28 December, Central Police Station, City K
When Phillip answered his phone John quickly spoke "Phillip, we have information. It appears that Lexi was the target, and Matthew was simply with her so they both were kidnapped. At present, we are keeping information closely held, but I need a favour."
"John, you lay this on me, it better be good. I have to deal with Chester."
"Rather than letting people know exactly what happened, can you and Chester hide at Matthew's villa until we have recovered Lexi and Matthew. We can use an excuse that you are feeling unwell. It is known that you are fighting cancer again …"
"You need to use me as a cover story?"
"You read my mind. I hate asking, but now as it appears Lexi was the target, we can hide Matthew's disappearance and more importantly make it easier to get both back."
After a minute or so of discussions in the background, Phillip responded "You have two days, I was not well today, so I can excuse not being in tomorrow, and then we have the weekend. But two days is it, as Chester and I will have to deal with Andrew."
"You have my word," responded John before hanging up.
John turned to say something, but before he could open his mouth there was a knock on the door, and he quickly opened the door seeing General Man and Warrant Officer Wang. John took one look at General Man and now questioned his decision about asking the General to come, but in all the circumstances it was necessary to determine how they would handle this matter.
General Man quickly walked in and sat down, while John secured the door. He took one look at the screen he could see and saw the image there. "F*ck"
"General, when I asked you here, I did not know the seriousness of the problem, but now you can see the situation is worse than we anticipated. We have not yet fully tracked movements back to determine who was the real target, but given," John paused as he needed to keep the information in the letter secret "Colonel Rong was involved, and the discussion I had with him yesterday I needed to speak to someone more senior."
"Mr Nang, do you and your team have a gut feeling at the moment regarding the target?"
"Nothing that is hard evidence, but we had through various channels information that vaguely indicated the targeting of someone connected to a significant business for kidnapping. Given what happened to Dominic Yao six months ago, I guess we may have wrongly assumed that this would mean the targeting of child of a businessperson. Not someone like Lexi Yao."
General Man looked at John Nang. Having had dealings with him for the last eighteen months' he realised John Nang already had a plan to deal with the situation. "You have something in mind?"
"Phillip Rong and Chester Yao are on board, and it is not totally a lie. Phillip will spend the next couple of days at Matthew's Villa, and the news will get out that he is not well. It is known his cancer is back, and at the dinner at TJ's he did not look totally well, so I can buy us two days. They will pretend Matthew and Lexi are there and knowing the Villa's staff they will protect everyone. That gives us time to go through all the CCTV footage we can trace the Devil both to where we lose them on CCTV footage and back to see their movements before the incident."
"I hate lying to people, but given he is not due to formally start until Monday, that can work. I just must deal with the chiefs of the military and let them know what is happening. Have you a secure line here I can use?"
John turned and pulled out his secure mobile and said "Use this. It is my personal secure mobile phone," while handing it to General Man. "You can use my office for privacy for the call." John walked over and opened his office door.
Once he entered General Man closed the door behind him, and quickly made a call to Military headquarters in the capital and asked for an immediate secure conference call with the senior Military chief and the senior special forces officer on duty. Once the call was connected General Man said "We have a problem. General Rong, appears to have been at the wrong place at the wrong time and has been kidnapped with Miss Lexi Yao, a childhood friend. We can hide this for two days, with the family's help, with a trustworthy small team from the local police heading the investigation. You need to keep a check for his location beacon. I can only stay a short time here before heading back to the hospital given the surgery that is scheduled today. The complication is the kidnapper is The Devil …"
-------
If you are reading this novel anywhere other than at Webnovel or its apps then you are reading work that has been stolen in breach of the authors rights and those rights assigned to others.
Please support this author and only access this novel through Webnovel at https://www.webnovel.com/book/15095783406874805 and report the illegal posting of this work.