The Risk Agent

40

9:20 A.M.

LUWAN DISTRICT

SHANGHAI

Shortly after breakfast the following morning, Grace received a call from Lu Jian. She’d told neither Knox nor Kozlowski about soliciting her former lover’s help. As a civil servant, Lu Jian had access to information it would take even U.S. Intelligence days or weeks to collect and analyze.

“Wei?” she asked.

“It is not a single owner,” Lu Jian began, as if mid-conversation. “The tannery. It was owned and managed by a company with a ten-person board of directors. The company ceased doing business, and the tannery was closed, two years ago.”

“When the environmental laws went into effect,” she said.

“The timing would be right. Are you going to tell me what this is about?”

“Are you able to identify the members of the board of directors?”

“I have done so already.”

“I really do love you. You know that.”

It was the wrong thing to say, and she regretted it immediately. She’d been on a high since arriving safely at the consulate. For a moment she thought he’d hung up on her.

“I can give you the names. Do you have a pen?” he asked. All business.

She wrote down the Chinese characters, slowly and carefully, and read them back to Lu Jian and he listened and did not correct her.

“Is that it, then?” he asked.

Was it? she wondered. “I hope not,” she said.

“I received word from Lu Hao. He is indeed safely out of the country. As his older brother…his family…our debt to you-”

“Please! There is no debt.”

“I wish to express our sincere appreciation,” he said, very formally.

“For a starter, you could visit me in Hong Kong,” she said. Chinese women were expected to be much more guarded than this. She hoped it wouldn’t push him even farther away.

“Yes, of course.”

“That is, if you want to,” she said.

“What one wants and what one accepts are very different.”

“You have my address,” she said. “It has not changed.”

“You are leaving the country then?” he asked somewhat anxiously.

She reveled in hearing that tone from him. She said nothing, allowing it to replay in her head, over and over.

“As soon as possible. Today, tomorrow?”

“I see.”

“It’s a short flight. An easy flight.”

“But for me, a journey.”

“I’ll be expecting you.”

He hung up. Grace placed the phone down and stared at it, again reliving the conversation. Looking for nuance. Re-creating it in ways that revealed hidden meaning.

A knock on her door brought her back.

It was Knox.

12:30 P.M.

Grace passed the board member names on to Kozlowski and rode the next several hours on a roller coaster of emotions. Knox napped for twenty minutes, then worked down two more cups of tea. She spent her time alone by a window of the consulate guesthouse living room, looking out into sunlit gardens. Steam rose from the soil. It was going to be a hot day.

A while later-it seemed liked hours, but it was not-a Marine led them across to the mansion house. They were shown into Kozlowski’s office. It felt to Knox like the last time he’d visited had been six months earlier. It had been a matter of days.

“First,” Kozlowski said. He’d showered and shaved and changed clothes, though had not yet been home to his family. “The U.S. government has no knowledge of the members of the PRC’s Resettlement Committee.”

“Understood,” Knox said. He was telling them he had full knowledge of that very information.

“Second. I’m continuing to explore the possibility of using back channel diplomacy to expose this official, but I’m told that will likely not happen.”

“I have a way around that,” Grace said. “Please continue.”

Kozlowski passed a hand-written note across his desk to Grace. “We have a match. One of the tannery board members serves as chairman of the Resettlement Committee. His name is Zhimin Li. Chairman Zhimin Li.”

Grace broke into tears. Tears of relief, Knox thought.

“Grace has a plan,” Knox said.

“Which is?” Kozlowski asked.

“Do you really want to know?”

Kozlowski shook his head. “I suppose not.”

“You’re going to have to smuggle us out of here,” Knox said, “in case Shen Deshi and his boys are watching the place.”

Grace explained to a perplexed Kozlowski, “This cannot be done over the phone. And the contact I have in mind would never allow himself to be seen entering the U.S. Consulate.”

4:05 P.M.

With Knox wanted for questioning on multiple assaults, and Grace having been identified as an accomplice, the idea of leaving the protection afforded by the consulate’s diplomatic immunity was gut-wrenching.

Any number of ideas had been put forward: from Grace acting alone-her idea; to the use of consulate vehicles-Kozlowski’s; to a simple ruse-Knox.

In the end, it was the Consul General, a woman of outstanding character whose husband ran a B &B in northern Idaho, and who had come to the job in a time of turmoil because of the world financial meltdown, who stepped up.

At four P.M., with dusk approaching, the Consulate General’s Marine-driven black Suburban pulled out of the consulate gates, as it often did at this hour. She jumped out of the car and began railing in Mandarin at the Chinese National Guard up the street about the lax security.

At this same time, the day laborers left the compound on foot as they always did: gardeners, mechanics, maintenance men, waitstaff, housecleaning.

Among them were Knox and Grace. He slouched and wore makeup to darken his face, and a tam to cover his head. Twelve workers walked the length of the street and rounded the corner to a bus stop. Two of them kept on walking.