Chapter 6

I caught the shuttle from the airport to the Crowne Plaza Beijing, near the Forbidden City, and got checked in without too much hassle. I'm not usually a patron of five star hotels, but the room rates were about what I'd pay for a three star in the US and it was centrally located with many English speaking staff members.

I first checked in with the American Embassy, then started trying to stir up a very large hornet's nest. Starting at the Ministry of Foreign Trade, I began inquiring into the whereabouts of a certain Mr. Huang who, I assured them, owed my company a great deal of money. Naturally, I was shuffled back and forth across the city from Foreign Affairs to the Ministry of Communication, to the Ministry of National Defense, and even, for crying out loud, the ministry of Geology.

With wait times, interpretation delays, bureaucratic snafus, etc., I ate up the whole three days it took Sun and Jun to reach the city.

On the fourth day, the front desk rang my room as I was preparing to embark on another day of hornet nest stirring.

"Mr. Winchell?"

"Yes."

"There is a gentleman here from the Ministry of National Defense who wishes to speak with you. I shall send him up right away."

It's a good thing I wanted to see the guy. From the tone of the desk clerk's voice, he was probably quaking in his boots. I'd just about bet the guy was on his way before the clerk called.

Sure enough, it was barely a minute after I hung up that a sharp rap sounded on my door. I peeped through the spyhole because it was expected. I already knew there were two of them in the hall, neither in particularly threatening postures.

"I don't suppose you are Mr. Huang?" I asked the young man who was clearly in charge of the task force of two as I held the door open for them. They walked past me into the room without speaking.

As soon as the door closed, the leader asked, "May I ask, Mr. Winchell, what it is that you want of Mr. Huang?"

"I have it on good authority that Mr. Huang initiated a transaction which caused me, as a confidential courier, to be engaged to transport a stolen item to Europe. I did not know, at the time, that the item was stolen, and frankly, don't give a damn. What I do care about is that I have not yet been paid for transporting that item."

"Do you still have the item in your possession?" the chinese gentleman asked.

"I do."

"Then give it to me, and I'll see that Mr. Huang gets it," he replied. "I'll see to it that you're paid as soon as he receives the disc."

This was getting closer to home. Not only did this guy not deny the existence of Mr. Huang, or that he was involved in this fiasco, he volunteered the information that the Item was a disc.

"I'm afraid I can't do that," I said. "There have been too many attempts by unauthorized parties to take the item from me by force, including attempts on my life. I shall make the exchange with Mr. Huang in person, or I shall destroy the disc."

"That won't be possible, Mr. Winchell," he said, stepping aside to let his larger, more athletic companion take the lead.

I wasn't too surprised when the guy drew a gun. He was pretty surprised when I took it from him, ejected the clip, and jacked the slide in case there was a round in the chamber before tossing the pieces on the bed.

Like a good soldier, that wasn't the only tool in his box, so I had to take a knife away from him and block a few punches and kicks before I found the right opening and doubled him over with a hard punch to the solar plexus before putting out his lights with a fist to the side of his neck. I rested one foot on said neck while I continued my conversation with Huang's agent.

Turning to him as if nothing had happened, I said conversationally, "Then I'll just have to destroy the disc and let it be known that it's bad business working for the Chinese."

He backed up a couple of steps. I hadn't used any particular style of fighting, but had casually taken out someone he thought was a tough guy, so he was naturally wary of me.

"How did you come to know of Mr. Huang's involvement in this issue, Mr. Winchell?" he asked.

"The two young men he sent to Austria told me before they died," I replied, matter of factly. It wasn't quite true. Sun and Jun happened to know that Huang was in charge of the program that bred them, and had been keeping tabs on him as a matter of course.

"How did they die?" He backed up another step, his eyes wide. Clearly he had known the capabilities of those two.

I shrugged. "They were killed by two young ladies who work for the original owner of the disc."

He relaxed visibly at the knowledge that I wasn't quite THAT bad. "And they let you keep the disc?"

"Yes." I answered truthfully. "They said it had been erased by remote control shortly after it left the Hastings building, before I ever received it."

"Then why should Mr. Huang pay you for it?"

"It was Mr. Huang's incomplete knowledge that resulted in the disc being erased and his people being killed," I replied self-righteously. "I am owed for my services. Since the disc was already compromised before I received it, I fulfilled my contractual obligation by ensuring that it arrived at its destination in the condition in which it was received."

"I will deliver your message to Mr. Huang," he said sourly, as the guy under my foot began struggling to get up.

Well, this was progress. I planted bugs on both of them as they left the room. Sun, waiting near Tiananmen Square, verified on her pickup that both devices were working. Jun followed them as they left the hotel.

'Ministry of National Defense' Jun told us later as we watched the two enter a building, through her eyes.

A few minutes later, Sun listened in as my visitor reported to his boss. I could not understand the Mandarin, but I understood Sun's understanding of it. Thought is apparently language independent. Our own minds translate it into concepts that are comfortable for us. I should have realized this earlier since English is not the girls' first language, but it took this instant understanding of conversation in a foreign language to bring it to my attention.

Since I was getting the semantic content of the conversation, without the syntax, it would be difficult to present it here as dialog. The gist of it was that Huang was more than a little suspicious of my motive, but not terribly concerned about me. I was a stranger in a strange land with no visible means of support.

He quizzed both of them long and hard about whether they had been followed, or if they had seen anything out of the ordinary. The tough guy, at least, had been trained well enough to look for such things, but reported nothing out of the ordinary, except for a crazy American (me) who thought he could get a Chinese Government official to pay him money.

Several hours later, long after the Ministry had closed for the evening, Jun, from her vantage point atop a nearby building, watched Mr. Huang get into a non-descript sedan and leave the area.

The next day was uneventful. I made several calls to the Ministry of National Defense, by phone and in person, ostensibly to set up an appointment with Mr. Huang. It was mostly for show. I didn't expect him to pay any more attention to me, but having come this far, I needed to play out my hand for whoever might be watching.

The bugs I had planted in the clothing of my two visitors were now picking up only random noise as, presumably, those clothes languished in closets or laundry hampers.

Sun and Jun ran team surveillance on the Ministry, and try as I might, when I paid my visit, I could not spot them, even though I knew, from what they were seeing, approximately where each of them was at all times. The crowds on the neighboring streets were in full bustle, and a watcher must keep moving along with them to avoid standing out from the crowd.

The girls did laps around the ministry, ducking out of sight at certain points to change their appearance slightly so that even keen observers would have a hard time recognizing that the same person kept coming past the building. Sometimes they were on one side of the street, sometimes the other. Occasionally, they changed directions, too.

In the evening, again long after most others who worked there had left the Ministry, Huang's car left the building with the girls following, Jun on a Mo-ped, Sun in a cab.

From my hotel room, I rode along with them as they followed Huang home, sometimes in front, sometimes behind, switching out occasionally, but never looking directly at Huang's vehicle or staying very close to it.

Unlike many of his contemporaries, Huang kept a large walled estate outside Beijing, with the house set in the middle of a large open area. Little was wasted on aesthetics. The entire place was built to be defended against one intruder or an army. As the girls cautiously surveyed the grounds, it became clear that Mr. Huang had guessed that they might come after him. There was a small army of heavily armed guards in and around the house, as well as patrolling the grounds inside and outside the wall. The guards wore the uniform of the Army of the People's Republic of China. I watched through their well-trained eyes as Sun and Jun identified sensors, hidden weapons, and booby traps.

When they could learn no more about the place, the girls headed back to the Ministry. Without too much trouble, they slipped past the antiquated security system, staying out of view of the cameras. My 'vision, ' interpreting the energies that impinged upon our shared chi, served to locate the few guards and janitors on duty at night as the girls made their way to the location from which the bugged conversation had come the day before. Sure enough, the characters on the door (as understood by my mind-mates) of one locked office identified it as belonging to one Mr. Huang. Their primary mission for the evening accomplished, the girls set about memorizing the locations of cameras, sensors, utility accesses, etc., and plotting several possible egress routes.

When they emerged from the building, I stayed with them until they got back to their separate hotels, then bid them a goodnight and hit the sack.

The next day was more of the same, for me - putting on a show of increasing irritation as I again sought an audience with Mr. Huang. Again, I was ignored. No big surprise. I decided to call it quits a little early and get some sleep. That night would be the critical night, and we would all need our wits about us.

Sun and Jun also slept most of the day, emerging around closing time for the Ministry of National Defense.

I went out and bought a small bottle of cheap booze, then walked around the streets of Beijing acting a little sloshed. I poured about half of the liquor out and splashed some on myself for effect. Besides being the 'radar' for this operation, I was also the distraction, should they need one.

It was a couple of hours later that Huang headed home for the evening, and I started shuffling erratically toward the Ministry as the girls made their way inside. The lock on Huang's office was new, but presented only a minor delay. A longer delay ensued while they scanned the interior of the office carefully for surveillance equipment, cameras, etc. I guess, like most of us, Huang didn't want people spying on him at work, and there were no such devices.

Sun and Jun left their package, carefully positioned to have maximum effect on the recipient. I watched with approval as they used at least as much caution getting out of the building as they had getting in. In SpecOps I had constantly had to caution the young bucks about getting careless once their primary objective was met. It was almost like they figured they were in a video game, and since they had won, everybody could just stand up and walk out of the combat zone. SHEESH!

Safely outside again, the girls headed off to Huang's house.

I finally found a cab and threw a handful of Renminbi (People's Currency), in Yuan notes and a few Jiao coins, into the front seat, demanding loudly that the driver take me to the address I had gotten from the girls' visit to Huang's home last night. I threw another handful of Yuan notes to the driver as I stumbled out of the cab in front of Huang's estate. Sun and Jun were already in position, so I staggered up to the gate and started pounding on it, proclaiming loudly that Huang had cheated me and demanding to see him.

Naturally, the guards converged on my position. At first, only one or two confronted me, telling me in broken English to go away.

"That shon of bitch in there owes me money!" I shouted loudly, bringing even more guards, "An' I'm damned if I'm leavin' without it!"

"You must leave now, Mr. Winchell!" This was the guy who had been to my hotel the other day, now in the uniform of an officer in the Army of the People's Republic.

"Hey!" I said, as if I'd just met an old friend. "Hey! How you doin'? Shay, why don't you be a pal and go tell Mr. Huang he owes me money?" I put a conspiritorial arm around his shoulders, saying in a stage whisper, "I'll make it worth your while..."