Private Beijing

Chapter 24

A hubbub of voices invaded my restless sleep. I woke to hear a group of men passing the door to the room. I was immediately alert and on edge but calmed down after a moment when the voices drifted by. They were most likely workers on their way out to start the day. I rolled onto my back and found Zhang Daiyu leaning over the edge of the bed, looking down at me.

“You were talking in your sleep,” she said.

As was often the case, my dreams had been of fire and death. I’d seen more than my fair share of both and carried the searing recollections with me. From the battlefields of Afghanistan to the streets of Berlin, from the slums of India to the palaces of Moscow, death had stalked me and those close to me, and the bombing of Private’s Beijing office had stirred bad memories. One moment I was back in Afghanistan, trying to rescue fallen comrades from my downed Sea Knight. But as the flames raged around me, when I looked down at the body I was pulling from the wreckage, instead of one of my Marine platoon I saw the face of Karl Parker, an old friend, the man who’d been assassinated in the New York Stock Exchange while I stood beside him. Trauma sometimes played out like that, disregarding the constraints of time and location, creating a doubly disturbing kaleidoscope.

I felt uneasy at the enforced intimacy between Zhang Daiyu and me. From the expression on her face, it was clear she felt it too.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to... you didn’t say anything coherent, just a jumble of words. I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.”

“It’s okay,” I assured her. Military service and field operations as a detective had taught me not to be precious about the awkward situations that often arose.

I sat up and stretched. “How are you feeling?”

“My head is sore and my bones ache,” she replied, “but other than that, not too bad. At least I’m still breathing.”

I smiled. She had a dry sense of humor.

“Thank you for saving me,” she said.

I nodded. “The guy who tried to shoot you planted bombs at our office last night. I interrupted him while he was priming the detonators.”

“Bombs? What the... Did you call the Bomb Squad?”

I shook my head. “He managed to detonate them.”

She gasped.

“Our office here has been destroyed. Everything’s gone.”

Zhang Daiyu took a moment to absorb the news.

“Was anyone hurt?” she asked at last.

“I don’t think so,” I replied. “I managed to evacuate the building in time.”

My phone rang and I saw Justine’s name flash on-screen. “I need to take this,” I told Zhang Daiyu.

“Searches of the other offices haven’t revealed anything,” Justine said as soon as I answered.

“That’s a relief. But we still need everyone to be on high alert,” I said. “Enhanced security across the board until we find out who is behind this and why they’ve targeted us. We don’t know what their next move might be.”

“We’re on it,” she replied. “Jack, please be careful. I want you to come back to me in one piece.”

“I will,” I assured her before hanging up.

Zhang Daiyu was busy on her phone sending texts.

“Most of the team already know about the office,” she remarked without looking up. “The authorities want us to come in for questioning.”

“How do you feel about that?” I asked.

“I think this would be a bad time to start trusting strangers.”

“I agree.”

“Do the other offices know?” she asked.

I could tell something was on her mind.

“Yes. I spoke to Justine last night and told her to alert everyone.”

“What were you doing at the office?” Zhang Daiyu asked, giving voice to what was troubling her.

I felt that I’d betrayed her by going looking for evidence she was somehow involved in whatever was going on. The attack on the New York office proved my initial suspicions were unfounded; it was Private that was being targeted rather than her.

“I had some things I wanted to check out.”

“Okay,” she said. “Do you have any thoughts on why we’re being targeted like this?”

I shook my head. “No. But although this has spread wider than Beijing, it began here. We need to review all cases from the last six months.”

“I can ask Huang Hua to recover the case files from the Cloud,” Zhang Daiyu replied. “It will take a few hours perhaps.”

“Good to know.”

“I’ll get him on it now,” she said, tapping furiously into her phone. “I’ll instruct everyone to work from home until further notice. The IT team will implement our remote working protocols.”

“This started with the investigation into David Zhou,” I observed. “I want to rule him in or out of this. He’s either been very unlucky or he’s part of whatever’s going on, and I need to know which. Who was our client?”

“Molly Tan,” Zhang Daiyu replied. “She’s a technology entrepreneur. She owns China’s second-largest online auction site and retailer. She and David Zhou have a history of being on opposite sides of deals.”

“OK.” I nodded. “I think we need to pay Ms Tan a visit.”