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  “SIMON LEONIDOVICH HAS EARNED HIS

  PLACE IN THE THRILLER PANTHEON RIGHT

  ALONGSIDE CUSSLER’S DIRK PITT, CLANCY’S

  JACK RYAN, AND LUDLUM’S JASON BOURNE.”

  —Brad Thor, bestselling author of Takedown

  THE COURIER

  “A perfect thriller. There is no putting this book down once it’s opened.”

  —Bookreporter.com

  “An edgy debut…. Leonidovich is a fascinating character…. A taut, enjoyable ride.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  BAGMAN

  “Razor sharp…equal parts Dashiell Hammett and James Patterson…. Heart-pounding, brilliantly paced…. An unmatchable, edge-of-your-seat thriller.”

  —Brad Thor

  “MacLarty’s writing is crisp and colorful. All of his characters, especially Simon, are carefully drawn with depth and complexity.”

  —The Oakland Press

  “Well-rounded and compelling. [Bagman] has all the elements of a great thriller—and MacLarty balances these components expertly…. Simon [is] a character worth following.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  LIVE WIRE

  “Intricate, fast-moving and…a whole lot of fun.”

  —The Oakland Press

  Also by Jay MacLarty:

  Live Wire

  Bagman

  The Courier

  An Original Publication of POCKET BOOKS

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2007 by Jay MacLarty

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

  For information address Pocket Books, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

  ISBN-13: 978-1-4165-3830-1

  ISBN-10: 1-4165-3830-5

  POCKET and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  Visit us on the World Wide Web:

  http://www.SimonSays.com

  This book is dedicated to:

  Miles & Ian

  my daughter’s best work to date.

  Acknowledgments

  The author wishes to thank the following people for their help with this novel:

  John Hill

  a great writer, with big ideas,

  and a willingness to share.

  Lew Nelson

  for his review of all things aeronautical, and for his

  ability to cry silently when I pull out my literary

  license and fly around the edges.

  Jill Kelly & Marc Horowitz

  they know why.

  And always, my literary compatriots,

  who never fail to offer good and honest advice.

  Gene Munger

  Louise Crawford

  Mark and Sunny Nelsen

  Vic Cravello

  Holly McKinnis

  CHOKE POINT

  CHAPTER ONE

  The Pacific Pearl, Taipa Island, Macau

  Wednesday, 27 June 16:22:51 GMT +0800

  “Everything is now better,” Quan said, turning over another page of blueprints. A slight man in his mid forties, rather formal in manner, with high cheekbones and saffron-colored skin, he was dressed in a custom-tailored linen suit and soft leather brogues. “Much better.”

  Better! Patience was not one of Jake Rynerson’s virtues and it took all his willpower just to remain seated at the table while Li Quan methodically recounted everything that was being done to accelerate the pace of construction. Better wasn’t good enough, not when a new world order hung in the balance.

  As he continued, Quan delicately smoothed down the large dappled sheet of paper. “Interior work should be back on schedule within ten days.” He spoke with an unusual accent, not quite Chinese, not quite English, a by-product of his Oxford education. “As you see—” His voice echoed through the cavity of unfinished space, a revolving cocktail lounge two hundred feet above the casino floor. “We have tripled our workforce.” He motioned toward the teakwood balustrade, an intricately carved serpentine of dragons.

  Though Jake hardly needed anyone to point out the obvious, he realized his attention was expected, and glanced down at the beehive of workers and craftsmen swarming over his masterpiece, and what he now feared would be his albatross. The main tower was a typical John Portman design—a huge open atrium with plants hanging off the indoor balconies—except nothing about the Pacific Pearl was typical. Every suite offered two breathtaking views: outward, over the Pearl River Delta, and inward, over five acres of green felt tables. It was by far the most spectacular of all the new resorts in Macau, exceeding even his own lofty expectations, but he was already late to the party, the last of the large gaming corporations to open in what was predicted to be the new Mecca of gambling. If he hoped to lure the high rollers away from the other resorts, he needed to open with a splash…and if he hoped to save the Pacific Rim Alliance, he needed to open on time, something that no longer seemed possible. Holy mother of Texas!—he couldn’t imagine the ramifications. The hotel booked to capacity…Streisand coming out of retirement to open the showroom…the collapse of a yearlong secret negotiation between China, Taiwan, and United States.

  “Three shifts,” Quan continued, “working twenty-four hours a day.”

  Nothing Jake didn’t already know. He would have cut the man off, but the Chinese were different from Westerners, they didn’t understand his mercurial temperament, and he couldn’t afford to offend his general manager a month before the scheduled opening. Billie, sitting between the men like a bridge between East and West, dipped her chin, acknowledging her husband’s unusual restraint, her subtle way of telling him to keep his yap shut. He took a deep breath, then let it out long and slow, all the way to the bottom, trying to control his anxiety. How could he have been so confident? The secret was too big, the time too short. All those bigger-than-life headlines must have turned his brain into bullcrap.

  BIG JAKE RYNERSON, BUSINESSMAN AND BILLIONAIRE,

  TAKES ON SOCIALIST CHINA.

  VEGAS COWBOY RIDES INTO MACAU—CAN HE DELIVER?

  Yup, that was it, his balls had finally outgrown his brain. He had clearly succumbed to the myth of his own infallibility. What did he know about Chinese politics? About Chinese superstition? How was a dumb ol’ West Texas cowboy supposed to appease the Gods, blow away the bad spirits, and sooth the sleeping dragons? Of all the stupid things he’d done in his life, this had to be the worst—not counting wives two, three, and four—three acts of lunacy he preferred not to think about. At least he’d been smart enough to marry his first wife twice—he gave Billie a little wink—the best decision he ever made.

  “Of course,” Quan went on, “much depends on the weather.”

  Jake swiveled toward the windows—a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree panorama overlooking the Chinese mainland, the islands, and the South China Sea—a spectacular view if not for the onslaught of rain hammering away at the glass, a two-day downpour that showed no signs of retreat.

  “It won’t last,” Billie said, sounding more hopeful than confident. “We’re going to make it.”

  Jake nodded, trying to put on a good face, but he didn’t believe it; it was the beginning of typhoon season, the time of black rain, and the onslaught could last for days. Weeks maybe, and if the problems continued…they were already $82 million over budget…but that was only money, that he could handle…it was all the political bullshit…the set-in-stone timetable established by some feng shui master…that’s what he couldn’t handle.

  Li Quan stared at the rivulets of water streaming down t
he glass, then turned over his hands, a gesture of helplessness. “Very bad joss.”

  Jake kept his eyes fixed on the gray horizon, barely able to restrain his desire to grab the man by the shoulders and shake some sense into him. Quan was an excellent administrator, but his Chinese mind-set, his propensity to blame all problems on bad joss, was almost too much. Luck had nothing to do with it. Too many things had gone wrong. Big things: a crane buckling under the weight of an air-conditioning unit and crushing two welders; a misplaced wrench tearing out the guts of the hotel’s grand escalator, a curving triple-wide mechanical marvel that cost over eight million dollars; the sudden collapse of a construction elevator that killed four workers; and two days ago—only hours after the security netting had been removed from the tower—a building inspector had somehow gotten past the retainment barrier and fallen off the roof. Problems that were costing him a fortune to keep out of the press, and far too many to be written off as bad joss. “No, Mr. Quan, I don’t believe luck has anything to do with it. Someone’s behind this.”

  A wave of confusion rolled across Li Quan’s face. “Behind this…?” He turned to the window, obviously wondering how someone could control the weather. “I don’t—”

  Billie, who had an aggravating and somewhat mystic insight into exactly what her husband was thinking, interrupted. “Excuse me, Mr. Quan—” She glanced at her watch, a gold, wafer-thin Gondolo by Patek Philippe. “But I think it’s time for the uniform review.” She nudged Jake’s boot with her foot, a reminder that Li Quan knew nothing about the secret negotiations, the proposed alliance, or the true significance of the opening date.

  “Right,” Jake said, more in answer to Billie’s unspoken warning than to what she had said. “Let’s get that over with.”

  “Hai,” Quan responded, a relieved lift in his voice. “We should not keep them waiting.” He snatched up his two-way radio and began chattering away in rapid-fire Cantonese, the most common dialect within the province. It was that single talent—Li Quan’s ability to communicate with the Macanese staff—that kept Jake from making an immediate management change.

  Within minutes people began streaming out of the crystal-domed glass elevators that ascended silently along one side of the atrium. There was a male and female employee from each department: bellhops and parking valets, hosts and hostesses, janitors and maids, dealers and croupiers, bartenders and cocktail servers, and at least a dozen more. As Li Quan began lining everyone up along the front of the balustrade, Billie leaned over and whispered, “You have to be careful, Jake, you can’t afford to offend the man. We need him.”

  He nodded, not about to argue, but knowing what he really needed was a hard-charging ballbuster like Caitlin Wells to get the place open.

  “And,” Billie added, “you can forget about Caitlin. She can’t speak the language.”

  Damn woman, he was starting to think she could read his mind. “Give me a little rope, darlin’, I ain’t senile yet.”

  “Besides, you need her in Vegas. She’s got enough to handle with the expansion of the Sand Castle.”

  As if he needed to be told. “I know that, Billie.”

  “I know you know, but you look a bit short on patience.” She gave him a teasing smile, the kind that could still make his old heart giddy-up and gallop. “So, I’m reminding you.”

  “Well I don’t need remindin’,” he whispered back, though they both knew that wasn’t true. “But if I hear bad joss one more time, that boy’s gonna be wearing one of my boots up the backside of his fundament.”

  She chuckled and patted his knee as Li Quan began his fashion parade. Though Jake smiled and nodded to each team as they paraded past the table, nothing registered, his mind struggling to find some way to speed up the construction process. He wanted to pick up a hammer, do something with his own hands, but that would look desperate, and all it would take for the press to unleash their bloodhounds. That’s the way it worked—one minute he was that loveable Vegas cowboy, and the next just another dumbass cowpoke from West Texas—but either way, up or down, Big Jake Rynerson made good copy for the tabloids, and their minions were always watching. So he was stuck, hoping Mother Nature would turn her wrath elsewhere, hoping the contractor could finish before anything else went wrong, hoping the press…

  “What do you think?” Billie asked as a casino hostess in a micro-short dress of shimmering gold stepped forward.

  He felt like a lecher just looking at the girl, who couldn’t have been more than eighteen, with perfect golden brown skin and sparkling black eyes. “About what?”

  “The dress. You think it’s too flashy?” Billie pointed toward the heavens and made a circling motion with her finger. The girl executed a graceful pirouette, her pixie-cut black hair spiking outward as if charged with electricity.

  Jake tried to concentrate on the dress but couldn’t move his eyes beyond the hemline. “It’s awful damn short.”

  “These girls don’t have breasts, Jake, and they’re not very tall. They need to show some leg.”

  “I got no problem with legs, Billie. We just don’t want ’em flashing their fannies around, that’s all.”

  Billie tilted her head, a look of amusement. “Jake, honey, you’re blushing like a schoolboy.”

  And feeling like one. Embarrassed, he pushed himself back from the table. “It’s almost nine o’clock in Vegas. I promised Caity I’d call before breakfast.”

  “What about the dress?”

  “Whatever you think.” He grabbed his cellular and started toward the back of the room, but before he could punch in Caitlin’s number, the tiny unit began to vibrate. The number on the display, a Macau prefix, was not one he recognized. “Hello.”

  “Mr. B. J. Rynerson, this I presume?” Despite the awkward syntax, the soft feminine voice was both confident and seductive, with only a hint of Cantonese accent.

  Jake hesitated, moving deeper into the room. Only three women knew his private number, and this was not one of them. “And who is this?”

  “My name Mei-li Chiang. Perhaps you have heard this name?”

  “It’s possible,” he answered cautiously, though he knew the woman by reputation: a well-known power broker, and one of the few Macanese who had managed to maintain influence in the new Special Administrative Region—the SAR—that guaranteed Macau a “high degree of autonomy” when Portugal turned the province over to China in ’99. “What can I do for you, Madame Chiang?”

  “It is more what I can do for you, taipan.”

  He hated the title—big boss—and tried to discourage its use. “Please call me Jake.”

  “Jake,” she repeated, turning his hard-edged name into something soft and provocative. “I understand you are having problems.”

  Was she guessing—he knew the Macau grapevine was healthy and well entrenched—or did she really know something? “The usual construction delays.”

  “Not so usual, I am told.”

  He wanted to know exactly what she had heard and who had said it, but was positive she would never divulge a source or any details of what she knew. That was the crux of her power—secrets—and she would know how to keep them and use them. “Nothing we can’t handle.”

  “That is most gratifying to hear, taipan. I thought perhaps I could be of some small service…” She paused, her voice a teasing mixture of promise and provocation.

  He could already feel her hand in his pocket and knew he was being sucked toward a vortex of Chinese graft and corruption. Given a choice, he would have told her to take a flying leap off the Taipa Bridge, but if she did know something, he needed to quash the story before it spread. “Yes, it’s true, we’ve had a few unfortunate accidents.” Nothing, he was sure, she didn’t already know.

  “Accidents,” she repeated, as if the word amused her. “I think it is more than that, taipan.”

  “And you could help?”

  “Perhaps. I have some small experience in these matters. There are people I could speak with about these…unf
ortunate accidents.”

  “And what’s this here ‘small experience’ going to cost?”

  She made a little sound, a disapproving exhale of breath, offended that he should be so blatant and boorish. “This is not about money, taipan.”

  He knew better. Once a person acquired that ludicrous title of businessman and billionaire, it was always about money. “Please excuse my ignorance, Madame Chiang. I’m just a simple qai loh, and a cowboy to boot.”

  “A foreigner, yes, but we both know you are neither ignorant nor simple, taipan. You misunderstood my offer.”

  “Which was?”

  “To welcome a new friend into the colony. To provide assistance. Your problems are my problems.”

  He didn’t believe a word of it. “That’s much appreciated, ma’am. Sure is.”

  “We should discuss these problems.”

  Or more accurately, the cost of eliminating them, a situation he could see no way to avoid. If he went to the police—who cared nothing about the problems of a rich qai loh—the story would leak out; and if he didn’t pay, the accidents would continue. The only question was the amount it would take to make the problems go away. “Yes, ma’am. I’m listening.”

  “These are not matters to be discussed over the phone.”

  Right, you don’t discuss bribes and offshore bank accounts over the airwaves. “What do you suggest?”

  “A private meeting.”

  And you don’t discuss such matters in front of witnesses, which was perfectly fine with him. “When and where?”

  “I am at your service, taipan.”

  He glanced at his watch—4:51—realized the day was rapidly slipping away, and the Alliance that much closer to dissolving. “Is today convenient?” He tried not to sound as desperate as he felt, but could hear it in his own voice. “Say nine o’clock?”