The Aggrieved Read online

  “Anything from the spotters?” he asked.

  “No one following us.”

  The two other members on their team were on motorcycles following the van, in case the target had arranged for someone to tail Jar. Apparently the man hadn’t thought it necessary.

  “He’s speeding up,” Jar said. “Turning right…right again…left now.”

  Nate twisted in his chair to see her computer screen. The target’s erratic movements continued for several minutes before the white dot stopped. When it started moving again, it was at a much reduced pace.

  “Slow down,” Jar said. “He’s on foot.”

  “Have one of the motorcycles do a drive-by,” Nate told Daeng. “I want to make sure he didn’t find the bug and give it to someone else.”

  Daeng relayed the order in Thai over the comm, and Jar added something that Nate assumed were directions. A moment later, a motorcycle sped by the van and raced out of sight.

  “Target’s turning again,” Jar said. “Smaller street. Not for cars, I think.”

  A spotter’s voice came over the comm.

  “He saw the target just before the man turned,” Daeng translated. “It’s our guy.”

  “Good.”

  A few moments later, Jar said, “He stopped…. Okay, he’s entering one of the buildings on the side street. Hold on.” She clicked a button and a satellite map replaced the graphic version she’d been using. “Three stories, butts up against buildings on the left and right. No outdoor space.” A text box appeared on the map. “Elevation rise, four meters. He’s on the second…wait. Elevation rise, another four. He’s on the top floor.”

  “Is it a home or an office or what?” Nate asked.

  “Can’t tell for sure.”

  Nate looked at Daeng. “Get us there. Quick.”

  THEY PARKED THE van along the road south of the walking street, donned their backpacks, and approached the start of the road on foot.

  “About seventy-five meters up the right side,” Jar said, checking the phone she was now using to monitor the tracking bug.

  “I want both spotters around back,” Nate instructed Daeng. One was already there, but the other had been watching the front of the entrance.

  As the orders were transmitted, Nate, Daeng, and Jar headed down the road.

  Running up either side of the street was a continuous line of buildings—two, three, sometimes four stories tall. Most ground floors were occupied by businesses—convenience stores, tailors, dry-goods shops, and restaurants. Many of the latter had mismatched tables and chairs out front, most of which filled with diners.

  “Status?” Nate asked as they reached the halfway point to the target’s building.

  “No movement,” Jar said.

  “None at all?”

  “None.”

  Nate frowned and picked up the pace.

  When the target’s building came into view, they saw that, contrary to the other structures, it had no shop or restaurant on the bottom floor, just a door and a solid gray wall. The second and third floors had windows along the front, all covered by heavy curtains.

  Nate motioned for Daeng to move next to him to create a wall, then nodded for Jar to do her thing.

  After donning a pair of earbuds and plugging them into her phone, she opened an app, pulled out of her pocket a disc not much bigger and thicker than a few stacked quarters, and placed it against the door.

  After several seconds, she removed the disc. “Unoccupied.”

  “Alarm?”

  “Checking.”

  She exchanged the disc for a flat wand, two fingers wide and about as long as her hand. After opening a different app, she moved the wand over the door frame and held it in the center of the door for a moment.

  “Contact points on the door,” she said. “And a motion detector or camera five meters in. Hold on.”

  She interacted with the app and wanded the door again.

  “Okay, door alarm disabled.”

  “Motion detector?”

  “Working on it,” she said as she tapped her screen. “This software is good, but not quite as efficient as it could be.”

  “I’ll let you tell Orlando that.” Orlando had created the app, and Nate and Quinn had used it to disable alarms on many jobs without a problem.

  “I am sure she will agree with me when I point it out.”

  Jar’s penchant for saying what she believed to be true without worrying about what anyone else thought was startling at times, but Nate was getting used to it. In fact, he appreciated it. Mostly.

  Jar held the wand near the center of the door again. “Disabled.”

  “Switch places with me. I’ll get the lock.”

  “I can do it.”

  “I’m sure you can. Switch.”

  Once Jar was out of the way, Nate crouched, looked at the two deadbolt locks, and removed his picks from his pocket. He had the first opened in twelve seconds. Deadbolt number two took a bit longer, but soon they were standing inside the building.

  They found themselves in a narrow hallway with a single door on the left side, and stairs leading up to the second floor another meter in. Now that they were out of the public eye, they pulled out their guns and attached sound suppressors.

  “Status,” Nate said.

  Jar looked at her phone. “Still no movement. He must have taken his jacket off.”

  “Or he left it upstairs as a decoy and he’s gone.”

  “Also possible.”

  Nate motioned at the closed door.

  “Check it,” he said. It would be foolish—and potentially fatal—to leave any area uninspected.

  Jar wanded the door. “No alarm. Two motion sensors.” A few more taps. “Clear.”

  Nate tried the knob. Locked, though only by a single deadbolt that he quickly picked.

  On the other side was a large room, open from the front of the building to the back. It was obviously intended to be a shop, but from the stack of boxes against the far wall, it was apparently being used only as a storage space.

  Near the back of the room, Nate spotted the entrance to an elevator. He walked over and carefully pulled the metal door open. There was no car at this level so he leaned into the shaft and looked up. Two floors up, blocking the elevator entrance to the third floor, was the bottom of a car that could hold probably no more than two people.

  He led the others back to the stairs, and up to a door that blocked off the second floor. Once more, Jar did her magic and Nate his lock picking.

  The new level had a completely different feel from the one below it. There were offices and a large conference room.

  Given their target’s choice of careers, Nate had a feeling the place was an operations center.

  It made sense. Sheng could staff it up as needed, and keep it on mothballs between jobs.

  They spread out to make sure no one was hiding anywhere.

  When they regrouped, Daeng said, “We have a problem. The stairs to the third floor have been walled off. No way to get to them.”

  If the target was controlling access to the top floor, then it must be his private office, or maybe even where he lived, Nate thought.

  “Maybe we can lure him down here,” Daeng said.

  “You have an idea about how?” Nate said.

  Before Daeng could speak, Jar said, “Why bring him down when we can still go up?”

  “Use the elevator? He’ll hear the motor.”

  She looked down the hall. “I did not say we would use the motor.” She led them over to the metal door. “Can you open it, please?”

  Nate pulled the door open, exposing the shaft, and shined his flashlight inside. The bottom of the car was about two and a half meters above them, and while there was some space between the wall and the side of the car, not even diminutive Jar could squeeze into it.

  He leaned back into the room as Jar pulled her laptop out of her backpack.

  She shoved the computer at Daeng. “Hold this.”

  Once
it was propped up in his arms, she opened it and began typing.

  “What’s your plan?” Nate whispered so that his voice didn’t carry up the shaft.

  “If you please. I am working,” she said without looking up from the computer. After half a minute, she frowned. “No Wi-Fi.”

  Leaving the laptop with Daeng, she stepped over to the shaft and looked inside. “I need some light.”

  Nate moved next to her and shined the light inside. She scanned above them, and then leaned forward and did the same below.

  “There,” she whispered, pointing down.

  Nate stuck his head into the shaft. The item in question was a black box attached to the wall about half a meter below the doorway. Several wires passed through the top and out the bottom.

  Jar returned to her backpack and removed a bundle of black cloth, which she unrolled next to the door. Inside were more than two dozen tools, several wires, and a selection of connectors, each in its specific, customized slot.

  “I will need you to hold me,” she said as she stretched out on the floor in front of the opening.

  Nate passed the flashlight to Daeng and knelt beside her. With him holding her by the waist, Jar scooted her upper torso into the elevator shaft and bent down to look directly at the box.

  After checking it over, she whispered something in Thai. The shaft went dark as Daeng moved away from the opening. When he returned with the light, he leaned down and handed Jar a screwdriver.

  She quickly removed the cover of the box and studied the wires that made up its guts. For the next few minutes, Daeng handed her items as she asked for them. When she pulled back out of the shaft, she was holding the end of the wire she’d attached to one in the box. Using another tool, she attached a connector to the raw end and plugged it into her computer.

  “Jar, you need to tell me what you’re doing.”

  Sitting cross-legged half a meter from the shaft, she typed and clicked as if she hadn’t heard him.

  “Jar.”

  She grimaced and shot him a look. “The computer running the elevator is tied to his network. My plan is to use the computer to lower the car without starting the motor.”

  “And can you?”

  “Yes, of course. But like I said, it is tied into his network. Check this out.”

  She turned the laptop to show him and Daeng, and then touched one of the keys. A camera feed appeared. It was a high shot looking down on a tastefully decorated living room with what looked like a chef’s dream kitchen against the wall to the left. The target was sitting on a couch with a glass of wine in his hand.

  Jar had tapped into the man’s security network.

  “Excellent work,” Nate said.

  “Thank you.”

  “Looks like he’s alone,” Daeng said. “Unless I’m missing something.”

  “Could be someone elsewhere in the apartment,” Nate said. “We’ll need to check.”

  “Are we going to talk about it, or are we going to do something?” Jar asked.

  “All right, smart ass. Get us up there,” Nate said.

  Jar tapped the down arrow on her keyboard.

  A faint groan came from inside the shaft. Nate looked at the camera feed but the man didn’t move.

  She hit the arrow again. Another groan, just as faint, just as unnoticed.

  She continued hitting the arrow every few seconds. Eventually, the bottom of the elevator car appeared at the top of the doorway. More clicks brought it down in small increments until the car filled the upper third of the opening.

  “Hold on,” Nate said before she could hit the arrow again. “Let me check something.”

  He pulled himself inside the car and examined the ceiling. Sure enough, he found the seam of an emergency hatch. A gentle push moved it out of the way. Crouching back down, he looked at his friends.

  “Lock it off here. This will work.”

  Jar nodded, and typed in the instructions while Daeng handed Nate their backpacks. Next, Jar raised the computer to him—the wire long enough though barely—to get the laptop into the car. Nate helped his friends up.

  He was the first through the hole in the roof. After Daeng joined him, he looked down at Jar inside the car with her laptop. She gave him a thumbs-up, so Nate turned his attention to the third-floor door. From what he’d seen on the feed, he knew it was only a few meters behind the couch where the target sat. He and Daeng worked as quietly as they could, and almost had it wide enough for them to pass through when the mechanism squeaked.

  “Go!” Jar said.

  Nate pulled himself up through the gap and rushed into the room as the target rose from the couch. Nate leaped over the couch, shoved the man back down, and aimed his gun at the man’s chest.

  The target blinked, bewildered and clearly a bit inebriated. “Who…who are you?”

  Nate glanced over at the elevator where Daeng was helping Jar through the opening. “Duct tape,” he said.

  “Hey, what are you doing?” the target said. “This is my house. You’re not…” The man’s voice trailed off as Jar and Daeng came around the couch. His eyes narrowed on Jar. “Miss Li?”

  Jar pulled a roll of duct tape from her backpack and handed it to Daeng, who then used it to secure the man’s ankles.

  “Where do you want his hands?” Daeng asked.

  Nate looked at the target. “Are you going to be cooperative?”

  “What are you talking about? Why are you here?”

  “Is that a yes or a no?”

  The man’s gaze flicked between his three visitors before he reluctantly nodded.

  “Front for now,” Nate told Daeng. “If he gives us any trouble, we’ll adjust.”

  Daeng taped the man’s wrists together.

  “You clearly do not know who I am,” the man said. “But I am reasonable. If you leave now, we can—”

  Nate snorted. “Don’t flatter yourself, Mr. Sheng. We know exactly who you are.” He gave Jar a nod.

  From memory, she said, “Freddie Sheng. Age 48. Divorced twice. Five children, two by mistresses. Freelance operations manager and information broker, seven years. Before that five years with Interpol after twelve with the Singapore Police Force, half that time as part of the Police Intelligence Department. Thirteen bank accounts, totaling $7,463,212.09 US. Main clients Trey-RC, the Mill, and the Chinese Ministry of State Security.”

  “How we doing so far?” Nate asked.

  It took a few seconds for Sheng to shake the stunned look off his face. “All right, so you know something about me. Which means you also know what will happen to you if you don’t leave now.”

  “I know this might come as a surprise to you, but there are people in the business more connected than you are. The best thing for you to do is answer my questions, all of them. After that you can go back to your empty life as if we were never here. But if anyone, and I mean anyone, ever learns about this conversation, you will be the one to feel the repercussions.”

  Sheng sneered. “I know your type. You’re full of big threats with no way to follow up.”

  Nate smiled and glanced at Jar again. “Please get Mr. Liao on the phone.” He looked back at Sheng. “I believe you’re familiar with Mr. Liao?” Liao was the head of the division at Chinese state security that Sheng dealt with. “He’s going to be very interested to learn about the work you’ve done for the Turkestan separatist movement.”

  “I’ve done no such thing!” Sheng shouted too quickly.

  The sound of a ringing line came from the speaker on Jar’s phone. A male voice answered, speaking in Mandarin. When he stopped, Jar replied in kind.

  “Wait,” Sheng whispered for only Nate to hear. “Wait, please. I’ll talk. You can ask me anything. Just…” He glanced at Jar.

  “And we were never here,” Nate said.

  “You were never here.”

  Nate gave it a beat before giving the signal. Jar spoke again to the man in Christina’s organization posing as Chinese state security, and then hung up. T
hey did have the information about Sheng’s duplicity, and if the man proved to be a problem, they would follow through on their threat, but there was no need to go nuclear yet.

  Nate pulled over a chair from the dining table, set it in front of Sheng, and sat.

  “This won’t take too much time,” he said. “Five days ago.”

  “What about it?”

  “You did a little logistic work for someone.”

  The man’s confusion continued for another few seconds before his eyes widened. “You…you were the escort.”

  “Yes. You tracked us to Jakarta. And passed that information on to your client.”

  “It-it was the job. That’s all. What she did with what I gave her was not my business.”

  Nate was tempted to push him about the weapon Liz’s killer had used and the men who had helped her. They had all come from in country, and would have needed to be arranged ahead of time by someone like Sheng. But that line of questioning would be counterproductive and only serve to increase Nate’s anger.

  “I want to know your client’s name.”

  “Her…name?”

  “Give it to me and we leave. Don’t and we tell Mr. Liao where he can find you.”

  “She calls herself Miss Smith. But I don’t think that’s her real name.”

  “No kidding. I want her real name.”

  “I just told you. I only know her as Miss Smith.”

  “No, you told me that’s what she calls herself.” Nate shook his head. “You know you’re forcing my hand, right? I want to be clear. You are the one making this choice.”

  “But I’m telling the truth! Miss Smith! That’s all I know!”

  Nate stood up and said to Daeng, “Wrap him up so he can’t move.” He looked at Sheng again. “We’ll leave the TV on so you have some entertainment until the Chinese arrive.”

  As he carried the chair back to the table, he heard Daeng loudly rip another strip of tape from the roll.

  “Wait!” Sheng said. “Wait! Just…just let me think for a moment.”

  Nate put the chair in place and headed back over. “Your time is already up, Mr. Sheng.”

  Daeng began wrapping the strip around the man’s calves.

  “Stop! I-I-I remember. There was something else.”