Beijing Payback by Daniel Nieh

Author:Daniel Nieh
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2019-05-30T16:00:00+00:00

21

Velvet is in the basement of Alien Street Market, a shopping center in the Russian neighborhood of Beijing, close to Sun Temple Park. In our taxi on the way there, a screen embedded in the passenger headrest plays an advertisement for “Korean movie star eyelid surgery” on a loop. Though it’s the middle of the night, we pass trucks, motorcycles, bicycles, ambulances, three-wheeled gleaner carts loaded with uncountable bags of plastic bottles. The city streets remain alight with signage: Sichuan cuisine, Hunan cuisine, Guizhou cuisine, Peking Duck, or, as it’s known locally, Duck. Party World Karaoke—the size of a large hotel. In the side street behind it, stalls selling skewers and noodle soups, stacks of flimsy plastic stools, pool tables under awnings made of tarps.

Sun tells me that he started researching Feder Fekhlachev after Dad pinpointed him as a weak link who could potentially provide dirt on Zhao and Ouyang. He found out that Feder had been posted to Beijing by the KGB more than thirty years ago, at the beginning of China’s Reform and Opening-Up era. After the Berlin Wall fell, Feder’s extended family emigrated en masse from Moscow to Brooklyn. But Feder’s background in Russian intelligence meant he couldn’t get into the States. He decided to stay in Beijing and try his hand at capitalism in its latest hotbed. He leveraged his connections in the intelligence world, as well as his fluency in Mandarin, to ingratiate himself with the city’s powerful Russian community. Nowadays, any time a Russian mobster or oligarch shows up in Beijing, Feder is there to show him a good time and arrange meetings with the relevant local scumbags. As a result, Feder has a thumb in almost every pie in town, despite the fact that he never lifts a finger himself—unless it’s wrapped around a vodka shot.

The more Sun tells me, the less I like our plan. “Former KGB? This guy sounds like a badass.”

Sun has amped up his disguise for the nightlife with an asymmetrical pleather jacket and a dyed-look blond wig that sweeps down over his face. It seems a bit much to me, but he certainly looks nothing like his austere normal self. When he shakes his head, his yellowish bangs flop back and forth.

“Feder’s not that tough,” Sun says. “If he were really a good businessman, he’d be retired by now. He drinks too much. Plus, we have something he wants.”

“Why are you so sure that forty grand is enough to make him cross Happy Year?”

“Forty grand and a visa. Remember, Feder can’t get past Immigration, so he has never visited his family in America. Old Ai can fix that.”

“Yeah, but why would he trust us? We’re coming out of nowhere.”

Sun does his microshrug. “Feder is a survivor. He does business with Happy Year but owes them no particular loyalty. You have to convince him that the Happy Year ship is sinking. Then you offer him a life preserver. Just remember, you are representing ‘a major American interest.’ He’ll assume you’re with a powerful conglomerate or crime syndicate.

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