A Harvest of Thorns

by Corban Addison

  This just keeps getting better, Cameron thought. “How many workers does he represent?”

  “Jashel told us there are others, but he doesn’t know how many,” Fung replied.

  “I want to know where Rightaway gets its employees,” Cameron said, revealing a hint of his mounting impatience. “If they deal with outsourcing agents, they need to be transparent.”

  Fung traded a glance with Salazar and looked suddenly nervous. “We’d like that too. But our hands are tied. Nothing in your supplier contract requires that kind of disclosure.”

  Cameron winced. Fung was right. The contract was silent on that point. He looked at Declan, who was writing furiously on his notepad. “We need to draft an addendum.”

  “I’m on it,” Declan replied.

  Cameron gave Fung a penetrating look. “Dare I ask where the Malaysian government stands in all of this? Don’t they have immigration controls?”

  Fung’s laugh came out like a bark. “That’s being charitable. The Malaysians are where the Colombians were with drugs in the 1980s. Weak and riddled with complicity.”

  When Cameron didn’t reply, Fung elaborated. “Thanks to the Asian boom, Malaysia is now a middle-income country. As incomes have risen, the manufacturing sector has taken a hit. Malaysians don’t want to work in factories anymore, but the government doesn’t want the sector to die. So they’ve bent over backward to bring in foreign labor from countries further down on the global poverty index. That’s where outsourcing agents come in. They do all the recruitment work for the factories and jump through all the bureaucratic hoops, but they don’t charge the factories a fee. They charge it to the workers, and the workers usually pay by taking on debt. The debt, more than anything else, traps them in bonded labor. The government is well aware of this. For years, the US State Department has chastised Malaysia in its Trafficking in Persons Report. But the government has done little to regulate the agents and protect the workers. If anything, they’ve exacerbated the problem by legalizing total outsourcing, where the agent, not the factory, holds the work permit. That kind of outsourcing is a petri dish for forced labor.”

  “It sounds to me like we need to get the hell out of Malaysia,” Cameron grumbled.

  “And go where?” Fung rejoined, allowing the question to dangle in the air. “Half the countries that make clothes for Presto have child labor or forced labor—not in every factory, but in enough to make it a statistically significant issue. And the other countries you source from aren’t much cleaner. Take Cambodia, for instance. It has one of the strongest labor laws in the region. It’s also the site of the International Labour Organization’s first Better Factories initiative. There’s no evidence of forced or child labor, but there are sweatshops galore, crackdowns on unions, terminations for worker pregnancy or illness, and other forms of exploitation. The ILO does what it can, but the government’s enforcement record is abysmal.”

  For a moment, Cameron stared out the window at the smog-tinged skyline of Kuala Lumpur. A memory came to him from the day of the Millennium fire. He saw Vance again, standing at the window in his office, demanding answers. He heard his own voice counseling reason and caution. There’s a risk to asking questions. We don’t know what we’re going to find. At the time, he wouldn’t have called himself prescient, just prudential. Now his heart was a divided thing. The risk manager in him wanted to run from the danger. But another part of him couldn’t look away. I know the boy I raised, he heard his father saying. I don’t believe that boy is gone . . . I just want to know how he lives with himself . . .

  He blinked, forcing his mind back to the present. “What are you telling me?”

  This time it was Kent Salazar who responded. “You asked us for the truth, Cameron. This is the truth. There’s a reason companies like yours do all their sourcing in the developing world. It’s because cheap labor is plentiful and workplace regulations are largely unenforced. You could reduce your lead times by making clothes in the United States. But then you’d have to deal with the Department of Labor and OSHA and the federal minimum wage and labor unions. That would increase your costs and cut into your profits, unless, of course, you raised prices, in which case you’d give your competitors an edge. Nobody wants to admit it, but the push to manufacture overseas was a calculated end run around all the labor protections that American workers gained a hundred years ago. Malaysia may look like a banana republic when it comes to outsourcing agents. But you’re not going to avoid the plague if you cut and run. What you need is a vaccine.”

  When Salazar fell silent, Cameron’s head was wobbling like a top. In less than a minute, the Atlas consultant had indicted not just Presto but the entire American retail economy in colluding with labor abusers, corrupt governments, and human traffickers. It was hard to assail his logic, but Cameron didn’t have time to process it. He had back-to-back meetings with the president of Mayang and then with Kanya Nguyen, who was flying in from Thailand.

  “This vaccine,” Cameron said, “am I right that it involves exposing corrupt auditors?”

  Salazar glanced at his watch. “Your lunch meeting. I got carried away.”

  “Go back to Rightaway. Ask the questions our auditors didn’t. I want to know what the owner says about the outsourcing agents he works with. If he doesn’t want to talk to you, then tell him he can talk to me.”

  Salazar nodded. “I’ll reach out to him this afternoon.”

  “Declan,” Cameron continued, “get room service on the line. I want a banquet on the table in half an hour. If we’re going to fire the bastards, we might as well do it in style.”

  Everyone in the living room grinned. “With pleasure, sir,” Declan said.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  MAISON FRANÇAISE

  KUALA LUMPUR, MALAYSIA

  JANUARY 24, 2014

  6:02 P.M.

  In a feat of uncanny legerdemain, the restaurant Declan’s secretary had selected for their meeting with Kanya Nguyen had the look of a manor house in Provence, notwithstanding the skyscrapers that towered around it and the throb of city life just down the street. The décor was refreshingly spare, the walls and tables bright white, the floor and exposed beams walnut brown. The paned windows were expansive. There were fans turning on the ceiling and a pool out back, surrounded by a patio with trees and vines. Cameron and Declan met Kanya in the lobby and followed the hostess to a table in the second-floor dining room. The tables around them were empty, and so they would stay. Declan’s secretary had booked all of them.

  “Do you drink wine, Ms. Nguyen?” Cameron asked when they were seated.

  “Of course,” she replied, offering him a deferential smile. “But, please, call me Kanya.”

  She was petite, not an inch taller than five feet, and looked about twenty-five, though according to Declan, she was a decade older. She had the figure of a dancer, slender as a reed, and the symmetrical face and flawless complexion of a model. But it wasn’t her beauty that impressed Cameron. It was her quiet intensity and cultivated intelligence. There were layers beneath the surface of her, an interior world rich with variegated life. He had discerned this after only ten minutes in her presence, and he was certain his assessment was correct. It was the same trait he had seen in Olivia when they first talked on the lawn at Harvard Law School.

  “Their selection is good,” he said. He signaled the waiter and ordered a bottle of Chablis. Then he turned to business. “When was the last time you were in Malaysia, Kanya?”

  It was a gentle opening, even solicitous, given what he now knew about the extent of Presto’s compliance failures in the region. On the drive from the hotel, he had contemplated the opposite approach—a blunt entrée designed to catch her in a lie. But then he met her and saw his wife under the surface of her skin. In honor of Olivia, he decided to treat her kindly.

  “It was last July,” she replied, her English softly accented.

  Cameron regarded her candidly. “And the time before that?”

  Discomfort swam in h
er eyes. “The year before, also in July.”

  “And what did you do on those visits?”

  She brought her hands together and twisted a ring on her little finger. “I spoke to our auditing company, Mayang. I observed two factory inspections and spoke to the owners and a few workers. I didn’t have time for more.”

  “Did you come alone, or with staff?”

  “I brought my assistant,” she said. “That is all our office could spare.”

  The waiter appeared and poured Cameron a taste of the wine. He swirled it around in his glass and sipped it delicately. “Exceptional.” He gestured with his hand, and the waiter poured all three glasses, promising to return after they looked at the menu.

  “Tell me about the Bangkok office,” Cameron said. “Declan says you have responsibility for three countries—Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia—and over seven hundred factories.”

  Kanya nodded. “It’s just under eight hundred, mostly in Thailand and Indonesia.”

  “How many people work for you?”

  She glanced down at the table and twisted her ring again. “There are four of us. There were five until six months ago, but my deputy resigned.”

  “Wait a minute,” Declan interjected, his alarm palpable. “I get quarterly reports from your office director, Aran Wattana. He says there are ten people in compliance.”

  Kanya’s lips spread into a wry smile. “I suppose if you count the people in legal, IT, and HR who work with us on a regular basis.”

  Cameron felt a clench of disgust. Once again, the rot was in the roots. “Your deputy,” he said, homing in, “why haven’t you replaced him?”

  Kanya looked suddenly anxious. “I’ve held interviews. But Mr. Wattana believes that none of the candidates are qualified.”

  “What do you believe?” Cameron asked softly.

  When Kanya hesitated, he perceived the truth as clearly as if she had written it down on a napkin. He saw it in the tension that compressed the muscles in her cheeks and neck, in the way her breathing shortened and her pulse appeared in the artery below her jawline, in the way her eyes searched his face just as he was searching hers. He felt suddenly exposed. Her vulnerability was disarming, as was her beauty. In another life, he might have allowed the emotions to linger and turned them into a request—for a drink, after hours, in a place where they could talk as people, not as colleagues. It struck him then, in a way he never could have anticipated, how lonely he was, how starved of companionship. But the timing was wrong, and the relationship so imbalanced that nothing could even the scales. In an instant, he locked down his heart and cleansed his mind of distraction. He had a job to do.

  “Kanya,” he said, “I need you to be honest with me. I’ve discovered certain anomalies in our apparel supply chain. I’m trying to find out why. If you tell me what you know, I assure you that no harm will come to you. Declan? Tell her.”

  “He’s a man of his word,” Declan affirmed.

  Kanya vacillated another moment. Then her expression hardened. “All right. I only interview qualified candidates. And I should have ten on my staff. We should be making quarterly trips to Malaysia. Better yet, we should have an office here. It’s impossible to provide adequate oversight from Bangkok.”

  Again, Cameron found himself stirred. “What would you say if I told you that our auditors have been taking bribes from factory owners?”

  She grimaced. “I would say it is inevitable. You get what you pay for. Mayang’s fees are notoriously low. Malaysia is rife with corruption. There’s a link between the two. I didn’t want to hire them. Mr. Wattana did.”

  Cameron smiled. “Then you will be pleased to know that their contract has been revoked. I spoke to the owner today. He tried to lie to me.”

  Kanya’s face radiated surprise. “Who will take over for them?”

  Cameron held out his hands. “Whoever you choose. Aran Wattana will not stand in your way. But I need to understand something. Presto’s compliance budget is robust. Vance Lawson is on our side. Whatever my compliance people need, they get, so long as they can justify it. What is Wattana’s game? Why is he not spending the money?”

  “Oh, he’s spending it,” Kanya replied acerbically. “Just not on compliance.”

  The waiter appeared again, but Cameron waved him away. “Where is the money going?”

  “It’s going to the sourcing staff. Mr. Wattana gives them perks when they get suppliers to drop their prices. The most effective sourcing associates fly business class and stay in five-star hotels. Their last team review took place at a resort in Phuket. Our last review took place in the office over lunch.”

  Cameron’s fingers curled around the edge of the table. It was offensive enough that Presto’s sourcing managers had ignored the Red List. But it was immoral to deliberately underfund factory oversight in order to finance junkets for people whose objective was to squeeze every last millimeter of margin out of Presto’s suppliers—thus tempting those same suppliers to violate the law and Presto’s Code of Conduct to cut their own costs.

  “Okay,” he said. “Complete the picture for me. What does Wattana get out of it?”

  It was Declan who answered. “He gets a stellar performance review from corporate. I’ve been worried about the incentives for some time, but until now I’ve never had proof of abuse. Our offices are rated on four metrics—quality control, on-time delivery, gross margin, and cost containment. Office directors manage their own budget, which means that if they want to, they can take funds from a cost center like compliance and deploy them in creative ways to drive margin on the goods they’re sourcing. I bet if I got Wattana’s performance ratings from HR, I’d find that he’s been getting top marks across the board.”

  “Mr. Mays is right,” Kanya said quietly. “For the past five years, we’ve been the highest-rated office in the world. We are the darlings of Presto’s sourcing department. The incentives to shirk compliance are built into the system.”

  Cameron took a breath, overwhelmed by the dimensions of the shit pile he’d stepped into. The day was coming when he and Rebecca Sinclair, Presto’s sourcing VP, were going to have a talk, and Vance was going to hear about it, and the system was going to change. But some things needed to happen before he could confront her.

  “Where are you staying tonight?” he asked Kanya.

  “At the DoubleTree,” she replied.

  Cameron shook his head. “Not anymore. You’re staying at the Mandarin Oriental with us. Wattana is flying in tomorrow. He and I are going to sort a few things out. I don’t care how beloved he is. He’s stealing money from my people, and I won’t stand for it. Prepare yourself for a budget boost. Hire the best auditing company in Malaysia, and tell them they have one job more than any other. They need to find out how our suppliers are getting foreign workers, and how those workers are being treated when they get here. I’m probably not telling you anything you don’t know, but right now, in this city, there are people making our clothes who are not free to leave. That’s a form of slavery, and I want it to stop. You can help make that happen.”

  To Cameron’s astonishment, he saw Kanya’s eyes moisten. “Thank you,” she said, imbuing her voice with the utmost sincerity.

  “It’s nothing,” he replied.

  “No,” she insisted. “It’s not nothing. I’ve seen them with my own eyes. They come from so many places hoping for a better life. But when they get here, they find that it’s all a lie. Awhile ago, I gave up hope that I could do anything about it. Now I see that I can.”

  In an instant, the flutter of pheromones in Cameron’s stomach turned into a full-fledged rush of adrenaline. For precious seconds, he allowed himself to imagine what it would be like to take off his coat, loosen his tie and shoelaces, and relax in the presence of a woman again, this woman, to laugh at a joke unencumbered by its professional implications, to seduce her with wit and kindness, to feel the touch of her fingertips on his skin, to watch her let her hair down and fiddle with the zipper on her dress, a
nd to throw back the sheets and chase her into the embrace of ecstasy. Then the moment passed, and the fantasy slipped away.

  “You’re welcome,” he said, smiling at her in the most genuine way. “Now let’s have a look at the menu. I don’t know about you, but I’m ravenous.”

  PART FOUR

  Joshua

  March 2015

  CHAPTER ONE

  THE INTERCONTINENTAL HOTEL

  KUALA LUMPUR, MALAYSIA

  MARCH 3, 2015

  9:50 P.M.

  The night was cloudless and clear, but the stars were nowhere to be seen. The humidity was a swamp in the equatorial sky, and the lights of the Malaysian capital were everywhere bright. Josh saw them from his room, perched like a bird at the level of the surrounding rooftops, the Petronas Towers in the distance gleaming like emerald-crusted fingers. He was in yet another hotel in yet another country, a new stamp on his passport, two thousand airline miles closer to the watershed mark of one million. Rana was behind him on the couch, a burner phone plastered to one ear, a fixer on the line, ironing out the details of a meet.

  “Who’s your contact?” Rana was saying. “Is he trustworthy? . . . How many workers are there? . . . Where are they staying? . . . Are there any guards? . . . What about the outsourcing agent? . . . We can go tonight, but we need to be sure it’s safe . . .”

  Josh’s iPhone vibrated in his pocket. He pulled it out and glanced at the screen. Of all the times! He took a breath and counted the cost. Then he caught Rana’s eye. “I’ll be right back,” he said and walked to the bathroom, locking the door behind him.

  He read Maria’s text again. “Joshua, where are you? It has been three weeks, and I hear nothing. Please do not forget us. We have no one else.”

  He wavered in indecision. He knew if he opened this door, it would not be easy to close. He thought of Madison and remembered the way her tears had shined in the light of the foyer when she confronted him with the O Globo story. He had known what was coming, but he hadn’t been prepared for the way her rejection would level him.