal?”

  “I couldn’t believe it either, but as I thought about the rest of what Zhang said, it seemed to fit.”

  “What else did he say?”

  “Well, he was really surprised his brother was out of prison.”

  “That’s understandable.”

  “But it was more than surprise; he was shocked. Zhang said that he did some things to help secure his brother’s release. I think what he meant by that was he took the assignment to kill me as part of some arrangement to obtain favorable treatment for his brother.”

  “So you think he was taking hit man assignments to save his brother? I’m sorry, but that guy was twisted beyond all comprehension. I can’t see him having any human feelings.”

  “Believe me, I’m not defending him,” Chris said. “I’m just trying to understand. It would explain why he was so shocked when he learned of his brother’s release. He thought that the people who had hired him were using his brother as leverage, and they wouldn’t just give up that leverage.”

  Zoey nodded, beginning to get on board. “But maybe he was mistaken about who had hired him.”

  “Exactly. Zhang’s brother asked him who he was dealing with to secure his release, and Zhang said that he thought he knew, but he was wrong. What does that tell you?”

  “Someone had hired him to do this contract hit, but they did it through an intermediary—or through the Internet—so that he thought he knew who was hiring him, but he wasn’t sure.”

  Chris nodded. “And we know that he offered his services through Silk Road, which is designed for anonymity on both sides of the transaction.”

  “So who did hire Zhang to kill you?”

  “Well, despite all evidence to the contrary, it might not have been the PLA or agents of the PRC.”

  “So who was it then?”

  “I don’t know, but I think we can no longer assume that the motive was revenge for the deaths of Li Owyang and Bingwen Ma.”

  “But doesn’t the hiring of a Chinese hit man suggest they’re related?”

  “Yes, but not necessarily. It could be someone who knew about what happened in China and wanted to throw suspicion on the Chinese government—and away from themselves.”

  “So we’re back to square one. Knowing that it’s someone who wants you dead doesn’t really narrow the field all that much, particularly when you consider all the hackers you put behind bars when you were at the DOJ.”

  “True, but we’re not really at square one. First, we know that whoever hired Zhang knew about my trip to China and what happened there. Second, we know a few things about Zhang and how he pursued us. I have to believe that there are clues there somewhere. We just have to go back over everything we know, looking at it from this new perspective. We were so sold on the PLA as the culprits that we made every fact fit that theory.”

  “So we go back over everything, huh?”

  “Right.”

  “I’m not even sure what that means. What am I actually supposed to do?”

  “Just let that Zoey brain of yours meditate on it.”

  “Clearly you have a lot more confidence in the Zoey brain than I do.”

  Attorneys are big on work plans, lists, and methodical research to solve a problem, but those analytical tools didn’t help much with this sort of puzzle. Chris didn’t know the answer or how to approach it, but he had the unmistakable sense that it was just beyond his comprehension. If he was right that Zhang’s brother had been a substitute criminal and that Zhang had been hired by an anonymous person trying to create the illusion that he was with the PLA, then he knew he was close to a breakthrough. It was like a cryptography problem where you had to step back and let the numbers and symbols speak to you, reveal their pattern.

  Chris tried writing down a chronology of events on the whiteboard that encircled the four walls of the forensic lab, starting with his arrival in Shanghai and ending with the shootout in the Chinatown warehouse. As he paced around the lab following the narrative, Chris traced and retraced his steps across China and back to the US, looking for some anomaly—and it didn’t take long to find one.

  “Zoey, look at this,” Chris said, pointing to the whiteboard.

  “Zhang went to the Bottom of the Hill after we were there. How did he know to do that?”

  “Could he have followed us?”

  “If he had been following us, he wouldn’t have waited until Stinson Beach to take a shot.”

  “Maybe he had access to my law firm employment file. We suspected that the PLA could have hacked the firm’s system.”

  Chris started to interject.

  Zoey immediately caught his meaning. “But, right, we’re not dealing with the PLA anymore. We have no reason to think that Zhang would have access to those sorts of technical resources. I mean, hacking Reynolds Fincher might not be that challenging for the PLA’s army of superhackers, but it’s not like anyone can do it.”

  “So let’s say for the sake of argument that someone here at the firm, someone who could gain access to your employment file, was working with Zhang.”

  “Are you thinking someone at Reynolds Fincher wanted to have you killed?”

  Chris’s thoughts raced, combing through hallway conversations and office
gossip, sifting for the connection.

  Until he found something.

  It wasn’t exactly a smoking gun, but it was a data element that did not fit, something that required an explanation he very much wanted to hear.

  Zoey was now standing next to him. “What is it? You have something, don’t you?”

  “You’re right. There is someone at Reynolds Fincher who would like me out of the way. Maybe that’s not all that surprising. But what is surprising is that they actually paid to have it done. And I think I know who did it.”

  52

  Richard Grogan appeared in the doorway of Chris’s office, looking dapper in a charcoal-gray suit and a violet tie. He was smiling subtly. Grogan seemed to do most things subtly.

  “Chris. I got your message,” Grogan said. “I assume you want to pick up that conversation we were having earlier.”

  “Sort of.”

  “Good. Because I’ve been giving it a lot of thought.”

  “Sit.”

  Grogan sat in one of the chairs across from Chris’s glass and granite desk. Chris knew roughly how he wanted this conversation to proceed, but the whole thing was a long shot. Grogan was so careful, so polished, that if he was to fall into a trap, it would have to be a very carefully constructed one.

  “Those billing credits are very important to you, aren’t they?” Chris said.

  “Well, I could say it’s all about the work and serving the clients, but that wouldn’t be entirely true, would it? It’s how we keep score.”

  “And is keeping score really that important?”

  “You know it is. Money is how we all keep score. And those credits represent several million in my paycheck every year.”

  “But what if you have enough money?”

  “You never have enough. Because if it’s not about putting food on the table and a roof over your head—and it’s not at this point—then it’s about respect, winning. And who ever gets enough of those two things?”

  “Not everyone is like that.”

  “Everyone I know is like that. At least everyone who’s played the game well enough to be a partner here at Reynolds Fincher. What’s really going on here? You going to join the kids in Berkeley protesting multinational corporations? If you’ve practiced law as long as we have and don’t suffer from a little self-loathing, you probably just haven’t been doing it right.”