Dead in Hong Kong (Nick Teffinger Thriller) (28 page)

Kong was stunned.

“You did?”

Poon nodded.

“IT WAS PRETTY SIMPLE, REALLY,” he said. “One thing you’ll learn as time goes on, Kong, is how to delegate. In this case, I delegated the problem to a man named Jean-Didier Dubois, who worked in the restoration department of the museum. His daughter—a young lady named Prarie Dubois—was attending the University of Hong Kong, which was a coincidence but not really relevant. She could have been going to school in Rome or London and it wouldn’t have made any difference. Anyway, to get to the point, I had her abducted. I told her father, Jean-Didier Dubois, that he’d get her back when and if he switched the paintings. You see, he was in a position to do it because he had access to everything in the museum. He thought about it and told me he wouldn’t be able to do it without the cooperation of the security department. The head of that department was a man by the name of Yves Blanc. Luckily, he also had a daughter, a young lady by the name of Dominique Blanc. We didn’t actually have to kidnap her. Just the threat of doing that was enough to get Yves on board. The two of them, meaning John-Didier and Yves, then figured out how to get the exchanges done.”

Poon paused.

He picked up a handful of sand.

It fell through his fingers onto the top of Vance Wu’s head.

“Vance, I’m telling the truth about all this, right?”

Silence.

Poon laughed.

Then to Kong, “You’ll have to excuse Vance, it appears he’s not in a very good mood right now. We made the exchanges, five in all, over a week’s period. I now had five original priceless paintings in my possession.”

Poon sighed.

“Art is nice, but money is nicer,” he said. “By that time, I had already decided to sell them once I got them. They were worth roughly $80 million each, in U.S. dollars. Pak had a friend—namely this man right here, Vance Wu—who had spent his life brokering rare archeological treasures. He had the contacts in place to sell the paintings on the black market. I decided to use him for the sale. Are you following me so far?”

Yes
, h
e was.

The seagulls flew off.

“THAT’S WHEN VANCE HERE, and his artist friend Guotin Pak, came up with a brilliant twist,” Poon said. “Pak would paint a second fake of one of the paintings. The original painting would be shown to the buyer—who, of course, would have someone there to confirm that it was in fact an original. After it got confirmed, Vance would switch the two, and the buyer would leave with a fake. Then he’d bring the original back to me together with the purchase money.”

Poon nodded at Vance.

“That took guts,” Poon said. “Vance was hanging out. If he got caught, he would have been killed on the spot. But that’s what we did. For one of the original paintings, namely Van Gogh’s ‘Self Portrait,’ Pak painted a second fake. The original was shown to a potential buyer in Paris by the name of Jacques Girard. He brought two people with him who confirmed that the original was in fact the original. The painting was out of the frame but still on the stretchers at that point. Vance put it in the adjacent room, with a bodyguard, while he counted the purchase money. The bodyguard brought the fake out when the transaction was done and that’s what the buyer left with.”

Kong nodded.

“Tricky,” he said.

“Tricky and lucrative,” Poon said. “Pak, of course, got another million for painting a second fake. Vance, for his part, got a 10% bonus, on top of his 10% commission, meaning 20%, which came to $16 million, U.S. dollars. I then got the balance of the sales proceeds—roughly $64 million—and still had the original painting. No one even knew who I was. That worked so well that we also did it a second time, with Claude Monet’s ‘Poppies.’ A fake of that painting got sold to a man named Sam Yamid in Cairo, Egypt.”

“So it all worked out well,” Kong said.

Poon nodded.

“For the other three, we simply sold the originals,” Poon said. “We didn’t want to press our luck.” He smiled. “You can’t get greedy, Kong. Always remember that. Greed will kill you.”

“Right.”

“I’m serious,” Poon said.

“I understand.”

“ANYWAY, TO CONTINUE,” Poon said, “Vance here had to go underground. Obviously, sooner or later, these two buyers would figure out what happened. Vince couldn’t be around at that point in time.”

“Understood.”

“But no biggie,” Poon said. “He had enough money to live on comfortably for the rest of his life, right Vance?”

“I don’t understand what’s going on,” Vance said.

Poon patted him on the head.

“You will in a minute,” he said. “What happened next is unfortunate,” Poon said. “The buyer in Paris, Jacques Girard, figured out he’d been duped. He went looking for Vance—at least I assume he did, that’s what I would have done—but couldn’t find him. So what he did was take Vance’s daughter, a young lady by the name of Syling Wu. Then he left a phone message for Vance to call him. Vance suspected something like that happened when could no longer get in touch with Syling. He called Jacques Girard, to feel him out. That was an ugly conversation. Mr. Girard not only confirmed that he had Syling, but also reported that he had killed Syling’s friend, as an example of how serious he was. The friend was named Nuwa Moon. Mr. Girard said he carved a
K’ung chia symbol
into the girl’s stomach and slit her throat. He said that the same thing would happen to Syling unless Vance produced the original painting.”

“Wow,” Kong said.

“Things can get dicey when the stakes get high,” Poon said.

“Apparently.”

“Extreme measures follow big money around like parasites,” Poon said. “That’s why I need someone like you in my organization. I guess I should ask you at this point if you’re still interested in the job, now that you know some of the stuff that’s going on.”

Kong flicked his hair.

“No problem.”

Good.

Very good.

“WE’RE GETTING NEAR THE END of the story,” Poon said. “Vance came to me and told me how Syling had been abducted. He wanted me to give him the original panting back so he could give it to Girard and get Syling back. I told him I had already sold it.” Then to Vance, “By the way, Vance, that was a lie. I had it at that point in time and still do. I just didn’t want to give it up.” Back to Kong, “What I did do, though was hire a P.I. by the name of Brittany So Kwak to see if she could figure out where Syling was being kept, so I could launch a rescue mission. So far, however, she hasn’t come up with anything.”

“Ouch,” Kong said.

Right.

Ouch.

Poor Syling.

“Are you ready for the end of the story?” Poon asked.

Kong nodded.

He was.

“This is fascinating,” he said.

“Wait until you hear the last part,” Poon said. “It’s going to interest Vance, too. Here it is. All this activity got me refocused on the two original paintings that I had in my possession. They’re hanging in my penthouse, by the way. Just for grins, I had a third party take a look at them, just to confirm that they are the originals. The answer surprised me.”

Vance squirmed in the sand.

Poon chuckled.

“To my surprise, they turned out to be fakes,” Poon said. “Both of them. Of course, I started to wonder how that could possibly be true. Then I figured it out. Vance and his little buddy, Guotin Pak, came up with yet another new twist, only this one they didn’t share with me. Their plan was simple and brilliant. Pak would actually paint a third fake of each of these two paintings. Then, when the originals were supposed to come back to me, it would actually be two fakes coming back.”

Poon looked at Vance.

“So tell me Vance, did I get it right?”

THE MAN’S FACE CONVOLUTED IN TERROR.

“I still have one of the originals,” Vance said. “It’s all yours. I’ll get it for you.”

“Where’s the other original?”

“Pak has it.”

“So that was your conspiracy with him then?” Poon asked. “That you would each keep one?”

Silence.

Then Vance said, “Yes, but it was Pak’s idea, not mine. In fact, the more I think about it, I think that was Pak’s plan all along from the very beginning—not to just get paid to paint a few fakes, but to actually end up with an original.”

Poon considered it.

“Wow, I never saw that c
oming, but it makes sense,” he
said. “If that actually is the case, the man is brilliant. But back to you, my friend. Which original did you keep?”

“The Van Gogh.”

“The ‘Self Portrait?’”

“Yes.”

“Where is it?”

“If I tell you, will you let me go?”

“Of course,” Poon said. “This is all just business. You’ll need to return all the money you got from me too.”

“Of course.”

“Do you still have it?”

“Most of it.”

“Good. So where’s the original Van Gogh?”

Vance told him.

It was in a storage locker.

The key was in Vance’s desk.

“Good,” Poon said. “See how easy that was?”

“So let me out now,” Vance said.

“Of course,” he said. “That was the deal.”

Day Eight—August 10

Monday Afternoon

______________

POON STOOD UP.

He shoveled sand away from Vance’s head.

Then he paused.

“Wait, there is one more piece of business.”

Vance sensed danger.

“What?”

“You had the original painting when Jacques Girard asked for it,” Poon said. “You could have used it to free Syling. But you didn’t.”

Silence.

“Instead, you kept it, and tried to see if I, or a P.I. hired by me, could get you out of your mess,” Poon said. “You could have freed your daughter the whole time but didn’t. What kind of father does a thing like that?”

Poon looked at Kong.

“That’s the greed part I was talking about before. Remember when I said to not be greedy? That greed will kill you?”

Kong nodded.

He remembered.

Poon squatted down and looked Vance Wu in the eyes. “You’re not going to stay here because of what you did to me. That I could forgive. In fact, I admire your cunning. But you are going to stay here because of what you did to your daughter. A man who does something like that to his own flesh and blood doesn’t deserve to live.”

He kicked sand in the man’s face.

Then said to Kong, “Let’s go.”

They rowed back to the Predator
, r
aised the anchor
a
nd took off.

IN MACAU, Kong called Emmanuelle the first chance he got. “Guotin Pak has one of the original paintings,” he said. “He has the original Claude Monet, the one called ‘Poppies.’”

“How do you know?”

“It’s a long story, I’ll tell you later,” he said. “Here’s the important part. You need to get over there now and find it. Otherwise someone else is going to beat us to the punch.”

“We already went through that place,” Emmanuelle said.

“I know, but somehow we missed it.”

A pause.

“Meet me there,” Emmanuelle said.

“I can’t,” Kong said. “I’m stuck in Macau and I’m supposed to have supper with someone. If I bolt out of here, it’s going to look suspicious. Then I have something else going on tonight that’s going to keep me tied up until after dark. I’ll call you as soon as I’m free. But you need to get over there right now. In two or three hours it will probably be too late.”

Okay.

She’d go now.

“Be careful,” Kong said. “If someone else shows up, get the hell out of there. They’re not the kind to play nice.”

“Okay.”

“I mean it.”

“Okay.”

“Don’t screw with them.”

“I said okay. So where should I look? Do you have any idea?”

“I don’t know,” Kong said. “All I know is that Pak has it, he definitely has it. He might have stashed it off-site, in a locker or something. Look for strange keys.”

“Okay.”

“I’ll try to break free in an hour or two and give you more details on what’s going on,” he said. “Right now I have to run.”

“Be careful.”

“You too. By the way,” Kong said. “If you find it, don’t screw me over.”

“I won’t.”

“Don’t find it and then pretend you didn’t find it,” Kong said. “If you do, I’ll know.”

“I’m not going to screw you over,” Emmanuelle said. “If we find it, you more than earned your share.”