The Chase

  “The producers said they’d call me in a week or so about shooting the next episode. What was I supposed to do in the meantime? I’m an actor, and actors need to act. It’s like breathing.”

  “You won’t be doing either if we find out you’ve been lying to us.”

  “Why would I? I’m not in on it. Isn’t it obvious why they hired me?”

  “Because you’re desperate and cheap?” Mr. Smith said.

  “Verisimilitude,” Boyd said.

  Mr. Smith gave him a blank look.

  “Reality,” Boyd said. “I gave their scam instant believability by virtue of being the only one involved who was genuine.”

  It was a good argument and Mr. Smith seemed convinced, or maybe he just couldn’t handle Boyd’s bad breath any longer. He glanced at Mr. Brown, who nodded, pulled the car over to the curb, and unlocked the doors.

  “You hear from them, you call us,” Mr. Smith said, handing him a card. “Or your next role will be a corpse on CSI.”

  Boyd got out and watched the Mercedes drive off down Lankershim. He didn’t dare try to call the number he had for Kate to warn her. They were undoubtedly watching him closely. If the number still worked, he’d be playing right into BlackRhino’s hands, revealing himself as a player in the con and leading them directly to Kate. All he could do was hope that Nick and Kate knew that they were already being hunted.

  Nick and Kate were once again sitting in the dark in the backseat of the Rolls-Royce. It was six hours before Fu’s A380 was scheduled to land in Shanghai. The dead BlackRhino operative was stashed in the boat, along with the trash bags. The safecracking rig was still whirring along. It was a waiting game now.

  They’d gone through the candy, the crackers, and a bottle of wine. They’d played 20 Questions, sung songs, and taken turns napping.

  “This is boring,” Kate said. “This flight is never going to end.”

  “Yes, but listen,” Nick said.

  “I don’t hear anything.”

  “Exactly.”

  The clickety-clack sound of the safecracking rig had stopped.

  “The combination has been cracked and the safe is unlocked,” Nick said.

  “And you’re still sitting here?”

  “There’s no hurry. We have hours until we land in Shanghai.”

  “I don’t care,” Kate said. “This is exciting. I have to see.”

  Kate got out of the car, flicked her flashlight on, and led the way to the ULD that contained the safe.

  Nick followed close behind and gestured to the iPhone attached to the rig. There were six numbers glowing on the screen. “That’s the combination.”

  Nick crouched in front of the safe, carefully removed the rig, set it aside, and turned the latch on the door. He opened the safe, and there was the rooster, staring out at them.

  “He looks fierce,” Kate said, shining the flashlight into the safe.

  Nick took the rooster out and placed it gently on the floor. He opened the case containing the real one and placed it alongside the fake one. He stepped back and examined them under his Maglite.

  “Whoever made the phony did excellent work. The patina of the bronze is perfect. I can’t see any difference.”

  “Don’t get confused and mix them up.”

  “I’m not new at this, you know. I’m an experienced professional. Maybe one of the best in the world.”

  “I’m just saying.”

  Ten minutes later, the real rooster was locked in the safe, the fake rooster was snug in its carrying case, and Kate and Nick were back in the Rolls-Royce.

  “While you were napping I made a quick trip to Fu’s wine cellar,” Nick said. “I thought we needed something appropriate for a celebration when the safe got opened.”

  “Champagne?”

  “Of course.”

  “Shall we open it?”

  He smiled at her. “It would be criminal not to.”

  “You’re the expert.”

  Duff MacTaggert slept in an apartment directly over his pub in a heavy, hand-carved four-poster bed that was among the few surviving pieces of furniture pillaged from Kilmarny Castle over a century ago. The bed was big, sturdy, and a survivor, just like Duff.

  The mattress, however, was brand new, hand-crafted in Aberdeen by blind artisans using the same techniques, and highly developed sense of touch, as their sightless ancestors who began the company in the mid-1800s. The British Royal Family slept on mattresses just like it at Balmoral Castle. It was an expensive, sumptuous mattress meant for kings and for Duff MacTaggert, the King of Thieves. Duff loved his bed.

  So it took a lot to get Duff out of bed in the middle of the night. But on this night there was a distant rumble, and as it grew closer and louder his bed began to shake, something it had never done before, not even in the fiercest winter storm. The noise grew deafening and the whole building rattled. The shaking loosened from the ceiling a fine mist of stone dust that powdered his whiskers, and then a harsh light filled his room. That got him up.

  He grabbed a robe, crossed the room, and squinted into the light outside his window. A helicopter hovered over the loch, aiming a spotlight at his pub. It had to be the police. They’d finally figured out what he’d done and had come to get him.

  Duff went downstairs, marching through his pub, out the front door, and across the gravel to the edge of the beach to face the bastards head-on. The big black chopper hovered in front of him like some huge angry insect. It was an Apache attack helicopter armed with Hellfire antitank missiles, Hydra 70 rockets, and a phallic 30mm machine gun between its landing gear. The Apache struck Duff as overkill, but part of him was flattered the cops thought he was so dangerous that they needed one.

  He gave the chopper the finger and cursed at it in Gaelic. The Apache opened fire on his pub with a barrage of 30mm rounds, shattering the windows, obliterating the doors, and riddling the stone façade. After a solid minute, the gun stopped. Duff looked back at his pub. It stood as defiantly as he did. Then two Hydra rockets streaked from the chopper. The building exploded like a sandcastle kicked by a petulant child.

  The blast knocked Duff off his feet and facedown onto the ground.

  Armed commandos dressed in black peeled out of the darkness. Two of them lifted Duff to his feet. When Duff saw their balaclava-hooded faces and the stony look in their eyes, he knew it wasn’t the police who’d come for him and now he wished that it had been.

  The police would only jail him. But these guys were from BlackRhino. They would torture him to the edge of sanity and death to get what they wanted. He’d hold out as long as he could against the agony. It was a matter of honor and pride. But he’d eventually tell them what they wanted to know. He’d give them Nicolas Fox.

  Hours after the events in Kilmarny, the A380 Superjumbo made a smooth landing at Shanghai Hongqiao International Airport and taxied to a stop. The local time was two in the afternoon, and it was drizzling. Nick and Kate were unaware of the local weather from where they sat.

  “I feel like we’re living the ending of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” Kate said.

  She was crammed into the trunk of the Dodge Charger with the two metal cases and a trash bag containing their bottles, candy wrappers, and soiled paper towels. They had done their best to clean up the cargo hold so there were no signs that a ULD had been opened, or that the safe had been broken into, or that there had been any stowaways on board. But they’d been working in the dark, using only their flashlights, and Kate knew they could easily have missed something.

  “You mean that scene when Redford and Newman are stuck in some adobe hut, surrounded by the Bolivian army, and they decide to run out the door shooting into a barrage of bullets?” Nick asked. He’d stuffed himself into the compartment they’d created under the backseat.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “That doesn’t apply to our situation at all.”

  “We’re a couple of outlaws stuck in an airplane, and the Chinese police and a squad of BlackRhino
killers could be surrounding us right now, waiting for us to come out of the cargo hold.”

  “Or there could be nobody outside this plane besides Fu’s ground crew. Don’t be so pessimistic. I’m counting on making my dinner reservation at Ultraviolet.”

  “That’s your priority right now, not losing your table?”

  “I haven’t had a proper meal in over twenty-four hours. It’s a matter of survival.”

  “What do you think is going to happen when that cargo hatch opens?”

  “The ground crew will unload the cargo hold, someone will drive this car to the underground parking garage at Fu’s high-rise in Pudong, and we’ll slip away unnoticed.”

  “And if we’re surrounded by police and BlackRhino killers?”

  “We go to Plan B,” Nick said. It was why, as a precaution, he was hiding under the backseat instead of with her in the trunk.

  “Plan B sucks,” Kate said.

  “It’s better than Plan C.”

  “We don’t have a Plan C.”

  “Now Plan B doesn’t seem so bad, does it?”

  She would have shaken her head had it been possible without banging herself on the wheel well. “I think you’re even better at fooling yourself than you are at conning other people.”

  “If you can’t fool yourself,” he said, “how can you expect to fool anybody else?”

  Fu’s A380 Superjumbo was parked outside a private terminal at the south end of the airport. Surrounding the airport was a dense concentration of warehouses, restaurants, office buildings, tourist hotels, sprawling apartment complexes, and the convergence of four freeways in an enormous tangle of overpasses.

  Fu sat in his office aboard the jet and peered out the window at the murky skyline. Scattered rain clouds mingled with the thick brown haze of smog that continually hung over the city. The drizzle rinsed the gunk from the skies and soaked the ground and water with toxic chemicals. But once the rain clouds passed, at least the skies would be clear for a change and Shanghai would sparkle in the sunlight. Fu always tried to look at the bright side of things.

  He was about to turn away from the window when several white police vans swarmed around the plane, and a dozen officers in their pressed olive green uniforms scrambled out, carrying rifles. He’d expected to be greeted by some low-level dignitaries, but not the police. He’d been told before he left for D.C. that the government wanted to keep the arrival of the rooster quiet and save the hoopla for the official unveiling and repatriation at the National Museum of China in Beijing. But now, with the Smithsonian woman on board and the arrival of the police, something had obviously changed the government’s thinking.

  Fu answered his phone, expecting it was the customary call from the pilot informing him that they’d arrived and inquiring whether Fu wanted to leave the plane before, after, or along with his invited guests.

  “My compliments on a smooth flight,” Fu said.

  “Thank you, sir,” the pilot said. “The Ministry of Public Security has contacted us. They’ve surrounded the plane and have ordered everyone to remain on board until instructed otherwise. They’ve sent an official to the main cabin door to meet with you.”

  “I’ll be right down,” Fu said.

  By the time Fu reached the bottom of the spiral staircase, the lower-level door was already open and a bureaucrat from the Ministry of Public Security was waiting for him with one of the flight attendants. The man appeared to be in his forties, wore a cheap, wet overcoat, and reeked of cigarettes. He had nicotine-stained teeth, bloodshot eyes, and a pointed nose that gave him a birdlike appearance.

  “I’m police inspector Zhaoji Li,” he said, and shook Fu’s outstretched hand. “I apologize for the inconvenience, Mr. Fu, but we’ve received a tip that Nicolas Fox, an international thief pursued by law enforcement agencies worldwide, might try to steal the rooster.”

  “Now? While we’re sitting here on the runway? That’s ridiculous.”

  Zhaoji grimaced, as if it pained him to even be discussing the topic. “I’m told he’s quite resourceful. In fact, there’s a chance he’s already stolen it in flight.”

  “How could he get on board, and how could he possibly hope to escape with the rooster?”

  The inspector shrugged. “If I was imaginative enough to figure out how to accomplish such an extraordinary crime, I’d be a world-class thief like Fox and not the simple police officer that I am.”

  “You sound like you admire him, Inspector.”

  “I envy people with imagination. People like you, sir. I’m someone who sees only what he already knows and what is right in front of him.”

  Fu appreciated Zhaoji’s honest self-appraisal and subtle suck-up. Perhaps there was more to this inspector than met the eye. “I assume this rumor about Fox is why a Smithsonian security guard approached us in D.C. and insisted on coming along on the flight.”

  The inspector shrugged again. Fu got the impression that shrugging was Zhaoji’s primary form of communication.

  “We’d like to keep everyone but you on the plane until we can confirm that the rooster is on board and genuine,” Zhaoji said. “We have an antiquities expert with us from the State Administration of Cultural Heritage to authenticate the rooster. If everything is in order, we’ll allow everyone off the plane and provide security for the rooster on its journey to the Shanghai Museum.”

  “Suit yourself, Inspector, but I assure you it’s a waste of time.”

  The lights came on in the cargo hold, and Kate heard the ramp drop open. There were footsteps on the ramp. Maybe a half dozen men. They were engaged in a serious conversation. They walked past the Charger toward the ULDs. Kate didn’t speak or understand Chinese, but she heard two words that chilled her blood. Nicolas Fox.

  Fu led the inspector, four armed officers, and the antiquities expert to the ULD that held his safe. The expert, Lui Wei, looked frail and ancient enough to have seen the rooster the last time it was in China, one hundred and fifty years ago at the Old Summer Palace in Beijing.

  Fu opened the ULD, revealing the safe inside. He looked over his shoulder at Zhaoji. “It appears untouched to me.”

  The inspector nodded. “That’s encouraging, sir. Please proceed.”

  Fu used his body to shield the dial from view so nobody could see the combination as he unlocked the safe. He spun the dial, opened the safe, and stepped back, presenting the rooster with a sweep of his hand.

  “Here it is,” Fu said. “Emperor Qianlong’s bronze rooster.”

  The antiquities expert crouched in front of the rooster and slipped on a pair of wire-rimmed glasses that made his eyes appear so enormous, he looked like E.T. in a wrinkled suit.

  Zhaoji stepped away to give Lui some light and more room to work. He scanned the cargo hold, glancing at the two cars and the boat. He looked up at the ceiling and down at the floor. Everything was immaculate. Except for one tiny dark spot on the floor. He knelt to examine it and found another drop a couple feet away. One drop led to another. And another. A trail. The inspector was so intent on following the drops that he missed an even more significant detail. The straps and chains that should have been securing the rare Dodge Charger Daytona to the floor of the cargo hold were unfastened, and the battery was back in place, under the hood.

  “We’re going with Plan B,” Nick whispered to Kate when he heard his name mentioned by the Chinese official.

  “Oh crap,” Kate whispered back.

  Nick slashed the backseat open and crept out of his hiding place and into the driver’s seat of the Charger, while all eyes were on the rooster. The keys were in the ignition. Nick released the parking brake and pumped the gas pedal to prime the engine.

  Kate thought Plan B should have been called Plan D, for Desperation. Or Plan S, for Suicide. She braced herself in the trunk as best she could. Her fate was in Nick’s hands now. Fortunately, if there was one thing she knew about Nick Fox, it was that he was very, very good at avoiding capture.

  Zhaoji climbed onto the jetb
oat, following the tiny drops of blood to an aft storage compartment that was topped with a cushion and doubled as a seating area. He bent down, removed the cushions, and lifted the lid. Several plastic trash bags were crammed inside. He pulled the bags out and discovered a woman’s stiff, dead body. She was blond, and her neck was twisted at an unnatural angle. He could see the Smithsonian patch on her jacket breast pocket.

  “The rooster is authentic,” Lui Wei declared, rising to his feet in front of the safe.

  “That’s a relief,” Zhaoji said, his back to the men below. “Tell me, Mr. Fu, was the Smithsonian guard a woman?”

  Nick heard someone on the boat say Smithsonian and nurén, the Chinese word for “woman,” and knew the assassin’s body had been found. He sat up, turned the ignition key, depressed the clutch, jammed the car into reverse, and flattened the gas pedal.

  The Charger’s loud, guttural roar startled everyone in the cargo hold. They were even more surprised when they saw the car speed backward down the ramp and smack onto the wet tarmac, setting off sparks and scattering the ground crew.

  Fu ran after the car, waving his hands, yelling for the driver to stop. Zhaoji scrambled off the boat, issuing orders to secure the hold. And Kate held her breath and braced herself.

  Nick executed a perfect half-spin as he hit the tarmac, turning the car around so it faced away from the plane and directly toward the chain-link fence that separated the airfield from the road. The Charger shot forward, a blur of red streaking over the asphalt, its 426 Hemi engine powering it through the fence and onto a side street that led into a warren of warehouses. He sped south, straight into oncoming traffic, dodging head-on collisions with the taxis, trucks, and buses. All those hours playing Asteroids at the video arcade when he was a kid had definitely paid off. He wanted to throw as many obstacles into the path of his pursuers as he could.

  He glanced into his rearview mirror and saw cars swerving wildly in his wake, but didn’t see any police on his tail. He had the element of surprise, a big head start, and a car capable of hitting two hundred miles per hour. Still, he knew eventually they’d spot him from the air. And to make matters worse, he had no idea where he was going. He’d flown into Hongqiao International Airport before. He’d seen the Hongqiao streets from the sky and from the backseat of a taxi, but that wasn’t the same as knowing his way around. What he remembered most about the area from those trips were the wide elevated freeways and roads that all seemed to converge in one spot.