Private Beijing

Chapter 72

“Your life isn’t in my hands,” I replied. I looked pointedly at Shang Li, who took what were likely to have been his first steps in days. It was his team who’d been killed, and he’d been the one taken hostage.

“I couldn’t save them,” Li said, tears glistening in his eyes. “Kha Delun, Ling Kang, and Jiang Jinhai. Those were their names. They were my friends. And you killed them.” He grimaced as though fighting an inner demon, then wheeled round suddenly and punched Liu in the face.

The gangster reeled backward and almost lost consciousness. He cracked a bloody smile as he regained his senses.

“Their deaths were necessary. As necessary as breathing. I ordered them gone with a single breath.”

Li seethed in the face of these cruel taunts.

“Will you do what’s necessary?” Liu asked. “Will you breathe?”

I saw the conflict on my friend’s face. He wanted vengeance so desperately, but he was fundamentally a good man. In the end his anger subsided and he sighed in resignation.

“I’m not like you,” he said. “I’m not a killer.”

Shang Li was a good, moral man. One of the many reasons I had chosen him to be my business partner in Private Beijing.

“Use him. Get what you need from him,” said Li, heading for the world beyond the container.

“Looks like we have a deal,” I told Liu Bao, who wiped his bloody mouth. “Your life for what you know.” He struggled painfully to stand on his wounded leg, but I gestured with the gun. “Stay down.”

He nodded slowly, eyes full of hatred, but he knew it was over for him.

“Start talking,” I said, as Zhang Daiyu came to stand beside me. I glanced out of the doorway at Li, who was squatting on his haunches, head in his hands. “We should call his wife,” I said to Zhang Daiyu.

She shook her head, glancing at the traumatized man. “Not yet.”

She turned to Liu then and said something to him in the most derisive, hostile tone I’d ever heard from her.

He grunted and turned to me as he said, “I am a member of the Three Dragons. It is a network that reaches from the street to the government. People like me, people in government, politicians, news media. Those with power. True power for change.”

He pulled down the collar of his shirt to reveal the insignia of the three dragons emblazoned near his heart, denoting membership of this secret society.

“We are going to build a new China,” he went on, “powerful enough to reshape the world. We have forged an alliance with a faction in Moscow.”

My heart skipped a beat when he said that word. I already suspected what was coming.

“Our new friends in Russia demanded the destruction of Private as a demonstration of our power and loyalty,” he revealed.

So this had been revenge for the interventions I’d made in Moscow, and likely also in Afghanistan. I had been warned I’d angered some powerful people in the Kremlin, but this went beyond anger. This was pure vindictiveness, and innocent and blameless colleagues of mine had suffered as a result

“You failed,” Zhang Daiyu countered.

Liu Bao looked at her insolently.

“There is no failure,” he said. “I am just a piece in this game. There are many others. They will succeed where I have not.”

“Or perhaps you will try again?” I suggested. “I can see what you’re thinking.”

His sly glance at me told me I was right. “It is a long road between here and the airport,” he said menacingly.

“You lost. You will always lose because you’re nothing. All your money and power can’t change that. You’re a criminal, and I break people like you for a living,” I responded. “Who’s the Russian contact?”

He shook his head. “You think I would tell you even if I knew?”

“That wasn’t our deal,” I said, brandishing the gun. “Your life for everything you know.”

“Fang Wenyan,” he said, referring to the young Guoanbu agent. “He’s the connection. He will know who ordered Private destroyed.”

“You should have killed me,” I said.

“I would have, long ago,” he replied. “But he wanted you alive to watch the destruction of your empire and the deaths of those you love. It was a stipulation of the deal. And now, knowing what kind of man you are, I see he was right. You don’t fear death or pain. You are only moved by the suffering of others.”

Fury flooded my body and I struggled to contain it. “Everyone who was part of this will pay,” I seethed.

“How?” Liu Bao sneered. “You have no idea of the power you face.”

“The power of evil, cruelty, greed? That’s not real power. Working to bring about justice and truth — that is where real power lies.”

“And how will you achieve such things?” he sneered.

“Technology helps,” Zhang Daiyu replied, pulling her phone from her pocket. She held it to her ear. “You get that?”

I sensed movement behind us and looked over my shoulder to see Huang Hua enter the container together with Chen Ya-ting, Zhang Daiyu’s Beijing Police contact. We’d just given him Liu Bao’s confession to murder.

“We got everything,” Hua said.

Chen started speaking in Mandarin and I recognized the tone of a police officer making an arrest. Zang confirmed my educated guess.

“Liu is being arrested for murder, kidnap, and treason,” she said as further officers arrived. “I hope you don’t mind. I called Hua while we were separated and he suggested we record everything. I asked him to contact Detective Chen and use my phone to track our location.”

I smiled. “You did good, Zhang Daiyu. Very good.”

She beamed. “Now I’m no longer using my phone to record, we can call Su Yun and let her know her husband is alive and safe.”