The crowds were thick and angry, and Teddy easily blended in as the police passed them by. When he was able to extract himself from the crowd, he looked down over the glass bridge and saw that Bingo had made it to the bottom of the Tower and was exiting the lower-level shopping center. If Teddy couldn’t catch up with him in the next several seconds, Bingo would likely disappear and Teddy’s best chance at getting justice for Peter and Ben would be gone.
At the end of the glass bridge, Teddy saw the bungee jumping station Dale had shown him. He didn’t have time to strap himself into the rig and then unstrap it when he got to the bottom, or wait for someone to unhook him if he didn’t quite make it to the bottom, so he looked to the line of tandem jumpers.
One instructor was already strapped into a harness and connected to the cord and the tandem jumper was almost finished getting strapped into her harness. Teddy put himself in the mind-set of stuntman Mark Weldon and pushed his way to the front of the line.
“I apologize terribly for what I’m about to do,” Teddy said, as he grabbed the instructor as tightly as he could and pushed them both off the jump deck.
Teddy pointed them as straight downward as possible so they had maximum speed. At the very bottom of the drop, just before they would snap and bounce back up toward the platform, Teddy spied the safety net he was aiming for and pushed himself off the plummeting jumper just as the cord snapped taut.
Teddy slammed into the edge of the safety net, taking the landing more roughly than he’d hoped. He could still run, though, and Bingo was just about to pass when Teddy hopped off the safety net and landed on top of him. Bingo fought back, but Teddy quickly regained the upper hand and wrapped Bingo in a wrestling hold one of the stunt coordinators on his last movie had taught him.
“Tell me Arrow Donaldson was behind those videos of Peter and Ben.”
Bingo struggled but didn’t say anything.
“Or was it Li Feng?”
Teddy tightened his grip on Bingo, crushing the man’s chest and putting immense pressure on his arms.
Bingo struggled to speak. “Li Feng would prostitute herself to your American friends, not ruin them. I put them in the video to make them pay. You American movie men think you can—”
Teddy was in no mood to listen to a long speech now that he had in his hands the main person responsible for setting up Peter and Ben. Teddy swung his feet out, caught Bingo’s legs at the knees, and dropped him to the ground.
“I don’t want to hear it,” Teddy said. “But I don’t want to kill you here on this hill unarmed unless I have to.”
Teddy let go of Bingo and took a step back.
Bingo went for Teddy’s throat.
“I will kill Li Feng, I will kill—”
Teddy sighed as he whipped his hand out and hit Bingo in the throat, then wrapped his arms around Bingo’s neck again and snapped it.
67
Teddy went back to the Tower to piece together what else had happened while he’d been fighting Bingo. He arrived just in time to see Sonny Ma and the festival organizers giving a press conference about how they had used the skills and talents of the local film community to stage the fake death that also served as a lesson to show kids contemplating a life of crime what was in store for them.
“The only reason I am standing on this stage instead of lying in a street is because I turned away from crime. I found my salvation in technology, but you can follow your own heart, whether it’s in books or paintings or music or business. Follow the voice of passion, not the voice of violence.”
The speech seemed to be going over well with the crowd, even if Teddy thought the wording was a bit corny. Violence was as much a product of passion as music and painting, and history had shown that violence and art were more intertwined than society ever liked to admit. But Teddy kept those thoughts to himself as he strolled through the scene of his most recent violence.
In the crush of bodies and screaming audience members, someone protected Li Feng. The woman, who had been part of the security crew for the film festival, escorted Li Feng out through a series of hidden access ways. They emerged on the opposite side of the chaos and caught their breaths before catching up.
“Thank you,” Li Feng said.
“You should thank her, too,” Dale said.
The woman named Millie Martindale from the CIA stepped into view. Dale Gai left the two of them alone.
“I was on my way over here to try and convince you one more time that I can protect you better than Arrow. Sounds like you’re ready to believe that now.”
“He had his man Bingo try to kill me.”
“I have a car ready to take you to the airport right now,” Millie said.
“My family has eyes at the airport. They have eyes everywhere. Arrow has eyes everywhere. The only way I was able to get in and out of the country before undetected was using Arrow’s private plane.”
“Don’t worry about Arrow. He’s not going to be a problem anymore. We’ll make a stop first. I know a guy who’s pretty good with disguises.”
“But my papers. My new identity. You can make me look like whoever you want, but my passport will betray me. My identity will betray me.”
“This is what we do at the CIA,” Millie said. “It’s called extraction, and we’re one of the best agencies in the world at it.”
“I’m not a good person. I’m a terrible person.”
“In exchange for getting you out of Macau and giving you a new life, my government is going to give you plenty of opportunities to do the right thing.”
“I’m going to have to testify for real this time?” Li Feng asked.
“Maybe not in front of a big room of politicians, but yes, you’re going to have to tell some people what really happened, all of it, and who was really responsible.”
“That sounds like a terrible idea.”
“Well, I can’t say I didn’t try,” Millie said. “I thought I saw something in you that was worth redeeming. I’ll just leave you here. I have some cash I can give you, but I’m not sure how far that will go with everyone in the country looking for you.”
Millie stretched her face in a mock terrified look. Li Feng rolled her eyes and followed her latest ally into a waiting car.
“You made your point. Well done. Let’s go see your magical disguise friend.”
68
When Arrow hadn’t heard anything from his driver or from Li Feng after he saw the chaos unfolding, he got on the phone with his own contacts and found out what happened. It sounded like everyone was dead, and it felt like time to leave Macau and return home to the U.S. He could eat real American food and bask in his new monopoly on cell phone equipment in rural areas that would provide him massive business income as well as the opportunity to do the kind of lucrative spying on American citizens he’d been ready to blame on China.
He called the business airport and arranged for a flight back to Los Angeles. If nothing else, he could lay low on the beach until this all blew over, then see what his next move should be.
The flight was smooth, and Arrow slept soundly until they landed the first time. He was sleeping so well he would not even have awakened had he not gotten an urgent alert on his phone from his accountant. Arrow couldn’t get a cell signal but could check his voicemails. His accountant, not normally a man prone to dramatic outbursts, had left an exclamatory three-word voicemail.
“Check. Your. Accounts!”
Arrow logged on to his laptop, which was connected to the plane’s Wi-Fi. He pulled up his accounts. All of them were empty. Still unable to get cell service, Arrow clicked the video conferencing app on his laptop and within a few seconds was staring at the haggard face of his accountant.