“Very well. Thank you,” she said.
Marquardt said, “Listen, I’m not going to lie to you: Lu Hao’s accounts of the incentives going public could pose difficulties for us. We want and need to recover those records. But let there be no question about it: first and foremost we want to get Mr. Lu and Mr. Danner back safely, as I’ve said. To that end, we are at your disposal.”
“I would appreciate the end-of-year accounts.”
“I do not see how that will help,” Song said, his mouth full of chewed food, his plate held to his lips.
“I asked for this before,” she said to Marquardt.
“Indeed. I would have expected you to have that by now. Preston, I asked Gail to take care of this. What’s the holdup? You’ll look into this for me, yes?”
“Of course.”
Marquardt sounded legitimately put off. Song worked eagerly on the glass of beer. The man shouldn’t have tried for the shao mai. The tips of his chopsticks shook considerably as he pinched the piece of wonton-wrapped pork and slid it between his wet lips. It was the first sign of cracks in his demeanor.
Grace reveled in the moment. Preston Song had no intention of her seeing the EOY accounts-which made her all the more eager to do so. Marquardt, on the other hand, felt like an ally.
12:50 P.M.
CHANGNING DISTRICT
SHANGHAI
Knox awoke with a start and answered the ringing iPhone.
“Yeah?” he said, looking around for Grace. She’d slept on the couch, where a blanket was now folded. No sign of her. It had to be around noon.
“It’s me.” Dulwich.
“Surprise,” Knox said.
“There’s a wet market on the north side of Julu, east of Xiangyang Road. Bring the hard drive. Ten minutes.”
“More like fifty,” Knox said. “I’m nowhere near there. Had to move.”
“We’ll talk. Bring the hard drive.”
“We?” Knox said. But the call was dead.
A light rain discouraged use of the scooter and made finding a taxi difficult. Knox was late before he started. An hour after the call, he walked past the wet market on Julu and stole a glance inside. No Caucasians. He wore the ScotteVest, the stain scrubbed clean from around the small slit in its left side. He kept his right hand on a knife in the pocket.
Entering the market, he circulated down aisles of bubbling plastic tubs containing live eel, catfish, perch, jellyfish, minnows, myriad crustaceans; displays of rabbit, pigeon, chickens and carcasses he could not identify.
The market jogged to the right into another, smaller room unseen from the entrance. It appeared empty until Knox spotted a man looming behind a tank thick with a moving coil of fish. The fish spooked and parted. The man’s face appeared.
Dulwich.
He stepped around into the open.
“I didn’t expect to see you,” Knox confessed. “I thought the reason I’m here is because you couldn’t be?” He felt the sting of dread-had Dulwich set him up all along?
“Don’t worry,” Dulwich said. “Technically, it’s not me.” He patted his chest pocket. He was on an alias passport, but still at great risk.
Knox did worry. If Dulwich had been able to enter China, then why recruit him for the job in the first place? As a fall guy, obviously. Someone expendable. So why would Dulwich enter now, when it seemed the risk was heightened over even a few days earlier?
Dulwich took Knox by the arm and led him into a room farther from the street. Gurgling Styrofoam tubs held soft-shelled turtles, frogs and sea urchins. Knox winced with the tug and Dulwich shot him a suspicious look.
“Pulled a muscle,” Knox said.
Dulwich extended his open hand. “The hard drive.”
Knox hesitated. “Seriously: what are you doing here?”
“The drop is still set for the day after tomorrow. We’ve requested a final proof of life just before the drop. You and the girl will make the drop.”
“That’s fine, but it doesn’t explain your being here,” Knox said.
“Since when do I answer to you?” Dulwich said gruffly.
“Since now.”
“I’m here to help you,” Dulwich said.
“You’re here for the hard drive. But last time I checked, you needed me because you couldn’t enter safely.”
“Who said I’m here safely?” Dulwich said. “‘Desperate times, desperate measures,’ and all that shit. I’m here because of Danny. Because of you.”
Knox wasn’t buying it. “Tell me you’ve got my back.”
“I’ve got your back.”
“The Berthold Group doesn’t want a second copy of Lu Hao’s books out there. That’s why the hard drive interests you. Yes?” Knox considered his own comment. “Are you so convinced the hostages will be killed because Danner’s an American, or because The Berthold Group is more interested in getting Lu Hao’s books back than the hostages?”
“Let’s just say I’m playing percentages,” Dulwich said. “Marquardt seems like the real thing to me, but who knows? These fuckers are in it for the money. Right? Danny is not expendable. Not to me. Not to you. That’s why you’re here. Am I right? What do I know? As to why I risked being here? My boss, Primer, raised the ransom cash for Marquardt. The two-fifty USD. It’s coming into Guangzhou by container ship tomorrow. I’m the courier. Primer will not trust freelancers with that kind of cash. Who put the free in freelance?”
“You could have headed straight to Guangzhou,” Knox said.
Dulwich bristled. “Coulda, shoulda. But Danny’s hard drive’s a priority.”
“You got the SIM card I sent?”
Dulwich nodded. “Yeah. Your guy made repeated calls to another pay-as-you-go China Mobile phone. At first, we thought it might be the intellectual fielding those calls.”
“The Mongolians aren’t the kidnappers. They’re on the receiving end of the incentives.”
“Interesting,” Dulwich said.
“Added on late in the game.”
“Well, whatever all that means, the guy taking those calls appears to report daily to someone in Beijing. A Party member? Government? A businessman? Who the fuck knows? But he’s a priority to you and me both.”
“These Mongolians are muscle for some Beijing bureaucrat?”
“Or middlemen for the incentives,” Dulwich proposed.
“That works for me.”
“We’ve been following GPS locators on both phones-the Beijing guy, and the Shanghai phone that apparently reports into him daily.”
Knox thought they were getting closer to the truth of why Dulwich had made the trip.
“You’re tracking them? Nice of you to tell me.”
“I’m telling you now. Right? The Beijing guy is smart enough to turn it off, and leave it off most of the time. Making tracking sporadic. The Shanghai guy, not so smart. You want to meet him?” Dulwich handed Knox his iPhone. “The blue dot. That’s him. He’s up the block from us.”
Knox studied the moving map. “You’ve got a bead on the Mongolian? When exactly were you going to tell me?”
“He came straight here the moment you arrived. I watched the dot cross the city.”
Knox tried to make sense of it. “He must have followed you. Is that possible?”
“You took a cab,” Dulwich stated, as if Knox had committed a crime.
Knox explained, “I was short on time.”
“We know this guy is connected to Beijing, right? You’ve actually helped us out by confirming the level of that connection. He didn’t follow you, Knox. He just headed over here. That tells me this Beijing guy swings a big enough stick to have the Shanghai cabbies looking out for you.”
“The run-ins with the Mongolians,” Knox said. “The cops contacted Kozlowski at the consulate about an American wanted for assault.”
“So they’ve been onto you. Makes sense. They lifted your face off camera footage, fed a photo to city cab drivers, and here you are. I’d keep my hat low from now on.”
An elderly Chinese man entered the small space, scooped up some live eels into a plastic bag and left.