What he saw caused him to reassess. Not Lu Hao in the chair but Danner. Alongside the leg of the chair were three straight-line, black smudges: Danner’s message-three hostage-takers. Knox felt a spasm of release in his chest.
“It wasn’t Lu,” he said. “It was Danner. In the chair. Three men covering him.”
“Three. Yes. That is what I have got,” she confirmed. “One a smoker. Another, left-handed and a vegetarian. The third, nervous and fidgety.”
“Seriously?”
She glared at him. “That chair,” she said pointing. “Cigarette ash and butts. Center chair: beer can on left side, not the right-left-handed. The pizza there is no meat, only vegetables-vegetarian. Last chair, napkin shredded, folded, pieces rolled up and tied in small knots. Nervous disposition.”
“I’ll take your word,” he muttered.
He didn’t need DNA results. He felt confident it had been Danner in the chair. He studied it more carefully, using a pencil light, paying special attention to where the man’s hands had been taped. It took a different angle to see the grooves pressed into the wood of the arm.
“The number ‘forty-four’ mean anything to you?” Knox asked. He tried to get a photograph of it, but failed.
Grace looked over, but didn’t speak.
“How about forty-one?”
Grace stepped closer, gravely. “Forty-four?” she inquired.
Knox pointed out the impressions in the armrest’s wood.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Nothing.”
“Grace?”
“Four sounds like-si-death.”
“Danner or Lu?” he wondered aloud. “Danner could be wounded. Lu Hao could have had a seizure.”
“Only the one chair,” she said.
He pointed out the scuffmarks. “It was Danner in this chair. Count on it.” He dug into the balled-up duct tape, peeling it apart. He found a patch with whisker hairs and torn skin in the rough shape of lips. The whiskers were faintly red under the pencil light. “Danner,” Knox whispered. “For certain.”
“Where’s Lu Hao?” she gasped. “Dying and dead?”
“No jumping to conclusions,” he cautioned. “We’ve got no blood. No sign of trouble. Chances are these guys are pros and kept the hostages separated. SOP. If they lose one to the cops or escape, they still have the other. Nothing to worry about. Not yet.”
“You sound like you are trying to convince yourself, not me,” she said.
Do I? he wondered. Guilty as charged. “A left-handed vegetarian?”
“He left a partially eaten pizza slice behind. Ate off the left side of the slice. You are trying to change the subject. Why would a simple delivery man know this address, yet it is not the address for Lu Hao? That does not make sense.”
Not to Knox either. He was surprised how quickly she jumped to the same place he did.
“We can’t get ahead of ourselves,” he said. “We have Danner alive. Moved not too long before we got here, judging by the smell of the place.” Sweat and smoke hung in the air. Someone had been here in the past several hours. “We have the Sherpa’s driver, but he operated as an independent.”
“The Mongolians?”
“Hostage-takers survey the payee of the ransom demand. We have the Mongolians watching Lu Hao’s apartment. That could fit. Or, like us, they could be wanting Lu Hao’s records.”
“But I’ve seen well-dressed Chinese watching the MW Building from Xiangyang Park,” she said. These were the men she used her disguise to be rid of.
“Yes. Maybe working with the Mongolians, maybe separate. If we forget the Sherpa’s guy, that gives us the two groups to deal with.”
“The well-dressed ones could be PSB, perhaps,” she said. “Or independents. Or the kidnappers themselves.”
“And if the kidnappers, then we have to explain the Mongolians. Listen, this was a lead we had to follow, but the gold ring is still Lu’s records.”
“Gold ring?”
“The prize,” he said, clarifying. “We know from the Sherpa’s man that it was the Mongolians who attacked him. They hit him after he made the ransom drop at Berthold, so they were watching either Berthold or the driver himself. They aren’t the kidnappers. They got this address ahead of us. But by the time they got here, the place was empty.”
“Because?”
“No sign of a struggle.”
She nodded. “So the Sherpa’s driver must have been expected to call in a code or message once he was safely away from the Berthold ransom drop. He never got time to do so because the Mongolians attacked him.”
“And the kidnappers packed up and moved at least Danny. Yes. It makes sense. But if true, it also means the intellectual made an amateurish mistake in giving the Sherpa’s man the hostage location. Why would he do that?”
“Maybe not a Triad,” she said. “Someone less experienced at kidnapping.”
“Like a competitor of Berthold,” Knox said.
“We come back around to needing Lu Hao’s accounts of the incentives.”
He bristled at the use of the euphemism. “One step forward…” he muttered. “But who are they, these Mongolians?”
“Perhaps we should inform the PSB about this place,” Grace said. “The PSB is efficient. They can lift fingerprints. DNA. This evidence could help a great deal.”
“If the PSB finds Danner ahead of us,” Knox reminded, “he’s worse off than in the hands of the kidnappers. Lu, too, more than likely.”
She looked ready to argue. Instead, she exhaled and settled herself. “Three days,” she said.
TUESDAY
10
7:45 A.M.
HUANGPU DISTRICT
SHANGHAI
“You asked I show you everything,” Feng Qi said, sitting uncomfortably in a dynastic armchair seven centuries old. Across from him, occupying an ornately carved chair and looking like a feudal lord, was Yang Cheng. The expansive desktop was a museum piece: exotic mahogany inlaid with ivory, ebony and mother-of-pearl.
Yang Cheng was everything Feng Qi longed to be: rich. Not that a security man could get rich off the salary he was paid, but the stock market was another story. Along with the old toothless geezers in their pajamas, Feng stopped into the public trading rooms whenever possible, buying and selling on rumor and instinct. He was up eleven percent in the past two months. He invested every dime he earned, a good deal of it in Yang Construction.
“Let’s see what you’ve got,” Yang said. He ran the DVD player, and the four-quadrant screen came alive with security camera images of Grace’s apartment.
“It is interactive. You may select any image at any time.” Feng had no doubt what image his boss would select. He had personally cued the DVD for the occupant’s entrance into the bedroom from the bathroom. The woman was naked. Feng knew on which side his bread was buttered.
Yang Cheng replayed the full screen image several times.
“Oh, my!” Yang Cheng said. “That puts some cayenne in the old stalk!”
“She is very clever, this one,” Feng said. “We see her entrance, but have yet to spot her leaving the MW office building. This, while watching every exit carefully.”
“Disguise?”
“Yes. It is the only explanation.”
“This tells us she is up to no good. Also that she spotted you! You are an idiot!”
“Or she was told by Berthold about the kidnapping and to take no chances.”
“Why her and no other employees?” Yang asked.
Feng looked stumped.
“We must now consider that she is aware of Tragic Lu’s current situation. I imagine Berthold employees are not the happiest right now. This gives me a good idea.”
“One thing of note: she made no attempt to disguise herself for yesterday’s lunch with a waiguoren.” He paused. “Canadian. American, possibly.”
“This I find even more interesting. No. Listen to me…I told you: she is up to no good. Her arrival is no coincidence. Her precautions? She fears the government, of course-the Ministry of State Security. What else? That they are aware of the kidnapping and may be interested in any newcomers. Of course! I knew it! And the fact that she takes such precautions? A windfall. She acknowledges her importance to us. Leading us to the American? She is engaged in the highest form of deception. She is challenging us to take the bait, or let it go. Thankfully our resources are many. We can play both sides to our advantage.” He was excited to the point of arousal.