“What about him? I’ve got to lose him,” Knox said, pointing to Dulwich’s phone.
Dulwich grinned. “I thought you’d never ask.”
1:20 P.M.
KINGLAND RIVERSIDE LUXURY RESIDENCE
PUDONG DISTRICT
“I wondered if you’d taken your lunch?” Grace said over the secure iPhone, knowing Marquardt’s assistants rarely took a lunch break beyond a baozi from the corner.
She considered her lunch with Marquardt and Song a draw: not a total failure but not the results she had hoped for. With any luck, Selena could be manipulated to correct that discrepancy. Grace had learned from the best: her manipulative mother.
“Not yet,” Selena Ming said. “Quite busy today.”
“I thought you might enjoy a look at my apartment.”
A moment’s hesitation, then Selena replied, “Yes! Very much!”
“I am taking my afternoon here in order to focus on some accounting personally requested by Mr. Marquardt. Do you like sushi?” An extravagant meal for an office worker like Selena was KFC. Because of its price, sushi was considered fine dining-take-away or not.
“My favorite!”
“I will order some take-away.”
“I can pick this up on my way.”
“Would you? How kind of you!” Grace supplied the name of a shop less than a block from her Pudong apartment.
“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.”