A pound was worth what, about a buck fifty?
Wheee! She wasn’t filthy rich, but Kerry Kent was certainly a modestly well-off secret agent, which was, as any self-respecting gentleman would tell you, the very best kind.
Almost two and a half million dollars.
On a civil servant’s salary.
Perhaps her grandparents were loaded and left her a bundle. Perhaps she had a rich first husband. Then again, perhaps she was the world’s finest stock picker and had done more than all right with her lunch money.
Or perhaps, Tommy Carmellini thought as he pocketed the worksheet and financial page, just perhaps, Kerry Kent was crooked.
Elizabeth Yeager’s apartment was a walk-up in a small village setting on the south side of the island. As the taxi driver settled in to wait, Jake Grafton made his way past the craft shops that catered to the tourist trade, only some of which were open today, to the stairs of Yeager’s building. Ivy and creeping vines covered the walls.
There were four mailboxes. Yeager’s was Apartment Three. He pushed the button.
“Yes.” An American woman’s voice, tired and angry.
“Elizabeth Yeager, I have a message for you.”
“What?”
“For you personally.”
“Come on up.” She buzzed the lock open.
The former consular employee opened her door just a crack. Jake Grafton slammed the door with his shoulder, and it flew open, nearly bowling her over. There was another woman sitting by the couch, a dumpy, middle-aged woman with graying hair.
“Who are you? What do you want?”
Yeager’s eyes were red from crying.
“You’re Yeager?”
“Yes.”
“Some questions for you.” He looked at the other woman. “If you wouldn’t mind.”
Yeager nodded at the woman, who glared at Jake as she swept past.
“It’s a crime to break into people’s apartments,” Yeager said as she perched on the edge of a chair. “Don’t forget, my neighbor, Mrs. O’Reilly, can identify you.”
“That was the woman who was just here?”
“That’s right.”
“Ms. Yeager, I wouldn’t be talking about crimes if I were you. Stealing passports, forgery, treason, kidnapping… If you ever go back to the states you may wind up spending the rest of your life in a cell.”
“You’re Grafton, aren’t you?”
Jake nodded.
“I’ve nothing to say, so get out.”
“Or what? You’ll call the police?”
She merely glared at him.
“Perhaps you’ll call Sonny Wong and he’ll send someone over to run me off. There’s the phone — call anyone you like.”
He sat in the chair facing her.
“Bastard.”
“Where’s my wife?”
“I don’t know.” Yeager hitched her bottom back in the chair and looked obstinately away.
Jake Grafton tried to hold his temper, which was getting more and more difficult. If Yeager only knew. “My wife has been kidnapped,” he explained patiently. “Her life is at stake. I think you know a great deal about Sonny Wong, where he can be found, where he stays, where his men operate from. I want to know all that. I’m not going to tell anyone what you tell me. I won’t report it to the United States government. It’ll be strictly between us, absolutely confidential.”
She turned to face him again. “You’re an officer in the United States navy. You can’t touch me. I know my rights! I have nothing to say!”
He pulled the Colt .45 from under his sports jacket, pointed it at her head, and thumbed off the safety. As she blanched, he turned the muzzle a few inches and pulled the trigger. The report was like an explosion, overpowering in that enclosed space. The bullet smacked into the wall behind her.
He leaped for her, grabbed a handful of hair, put the muzzle against her nose.
“Your rights don’t mean shit! Where is my wife, goddamn it?”
She swallowed hard. “I don’t know.” That came out a squeak.
“We’re having a revolution in Hong Kong, Ms. Yeager. The police have crawled into holes and the army has its hands full. No one cares about you. I can break every bone in your miserable body. I can shoot you full of holes and leave you here to bleed to death and nobody on this green earth will give a good goddamn. Now I’m going to ask you one more time, and if you give the wrong answer, we’re going to find out how many bullets it takes to kill you. Where is my wife?”
Elizabeth Yeager’s eyes got big as half-dollars and the color drained from her face. She tried to speak; the words came out a croak. Then she passed out cold. At first Jake thought she was faking it, but she went limp as linguine.
“Shit!” said Jake Grafton, more than a little disgusted with himself. Scaring a woman half to death.
“Shit,” he said again, and released his hold on Yeager. She slid off the chair onto the floor like a bundle of old rags.
He kicked the coffee table. It skittered away.
He had his chance last night. He should have stuck that revolver up Wong’s nose and told him he was going to blow his fucking head off if he didn’t produce Callie in a quarter of an hour.
Yeah.
He slammed the door to the apartment on his way out.
He had the taxi take him back to the consulate so he could watch the revolution on television. Since Cole had submitted his resignation and was technically no longer an employee of the United States government, Grafton probably shouldn’t be in his office. In any event, no one had suggested he leave. He turned on the television and settled behind Cole’s desk.
The thought that he should be doing something to find Callie gnawed at him. Just what that something was he didn’t know.
When the time came, Sonny would produce Wu and Callie to collect his money, but once he got it, he had to kill them all. Wu, Callie, Jake, Cole, everyone who had firsthand knowledge of the kidnapping. If he didn’t he was a dead man.
Sonny Wong would have enough shooters in the area to ensure no one escaped. You could bet your life on that.
Jake’s thoughts wandered. Callie had a brother in Chicago, married with two kids in college. Her mother was in an independent living facility near her brother, and her father was dead.
Her father had spent his career on the faculty at the University of Chicago. Professor McKenzie. What a piece of work he was! It wasn’t that the old man believed in Marxism, with its dubious theories of social change and mind-numbing economic twaddle — the feature he liked was the dictatorship of the elite. The professor was an intellectual snob. The great failing of the common man, in McKenzie’s opinion, was that he was common.
Jake wondered just what the prof would have thought of the collapse of communism all over the world.
He snapped off the television and sat down behind the consul general’s desk in the padded leather executive chair that usually held Tiger Cole’s skinny rump. There was a yellow legal pad on the desk, so he helped himself to a pen and began writing a report to the National Security staff on the situation in Hong Kong. Fortunately the consulate had radio communications with the State Department, so the staff could encrypt the report and put it on the air as soon as Jake finished it.
He was scrawling away when the secretary stuck his head in. “Ahh… Admiral.” He frowned, perhaps offended that Jake was using Cole’s office.
“Yes,” Jake replied, and kept going on the sentence he was writing.
“There’s a telephone call, sir. Mr. Carmellini.”
Jake picked up the instrument. “Grafton.”
“Carmellini, Admiral. I’m over here at Kerry Kent’s apartment checking her cupboard. It seems she has a sizable stock portfolio somewhere.”
Jake stopped writing. He had the telephone in a death grip. “Tell me about it.”
Carmellini did. He gave Jake the names of the companies he thought she owned shares in, the number of shares, and the values. He also gave Jake the information on the seventh stock, though he didn’t know the name of the company.