“Great,” I say.
AFTER THAT I SPEND some time on the Internet. Check my email.
I check a few other things, too. I have an idea, about that American guy, Buzz Cut. The one from the warehouse.
I find out what I need to know. And when I’m done, I know who I need to call next.
I stall for a while, go downstairs to the hotel bar, have a beer and think about it. Because this could go very wrong and leave me in a worse situation than I’m in right now.
Here’s the thing: Those guys, the American guy and the Chinese guy who left me in that warehouse in Guiyang, they wanted me dead. And by now someone’s found those bodies, the two guys that Sidney’s men killed.
They know I’m alive.
And the American guy knows who I am.
Companies like Eos hire private security. Some of them even hire private intelligence. Like GSC, the company my ex-husband works for.
I’ve tangled with those guys before. Some of them, they’re connected.
Private contractors. OGAs. “Other government agencies.”
You try to figure out, are they government? Are they private? And what I finally decided was it doesn’t really matter anymore. They’re all part of the same fucking thing.
Last year those kinds of guys-contractors, OGAs, whatever you want to call them-got me in a lot of trouble. And they warned me. Told me if I stepped out of line, there’d be consequences.
A company like Eos is so powerful that it can buy anything it wants.
We will be watching you. We’ll be listening to you. There’s no place you can go where we can’t find you. So don’t try to run. There’s no such thing as running.
Living in China, where you know you’re being watched, I sort of accepted it. Okay, fine. Most of the time I pretended surveillance wasn’t there.
When I found out it was my own people too… well, that pretty much sucked.
You better be smart. You start acting stupid, there’s not much I can do.
It’s not like I meant to be stupid. I was just trying to do a favor for a friend, right?
Yeah. Right.
“DOC MCENROE. I WASN’T expecting to hear from you.”
“Yeah, well, I wasn’t expecting to be making this call.”
I hear Carter cough on the other end of the line. He always seems to have some kind of cough. I don’t know whether it’s because he smokes or just because he’s living in Beijing, where air is sort of a solid.
“So what do you want?”
I have to hand it to Carter: he doesn’t pretty things up.
Carter works where my ex does, at GSC. I wouldn’t call him a friend. At one time he was the opposite of that.
“I need a favor,” I say.
I lay out the situation. What I need to know.
A pause. A phlegmy cough. “And I’m supposed to do this for you why?”
Because you helped me before, I think. Because you acted like you were on my side, at least a little.
Because you know what you and your buddy did was wrong.
But I don’t say any of that.
“Maybe I’ve got something to trade,” I say.
CHAPTER THIRTY
CARTER WANTS TO MEET face-to-face. I don’t like that idea. Sure, I called him. But I don’t exactly trust him.
It didn’t take him long to find out what I wanted to know. At least that’s what he claims.
“You pick the place,” he says. “I’m not having this conversation over the phone.”
“When you get to Shanghai, call me. We’ll pick a place then.”
If he’s going to fuck me over, turn me over the Eos people, I’m not going to make it easy for him.
“Fine. I’ll be down tomorrow.”
He calls me around 4:00 P.M. the next day. “Okay. Where?”
There’s a fancy bar down on the Bund that I went to once with Lucy Wu. Not really my thing, but unlike the expat dive bars I generally go to, it’s the kind of place where you’d have a hard time causing trouble.
Besides, now I even have the outfit for it.
I TELL HIM 6:00 P.M. and make sure I’m there first. It’s a bar/restaurant on the first floor of one of the restored European buildings that line the Shanghai riverfront. Sunk a little below ground level, so it’s got that dark, almost speakeasy vibe. I scope out the place. I mean, it looks okay, but what do I really know about this spy shit? There’s some foreign businessmen having cocktails and overpriced scotch. A couple of elegant Chinese women wearing little black dresses. Accent lights glow against the black-and-red walls.
I seat myself at a little table against the wall, where I can see the entrance and I’m not too far from the back exit, then order a beer-some new Chinese microbrew made by an American and an Australian. It’s not bad.
I don’t have to wait too long before Carter shows up.
He spots me pretty fast. Comes over to the table and looks me up and down.
“You’re looking kinda fancy,” he says, pulling out the chair opposite and sitting down heavily.
I shrug. “Yeah, well, don’t get used to it.”
He looks the same. Middle-aged. Ginger hair going grey. Freckles. Blocky body in a cheap suit.
“How much am I gonna overpay for a tequila in this place?”
“Too much. It’s on me.”
He chuckles. “You’re really moving up in the world, Doc.”
“If you say so.”
He pounds his tequila and orders another one. I sip my beer. I’m trying to be smart.
“So tell me,” he says after the second tequila arrives. “What’s your take?”
“My take?”
“Tell me what you think is going on. And then I’ll tell you what I know.”
I sigh. I mean, I could be wrong.
Here goes nothing.
“I think this guy Han Rong worked for Hongxing Agricultural Products, like he said. But I don’t know that he really quit because he was all… outraged or whatever by what Eos and Hongxing are doing.”
Carter stares at me with a neutral expression. Drinks some tequila. “How come you say that?”
“Because… I don’t know, the dude’s a weasel.”
He nods. “Okay. So then what?”
“Could be a lot of stuff. Like maybe he’s helping to fuck up Eos here in China so whoever’s paying him, some other company, can get a leg up with all this GMO crap. Or he’s still working for Hongxing, even. Hongxing decided they wanted to fuck over Eos and steal the patents for whatever it is they’re working on together, raise enough shit about Eos in the international press that Eos just gives up on whatever it is they’re doing here. Make them the bad guys. And whoever, Hongxing or some other company, can take over the market here, for now.”
All the while Carter stares at me, eyebrows half raised, expression a blank. I feel myself flush.
“Something like that,” I mutter.
“Not bad.” Carter lifts his hand to call the waitress. “Go on.”
“Okay. I’m not sure about this next part. Well, I figure Eos knows what Han Rong knows. About the three seed companies.”
“What do you mean?”
I sip my beer. “The American guy said, ‘We know the source of the leak now.’ ”
Carter nods, fractionally.
“The place in Guiyu, maybe that was for real,” I say after the waitress leaves. “I mean, as an address for a fake business. Or a place they could drop shipments to distribute to other stores or to farmers. It’s not like officials or whoever would probably check up on them, right? Who’d go looking for a seed company in Guiyu? Nobody goes there unless they have to.”
I think about the camera at the storefront in Dali. They were waiting for someone. Someone like me.
“The store in Dali, it was a setup. A trap. They were just waiting to see who took the bait. When I showed up at the warehouse in Guiyang, they were expecting me.”
“What about your pal Jason?”
“He’s not my pal,” I snap. “I never even met him.”