Killer Thriller (Ian Ludlow Thrillers Book 2) Read online

  “Author by day? Secret agent by night?”

  “Something like that,” Healy said.

  “You can’t be serious.” Margo glared at Healy and then turned to Ian. “Have you forgotten that this is how you got into trouble before?”

  “Relax,” Ian said. “I didn’t say I was going to do it.”

  “You didn’t say no, either.”

  That was true. He didn’t.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Hong Kong. Fourteen months later, May 11. 9:15 p.m. Hong Kong Time.

  “Hong Kong” means “fragrant harbor” in Chinese. The fragrance is the smell of money. First it was the boatloads of money earned by the British at the beginning of the nineteenth century from the sale of opium to millions of Chinese addicts. Now it was the money being earned by the Chinese from money itself—keeping it, investing it, laundering it, hiding it, and, of course, spending it. Hong Kong’s crowded waterfront skyline of shoulder-to-shoulder skyscrapers was a monument to that sweet smell.

  In a city where buildable land is scarce, the ever-increasing population density is among the highest on earth, and the only place to build is up, wealth and power are measured by how much of that airspace you possess. By that measure, or any measure really, Wang Kang was obscenely wealthy.

  The billionaire lived atop a seventy-five-story harbor-front tower known locally as the Blade because the building was unusually thin, with only one large apartment per triangular floor, and had a long, razor-sharp edge that made it seem as if it had sliced itself into the skyline. In fact, it wasn’t unusual to find the sidewalk littered with bisected birds that had flown into the leading edge of the Blade and were neatly cut in half.

  It was a building that would have perfectly suited Warren Fung, if he could afford to live there, which he couldn’t. Everything about him had a sharp edge. His eyes. His cheekbones. His fingernails. The cut of his business suit. The tips of his leather shoes. He walked across the black marble of the lobby to the guard who sat in the center of a circular desk embedded with security monitors.

  “I’m Warren Fung with the Wall Street Journal.” He addressed the guard in flawless Cantonese. “Mr. Wang is expecting me.”

  The guard glanced at a monitor, which showed an X-ray of Fung, revealing his pen, a notepad, a cell phone, keys, a wallet, and no weapons. Fung leaned over and looked at the monitor.

  “Cool,” Fung said.

  “Let’s see some ID,” the guard said.

  Fung offered him his identity card. The guard scanned it, handed it back, and made a call. A moment later, one of the two elevators opened and a Caucasian woman came out, wearing black pants and a long-sleeved, white silk blouse with a squared Mandarin collar.

  “I’m Emilia Farrow, head of Mr. Wang’s security detail,” she said in English and spoken with an Australian accent. “Please empty your pockets.”

  Fung emptied his pockets on the countertop. “You take security very seriously,” he replied in English with the slight British accent befitting a man raised in Hong Kong under British colonial rule.

  “Mr. Wang is one of the richest men in the world.” Farrow examined the pen, scribbled on Fung’s notepad with it, and then gave everything back to him. “Come with me.”

  She led him to the elevator and stepped inside. She positioned her eye in front of an iris scanner before hitting a button on the keypad. The elevator doors closed and the carriage shot up with astonishing speed and smoothness. The doors opened a moment later in Wang’s marbled foyer. They were greeted by two muscular Caucasian men wearing the same outfit as Farrow, only their Mandarin-cut shirts were cotton instead of silk in deference to their strident masculinity.

  Farrow led Fung past the two men into a vast office where Wang stood, his back to them, taking in the massive view to the north of Victoria Harbor, the densely populated Kowloon Peninsula, and the territories beyond, as if he owned it all. It was possible that he did. At least four of the massive skyscrapers growing like weeds across Kowloon carried his corporate logo in bright lights against the night sky.

  His office was industrial, all concrete and steel. Even the desk was formed out of poured concrete. The couches were leather but looked like upholstered cinder blocks and were about as inviting.

  “Mr. Wang,” Farrow said. “This is Mr. Fung.”

  Fung stepped past her, held out his hand, and spoke in perfect Mandarin: “Thank you for seeing me.”

  Wang turned. The elegant sixty-year-old statesman wore a blue cotton Mandarin shirt under a classically square-collared black Tang jacket. He also replied in his native tongue. “It is my pleasure.”

  Wang shook Fung’s hand and dismissed Farrow with a nod. She walked out, but Fung assumed there were cameras watching the room.

  “We’re profiling the ten most influential business leaders in Asia,” Fung said. “You’re at the top of the list.”

  Wang motioned him to sit on a couch. “It’s an honor, one I’m sure I don’t deserve.”

  “You’re being too modest, Mr. Wang.” Fung sat down on the hard couch, took out his pen and pad, and set them on the poured-concrete coffee table. “You own the majority stake in a dozen of China’s top financial institutions. That makes you almost as powerful as President Xiao.”

  “That’s hardly the case,” Wang said in a tone that made it very clear that it was.

  “If you make one misstep, the nation’s entire economy could falter.”

  “There are many safeguards in place to prevent one man from having that kind of impact,” he said, still standing so he could look down on Fung, who thought it was a petty power play. “Besides, I would never do anything to put those institutions at risk.”

  “Some would argue that you already have by making huge investments in money-losing US movie studios, electric car companies, and newspapers.”

  “I know what I am doing. I didn’t get where I am by making bad decisions.”

  “We’ve heard rumors that there are members of the Politburo who want to crack down on you for flaunting your wealth and getting too cozy with the West,” Fung said. “Many believe you moved to Hong Kong so the Chinese security services can’t touch you without violating the ‘one country, two systems’ agreement.”

  “That’s nonsense. I’m here overseeing the expansion of my movie studio complex in Kowloon.” Wang gestured to the view across the harbor and something out there caught his eye. He stepped to the window to take a closer look. “My daughter Mei is costarring in an international thriller that starts production in July. Damon Matthews is the star. I want to be here for that, too.”

  “It doesn’t worry you that over the last year a dozen business leaders have been kidnapped from Hong Kong and taken to Beijing?”

  What Wang saw outside was a white helicopter streaking across the harbor from Kowloon toward the Hong Kong skyline. It was coming his way through the night sky like a guided missile.

  “They weren’t kidnapped,” Wang said. “They went willingly to assist the government’s anticorruption efforts.”

  “Aren’t you concerned you might also be asked for assistance?”

  “Not at all.”

  “So all your security precautions and your bodyguards, who just happen to be Australian and have no allegiance to China, are just for show?”

  “I’m a billionaire, Mr. Fung. There are a lot of people who’d like to do me harm just for having money. I’m not going to make it easy for anyone to get to me.”

  “Yet here I am,” Fung said.

  Unnerved, Wang turned, and as he did, Fung pointed his pen at him and fired a dart into the billionaire’s neck. Wang crumpled to the floor, where he lay twitching and half-conscious, his wide eyes bulging.

  Fung pocketed his pen and notepad but made no move to rise from his seat. “You’re so eager for publicity from the Western media that it’s made you stupid and careless. You’ve seen Fung’s byline but have you ever seen his face?”

  Fung turned his head toward the door as Farrow and the other
two bodyguards burst into the room holding guns. He leaned back casually, resting his arms expansively along the back of the couch.

  “Here’s what happened,” Fung said in English to Farrow. “Mr. Wang fell ill. You called for medical assistance. Oh look, it’s here.” He tipped his head to the white helicopter that was close enough to the building now that they could clearly see it had the markings of a medevac unit.

  “You aren’t leaving this room and neither is Mr. Wang.” Farrow aimed her gun at Fung’s head for emphasis while her two men went to check on Wang, who was involuntarily wetting himself. They were lucky that he’d emptied his bowels earlier that evening.

  “Wang is going to Beijing to deal with his medical issues and you’re going carry him up to the helipad to meet the medevac chopper,” Fung said.

  “Why would we do that?” Farrow asked. At that same instant, the phone in her pants pocket began to vibrate.

  “Because the Australian gaming company that is your security firm’s biggest client doesn’t want to lose their license to operate casinos in Macau and the billions of dollars in revenue they bring in.” Fung pointed to her vibrating pocket. “That’s your boss calling to tell you to stand down and do as I say.”

  Farrow reached into her pocket with one hand for her phone and held it to her ear while keeping her gun on Fung.

  “Farrow . . .” Her face fell as she listened to the caller. “Yes, sir.”

  She lowered her gun and gestured to the guards to do the same. “Put away your weapons.”

  Fung rose from the couch and addressed the guards. “You two, pick up Wang and carry him to the helipad.”

  The guards looked to Farrow and she nodded, pocketing her phone.

  The men holstered their guns, picked up Wang, and carried him out of the room as the helicopter came in for a landing.

  Farrow watched them go and shifted her gaze to Fung. “You want us to be seen on the security camera footage taking Mr. Wang out of the building. That way Beijing can say that he left Hong Kong willingly.”

  “Just like you. You and your people have eight hours to leave the country and never come back. Or you can go home in caskets.” Fung smiled, walked past her, and headed for the elevator. He paused in the doorway. “Oh, and one more thing. I was never here.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  The Cutting Board, Washington, DC. May 25. 7:45 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time.

  The Cutting Board was a dimly lit wood-paneled steak house with booths upholstered in red leather. The air in the restaurant was stagnant and heavy with the smell of cigars, garlic, butter, and burning beef. The ambience was so masculine that infertile men could increase their sperm count just by walking in the door.

  Senator Sam Tolan, wearing his trademark Stetson hat, sat in a corner booth cutting into a thick and very rare rib-eye steak. He’d killed his way into the US Senate by sending more men to death row in Texas than any prosecutor in the state’s history. Texans liked that—unless they were black or Hispanic. He speared his fork deep into the morsel of meat, ran it through the blood on his plate, stabbed a french fry with the exposed tines, and shoved the combination into his mouth. He chewed it with relish, imagining the battle being waged in his bloodstream between the cholesterol in what he was eating and the horse-pill-size dosage of Lipitor that he took each morning.

  Tolan looked across the table at Hamilton Nash, his dinner guest, who wore a Stetson in deference to the sixty-six-year-old senator and their home state, and who was cutting into his roasted half chicken.

  “I don’t see what you’re so concerned about,” Tolan said. “My bill doesn’t end foreign investment in American companies—it simply requires our government to scrutinize those deals more closely for any potential national security risks. The president isn’t even in my party and he supports the legislation. Do you know why?”

  “Because he’s a xenophobic protectionist,” Nash said.

  “Because he ran on saving American jobs and keeping our country safe,” Tolan said. “Just like me.”

  “All I’m asking, Senator, is that you give the bill more thought before bringing it to the floor for a vote. What’s the harm in that?”

  “Because during every minute that we waste, another treasured American asset is taken by the Chinese.” Tolan cut into his steak again, with some urgency this time, as if the Chinese might take his plate away, too.

  “They aren’t taking anything—they’re saving companies and generating jobs that would be lost otherwise,” Nash said. “Like my poultry company, our employees, and the thousands of chicken farmers we support in our state.”

  “You’re talking about selling out to a foreign adversary.”

  “I’m talking about reaching 1.2 billion new consumers for American chicken.”

  “But they won’t be American chickens anymore. They’ll be Chinese and the profits will be going to Beijing, not Houston.” Tolan ran his piece of meat through the blood again and stabbed another french fry. “Even worse, the Chinese are going to learn the trade secrets that made you a leader in the processed poultry business for a century.”

  “We’ll be out of business if the Chinese deal falls apart and then what good will those trade secrets do us?” Nash pushed his plate away. He’d lost his appetite.

  Tolan nodded and considered Nash’s comment as he chewed. After a moment, he said, “Do you like this place?”

  “Sure, it’s nice.”

  Tolan picked up his napkin and dabbed at the steak juice that had escaped from the corners of his mouth.

  “It’s the best steak house outside of Houston. It’s been around forever. They say this is where George Washington had his first meal with his wooden dentures. Every politician and lobbyist in town eats here. Even so, it fell on hard times. Two years ago, a Chinese company swooped in and saved it from closing.”

  Nash smiled and leaned back in his seat. “That’s exactly my point, Senator. Thanks to the Chinese money, a Washington, DC, tradition will endure. Everybody wins.”

  “Especially Chinese intelligence, who’ve bugged the entire place, acquiring a gold mine of classified information that’s sabotaged American foreign policy in Asia.”

  Nash leaned forward and lowered his voice. “Jesus. Is that true?”

  “Damned if I know. But under my bill, the Chinese deal for this restaurant would have been rejected because of the potential for that frightening scenario to happen.”

  That statement didn’t disturb Hamilton Nash nearly as much as it did the two dozen Chinese intelligence analysts in identical gray jumpsuits who were watching and listening to the conversation play out from their stations in a windowless situation room seven thousand miles away and twelve hours into the future.

  Classified Location, Kangbashi District, Ordos, Inner Mongolia, China. May 26. 8:00 a.m. China Standard Time.

  Yat Fu stood in the back of the windowless situation room with his hands clasped behind his back, a thoughtful posture that thrust his potbelly out and ruined the utilitarian line of his dark-blue Mao tunic suit. It was a pose he adopted whenever he was considering a move in the international game of espionage, a game in which he was acknowledged within China’s Ministry of State Security as a grand master. Several rows of consoles, where his two dozen stiff-backed analysts worked diligently at their computers, separated him from the crescent-shaped wall lined with flat-screen monitors showing him multiple views of the Washington, DC, restaurant.

  “Paranoia isn’t healthy,” Yat Fu said in Mandarin.

  The analyst nearest to Yat Fu, a bald man with enormous ears named Pang Bao, understood the command and whispered an order of his own into his headset.

  The Cutting Board, Washington, DC. May 25. 8:02 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time.

  Nash stared at Tolan and tried to contain his anger. “You’d destroy a century-old company and put thousands of your constituents out of work over a hypothetical scenario?”

  “Don’t worry, my legislation won’t kill your deal,” Tolan said. “But
if it does, I’m sure you can find another investor in a friendly country. They eat chicken in Italy, don’t they?”

  Nash stood up, dropped his napkin on the table, and walked away without saying goodbye.

  Tolan didn’t care. The fact was, if the Chinese deal evaporated, the senator had another wealthy constituent ready to buy Nash’s company at what would be a much lower price than it commanded now. Besides, Tolan didn’t trust a man who ate chicken at a steak house, regardless of whether the individual was in the chicken business.

  A waitress approached with a fresh martini on a silver tray. Tolan was so delighted to see the drink that he was willing to ignore that the waitress was Chinese. He didn’t think of himself as a racist, but he felt strongly that the waitstaff should be white in a classic American steak house and Asian in a Chinese restaurant. But he’d overlook a lot given a martini at the right time. This was one of those times.

  “You read my mind,” Tolan said with a smile as the martini was set in front of him. She smiled, turned, and walked away. He guzzled down half his drink as he admired how her tight black slacks hugged her firm ass. His wife once had an ass like that. Now her ass looked like a couch cushion.

  He put down his glass and was about to finish his steak when he felt a sudden tightness in his chest and then a stabbing pain like a spike being driven into his sternum with a mallet.

  Tolan instinctively grabbed at his chest, as if he could yank out the invisible spike. His distress immediately drew the attention of the diners nearby. He opened his mouth to ask them for help, but something exploded in his chest and then he was aware of nothing. He pitched forward into his plate, his cheek against his steak, his eyes wide open and lifeless, his Stetson rakishly askew on the side of his head.

  In all the commotion, nobody noticed the Chinese waitress walk slowly out of the restaurant and into the dark night.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  An excerpt from the shooting script for Straker.

  EXT. HONG KONG — KOWLOON — NIGHT