All of that was bad luck. The good news was that whoever was moving this stuff around didn’t simply load it onto a ship and send it on its way. But this warehouse, like the first, was butted up against the bay, and Jack suspected that a ship was en route to pick up the secretive cargo. How soon, he couldn’t know. But sooner rather than later, no doubt, and whatever the shipment was, it was hot enough that the owners felt they had to move it just on the suspicion that Jack Ryan might dig further.
They didn’t know how right they were.
Jack tracked the semi’s journey out of that facility and back over to a rental yard across town. He snapped a photo of the image of the truck and the name and address of the rental yard with his phone, but he knew that neither would likely lead to anything of consequence. His target wasn’t the truck, it was the new warehouse and whatever the hell had just been loaded into it.
Jack shut the Steady Stare program down, thinking about what his next move would be. He couldn’t contact anyone by cell phone inside the building, including Gavin. He could call him on a Dalfan landline, but that call would be automatically logged and possibly recorded, and he didn’t want to draw that much attention to himself, Gavin, or even Hendley Associates at this point, especially since he was now engaged in an illegal activity — several, technically.
Right now he didn’t need Gavin, anyway. What he needed was a way to get over to that second warehouse. He couldn’t use his cell-phone app to connect with another Uber ride — and if he used the landlines to call for a cab, well, who knows what that might trigger? He guessed that Lian’s security team was probably still staking out his guesthouse, so using the company car Lian had loaned them wouldn’t work unless he engaged in some fancy driving and shook them off his tail — but at night with little traffic and in the rain, with Lian’s mandate to her team to never lose him again, he suspected that he wouldn’t be able to pull it off short of a Fast and Furious movie-trailer car chase. And even if he did, he’d only piss Lian off even more and sour his already strained relationship with her. His job overall was to smooth the merger transaction between two companies, not cause irreparable damage to that relationship. His suspicions about the contents of that warehouse were just that — suspicions. He didn’t want to embarrass Gerry Hendley or Hendley Associates by going off on a snipe hunt that might not result in anything except screwing the pooch and ruining the merger.
Still… his instincts told him that checking out the warehouse was worth at least some risk. Stepping over to the window confirmed the weather was still miserable, so walking or running the twenty-five miles or so to get there was out of the question. He needed a set of wheels. Fortunately, Feng had shown him where the keys were kept for the company delivery vans parked in the back. Technically, he would only be borrowing one of them, not stealing it.
Or at least that’s what he’d tell the police after they arrested him.
47
Yong sat at his desk, nude.
The storm blasted against the heavy plate glass of his twenty-fourth-story luxury condo, but his eyes were fixed on the same video images of the semi truck and warehouse that Jack was watching simultaneously.
“Ice?” Meili was nude, too, but in the kitchen, fixing drinks. She held a cube of ice aloft in a pair of silver tongs.
“No.”
She muttered a curse to herself as she tossed the ice cube into the stainless-steel sink, then poured a couple ounces of Casa Noble Anejo, a fine sipping tequila, into two tulip-shaped Glencairn whiskey glasses and carried them into the living room.
“That’s why you got out of bed? I was hoping you were looking for more porn, or maybe QVC.”
“The alarm triggered.” Yong lifted the glass to his lips and sipped, keeping his eyes on the screen. Unknown to Jack or Paul, wireless trackers were embedded in their Dalfan security cards, keyed to an alert system on Yong’s computers.
“I’m surprised you heard it. You were quite busy at the time.”
“I’m a great multitasker.” Yong threw back the rest of his tequila.
“More?”
“Of course.” His eyes fixed on the heart-shaped mole over her lip, stirring a memory. Blood rushed to his manhood.
“What’s Ryan up to?” She finished her glass.
Yong snorted; the blood retreated. “He’s a nosy bastard. I’ve never known an auditor to be so pushy.”
Meili stroked the back of Yong’s neck as she watched the screen over his shoulder. “He’s becoming quite a problem.”
“He’ll head to the warehouse tonight.”
“In this weather? No way.” Meili dragged her nails gently across his back.
“He’s persistent.”
“What do you intend to do about it?”
“Scare him off.”
Meili stopped rubbing him. “We need to kill him.”
Yong gazed at her. “Too risky. Besides, he won’t find what he’s looking for.”
“No, he won’t, but he’ll just keep looking. You said yourself he’s persistent. We need to get rid of him.”
“We can’t kill him. It will bring the cops in — or worse, the Americans.”
“It won’t be a problem if it looks like an accident. He’s not supposed to be sneaking around in that warehouse, right? A large crate could fall on him, or maybe he interrupts a burglary in progress.”
“It can’t be traced back to me — or Lian.”
“It won’t.”
“Let’s do it my way first.” Yong picked up a phone.
“There isn’t much time.” Meili picked up her phone. “You call your men, I’ll call the warehouse. If your plan fails, mine won’t. But one way or another, Jack Ryan will be dealt with tonight.”
The rain hammered on the metal roof of the garage as Jack climbed into the white Nissan NV200 compact cargo van plastered with a Dalfan-logo vehicle wrap. The automatic garage door opened and sheets of heavy silver raindrops poured in front of the van’s bright halogen headlights. The storm was definitely getting worse.
The van smelled showroom-new. The odometer read three hundred and forty-two kilometers. He logged in his destination on Google Maps even though his cell signal was still jammed in this location, but he knew it would pull up once he left the property.
He approached the automated gate and it swung open. No guard was in the shack, but he was certain the security cameras were logging license plates. With the brim of his hat pulled over his eyes and his head tilted down, he was confident that his face wouldn’t be seen by the cameras, allowing him the slimmest possibility of denial if it came to that.
Jack pulled out onto Changi North Crescent and headed for the PIE. It wasn’t the fastest route, but he’d done it enough times to feel comfortable taking it even if for some reason Google Maps or the onboard-vehicle GPS couldn’t pull up his route.
He passed a silver Toyota minivan parked at the curb, facing in the opposite direction. He saw the driver’s face when a bolt of lightning flashed across the Toyota’s windshield as the big wipers cleared away the rain. Dark, scowling eyes beneath a thick unibrow tracked him as he passed. A Turk? Maybe. Hardly worth noting, except the Turk tracking him sat next to a blond man in his mid-thirties who was shouting into a cell phone.
His eyes also caught the bright black-and-white license plate bolted to the front. Easy to read, at least part of it. SAM 00 was all he caught. It reminded of a dead friend, Sam Driscoll. It stuck in his brain.
But the mini movie scene in the front seat of the Toyota was over in a flash — literally — and Jack didn’t think any more about it as he turned left onto Upper Changi Road North.