“Next time,” she told Knox as he sat down across from her, “please let me pick the place.”
“It’s quiet,” he said.
“I cannot breathe.”
“If you jump the wall out the back door you’re in a lilong,” he said, explaining his choice. A lane neighborhood. He ordered a beer when a clear drink arrived for her. Vodka, rocks, he was guessing.
“So? What’d we find?” he asked.
“You are favoring your right side.”
“I’m fine,” he said. “Tell me about the apartment?”
She passed him her iPhone, on which she’d been reviewing the photographs she’d taken in Lu’s room. In return, he passed her the Mongolian’s wallet and produced the SIM card from the man’s phone.
“He’s carrying a national ID, so maybe not Mongolian. But he looked Mongolian.”
“I found no medication,” she said. “Troubling. No toothbrush. No laptop or charger. No mobile, or charger. No USB or storage device for files. No accounts, no files, nothing.”
Knox looked up from the photos on the phone. “The kidnappers beat us there.”
“The roommate says otherwise.”
“How about clothing?”
“Nothing to say one way or the other. My mother was obviously mistaken.”
“Mothers are never mistaken,” he said. “Not if you ask them.” He had hoped for a smile.
“Perhaps Lu Hao keeps his medication with him.”
“Could be. But why take your laptop on a delivery run?”
She said, “In China, a laptop is a sign of prosperity. People carry them like handbags.” She pointed across the bar to two young Chinese at their laptops.
“Yeah,” he said. “I didn’t say it meant anything.”
“Your voice did.”
“Know me that well, do you?”
She worked the vodka. “Well enough.” She had the Mongolian’s wallet open and was pulling out cards. A transportation card. A Chinese Resident Identity Card. “If a forgery,” she said, “it is a very good one.”
“He sounded Mongolian,” Knox said. “Looked it, too. But maybe he’s Chinese?”
“Possible. We get our share across the border.”
Knox had never thought of people wanting to get into China before. “He was trained in close quarters combat. Sambo. You know sambo?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Waiguoren,” he said in Mandarin. Foreigner. It made Knox think back to the guard at Danner’s apartment building mentioning a foreigner.
The beer was half gone. Knox ordered them both another drink. She didn’t object. He liked that.
“I’m going to overnight the SIM card to Dulwich. But first, tonight, I’ll hope for an incoming call. Or maybe we should call some of its recently called numbers?”
“Patience.”
“My contact at the U.S. Consulate might run the national registration card for me. He’s a good man. And if he’s who took Danner’s laptop, he might be willing to share.”
“What about Lu Hao’s motorcycle?” she asked.
“What about it?”
“Mr. Danner and Lu Hao were both on motorcycles when they were taken, correct?”
“Correct.”
“So what happened to the motorcycles? Where did they end up?”
Danner’s missing Garmin GPS, Knox was thinking. “You’re brilliant.”
She averted her eyes to the tabletop and reached out for the second drink as it arrived. Chinese had trouble taking compliments. Not him.
“Since the police do not yet officially recognize the kidnapping,” she said, “perhaps neither motorcycle has been processed as evidence?”
Knox said brightly, “Lady Grace, you should drink more often.”
“Excuse me?”
“Another compliment.”
“Accepted.”
Progress. He hoisted his beer and they clinked glasses.
A waitress passed. Knox’s eyes strayed to her. He said, “Do you know the term “handi-capable”?”
“Afraid not.”
“A person who’s challenged, physically or mentally, but the challenge is viewed more as opportunity than limitation.”
“That is nice.”
“That is my brother,” he said. “My business partner.” The beer was wrestling with his tongue.
She sipped the vodka, looking across the rim of the glass at him curiously.
“Just thought I’d get that out of the way,” he said, upending the beer.
She stared across, studying him.
“I actually would like you to review our books,” he said.
“Then I will.”
“Lu Hao?” he tested. “What’s the family connection?”
“Not yet,” she said, her lips opening to welcome the liquor.
MONDAY
8
9:40 A.M.
LUWAN DISTRICT
SHANGHAI
The U.S. Consulate occupied a former private residence on four acres at a prestigious corner in the heart of what had once been the French Concession. Having already copied and overnighted the SIM card from the Mongolian’s phone to Rutherford Risk in Hong Kong, Knox walked in the shade beneath the plane trees, a warm breeze on his face. To his right rose the twelve-foot wall topped with razor wire that encircled the consulate. Phone booth-sized security booths stood at regular intervals manned by rigid, uniformed officers of China’s Ministry of State Security. There had to be dozens of security cameras trained on the area. The Chinese captured and identified every face that entered.
Knox had originally met Steve Kozlowski through the man’s wife, Liz, a statuesque blonde who served as an immigration lawyer at the consulate. Her love of all things Chinese had inevitably led her to Knox, whose reputation for procuring the best antiques and collectibles made him popular with the “trailing spouses.”
He and Kozlowski discovered a shared love of American football, and with the consulate receiving the U.S. Armed Forces television feed, Knox had joined the ranks of corporate executives, university professors and a few select government workers handpicked by Kozlowski to watch live games with him and a few Marines, exactly twelve hours off the U.S. air time.
Over time, he’d developed a cautious friendship with Kozlowski, who, by reputation, got close to no one. Knox
