The German policeman yawned and blinked at the luminous hands of the clock over the window. He stretched back in his chair. “Aren’t you hungry?” he asked.
Du An watched him from the corner of the dark office. White men never stop eating, he thought. He shook his head and turned back to the window. The parking lot outside Hall Six was empty, except for his black Jansen Trapp Insignia and the policeman’s cruiser. The production line had closed two hours ago. The workers had gone home. He picked up the desk phone.
“Who’re you calling?” The policeman was tired. Since 8 AM, he had been watching Du An do nothing much of anything except sweat. But the policeman was a German, and he had his job to do.
“The security gate.” Du An dialed.
“When the American agents arrive, the security gate will call us. They will send them straight over here. Don’t worry.” The policeman stood and adjusted his pants around his belly. “I’m hungry, even if you aren’t.” He checked his watch. “The cafeteria is closed, right?”
“There’s a vending machine at the end of the corridor.”
The policeman belched slightly. He shifted the holster to make it comfortable on his bulky hips and went out.
The security office at the front gate of the Jansen Trapp factory picked up Du An’s call. “Hi, this is Heinz again,” he said. “Yes, Chinese Heinz.”
He would have thought An was an easy enough name for these Europeans to remember, but they only stared at him when he spoke it. So like most Chinese, he took a Western name. In Germany he was Heinz.
“Okay, well, you’ll call me as soon as they arrive, right? I’m waiting.” He hung up. He touched the flat of his hand to the top of his head. The short hair, growing back from the close shave he had given it a month earlier, prickled against his palm. He brought his hand down in front of his face. He would have sworn he could see little welts on his palm, as though the hair was poisoned. He would have shaved it all away again. But that was most certainly not allowed.
Something crashed down beyond the office door. Du An jerked away from his desk, shooting on his rolling chair toward the dark corner. He heard the pop of a tab being pulled on a soda can and realized the thunderous sound was only the policeman getting a drink at the vending machine.
The air wheezed in his throat. He hadn’t drawn a relaxed inhalation since Feng Yi picked him for the project. But the last couple of days had been worse. When the warning message arrived from Su Li in New Jersey, his asthma started to crush his chest as if it knew time was running out for it to inflict pain on him. Someone was coming for them. The killing started with Gao in Detroit. That hadn’t surprised him. After all, Gao had defied them. He had changed the execution date. Du had known it as soon as he heard the squealing tires and the crushing impacts and the sirens on the streets of Rüsselsheim. It was the Dariens, he had thought. The German chancellor broke out of a summit meeting with the French president to talk of terrorism, and skinheads sprayed swastikas on the mosque near Du’s home and burned down the local Turkish kebab restaurant. But Du had known that Gao had issued his warning to the world, and killed thousands of people in doing so.
There has to be a better way. Those were the last words Du had spoken to Gao over a Skype connection to Detroit. His attempt to persuade the guilt-ridden fool to wait until they could figure out a way to stop it. To stop themselves. All the engineers had agreed that they would defy any order to activate the plan, but Gao was impatient. Perhaps he didn’t trust Su Li to go up against Beijing, or he figured Jin Ju wouldn’t risk her family. Then there was Turbo, who was completely unreliable. Gao trusted me though, Du thought. Didn’t he? Yet Gao had brandished an ultrasound photo of his unborn child in front of the webcam. “If I knew that this baby was evil, I would kill my wife and the baby. Without hesitation,” he had bellowed. Du hadn’t doubted him. General Feng made each of them crazy in their own way. Gao had simply cracked worse. Or first.
He wondered if one of the others had made a mistake, let the secret of their opposition to the crash plan slip out. Maybe that was why someone was coming after them, rubbing them out one by one, before they could betray the whole project. But General Feng needed all of them in place, inside the car companies and able to manipulate their computer networks, or the plan wouldn’t work. Unless the general had figured out a better way to make it happen.
Du had found a better way to stop it, at least, as he had promised poor Gao. Rather, a better way had found him. Thanks to the American agents, he had hope now for the first time in months. The German police had come to him in the Jansen Trapp factory just after he arrived for another day at his computer. They told him the Americans had traced Su’s message to him. The Germans would watch over him here until the Americans arrived to question him. The cops refused to let him leave the factory. They wouldn’t even take him to the police station. The Americans had insisted that he was in danger and that he should be kept secure wherever they found him. Even a few minutes on the road would be enough—that was the message the German police received from the US agents. Du didn’t ask them “enough for what.” Gao was dead, and he assumed Su was gone too. A few minutes outside the Jansen Trapp compound would be his last few minutes on earth.
He listened for the policeman’s footsteps. The big man was still down the corridor by the vending machines. Du picked up his phone and dialed a number in Cologne. “Turbo, it’s Du,” he said. “The Americans contacted me. Gao’s warning worked. It got their attention. I’m going to make them protect us.”
The man on the other end of the line spoke fast and loudly. Du barely listened. Turbo seemed high, even when he wasn’t. He sounded as though he had mainlined panic and fear. “I will kill whoever comes for me,” he yelled. He made a machine-gun noise. “Say hello to my little friend. I’m going to kill you, Al Pacino.” Then he wept, calling out the names of the dead engineers.
Du heard footsteps in the hall. The policeman was coming back. “Turbo, if the Americans don’t get to me in time, you must be the one to warn our last comrade. Do you hear me, Turbo? Go to Saskia. She will help you.” He set the phone down softly.
He glanced up at his whiteboard. Saskia Hütz’s phone number was there, hidden in plain sight among all his equations and meetings scrawled across the wall. Turbo could hide out at Saskia’s environmental watchdog agency in Cologne. It was a short drive from the Wolfwagen subsidiary in Holland where Turbo worked. Saskia didn’t know what they were up to, but she was glad to have inside sources at the auto companies. They fed her leaks on the carbon dioxide emissions that she devoted her life to stemming. In return they knew they had an underground bolt-hole when they needed it. Du stood quickly and rubbed Saskia’s name away. He cleared the entire whiteboard. Just in case.
In case the Americans didn’t get to him first.
The phone trilled. The sudden noise in the silence made Du jump. He wasn’t used to the quiet. Throughout the day, the production line buzzed and rumbled beneath him. He snatched the handset to his ear. “This is Heinz.” He listened. “Thank you. Yes, I am waiting for them.”
He went to the window. The moonlight glimmered on the rippling surface of the wide Main, flowing to the Rhine. The Americans had arrived to protect him. He smiled with relief. They could put him in an orange jumpsuit and waterboard him for all he cared. They weren’t about to kill him. He would tell them everything, and they would stop it all from happening.
The front gate was a three-minute drive, unless they took a wrong turn between the identical green-roofed factory buildings. His mouth was dry. Someone moved in the parking lot. He stared at the motion, squinting and blinking. It was just a cat. He puffed out his cheeks in relief.
He went to the door and opened it. He leaned into the corridor to alert the policeman to the arrival of the Americans.
At the end of the corridor, a man was bent over the prone body of the German cop, his back to Du. He straightened up at the sound of the door moving on its hinges.
Du ran to the other end of the corridor and scrambled out onto the gantry overlooking the factory floor.
The killer’s footsteps approached behind him.
Du backed away, tripping to the far corner of the platform.
The man came out onto the gantry. He raised his head and smiled cruelly. His skin was ridged and scaled like a crocodile’s hide. Du An opened his mouth to scream.