The Risk Agent

FRIDAY

10:07 P.M. CHONGMING

ISLAND

CHINA

Lu Hao, a slim, well-dressed man in his twenties, stood on the roof of a subcompact car the size of a toaster, peering over a ten-foot-high concrete-block wall and into the parking lot outside an aging tannery.

There was almost too much going on for the senses: the acrid smell of tar, the clamor of dump trucks and road rollers, the din of Chinese spoken in machine-gun staccato.

Lu Hao had been schooled from an early age about the role chance and fate played in one’s life. If he hadn’t driven past that particular fuel station at that exact time, he would have never recognized the foul Mongolian, a man he knew from his deliveries over in Shanghai; would have never followed him to the remote location. Would have never witnessed the meeting where three men went into a factory building, and only two came out. He had watched through a crack in the hanging doors as the smallest, youngest of the three argued with a portly Chinese man wearing an expensive suit. With a nod from the businessman, the younger guy was then bludgeoned by the Mongolian.

A moment later, back outside, the Mongolian shook the hand of the businessman, who then walked over to a black Audi sedan and was driven away. As the license plate flashed in the glare of a floodlight, Lu gasped: the plate carried only the number 6, indicating a person of extreme importance, a high-ranking official without question. Why here, of all places?

Trembling now, Lu Hao clung to the wall. Refusing to move and risk attracting attention. Terror rippled through him: opportunity, risk, reward. Chance. Fate.

A part of him wished he could forget what he’d seen, wished he could sneak off in the Chinese-made subcompact. He was about to do just that when the Mongolian, inspecting the paving job, jerked his head up quickly in the direction of the yard’s far corner.

Lu Hao looked in the same direction.

Cao! he cursed silently. A glass lens winked from above the wall. It belonged to a sizable video camera in the grip of a pair of white-skinned hands. A waiguoren-a foreigner!

Lu Hao dropped from the wall like a stone, fumbled for his keys and was into his car in a heartbeat. No more! He would determine how to best use this information later, when he could be calm and reasonable. He might appeal for help.

He might go to the temple and burn incense.

But for now, he’d get gone, return to Shanghai, and hope that he, too, had not been seen.