Knox wasn’t going to repeat himself.
“Perhaps Lu Hao’s records confirm this.”
“Not to be rude, but who cares?” Knox said. “Honestly, I don’t care who’s paying whom at this point. I want an address. I want extraction.”
She was silent for some time. “Lu Hao’s records are our only source of possible information.”
Knox closed his eyes and tried to work it out. The money trail was apparently fascinating to an accountant, but he’d grown tired of it. The big payments to the Mongolians and on to Beijing were clearly significant. “Yang Cheng could be behind the kidnappings,” he said. “It was his men in the alley behind Quintet. He knew about your hire at Berthold, so he obviously has an insider there. He wanted you to abandon Marquardt. Make things more difficult for Marquardt. Maybe we can trade for the hostages.”
“If Yang had Lu Hao he would have Lu Hao’s information. Yang is not the kidnapper.”
“You know what? Who gives a shit? What’s important to us is that with Sarge down, there’s no ransom money.”
“Yes.”
“We won’t want to trade the accounts until we know what we’re giving away.”
“Again, I do not follow.”
“Lu’s accounts may reveal who has the most to fear, who has the most to lose. Therefore, who will pay the most.”
“John, are you talking to me?”
“The accounts are the prize-it explains all the attention on Lu’s apartment. The attack on us.”
“You and I want the same thing, if for different reasons,” she said. “Lu Hao’s books.”
“You sound like a marriage counselor.”
“Do not get your hopes up.”
“Ha! Regardless,” he said, “once we have Lu’s books we can start dealing. Yang Cheng, the Mongolians, maybe Marquardt as well.”
“You want to sell the information for cash. To raise money needed to pay the ransom,” she said.
“I thought you said you weren’t following.” He paused. “Amy knows this guy-I’ve met him a couple of times. Sells counterfeit video games. A computer brainiac. He can help us.”
“So call this person,” she said reluctantly. “Selena owes me a copy of Marquardt’s redacted credit card statement. I will ask her again. This may help as well.”
“You don’t have to sound so excited about Amy helping us,” Knox said.
“This has nothing to do with you. It is Chinese. You would not understand.”
“Face? I understand face.”
“Westerners intellectualize face. Chinese live it. It is very different.”
5:40 P.M.
Knox did not like the idea of putting them all in the same room together-pigs for the slaughter-but saw little choice. Carrying a black backpack containing Lu Hao’s digital photo frame, he checked the street for surveillants at every opportunity. Changed his look every few blocks with baseball caps and sunglasses.
He arrived early at the rendezvous, a dismal-looking beauty salon with a white, pink and blue barber pole outside. Walked past and continued for another block. Crossed through traffic. Cut back at the next light and approached the salon for a second time.
He paused by a curbside dice game being played on an inverted cardboard box in the shade of a plane tree. Cigarettes dangled from wet lips. Spitting tobacco bits, and sipping cold tea, rheumy-eyed men competed fiercely.
Amy arrived at the salon first, taking no security precautions whatsoever. Grace followed, also performing a walk-by before entering. Selena had e-mailed Marquardt’s electronic AMEX statement; Knox had left her studying it, unsure if she’d pry herself away for this meeting; glad she had.
He awaited a city bus to screen himself from the opposing sidewalk and, as the bus passed, slipped into the salon.
Amy occupied the third of three chairs to the right, her hair foaming, her attendant shooting a stream of water from a squirt bottle onto her head while working up the suds. Despite the wet application, it was referred to as a “dry” shampoo. Grace, in the middle chair, was being prepared.
Knox greeted the owner, a fit man in his early forties with a cataract film covering his left eye. The man checked with Amy in the mirror. Amy nodded.
“You wait, few minutes, please,” the man said in passable English. He pointed. “Waiting area in back, past curtain.”
Knox and Grace exchanged a meaningful look. He wondered if she, too, had spotted the Mongolian following Amy.
Knox wondered how the Mongolian had possibly made the connection to Amy-the cocktail party? Quintet?
The curtain was a Simpsons bedsheet thumbtacked into the doorjamb beyond which was a tiny sink and stool. Knox was forced to turn sideways to slip past the sink and into a narrow hallway that led to a back door. He inspected the door, checking the lock. The door opened on to a sublane where laundry was in bloom. Clear both directions. He turned. Homer and Marge laughed at him in faded glory.
The tiny storage room’s shelves were crowded with hand towels, hair product, a rice cooker, a cutting board and a plastic pail of green vegetables. Near the far wall, half a wooden door on rusting file cabinets served as a desk. At the desk, his back to Knox, sat a twenty-something Chinese boy with a lousy haircut. If he stabbed the laptop’s keys any harder he was going to break it.
He spun to face Knox. A poor attempt at facial hair. He was chewing purple gum. He spoke English. “Ready when you are, professor.”
“Tom,” Knox said, introducing himself.
“Randy.”
As if.
Amy came through wearing a towel on her shoulders and her hair spiked punk rock by shampoo.
“You two make introductions?” she said.
“Yes,” Knox said.
Grace entered next, crowding the space. Her eyes tightened, dancing between Amy and Knox.
“Let’s have a look,” Randy said. It sounded rehearsed. The kind of guy to practice lines in front of a mirror.
Knox provided him the digital frame. Amy had made all the arrangements; she carried the anxious concern of a worried hostess.
Grace seemed more interested in Amy than the laptop. “It is crowded here. We will give you room.”
Knox stayed. He wasn’t leaving a stranger in possession of the frame and its possible contents. Randy connected the frame to the laptop by wire, and began typing. Ten minutes passed, feeling like thirty.
“Memory is partitioned,” he said. “One side encrypted. You care about frame?”
“Only its contents,” Knox said.
Randy pried the frame open with a screwdriver, startling Knox.
He spoke as he continued disassembling the device. “Common mistake is try to break encryption.” He exposed a small circuit board. Using a magnifying loupe, he studied the board as his hand blindly searched the desktop for the screwdriver.
“But that’s what we want,” Knox said. “We want the data from the encrypted partition.”
“I understand,” Randy said. “Breaking such code can take days. Weeks.”
“We don’t have days or weeks.”
“No. But we have this,” he said, holding up the screwdriver, his attention still trained onto the loupe and the circuit board.
“The CMOS battery is soldered,” he said.
He sat up and addressed Knox.
“Just like laptop, the board uses small watch battery to hold password. Dead battery, no password. Sometimes battery is soldered to keep it from separating. That is case here. Screwdriver too big. Need paperclip.”
“How about a bobby pin?”
The man looked at him, confused. “Bobby?”
“Hair clip? We’re in the right place for hair clips.”
“Excellent!”
Minutes later, Randy had used a metal bobby pin to short the board and drain the small battery’s charge. The full directory of the partitioned side of the frame’s memory now appeared on his connected laptop.