Private Beijing, page 1
About the Authors
James Patterson is one of the best-known and biggest-selling writers of all time. His books have sold in excess of 400 million copies worldwide. He is the author of some of the most popular series of the past two decades – the Alex Cross, Women’s Murder Club, Detective Michael Bennett and Private novels – and he has written many other number one bestsellers including stand-alone thrillers and non-fiction.
James is passionate about encouraging children to read. Inspired by his own son who was a reluctant reader, he also writes a range of books for young readers including the Middle School, Dog Diaries, Treasure Hunters and Max Einstein series. James has donated millions in grants to independent bookshops and has been the most borrowed adult author in UK libraries for the past fourteen years. He lives in Florida with his family.
Adam Hamdy is a bestselling author and screenwriter. His most recent novel, The Other Side of Night, has been described as ingenious, constantly surprising and deeply moving. He is the author of the Scott Pearce series of contemporary espionage thrillers, Black 13 and Red Wolves, and the Pendulum trilogy. Keep up to date with his latest books and news at www.adamhamdy.com.
THE PRIVATE NOVELS
Private (with Maxine Paetro)
Private London (with Mark Pearson)
Private Games (with Mark Sullivan)
Private: No. 1 Suspect (with Maxine Paetro)
Private Berlin (with Mark Sullivan)
Private Down Under (with Michael White)
Private L.A. (with Mark Sullivan)
Private India (with Ashwin Sanghi)
Private Vegas (with Maxine Paetro)
Private Sydney (with Kathryn Fox)
Private Paris (with Mark Sullivan)
The Games (with Mark Sullivan)
Private Delhi (with Ashwin Sanghi)
Private Princess (with Rees Jones)
Private Moscow (with Adam Hamdy)
Private Rogue (with Adam Hamdy)
Private Beijing (with Adam Hamdy)
A list of more titles by James Patterson appears at the back of this book
WHY EVERYONE LOVES JAMES PATTERSON AND THE PRIVATE SERIES
‘Great action sequences … breathtaking twists and turns’
ANTHONY HOROWITZ
‘An unmissable, breakneck ride’
JAMES SWALLOW
‘Exhilarating, high-stakes action’
LESLEY KARA
‘An exhilarating and totally satisfying read’
NB MAGAZINE
‘A breakneck fast, brutally good page-turner’
DAILY MAIL
‘Hits the ground running and the pace never misses a beat’
DAILY EXPRESS
‘Yet another fine outing from the master of thrillers’ CITY A.M.
James Patterson
& Adam Hamdy
* * *
PRIVATE BEIJING
Contents
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 32
CHAPTER 33
CHAPTER 34
CHAPTER 35
CHAPTER 36
CHAPTER 37
CHAPTER 38
CHAPTER 39
CHAPTER 40
CHAPTER 41
CHAPTER 42
CHAPTER 43
CHAPTER 44
CHAPTER 45
CHAPTER 46
CHAPTER 47
CHAPTER 48
CHAPTER 49
CHAPTER 50
CHAPTER 51
CHAPTER 52
CHAPTER 53
CHAPTER 54
CHAPTER 55
CHAPTER 56
CHAPTER 57
CHAPTER 58
CHAPTER 59
CHAPTER 60
CHAPTER 61
CHAPTER 62
CHAPTER 63
CHAPTER 64
CHAPTER 65
CHAPTER 66
CHAPTER 67
CHAPTER 68
CHAPTER 69
CHAPTER 70
CHAPTER 71
CHAPTER 72
CHAPTER 73
CHAPTER 74
CHAPTER 75
CHAPTER 76
CHAPTER 77
CHAPTER 78
CHAPTER 79
CHAPTER 80
CHAPTER 81
CHAPTER 82
CHAPTER 83
CHAPTER 84
CHAPTER 85
CHAPTER 86
CHAPTER 87
CHAPTER 88
CHAPTER 89
CHAPTER 90
CHAPTER 91
CHAPTER 92
CHAPTER 93
CHAPTER 94
CHAPTER 95
CHAPTER 96
CHAPTER 97
CHAPTER 98
CHAPTER 99
CHAPTER 100
CHAPTER 101
CHAPTER 102
CHAPTER 103
CHAPTER 104
CHAPTER 105
CHAPTER 106
CHAPTER 107
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
For the brave members of law enforcement who work so hard to keep us safe
CHAPTER 1
THE LIGHTS OF Beijing, city of twenty-two million souls, stretched as far as the eye could see and shimmered and danced in the July heat, adding a touch of magic to the darkness. Shang Li loved this city, his home, and paused at one of the viewpoints on Qiaobai Road to admire the sight of one of the most populous places in the world. All those lights, all those people, mostly living in harmony, striving to improve their lives, working, resting, playing.
The city hadn’t swallowed up the surrounding hills and mountains yet, but offshoots could be found in the intricate folds of the green surrounding valleys. There were reservoirs and power plants, quarries and industrial parks, and shops and restaurants to serve the workers. One day, Li suspected, the city of patriotism, innovation, inclusiveness and virtue—its core values—would extend even further. He wasn’t normally a cheerleader for official designations, but thought his city’s values a model for all to live by. He was a true patriot, always strived to do better, harbored no hate in his heart, and tried to be virtuous. But if everyone else in the city below lived by those values, he would be out of a job.
He couldn’t linger over the view so resumed his journey along the deserted winding road. He had been summoned by colleagues who wouldn’t have wasted his time if there was nothing to see. He’d instructed them to alert him only if the target of their surveillance did anything out of his ordinary routine. His colleagues knew how much importance he set on family time. He’d been halfway through dinner with his wife Su Yun and their children Mai and Han when Jinhai had called.
Li slowed his gunmetal grey Changan CS75 SUV as he approached the signpost for Yunhu Forest Park, making a left onto an otherwise deserted track. It cut through a copse of trees so thick even the pervasive glow of the city lights was obscured. He drove for two hundred yards until the track reached the edge of the vast Miyun Reservoir, which stretched away into the darkness. He turned off the headlights as he followed the bank for another five hundred yards before slowing as he rolled into a large parking lot. There was one other vehicle there, a blue LDV 9 van, parked near the perimeter fence, overlooking Zhonghang University. The distinctive red-roofed campus buildings stretched away to the south and west, looking eerily unpopulated at this time of night.
Li stopped next to the van and got out of his vehicle. The warm July air hit him along with the strong scent from the pine and juniper trees edging the northern side of the lot. He hurried to the van, opened the side door and climbed in to find his three-man surveillance team crowded in the back. Kha Delun, a former army lieutenant who’d been discharged due to a leg injury, was on comms, and Ling Kang, ex-Beijing Police, operated the controls of a surveillance drone. Jiang Jinhai, the head of the team, watched the drone footage on-screen. He had joined Li’s unit from Guoanbu, the Ministry of State Security, and was a quiet, methodical man.
“What have you got?” Li asked, sliding the door shut behind him.
“Zhou drove all the way out here to stand around an empty university campus,” Jinhai replied, gesturing at the screen. “It’s not exciting, but it’s certainly out of the ordinary.”
Li nodded. He had asked to be notified of anything unusual and this certainly qualified as odd behavior from David Zhou, one of Beijing’s richest and most powerful men, currently standing on his own in a courtyard between three lecture halls. Flecks of grey in his perfectly styled short hair spoke of his years of experience, but his trim physique gave no hint of his age. He had weathered well, despite Beijing’s demanding and pressurized business environment. He wore a dark tailored suit that would have looked at home on a Milan catwalk, and seemed to be checking his surroundings nervously. It had to be someone or something important that had brought him all the way out here without his personal protection team.
“What’s he doing?” Li asked.
Jinhai shook his head and shrugged.
“Waiting,” said Kang.
“But for what?” Li wondered.
What would bring David Zhou out here? They’d been following the man for a while now and knew his habits. He spent his days in the office and in the evenings took business meetings in some of Beijing’s finest restaurants. His life isn’t completely mundane, Li told himself, thinking of Zhou’s visits to the strange old woman in Pinggu District, one of Beijing’s poorest neighborhoods. Those trips seemed to support their client’s theory that David Zhou was a man with something to hide, as did tonight’s solitary excursion.
Li noticed movement on-screen and felt the tension rise as the others too registered a shadow moving toward Zhou from between two campus buildings. A man emerged from the gloom. He wore dark trousers and a black hooded top with rolled-up sleeves. The two figures nodded tersely to each other.
“Zoom in on his left wrist,” Li suggested, and Kang changed the zoom on the drone camera to focus on the hooded man’s arm.
There was a distinctive tattoo of twin dragons entwined around a third, more ferocious firebreather.
“Does anyone recognize that?” Li asked.
The others shook their heads, and he wondered whether the tattoo was just a one-off or a symbol with underlying, as yet unknown, significance.
“I wouldn’t have come if I’d known it was you I’d meet.” Zhou’s words to the newcomer were broadcast through the van’s speaker system.
Li moved closer to the comms unit to hear the conversation being picked up by the directional microphone pointed at their target. Who was Zhou meeting? Why the secrecy?
“You had to come,” the hooded man replied. “You know the game is almost over. One of us will define China for a generation.”
“It will not be you,” Zhou responded angrily. He started to back away.
“You’re wrong,” the hooded man countered. “Your being here tonight has handed me victory.”
On-screen, Zhou stopped in his tracks and turned to face the other man, face creased in puzzlement. “How?”
Li heard a sound outside the van. An animal?
The side door suddenly slid open and a masked figure tossed something into the cabin.
“Grenade!” Li yelled, but there was nowhere to take cover.
The masked man slammed the door and the central locking snapped shut.
Li thought of Mai and Han, his wonderful children, and of his beautiful Su Yun. He prayed they would not feel his loss too deeply.
Jinhai grabbed the grenade and rushed to the back door, but before he could do anything more, the device detonated.
There was no explosion. Instead it released a cloud of noxious gas that made Li cough and splutter. He’d taken a couple of lungfuls before he realized he should hold his breath. He grabbed the handle of the side door and tried to release it, but their assailant had overridden the system. It was no good, they were trapped, and whatever was in his lungs was doing its work. He saw the rest of his team fall and felt his own body weaken as the gas took him into oblivion.
CHAPTER 2
TWO FORENSICS TRUCKS stood on the far side of the parking lot, next to a couple of Beijing Police vehicles in their black-and-white livery and three unmarked SUVs. Uniformed officers performed a fingertip search of the area while crime-scene analysts in white full-body hazmat suits checked the interior and exterior of the blue van. Sunlight dappled the woodland between the parking lot and the reservoir, where more police officers performed a ground search.
Zhang Daiyu had been to many such scenes before, but what made this one different was her personal connection to the victims. Years on the force had taught her to control her emotions, but it proved difficult to keep a lid on her grief as she parked beside one of the forensics trucks. She cut the engine and took a moment to compose herself, glancing in the rear-view mirror and wiping away the tears that threatened to brim over. Through the rear window of her Honda CR-V she saw someone approaching. She quickly climbed out. Chen Ya-ting, a former colleague in the city’s police department, came toward her. He’d called and suggested she come to the scene. He wore the sky-blue shirt, black tie and black trousers that had once been Zhang Daiyu’s uniform too. As he reached her he removed his peaked cap and ran his hand over his tufty black hair. His usually cheerful face looked somber.
“Zhang Daiyu,” he said. “I wish I could say it was good to see you, but not in these circumstances.”
“Thanks for calling me,” she replied. His sorrow only made things harder and she fought back more tears. Kha Delun, Ling Kang and Jiang Jinhai were her colleagues, and she thought back to all the moments she’d spent with them—laughing at Delun’s lame jokes, arguing over the best noodle stands with Kang, or discussing cases with Jinhai, who was always the most serious of the trio. She couldn’t bear to think they were gone.
“We believe the assailant or assailants used knockout gas before shooting them. We found the canister in the van.”
“And Shang Li?” she asked.
Her boss had texted her to say he was on his way here because Jinhai had summoned him.
Chen shook his head. “No sign of him. We found drag marks near the van. They’re patchy, but they lead over the parking lot to the bank of the reservoir. We have divers in the water searching for him.”
Shang Li was the warm, generous man who’d recruited Zhang Daiyu from the Beijing Police. She knew his wife and children, and didn’t want to be the one to break this terrible news to them. She prayed Chen was wrong in assuming her boss had been drowned.
“What were they doing out here?” he asked.
“Following a lead,” she replied.
“That sounds a lot like detective work,” he countered.
Private detectives were officially illegal in China, but they existed thanks to a loophole that permitted consultants and advisers to help individuals and organizations solve operational problems. Anything overtly investigative was against the law, and would be punished, but Zhang Daiyu and Chen went way back and she knew there was no need for pretense between them, not least because they were standing a few yards away from a van full of surveillance gear.
“This lead have a name?” Chen asked.
Zhang Daiyu was saved from answering by a shout from one of the officers involved in the fingertip search.
“Sir, I’ve found something,” she said, rising from the ground. She hurried over and showed Chen a tiny USB drive in the palm of her gloved hand.
He thanked her and carefully put on a pair of latex gloves before taking the small data-storage device. Zhang Daiyu followed him to the nearest forensics truck. The blast of air conditioning was welcome relief from the mid-morning heat.
There were two crime-scene technicians working at neighboring benches, analyzing and bagging evidence recovered from the scene.
“Check this for prints,” Chen said to the nearest technician, a young woman whose face was the only visible part of her body. The rest of her was concealed beneath a hazmat suit. The technician nodded and sprayed light-sensitive fluid onto the USB, before holding it under a UV lamp. She shook her head.
“No prints or biological material. You want me to bag it for analysis?”
“Thanks. I’ll take a look at it first,” he replied.
He beckoned Zhang Daiyu over to a workbench in the corner of the truck and popped the drive into the USB port of a laptop. The screen came to life and the computer automatically opened a file window.
“All the hard drives in the surveillance van have been erased,” Chen revealed. “Whoever did this was trying to cover up something.”
There was a single video file contained in a folder. He played it.
The screen filled with surveillance footage shot by a drone, showing a man standing in a courtyard on the nearby university campus. His face was familiar to Zhang Daiyu, and she knew Chen too would recognize him as one of Beijing’s richest men.
“David Zhou,” he said.
The footage ended, freezing on an image of Zhou’s face.
“Was this your lead?” Chen asked.
There wasn’t any point in denying it. Not now. So Zhang Daiyu nodded.
