The Altman Code

“Yes, we do. Or at least, I do. I’ve been listening, and even though I was blindfolded, too, I was able to figure out a few things. It’s morning now, probably late morning. I heard vendors’ voices, awnings being opened, and boat horns and whistles from the harbor. Plus, I think there was a rumble from underneath us, as if the subway runs somewhere near. I figure we’re in Wanchai again, in some back street not so far from the harbor.”

  “From the look of this room, we’re in an old building,” Randi decided. “And that means probably only one staircase—only one way out.”

  Jon nodded. “Right, so our best shot really is to jump them. You can handle McDermid, right?”

  “With one hand.”

  “Use two. Just to be sure, not to mention fast.”

  “Consider it done. We’ll need to be out of here in a hurry, before the others know what’s happening. But can you do it? You look seriously banged up.”

  “I’ve felt better. The good thing is nothing’s broken, and I’ll rise to the occasion. The threat of death is a fine motivator to get a fellow off his duff.”

  She studied him and nodded. He had that determined look she had seen in him before. “You’re the doctor.”

  “Get me loose, but leave the ropes on so it looks as if I’m still tied.”

  She undid the knots, her fingers fumbling as she hurried.

  As she worked, he said, “They’ll ask you a lot more questions about your Russian contacts. What you’re after. What your arms dealer has to sell and wants to buy . . . all that. You’ve got to keep their attention, especially Feng’s.”

  She left the ropes entwined, so they would look tight. “Thanks for the advice. I never would’ve figured it out by myself.”

  Jon ignored her sarcasm. “He’ll have his gun, of course. I intend to blind-side him.”

  “Then you make damn sure you get him the first time.”

  “I know. I—”

  They heard the key turn in the lock. Jon instantly slumped in the chair, careful not to move the nylon ropes. Randi resumed her nonchalant posture in the other chair, ready to do business with McDermid, if the price was right.

  McDermid appeared first. Feng Dun walked behind, not hurrying, his expression a mixture of suspicion and disapproval. He did not like the way McDermid was handling the Russian woman. He cared nothing about McDermid’s business, and, besides, he did not trust her. She was too glib. No one had yet asked her to prove that she was who she claimed to be. It was an oversight he intended to correct now.

  From under his nearly closed eyelids, Jon saw the questions on Feng’s face. And although the killer was distracted, he was watching Jon.

  McDermid walked directly to Randi. “All right, let’s talk about your people. We’re going to—”

  “Hold it,” Feng announced. “First I’ll check the American.”

  He pulled Jon’s head up by his hair. Jon groaned, and he drooled saliva from his slack mouth. Without warning, Feng slapped him across the face. Jon gave a feeble flinch and collapsed so heavily Feng had to support his head with one hand while he used the other to tug on the nylon cords across Jon’s chest.

  Randi felt her muscles tense with fear as she tried to maintain her casual slouch on the chair. Jon’s cords held. She had looped them several places, and Jon had expanded his chest to make them tight. When he relaxed, the loops would slip. Then he could work free unseen.

  “Finished?” McDermid said impatiently. The Altman CEO did not wait for an answer. He returned his attention to Randi. “We . . . What’s your name, I can’t just call you the Russian.”

  “Ludmilla Sakkov.” She nodded toward Feng Dun. “What’s his name?”

  “You don’t need to know my name, Russian. If you are Russian,” Feng said, observing her closely from head to toe. “I once fought for the Russians—”

  At that moment, Jon leaped from his chair far more quickly than he had thought possible. Relaxing, feeling the cords slip, then lunging. The loops fell away, the chair clattered backward, and his right fist caught Feng Dun on the point of his jaw. The blow snapped Feng’s neck back and sideways, pinched his spinal column, and knocked him sideways where he would have pitched into McDermid, if McDermid had still been standing there.

  He was not. Two powerful karate chops to the throat and the side of the head from the suddenly standing “Russian” had knocked McDermid to the floor, unconscious. Feng’s legs tripped on McDermid’s legs, and Feng slammed down onto his shoulder.

  “Jon!” Randi shouted.

  As Feng landed, he shook his head to clear it and reached under his jacket. They could see his pistol, but he had sprawled too far away for them to reach it with a kick. He rolled over onto his back, the gun in both hands, preparing for a target. At the same time, shouts erupted outside the room. Feet pounded to the door. Feng’s men.

  They were trapped again, and they had fewer options.

  “The window!” Jon said.

  He spun, nearly fell over from a wave of pain, and ran straight at the drapes that covered the big window. He slammed through in a loud shattering of glass and splintering of old wood, and was gone, carrying the protective drapes with him. Without letting herself think, Randi followed.

  The room had been on the third floor of a building from the thirties. A scream escaped Randi’s throat as she and Jon plunged down.

  Jon and Randi flailed through the air, desperately grabbing at anything they could see as they plummeted. They smashed onto a heavy canvas awning. Safe, they gazed with relief at each other, collecting their wits. The awning groaned. They scrambled toward the frame, trying to grab it. The steel supports resisted and bent.

  As shouts sounded from the window above, the canvas ripped, dumping them toward the street again. But there was a second, shorter awning, shielding a window. They landed, slid off, and landed again—this time on the umbrella of an omelette vendor. Instantly, it collapsed, too.

  They fell hard to the street, barely missing the omelette cart. As the vendor yelled, they lay stunned, reeling. Around them, businesspeople were preparing for the new day. Delivery trucks rumbled along the narrow street, parking on the curb, blocking the traffic so that only one lane could pass. Pedestrians stopped to stare at the European couple who had crashed into their midst, especially since the blond woman wore rustic country clothes. A babel of languages filled the air as they gathered, some pointing upward as they explained the unusual event.

  Jon’s mouth and face were bleeding again, and there was a ragged tear in his trousers where fresh blood oozed up. He moved his arms and legs. He hurt everywhere, but nothing seemed broken.

  Randi had landed on her back. Gasping, trying to breathe normally, she checked herself for injuries, for broken bones, for blood. Remarkably, she appeared to be unhurt.

  They sat up, almost at the same moment. As the circle of the curious closed in, they exchanged another look of relief, this time mixed with exhaustion. Still, it was not over. Feng Dun and his men were probably already chasing down the stairs after them.

  As they struggled to their feet, she told him, “There’s an alley.”

  Jon nodded, unable to talk. They limped toward it, pushing people out of their way.

  “Randi! Here!” CIA operative Allan Savage waved his arms from where he stood on the fender of a black Buick. His nondescript face was worried. Two more members of Randi’s team were shoving their way toward them.

  “Who’s this guy?” Agent Baxter wanted to know as he slung Jon’s arm over his shoulder and supported him toward the car.

  “Don’t ask. Get him inside. Fast!”

  With his peripheral vision, Jon saw Feng Dun burst through to the street next to an adult shop, his head swiveling as he looked everywhere. Three other men crowded out behind. All aimed weapons. When the crowd saw them, they screamed and ran.

  Jon’s legs moved weakly, unable to hold him up. Randi tumbled into the back of the Buick. Agent Baxter threw Jon in after her.

  Shots ripped the street. People continue
d to scatter, finding cover where they could. From the car, Allan Savage in the driver’s seat and a female agent in the back returned a withering fire from minisubmachine guns.

  As Feng Dun and his killers dove back into the doorway, Savage ground the Buick’s gears and drove away, screeched around the first corner, and was gone.

  The CIA safe house occupied a four-story building on Lower Albert Road in Central. The Buick drove into an alley behind the building, a cement wall slid open, and the car disappeared inside. The first floor had been gutted, the hidden garage installed, and the front area turned into an insurance office where people came and went all day, doing legitimate business. The insurance agency made a small profit, which pleased the DCI in Langley as well as the congressmen and senators on the oversight committees.

  On the second floor was the safe house’s first-aid room. An American-born Hong Kong doctor on Langley’s payroll examined their wounds and bruises and took X rays with a portable unit.

  He declared Randi “one lucky little girl.”

  Allan Savage and the others on the rescue team winced as they saw the scowl that appeared on Randi’s face, expecting the worst for the doctor. But to their astonishment, she merely glared. The doctor, who had expected at least a smile of appreciation, was confused.

  He turned hastily to Jon, who was a different matter. “That’s a nasty battering your face took, and you’re bruised around the ribs.” He muttered to himself as he took X rays of Jon’s injuries and was amazed to find nothing more than the severe bruising. “Still, you’re well beat up. I’d say you were out of action for a week . . . at least three or four days. You could get an infection from those facial wounds and the lacerations in your mouth.”

  “Sorry, Doc,” Jon told him. “Work to do. Clean me up and shoot me full of antibiotics. Painkillers sound like an attractive idea, too.”

  After the doctor left, the crew provided lunch. Soup only for Jon.

  Allan Savage apologized to Randi. “Sorry we were late, but Tommie tailed you fine until they got you to the street. That’s where she lost you. She never saw exactly where they took you. We were combing the area building by building when you came flying out those windows. That was a damned risky way to escape. How’d you know how high you were and what was under the windows?”

  “Don’t ask me.” Randi gave a toss of her head toward Jon. “It was his idea. I just followed.” She wolfed down eggs and bacon.

  Jon shrugged. “I figured it was an older, lower building. Anyway, without weapons, and Feng Dun’s going for his gun and the rest of the gang damn near into the room, we didn’t have time to even grab our chairs and swing them. It was out the window or dead.”

  There were awed looks all around.

  The other female agent, Tommie Parker, said to Randi, “Who is this guy?”

  “Meet Lieutenant Colonel Jon Smith, M.D. That’s Jon without an h. He’s a researcher for USAMRIID. What else he is remains open for speculation, right, Jon?”

  “Randi sees conspiracies everywhere.” Jon grinned innocently. The painkillers were taking effect. Between them and the soup, he was beginning to feel much better. There were flesh-covered Band-Aids on his face, and his fat lip was hardly a pretty sight. Still, he figured he could look a lot worse. Now what he wanted was a few uninterrupted hours of sleep.

  “So do we,” Allan Savage said, studying Jon.

  Jon sighed. “I’m a doctor, a microbiological scientist, and I work at Fort Detrick for USAMRIID. Sometimes they send me on special assignments. Especially in cases of emerging viruses. Why don’t we leave it at that?”

  Tommie frowned, her dark eyes suspicious. She had shoulder-length brown hair and a sweet, gamin’s face that Jon had decided hid shrewd intellect and a daring spirit. “What virus is emerging in Hong Kong, Colonel?”

  “None. But there’s one inside China,” he lied, “and Donk & LaPierre’s medical division is investigating it. The government wants to know more.”

  “Which government?” Tommie probed suspiciously.

  Randi interrupted, “That’s the only thing about Jon I’m sure of—he works for our side.”

  Jon had a retort ready to fling when the last agent from the Buick, Baxter, leaned into the first-aid room through an open door. “We’re picking up something on the phone bug we installed in McDermid’s office last night. A call just came in.”

  They jumped up and ran out along the hallway and into a rear room crammed with electronic gear, machines, and instruments. Randi and Jon pushed through to stand close to a notebook computer from which a woman’s voice spoke with a slight accent. “You’re Ralph McDermid?”

  Chapter

  Thirty-One

  Ever since he returned to his penthouse office, Ralph McDermid had been alternately worried and angry. As he worked on a new agreement to acquire a troubled Asian investment firm in Hong Kong, his mind returned to the morning’s debacle with Jon Smith and the woman. He was angry with himself for allowing the woman, who might not have been Russian after all, certainly not someone looking for a business deal, to play him so easily, and at Feng Dun, for underestimating Smith.

  Still, the situation was hardly lost. It was true the pair was on the loose, and Jon Smith was dangerous, but little harm had actually been done. Smith still had no way to prove the Empress carried illicit chemicals. Feng would eventually find and kill him—he had the resources, even here in Hong Kong.

  These thoughts reassured him. When his phone rang, he answered with his usual well-honed civility. “Yes, Lawrence?”

  “A lady, sir. On line two. She sounds rather young, and . . . ah . . . attractive.”

  “A lady? And possibly attractive? Well, well.” He was expecting no calls from any “lady,” and this made him feel even more optimistic. “Put her on, Lawrence. Put her on.”

  He was straightening his tie as if she could see him when her voice appeared in his ear in slightly stilted English. “You’re Ralph McDermid?”

  “Guilty as charged, my dear. Do we know each other?”

  “Perhaps. You’re chairman and CEO of the Altman Group?”

  “Yes, yes. That I am.”

  “Your corporation is the owner of Donk & LaPierre?”

  “We’re a financial group, and we hold many companies. But what—?”

  “We’ve never met, Mr. McDermid, but I believe we’ll soon have occasion for that. At least figuratively.”

  McDermid felt his bad temper returning. This sounded like no woman suggesting a tryst. “If this is business, madame, you’ll need to call my office, state what that business is, and make an appointment. If your concern is with Donk & LaPierre, I suggest you call them directly. Good day to you—”

  “Our business is with The Dowager Empress, Mr. McDermid. Believe me, you are wise to deal with us directly.”

  McDermid’s eyebrows rose. “What?”

  “The Empress is a ship, in case you’ve forgotten. A Chinese cargo vessel en route to Basra. Its cargo is, we believe, of great interest to the Americans. Possibly to the Chinese also.”

  “Tell me what you want, and we might be able to benefit both of us.”

  “We’re delighted you’re ready to talk of mutual benefit.” He lost his temper. “Stop speaking in riddles! You’ll have to tell me far more to convince me I need to listen. Otherwise, stop wasting my time!” Attack, as he had learned personally over the years, was often the best defense.

  “The Empress sailed from Shanghai in early September for Basra. In its holds are many tons of thiodiglycol for Iraq to produce blister weapons as well as thionyl chloride to produce both blister and nerve weapons.” The woman’s quiet voice took on a sinister edge. “Is that sufficient, Mr. Ralph McDermid, CEO, founder of the Altman Group?”

  McDermid found it difficult to speak. He pressed the recording button on the phone, signaled for Lawrence, and said carefully, “Precisely whom do you represent, and what do you want?”

  “We represent only ourselves. Are you ready to hear our pr
ice and terms?”

  Lawrence entered the office. McDermid gestured for him to have the call traced. At the end of his patience, he snapped, “Who the hell are you, and why shouldn’t I hang up immediately?”

  “My name is Li Kuonyi, Mr. McDermid. My husband is Yu Yongfu. As you no doubt recall, he’s the president and chairman of Flying Dragon Enterprises. He’s an intelligent man. So intelligent and farseeing, in fact, that he saved his company’s copy of the Empress’s invoice manifest. We have it with us.”

  In the CIA safe house, the exclamation burst from Jon before he could stop himself, “Holy hell!”

  All eyes turned to look.

  Randi said, “Jon? You know what this is about?”

  “Later,” he said, waving his hand. “Quiet. Listen.”

  McDermid’s shocked silence had ended. He’d had enough. “Your husband burned the manifest and committed suicide. A tragedy, as we say. I don’t know what your game is, but—”

  “You were told my husband had killed himself to save his family on the orders of my father and those far higher politically. You were also told he burned the manifest and shot himself in the head and fell into the river. All of that’s a lie. He burned a useless paper and fired his pistol, yes. He fell into the river, yes. But the bullets in the weapon weren’t real. What Feng saw was a charade. I know, because I staged it.”

  “Impossible!”

  “Has the body of my husband been found?”

  “Many bodies are never found in the Yangtze delta.”

  “Do you know my husband’s voice, Mr. McDermid?”

  “No.”

  “Feng Dun does.”

  “He isn’t here.”

  “You are, of course, recording this conversation?”

  There was a pause. “Yes.”

  “Then listen.”

  A male voice came onto the line. “I’m Yu Yongfu, McDermid. Tell that traitor Feng that the last time we spoke I offered him a bonus. He told me of the death of the American spy, Mondragon, on Liuchiu Island and about a second American who escaped and was seen in Shanghai. Tell him that, unfortunately for him, my wife is my business partner, and I never withhold information from her. Never. It was she who advised me to keep the manifest safe, and she’s the one who orchestrated my ‘suicide.’ Everyone believes she’s the smarter of us in all ways, but that’s not true. I’m rather intelligent myself—after all, I convinced her to marry me.”