Final Target

CHAPTER 9

Y ou ain’t paying me enough to become a floater in the South China Sea,” Brian Early whined from Hong Kong as Gage sat down behind his desk the following morning.

Gage shook off the image of the pale and comatose Jack Burch that he’d carried away from his and Faith’s 8 A. M. visit. He glanced at Burch’s SatTek file and Alex Z’s research binders that he’d worked through the night before, then looked at his watch. It was after midnight in China, which meant that Early had gotten the job done in less than twelve hours, or at least had tried.

“What are you talking about?” Gage asked.

“I went to that address in Guangzhou you gave me.”

Early was the entirety of Pacific Rim International Investigations Limited. Ex-U.S. Customs agent stationed in Hong Kong for the last five years of his twenty-seven-year career. Married his Filipina maid and stayed. She really loved him. He loved himself, and talking.

“I haven’t gotten that chilly a reception since we did that software piracy case in Beijing.” Early laughed. “But at least this time the folks didn’t have guns.”

“I just told you to look, Brian, not touch.”

“Well, it was like this-”

“Whenever you begin like that, I start to feel a little queasy. What did you do? And skip the detours.”

Gage grabbed a legal pad from the top of the credenza behind him.

“Okay. You know that old Gertrude Stein line about Oakland? ‘There’s no there, there.’ Well, there was almost no there, there.”

Gage looked up at the ceiling and exhaled loudly enough for Early to hear. “Brian?”

“What?”

“You’re already on a detour.”

“Okay, okay. Gotcha. I hopped a train across the border to Guangzhou and took a taxi to the building. The office number you gave me was on the seventh floor. No elevator. I hiked up and peeked in. A picayune office. A couple of middle-aged women pushing papers. I just said the company name, Hawei, and got the big chill. Then one of them starts chanting, ‘ Bu zai zhe li, bu zai zhe li. ’ Not here, not here.”

“Was it once?”

“It was there all right. Two guys were waiting for me when I got back down to the street. Wanzi and Panzi or maybe it was Kung Fu and Dung Fu. Anyway, Wanzi gets in my face and says, ‘Can I help you?’ and I say, ‘No thanks.’ And he says, ‘It’s not here.’ So I say, ‘I just figured that out, pal.’ And then Panzi puts his hand on my shoulder and says, ‘So you won’t be coming back?’ and I say, ‘Nope, no need to.’ I kinda pawed the sidewalk for a few seconds with my knockoff Nikes, then skedaddled out of there.”

“Come on, Brian, that hardly qualifies you for hazard pay.”

“That’s not the end of the story.”

“You went back?”

“Couldn’t help myself. Last night. Late. Real late. The building is in a district of the city that the Great Leap Forward leaped over and where nobody, at least on the legit side, ever made any real dough after China joined the capitalist road. The whole area is deserted at night except for a noodle place on the first floor and a karaoke bar down the block. Just the bouncer and a couple of hookers poking their heads out. So I go around the back. The noodle shop’s door is propped open for ventilation. I figure I’ll have a little look-see. Maybe I can work my way into the rest of the building. But once I get inside, the only door goes to the basement. What the hell? I go down there-smelled like rotted pig guts.

“Looks like everybody in the building uses it for storage. Bunch of caged-in compartments, heavy chicken wire. Dried noodles, office supplies, old files, that kind of stuff. One of ’em got a big, industrial-strength canvas tarp over everything inside. So I grab a broom and get down on my knees. I jam the handle under the edge of the tarp. Weighed a ton. No leverage. But I got the corner up, and guess what?”

Gage felt his body stiffen even before he said the word. “SatTek.”

“Damn right. Must be seven, eight hundred devices. Millions of dollars’ worth. Millions. Made in the good old USA. They were marked LNA. That stands for ‘low noise amplifier.’ I looked it up on the Net. I found something about China using nonmilitary-grade detectors like these in a new flood warning system. They pick up vibrations from older dams that may be starting to weaken.”

“Could you tell when they were shipped over?”

“Nope. Could’ve been anytime up to when SatTek collapsed-maybe a last shipment Hawei hadn’t paid for yet.”

“That can’t be right. These are made to spec. Hawei wouldn’t have ordered the devices unless it already had a contract to resell them.” Gage paused, wondering what SatTek had tossed into the Chinese black hole. “You get a sample?”

“Nope. But I was thinkin’ I should try, when this greasy T-shirt comes in waving a cleaver at the end of his string-bean arm. He’s yelling, ‘ Zie! Zie! Zie! ’ You know, ‘Thief. Thief. Thief.’ I’m still on my knees, thinkin’ he’s gonna chop my head off. So I grab my stomach and I kinda slur out, ‘ Wo he zui le ’ like I’m drunk and gonna puke. He points the cleaver at the door, then back at me like, What’re you doing in here? I reach in my pocket and he raises the cleaver again. I pull out my hand, real slow, empty, no money, like I’ve been robbed. I say, ‘ Ji nu,’ you know, ‘Hooker,’ like she came down there to do me and robbed me instead. And the guy starts laughing and points me toward the door.”

“Can you get back in?”

“No way. Right after I grabbed a taxi to scoot to the train station, I looked back and saw Wanzi screeching up in a Mercedes G55. It’s like a Land Rover, but costs twice-”

“Brian?”

“Okay, okay. Sorry. Once greasy T-shirt told ’em what I looked like I’ll bet they moved the boxes out of there, pronto. In fact, I’ll bet Wanzi or Panzi is sittin’ down there right now with an AK-47 waiting to blow my head off.”

“What about flying over to Ho Chi Minh City to look at the other one?”

“It’s your money, but I think whatever was there is gone, too.”

“Just to cover the bases. You know any Vietnamese?”

“Sure Con d cuop toi.”

“What’s that mean?”

“It sorta means, ‘The hooker robbed me.’”