Hour of the Rat (39 page)

“Great,” I say.

A
FTER THAT
I
SPEND
some time on the Internet. Check my email.

I check a few other things, too. I have an idea, about that American guy, Buzz Cut. The one from the warehouse.

I find out what I need to know. And when I’m done, I know who I need to call next.

I stall for a while, go downstairs to the hotel bar, have a beer and think about it. Because this could go very wrong and leave me in a worse situation than I’m in right now.

Here’s the thing: Those guys, the American guy and the Chinese guy who left me in that warehouse in Guiyang, they wanted me dead. And by now someone’s found those bodies, the two guys that Sidney’s men killed.

They know I’m alive.

And the American guy knows who I am.

Companies like Eos hire private security. Some of them even hire private intelligence. Like GSC, the company my ex-husband works for.

I’ve tangled with those guys before. Some of them, they’re connected.

Private contractors. OGAs. “Other government agencies.”

You try to figure out, are they government? Are they private? And what I finally decided was it doesn’t really matter anymore. They’re all part of the same fucking thing.

Last year those kinds of guys—contractors, OGAs, whatever you want to call them—got me in a lot of trouble. And they warned me. Told me if I stepped out of line, there’d be consequences.

A company like Eos is so powerful that it can buy anything it wants.

We will be watching you. We’ll be listening to you. There’s no place you can go where we can’t find you. So don’t try to run. There’s no such thing as running
.

Living in China, where you know you’re being watched, I sort of accepted it. Okay, fine. Most of the time I pretended surveillance wasn’t there.

When I found out it was my own people too … well, that pretty much sucked.

You better be smart. You start acting stupid, there’s not much I can do
.

It’s not like I
meant
to be stupid. I was just trying to do a favor for a friend, right?

Yeah. Right.

“D
OC
M
C
E
NROE
. I
WASN
’
T
expecting to hear from
you
.”

“Yeah, well, I wasn’t expecting to be making this call.”

I hear Carter cough on the other end of the line. He always seems to have some kind of cough. I don’t know whether it’s because he smokes or just because he’s living in Beijing, where air is sort of a solid.

“So what do you want?”

I have to hand it to Carter: he doesn’t pretty things up.

Carter works where my ex does, at GSC. I wouldn’t call him a friend. At one time he was the opposite of that.

“I need a favor,” I say.

I lay out the situation. What I need to know.

A pause. A phlegmy cough. “And I’m supposed to do this for you why?”

Because you helped me before, I think. Because you acted like you were on my side, at least a little.

Because you know what you and your buddy did was wrong.

But I don’t say any of that.

“Maybe I’ve got something to trade,” I say.

C
ARTER WANTS TO MEET
face-to-face. I don’t like that idea. Sure, I called him. But I don’t exactly trust him.

It didn’t take him long to find out what I wanted to know. At least that’s what he claims.

“You pick the place,” he says. “I’m not having this conversation over the phone.”

“When you get to Shanghai, call me. We’ll pick a place then.”

If he’s going to fuck me over, turn me over the Eos people, I’m not going to make it easy for him.

“Fine. I’ll be down tomorrow.”

He calls me around 4:00
P
.
M
. the next day. “Okay. Where?”

There’s a fancy bar down on the Bund that I went to once with Lucy Wu. Not really my thing, but unlike the expat dive bars I generally go to, it’s the kind of place where you’d have a hard time causing trouble.

Besides, now I even have the outfit for it.

I
TELL HIM
6:00
P
.
M
. and make sure I’m there first. It’s a bar/restaurant on the first floor of one of the restored European buildings that line the Shanghai riverfront. Sunk a little below ground level, so it’s got that dark, almost speakeasy vibe. I scope
out the place. I mean, it looks okay, but what do I really know about this spy shit? There’s some foreign businessmen having cocktails and overpriced scotch. A couple of elegant Chinese women wearing little black dresses. Accent lights glow against the black-and-red walls.

I seat myself at a little table against the wall, where I can see the entrance and I’m not too far from the back exit, then order a beer—some new Chinese microbrew made by an American and an Australian. It’s not bad.

I don’t have to wait too long before Carter shows up.

He spots me pretty fast. Comes over to the table and looks me up and down.

“You’re looking kinda fancy,” he says, pulling out the chair opposite and sitting down heavily.

I shrug. “Yeah, well, don’t get used to it.”

He looks the same. Middle-aged. Ginger hair going grey. Freckles. Blocky body in a cheap suit.

“How much am I gonna overpay for a tequila in this place?”

“Too much. It’s on me.”

He chuckles. “You’re really moving up in the world, Doc.”

“If you say so.”

He pounds his tequila and orders another one. I sip my beer. I’m trying to be smart.

“So tell me,” he says after the second tequila arrives. “What’s your take?”

“My take?”

“Tell me what you think is going on. And then I’ll tell you what I know.”

I sigh. I mean, I could be wrong.

Here goes nothing.

“I think this guy Han Rong worked for Hongxing Agricultural Products, like he said. But I don’t know that he really quit
because he was all … outraged or whatever by what Eos and Hongxing are doing.”

Carter stares at me with a neutral expression. Drinks some tequila. “How come you say that?”

“Because … I don’t know, the dude’s a weasel.”

He nods. “Okay. So then what?”

“Could be a lot of stuff. Like maybe he’s helping to fuck up Eos here in China so whoever’s paying him, some other company, can get a leg up with all this GMO crap. Or he’s still working for Hongxing, even. Hongxing decided they wanted to fuck over Eos and steal the patents for whatever it is they’re working on together, raise enough shit about Eos in the international press that Eos just gives up on whatever it is they’re doing here. Make them the bad guys. And whoever, Hongxing or some other company, can take over the market here, for now.”

All the while Carter stares at me, eyebrows half raised, expression a blank. I feel myself flush.

“Something like that,” I mutter.

“Not bad.” Carter lifts his hand to call the waitress. “Go on.”

“Okay. I’m not sure about this next part. Well, I figure Eos knows what Han Rong knows. About the three seed companies.”

“What do you mean?”

I sip my beer. “The American guy said, ‘We know the source of the leak now.’ ”

Carter nods, fractionally.

“The place in Guiyu, maybe that was for real,” I say after the waitress leaves. “I mean, as an address for a fake business. Or a place they could drop shipments to distribute to other stores or to farmers. It’s not like officials or whoever would probably check up on them, right? Who’d go looking for a seed company in Guiyu? Nobody goes there unless they have to.”

I think about the camera at the storefront in Dali. They were waiting for someone. Someone like me.

“The store in Dali, it was a setup. A trap. They were just waiting to see who took the bait. When I showed up at the warehouse in Guiyang, they were expecting me.”

“What about your pal Jason?”

“He’s not my pal,” I snap. “I never even met him.”

“Jesus, you’re touchy,” he mutters. “I mean, how far do you think he got?”

And this is where it gets tricky. Because even if I can trust Carter not to screw
me
over, I bet he’d love to get his hands on Jason. To collect the bounty on his head.

“I’m not sure. I’m guessing that he got as far as Dali,” I said. “But if he went to Guiyang, he never visited the warehouse. That’s what they wanted to know when they caught me. If I knew where he was.”

“And do you?”

“Like I said, no.”

“Okay.”

Our drinks arrive. Mine’s a Coke. For once.

“Well, I gotta say, Doc, from what I found out, you’re pretty close. I can’t tell you for sure whether it was a faction in Hongxing or some other group of assholes who wanted to fuck over Eos. Whichever it was, Hongxing closed ranks and they’re sticking to the original agreement with Eos. Who knows why? Maybe they’re scared of Eos’s firepower. Or maybe they think they can make more money working with Eos than competing with them. You know these Chinese companies. Most of them can’t innovate for shit.” He tosses back his tequila. “So whaddaya got for me?”

I sip my Coke. “I already gave it to you.”

His face gets that mean look I remember. “Nice. Here all this time I thought you might be playing fair.”

“Hey, I did some checking. You guys work corporate security
for another big biotech company. Maybe
you
might wanna fuck with Eos a little. Help secure some market share here.”

“What if we don’t?”

I shrug. “Up to you. I still told you some useful stuff. You wouldn’t have known where to look if I hadn’t. Besides, you didn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know.”

At that he chuckles. “Okay. So you knew it already. Then what is it you really want?”

The way he’s looking at me, with that little smirk, arm draped over his chair back, he’s not going to help me. I’m pretty sure I’ve wasted my time, or worse.

But I already took it this far.

“Those guys, those guys from Eos. They were gonna kill me. I’ve already got enough people on my ass. I don’t want to be looking over my shoulder for them, too.”

“And you think I can do something about that?”

“I think you know them. You or somebody else at GSC. That’s how you got your intel about Eos. And, I mean, they knew
me
. Where’d they get
that
from? Somebody at GSC, right? What was it, a couple of you getting together in a bar, swapping stories? You tell them about that fucked-up head case you threatened and bullied and beat up last year? Or was it … I dunno, a little horse-trading? Like you like to do.”

Silence. Carter’s doing that stare again, trying to psych me out, I figure. Well, fuck him. I can play that game, too.

He blinks first.

“You still haven’t told me what you want,” he says.

“I need for you or somebody to tell them that I’m not going to cause them any problems. That this isn’t my fight. I was just trying to do a favor for a buddy. That’s it.”

He’s quiet again, but he’s not staring at me. Instead he fixes on his tequila.

“Okay,” he finally says. He still won’t look at me.

“Thanks.” I’m so surprised he agreed that I don’t know what else to say. “You want another tequila?” I think to ask.

He shakes his head. “Look, Doc, you’re not gonna fuck me over on this, are you? Because yeah, I know those guys. And they’re assholes.” Now he does look at me. I’d say he seems more annoyed than concerned, but whatever. “So say I talk to them. It’s gonna be hard to call those dogs off the scent. The best thing you can do? Give it up. Don’t give them a trail to follow.”

“Okay,” I say. “Gotcha.”

I
DECIDE TO LOOK
for soup dumplings. They’re supposed to be a Shanghai specialty, and I’ve hardly had any dumplings since I left Beijing.

Just those ones with Creepy John. And the dog.

Anyway, the famous place is over in some tourist area near a temple, but it’s not close and I’m tired. Plus, my new outfit may look cool, but it’s not quite warm enough for the forty-something-degree weather outside. I ask the hostess about dumplings when I pay the bill for my drinks and Carter’s tequilas, and she tells me there’s a good place not far from here. I find it, tucked on a little street just a few blocks away. Your basic cheap Chinese restaurant, white walls, plastic tables with plastic covers, a couple of fish tanks in the window. I order some dumplings, including the soup kind that come with a plastic straw so you can suck up the hot juice.

I’m aching tired. Seeing Carter again, talking to him, it’s made me think about too much other shit I don’t like thinking about.

What I try to think about, while I’m eating, while I’m limping back to my hotel, is what do I do now?

Go back to Beijing, I guess. I mean, that’s the only thing to do, right? Hope that Carter can call off the dogs.

Which makes me think about Dog Turner. I wonder if he’s out of the hospital.

What the fuck is it with dogs anyway?

I get back to my hotel just after 8:30
P
.
M
., and all I want to do is crawl into bed.

Except maybe I’ll check my email first.