Razing Beijing: A Thriller (89 page)

Devinn directed the flashlight toward Thackeray. “I want
you to stand next to him.” When Emily didn’t instantly move, he raised his gun
and aimed it into her face. Emily took several steps before tripping over
cables and stumbling against Thackeray’s shoulder.

Devinn played the beam over the floor, reached down and
tugged an electrical cord from a wall socket. Attached to the other end was a
printer, which he jerked to the floor. He flung the length of cord at Emily. “Use
that to tie his hands behind his back.”

Thackeray stared at the pistol in his face while holding
his arms behind the back of his chair. Emily began wrapping the cord around
where his wrists came together. “Paul—”

“Tight,” he said, cutting her off. “Okay, now one loop
around the seat back. Press your foot against the back and pull it...tighter,
that’s it. Tie it off. Good.”

Devinn ordered Emily into the other swivel chair. He tied
her up in a similar fashion. “Not cutting into your wrist, I hope.” He wheeled Emily’s
chair beside Thackeray, and positioned himself in a chair facing them.

For several minutes they sat quietly, nobody saying a word
as Devinn alternated the quivering beam of light between their squinting eyes.

“Here’s the deal,” Devinn finally said, aiming the beam on
his wristwatch, “and I haven’t got all night. You tell me everything I need to
know, I’m on my merry way, never to be heard from again. If you make it
difficult for yourselves...let’s not go there. First question”—Devinn passed
the light over the three computer monitors to his left. “You’ve been very busy
here, doing precisely what? Something tells me you’re not catching up on your
e-mail.”

Neither captive uttered a sound.

“Tell me what’s going on here.”

“Catching up on our e-mail,” Thackeray replied with a
shrug.

Devinn rose calmly from his chair and approached Thackeray,
who instinctively withdrew from the bright light inches from his face. It was
impossible for him to see the wide, arcing swing of Devinn’s left hand. The
butt end of Devinn’s pistol landed with a wet-sounding
thud
against the
side of Thackeray’s mouth, snapping his head sideways and backwards.

“Thack—
no!
” Emily cried.

“I’ll fuckin’ kill you for that!” shouted Thackeray.

Devinn sat back down. “Don’t bet on it.”

Thackeray spit something small and hard onto the floor. “Som’
bitch busted my teeth!”

Devinn trained the light on Thackeray’s blood stained lips.
Bloody drool in his beard mingled with a red trickle from a gash in his cheek.

“See how this works?” Devinn’s tone was casually
supportive, as if cautioning awestruck children. “Oh. It’s only fair to inform
you that I probably know enough to tell when you’re lying. For instance, I know
that Stuart apparently believes somebody stole intellectual property from CLI. I
know that you are both obviously working on something important here, as you
have pretty much around the clock for the past few days. I know the government
has shut down your regular offices.”

“We’d be using computers there if we could,” Thackeray
growled. “We can’t, so we’re doing our job here. What’s the big deal?”

Devinn ignored the refrain. “Nobody seems to know where my
good friend Stuart is. And this pace...you seem to be rushing to finish this,
whatever it is. What, before he shows up? To prevent him from stopping you?” He
played the beam back and forth between two obstinate faces. Thack’s chest rose
and fell, still catching his breath. “Mmm—no, I don’t think so. I see loyal
employees—obedient pawns. Don’t try my patience. Fill me in on the plan. Make
it easy on yourselves.”

Devinn held the light on Emily:
you next
.

“So that’s what Joanne Lewis told you?” Emily blurted.

Devinn held the light steady.

“You nearly killed her. You did kill Sean Thompson. Why
should we expect you’ll treat us any differently?”

Devinn leaned back in his chair. “Lewis... Don’t think I
know a Lewis.”

If her disclosure had prompted any visible surprise, Emily
couldn’t see it behind the beam of the flashlight.

DEVINN ACTUALLY
APPRECIATED
that she had just confirmed his suspicion. He had been
right, after all, to assume his cover was blown.

He said, “Care to tell me what break-through you’re working
on these days, Emily? I’ve always had such great respect for your brains, all
the intelligent Asian blood flowing through that lovely body of yours—let’s
agree to keep all that where it belongs. But you’ve got to do your part to help
me. What is it you do for CLI?”

“Emily doesn’t know what’s going down here,” Thackeray said
in a raspy voice. “She works for me.”

“That true?” He held the light in her face, intrigued by
Thackeray’s response to threats aimed at her. “I’d have guessed the other way
around.”

“Don’t you dare answer him,” said Emily to Thackeray.

Devinn tucked the pistol into his waist band.

Thackeray shouted, “
NO!
”

The blow to Emily’s face knocked her senseless. She hung
her head forward with her chin on her chest.

Thackeray leaped to his feet. Hobbled by the chair tied to
his back, Devinn easily knocked him tumbling backwards onto the floor. Thackeray
launched a second assault, repeating the cycle, this time arousing Devinn’s
amused laughter as he stooped to retrieve his cellular phone.

Minutes later, Emily’s eyelids remained steadily open,
appearing fully lucid again. He trained the light, back and forth, studying
their faces.

*     *     *

BY 2:58
A.M.,
THE FBI TEAM
knew they had passed into
the zone too early to conclude a no-show, and too late to do much about it.

“Say, Nick,” Hildebrandt’s tone reflected the tedium
typical of stake-outs, “what reasons can you give for our Carl Smith to
suddenly start using his credit card again?”

Brophy pulled his face from the spotting scope, rubbing his
eyes. “Well, he could be getting low on cash,” Brophy suggested the obvious. “The
Hilton isn’t exactly Motel 6.”

“To which one might ask, why stay at the Hilton?”

“We’ve seen that he likes pricey places. You read the
profile work-up. The guy’s liable to be feeling his oats.”

“Yeah, and if he’s feeling that complacent, why not stop by
the lounge downstairs for a drink?”

“I thought he doesn’t drink.”

Hildebrandt rubbed his face. “What I meant was, the shit
left his bathroom kit. Why isn’t he here?” Mulling over the events of recent
weeks, he remained unable to see what opportunity they might have provided for
either Devinn or Bloch, his lawyer, to suspect that the FBI had placed them
under surveillance. Their last material contact had not really occurred since
the Type III was put into place, when Devinn—Smith—checked out of the New York
Four Seasons. Counterintelligence staff examining the case believed the suspect
was merely practicing prudent tradecraft. Perhaps, although it wasn’t as if
Devinn was averse to using his credit card. He had maintained its use for the
ongoing rental car contract. Ford Motor did confirm the engine-to-serial number
match on the van found after the refinery explosion. So, cash for the truck
and
the van... Had a pattern shift occurred there? Of course, he didn’t need credit
card deposits at either of those outfits. He apparently had no need to spend additional
money while abducting the CLI lawyer.

Hildebrandt asked Brophy, “Do we have the phone number
handy where Emily Chang and the other guy are holed up?”

Brophy reached inside his shirt pocket and handed his
partner a slip of paper.

Hildebrandt punched the area code and number into his
cellular telephone. He heard the customary sounds of a call going through,
followed by a recorded message indicating that the customer’s service was out
of order. He snapped off the telephone.

Brophy recognized Hildebrandt’s expression. “What’re you
thinking?”

“No service.” Hildebrandt depressed his collar mike. “TOC
to Charlie group, I’d like a count-off of the number of cars you’ve seen drive
by in the last hour.”

“Charlie One to TOC, two passenger vehicles traveling
opposite directions on Church. Neither entered the hotel premises.”

“Charlie One, any traffic
leave
the hotel?”

“Negative, not in the last hour.”

The other two squad cars called in with similar sightings. Traffic
was light, as one would expect this time of morning.

Hildebrandt swore. “I’m wondering if Devinn could’ve
known somehow of our stake-out. Alright, listen up...”

TEETERING AT THE ABYSS
of personal bankruptcy, his only concern had been latching onto any financial
lifeline within reach. Tonight, Steven Reedy was out of his game and he knew
it.

At least the task was a simple one, Reedy thought while
eyeing the lobby of the hotel through binoculars. Several minutes ago, it had
looked as though there might be activity inside, perhaps patrons preparing to
leave, but nobody had yet exited the building and no cars had left the parking
area. He had been instructed to expect if anything a flourish of activity—a
dozen or so people and multiple cars. Hilton was not, after all, a
charge-by-the-hour establishment. Couples trickling out in the middle of the
night were not expected to interfere with his task.

Emma, his wife, did not expect him home from his business
trip until late in the morning. He might as well try to relax, he thought with
a sigh, resting the glasses against the steering wheel.

Reedy jumped nearly out of his seat at the figure appearing
suddenly beside the door of his car.

The man stooped to take a closer look. “Would you mind
stepping out, sir?”

Reedy could see that the man wasn’t a cop. He nonetheless
maneuvered the glasses under his legs to the floor. “Why should I do that?”

The man pressed an identification badge against the window.
“FBI.”

On the center console next to Reedy’s thigh was a cellular
telephone, the numeral 2 key programmed to speed-dial a call. “Have I broken a
law?” It was dark in the car, Reedy reasoned, easing his hand slowly toward the
phone.

“I wouldn’t do that!”

Two metallic raps against the passenger window announced
the agent wasn’t alone. Reedy turned toward the source of the noise to find a
man with a pistol pointed into his face.

“JUST WHAT IS IT YOU THINK
you’re protecting?” Devinn asked Emily Chang, attempting an appeal to her
analytical side. “Your corporate servitude? A year-end bonus?”

Devinn finally grew tired of looking at the long drool of
mucus hanging from Emily’s nose. He found a box of tissues on a table beside
one of the computers, but the woman only recoiled from his outstretched hand.

He was beginning to fear that he had miscalculated their
resolve. Measured doses of brutality had not produced the desired effect; if
anything, his lashing out in frustration had been counter-productive. And yet
they were typical of the average American citizen, even the Chinese immigrant,
having no sort of training to endure torture, foreign to physical hardship or
sacrifice throughout their obsessively consumptive lives. That he shared a
similar background meant their tenacity served only to further perplex him.

Devinn flicked his wrist; Thackeray squinted, defiant, into
the beam of the flashlight. Despite broken teeth, split and swollen lip, and
blood running from his nose, the captive refused to conform to expectations. As
always he found amusing, if not pathetic, man’s quaint defense of woman, who in
this case Thackeray obviously presumed to be weaker than he. Emily meanwhile
seemed to make bolstering her will against him a deeply personal matter.

Lee had revealed little of the technology in question,
other than to say that it had the potential to be militarized. Was Devinn to
infer these two were involved in assembling some sort of a weapon? That hardly
explained such disregard for their own physical well being; albeit intelligent,
these two were still fundamentally cogs in a wheel. He should have pressed Lee
harder for a fuller account of what this CLI ordeal was about; that Lee hadn’t
been more forthcoming was itself disturbing. Had it not been obvious that their
tampering with the GW Bridge evidence was to conceal the effects of some type
of laser device? Yet Lee had not been forthcoming on the role of either CLI or
these individual employees. Did Lee really find him so untrustworthy? And
having insisted that he approach both Chang and Thackeray, Lee had pushed him
in a risky direction.

Exacerbating his frustration was concern that something had
gone wrong at the hotel, in which case his time might have already expired. Again,
he should have challenged Lee’s strict compartmentalization and insisted he
provide the sentinel’s cell phone number. Moving his two captives elsewhere
would prove to be challenging. He would have to ensure each was able to walk
since he certainly couldn’t drag them, while preserving that option
contradicted his need to intensify things.

Devinn searched the confusing digits advancing on
Thackeray’s computer screen until discerning the time; 4:13
A.M.
He noted again that time seemed to be of
crucial importance to everyone involved. Maybe there was a way for him to both
beat the clock
and
ensure at least one of his subjects was able to walk.
Thackeray being the weaker of the two, and as he seemed to find inspiration in
a woman’s inferiority, perhaps his chivalry could be useful...