The Risk Agent Read Online Free PDF

respected and feared in all of national law enforcement. An armored division of both military and police bureaus, PAP officers carriedconcealed weapons and were free to use them at their discretion. Officers of the elite corps were often referred to by the nickname “Iron Hand.”
    Shen Deshi leaned onto his forearms on the countertop. His fingers were blunt, wide, and bent awkwardly, each having been broken multiple times.
    “May I help you?” she inquired in Shanghainese to test his origins.
    “I am Shen Deshi,” he said, also in Shanghainese. “I will speak with your most senior officer on duty. I do not wish to be kept waiting.”
    She glanced toward the phone, but then thought better of it. “One moment please.”
    Shen Deshi took a seat between two women waiting in chairs against the wall. He gave the younger of the two a slight smile as he appraised her from ankle to chest. Then he looked straight ahead, as if alone in the room.
    The desk officer returned with a slight man in a captain’s uniform. He was in his mid-fifties, with hollow cheeks and cheap eyeglasses.
    “Officer Shen,” the captain said, “this way, please.”
    In the captain’s tiny office, Shen Deshi brushed off the chair, unnecessarily, before sitting.
    “We are honored by your visit,” the captain said.
    The two men exchanged business cards, proffering them held at the edges by both hands and with a slight bow of the head.
    “The honor is all mine, I assure you,” Shen Deshi said flatly, wanting the formalities out of the way.
    “May I offer you some tea?”
    “I would be delighted but do not wish to trouble you or your staff.”
    “It is no trouble at all, I assure you.” The captain worked the intercom and ordered some tea. There was no further conversation until the tea arrived some five minutes later.
    Shen Deshi accepted the cup and immediately set it aside.
    “Thank you,” he said.
    “It is my pleasure,” the captain said behind clenched teeth.
    “I need everything you have on the severed human hand that was fished from the Yangtze. You will withhold nothing.” He sat back, eyedthe steaming cup of tea one more time, but did not reach for it. “I’m waiting.”
    The captain worked the intercom to request the evidence and all documentation.
    “An unusual case,” the captain said.
    Shen Deshi offered only a disapproving look.
    “We followed procedure, of course.”
    “Then I am sure to write a glowing report.”
    The captain swallowed dryly.
    “Such discoveries are to be reported quickly,” said Shen Deshi.
    “The skimmers—the trash skimmers at the mouth of the Yangtze—snag bodies on a regular basis,” the captain reported. “Maritime accidents.”
    “Of course.”
    A Utopian society did not foster suicide.
    “I did not know how to report this severed hand,” the captain said carefully. “Its existence implied a violent crime or accident but one having taken place well upstream of Shanghai.”
    “A difficult situation,” Shen Deshi said, though his face said otherwise.
    “I checked the reports.”
    “Of course.”
    “Saw nothing that might connect.”
    “Of this, I am sure,” Shen Deshi said. “The Ministry”—the Ministry of State Security, the Chinese intelligence agency—“is interested in this hand. A quick resolution to this investigation could benefit all concerned.”
    “It has my full attention.”
    “The movement of certain members of an American film crew are at the heart of it.”
    “Indeed?”
    “Let us say they may have strayed from the parameters set forth in their visas. The Ministry is intent on knowing where they have been, and more importantly,
why
.”
    “To cancel the visas.”
    “Perhaps,” Shen Deshi said. His eyes warned the captain not to get ahead of himself.
    The minutes stretched out. The captain complimented his guest on the strength of his name: Shen, the family name, meant “don’t yield.” Deshi, “virtuous.” The combination of the two was