Chapter 13
When Hawker didn’t respond to the man who questioned him, one of the thugs raised a gun and aimed it at his eye.
“You really won’t get much out of me if I’m dead,” he told them.
The thug was unmoved but the man behind him laughed. “Bring him with us,” he said.
Hawker was blindfolded and dragged into a waiting van. From there it was a short trip to the waterfront and a forced walk onto a waiting vessel, a diesel-powered junk.
As they rumbled out into the harbor, Hawker tried to guess their direction or speed.
“Where are you taking me?” he asked after a minute or two.
“I’ll gladly answer that, once you tell me what you’re doing here,” the Russian voice said back to him.
Hawker gave no answer. He was still trying to figure out the dynamics of the situation. Why should he, an American, have to explain to a Russian what he was doing in Hong Kong?
The motor beneath the deck cut back to idle and then died away. Soon the boat’s momentum ceased and the vessel began to rock back and forth in the chop of the waves.
“Stand up,” the man said.
Hawker stood, holding the rail, as one of the man’s guards pulled the blindfold away. He began to turn.
“Eyes forward!”
A rifle jabbed him in the back.
Hawker did as he was ordered. They were a mile out into Victoria Harbour, looking back at the skyscrapers of Hong Kong.
“You are a man without a home, or so I hear. A man with debts to pay, who is wanted even by his own country.”
Hawker did not respond.
“You go by the name Hawker,” the Russian said. “An interesting metaphor this word. Where I come from, it means a seller in the marketplace, a shill, offering goods or services.”
The name had come to him as a code, one he’d kept for his own reasons. He didn’t try to explain.
“At any rate, you are here plying your trades, both gross and fine, only in this case, it is at the behest of your own nation’s security apparatus. Care to tell us why?”
Hawker held the rail. He guessed that the man already knew the answer, or some version of it. He remained quiet.
“Come now,” the Russian said. “You’re among friends here. To prove it, I’ll answer for you. You’re here to do something that might infuriate the Chinese. Something the people who hired you don’t want to be known for. Murder?”
“I’m not a killer,” Hawker said.
“You are a killer,” the man replied, emphatically. “But not a murderer, perhaps. What then?”
Hawker thought of leaping over the rail, but guessed he’d be riddled with bullets before he hit the water.
“It’s not so complicated,” the man said. “In fact, the answer is right in front of you.”
Hawker looked across the water, staring straight ahead. The boat had been lined up with Kang’s Tower Pinnacle, its white marble fa?ade gleaming in the morning sun.
“They have something your people want back,” the man added.
Hawker’s eyes followed the contours of the tower down to the bedrock at its base. Whatever cover he’d once thought he had was nonexistent at this point.
He turned around slowly, and this time no one stopped him.
Ten feet away, hidden in the shade of the boat’s pilothouse, stood a short, gaunt figure of a man. He wore a black peacoat and leather gloves. No more than five foot six, his round face was marked by sunken cheeks and whitish stubble the same length as the buzzed gray hair on his head.
Hawker guessed the man’s age was close to seventy. His face was pale, his eyes almost gray. Apparently his host was a confident man. His henchmen had vanished and no gun or weapon could be seen.
“Who are you?” Hawker asked.
“My name is Ivan Saravich,” the man said.
“Are you my contact?”
“No,” Saravich said.
“What happened to him?”
Saravich waved a hand in a manner of swatting away an insect. “Don’t worry about him. He chose a bribe over a job. I treasure men like that.”
“What do you want from me?” Hawker asked.
Saravich explained. “I want to help you get at Kang, to help you recover your missing person.”
“And in return?”
Saravich stepped into the light, shielding his eyes from the sun. He walked to the rail, looking toward the Tower Pinnacle in the distance.
“Kang is not a very discriminating man,” he said. “In addition to your missing friend, he has taken one of our citizens, a child, whose mother is a prominent member of our Science Directorate.”
That sounded like a legitimate possibility from what Hawker had been told, but there had to be a reason. “Why would he do that?”
“She’s an expert in high-energy physics,” Saravich said. “What Kang cannot buy he steals; what he cannot steal, he extorts. He wants information from her.”
Information on high-energy physics. Hawker wondered if it were related to what Danielle and McCarter had been working on.
“For weapons?” Hawker asked.
Saravich shrugged. “No one knows,” he said. “Kang is rumored to be very strange, obsessed with exotic areas of science and compulsive in regard to other things like medical oddities and genetic deformation. It is said he has a zoo of humans born defective.”
“Charming,” Hawker said. “Why do you need me to deal with him? Why not take him out yourself?”
Saravich exhaled. “I would prefer it,” he said. “But certain niceties must be observed. You, on the other hand … well, a man with no home does what he does. There can be no proof of whom he works for or why.” He shrugged. “There can be suspicions, yes. Whispers and rumors. Of course. These things will always fly, but in the end it will never be clear, and that is what we prefer. Just as your people do.”
“Of course,” Hawker said. “Everyone’s afraid of the dragon these days.”
“Don’t want to wake it,” Saravich said.
“You want me to get the kid back?”
Saravich nodded. “You can get them both at the same time.”
Hawker might have asked what the alternative was, but it was fairly clear to him that there was none. He was now working for Moore and the Russians. He smiled at the irony, wondering what Moore would think, footing the bill personally with his cold war enemies riding along for free.
Perhaps it was for the better not to try this act alone. He turned back toward Kang’s fortress of a tower. “You think they’re inside?”
Ivan nodded. “We have surveillance video showing them entering the building and no indication of their departure.”
It had been eight days since Danielle’s capture in Mexico. “That’s not exactly conclusive.”
“We know Kang.” Saravich was insistent. “We know his ways. If your friend is alive, then she’s there. And he wouldn’t have brought her here if he planned to kill her quickly.”
He studied the building. “Well, that narrows it down to a hundred floors or so.”
“Actually,” the Russian said, “we have only one floor to worry about.” He handed Hawker a spotting scope. “Look at the foundation.”
Hawker trained the scope on the black bedrock from which the tower seemed to sprout. He saw the remnants of fortifications and old stone walls, even a broken set of stairs leading down to the water.
“Kang built his tower on the ruins of Fort Victoria,” Saravich explained. “A fort those hardworking Brits carved out of solid rock in 1845, before building Fort Stanley a few years later. Kang uses the old brig as his private gulag. Down there he keeps those who owe him what they cannot pay or those who cross him and survive. A very rare few have even been ransomed out.”
Hawker studied the jagged black stone, wet from the spray of the waves.
“He has both of our people,” Saravich said. “I promise you, he has them there.”