Dying Breath Read online

  He lowered himself into the chair. “Two rocks.”

  I went to the kitchen, took two tumblers and a bottle of The Macallan from the cupboard and filled a cereal bowl with ice. Then I carried the whole lot to the living room and set it on an occasional table between his chair and mine. I don’t like coffee tables. They are designed to trip you up and graze your shins.

  I poured in silence, gave him two rocks of ice and had mine neat.

  “Cheers.” He raised his glass and sipped, then smacked his lips and sighed. “The Macallan, a rare treat. A crime to put ice in it, but bad habits die hard.”

  I nodded, gave him a moment and asked, “How can I help you, Russ?”

  He took another sip and regarded his glass like he was particularly proud of it.

  “Ever heard of Zak Lee?”

  “No. Who is he?”

  “Heilong Li, Westernized his name to Zak Lee. He’s a Chinese chemist, emerged from obscurity some five or six years ago to become head of viral research at UCP, that’s United Chinese Petrochemicals, an umbrella company that handles about fifty percent of Chinese chemical and medical research and development, under government control and supervision, naturally.”

  “We don’t like him?”

  “Not a lot, no. At a conservative estimate we figure he is directly responsible for somewhere in the region of one hundred and twenty thousand deaths in Africa alone: Senegal, Cote d’Ivoire, the Congo, Gabon, Angola, Namibia, and South Africa, possibly other places too. Women, children… Men go without saying.”

  “What do you mean he is responsible for their deaths? How?”

  He shrugged. “The west coast of Africa is like his personal testing lab. Testing on human subjects in China is not impossible, but it is difficult. It is a restrictive regime, not anarchic at all. President Xi Jinping is a man with a lot of power, and a lot of personal privilege, but his power comes from the system. The system is supreme in China and he must operate within it.

  “So what UCP does, and the system turns a blind eye, is pay large bribes to West African regimes that are anarchic, where the system is simply an extension of the man in power, and they are granted permission to experiment on live human beings, whole villages and towns, where basically nobody gives a damn what happens to the people.”

  I didn’t answer. I sipped from my glass while he rattled the rocks in his. He set his glass down and sighed. “He turns up, usually in person but sometimes it’s his students and assistants. They are supported by armed guards and they force an entire population to take a so-called vaccine, or a cure for some local disease.” He gave a dry laugh. “Of course the objective is not to kill these people. Labs don’t make money by killing their customers. The purpose is to establish what the side effects are of the products they are researching, before feeding them to people who do matter. So in some cases entire villages have died in a matter of a few weeks. In others the majority of the subjects have gone blind.

  “In one case, in the village of Massonde, four hundred miles southeast of Luanda as the crow flies, five hundred and fifty by Angolan road—and the last fifty of those through dense jungle—these doctors, for want of a better name, were sent in, protected by armed thugs in uniform, to provide vaccines against the flu. Within forty-eight hours half the town had become psychotic, hallucinating, screaming, running naked through the village square…”

  He shook his head. I said nothing, watching him, waiting. He pointed at the bottle and made a question with his eyebrows. I said, “Sure, don’t ask. Just help yourself. What happened?”

  He spoke as he poured. “The soldiers mowed them down. And anyone who showed symptoms was systematically shot. The town is now a graveyard.”

  I nodded. “You said there might be other places outside Africa.”

  “Sure, Latin America, other parts of Africa, remote parts of Mongolia, the Far East… We suspect, but we can’t be one hundred percent sure of our facts.”

  “So you’d like me to pay him a visit.”

  He smiled, gave a short laugh. “You spent a lot of time with the Brits, right?”

  I returned the smile. “A bit, yeah.”

  “You have their flair for understatement. Yeah, we’d like you to go and blow the bastard’s brains out.”

  “Good. Consider it done. I’ll need all the intel you have, obviously.”

  “Obviously. But it’s a little more complicated than that. He’s here in New York. So it’s important it looks like an accident, or at the very least a mugging or an act of terrorism…”

  “You want deniability. That goes without saying.”

  “Yeah, but there’s more, Harry. Zak Lee is here talking to a UN delegation, a delegation from the European Union, and there are US representatives meeting with him too. The brigadier would really like to know what they’re talking about.”

  I frowned. “I thought that wasn’t our job. That’s what the Feds are for, or the Firm.”

  “Sure,” he sipped, “but let me ask you something. When the big unknown here is China’s chemical warfare capability, and the man who’s responsible for developing it is in New York, at the United Nations, talking to American companies that are part of the military industrial complex, do you feel relaxed and comfortable leaving things to the CIA and the FBI?”

  I nodded and sighed. “I guess not.”

  “It’s a bit like having Dennis Rader break into your house, and you don’t do anything because it’s the cops’ job.”

  “I get the point. So what does the brigadier want me to do?”

  “He’s convinced, and some of his advisors agree, that Lee’s research has reached a critical point and he may be mobilizing resources to deploy it.”

  “You mean he fears he’s preparing a dirty bomb?”

  He shrugged. “That’s partly what we need to find out. A bomb is simply a means of delivery. The problem is, the brigadier fears he may actually have something to deliver. If he has, then we need to know what, and where, when and how he plans to deliver it. The consequences could be very serious.”

  “And you say I have a gift for understatement.” I drained my glass and set it on the table. “OK, so I need to know who my targets are, their exact location and any other intel.”

  “Your primary target is Heilong Li, Zak Lee, your secondary target is Yang Dizhou, no Westernization. He is Zak’s personal assistant. He is also a very accomplished scientist and was Zak’s student and disciple for many years, then became his assistant. He takes care of business for Zak. He has to go too.

  “They’re staying at the Oriental Suite, at the Mandarin Oriental, on Columbus Circle. Chinese taxpayers to foot their comrades’ bill at fourteen grand a night, power to the people, comrade.”

  “They don’t make Communists like they used to. So who else is on the list?”

  “He has a number of meetings scheduled at the UN, plus a couple of private meetings with US scientists from Colombia at the hotel, which I suspect is just cover, and then a couple of dinners with bankers and industrialists from the petrochemicals industry. It’s a busy schedule.”

  He reached in his pocket and pulled out a manila envelope which he handed to me. I opened it and inside were a couple of A4 documents stapled together. I examined them and saw that it was a list of times and dates showing where Lee was going to be, and what he was going to be doing while he was there. There were also a couple of photographs, one of Zak, the other of his assistant.

  Zak was in his mid-sixties, bald as an egg, very thin, with hollow cheeks and large ears. He was tall, maybe six two, with a long, thin neck, long thin arms and big, bony hands.

  Yang was shorter, thick set, with heavy, bottle-base glasses, receding gray hair and a pencil moustache. Somebody must have told him that was a good idea. I asked without looking up, “He in the same suite?”

  “Yeah, and May Ling, the personal assistant’s personal assistant.”

  I glanced at him. “I don’t kill women or children. I’m funny that way.”

  “Relax, that’s company policy. Besides, she’s not on the list.”

  “So what about these delegates he’s meeting with?”

  “OK,” he drained his glass and crossed one leg over the other, “that’s part of your brief.”

  “What is?”

  “Decide which ones to recommend for termination. You run your list by the brigadier, and the management decides which ones to execute.”

  I nodded and looked back at the pictures.

  “OK. This is going to be expensive. I’m going to need serious expenses. I’m going to need to get inside and recon this place. I need to be invisible…”

  “Sure.” He reached in his jacket again and pulled out another, fatter envelope. In it was an expensive leather wallet containing five thousand bucks, a driver’s license in the name of Auberry Winchester, a Centurion Amex and a Black Visa. “You have absolute operational autonomy,” he said. “Do what you have to do. Keep the brigadier in the loop as much as you can, but he likes you and he trusts you, so you have pretty much a free hand.” He grinned. “Don’t let him down.”

  “I won’t.”

  He sighed, put his hands on his knees and levered himself to his feet.

  “Thanks for the whisky. A rare treat.”

  I let him out and stood smelling the damp, night air as I listened to his steps receding down toward Barkley Avenue. A few seconds after they had faded I heard the soft hum of a motor, which in turn blended into the night, leaving only the distant call of a foghorn, and the desultory chatter of a bird, fooled by the streetlamps into believing it was day.

  I closed the door and went back inside. I picked up the papers he’d given me. Auberry Winchester. I smiled. It was like something out of Scott Fitzgerald meets P. G. Wodehouse. I’d have to go clothes shopping for blazers and cravats. But first I’d have to digest and memorize Zak Lee’s schedule for the next few days, and do some observing from a distance. My window of opportunity was small, and I was starting from zero, but it was as important to go slow and steady at this stage, as it was to act lightning fast when the time came.

  Zak Lee’s first appointment was the next morning, Monday the 30th, ten fifteen at the United Nations building. I figured I didn’t need to follow him inside because there was no way I was going to make the hit in there, but I could follow him there and follow him back, see what route he took, what kind of transportation he used and what his security was like.

  A guy like him might have real tight security, or he might choose to keep a low profile. He wasn’t exactly famous, and the people who might want to kill him were probably too poor to leave their villages, let alone their countries. Either way I didn’t want to make assumptions. It was better to keep an open mind. We’d see tomorrow.

  I scanned his schedule again and saw he had a lunchtime engagement in his rooms with a Professor Moricone from Harvard, and then a dinner appointment at nine PM. This appointment, instead of being in his suite, was in the restaurant. That struck me as curious. Either he was not at all shy, or he had a purpose for arranging a public meeting. He must know there were people in the international intelligence community who’d be watching him. I filed that away under “answer later.”

  So between lunch and nine I’d have a few hours to buy an expensive wardrobe, an expensive watch and expensive shoes. I figured I should get an expensive haircut, too. Expensive people notice that kind of thing. Finally I figured I should hire an expensive car for the week. That made me smile. What the heck, Cobra might need it again for another job in the future. It might be cheaper just to buy one.

  This hit had definite pluses to it.

  Chapter Three

  I was up at six the next morning, went for a ten-mile run, spent an hour training in the backyard and had a breakfast of spelt waffles and honeycomb at nine thirty. Then I showered and dressed and went out to my old beat-up 1999 VW Golf GTI. It was the kind of wreck people made a point of not noticing, but under the dented, scuffed chassis, there was nothing wrong with the tweaked engine or the suspension. I had done some work and jacked it up from a hundred and fifty brake horsepower to two hundred and fifty by taking out the old engine and dropping in an Mk6. I’d had to tweak the suspension and the wheels too, but it had worked out nice. The 1999 model only weighed two thousand eight hundred pounds, compared with the three thousand four hundred of the Mk6, so with the extra power and torque it was doing naught to sixty in four seconds, which was nice.

  I climbed behind the wheel, stuck the old-fashioned key in the ignition and enjoyed the low growl and rumble of the engine. Personally I like a stick shift because it gives you more control over the engine and the revs. You drop from sixth to third at a hundred MPH and your revs go through the roof. If you need a burst of speed or power, you can do that with a stick shift. With an automatic you’re stuck with what the car thinks you ought to be doing. And if it’s a German car, two gets you twenty the car will think you should be obeying the rules.

  And the trouble is, a lot of the time I’m breaking the rules, doing stuff I ought not to be doing.

  It was a half hour drive from my house to Columbus Circus. I approached down the West Side Highway and West 56th, then turned north onto 8th Avenue. I followed the circus round to West 60th and parked outside the post office, where I had a good view of the entrance to the hotel, and the hotel underground parking. There I killed the engine, adjusted the mirror and settled in for a wait.

  It wasn’t a long one. At fifteen minutes to ten a black Audi Q8 emerged from the hotel underground parking. A moment later two men exited the hotel and walked quickly toward the Audi. They were Heilong Li and Yang Dizhou. The chauffeur climbed out to open the rear door for them and at the same time a guy the size of a small barn got out of the front passenger side and stood staring up and down West 60thth Street, like he really didn’t like West 60th Street at all. He and the driver were both Chinese, with real short hair, dark suits, dark shades and wires in their ears. They were about as conspicuous as my car was invisible.

  Once their charges were in the vehicle, they climbed back in and took off. I followed them at a leisurely pace onto Columbus Avenue and down West 57th, all the way to Second Avenue. There they turned south as far as East 40th, where they finally turned onto First Avenue and then into the United Nations compound and underground parking.

  As events go it wasn’t much, but it told me something important. That was the most direct, obvious route they could have taken to get to the UN, and they had not been a bit shy about it. They had been bold to the point of being showy, and were making no effort at all to be discreet. Which meant that either they did not expect trouble, or they didn’t care if they got it. Either way it suited me fine.

  I decided not to waste time following them home. I had their schedule and I was keen to get my shopping done. So my first stop was Hickey Freeman on Madison Avenue, where I spent just short of ten grand on two suits, an evening suit and a handful of shirts. After that, I went to look for a suitable car at Cooper Classics on Perry Street, in the Village. I called before I went. When the sweet girl on the other end answered I told her, “Hi, what’s the most expensive, cool car I can walk away with this afternoon?”

  She took a moment to answer, then laughed and said, “The car I’m in love with right now is a replica.”

  “A replica?”

  “Of the AC Cobra. Factory five, Oxford blue period color, silver Le Mans stripes, cream leather upholstery, VX220 seats, ProCharged four twenty-seven CI SBF stroke engine putting out seven hundred and fifty bad-ass horsepower, stainless-steel headers, four-barrel Holley, Carter fuel pumps, fully lined engine bay in polished alloy, Edelbrock rocker covers, electric power steering, high torque starter motor, ProTech shocks all round, electroplate brake calipers, Smiths instruments, period radio, power steering drives like a dream, complete build portfolio. Man, I’m getting horny just telling you about it.”

  A Cobra? How could I say no? I smiled into my voice and told her, “Yeah? I think you just sold it. Hold it for me, will you? I’m on my way.”

  It was a very sweet ride and worth every one of the fifty thousand dollars I paid for it. And when I turned up at the Mandarin Oriental that evening, that replica kit car was going to look just as sweet sitting next to the Bentleys and the Ferraris as it did in the showroom at Cooper Classics. In fact, my only worry was whether the brigadier would let me keep it when the job was done.

  I arranged to collect the car later that afternoon and took my purchases home in the VW, along with Dashiell Hammett’s Glass Key, which I had a feeling I might need at dinner. Once home I made a reservation for a week at the Mandarin, packed a suitcase with a false bottom with all the things I thought I might need, showered and dressed, and made an appointment at the Pall Mall Barbers at 10 Rockefeller Plaza. By the time they’d finished with me, I not only had a name out of a P. G. Wodehouse novel, I looked like a character out of a P. G. Wodehouse novel too.

  I’d taken a cab from Throggs Neck to Manhattan for my restyle and a wet shave. One hundred and twenty bucks lighter, I had then taken a cab to Coopers and collected my Cobra. From there I had finally rolled up at Columbus Circus in my gleaming automobile, tossed my keys to the valet, allowed a buttons to take my case and strolled into the foyer to check in.

  Once registered, the buttons led me to my room, threw open the curtains, showed me where everything was and stood smiling and expectant at the door. I took fifty bucks from my wallet and handed it to him.

  “Say, I heard there was some kind of Chinese scientific delegation here. Am I right?”

  He smiled and gave his head a little dance. “Well, it’s not exactly a delegation. That’s Mr. Heilong Li. I’m never sure which is the first name and which is the surname, they do it the other way around over there. But he’s here with Mr. Yang Dizhou and a couple of assistants, on business at the United Nations. ’Course, we get a lot of people here from the UN, because it’s very handy for them, just down the road as it is.”