Behind her, lying wet atop the plaza’s concrete pavers, they would soon come across the orange tank top, trod upon, dirty and already torn.
23
4:00 P.M.
HUANGPU DISTRICT
Knox prodded the taxi driver to stay with the blue Volvo sedan sandwiched in traffic up ahead.
He’d returned to the Metro security station in time to catch the four P.M. shift change, had watched as one of the uniformed security men had left carrying a heavy black duffel with the oversized, smudged Nike logo on its side.
The guard cut through People’s Square indifferent to the steady rain and the gloom it produced. Knox skillfully avoided being seen, reveling that the shoe was on the other foot. The guard continued two blocks on foot until meeting the blue Volvo.
The first decent break of the past week came as a woman and her daughter disembarked from a taxi heading the same direction on Dagu Road as the Volvo. In the rain. In Friday rush hour.
Knox took it as an omen.
Now his taxi driver ran a light as its timer expired. The man used the right lane to pass two vans, nearly paving two cyclists in the process.
“Hen hao!” Very good! Knox called out from alongside the driver. They’d caught back up-less than a block separating them from the Volvo.
The driver smiled widely, his few remaining teeth cigarette-stained and crooked.
24
4:04 P.M.
XINTIANDI
A defeated Grace descended into the Metro station. Her legs burned; her throat was dry; the soaking wet green T-shirt stuck to her like unwanted skin. Acutely aware of the probing electronic eyes and the possibility of a Mongolian still following, she hung her head and attempted to blend in with the hundreds-thousands!-of Chinese swarming the underground station.
The operation was blown. Her face was known to police. She’d lost Knox. She’d lost the cobbled-together ransom money. One of the Mongolians was following her.
Lu Hao would be killed. Danner, along with him. She’d come to believe the switch had been made in the X-ray machine back in People’s Square. It was the only place she’d been removed from the bag. It was a devious, clever deceit.
She knew there was only one person to blame for it coming off so flawlessly.
25
4:20 P.M.
North of the confluence of Suzhou Creek and the Huangpu River, Knox’s taxi sped through the area northeast of the Garden Bridge that in the past 160 years had been home to American traders, Russian refugees, Japanese merchants (and then military occupiers) and the European Jews whom the Chinese required to live in squalor during the war. An uninspiring and neglected part of the city for decades, it had recently undergone gentrification, and was now home to hotels, coffee shops and office buildings.
He tapped the driver’s forearm. “Slowly, cousin,” he said, speaking Shanghainese. “Straight on.”
“Excuse me. The car-”
“Straight,” Knox repeated. “Turn around and pull to the curb.”
“But-”
“Kuai, kuai, kuai!” Fast.
The Volvo had slowed and taken two successive rights. Evasive action to check for tails. Knox was betting it would take two more, returning to its former route. The pause to look for tails was a good sign: they were getting close.
He’d had the taxi turn around so he could see through the Volvo’s windshield in order to confirm its passenger had not left the vehicle. The sleight-of-hand trick with the duffel weighed heavily upon him.
Knox checked his watch, forgetting it had stopped hours ago. The moment that money was delivered, Danner and Lu Hao would be killed. Close wasn’t going to cut it. The stopped watch suddenly seemed prescient.
The driver, his face animated, waited for him to say something. Knox could hardly think.
Too long! The Volvo hadn’t been trying to lose surveillance; the two consecutive rights had been the result of a missed turn or one-way streets. It was nearing its destination.
He texted Randy.
need location
A moment later a text returned:
soon
Knox directed the driver in the direction they’d last seen the Volvo. Recalling Grace’s mention of broken glass in the background of the video, he realized they were in the wrong neighborhood.
“Abandoned building or old lilong near here?” he asked the driver. “Broken windows?”
The driver’s face contorted. “Power station by river, many years,” he said. “Made new most recently.”
“New does not work,” Knox said. He pointed for the taxi to take another right, the Volvo nowhere to be seen.
His phone buzzed:
south of Kunming Rd, east of Dalian
Knox defined the area for the driver.
“We are close!” the driver said, accelerating and crossing Dalian Road two blocks later. “Is large area.”
“Yes,” Knox said, peering through the smeared windshield.
The driver offered a thumbs-up, then pointed out his side window.
It wasn’t the Volvo he’d spotted, but a brick fortress set back from the curb.
With hundreds of broken windows.
HUANGPU DISTRICT
Rabbit had lost the woman in Xintiandi, leaving Melschoi wanting to break something, starting with Rabbit’s head.
He called his source inside Feng Qi’s group.
“What can you tell me?”
The line went dead. The man couldn’t talk.
Minutes later the man called back.
“We are monitoring police radio. The foreigner has been spotted in People’s Square Metro station.”
“Tell me something I don’t know!”
“Our people are headed there.”
“You’re too late! He’s gone.”
The eBpon would suffer for this-if he ever found him again.
HONGKOU DISTRICT
Knox faced a pair of crumbling four-story brick blocks. The roof and windows were riddled with holes. Given the location provided by Randy, and the description, by Grace, it was a strong candidate.
Danner’s time clock was quickly expiring. Knox had to test the waters.
The compound was set back from the street across a patch of bare dirt and weeds and surrounded by high brick walls that met at an elaborate archway where a wrought-iron gate hung open. Inside the archway were aluminum lawn chairs occupied by a handful of overweight women, smoking and cackling in Shanghainese.
Electric wires had been strung through several of the second- and third-floor windows in the building on the left. The structure on the right appeared fully abandoned.
A nail-house by all appearances-a residence condemned to demolition where a few determined squatters had “nailed” themselves down, refusing to be relocated.
He had no great desire to confront a group of Shanghainese matrons; they were considerably more frightening to him than the Mongolians, but they would know everything going on in those buildings.
He crossed the street and approached them. Soaking wet now.
The woman closest to the street wore an armband symbolizing her affiliation with the government as a neighborhood observer. Only in China, he thought, could a squatter hold a community position.
On the dry concrete protected by the archway, he saw fresh wet tracks leading into the compound. The security guard, he thought. Or a courier who had met the Volvo and taken possession of the duffel.
He was tempted to follow the tracks and ignore these women. But he knew they could be paid sentries. No time to shorten Danner’s time clock.
“Heavy rain!” he said in English.
The youngest of the five women-mildly attractive-nodded faintly, though the one in charge shot her a penetrating look, apparently not wanting a language bridge between this waiguoren and their group.
“Rain,” Knox said, in intentionally poor Mandarin.
The head matron cocked her head. He tried again, improving only slightly.