“Name, Johnny. Now.”
“I was commissioned to steal the portrait by Sheng Fang.”
“Means nothing to me, darling,” Scarlet said.
“Me neither,” said Hawke.
But Lexi spun around and stared at Chan for a few seconds in horror. She spoke to him rapidly in Mandarin, and he returned a few short sentences.
“What are you saying, Lexi?” Hawke asked.
“I just asked him if he’s telling us the truth.”
“But we have no way of knowing that, do we now, darling?” Scarlet said, looking at Lexi with thinly veiled suspicion.
“It’s the truth,” she said. “I asked him if he was being truthful and he said he was. He stole the painting for Sheng Fang. He says he was supposed to deliver the portrait to him half an hour ago but couldn’t because we’ve got him taped to a chair. He says Sheng will just send some guys to get the painting and we’re all dead, basically, and I believe him. This is Sheng Fang we’re talking about, Joe.”
“And the significance of that is… what?” Hawke asked.
“Sheng Fang is one of China’s richest men,” Lexi said. “Ostensibly he made his money in the telecom sector but there are many rumors about him and his activities in the criminal underworld.”
Hawke sighed. “Why do I have a bad feeling about this?”
Lexi casually brushed Chan’s paperwork on the floor and sat on the desk. “Many people say he made his first fortune in the human slave trade as a trafficker and used that money to invest in real estate before the economic explosion here in the last few years. Among those who know the real man and not merely the public persona he has a reputation for extreme violence and close ties to the Triads.”
“And now you understand my reluctance to give you his name,” Johnny Chan said, a look of vindication on his face. “I don't know what Sheng wants with the portrait but there’s word on the streets — rumors in the wind. Something very big and very dangerous is going to happen, and soon too. A man like Sheng doesn’t play games. He wants everything, and he’s already halfway there.”
“Yeah, you can shut up now,” Scarlet said, taping his mouth back up once again.
“This isn’t good news, guys,” Lexi said. “If Sheng really is behind the disappearance of the portrait and the murder of Hoffmann, then it must be him behind the theft of the Tesla device from the American transport vessel, and worse than that, Lea’s disappearance.”
Hawke sighed. “This sounds like bad news on a great many levels…”
“I’ll say. Does this mean I don’t get to shoot his balls?” Scarlet said, jabbing the Colt into Chan’s crotch a second time. Chan moaned beneath the duct tape. Hawke wasn’t sure if she was feigning the disappointment he heard in her voice or not.
“Afraid so. Cairo — you need to get in touch with Richard and give him an update. I’m going to speak with Nightingale and see if the Americans know anything about this.”
Scarlet contacted Sir Richard Eden. Hawke left Lexi in charge of Chan while he called Manhattan.
A second later Nightingale answered the phone.
“N, hi. Joe.”
“Well if it isn’t Joe Hawke,” she said. “Not heard from you for a while.” She sounded happy.
“What can I say? I’m a busy man.”
“And here I was thinking that you liked me. You know you asked me on a dinner date when you were flying into Athens. What happened to that?”
“Must have been the altitude,” he said. “And as I recall, you still haven’t even told me your real name.”
She laughed, but now there was a sadness to it. “I think you and I must have the world’s most dysfunctional relationship.”
“We’re in a relationship?”
“You know what I mean, Joe.” He heard her sigh. “So I guess you’re not calling to ask me on a dinner date this time?”
“Sorry, N, but no. I’m just wondering what you can get me on a guy called Sheng Fang. He has something to do with a case we’re on, only this time Lea is missing. He’s supposed to be a real…”
“A real bad guy, I know. And you’re talking about Lea Donovan, right?”
“Yes. Listen, you’ve heard of Sheng?”
“Sure. We’re not all as ignorant as you, Joe.”
“Touché, but I would prefer the word Anglo centric next time.”
“Hmm, if you say so. Sorry about Lea by the way. ”
‘Thanks, but we need information more than sympathy, N.”
“I know…”
He heard her firing up her computer and after a few seconds of key-tapping she came back to the phone. “Sheng’s a big player in the telecom sector in China — we’re talking twenty-five billion dollars here, and that’s just the legit end of things. Various covert agencies are pretty sure he still has a few fingers in the human-trafficking pie as well, and how much he makes from that we just don't know. His wealth makes your man Zaugg look like some kind of welfare bum. He has his own private island, and rumor has it that’s where he kills his enemies and holds his slaves.”
“He sounds like he has reach. Am I right?”
“You most certainly are. Sheng has so many politicians on strings he treats the National People’s Congress like a puppet show. Upsetting him is like upsetting China itself. You need to tread carefully here, Joe.”
“I will.”
“I mean, try not to be yourself at any point and you might just get away with it.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence.”
“You’re welcome. What’s your interest in this guy, anyway?”
“We think he’s behind the murder of a theological scholar in France and the theft of a portrait in Hong Kong. Oh, and the Tesla machine that you guys were playing with on an atoll in the Pacific.”
“The what?”
“Maybe you should start to do some research into that, N. I have it on very good authority — a General McShain of the US Army, for one — that someone recently stole a highly classified earthquake machine from the US Navy and now a little bird, call it a nightingale if you like — is making me think the culprit is Sheng Fang.”
“I never heard of a project like that, Joe — honest. But then I’ve been out of the loop for a long time I guess.” He heard another sigh and then a few moments of silence.
“Are you all right, N?”
“Me? Sure — why wouldn’t I be?”
“Just that you sometimes tune out for second, if you know what I mean. What happened to you, N? Why did you leave the CIA?”
“Maybe another time, Joe. I’ll tell you over that dinner date we’re never going to have.”
And then she disconnected.
Hawke didn’t have time to think about her last sentence. A second after he hung up, Scarlet ended her call to Eden and began to brief everyone on what he had told her.
“He says if it’s Sheng Fang we need to make sure we look after ourselves. He says Sheng is known by various British intel agencies for his trafficking empire, but no one has ever been able to link it back to him.”
Hawke frowned. “Why do I get the feeling this is going to spin out of control?”
“He’s utterly ruthless, Joe,” Scarlet said. “Richard just told me that the last man who crossed Sheng was a Japanese Yakuza rival by the name of Fujimoto. Sheng had him kidnapped right out of the heart of Tokyo and — you’re not going to believe this — apparently they found his bloated corpse on a beach in Kyushu. His body was covered in a thousand cuts.”
“Death by a thousand cuts?” Hawke said, shocked. “That really happens?”