At the moment she was struck by the fresh air, there came a sound like a melon hitting the kitchen floor. Warmth speckled her face.
Blood.
The men dropped her. One lay on the concrete, out cold and bleeding.
A monster with half his face scraped off-a Mongolian, or northerner-brutalized the second man.
Before she fully came to her feet, someone grabbed her from behind and dragged her into a van. She was thrown inside and her abductor followed in behind her. The door slid shut. The tires squealed.
A flurry of Shanghainese cursing. The driver said something to the man hovering over her about “going back for him.” More cursing. A rag was stuffed down her throat, followed by duct tape across her face.
She blacked out.
7:53 P.M.
Melschoi dragged the man deeper down the alley, already softening him up by kneeing him repeatedly in the chest. The man bounced away from him like a puppet.
“Who do you work for?” Melschoi asked in passable Mandarin.
“Feng Qi.”
“Yang Cheng’s man?” Melschoi said, holding him tightly.
“Dui.”
Melschoi contemplated the angles like a mathematician.
“Where have they taken her, these men?” The road rash on his face had not had time to scab, leaving him looking like he’d made out with a cheese grater.
The man’s eyes rolled back in his head. Melschoi was losing him. Melschoi lifted him off the ground and kneed him in the groin, jolting him awake.
“Where?” Melschoi said, his hand now clenching the man’s throat.
The man volunteered an address on Moganshan Road, a former warehouse district that had been partially gentrified into art galleries.
Melschoi knew the area. He leaned in close to the man. “You work for me now. We always have eye on you. You try to run or double-cross me and I will cut off your manhood.”
Melschoi took the man’s mobile phone one-handed and dialed in his own number in order to save it into the man’s phone.
“Whatever you hear, you will pass along to me immediately,” Melschoi said. “If I do not hear from you regularly, you will hear from me.” He held up the man’s wallet so he’d be sure to remember Melschoi possessed it.
He let him fall. “If you try to warn your associates, I come back for you.”
8:40 P.M.
Amy Xue vaguely recalled swallowing something bitter. Her limbs were numb. She tried to speak, but her words were slurred. She took a moment to place herself in her surroundings. Two men: one bruised and beaten. Her shirt hung open, exposing her breasts and belly. She could see she wasn’t wearing pants, but couldn’t feel anything. Her wrists were held to a bamboo pole with plastic ties, the pole tied between pipes.
A man’s low voice spoke Mandarin close to her ear. “The American and the Chinese woman. Names. Mobile numbers. And where to find them.”
She perceived a need to lie, but surprised herself.
“John Knox,” she answered. “The woman is called Grace.”
“We have your phone. Which are their numbers?”
He held her mobile phone up in front of her, but she couldn’t focus. The room was swirling and fuzzy. She felt physically numb and mentally empty-as if all resistance had been bled out of her. Her tongue had a mind of its own.
“The top number,” she said, finally seeing the screen, though dimly, “is his.”
She considered herself such an expert liar-perhaps the best bargainer in all the pearl market. She didn’t know this woman she heard speaking.
The lighting changed as if a door had come open. A gray hue spread along the ceiling. Whatever it was, it caused the man in front of her to turn around, for which she was extremely grateful.
Do something, she willed her body. But it was gone. All sensation, gone.
Melschoi recognized the minivan from the abduction at the pearl market. Amateurs. It was parked in a muddy lot on the back side of a storage building that, according to the sign, was leased to Yang Construction. Idiots.
Melschoi climbed atop the van and had a look inside. No guns. Three men without so much as a knife between them, he guessed. They’d stripped the woman naked, which offended Melschoi. He thought back to the rape of his dead brother’s wife. He gained a newfound energy.
He kicked in the door, shouted, “Police!” and headed straight for the one whom he’d seen was in charge. The announcement bought him enough time to cross the space without being attacked. Their expressions changed as Melschoi’s torn face caught the lights. Two of them had just met him an hour earlier.
He grabbed an electric drill off the wall and swung it by its cord like a chain mace.
One of the men made for the door. The drill clubbed him at the base of the neck and he fell.
“Next,” he said in Mandarin, moving inexorably toward a man who hoisted an office chair. Melschoi used the flying drill to break his ribs and then club the side of his head.
The third produced a knife.
Melschoi stepped onto the fallen man’s back, using him like a doormat. He swung the drill in a figure eight in front of him.
“Be certain she is worth it,” he said.
His opponent circled to his right.
“Tell your employer he should leave this to others. It is a cemetery for those who stay.” He motioned an invitation toward the open door.
The man backed out of the warehouse slowly. Moments later, the van started and raced away.
Melschoi tied up the fallen pair with electric cords. He faced her, having noted the spilled pills and Gatorade on the desk.
Mandarin did not come naturally when his adrenaline flowed.
“I can leave you here,” he said. “Maybe they return. Maybe someone else comes along. We both know what they will do with you.” He ran his eyes over her. She stared into space, unblinking. “I know you can hear me. It must be agony, not to be able to move. So, where do I find the foreigner?”
He started the drill swinging again.
“I do not know,” she said.
He trusted her answers, knowing the effects of Rohypnol.
“The hair salon,” he said.
“Computer files.”
“What kind of files?” he asked.
“Spreadsheet.”
“The foreigner has the spreadsheet?” he said.
She stared off into space; he was losing her.
“His name?” He stepped closer, knowing she could hear. He raised his voice. “His name?” The words reverberated in the space.
“John Not.”
“‘John Not’?”
He could see the light go out. He closed her eyelids for her. Touched her carotid artery and felt a weak pulse. He picked up her discarded pants and purse from which a pile of money spilled. He took the purse. Cut her down and carried her like a sack over his shoulder to his bike.
He drove her up the road to a bus stop and sat her down on a bench, covering her lap with her pants and buttoning her shirt. He patted her on the cheek, half-tempted to thank her.
16
10:15 P.M.
HONGQIAO DISTRICT
SHANGHAI
“This had better be good!” Allan Marquardt declared, glaring at Grace as she stood at his front door.
Elegant Gardens, a gated expatriate compound in the Hongqiao District, was home to several dozen three-story McMansions on small, manicured lawns.
Grace had announced herself at the compound’s main gate, forced to wait to see if Marquardt would admit her. Now, his eyes irreverently inspected her.
“My apologies, Mr. Marquardt,” she said. “It is urgent.”
Reluctantly, he showed her inside. A television played somewhere within. A thin and beautiful middle-aged woman in white linen pants and an aquamarine silk top approached. Marquardt introduced his wife, Lois. He introduced Grace as an employee.
“Tea, please, darling,” Marquardt said.
He led Grace into a sitting room filled with crowded bookshelves and Asian art. The yin-yang love seat he offered was more than two hundred years old. He sat in a leather chair, facing her from across an Indian elephant-saddle coffee table.