“He was a great leader,” Jake said.
“He was our George Washington,” Kwan said wistfully.
Jake glanced about, a little concerned that he had lost track of his tail. “What will I find on the drive?”
“Everything you need.”
“How do you know what I need?”
“The whole world knows about Remington,” Kwan said. “Your president bowed down like a little bitch to the communist Chinese leader. He took no responsibility, hoping to save face while throwing his own CIA under the bus.”
“You seem to know a lot about America,” Jake said.
“I took my undergraduate degree from Stanford,” Kwan explained.
“Is that where the Agency recruited you?”
The man said yes without saying a word. His forehead simply scrunched up like a shar pei’s skin.
“Does it say where he is?” Jake wanted to know.
Kwan got up to leave. “Just read the file. I encrypted the file with our current calendar animal.” The Taiwanese man nervously wandered into the sea of shoppers.
Before Jake got up, he took the jump drive from his jacket pocket and put it into his front jeans pocket. He was about to rise up from the chair when he heard screams.
Jake wasn’t sure what was going on, but all the commotion was coming from the direction Kwan had just gone. He slowly walked toward the noise and found an increasing group of locals surrounding a man on the street. A pool of blood was quickly forming from two locations on the man’s body — his throat and his kidney area, where snow white goose down puffed out and was spattered with red blood.
It was Kwan. Jake knelt down and tried to get the man to say something to him. But he could say nothing. His throat was severed so far that his trachea was visible. The eyes that had nervously scanned for trouble now simply portrayed the shock and horror of impending death.
Jake got up and instinctively grasped for a gun that was not on his body, his vision scanning for danger. Finally he saw the man who had tailed him from the subway platform, his long hair flowing in the breeze.
Grabbing his knife from his pocket, Jake pushed through the crowd toward the long-haired man making his escape. Then he flicked the knife open and discreetly put it into his right hand, the blade against his wrist. This way he could punch with his fist and follow that up with a slash from the knife, a technique he had learned decades ago in his martial arts training.
Still no sirens, Jake thought, as he closed in on his target. Again, he tried his best to look for additional assailants. Killers of this type rarely worked alone.
Suddenly the man ahead of him turned to the left and disappeared down another street.
Jake rushed forward faster through the crowd, pushing people aside with his left hand. When he got to the place where the man went, Jake saw that it was simply a narrow passage between two buildings. He could easily reach across from one side to the next. A good place for an ambush.
Stepping down the passageway ten yards, Jake stopped when he heard something shuffle. He expected to see a rat. But what he saw was a cat with a rat in its mouth. He let the feline pass to his right.
Then Jake stepped forward again. When the attack came, he was ready.
He saw movement in the darkness and he shoved himself alongside the stone wall. But this distracted him from the way he had come. Another man rushed toward him from behind.
The long-haired man rushed him, the blade in his right hand swishing through the air and catching Jake’s left arm, which he’d thrown up instinctively. Now Jake rushed in closer, punching the man in the sternum and taking his wind away. He followed that with a knee to the man’s face, knocking the man backwards to his butt.
Then, without thinking, Jake shoved his right foot back and caught the approaching man in the groin with his heel. With a backfist Jake caught the second man with the knife in the guy’s right shoulder. He swiveled and simultaneously took the man’s feet out from under him and removed the blade of his knife from the guy’s shoulder.
Now with a clear path to escape, Jake considered his options. These two had somehow been sent to kill him and Kwan. Or maybe just Kwan and Jake was a bonus. Did he need to know any more from these two? Not really.
Jake hurried out of the narrow passageway and tried to blend into the crowd as much as possible. Panic still enveloped the normal flow of the street market. Some wanted to get closer to see what was going on, while others were heading in the opposite direction, perhaps already knowing the horror of the scene. Jake followed those. He thought about getting rid of the knife. If some vigilant cop found him with the blade, they might assume he had something to do with the murder of Kwan. But he decided to keep it. He would need to find his way toward the next subway stop on the red line, nearly a mile down the crowded street.
The slight of frame Asian man had watched what he could of the encounter the western man had with the two locals who had killed the banker. The man with the hat had some major skills, he thought.
When the western man with the hat had come out of the alley alone, surviving the attack, Shangwei knew he had just seen the man they had heard was coming.
He kept his distance now, considering his training years ago as a captain in the People’s Liberation Army intelligence branch. The general had told him to simply observe and report back. “Do not encounter,” the general had emphasized.
As he tried his best to simply wander at a safe distance, he couldn’t help scratching at his neck, where he had recently gotten the rest of his tattoo completed. His entire back contained tattoos of the fighting dragon and tiger, with the heads of each beast swirling around his neck. The dragon, the defender, was losing the battle to the aggressive tiger. Yin and yang was no concern for Shangwei. He was the tiger.
Ahead, the man with the hat hurried up the stairs and Shangwei did his best to catch up with his target once he got out of sight.
He slowed when he got to the top of the stairs and saw the Metro train doors closing. Then the train slowly pulled away from the platform and quickly picked up speed.
Shangwei scratched at the dragon on his neck again, as if he too was attacking that mythical beast.
Jake had barely made it to the train when the door closed behind him. He quickly got behind a pack of youths standing between the doors listening to their ear buds.
Glancing over the top of the young people, Jake could see the man who had been following him from the street market. Other than the nervous scratching at the tattoo on his neck, the man’s skills were quite good. He looked to be in his mid 40s, so he had probably been in the game a while. Longer than the two who had jumped him in the alley and tried to kill him after taking out Kwan. Maybe he was their boss. Regardless, someone knew he was in Taiwan. And that was a problem.
He rubbed against the jump drive in his pocket and wondered what had gotten Kwan killed.
2
Alexandra couldn’t take it any longer. She had worked for the BND for more than twenty years and had watched the service go from somewhat competent and focused to its current condition of underfunded and just another bureaucratic nightmare. She knew she needed to get out soon or she would be inclined to eat her gun. She had given everything to them. And what had it gotten her? She was over forty without children and without a man. She had always wanted both, but now her time was running out.