Darkness.
Grace held the cop’s gun trained on the cadet, who stood there with the bloody pipe in her hand, breathing heavily, her eyes locked onto the fallen man.
For a moment, the three of them looked back and forth at one another. Exhausted. Paralyzed.
“There will be no killing here,” Knox told the cadet in Mandarin.
Enough killing, Grace was thinking. Surprised by Knox. Again.
“He will not dare to report this,” Grace said to the girl. “Too much he cannot explain. Drop the pipe and walk away.”
“Drop the gun,” the young woman said.
Grace ejected the magazine and placed it down onto the asphalt by her feet. She retained the handgun and the one bullet remaining in its chamber.
“Together?” she offered.
The cadet nodded.
Grace and the woman moved in concert, placing the pipe and the gun down nearly simultaneously.
“We can drop you somewhere,” Knox offered in Mandarin.
The woman spat onto Shen Deshi. She backed up, facing them until reaching the Range Rover. She finally turned and walked off into the headlights and down the River Road, in no particular hurry.
“What if he can give us the name?” Grace asked Knox, looking at the fallen policeman.
“This guy? It would take a lot of good drugs and a couple weeks to get his own name out of him.”
“We just…leave him?”
“I’m open to suggestions,” Knox said, rubbing his head to make sure it was still attached to his body.
“We have nothing! For all this, we gain nothing.”
“We have Kozlowski. We have the tannery and whatever’s beneath the asphalt. The waypoints of one massive chunk of land.”
“The Chinese have this place,” she corrected. “Any evidence will be long gone by morning. Americans can’t investigate, anyway.”
Grace walked closer to the fallen Iron Hand and kicked him hard enough in the shoulder to make sure he wasn’t play-acting.
“I’ll do it,” Knox said.
Grace reloaded the magazine into the handgun and held it on the man as Knox searched him. He found his phone and smashed it. He found a wallet and a passport belonging to a Mongolian. He passed these to Grace.
“That answers that,” Knox said.
“Every bone in my body says not to leave him here…not alive,” she said. “Not like this.”
“Hey, the girl’s prints are on the pipe. You want to cap him, be my guest. We can put this on her.”
“But you said…”
“Listen, that was for her sake. I’m trying to be supportive here.”
She allowed a small laugh to bubble up from inside her. For the second time, she disassembled the handgun, this time throwing the pieces into the field.
“That’s the first time I’ve seen you laugh,” Knox said.
“His car?” she asked.
Knox reached into a pocket and dangled the keys.
“Always a step ahead, John Knox.”
“Not always,” he said. “Sometimes.”
“Sometimes is good,” she said. “Very good.”
Knox slammed the Range Rover’s hatchback into place. He’d taken a moment to put the section of pipe into the back-the pipe containing the cadet’s fingerprints-as evidence, in the event the inspector did not survive his injuries. He wanted all the bases covered.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Kozlowski said, immediately after being untied from his noose. Knox occupied the front passenger seat.
Grace pulled the driver’s seat forward and adjusted the rearview mirror. She drove.
“You’re welcome,” Knox said.
“I’m serious,” Kozlowski said.
“I saw you pull up, I thought you were bent. Imagine my surprise.”
“What the fuck were you doing here, Knox?”
“Your work for you. The work you asked me to do.”
“Don’t mess with me.”
“A surveyor, here on the island,” Knox said, “was killed and his death made to look like an accident. Chances are he was attempting to blackmail the Beijing higher-up you and I discussed. This, because he’d figured out what he was surveying-a New City development that will eventually hold four million people. My guess: he wanted money to keep his yap shut. So the Mongolian shut it for him.”
“What Mongolian?”
“And Lu Hao saw the whole thing. So did your one-handed cameraman. Only, the one-hand part came later.”
Kozlowski leaned back and rubbed his neck. “You’re an asshole.”
Knox and Grace spent the next hour filling Kozlowski in on what they knew, and still had yet to find out.
“You demanded I find the name of the government type in the video,” Knox said. “You put Dulwich’s life in hock for that. How do you think I feel about that?”
“And I care because…?” Kozlowski said.
“More to the point, how would the Consul General feel about that?”
“This is not the road you want to go down,” Kozlowski said. He wasn’t talking MapQuest.
“We give you everything we’ve got. You let the intelligence community run with it. But you get Sarge out of Huashan Hospital, and the three of us out of the country by noon tomorrow. We’ve put in our time.”
“He saved your life,” Grace said.
The car engine hummed. The highway was alive with a million cars again. It was as if the storm had never happened. They sat in traffic for twenty minutes trying to get over the Lupu Bridge.
“I love this city,” Knox said.
“I hate this place,” Kozlowski complained. After a moment he spoke again. “You said The Berthold Group was attempting to buy the acceptable bid price on this New City project? And that that’s where the government official comes in.”
“I said that’s how it looks.” Grace tossed the Mongolian’s credentials into Kozlowski’s lap.
“My guess,” Knox said, “is your best witness is going to report late for work.”
“You’re right about our guys. If there’s a connection between the tannery and a committee member in Beijing, they’ll find it.”
“It’s there,” Knox said.
“But it’s not like we can out him, regardless of who it is.”
“Because?”
“Because we’re Americans. We don’t investigate,” Kozlowski reminded.
“And there is the matter of face,” Grace said. Knox sighed. “It would be great dishonor and shame for the Chinese government’s internal corruption to be exposed by a bunch of foreigners. It would never be admitted, no matter how obvious.”
“So we did all this, and we have to sit on it?” Knox asked irritably.
“Allan Marquardt started all this,” Kozlowski said. “He’ll pay.”
“Allan Marquardt played the hand he was dealt. Give me a break! Like he’s the only American company paying out incentives?”
“He’s the only one we’ve caught,” Kozlowski said. “This week.”
“By the time Marquardt’s books are audited,” Knox said, glancing over at the driver, “they’ll be clean as a whistle.”
“That’s not right,” Kozlowski said.
“TIC,” Knox answered.
