Covert One 4 - The Altman Code (31 page)

When the train came, Mcdermid entered a car, and Jon slipped on behind,
through a second door. Mcdermid wove forward until he found a space he
liked on one of the stainless steel benches. He sat and stared into
space, making eye contact with none of his silent, weary fellow
passengers and ignoring the colorful advertisements, all of which were
in Chinese, very different from the days before the island returned to
mainland China’s control and commercials appeared in English as well.

Jon moved in the opposite direction and grabbed a pole, his back half
turned, where he could catch Mcdermid in a window reflection. He found
himself wondering why anyone of Mcdermid’s position and wealth was
riding the subway. Not going far? Not wanting to use company cars or
personnel in another man’s empire? Tired of the pandemonium and pressure
of the streets? Cheap? Or, more likely, he wanted no one, not even a
chauffeur or taxi driver, to know where he was going.

The ride was remarkably quiet and smooth. Mcdermid never bothered to
gaze around, apparently unconcerned that he might have picked up a tail.

He got off a couple of stops later, at the Wanchai station. Jon waited
until the last moment again, when the CEO was already some forty feet
away, to squeeze out through the closing doors. He hurried out to
Hennessy Road, where Mcdermid was ambling along, looking relaxed.

Mcdermid led him through Wanchai, Hong Kong’s former red-light district.

Once notorious for sex and drugs, the area had fallen on hard times. The
result was that the city’s booming financial district had invaded. New
high-rises clustered together, and the newest and best hotels asked and
received more than three thousand dollars a night for rooms.

Hands in his pockets, Mcdermid strolled down neon-lighted Lockhart Road,
where most of the remaining sex trade was. Here, Wanchai still lived
down to its tawdry reputation. Wanchai girls loitered at bar doors and
gave a well-rehearsed pssst to any man who looked as if he could pay.

There were gaudy hostess clubs, topless bars, discos, and raucous
English and Irish pubs. The signs and the spielers, the neon and the
come-ons were still loud and bright here, broadcasting the delights
inside for the hungry and the lonely.

But the beat was gone. Neither he nor Mcdermid gave more than a glance
at the tarnished pleasure shacks, while Jon again wondered where
Mcdermid was headed–and why.

At last, the CEO turned into a side street and then into a brick office
building in the shadow of a spanking new higher-and-shinier,
glass-and-steel monolith of offices. The street was narrow. Vendors
assembled their gear. A few stores offered peep shows and porn, tattoos
and adult toys. At the same time, a steady stream of middle-class office
workers and executive types left the brick building on their way home to
the darkening hills and suburbs, a reflection of the cultural
schizophrenia that Wanchai had become.

His curiosity growing, Jon used the exiting stream as cover and slipped
inside. In the marble-lined lobby, Ralph Mcdermid stood facing a row of
filigreed elevators. When a car emptied a small river of people, he
walked inside, the only passenger, since everyone else was leaving.

Again Jon watched the numbers of the floors light up on the indicator
above the door. Me-Dermid’s car stopped on the tenth then returned down.

Jon stepped into another car and pressed the button. At the eleventh
floor, he rushed off and ran down the fire stairs two at a time. Finally
on the tenth, he peered out into a twin of the empty, marble-lined
corridor above. Where had Mcdermid gone?

Jon jerked back when three women left one of the offices and headed
toward the elevators, chattering in Chinese. Flattened against the
stairwell, he listened, mystified, wishing he had learned the language.

Before he could look out again, other footsteps clattered along the
marble floor and stopped at the elevator, where the three women were
still talking. More doors opened and closed, and the unseen corridor was
silent again … except for a rustling that passed directly outside his
door.

Jon cracked it open and peered out. Dressed in the black pajamas and
conical strawhat of a rural peasant, a Chinese woman disappeared through
the door at the very end of the hall. But where was Mcdermid? As he was
about to go looking, he heard what he thought was the CEO’s voice from
somewhere to the right, beyond the elevators. He gave a grim smile,
pulled out his Beretta, and padded into the corridor.

He listened at each door. All were identical–cheap and hollow-core,
with steel mail slots and name plaques that announced the businesses
housed inside, everything from accountants to start-up Web site
companies, dentists to secretarial services. Muted voices sounded from
behind several, and a radio station from one. He was beginning to worry
that he had somehow lost Mcdermid when he heard him again.

He slowed. The muffled tones were coming from the other side of a door
that proclaimed in Chinese and English: dr. James chou, acupuncture &
shiatsu. It appeared that Ralph Mcdermid indulged in acupuncture or
shisu massage or both. But why did he go to the trouble of taking the
subway here and then the long walk? Mcdermid was a physically soft man.

Or was he here for a different purpose? Perhaps this was a front for an
old-fashioned “massage parlor.”

As Jon thought that, he dropped low and peered in through the mail slot.

The reception area was sparsely furnished, with cheap molded-plastic
chairs and tables. The couch was overstuffed and had bamboo arms and
braces.

Magazines in both Chinese and English lay on the tables and couch. The
waiting room was deserted. So where was the voice coming from? Had he
been wrong?

Weapon in hand, he turned the knob and crept inside. That was when he
saw the second door. Mcdermid said something from the room on the other
side of it.

Jon had begun to smile to himself when suddenly there was complete
silence. The talk had stopped in the inner office. Two people–Mcdermid
and the doctor or the masseur–should make some sound … Jon’s chest
tightened as a new answer occurred to him. There was another reason
Mcdermid might take the subway and walk. Mcdermid could have expected to
be followed. He could have expected Jon. The unpleasant truth was …
Mcdermid could have lured him into an ambush.

Jon spun, dove to the floor, and skidded behind the couch, his Beretta
ready.

The hall door flew open, latch and hinges ripping, and crashed to the
floor in a shower of splinters. Two of his earlier tails slammed through
the opening, pistols preceding them.

Jon squeezed off two rounds. One of the men fell onto his face and slid
across the linoleum floor, leaving a slash of red blood. The other flung
himself backward out of harm’s way, into the hall again. Jon’s bullet
had missed him.

Jon snaked forward on his elbows. The second man darted into view again,
gun aimed at the couch. Jon was halfway toward the door, where the
gunman had not expected him to be. Jon fired once. This time there was a
grunt of pain, a curse, and the man fell back.

Warily, Jon reached the shattered doorway and positioned himself low but
where he could rise to see along the hall toward the elevators and where
anyone trying to enter the reception room through the second door would
have to be fully inside before they could focus on him and shoot. Ahead
in the hall, two men bent over a third, who sat against the wall. Blood
pooled at his side, where Jon’s shot had connected. They glanced angrily
back at the office where Jon hid and watched.

Jon scrambled up, ran to the couch, laid it on its cloth side, and
pushed it to the doorway. He positioned it to cover his flank and
dropped to the floor again.

He could hear the sounds of feet outside in the corridor, trying to be
quiet. His hunters were moving in. He made himself stay down. He counted
off ten seconds, raised up, and dropped one with a single shot as he
burst in, low to the floor.

As the cry of pain echoed against the marble walls, the office’s other
door blasted open and shots slammed into the couch’s bamboo and
stuffing. Jon fell flat, waiting. His heart ticked into his ears.

Finally, a man jumped through the door and into the room, a tiny
submachine gun in his hands. Jon fired off a bullet. The man catapulted
back against a large window and crashed through, his scream receding as
he dropped from sight.

Jon raised above the couch again to check the hall. They were closing
in–three this time. He fired twice, and they scurried back, but for how
long? They would try again from the inner room, too. He had another
clip, but eventually they would coordinate better, attack simultaneously
from both doors, and that would end it. He would be killed or captured.

He was unsure which they wanted.

Sweat broke out on his forehead. On one knee, he waited for the next
assault from the inner office. Without warning, they barreled through.

There were two now. They moved faster and were cleverer, diving to
either side, while he had to remain alert in case those in the hall
attacked simultaneously. He emptied his gun, spraying the chairs,
tables, walls. He slammed in his last clip–and they were gone.

Or were they? Abruptly, more shots exploded, shook the walls. But from
where? The hall or the inner office? And where were the bullets? Nothing
hit the couch where he crouched, and nothing slammed into the waiting
room. Should he drop or remain kneeling? As another fusillade erupted,
he realized the noise came from out in the hall. Oddly, they were not
shooting at him.

He raised up and looked. There were four of them, including the two from
the inner office. The fifth and sixth–both injured–lay in one of the
elevators, the doors jammed open. The remaining four hunters were firing
away from him, toward the opposite end of the corridor. Abruptly, one
turned and shot back, trying to keep him pinned down.

He returned fire, rising and dropping. Suddenly there was swearing,
scrambling, and the slam of a door as heavy feet raced away. He
listened. An elevator door closed. There was silence from both the
corridor and the inner room. Were they really gone? Or was this another
damn trick?

Cautiously, he leaned out to look. The hall was empty in both
directions.

The old building creaked. Somewhere on another floor, a toilet
flushed.

Jon inhaled. He wiped his sleeve across his forehead as he studied the
motionless man he had shot, who still lay sprawled on the floor of the
waiting room. He crab-walked to him. The man was dead, and his pockets
carried nothing that would identify him.

Disappointed, Jon jumped up and sped into the inner office. There was a
massage table, a cabinet, a chair, and a portable radio-and-CD player.

Everything had been riddled with gunfire. Wind whistled through the
broken window through which one of the men he had shot had crashed.

Below, sirens screamed. The Hong Kong police were on their way.

There was a second door in here, too. It stood open into the hall. He
sprinted toward it and gazed carefully out. The corridor was still
deserted, blood and bullet casings making a trail to the elevator.

Beretta in both hands, he moved toward the elevators, too, swinging the
pistol front and back, covering the passageway, as he continued past and
reached the last door in the hall, the only other one that was open. It
faced the length of the corridor.

Beretta up, he rolled around the doorjamb and pointed. In his sights was
the Chinese peasant woman he had seen earlier from his hiding place in
the stairwell. Still dressed in her black pajamas and conical straw hat,
she sat cross-legged on the floor, her back against a rolltop desk.

There was a cell phone at her side. Both hands aimed a thoroughly
non-peasant 9mm Glock at him.

“Who are you?” he demanded.

Still keeping her Glock aimed at him, her voice was irritated as she
said in perfect American English, “So this is the answer. Your goal in
life is to screw up my operations. Your timing stinks.” But she smiled.

“Randi?”

“Hi, soldier.” She lowered her weapon.

He stared as he put his away. “Unbelievable. The CIA just keeps getting
better at their disguises.” So this was where the other gunfire had
originated. Randi had created the diversion that had saved him.

She uncoiled from the floor and rose to her feet in a single motion. “Do
I hear sirens?”

“You do. We’d better get the hell out of here.”

Beijing.

The scent of camellias floated in from the lush garden at Zhongnanhai as
Niu Jianxing–the Owl–leaned back, listening angrily to the discussion
at tonight’s special Standing Committee meeting. All of his intellect
was being required to keep his program on track in the face of the
Empress crisis. He could not allow his bad temper to show.

“First the American spy, who has, it seems, been allowed to escape,” Wei
Gaofan complained. His fierce, temple-dog scowl made his usually
unsmiling face seem almost kindly. “Now this American warship–what is
it? the John Crowe?–invading our rights on the high seas! It’s an
outrage!” It was the hawk party line.

“Exactly how did Colonel Smith escape?” Song Riuyu, one of the younger
members of the Standing Committee, asked.

Niu said calmly, “That is being investigated as we speak.”

“How is it being investigated?” Wei Gaofan demanded. “Are you forming
one of those endless, pointless committees like the Europeans do?”

Niu’s voice was suddenly sharp. “Are you volunteering for that
committee? If so, I can certainly form one and would be honored to add
your name … ”

“You have the confidence of us all, Jianxing,” corpulent Shi Jingnu
purred in his smooth, silk-merchant’s voice.

The general secretary intervened: “These matters concern all of us. I,
for one, need answers to both questions. Are the Americans just waving
the Roosevelt big stick, or are they actually sharpening their Kennedy
swords?”