by Jake Needham
Chapter Seventeen
The stairwell’s emergency lights flashed on and fire bells began to ring. Each emergency light box had a rotating beacon on top that activated when the light came on and the swirling streaks of red the beacons threw across the stairs gave the whole scene a lurid, surreal feel.
The echo in the stairwell made the fire bells sound as if they were coming from everywhere at once and the cacophony ramped up a further notch when loudspeakers began blaring recorded evacuation instructions in several languages.
As the three of them jogged steadily on down the stairs, doors began to slam open on first one floor and then another, and the stairwell filled with a growing stream of guests in a variety of states of dress and undress hastily evacuating the hotel. Down here on the lower floors, they probably hadn’t heard the explosion, only the sound of the fire bells and the evacuation orders coming over the loudspeakers, but August had heard the sound of the explosion, and he had felt it. He couldn’t help but think of September 11 and the towers of the World Trade Center pancaking down, each floor falling on the one below until a hundred floors had fallen and nothing was left of the towers but a massive pile of rubble. The people unlucky enough to be left inside when the towers collapsed didn’t just die, they were crushed into powder.
August shot a look over his shoulder at Claire, saw that she was keeping up with him, and jogged faster.
A thick-bodied Chinese woman wearing green pajamas pushed into the stairwell through a door directly in front of August and he put out his hands to keep from running over her. He had just registered that there was something odd about the way she was standing when he realized she was pressing a small white dog to her chest and the dog was trembling in fright. Suddenly the woman turned toward August and inexplicably thrust the dog directly at him as if she expected him to relieve her of her burden. August pushed past her and jogged on down behind Woods.
By the time they made it to the lobby, rivers of people were pushing out of the doors of every emergency stairwell. The crowds wrapped them in a blanket of anonymity for which they were grateful. A few uniformed hotel personnel stood in the lobby directing the crowds emerging from the stairwells toward the exits. Under the circumstances the sight of any uniform, even that of a bellboy, was a calming influence and the crowds were moving outside in an orderly fashion.
August was shoulder to shoulder with Woods as they passed through the lobby and Claire was right behind them.
They emerged on Reclamation Street.
The people leaving the hotel had mostly stopped walking the moment they got outside and the areas just beyond the exits were quickly jamming up. August pushed his way through the crowd with Claire and Woods right behind him and moved away up Reclamation Street to put some distance between them and the hotel. He felt himself crunching over glass shattered so finely it was like walking on beach sand.
When they found a space on the sidewalk that was less crowded, they stopped and looked around. Most of the people along Reclamation Street were staring up at the hotel building with stunned and frightened faces.
The three of them looked up, too.
“Holy shit,” Claire murmured.
Neither August nor Woods said anything at all.
Up on what they assumed was the eleventh floor, and for two or three floors both above and below it, a hole had been punched in the hotel that made August think again of 9/11. A huge chunk of the building was simply gone, and all around the void draperies that were never meant to see the outside world fluttered desperately through shattered glass as if they were trying to escape the carnage. Who could blame them? From one pair of broken windows a bed teetered half in and half out of what was left of the room, and in another a green chair looked as if it was trying to decide whether or not to jump. Strangely there was no sign of flames or smoke, no fire at all. Just immense and total destruction.
It looked as if a bomb had gone off.
It certainly did.
“What the fuck just happened?” Claire murmured.
“Woods saved our lives,” August said.
“You mean the Chinese tried to kill their own defector and we walked right into it?”
August said nothing. He just shook his head. Then he looked at Woods, and Woods shook his head, too.
August glanced at his watch.
4:30. It wouldn’t be dawn for another hour or so.
He pointed north on Reclamation Street.
“There’s a twenty-four-hour McDonald’s around the corner on Argyle Street. Let’s get some coffee and figure out what to do now.”
When they got to the McDonald’s, it looked as if all of the customers and most of the employees had rushed outside at the sound of the explosion and were now standing together in little groups babbling to each other in Cantonese and pointing up at the side of the Cordis Hotel.
August, Woods, and Claire went inside anyway, found somebody to wait on them, and got coffee. They took their cups over to a red and yellow booth that was well away from everyone else and sat drinking in silence while they each contemplated separately what had just almost happened to them.
“Anybody else hungry?” Woods asked all of a sudden.
Claire and August just looked at him.
“Personally,” he said, “I could go for a Big Mac right about now.”
When nobody said anything, Woods looked back and forth between August and Claire. “Okay, well… suit yourselves.”
He shrugged, slid out of the booth, and walked back to the counter.
“He’s going to eat?” Claire asked August. “Now?”
August thought about that for a moment.
“I’ve changed my mind,” August said and slid out of the booth. “You sure I can’t get you something, Claire?”
“More coffee,” Claire muttered. “And… uh, maybe an Egg McMuffin if they have them here.”
August smiled, but he didn’t say anything else.
August put a fresh coffee in front of Claire and handed her an Egg McMuffin. She unwrapped it slowly, her eyes fixed on Woods.
“How did you know about the bomb?” she asked.
“I heard the trigger when the door opened. I’m guessing it was a proximity device of some kind, and the movement of the door into the room tripped it.”
“But the bomb didn’t go off when you opened the door. It didn’t go off for two or three minutes after that.”
“The proximity detector must have activated a time delay mechanism.”
“But why a proximity trigger and a time delay? What’s the point of that?”
“Probably to make sure all three of us had time to get inside the room.”
“Wait. You’re saying the bomb was meant for us? Not for Billy Fang?”
When Woods didn’t respond, Claire glanced at August. He didn’t say anything either, but it was clear he was thinking the same thing.
“Somebody just tried to kill us? You’re telling me the Chinese were willing to murder a valuable defector like Billy Fang just to get us? I don’t believe it.”
Woods and August exchanged looks.
“I doubt Billy Fang even exists,” August said. “I think this was a set-up from the beginning. The whole idea was to get us into that room and kill us.”
“Whoa,” Claire breathed out.
“Those Louis Vuitton suitcases delivered by our chubby friend in the purple dashiki probably contained the bomb and the trigger. Maybe he set the trigger, maybe somebody else came in later and set it. Either way, the plan was to kill us.”
“The Chinese wanted to kill us?”
“I don’t think so. Too messy, and too obvious for them to do something like that here in Hong Kong. The location immediately throws the suspicion on them. If the Chinese wanted to kill us, they’d do it in a third country.”
“But if it wasn’t the Chinese, then who the hell was it?’
“I’ve got no idea.”
“Who even knows we’re here?” Claire asked.
�
��The three of us, of course, and Spike and the messenger.”
“And the Conductor,” Claire added.
“And the Conductor.”
“Well, it sure as hell wasn’t any of us who were responsible and I’d bet my life it wasn’t Spike either.” Claire looked from August to Woods and neither of them appeared to disagree with her. “That leaves the messenger and the Conductor.”
“Unless we have a mole,” August said.
Woods and Claire just looked at him.
“You think the Band has been compromised?”
August looked down at the yellow Formica table top and slowly shook his head.
“Look,” he said, “here’s what I do know. Somebody wanted the three of us dead. And that has to be somebody who knew we had instructions to take down Billy Fang here in Hong Kong. They also had to know we had a limited window of time, and that was what allowed them to focus down to an exact time and place to go after us. Whoever it was, they knew everything.”
“You think somebody is trying to shut down the Band?”
“That’s my guess right now.”
“Maybe the Conductor is pulling the plug,” Woods said, “and he’s tying up loose ends.”
“Oh, come on,” Claire snapped. “That’s not possible.”
She looked at August.
“It isn’t, is it?”
“Look, Claire, I don’t know what to think yet. But right at this moment I don’t trust anybody other than the two of you.”
“And Spike.”
August hesitated. “Probably.”
“You’re scaring me, Bossman.”
August said nothing and Claire and Woods looked at each other.
“Here’s what I want you to do,” August continued. “Whoever set that bomb almost certainly thinks the three of us are dead. Maybe they were watching the hotel, but as many exits as there are and as big as the crowd coming out was, I think it’s a long shot that they would have seen us. Right now, odds are we’re dead as far as they’re concerned and that gives us some short-term cover. I want to protect that as long as I can. We need to go to ground until we get a clear fix on this. You’ve both got bolt holes, don’t you?”
In their line of work, they had to have lifelines in case everything went sideways. Bolt holes weren’t just a place to hide, they were equipped with emergency IDs, virgin passports, unused credit cards, and a pile of cash. Survival stashes.
August looked at Claire, who nodded, then he looked at Woods, who nodded too.
“How about Spike?”
Another nod from Woods.
“Okay, use them. Don’t let anyone know where you are. Not each other, not even me.”
“How do we find out who did this if we all go off and hide in holes?”
“Leave that to me.”
“You mean you’re not—”
“Dump your guns and the burner phones we’ve been using. The second set of burners has got to be clean. Keep those. Tell Spike to get a clean burner, too, and then text the number to one of you. When I find out what’s happening and decide what we’re going to do about it, I’ll be in touch with Claire and she can get in touch with everyone else. Until then, stay silent and stay invisible.”
“Look, Bossman, wouldn’t it be better if—”
“I want both of you to get out of here right now,” August interrupted. “Get yourselves on the first flight out of Hong Kong that takes you to wherever you’re going. Travel separately to the airport and change cabs a couple of times just in case you’ve been spotted.”
“What are you going to do?” Claire asked.
“I don’t know.”
But that wasn’t true.
August knew exactly what he was going to do.
Chapter Eighteen
August caught the early morning Cathay Pacific nonstop flight from Hong Kong to New York and took a cab into Manhattan.
He had dropped off their gear and picked up an identity package from the Hong Kong safe house on his way to the airport and he was traveling under an Australian passport with a driver’s license and credit cards to match. The package also included a couple of Australian SIMs for his telephone so, while the cab was still on the Van Wyck Expressway, he inserted one of them and used his phone to pick out a middle-market hotel on the northern fringe of Chelsea where he had never stayed before. He booked a room using a popular booking app without ever speaking to a soul, which was his favorite way to do everything.
It was almost five in the afternoon when August got to the hotel, a pleasant enough looking place on 25th Street just off Eighth Avenue. He had dozed briefly on the long flight in from Hong Kong, but he never slept well on airplanes. Some part of him always remained on alert just in case the pilots needed his help.
August asked for a quiet room on a high floor in the back away from the street. The worst thing about flying into New York, he always thought, was plunging straight into the noise of the city. Some people called New York the city that never sleeps. August called it the city that never shuts up. He took a shower, ordered an early dinner from room service, and slept for nearly twelve hours.
The next morning, he checked out just after nine and walked north on Eighth Avenue carrying his small leather duffle bag. A block or two up he stopped at a deli and had a bagel with cream cheese and two cups of coffee, then he walked four more blocks to Penn Station. By ten, he had an Amtrak ticket on the ten-thirty Acela Express to Washington D.C. and was on his way out to board the train.
The train encountered the usual delays around Philadelphia and it wasn’t until a little after three in the afternoon that August got to Union Station. He walked out through the main entrance and stood for a moment facing the big traffic circle in front of the station. Across on the other side, the dome of the United States Capitol loomed huge and somehow a little unreal. It gleamed in the afternoon sun like a field of virgin snow.
August walked to the taxi stand where he stood to the side and allowed several people to go in front of him. Eventually, he fell into line behind a woman with two small children and when it came his turn he got into the next taxi on the rank. The driver was an elderly black man, bald except for wisps of gray hair above each ear.
The old man half turned and looked back over his shoulder without making eye contact. August noticed his eyes looked rheumy and unfocused. He hoped the man could see well enough to drive.
“Where to?”
“National Airport,” August said.
“You mean Reagan, don’t you?”
August hated it when the traditional names of airports or roads or buildings were changed as a gesture to the fashion of the day. Out of sheer stubbornness, he steadfastly refused to use whatever the new name might be and stuck with whatever name he had always used.
He had no doubt the driver knew exactly where he wanted to go so he didn’t bother to reply. The driver only grunted and pulled away.
After a bit, not bothering to look back again, the driver asked, “What airline?”
August picked one at random.
“United.”
Another grunt.
August leaned back in the seat and crossed his legs. National was just on the other side of the Potomac River in Northern Virginia. The ride wouldn’t take more than fifteen or twenty minutes across the Fourteenth Street Bridge and south on the George Washington Memorial Parkway unless they ran into one of the random, haphazard traffic snarls for which Washington was justly famed. They didn’t.
A little over fifteen minutes later, August paid the driver and walked into the United terminal at National, or Reagan, depending on your point of view. He took an escalator down one floor to the baggage claim area, walked outside to the curb, and randomly got on the first car rental shuttle bus that came by. No one got on with him.
When the shuttle arrived at the Avis garage, August used his Australian passport and credit card to rent a white Honda Accord. Driving an Accord, particularly a white one, made him as close to invisible on an American
road as it was possible to be. He threw his leather duffle on the back seat, pulled out of the airport onto the parkway, and headed south.
He had watched carefully throughout all of the zig-zags on the trip from Hong Kong to New York and on to Washington and nothing he had seen yet caused him to twitch. Of course, if there was a full team of professionals on him, he wouldn’t have caught any sign of them. He had no illusions about that. If they wanted to keep him boxed, they would, and he wouldn’t get a glimpse of them until it was too late.
But still, he figured the odds were in his favor. He was dead, wasn’t he? Who would deploy a large and very expensive team of watchers, then spread them around half the globe just in case he suddenly popped back to life? No, that was too unlikely to be realistic. Not impossible, of course, but unlikely. August liked his chances.
The more he thought about it, the surer he was.
Nobody knew he was coming.
Red River Consultants operated out of a small, two-story brick building on a quiet side street in Alexandria, Virginia, a peaceful and dignified community a few miles south of National Airport on the west bank of the Potomac River. Alexandria was the sort of place where two-hundred-year-old houses shared the brick and cobblestone streets with small commercial buildings carefully designed to fit into the area’s historical tone.
Red River’s neighbors were accountants and lawyers and investment managers, people who could have their offices in the civilized climate of Alexandria rather than in one of the bland K Street buildings in downtown Washington because they had the sort of clients who didn’t care where they were. Red River Consultants didn’t just have clients that didn’t care where they were. Most of them didn’t know where they were, or even particularly want to know.
The front of the house, as everyone called it, consisted of about a dozen people who kept up the façade that Red River was an international business consulting group. As far as August knew, Red River really did have a few legitimate clients, but he had always suspected that claim required using a rather elastic definition of the word legitimate. The intelligence establishment in Washington was everywhere, and it was ferocious. It protected its own. If Red River needed some legitimate clients to maintain an acceptable front, August was sure it had been provided a few by the Conductor’s friends.