The Risk Agent

3

4:05 P.M.

BAN LUNG

CAMBODIA

Accompanied by a local guide and driver, a mosquito-bitten John Knox had been traveling for nine days through the jungles of Cambodia on a buying trip. He had packed the back of his Land Rover to the ceiling with tribal arts and crafts, primarily hand-carved stone boxes and some hammered bronze. He had spent the past two days in Virachey National Park, the most direct route to Ban Lung.

Knox checked his appearance in the Land Rover’s rearview mirror before climbing out. He’d run out of soap three days earlier and his beard had grown in quickly, the dark stubble contrasting sharply with dark blue eyes that shone richly in the afternoon light. His hair was oily, his shirt sweat-stained and soiled. He ran his tongue over teeth, cleaning up some of the gorp that had sustained him over the last forty miles, and washed it down with a swig of warm water from a plastic bottle.

His driver spoke some Thai, the one language common between them. “Unpack car?”

“Find yourself a room,” Knox said, handing him a considerable amount of cash, knowing the man would keep it and sleep in the car. “Unload everything into my hotel this evening. We’ll ship it in the morning.”

The village was a mix of aging concrete blocks and palm-frond-roofed huts on stilts. Knox refocused on the front porch of the small hotel and a line of chairs beneath water-stained sailcloth paddle fans turning lazily against the heat. He met eyes with the man occupying one of the chairs. A grin swept painfully across his chapped lips. He licked them.

David Dulwich lifted his sweating beer bottle and gestured to an unoccupied chair.

“Look what the cat dragged in,” said Knox, mounting the steps.

“You look like shit.” Dulwich, a former army sergeant, had as a civilian managed the trucking contractor that had hired a young John Knox as a driver to convoy supplies from Kuwait into Iraq. The runs paid eighty thousand dollars a month, hazard pay that Knox had banked to cover his brother’s long-term medical expenses back home.

The two men shook hands and slapped each other on the back. Dulwich signaled a waiter for two beers.

Knox simply stared, waiting him out.

“What? I was in the neighborhood.”

“Uh-huh. Sure you were, Sarge.”

“I wanted first dibs on the teapots, or prayer wheels, or nose flutes, or whatever the hell it is you’ve stolen off the unsuspecting locals.”

“Only Tommy knew I was coming to Ban Lung,” Knox said. “You took unfair advantage.”

Knox had lived his entire life protecting and defending Tommy, about whom many jokes had been cracked. “Not the sharpest knife in the drawer.” “Room temperature IQ.” Knox had heard them all; had broken a few faces over them.

His brother suffered from bouts of epilepsy-controllable by medication-migraines and moderate learning disabilities. With proper oversight, Tommy could function as Knox’s business partner, but he also possessed a savant-like ability in math and computer sciences. He displayed remarkable processing speed and bandwidth, while often proving himself socially immature and inept despite his thirty-one years. Tommy was the one and only absolute in Knox’s life. The two were joined at the hip, the wallet, by blood, and by telephone and Skype.

Dulwich shrugged. “Tommy sounded great. Told me he’s running the online sales.”

“Which he’s good at, as it happens.”

The beers arrived. Knox was tired and hungry. He cautioned himself about drinking the beer too quickly. He needed to remain on his toes given his present company. He pledged to sip, not gulp.

Now it was Dulwich’s turn to stare. Cutting. Penetrating.

“I’m not interested,” Knox said, the bottle finding its way to his lips a little too quickly. It didn’t take a giant leap for Knox to understand what was at play. He’d turned down the offer of joining civilian convoys in Afghanistan more than once. He’d been lucky to get out of Kuwait intact-he realized that now. Others, including Dulwich, had injuries that had nearly taken their lives. Now he and Tommy had a business up and running. With their parents both gone-or as good as gone-it was important that Knox stay alive and the import/export business continue to succeed. But it was also paramount to keep Tommy supervised, something that required a constant stream of money. At present, things were decent. Not great, but decent. No doubt the man sitting across from him had run a credit check. Dulwich did due diligence. No doubt he knew of Knox’s desire to set up a fund to cover his brother’s medical costs. No doubt he knew he and Tommy were walking a knife’s edge, that an infusion of capital was exactly what the doctor ordered. Shithead.

Dulwich showed him a photo and told him a long story about a kidnapping in China that had involved someone named Lu Hao. The story ended with, “I had a guy shadowing Lu. He got caught up in it. They took him hostage along with Lu. It’s Danner.” Dulwich unfolded a photocopy of the ransom demand and passed it across to Knox. “This was part of a lunchtime take-out order delivered by a Sherpa’s guy to the construction company’s CEO, a man named Marquardt. Runs a construction firm called Berthold.”

Knox glanced at the note, then back at Dulwich. Sherpa was a popular food service delivery company that delivered from dozens of city restaurants.

“Not interested,” he lied. In for a penny, in for a pound.

“DNA swab accompanied the ransom note, along with a photo. We need a comparison sample.”

“Danny’s DNA,” Knox said.

“Yes.”

“Try Peggy.”

“We don’t involve spouses until we have confirmation.”

“Is that common? A DNA swab?”

“No. First time for us.”

“Young.”

“Yes,” Dulwich said.

“You have a photo,” Knox reminded.

“Ever heard of Photoshop? We need a DNA sample. This is Danner.”

“Can’t help you.”

“It’s Shanghai,” said Dulwich by way of explanation. “You work out of Shanghai.”

“Sometimes.”

“Six trips there in the last fourteen months.”

Knox eyed him for a moment. Dulwich’s new gig gave him access to far too much information for Knox’s comfort. “I like China.”

Looking at Knox, people might have taken him for a nomad, but few would imagine the extent of it. When not living out of a tent in some trading outpost, he called hotels and rentals home. Tommy ran the online side of the company back in Detroit, unaware the guests at the house were paid home health aide supervisors, while Knox roamed all corners of Asia, from the Middle East to eastern China, parts of South America and Eastern Europe as their buyer.

With the death of their father three years earlier, Knox had assumed full responsibility for Tommy. He’d left the high-paying, high-risk work, forming the more manageable trading company and bringing Tommy in on it. So far, so good.

“What do you make of the ransom demand?” asked Dulwich.

Knox studied the photocopy.

“Left-handed. Under thirty.”

“Because?” Dulwich leaned forward.

“Writing Mandarin in simplified characters began in the nineteen-twenties. It didn’t take hold until the fifties and sixties. This character,” Knox said, circling one with his finger, “was modified more recently than that, and began being taught in schools in the late eighties. That gives us the relative age of the writer. As to the calligraphy-the tails are from a lefty. I can’t tell from the photocopy-was this written in ink or pencil?”

“Pencil.”

“The continuity of the lines, the lead, suggests a mechanical pencil. Common enough there, but maybe he works as a draftsman or engineer, or he’s a bean-counter. The date, the first of the month, is Western notation, not Chinese. That’s interesting. Why not Chinese notation?” Knox slid the document back across the table with his index finger. “But you know all this already.”

“Some of it, not all. I need you, Knox. Danner needs you. We need a hair sample, an electric razor-anything with his DNA for verification.”

When he was first getting to know Dulwich back in Kuwait, Knox had read him as a steak-and-potatoes guy. The kind of person who got his reading from the back of shampoo bottles while on the can. But over time, he’d revealed a deeper intelligence and far broader interests than Knox had initially suspected. Now Dulwich had the resources of a major security company-Rutherford Risk-at his disposal. Companies like Rutherford Risk operated like a private CIA or NSA. Knox knew better than to get sucked into one of their operations.

“I see two people.”

“In his capacity as a consultant for The Berthold Group,” Dulwich continued, “Lu’s main job was incentivizing certain individuals and companies involved with the construction job.”

“You mean he was paying out bribes.”

“Yeah.” Dulwich shrugged. “He’s known to have kept a set of books of these confidential payments. One theory is that one of the individuals receiving the kickbacks realized how valuable a man like Lu Hao was to Berthold and snatched him up. Another-”

Knox cut in. “Listen, I feel horrible about Danny. I do. But I’ve got Tommy in a good place. I can’t afford to step out on the business, even for a short time. I’m sorry.”

“You’re SERE trained. I paid for it in the first place.”

Few civilians were allowed into the military’s Survival Evasion Resistance Escape training program. A lifetime ago for Knox, Dulwich had arranged for him and six others to go through SERE training, as well as the FBI’s Quantico course. It made Knox a uniquely qualified civilian.

“You know plenty of others with SERE training. Ex-Air Force. Hire one of them.”

“They don’t do regular business in Shanghai,” Dulwich said. “This is Clete Danner we’re talking about, man. Maybe I judged you wrong.”

Knox sighed, looked away. “Maybe so.”

“You ever seen the inside of a Chinese prison?” Dulwich asked.

“Give it a rest. That’s beneath you.”

“If PSB get Danner, that’s where he’s headed. For an eternity. You know the laws. He’ll be considered a spy. We need to beat them to it, and we need to move quickly.” The Public Security Bureau-the Shanghai police-was nothing to mess with.

“And if I slip up, it’ll be the same thing for me. I’ve got Tommy. No go.”

“We’ve put a woman into Shanghai. An accountant who knew the hostage personally. She’ll pose as a new Berthold employee and go after the bookkeeping with you. She can interpret it once you’ve got it. The hope is, those docs will help lead us to the kidnappers in time. Meanwhile, we’ll be preparing to negotiate the ransom and the drop.”

“Dangerous to play both sides like that.”

“Yeah, but what are you gonna do? If a Triad took Lu Hao and Danner, what do you think they’ll do to the American once the ransom is paid?”

“Don’t lay this on me.”

“It’s not about you. It’s about Danner. He’s facing prison or death. You know I wouldn’t ask you otherwise.”

Knox shook his head. “Bullshit you wouldn’t.”

“Look, you have a legitimate reason to be in Shanghai. Pretend like it’s a business trip. Meet up with the woman we’re putting in place. Support her. Help find Lu’s accounts. We’ll supply you with whatever we can on the sly. And if we find Danner, you bring him out.”

“And what if I don’t get out?” Knox snapped, realizing as he said it that his mouth had betrayed him. “What happens to Tommy then?”

“We’ll pay your fee to him,” Dulwich said, sensing his progress. “We’ll double it. Deep pockets on this one.”

“I don’t like it,” Knox said.

“Tommy says you’re bored.”

“Tommy talks too much. Enough with the cheap shots.”

“You know what I think?” Dulwich said.

“I don’t remember asking.”

“You once said pulling me out of that truck changed everything. Remember that?”

“Yeah. That’s about the same time I decided not to go to Afghanistan and to get out of the contracting business.”

“Peggy is eight months pregnant with their second,” Dulwich said of Danner’s wife. “She went hysterical when I told her he’d gone missing. She’s forbidden from flying. Stuck in Houston.”

Shit. Knox should have known about the pregnancy. Should have stayed in better touch.

“I can’t put any of our guys into China right now,” Dulwich said. “We’ve had inquiries-formal inquiries asking if one of our employees is missing. They’ll be watching Immigration. But since you do business there on a regular basis, you go in as you. Just another buying trip. You meet up with the woman and together you find the books, find Lu Hao and Danner.”

“I don’t babysit,” Knox said.

“You won’t have to. She’s former Red Army, very, very smart, and a looker.”

“Shit, shit and shit.”

“We have to leave tonight,” Dulwich said. Checking his wristwatch, he said, “Wheels up in ninety.”

Knox drummed his fingers on the rattan tabletop. “And what if they do kill him?”

“Then we deliver the wrath of God upon them. You and me. Whatever it takes.”

Slowly, Knox stood and stretched. “Do I have time for a shower?”

“God,” Dulwich said with a smile, “I sure hope so.”