The Risk Agent

  The Risk Agent

  Ridley Pearson

  Grace Chu is an American-educated Chinese national now working as a forensic accountant after serving in the Chinese army as an intelligence officer. John Knox is an American who parlayed his military service during the first Iraqi war into a lucrative import/export business – which now provides him the official access he needs to work freelance undercover operations throughout the world. Both are highly skilled operatives capable of deft subterfuge or extreme violence, if circumstances require. They meet for the first (but not last) time in Shanghai when the security firm they work for is hired to retrieve a kidnapped employee critical to the success of a multi-billion dollar real-estate deal. But the stakes are high and Grace and Knox find themselves at the center of a deadly international imbroglio.

  Ridley Pearson

  The Risk Agent

  © 2012

  FRIDAY

  September 17

  10:07 P.M. CHONGMING

  ISLAND

  CHINA

  Lu Hao, a slim, well-dressed man in his twenties, stood on the roof of a subcompact car the size of a toaster, peering over a ten-foot-high concrete-block wall and into the parking lot outside an aging tannery.

  There was almost too much going on for the senses: the acrid smell of tar, the clamor of dump trucks and road rollers, the din of Chinese spoken in machine-gun staccato.

  Lu Hao had been schooled from an early age about the role chance and fate played in one’s life. If he hadn’t driven past that particular fuel station at that exact time, he would have never recognized the foul Mongolian, a man he knew from his deliveries over in Shanghai; would have never followed him to the remote location. Would have never witnessed the meeting where three men went into a factory building, and only two came out. He had watched through a crack in the hanging doors as the smallest, youngest of the three argued with a portly Chinese man wearing an expensive suit. With a nod from the businessman, the younger guy was then bludgeoned by the Mongolian.

  A moment later, back outside, the Mongolian shook the hand of the businessman, who then walked over to a black Audi sedan and was driven away. As the license plate flashed in the glare of a floodlight, Lu gasped: the plate carried only the number 6, indicating a person of extreme importance, a high-ranking official without question. Why here, of all places?

  Trembling now, Lu Hao clung to the wall. Refusing to move and risk attracting attention. Terror rippled through him: opportunity, risk, reward. Chance. Fate.

  A part of him wished he could forget what he’d seen, wished he could sneak off in the Chinese-made subcompact. He was about to do just that when the Mongolian, inspecting the paving job, jerked his head up quickly in the direction of the yard’s far corner.

  Lu Hao looked in the same direction.

  Cao! he cursed silently. A glass lens winked from above the wall. It belonged to a sizable video camera in the grip of a pair of white-skinned hands. A waiguoren-a foreigner!

  Lu Hao dropped from the wall like a stone, fumbled for his keys and was into his car in a heartbeat. No more! He would determine how to best use this information later, when he could be calm and reasonable. He might appeal for help.

  He might go to the temple and burn incense.

  But for now, he’d get gone, return to Shanghai, and hope that he, too, had not been seen.

  THURSDAY

  September 23

  1

  4:30 P.M.

  CHANGNING DISTRICT

  SHANGHAI, CHINA

  Lu Hao rode his lovingly restored CJ750 motorcycle, its sidecar seat covered by an oilcloth tarpaulin hiding a duffel bag that minutes earlier had contained cash. A good deal of cash. The kind of cash Lu Hao needed in order to repay his father for his own foolish mistake. But now the duffel was nearly empty-a few thousand yuan was all that remained. He returned his eyes to the street. To glance away from Shanghai traffic for more than a second could prove fatal.

  13…12…11…

  The middle lens of a Shanghai traffic light was an LCD timer that counted down to the light change, giving motorists on both sides of the intersection time to at least consider the traffic laws. Not that anyone obeyed them. The traffic laws in Shanghai were offered more as suggestion than enforceable law.

  Lu Hao revved the bike-a thing of beauty, a sound like that. He drew a few envious looks.

  4…3…2…

  Hundreds of waiting vehicles crawled forward. A Darwinian exercise commenced in the wide bike lane to the right: motorcycles assumed the lead, followed by motor scooters, electric bikes and finally bicycles. Not a horn sounded. Not a curse was thrown. Everyone knew their place.

  Lu Hao turned off Yan’an Road, a ten-lane arterial, and traffic immediately lessened. A few more turns, and he entered a time machine: Shanghai as it was a century before.

  Laundry hung like colorful prayer flags from bamboo poles jutting from apartment windows. There were more pedestrians than vehicles on the street. He slowed, straddling the motorcycle’s sonorous rumble. A delivery man had dumped a half-dozen fifteen-gallon water cooler bottles off his motor scooter, stopping traffic.

  Lu Hao swung right again down a narrow street lined with stalls. Old, toothless men in white undershirts commandeered second-floor windows. The spirited laughter of a mahjong game echoed down the lane, mixing with an out of tune piano implausibly working through Gershwin.

  He caught movement from his left: a man running toward him at top speed, head down. An ambush, forced upon him by the spilled water bottles. The lane was a choke point. He glanced to the sidecar and the hidden duffel.

  His attacker led with his shoulder, connecting with Lu Hao and knocking him off the bike. Two more men appeared. They grabbed hold of him. He was dragged, facedown, barely conscious, and thrown into the back of a microvan, where yet another man slapped duct tape over his mouth and pulled a plastic tie around his wrists.

  Then everyone started shouting at once.

  Clete Danner wore the motorcycle helmet’s mirrored visor down to hide his American face. He bent into the handlebars to disguise his size-there weren’t many Chinese who were six-three and two-thirty. When the threat came from Lu Hao’s left, Danner vaulted the bike and, in an infinitesimal misjudgment, caught the toe of his right shoe on the frame. He overcompensated, suddenly finding himself off-balance and thrown back on his heels only a few meters from the van.

  A nunchaku came at him like an airplane propeller, its aluminum cylinder striking his raised right forearm. He felt a bone snap. He went light-headed and a deep purple overtook his vision.

  He cocked his right leg and kicked. The nunchaku connected with his upper thigh, but the man holding it went airborne, slamming into the metal frame of the van and sliding down unconscious.

  His assailant was hauled inside. There was much screaming in Mandarin.

  The van’s motor strained and coughed exhaust from the tailpipe. The van backed up, knocking Danner over. His helmeted head bounced off the asphalt. Everything went dark.

  A second or two-more?-had passed, followed by pain. The broken arm. The bruised thigh. His concussed head.

  He was dragged into the van, the smell of sweat, oil and blood overwhelming him. The van doors banged shut. A flurry of angry Mandarin as the van took off. His helmet was ripped off his head.

  “Waiguoren!” he heard.

  He knew he could not possibly be part of their plans. He’d had Lu Hao under surveillance for months. Where had these guys come from? His cover was now blown. The entire operation was blown.

  The pain subsided, replaced by a deep and welcome silence.

  FRIDAY

  September 24

  7 days until the ransom

  2

  11:00 A.M.

 
; HONG KONG

  SPECIAL ADMINISTRATIVE REGION, CHINA

  The twenty-fourth-floor corner office overlooking the bustling Hong Kong harbor and, on the opposite shore, Kowloon, was spacious, its appointments comfortable. Three flat-panel screens surrounded a sitting area, one displaying a black-and-blue logo of mirror image Rs beneath which was written RUTHERFORD RISK, SECURITY MATTERS.

  Brian Primer ran Rutherford Risk’s Asian division. He wore a golf tan beneath a full head of hair, his face punctuated by gray, flinty eyes. Turning to his left, he addressed David Dulwich, one of his six key field operatives, picking up on Dulwich’s reference to a take-away food container in a photograph.

  It was but one of many photographs on the coffee table between them, along with a brown paper take-out food container with a wire handle.

  “Jesus,” said Allan Marquardt, the boyishly handsome forty-five-year-old CEO of construction industry giant The Berthold Group. Marquardt sported a tailored suit with a blue pocket square and matching tie. The corner of a China Air ticket envelope peeked out from his breast pocket. He was reacting not to the photo, but to the memory of opening the food container less than ten hours earlier and discovering its contents: a photograph of two men-a Chinese holding a newspaper and an American holding his broken arm-taken against the backdrop of a hung bedsheet; a carefully folded ransom note; two plastic bags, each containing a single Q-tip.

  Dulwich said, “The one on the right. He’s ours. Cletus Danner. He was keeping tabs on Mr. Lu. Must have walked into this. Both alive at the time of the photo. Confirmed POL.”

  “‘Proof of life,’ he means,” Primer informed Marquardt. “You’ll get up to speed on the acronyms quickly. Anything you don’t understand, just ask.”

  “Like why somebody would do this?” Marquardt asked.

  “It’s a business. Don’t personalize it. U.S. concerns paid out four hundred million dollars last year in ransom in Mexico alone.”

  “Come on.”

  At thirty-nine, Dulwich had a face lined with worry and consternation. A fleshy scar that looked like melted wax climbed out from beneath the T-shirt he wore under his open-necked Oxford button-down.

  “The Q-tips are assumed to be DNA swabs,” Dulwich said. “We’re running them now. Another two days, minimum. But they’ll come back Lu Hao and Cletus Danner. Used to be, you sent a severed finger for the sake of the print. We haven’t seen swabs used before: our takers are young, educated and enterprising. Seems a stretch for a Triad-an organized gang-though not out of the question. Whatever the case, it’s very clever and tells us these are not people to mess with. We want to get this handled and get both hostages home ASAP.”

  Brian Primer passed Dulwich the plastic evidence bag holding the ransom note.

  “The brown paper’s common enough in China,” Dulwich explained, having already studied it. “Easily purchased. Simplified Chinese characters written in pencil-nothing terribly interesting about that. The lack of a political manifesto suggests it’s all business. That’s good for all of us.”

  “Our insurance will pay our half of the ransom,” Marquardt said, “as I assume yours will as well.”

  Primer nodded.

  Just like a CEO, thought Dulwich, thinking about cash before lives.

  “They’ll kill them once they’re paid,” said Dulwich.

  “You can’t know that,” Marquardt said.

  “Our man’s dead for sure at that point,” Dulwich said calmly, “if they don’t do him before. Our one hope is that as an American he’s worth more to them alive.”

  “Why kill him at all?” Marquardt asked.

  “Because at some point he’s too great a liability. A Chinese kidnapping a waiguoren. An American, at that? You don’t want to get caught. Better to bury him.”

  “Jesus.”

  Mission accomplished. Dulwich had gotten the human cost to sink in. Marquardt had turned ghostly pale.

  “The ransom demand names the first of the month, so we’re already short on time,” Dulwich continued.

  “Our clients typically are given weeks or even months until the drop. This shortened schedule is disturbing,” Primer said.

  “The first is the start of the National Day holiday,” Dulwich said, “which coincides with the Autumn Festival this year. It’s an interesting choice.” He set the ransom note on the coffee table.

  “You make it all sound so…ordinary,” Marquardt said.

  “If only,” Primer said. “The DNA samples. The hurried schedule. By no means ‘ordinary.’”

  Dulwich screwed up his courage and asked the question Primer wouldn’t.

  “What’s more important to The Berthold Group, Mr. Marquardt? The recovery of Lu Hao’s recordkeeping, or Lu himself?”

  “That’s a hell of a thing to ask,” Marquardt said.

  “That’s not an answer,” Dulwich said, to his boss’s obvious discomfort.

  “What Mr. Dulwich means is: it’s important to clarify and prioritize your goals,” Primer said.

  “I won’t lie to you,” said Marquardt. “Lu Hao’s records of the incentives could be extremely damaging to the company and to me personally.”

  “You’re referring to the two Australians who just got twelve years in Chinese prison for similar ‘incentivizing,’” Dulwich said.

  “The case won our attention,” Marquardt admitted.

  It had stunned the entire expatriate community. Bribery, overpayment, “incentives,” were part and parcel of Chinese deal-making. For nearly a decade the Chinese government had been working to ferret out corruption among its officials. But reaching into the private sector and imprisoning foreign businessmen had never seemed remotely possible.

  “Remember, Allan,” Primer said, “we’re your representatives in this. We’re not here to judge you. Only to get the job done. The job you want done. And that means prioritizing. If the documents are more important, then so be it. We lost one of our men in this. He’s our priority, so don’t think for a minute we’re going to abandon extraction. But how we approach recovering Mr. Lu for The Berthold Group will be adjusted depending on your priorities and needs.”

  “We’re talking about human lives,” Marquardt said. “I never thought there’d be any question of priorities. We pay the ransom. We get them back.”

  “Like I said,” Dulwich told him, “it isn’t that simple. We wish. But if these people are professionals-and we have no reason to believe otherwise-then they’ll have a half-dozen separate groups in play: the person overseeing the entire operation is called the intellectual; then there’s the hostage-takers; the hostage-keepers; one or more surveillance teams; ransom retrieval, delivery and processing; hostage return.”

  “Jesus!”

  “It’s big business,” Dulwich said. “Only the intellectual has the full picture, sees all the parts. And he’s removed from the others. We never get to him. None of the groups knows of the others, which is what keeps it safe for the intellectual and makes it nearly impossible for us. So, yes, we work to help you stay calm and to negotiate the release of, or extract, the hostages. As you know, we have a rate of success in the mid-nineties. We know what we’re doing. If this was Colombia, Bolivia or any of the ‘stans,’ it’d be simpler. But this is China. And our guy’s an American, even if yours isn’t. They kidnapped an American. That gives them two things: a rationale to make a high money demand; and a reason to kill the hostages.”

  Marquardt looked even paler, Dulwich noted. He seemed to miss the fact that four hundred thousand dollars was a paltry demand. That point had not escaped him and Primer. Ten million would have been a typical starting point. So why not?

  “When a Chinese is kidnapped and safely returned, that’s the end of it. An American? The kidnappers will be hunted down by police, caught and executed. Period. They know that. We know that. Whether they meant to take our man or not, it’s too late now. That’s why they’ve set a relatively short timetable for the ransom-to get this over quickly. Get out of Dodge. But make no mi
stake: once it’s paid, they’ll kill and bury at least our guy, maybe both hostages. It’s the safest move.”

  “Mother of God,” Marquardt whispered.

  “But remember,” Primer said, “they still want the ransom. To win it, they need to offer us at least one more proof-of-life. Maybe two. We have a week to locate and extract the hostages, maybe push back the demand, certainly negotiate the amount down because they’ll expect that. It’s doable. All right?”

  Marquardt nodded.

  “Back to the accounts,” Dulwich said. “There’s another aspect to it. Lu Hao’s records of the bribes could be extremely important for us, as well as to you. You want to keep the incentives secret. Fine. We might be able to use the list of people receiving the bribes to find our men. Any one of the recipients of those incentives could be directly or indirectly responsible for the kidnappings. With so little to go on and so little time, that’s one area we intend to explore.”

  “There are many other avenues we’ll pursue,” Primer hastened to add. “But Lu Hao’s records are our best lead. Equally important, everything Rutherford Risk does in Shanghai has to be done virtually invisibly. So while we’re searching for Mr. Lu’s records, it can’t look like we’re involved. For one thing, it would put the hostages at added risk. The kidnappers’ demand is for no police, and that includes us. For another, we can’t legally operate in China. The Chinese authorities have not been notified of the kidnapping, as you know.”

  Marquardt nodded. “I understand and agree.”

  “What we need,” said Primer, “is someone level-headed and preferably Chinese to act as our Berthold Group contact and lead this search.” He paused.

  “We have someone in mind,” Dulwich said.