He pushed forward and tugged open the bent back door. Dulwich was unconscious, his face bloodied. Knox hooked him beneath his arms and pulled him out. As he did, his hand found the hard drive. He was searching for the iPhone when an old, nearly toothless woman slapped his hand and shouted, “Thief!”
Knox called her an old cow, but hurried off down the street before the crowd decided to make an example of him.
3:20 P.M.
JING AN DISTRICT
SHANGHAI
Knox called Rutherford Risk in Hong Kong and then waited ten minutes for the company’s head, Brian Primer, to return the call to the iPhone. As they talked, he walked up Changle Road toward Huashan Hospital.
“Go ahead,” Primer said, with no introductions.
“Sarge-David Dulwich-is down. Traffic accident. Looked serious to critical.”
“You escaped unharmed?”
“Wasn’t in the cab. What’s the call? I can have him out of there within…two hours, at the outside. Request a safe house with medical, or an evac team.”
“I appreciate your…loyalty. His identification is good. It should hold. No need to put the operation at risk. Not yet.”
“But the ransom money,” Knox said.
“Yes, I’m aware of the situation, believe me.”
“You want me in Guangzhou?” Knox asked.
A long pause on the other end of the call as Primer weighed his options. Perhaps Knox had surprised him with his knowledge of the operation.
“I need a few minutes. An hour. Do you have the hospital?”
“Approaching it now.”
“Survey for arrival of interrogation team, or anything suggesting compromise.”
“Can do. I won’t let him be taken,” Knox stated.
“Settle down,” Primer said. “We’ve managed a lot worse than this.”
“It was intended for me. The crash.”
“Knowledge or speculation?”
“I spotted an adversary in the area. Both drivers fled the scene.”
“Good to know. Then I’d keep my head down if I was you.”
“I want him out of there.” He paused. “I need the ransom money.”
“I said: settle down. This is what we do. Let us do it. You handle your end. The accounts?”
“A work in progress.”
“And is there progress?”
It struck Knox that this was Primer’s focus. “Guangzhou?” Knox said. He wondered if Primer would authorize a quarter million dollars in cash to be picked up by a relative stranger.
“That drop required Dulwich. We’ll figure something out. Not to worry.”
“Worry? We’ve got two days! Less, now. I can get him on a plane. A boat.”
“You handle the accounts. The exchange.”
“There won’t be an exchange without that money!”
“Then extraction. We’ve got Dulwich covered.”
Sure you do, Knox thought, wondering how expendable Dulwich was to a man like Brian Primer.
“Keep this phone close.” The line went dead.
Knox had reached the street corner. Looking left, he saw the blockish white buildings of Huashan Hospital. In the first few hours of care it would be difficult to get to Dulwich. But after that…
He kept vigil, waiting for the arrival of police that never came. An hour passed. Primer was right: Dulwich’s “accident” was being treated as just another civilian casualty.
For how long remained the question.
6:20 P.M.
CHANGNING DISTRICT
SHANGHAI
“The wheels are coming off this thing,” he told Grace, having returned to the safe house apartment. “We have to get Sarge out of there. Priority one.”
“The company will take care of Mr. Dulwich.”
“The company will pretend he doesn’t exist.”
“Not Mr. Primer.”
“Believe it,” Knox said. “In truth, Sarge probably doesn’t exist. He’s probably an independent contractor, like you. Like me, now. Nowhere on their payroll despite his working there. It’s an insidious arrangement set up exactly for moments like this.”
“Like Lu Hao,” she said solemnly.
“Yes. Like that,” he agreed. “It all depends how good his documentation is. There are ways.”
“You cannot possibly be considering removing him from hospital.”
“Can’t I?”
“We cannot care for him! The way you described his condition-”
“Don’t get your panties in a knot.”
“Excuse me?”
He didn’t translate it for her. “At some point they’ll determine he’s an American. His teeth-dental work-will tell them that much. X rays. Tattoos. There are ways.”
“We must focus on Lu Hao and Mr. Danner.”
“Sarge was the source for the ransom money.” He relived their conversation in the wet market, including the pickup in Guangzhou. A pickup that would not happen. “No Sarge, no ransom drop.”
Grace hesitated before speaking. “Extraction.”
“Right,” he said. “As if.”
He looked over at her. She needed sleep. They both needed food.
“Okay. One step at a time,” he said. “Maybe the frame has Lu’s files. Maybe the numbers tell us something we don’t know.” He no longer believed it. He suddenly saw them instead as a means to an end. “We’re looking at this wrong.”
“How so?”
“Everyone seems to want Lu’s accounts, right?”
“It is possible,” she said. “Yes.”
“So whoever possesses his files has power over the others. Power means leverage.”
“The numbers always reveal more than anyone suspects,” said the forensic accountant.
Knox yawned. “You’re missing the point.”
“Which is?” she said angrily.
“We need to raise money in order to pay the ransom.”
“I am aware of that predicament.”
“So now maybe we have something to sell,” Knox said.
Twenty minutes later, he sat in a wheelchair outside a changing room in a boutique clothing store.
“Do you know the expression, ‘Take no prisoners’?” he asked, as Grace tried on clothes on the other side of a black silk curtain. He could see her bare feet. The petite woman who ran the store was in the front dealing with a customer.
“I have heard it before.”
“Tie up every loose end.”
“Yes,” she said, impatient with him.
“That’s why the change of clothes for both of us, and my condition.” His hands on the wheelchair’s wheels. “In case any of those cops are still watching the building.”
“The police,” she said.
“We don’t know who they are. State Security? Private muscle?”
Grace drew back the curtain. She wore a gray business suit with black pinstripes, and a sheer white blouse unbuttoned to show a good amount of skin. She looked older. She carried a tote over her shoulder. Just right, Knox thought: slightly slutty.
She said, “How do you know those men who attacked us are not because of this woman you slept with?”
They both knew Grace’s carelessness had led Yang’s men to them in the alley, but he kept his mouth shut.
“How do you know Lu Hao isn’t a blackmailer?” Knox said. “That he wasn’t blackmailing some Beijing minister who then sicced the Mongolians on him to clean up loose ends?”
She studied him. Disappointment and disdain mixed with a hint of curiosity.
“Not Lu Hao,” she said.
Knox rode in the wheelchair head down, a blanket across his lap. He wore a woven bamboo hat and a collarless blue cotton jacket typical of retirees, his shoulders hunched, his head drooped against a lightly falling rain. Wheelchairs were rarely seen on the streets of Shanghai. Wherever Shanghai’s elderly or handicapped were kept, it wasn’t on the busy sidewalks. But Knox fit the mold for those that were occasionally seen-old and decrepit, sad testimonies to the ravages of age.
Guiding him was an upscale office worker, a woman with a nice figure wearing high heels. She pushed the chair with one hand, and with the other clutched her purse over her head against the rain.