The Death and Life of Nicholas Linnear (3 page)

Baron Po’s limo was nowhere to be seen, but then, like his own car, it couldn’t bull its way down this street. However, he’d seen the three figures, Anna sandwiched between the two Shantung suits, enter the restaurant moments ago.

Nicholas stepped in, ordered soup off the hand-written Chinese menu on the wall, and went straight back past the tables, small as Chiclets. Between the toilets and the narrow kitchen, where a cook and his assistant stared morosely at their idle woks, was a steep set of stairs down to the basement. He went past, checked the rear door, then returned to the stairs and silently descended.

Halfway down he could hear voices—male, harsh, on the verge of anger: Baron Po’s suits. He crouched down, listening. They wanted information from Anna Song, but he did not hear her answering voice. When he heard the slap of flesh on flesh, he rose and, reaching up, grabbed onto one of the thick, wooden foundation beams. Swinging his body up, he grabbed the beam between his ankles. Now he inched forward, moving from the stairwell into the basement proper.

With the vantage point of a bat, he stared down at the scene below. Anna was bound to a straight-backed wooden chair, arms behind her, wrists tied. Her ankles were tied to the chair’s front legs. Shantung Suit—the one who had steered her out of the hotel—was bent at the waist. His jacket was off, his sleeves rolled up. The second man stood several paces away; the other’s suit jacket folded carefully over one forearm.

He hit Anna again, a strong blow across the cheek. Nicholas saw it coming and was dropping down even as Shantung Suit’s open hand turned Anna’s head. He struck with his elbow, taking the man by surprise. As he staggered, Nicholas grabbed his leading wrist, spun him around and down, using the man’s own momentum against him. With the man flat on his back, Nicholas used a nerve strike to render him unconscious.

“Stand up!” The order came from the second suit.

Nicholas turned. The man was holding a snub-nosed .38, aimed at his belly. In the midst of his turn, Nicholas moved forward, his torso a blur. The gunshot passed close by his left side, but by that time the second man had been disarmed and had joined his compatriot deep in slumberland.

Anna Song watched him with her long, unrevealing eyes, her expression never changing as he untied her. She would not accept his hand; instead she rose to her feet on her own and, brushing past him, climbed the stairs. Shaking his head, Nicholas followed her. In the restaurant, he paid for the soup without eating it. The waiter didn’t utter a word; his eyes were averted from Anna’s passing.

Out in the street, with the smell of food mingling with the stench of garbage and raw sewage, she said, “You have been following me. Why?”

“I saw you being led out of the party.”

She peered at him as they began to walk. He was directing her back to where his car was waiting.

“Do I know you?”

He pulled out a rough-textured glove, pulled away the bulk of his makeup.

“Nicholas! This is a surprise.”

She didn’t look surprised, but then she never did. Ever. Her Chinese mask was set firmly in place, as were her impeccable manners. Could nothing faze her, even being abducted by the most powerful warlord in the Golden Triangle?

“What does Baron Po want with you?”

“Is this your vehicle?” she asked, deflecting his question.

“It is.” Nicholas opened the rear door, and without another word she slid in.

He joined her in the backseat. “The Bund,” he told Ko, who was savvy enough not to peek at them in the rearview mirror. “And let me know at once if you spy the limo we followed here.”

Neither of them said a word until they were in the tunnel under the Huangpu River. Then she turned to him and—as if he had just picked her up to take her to the party—said, in her soft, fluid contralto, deep for a Chinese woman, “No one trusts you, Nicholas, the Americans least of all.”

“And you Chinese think of me as a mongrel.”

"Are the Japanese any better? I’d say not at all.”

“They respected my father.”

“He was a U.S. Army colonel. He helped shape their future. Their respect was brittle, thin as a Qing vase. It was forced on them.”

“My father had many Japanese friends, and so do I.”

“
Ke bu shi ma
,” she said. Isn’t it so. “And yet you are despised in the country where you were born and raised. Even after all these years, you are an Outsider.”

Nicholas turned away, stared out the smoked glass window where there was nothing to see but the slightly curved wall of the tunnel. “Why are you telling me this, Anna?”

Anna Song settled herself more comfortably against the seatback. “You enjoy a special relationship here in Shanghai, Nicholas. A special relationship with me and the people of power in Beijing I represent. This is not something you should forget.”

Nicholas, sensing a slight but unmistakable ripple of tension, turned back to look at her. “Have I given you cause to suspect that I have?”

“Not you,
per se
, Nicholas. But one has to wonder at the sudden interest Baron Po has shown in you since you began your expansion into liquid natural gas.”

“Baron Po?” Nicholas felt a tightening in his lower belly. “I don’t understand.”

“Those two men down in the restaurant basement abducted me on the orders of Baron Po. They were asking me about my relationship with you when you intervened.” She paused, moistening her lips, which, with her, was a deeply erotic gesture. “What have you done to piss him off?”

It was odd and unsettling to hear this phrase spoken in English amid their conversation in Mandarin. “Nothing,” Nicholas said. “I’ve never met him, let alone had any dealings with him.”

“Then why,” Anna Song said, “did he try to have you buried alive tonight?”

At that moment, they emerged from the tunnel into the dazzling lights of the Bund.

“You see, Nicholas, the trouble is, I don’t believe you.”

Anna Song’s eyes sparkled in the early morning sunlight blazing through the colossal east-facing windows in the dining room of the First Sun, the hotel favored by high-level Communist Party officials and PLA officers. Outside, the Bund was already filling up with people in business attire scurrying to and fro. A group of flight attendants fresh off a trans-continental shift entered the restaurant and requisitioned one of the large circular tables. The noise they collectively made was like a church choir out of sync and out of tune.

Nicholas, stripped of his facial disguise, ate his Chinese breakfast and listened, which was more often than not more useful than speaking.

“First,” Anna said, ticking her points off on her fingers, “you have that LNG tanker at dock. It’s like a floating city, so huge that smuggling contraband—opium, for example—would hardly be difficult. Second, you spent several weeks in the Golden Triangle.”

“That was some time ago,” Nicholas felt compelled to say.

“And during that time you never met with Baron Po.”

“I was rather busy,” Nicholas said dryly.

Anna Song’s gaze was penetrating. “I’ll bet you were.”

There was a burst of raucous laughter from the flight attendants as they lifted glasses in unison and sang “Happy Birthday” to one of their own.

Anna used the noise as cover as she returned to ticking off points on her fingers. “Third, I not only know who you are but what you are.”

“And that automatically makes me suspect.”

“In this case, yes.”

Nicholas continued to eat at a slow, steady pace. It was essential, he knew, to keep his poise and composure during this interrogation, just as a Chinese would. “Why in this case?”

“Because only an exceedingly lucrative opportunity would compel a man such as Baron Po—ever so powerful, but ever so careful—to abduct a member of the Shanghai Clique, potentially incurring the wrath of the CCCP.” She cocked her head, in other women a coquettish pose, but in her another erotic one. “Why would he undertake such a grave risk?”

“I’m afraid you’re going to have to ask him yourself,” Nicholas said, not missing a beat or a bite.

Anna waited until he had finished his breakfast. Then, without a word, she rose, led him across the dining room, past the flock of celebrating flight attendants.

“
Zúgòu
,” she said to them. Enough. And immediately they settled down.

She pushed through the swinging door into the kitchen. At once, all activity came to a standstill. The kitchen staff stood at attention in their respective stations, their eyes cast downward. Scarcely anyone dared to breathe.

Anna Song took him to a shadowed corner of the kitchen, where an enormous stainless-steel refrigerator stood by itself, as if on an island. She opened the door and removed what appeared to be a silk hatbox, tied with a pink ribbon. Turning, she set it on a counter.

“Open the box, Nicholas, if you please.”

Nicholas untied the bow, let the ends fall away. He lifted the lid off the hatbox and peered inside at the decapitated head of a man. The dead eyes stared straight up at him.

“This is the operative we sent to find Baron Po. We received the hatbox forty-eight hours ago.”

She took the lid from Nicholas, put it back over the head, and returned the hatbox to the refrigerator. Then she addressed him: “As for Baron Po, I would not know where to find him. But in any event, this is between you and him. My relationship with you has put me in an embarrassing position. Because of you I have lost face.”

Anna Song said this so gravely that he felt again that clenching in his lower belly. The subtle flirting had abruptly ceased.

She leaned in. “It is you who must ask him, Nicholas. That is, if you ever hope to have your ship’s exit permits approved.”

The Golden Lotus Club & Sauna lay in the Jing’an District. It was one of those places that thrive at night in any city the world over. Shanghai was no different. Nicholas entered at about midnight, after having missed the entire afternoon and evening in a dead sleep.

He had been followed here, just as he had been followed from the moment he had stepped out of the First Sun Hotel into the hazed, late morning sunshine. The Bund had been crowded with tourists: singly, in pairs, and in groups. The ex-pats, leaning against the railings, taking their ease, watched them with expressions ranging from bemusement to vague contempt. He hadn’t caught a glimpse of the shadow, but the crawling at the nape of his neck told him in no uncertain terms. Thus he had made plans.

The club was composed of the three traditional Chinese colors: gold, crimson, and gaudy. There was a surface stab at being a massage/sauna, but once past the lion-like security and the dragon-like madam, the fragrant clouds of half-dressed girls shattered all pretense. All nationalities and races had their place here, it seemed, draping themselves over leather chairs and velvet sofas in the semi-circular arena.

Taking his time to make his choice, Nicholas spent a moment considering his conversation with Anna Song from an observer’s position. What struck him first was the CCCP’s hands-off policy toward Baron Po. No matter how powerful he was, the Mainland government could bring him to heel with the Army any time they felt the need. Clearly, they did not feel the need. Why? Just as clearly, Baron Po must have protected status. Someone very high up on the Central Committee was making a fortune by keeping Baron Po safe, his drug business thriving.

Nicholas, surrounded by women both doe-eyed and nubile, allowed his gaze to roam over the shining flesh and then, further afield, to the newcomers entering the inner sanctum after him. He had come here for one reason only: to find his shadow and fix him in his memory. He usually looked to lose a shadow, but sometimes—and this was one of them—he wanted to identify the shadow in order to reverse things: to follow the shadow back to his base of operations.

Currently, there were three candidates: two male, one female. The female was soon crossed off his list: she never so much as glanced at him, choosing a partner almost immediately and disappearing through one of seven golden doors to “Heaven and Earth,” as the more intimate quarters were known. Of the two men, one was obese, the other too old. That eliminated the lot.

Patience, as both Sun Tzu and Confucius wrote, is often its own reward. Now was no exception. Another man entered the arena. He was neither tall nor short. He wore a sharkskin suit like the men who had abducted Anna Song. He did not look at Nicholas; neither did he seem interested in choosing a partner. Rather, he stood back, rejecting one girl after another. His head was now aligned perfectly to allow him to watch Nicholas out of the corner of his eye without seeming to be interested. No one else arrived; Nicholas was now certain that this man was his shadow. He memorized the face, the stance, and the stony expression. All within a split second he sucked the man’s essence into himself. From this moment on, he would know him even if the man did his best to change his appearance.

Time to make things happen. Nicholas nodded to a young Chinese woman, tall and slender as a reed, and, smiling seductively, she took him by the hand. They went through one of the golden doors, up a steep flight of shockingly worn wooden stairs onto a second floor. A long corridor with closed doors on either side stretched away from them.

When one of those doors closed behind them, he crossed to the window on the opposite wall. It looked out on a narrow alley, filthy with garbage. A dog, so thin its ribs were its most prominent feature, rooted around in the filth. It wasn’t the only occupant of the alley. Another sharkskin suit stood at the opening to the street, watching, waiting for him. Nicholas got a good look at him, then turned back into the room where the girl stood at rest, waiting for him.

“Other than this window,” he said to her, “how do I get out of here unnoticed?”

The girl smiled seductively.

“Is there a way?” he asked with infinite patience.

She came toward him on bare feet. They were very small and very white, the nails lacquered vermillion. “There is always a way.”

She was close enough for him to smell the cinnamon and clove on her breath. She was very beautiful and, to his way of thinking, very sad.