She saw a bag filled with stacks of newspaper bundled together with twine. Unable to breathe, she looked up into the rain as if expecting answers. When? Where? How? She had put the money into this duffel herself-her reaction went far beyond bewilderment to outright denial. This was impossible!
Impossible or not, it was. She dug through the newspapers just to make sure.
The two cops were closing in on her. The Mongolian was back there somewhere. She had but a matter of seconds. The orange shirt gave her away.
She abandoned the bag.
She had no money, only a travel card with twenty yuan left on it-about three dollars. She hurried away from the police, approaching a T-shirt kiosk.
She stole a shirt, not by lifting the hanger off the peg, but by bending over and pulling the shirt down, off the hanger. Ten yards later, down on one knee, she delighted a pair of high school-aged boys by peeling off the orange top and donning the stolen T-shirt.
She returned to the Metro entrance, passing within a few yards of the police, who seemed to be looking for her.
Behind her, lying wet atop the plaza’s concrete pavers, they would soon come across the orange tank top, trod upon, dirty and already torn.
23
4:00 P.M.
HUANGPU DISTRICT
Knox prodded the taxi driver to stay with the blue Volvo sedan sandwiched in traffic up ahead.
He’d returned to the Metro security station in time to catch the four P.M. shift change, had watched as one of the uniformed security men had left carrying a heavy black duffel with the oversized, smudged Nike logo on its side.
The guard cut through People’s Square indifferent to the steady rain and the gloom it produced. Knox skillfully avoided being seen, reveling that the shoe was on the other foot. The guard continued two blocks on foot until meeting the blue Volvo.
The first decent break of the past week came as a woman and her daughter disembarked from a taxi heading the same direction on Dagu Road as the Volvo. In the rain. In Friday rush hour.
Knox took it as an omen.
Now his taxi driver ran a light as its timer expired. The man used the right lane to pass two vans, nearly paving two cyclists in the process.
“Hen hao!” Very good! Knox called out from alongside the driver. They’d caught back up-less than a block separating them from the Volvo.
The driver smiled widely, his few remaining teeth cigarette-stained and crooked.
24
4:04 P.M.
XINTIANDI
A defeated Grace descended into the Metro station. Her legs burned; her throat was dry; the soaking wet green T-shirt stuck to her like unwanted skin. Acutely aware of the probing electronic eyes and the possibility of a Mongolian still following, she hung her head and attempted to blend in with the hundreds-thousands!-of Chinese swarming the underground station.
The operation was blown. Her face was known to police. She’d lost Knox. She’d lost the cobbled-together ransom money. One of the Mongolians was following her.
Lu Hao would be killed. Danner, along with him. She’d come to believe the switch had been made in the X-ray machine back in People’s Square. It was the only place she’d been removed from the bag. It was a devious, clever deceit.
She knew there was only one person to blame for it coming off so flawlessly.
25
4:20 P.M.
North of the confluence of Suzhou Creek and the Huangpu River, Knox’s taxi sped through the area northeast of the Garden Bridge that in the past 160 years had been home to American traders, Russian refugees, Japanese merchants (and then military occupiers) and the European Jews whom the Chinese required to live in squalor during the war. An uninspiring and neglected part of the city for decades, it had recently undergone gentrification, and was now home to hotels, coffee shops and office buildings.
He tapped the driver’s forearm. “Slowly, cousin,” he said, speaking Shanghainese. “Straight on.”
“Excuse me. The car-”
“Straight,” Knox repeated. “Turn around and pull to the curb.”
“But-”
“Kuai, kuai, kuai!” Fast.
The Volvo had slowed and taken two successive rights. Evasive action to check for tails. Knox was betting it would take two more, returning to its former route. The pause to look for tails was a good sign: they were getting close.
He’d had the taxi turn around so he could see through the Volvo’s windshield in order to confirm its passenger had not left the vehicle. The sleight-of-hand trick with the duffel weighed heavily upon him.
Knox checked his watch, forgetting it had stopped hours ago. The moment that money was delivered, Danner and Lu Hao would be killed. Close wasn’t going to cut it. The stopped watch suddenly seemed prescient.
The driver, his face animated, waited for him to say something. Knox could hardly think.
Too long! The Volvo hadn’t been trying to lose surveillance; the two consecutive rights had been the result of a missed turn or one-way streets. It was nearing its destination.
He texted Randy.
need location
A moment later a text returned:
soon
Knox directed the driver in the direction they’d last seen the Volvo. Recalling Grace’s mention of broken glass in the background of the video, he realized they were in the wrong neighborhood.
“Abandoned building or old lilong near here?” he asked the driver. “Broken windows?”
The driver’s face contorted. “Power station by river, many years,” he said. “Made new most recently.”
“New does not work,” Knox said. He pointed for the taxi to take another right, the Volvo nowhere to be seen.
His phone buzzed:
south of Kunming Rd, east of Dalian
Knox defined the area for the driver.
“We are close!” the driver said, accelerating and crossing Dalian Road two blocks later. “Is large area.”
“Yes,” Knox said, peering through the smeared windshield.
