Buch lesen: «Lethal Risk»

PROLOGUE

Edward Carstairs couldn’t stop drumming his fingers on the worsted wool of his navy blue dress slacks. Barely containing his impatient sigh, he peered through the thick, gray smog at the bumper-to-bumper traffic inching along the eight-lane superhighway. Although there was still an hour before sunset, the cloud of pollution lent a hazy, unreal appearance to the world outside.

We’ll never get there at this rate, he worried. “How long now?” he asked his driver in flawless Mandarin.

“Ten, fifteen minutes,” the man replied.

Rolling his eyes, Carstairs ran a hand through his thinning brown hair. It was the exact same answer he’d gotten the last three times he’d asked—inflection and all—over the past forty-five minutes.

He took a deep breath, tasting the pervasive, acrid odor of Beijing’s polluted air, and stared out the window, pondering what the successful completion of this assignment could mean to his career.

Carstairs had only been in China for eight weeks, and was still figuring things out at the US Embassy. So far the capital city had been a constant swirl of contradictions, delightful one day, maddening the next. But when a coded message had arrived from Washington, DC, instructing his superior to send a car and an escort with a stated “low profile” to pick up a family from an exclusive address in a gated community and bring them back to the embassy, Ambassador Balcius had picked Edward to carry out the task.

“It should be a simple pickup,” he’d said. “No one knows you’re coming, and the neighborhood is fairly close to your home. Your background and recent arrival make you perfect for the job, as no one has gotten a bead on you yet—at least, as far as we know. I’m sorry I can’t give you more information other than the minimum need-to-know, just know that this assignment has repercussions far beyond its seeming mundanity. Above all, be careful—the government here has its hand in everything. Take nothing for granted, and above all, trust no one.”

His superior’s words ran through Carstairs’s mind again and he patted his right pocket, feeling the small tube of metal there. If he was caught carrying it, or even worse, using it, it would be a diplomatic incident at the least, and get him expelled from the country and possibly even end his career at the worst.

But Edward Carstairs was well prepared to handle just about anything that might happen; three years in the US Army had seen to that. He would have gone into Ranger School but for the accident that had blown out his knee; however, his ASVAB score had allowed him to move to intelligence. After his four-year hitch was up, his flawless command of Mandarin made him a top recruit of the State Department, and Carstairs soon found himself swimming in the murky waters of international diplomacy on the other side of the world.

With a lurch, the traffic knot untangled itself and as quickly as they’d been blocked, the nondescript sedan sped up and took the next exit to the neighborhood and the address Carstairs was heading to. As they left the jam-packed main streets behind and entered the rarified neighborhood, his breathing quickened. He already knew that this was more than just a simple pickup—whoever he was going to collect was important to the United States, which meant there could be trouble before the night was over.

His sedan motored down wide, empty streets with homes built like Italian villas on either side. He stared, eyebrows raised, at the Western-style grounds that made the neighborhood even more surreal. To buy a house out here took real money, even considering China’s artificially inflated economy. Whatever was going on, it was bigger than anything in which Carstairs had previously been involved.

In a few minutes the car stopped in front of a more modest, Tudor-influenced house several blocks inside the neighborhood. His driver pointed to the home. “This is address.”

Carstairs looked up from his smartphone, which had confirmed his driver’s words, and down the block. There was no one else in sight. His car was the only one here. “Keep the engine running. I’ll be back with three other people very soon.”

His driver nodded and grunted a response. Edward slipped his paper mask over his nose and mouth, then stepped out into the night air.

It was a little easier to breathe out here. Glancing up he was surprised to be able to barely make out the night sky amid the smog and light pollution. Carstairs trotted up the flagstone-inlaid walk to the large, double front doors made of some sort of exotic wood he didn’t recognize, complete with a small, inset door for seeing who was outside. Scanning the area one last time, he noticed there were no lights on inside as he raised his fist and knocked on the door. There was no answer at first and Carstairs was just about to knock again when the viewing portal cracked open. A woman’s eyes stared at him.

“Good evening, Mrs. Liao,” Edward began, “My name is Edward Carstairs, and I am from the United States Embassy—”

He had only gotten to “United” when the portal closed and he heard locks being opened on the other side. The door cracked open just wide enough for him to enter, and a woman’s hand shot out, grabbed his arm and pulled him inside.

Before he could react, Carstairs found himself standing in an opulent vestibule. The floor was white marble, and an unlit, massive, blackened-iron candelabrum hung overhead. The woman who had yanked him inside was also wearing a breathing mask, and dressed all in subdued gray and black. She was younger than he expected, somewhere around thirty years old, and clutched a dark green leather Hermès satchel purse, her only apparent nod to fashion. Two children stood in the doorway, a girl of about ten years old and a boy about eight, both wearing backpacks. The boy stared at him silently. The girl had her nose buried in some kind of portable game console.

“You are American,” she said. “From the embassy?” The second sentence was practically a statement, with the barest upward inflection at the end to hint at uncertainty.

Carstairs nodded. “Yes, I’ve been sent to get you and your family and to take you back to our compound.” He looked over the children’s heads into what appeared to be a richly appointed dining room.

“Where is your husband?”

“He is—not home.”

The pause in her words told him more than she could have possibly known. He was most likely the real target, but the United States was securing his family so the Chinese couldn’t get to them and use them as leverage. “Are you ready to go?”

She nodded then turned to check her children. “Zhou, put that away. I need you to pay attention to me now.” To Carstairs’s surprise, the girl tucked her game into her backpack and regarded her mother and him steadily.

“All right, here’s what’s going to happen.” Turning to the portal, Carstairs cracked it open enough to see up and down the block. His car, idling at the curb, was still the only one outside. “I’ll go out first. You give me three steps, then take the children’s hands and follow me. If anything happens, get them inside the car. The driver will take you to the embassy. Understand?” She nodded tightly. “All right, let’s go.”

Slipping his right hand into his pocket as he opened the door, Carstairs swept his practiced gaze left then right as he strode confidently outside and down the walk. Even while sending a brief, coded text to the embassy telling them he’d made the pickup, every sense was on overwatch, searching their surroundings for the slightest hint of a threat. Carstairs was aware of the woman and her children two steps behind him as they walked toward the idling car. Five steps away, four, three—

Headlights bloomed down the street as a large sedan with government plates rounded the corner and headed toward them.

“Keep moving,” he said as he stood at the rear of the car, shielding her and the kids with his body. “Get inside.”

Mrs. Liao did exactly that, efficiently shuttling her two children into the backseat, then sliding in after them. The sedan pulled to a stop in front of Carstairs’s vehicle, and a man got out of the passenger’s side. He was dressed in a simple black suit with a white shirt and black tie, and screamed government intelligence to the American. Not local police—probably someone from the Ministry of State Security.

Carstairs casually slipped his hand out of his pocket and held it at his side, fingers loosely curled to conceal what he was holding.

The man had no doubt spotted the diplomatic plates on the embassy car—and Carstairs knew that if they wanted Liao’s family that badly, the plates wouldn’t mean dick. Even so, he tried feigning innocence; it was possible, although improbable, that these guys had spotted the diplomatic plates and were just out for an evening shakedown.

“Can I help you?” he asked as the man walked up to him.

The man didn’t answer for long seconds, his gaze raking the sedan as a tendril of smoke curled up from his crooked butt. Carstairs waited patiently, already aware that the men knew who he was and why he was there. “You are from the US Embassy.” He didn’t even try to make it a question.

“Yes.”

“What are you doing in this neighborhood at this hour?”

Carstairs had had more than enough time to come up with a plausible cover story for this trip—as long as his accuser didn’t know what was really going on. The problem was that in China, even one wrong word could be misconstrued as an insult, or even worse, evidence of something improper or illegal occurring. “I’m helping a friend of mine—Mr. Liao. He asked me to look in on his family while he’s away. We’re going to dinner.” It was about as simple as he could make it, and reasonably plausible. The fact that he was an American might raise an eyebrow or two, but usually the weight of his being with the embassy silenced any questions.

Not, however, this time.

The man shook his head curtly. “These three are wanted for questioning by the Ministry of State Security. They will have to come with us.” He turned to the car door even as Carstairs interposed himself between the man and the vehicle.

“I’m afraid that I cannot allow you to do that, sir. These people are now in a United States Embassy vehicle, and as such, are under the protection of my country.”

It was a major gamble Carstairs was trying, and he knew it. He’d seen the “diplomatic protection” gambit used in a movie when he was a child, and he knew that US Navy ships were considered sovereign territory, but he wasn’t aware of any official laws rendering a car to be defined as sovereign US territory. However, he was determined to play as many cards as he could before resorting to any kind of violence.

His words actually stopped the man for a moment and he regarded Carstairs with a quizzical expression. “Do not make this into trouble for yourself and your country. Surrender the three people inside to me and go home.” He pushed back his rumpled coat to reveal a matte-black pistol Carstairs didn’t recognize on his hip.

The novice diplomat sighed and turned to the car door. “Very well. However, I want your name and identification number, as my superiors—” Instead of reaching for the door, however, he whirled and sprayed the man in the face with his pocket pepper spray canister. The man stumbled away, coughing and clutching his face with both hands, unable to even think about drawing his gun.

Carstairs yanked open the front passenger door and got in as the driver’s side door of the MSS car opened.

“Go! Get us out of here!” He turned to the woman and children in the backseat. “Get down and stay down!”

The driver put his car in Reverse and backed down the street as Carstairs turned back in time to see the MSS driver with his pistol out and aimed at them. He hunched in his seat as the flat cracks of the firing pistol were heard over the racing car engine. The front windshield starred as a bullet hit it, but it didn’t penetrate, ricocheting off into the night.

Carstairs’s driver backed onto a side street and slammed the car to a stop, then put it into gear and rocketed them forward as he turned toward the highway. Carstairs glanced behind them to see the headlights of the MSS sedan in the distance, gaining rapidly.

If we can just make the highway, we can probably lose them… But even as the thought materialized, the sedan caught up with them, looming even larger in their rear windshield. Underneath it huddled Mrs. Liao and her children, all staring at him with wide, frightened eyes. Carstairs noted that they all had their seat belts on, which was good, since the possibility of an accident was high now.

The sedan rammed them from behind, making the embassy car shake and lurch forward. The Chinese sedan accelerated, pulling alongside the car on Carstairs’s side. Now, unfortunately, the driver could shoot at them if he wished, but instead he jerked his steering wheel sharply, slamming his car into theirs and making his driver fight for control.

“Ram him back!” Carstairs ordered. His driver slowed a bit, allowing the MSS car to pull ahead. But just when Carstairs thought the enemy car was going to cut them off, his driver flicked the wheel, sending their car into the other’s rear quarter panel. The expertly executed pit maneuver made the MSS car skid and swerve wildly out of control. It crossed in front of Carstairs’s car, close enough that he could see the driver’s furious face as he struggled to avoid crashing. Then they were past, and his car was accelerating up the entrance ramp to merge with the busy but flowing evening traffic.

Still breathing hard, Carstairs checked behind them for any signs of pursuit, but no battered black sedan came flying up from an off-ramp after them. He took a deep breath, aware that his pounding heartbeat was starting to slow, and checked on Mrs. Liao and her children. They all seemed to be all right, although the boy had tears running down his face, even though he had never made a sound.

“It’s all right. We’re taking you back to the US Embassy, where you’ll be safe—” Even as he said that, Edward felt the car swerve suddenly. He turned to find them taking an unfamiliar off-ramp.

“Where are we going?” he asked.

“Accident ahead. Taking detour,” his driver answered.

Carstairs blinked at that answer, even as he pulled out his smartphone. A hand covering it made him look up in surprise.

“Do not use. Ministry agents track you through it,” the driver said.

“Oh. Okay. Just get us back to the embassy as quickly as possible.”

“Yes, of course.”

But as they drove on, Carstairs’s instincts alerted him that something was wrong. He glanced at the driver, who navigated the cramped side streets with ease. There was nothing outwardly remarkable about him—just another Chinese national who had gotten a job driving for one of the many embassies in Beijing, a highly prized position in the city. And yet… Carstairs began reviewing the events of the evening.

He hadn’t seemed surprised by the two men at Liao’s house, he thought. However, as the ambassador had said, the government had its hand in most everything here, so perhaps it just wasn’t that surprising to see them following a US Embassy car with diplomatic plates.

But what about that pit maneuver? That was more uncommon, as was the way he had handled the chase in general.

Glancing at the man again, Carstairs was surprised to see part of a tattoo, consisting of Chinese characters, on his forearm. “That’s a nice tattoo. What does it mean?”

His driver glanced down, then sidelong at the American before replying. “‘Loyalty to the nation.’”

His words sent a chill through Carstairs. While that could have been any loyal young Chinese’s man’s symbol of dedication to his country, he knew that particular tattoo had special meaning for those in the Chinese military.

The phrase had become famous since the twelfth century when a Chinese army general named Yue Fei had quit his post and returned home, only to be scolded by his mother for leaving his post and abandoning his duty to his country. According to legend, she had tattooed that exact same phrase on his back, and he had returned to duty, becoming one of China’s most celebrated warriors. To this day, many lifelong military recruits, especially among the younger generations, got the same tattoo as a symbol of their fidelity to the military and the People’s Liberation Army in particular. Carstairs had become aware of it during his studies of Chinese military history.

Shit, he’s military intelligence!

Carstairs slid his hand around the pepper spray again and waited for the opportunity to strike. He had one shot at surprising the man, who was probably equally trained in hand-to-hand combat as he was, maybe better.

Ahead, a small traffic jam made the driver slow the vehicle as a motorcycle rickshaw had collided with a panel truck. The accident blocked the entire street and traffic was at a standstill. The moment the car pulled to a stop, Carstairs made his move.

Flipping up the safety cover, he brought the container out of his pocket and blasted the driver in the face. But instead of screaming and trying to protect himself, the Chinese man shoved his arm up, deflecting the tear gas spray into the roof. Quicker than Carstairs could react, he brought his left arm over, grabbed the wrist of Carstairs’s canister-holding hand and twisted it toward the windshield. The chemical was having some effect—his eyes were red and watering, and his nose was dripping, as well—but the man didn’t seem incapacitated in the least.

He’s had chemical desensitizing, Carstairs realized before a fist streaked toward his face. The blow was off balance and startled him more than doing any real damage. His head bounced off the door window, and he managed to throw his left arm up to block the second punch coming his way.

The pain in his wrist was increasing, but Carstairs managed to turn the canister toward the man’s face and blast him again. Although the chemicals didn’t faze him, the buffeting spray did make him instinctively turn his face away, which was what Carstairs had wanted.

Plucking the canister out of his pinned hand, he smashed it into the driver’s face, feeling the man’s cheekbone break with a palpable snap. Carstairs didn’t let up; driving the end of the plastic-and-metal device into the side of the man’s face, ignoring his weakening attempts to fend him off.

Finally, when the driver was bloody and semiconscious, and no longer an immediate threat, Carstairs reached across, opened the driver’s door and shoved him into the street.

Sliding into the driver’s seat and trying not to cough at the lingering wisps of gas, he put the car in Reverse and began backing up to the nearest intersection. Fortunately there was no one behind him.

“What was all that? Why did you do that to him?” Mrs. Liao asked.

“He was Chinese military,” Carstairs said between coughs. “Whatever your husband has done, a lot of people want him really bad—”

As he said that, they reached the intersection and were immediately flooded with bright white floodlights. Carstairs had just enough time to look over when the car was broadsided by a huge truck. The impact sent them flying across the intersection and into the side street, where the car landed on its roof.

Flung around by the crash, Carstairs found himself lying on the ceiling of the overturned car, a heavy tightness compressing his chest. He tasted blood. One eye was swelling shut and a dull pain bloomed in his ribs. Even so, he knew he had to get Mrs. Liao and her children out and away before more soldiers came. He tried to move, but found himself pinned by the seat. He looked around for his phone but couldn’t see it nearby.

Footsteps crunched on the shattered glass from the window and Carstairs looked out to see a pair of wing tips standing next to the wrecked sedan.

Sets of combat boots appeared next to the shoes and a face leaned down to look in at him in surprise. “The American is still alive.”

“Kill him and collect the others,” came a curt reply. “Make it look like the car accident did it.”

The man looking in on him produced a pistol and turned it around so he was holding it by the barrel. Trapped and unable to move, Edward Carstairs watched as, without a word, the Chinese soldier began crawling toward him, pistol held at the ready to bash his skull in.