The Risk Agent (21 page)

“Oh!” she said, as if just thinking of it. “Mr. Marquardt would like me to check the EOY financials. End of year. I may have mentioned that before.” She knew she had, and Selena had been reluctant to help her
obtain them. But now she came at it from a better angle. Selena had seen Grace win on the apartment issue. Her impression of Grace’s power within the company would have greatly improved. “I left them on my office computer,” she lied. “I wonder if I gave you my password, if you could bring me a thumb drive? I do not wish to trouble you.” As Marquardt’s executive assistant, Selena would be able to obtain nearly anything. Grace did not have the files on her machine, but knew Selena would never agree to access another employee’s computer.

“We have a printout here in our files, if that would suffice? I would be most happy to deliver these for you, Miss Chu.”

“Call me Grace, please.” The final hook: first name basis with a junior executive. “Mr. Marquardt would like me to complete the work as quickly as possible. You know how he is.”

“I will bring them with me,” Selena said.

“Thank you. And I would just as soon he not know how forgetful I can be.”

“Of course.”

“See you soon, then,” Grace said. She chortled upon disconnecting the call, proud of herself. Keeping in mind that her apartment was likely bugged, she and Knox planned to use Selena’s visit to ferret out whoever was behind the surveillance—to offer up just enough juicy content to tease a reaction from either Yang Cheng or Allan Marquardt.

Grace fetched a scarf from her bag and covered her head. She entered a sister tower to her own residence and rode the elevator to the tenth floor where a sky bridge connected the two. If anyone was watching her tower, they would not have seen her enter.

Once into her apartment, she was mindful of the electronic ears and eyes. Eventually, Grace was buzzed by lobby security and Selena was announced. Marquardt’s secretary failed to conceal her reaction to the apartment’s opulence. She covered her mouth, moving room to room, her eyes giving away her astonishment. Following the tour, the two sat at the dining table and shared the sushi that Grace had put out on a plate. Grace positioned them both with their backs to the room as if to admire
the view. In fact, it was for the sake of the possible cameras, hoping the open drapes would place them both in silhouette and make them less easy to read.

“I was unable to download the spreadsheets you requested,” Selena said.

Grace’s shoulders slumped in disappointment. “I see.”

“But I was able to bring you these.” Selena withdrew a pair of heavy binders from her backpack and slapped them onto the table. “I cannot give them to you, but I can leave them with you for a day or two. You can perhaps look them over and return them to me at that time?”

“Yes. Of course.” Grace did her best to contain her excitement. These binders and the end-of-year accounts they contained represented a complex numeric crossword puzzle, as entertaining to her as it was challenging. She flipped open the first of the two, delighting at the sight of all those numbers. Somewhere in these pages was a record of every cent paid out as bribes through Lu Hao. Dates. Internal transfers of funds. Budgeting.

“It is what you expected?” Selena asked between bites.

“Yes. Perfect. Thank you.”

“What exactly is ‘forensic accountant’?”

“We are like surgeons. We cut into the body and find out what is wrong…how to fix it,” Grace answered. She fictionalized her role for the sake of the surveillance, according to her and Knox’s plan. “The firm believes there is an audit imminent from the U.S. tax authorities. Broadly speaking, my job is to make sure everything adds up.”

“You will, no doubt, be troubled with Mr. Marquardt’s travel expenses, then?”

Grace was typically focused on five or six figures and above, but she was tempted by Selena’s concern.

“If you have had trouble balancing an expense account,” she said, “I would be pleased to be of assistance.”

“I just wish to make it known that it was not my idea to redact lines from his credit card bill. I would like very much for that to be understood. Is this a crime?”

“Happens all the time, dear girl. Not to worry.” Inside, Grace was churning. Why should Marquardt want his assistant to redact line items from a credit card bill? Buying a gift for the wife on the company card? Had he lied about a mistress? Did any of it matter? “There is no blame that will result from my work. I find problems and make suggestions for how to fix them, to institute proper accounting practices.”

“I removed the lines because of security concerns,” she said, offering up the excuse. “I was told to by Mr. Song.”

“Indeed?”

“He said our competition would go to great lengths to secure such information.”

“Yes. Of course. I suppose the travel of the boss would be of interest to many.” Grace couldn’t allow herself to appear too hungry for more information, but her heart pounded. Ever mindful of the electronic eyes and ears, she considered how to end the conversation for now. “What were the dates of the trip? Or a particular charge? That might help me locate it within the accounting.”

“A hotel and some meals in Chongming. Golf, you might think. Mr. Marquardt charges golf to the company card plenty. But not golf. He was with Mr. Song. So, business, neh? No pleasure trips with Mr. Song.”

“It is nothing to worry about, I am certain,” Grace said. “Perhaps, if you provide me with the dates…” she tried again, “I can take a look to make sure.”

“As to that, it was mid-September. I don’t recall the exact day. Second weekend, perhaps. Not during the workweek—I remember as much. Even more curious, given Mr. Song was traveling with him! The two together on a weekend! I would never have expected that,” Selena chuckled.

“Business only,” Grace said, simply to keep the conversation going while her mind sorted out what she was hearing. Danner had voice-dated the GPS bookmark for the Mongolian delivery for September tenth. She’d had the call from Lu Hao left on her cell phone a week later, the seventeenth. Marquardt’s Chongming Island trip had to be tied to Lu Hao—Lu Hao’s family lived on the island, as did Grace’s. Did this trip
explain Marquardt’s reluctance to show her the more detailed accounting even while cooperating with her other requests? Did it somehow account for Lu Hao’s kidnapping?

Selena gauged the moment, sipped tea and then marveled at the view, briefly changing the subject.

“Mr. Marquardt does not like Mr. Song,” she said. “I cannot imagine him traveling with Mr. Song for pleasure. A weekend together at the same hotel? It must have been business.”

“What kind of business?”

“Mr. Song conducts due diligence on our upcoming projects.” Selena proudly showed off her in-depth knowledge of the corporate big men.

“Easily explained then!” Grace said cheerfully. “And the Chongming Island project is…?”

Selena’s eyes grew sharp.

“I do not wish to pry,” Grace said. “I simply want to do my best to keep you out of trouble with the U.S. tax authority. If you are not the one in charge—”

“Of course I am in charge. I handle all of Mr. Marquardt’s itinerary.”

“All but his trip to Chongming Island…”

“This trip…this is the first it has appeared on his schedule.”

“But the billing statement has been redacted,” Grace reminded. “So there’s no proof of it anyway.”

“Of course there is proof! There is the original billing. A duplicate can always be requested.”

Grace worked to appear surprised.

“I can request the records the moment I am back into the office,” Selena said. “I will send them to you the moment I have them.”

“What a clever girl you are,” Grace said.

14

1:25 P.M.

HUANGPU DISTRICT

The wet market was less than three blocks behind him when Knox used a reflection off a storefront window to spot the dark green motorcycle at his back. It started to rain lightly. He walked quickly south and the Mongolian followed. Dulwich’s explanation about the taxi driver reporting him seemed plausible if unlikely; more probable was that the Mongolian had spotted him and Grace on the scooter in his lilong and had then traced the scooter’s registration back to the employee at Quintet from whom Knox had rented the scooter. He made a mental note to follow up with Fay about that.

Knox headed to the Modern Electronic City, a funky, three-story shopping complex at the intersection of Xiangyang Road and Fuxing Middle Road. Inside was a congested rabbit warren of narrow aisles and shop stalls crammed with anything electronic as well as the ubiquitous clothes and kitchen supply stalls.

He was met with the roar of negotiation. He climbed a moving escalator, turned right at the top and slapped a hundred-yuan note onto the scratched glass countertop. He punched “Kenny G” in the shoulder and, in halting Mandarin, told the shop booth attendant he was being followed by a Mongolian asshole who thought all waiguoren were fair game. “A common pickpocket, no doubt.”

To be called “common” was among the gravest insults.

Kenny cursed. Knox, a regular customer when in town, stepped into shadow, wedging himself into a corner. The emergency exit he wanted was at his back.

Two minutes and the Mongolian had not entered.

Knox saw across to a stall selling digital cameras. On its counter stood an array of digital frames—electronic LCD screens that could display a slide show. One of the frames scrolled through images of the Great Wall and the terra-cotta soldiers. Another advertised across the screen in a steady scroll:

Join the revolution in digital storage!! Holds over 1,000 photos and 5,000 songs!

Grace had photographed a digital picture frame in Lu Hao’s apartment. It had not occurred to her to collect it. But it being digital implied internal memory. The frames accepted images from USB connections.

Lu Hao had hidden his off-the-book spreadsheet in plain sight.

Knox was suddenly far less concerned with trapping and working over the Mongolian for information—Dulwich’s current plan—as he was with returning to Lu Hao’s apartment to grab up the digital frame.

Knox spotted Dulwich wandering the lower level. After allowing several minutes to pass, Dulwich rode the escalator upstairs and joined Knox around the corner at Kenny G’s. They quickly swapped jackets and hats, Dulwich now dressed in the ScotteVest, jeans and ball cap, Knox in Dulwich’s pale gray canvas airman jacket—candy bar wrappers in both pockets. Given the rain, the substitution might work.

“Forget working this guy,” Knox said. “I’ve got a new lead to follow.”
He explained how Grace had seen a digital frame in Lu Hao’s apartment, how they’d overlooked that as a possible digital hiding place. “All I need is to get this guy off my back.”

“The plan is still actionable,” Dulwich said. “He’s out there watching. We hit him. Now.”

“He doesn’t know shit,” Knox said. “That’s why he’s following me.”

“He knows something we don’t. Beijing. That makes him an information asset.”

“Just lead him away. Get him off me. You’ve got his location on your phone. We can take him anytime we want him.”

“There is no ‘we.’ I have a train to catch. It’s now or never.”

“Then never,” Knox said. Adding, “Not now. This frame is more important.”

“Your call. Stay tough,” he said. He turned and headed for the escalator.

Knox worked his way across the third floor to a stall selling rice cookers, blenders and hot plates. At the back of the stall was one of very few windows on this floor—a fixed-pane window six inches wide and three feet high. Knox put his face to it.

Through the blurry smudge, Knox spotted the Mongolian across the intersection on the motorcycle, oblivious to the rain; they both watched Dulwich—now wearing Knox’s jacket and hat—dodge his way through umbrellas to the curb where a taxi was waiting. Dulwich opened the back door and climbed in. The taxi pulled out into slowly moving traffic.

Knox celebrated their success: the short distance to the taxi had made the substitution work perfectly. The Mongolian rose to kick-start his bike but held up on the curb watching as the taxi moved off.

Why was he not following? The idea had been to lure the Mongolian away, following Dulwich the impostor. So why give the taxi such a lead? Taxis all looked the same—they were difficult to follow.

Knox peered down the street. Was there a second Mongolian in place? Had they screwed this up?

Panic flashed through him. A heavy rain in Shanghai. Snagging a taxi in this weather could take fifteen minutes and yet…

The taxi had been waiting at the curb. Improbable on a sunny day. Impossible on a day like this.

Knox rapped his knuckles on the window as if he could stop the taxi, already moving. He fumbled with the iPhone; dropped it; stooped to recover it. Dialed as he stood.

His face back to the window, he saw the roofs of vehicles as traffic moved around Dulwich’s taxi—another anomaly. Dulwich’s taxi was clearly positioning itself toward the right lane.

“Yeah?” Dulwich said, his voice slightly altered by the ever-shifting signal embedded in the phone’s security.

“Abort!” Knox said. “We were set up! That taxi was waiting for me!”

Knox heard Dulwich say, “Hey, pal, pull over,” in English. “Ting!” he hollered. Stop.

Knox heard the breaking glass and twisting metal a millisecond before the same sounds found their way through the wireless phone network.

The taxi was T-boned by an old-model gray Toyota, pushed clear through the intersection and slammed into a tree.

The drivers of both vehicles hurried out and staggered toward the curb.

Now the Mongolian headed up the sidewalk on his motorcycle. He hopped off and reached through shattered glass as if trying to help. Knox knew better.

A massive throng of onlookers immediately surrounded the wreck. Everyone loved a good collision.

Knox made it to the ground floor before his brain fully kicked in. Protocol dictated he walk calmly in the opposite direction of the wreck.

Instead, he ran to the wreck and challenged the crowd, pushing and shoving and shouting curses in Mandarin. The Mongolian was back on the bike. He throttled up and swung left around the corner—out of sight.