He who offends against Heaven has none to whom he can pray.
confucius, the analects, c. 500 BC
The earth trembled and quaked, the foundations of the heavens shook; they trembled because he was angry.
samuel, book of samuel, c. 950 BC
A Bit of Background
I thought it would be helpful to give some information on Chinese perspectives. Please keep in mind, that with a billion and a half Chinese worldwide, the comments are not hard and fast rules.
Traditional Chinese Medicine
Doctors of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) treat the body as a whole with one part impacting another. The body’s life energy―Qi―has a series of “meridians” that connect it together. That’s why a Chinese doctor may be working on a vein in the foot to treat a kidney or putting a long thin acupuncture needle in the arm to treat gout. Unlike Western medicine, there are no specialists in Chinese medicine.
TCM doesn’t have a universal system of study, training, or treatment. This varies not only from country to country, but often from doctor to doctor.
While many colleges and schools offer courses in TCM, each college’s programs and curricula are different. With such an individualistic approach, apprenticeship is a time-honored method of training.
Snakes
Chinese attitudes toward snakes are quite different than most Western cultures. Instead of fear and loathing, snakes are respected, revered, and worshipped for fierceness. In some Chinese myths, snakes appear as supernatural beings, sometimes with human body parts.
Many who deny the serpent’s spiritual or supernatural powers will still accept its powers to regenerate and rejuvenate. In Chinese pharmacies, herbalists use the scaly skin, gall bladder, and meat to treat everything from skin eruptions and hemorrhoids to arthritis. From fresh snakes, the bile and blood can be mixed with rice wine to create a tonic that stimulates energy and is a potent aphrodisiac.
In select restaurants, fresh snake meat is a specialized delicacy—fried, baked, in hot pots—including every part of the body from its skin to its blood to its bones.
Prologue
With howling flames bellowing up his legs and chunks of scorching plaster crashing around and on him, Garret embraced Chin tightly. Chin struggled, grabbing Garret’s throat, but the lawyer refused to release his grasp. The two began to burn as one. Searing pain ravaged their bodies.
Chin gasped, “I can still make you wealthy beyond your wildest dreams.”
“You still don’t get it, do you, Chin?” Garret said hoarsely. “This is not about money. This is not about honor. This is about Mary and Jocelyn. Tommy and I planned this for years. Finally, we have redemption.”
Garret saw Olivia trying to approach them, but the conflagration was too intense. He called out to her. “Stay there, Olivia. It’s okay. I have waited until now to avenge your mother. You were always right. It was my fault. But I hope I’ve made it right. I love you, Olivia.”
“No!” screamed Olivia. She saw the ceiling above Garret collapse with screeching white hot steel falling on and around him. She got a final glimpse of her father holding Chin tight and burning like a single candle before flames shot outward, upward and downward, engulfing the pair, then disappearing into the inferno.
Chin battled to stay conscious. In his severely weakened state, the combination of Garret’s vise-like lock on his body and the toxic black plumes of smoke and scorching heat were overwhelming. He knew it would be over in less than two minutes, maybe one.
But Chin was a battle-hardened veteran who had faced death innumerable times and won. He knew the key was to keep calm and watch for or create a break. Fighting through the agony of movement, he slowly tilted his head back, then thrust it forward. His skull hit Garret’s forehead. Normally, Garret would have shrugged it off but because of the heat and his weakened condition, the force was enough that Garret hit oblivion. His body dropped to the ground, a victim of his own miscalculation. By wrapping himself around Chin, Garret provided the tiger master a scant protection against the white-hot angry fire, absorbing the brunt of it himself.
I’m not done yet! Chin knelt to the ground and draped Garret’s body over his.
Over the blood-curdling roar of the fiery furnace, Chin heard Master Wu’s familiar voice shouting, “Hurry, Noah. Come! Now!”
Wu’s voice jolted Chin to an even more determined awareness. With the floor beneath him burning, Chin’s hands and knees charred as he crawled toward the elevator. As he moved, the inferno scorched his face, arms and hands but his plan was working. Garret’s body shielded him from being completely barbecued.
Chin arrived at his private elevator, pain screaming from every pore in his body, his chiseled body replaced with his own cooked flesh.
He pressed the elevator button and miraculously it opened. Chin stood. He stooped to pick up Garret’s body and tossed the corpse into the flames.
Chin stumbled into the elevator and forced himself to pick up its emergency phone. His fingers screamed for mercy as he punched in a number.
“Yes, Chin, what can I do?” asked Wing, one of his faithful staff at the gargantuan Tiger Palace.
“Help,” croaked Chin. But before he could utter another word, he dropped the phone and collapsed to the floor.
Wing went into immediate action. He called down the elevator and saw Chin, at death’s door, lying on the floor.
He knelt next to his boss and detected faint breathing. He took out his cell phone but, before he could punch in a number, Chin rasped, “No.”
Stunned, Wing replied, “You need to go to a hospital. Now.”
Chin’s voice was barely a whisper. “No hospital. I need my own medicine.”
Wing knew what Chin wanted but didn’t feel there was adequate time. “The closest tigers are more than four hours away. You won’t make it.”
The tiger master had never seen a Western physician or a doctor of TCM, and Bengal tigers were more than just Chin’s trademark; he revered them, respected them and used them. He regularly ate tiger parts, not simply for their healing or aphrodisiac qualities, but because he believed his spirit would meld with the tiger’s. The tiger was his source of strength, his vitality and his power. If he was going to heal, the tiger would be key to his recovery.
Chin was adamant. “No hospitals. Do it, Wing.”
“Yes, Chin.”
Within an hour, Wing rode with Chin on a private jet to a refuge in the Himalayan foothills where the cool mountain air would help him recuperate. This location was less than an hour away from the Sundarbans mangrove forests where the greatest concentration of Bengal tigers lived. There would be plenty of poachers to provide Chin with enough medicine for his healing.
Chapter 1
Noah Reid reminisced with Master Wu as they strolled through the Kowloon Walled City Park. Before the Hong Kong government took it over, the “Walled City” was a densely populated slum blighted by poverty, crime and improper sanitation. In one square block, fifty thousand people lived in this unsanitary, unsafe sea of unregistered buildings.
This was where Chad Huang, Noah’s best friend, was born. Today, this would be where Noah would discreetly scatter Chad’s ashes.
Noah brought Master Wu because the elderly sifu was the closest thing to a living parent he had and he wanted him there with him.
Noah chose the Walled City Park for Chad’s remains, not because this was the place of his friend’s birth, but because of Chad’s passion for the underprivileged or those who had had a rough go with life. That the hopeless place of Chad’s birth had become a park jewel symbolized what Chad and Noah believed: no matter how dark the circumstance, there was a beauty awaiting that would exhibit itself, given the opportunity.
Noah and Master Wu arrived at their destination, a small pagoda beside a pond. As he and Master Wu tossed Chad’s ashes into the turquoise waters, Noah reflected, “Chad, you were always there for me. Thanks for that. You know, we got billions to play with now. You’d be happy. We’re going to h
elp build hundreds, maybe thousands of basketball courts, community centers, whatever for kids to play in, in Asia and North America. And get this. I am going to be the president of the Chad Huang Foundation. Isn’t that crazy? Remember, we wanted to do something for the kids? Well, we’re doing it, bud. We’re really doing it.”
Noah turned to face Master Wu and smiled, masking the tears he wanted to express. Master Wu took Noah’s hand and squeezed.
Noah and Master Wu then began the trek to the city in the beater MG sports car that Noah and Chad had co-owned. As Noah looked over to his sifu sleeping in the passenger seat, his thoughts traveled back to the time when Master Wu became more than just a teacher of martial arts to him.
Ten Years Ago
This tiny Protestant church with a seating capacity of one hundred had been a mainstay of Hong Kong since the 1850s. Its rough wooden pews, twelve-foot tall wooden cross at the front and a large unfurled rice paper scroll with the words “Jesus Saves” written in Chinese calligraphy were all at least a hundred years old. It was the church where the Reids had worshiped for ten years and now it was the church that would send the senior Reids home.
At the front were two plain wooden coffins. Eighteen-year-old Noah was draped over one of them. Master Wu was beside him, his arm around Noah’s back.
“Why? Why? Why?” cried the teenager. “Mom and Dad never hurt anyone. All they ever did was help everybody they could. They never took anything for themselves.”
“Drug addiction is a serious disease. It does...strange things to the mind.”
“How could a good God allow this to happen?”
It was the question that had troubled or stumped every spiritual person regardless of faith since the beginning of time. For most, there had never been a completely satisfactory answer. Master Wu’s answer from a Buddhist/Taoist background was as good as any.
“Don’t look at the immediate, Noah. Think a year, a decade, a century ahead. No one knew the mind of the gods...of God. This may be the turning point, no, this was the defining moment of your life.”
“I couldn’t care less. Xenos, the bastard...he stabbed them a hundred times each. For what? We have nothing. I’d kill him except the coward stuck a knife into his own heart first.”
“If there was a hell below, you can rest assured that’s where his soul is.”
“I don’t care about where Xenos is. That doesn’t help Mom and Dad. They didn’t deserve this. That doesn’t help me.”
“I know. I know.” So much to say, so few words of genuine comfort. Master Wu pulled the weeping boy in a little tighter. “Your parents were the finest people I ever met. Someday, I hope you will be in that group too.”
Noah replied bitterly, “And look where that got them...”
There was nothing Master Wu could do but share in Noah’s pain.
“Noah, you must stop drinking,” chastised Master Wu in the foyer of his studio.
“Who are you? My mother? It’s legal. It’s in the Bible,” snickered Noah as he chugged down a quarter of a bottle of the cheap scotch. “Or do you think you’re too good to have booze in ‘Master Wu’s Kung Fu Palace and Pie Shop.’”
Master Wu grabbed the bottle from Noah and threw it against the wall of his martial arts studio. The glass shattered into fragments and the tan liquid spread out over the floor.
“What’d you do that for?” cried Noah as he drunkenly pounded on Master Wu.
Master Wu did not try to defend himself and allowed Noah to hit and hit and hit until the young man hadn’t a shred of energy to do anything anymore.
“Are you giving up on me too?” cried Noah in despair.
“Hit me some more, Noah. Hit me until the pain stops.”
Noah took a wild, inebriated roundhouse at Master Wu. Completely missing, he stumbled to the floor and started vomiting.
Six Years Ago
Noah did a flying handstand and landed in front of Master Wu. “I got it! I got it! I got a scholarship. Los Angeles, here I come!”
“And you didn’t think you’d get in anywhere. I’m proud of you.”
Noah whipped a sheet of paper out of his shirt pocket and waved it in front of his sifu.
“Can you believe that? I got a ‘special university scholarship.’ Otherwise I could never afford to go. All I have to do is teach a few martial arts classes a week: beginner, intermediate and advanced. A one in a million chance at getting something this good.”
Master Wu beamed at Noah, hiding the truth behind his smile. No, it’s a one hundred percent chance when you talk to the right people. And in a few years, you will get another ‘special scholarship’ for law school, again to teach martial arts classes...That’s the only way we can be sure you will keep your training up.
“Hey, you’ve got to come visit me. Check out Disneyland, Knott’s Berry Farm, Hollywood,” Noah said.
“I don’t even own a television. And besides, I hate flying. You’ve got to come back to me.”
“Someday, Master Wu. Someday.”
And some day, Noah, you will need to pay it back.
Noah pulled up in front of Chad’s Caffeine Emporium, the small Internet cafe that Chad had owned. He tapped Master Wu on the shoulder. “Wake up, Sifu. We’re here.”
Chapter 2
This was the first official meeting of the Chad Huang Foundation. Noah chose Chad’s internet cafe, “Chad’s Caffeine Emporium,” over a prestigious hotel or boardroom because it embodied the values he and Chad shared. Not only was it a place for at-risk youth to hang out, Chad hired them to work there.
Noah watched as one of the street kids Chad had taken under his wing, fourteen-year-old Sam Xi, pulled perfect espresso shots, frothed the milk, then expertly poured the milk into the cups of espresso, creating designs of hearts, tadpoles and faces for the Foundation’s executive board—Olivia, Abby, Master Wu, Sam and himself.
Sam was a fourteen-year-old former teen gang member Chad had befriended. His mom was a drug addict and his dad was in jail, so Chad became the big brother Sam never had. After Chad’s death, Sam would have returned to his old ways had Noah not taken him in.
Noah made a deal with Sam’s mom, telling her he would take care of Sam until she turned herself around. Sam could live with him. Noah would ensure that he went to school and would take care of all Sam’s expenses. It was an easy sell, especially after Noah promised her a thousand dollars a month in cash. Because Sam was an example of the kind of troubled street kid Noah was trying to help, Sam’s experience made him a perfect first “hire” and “Junior Board Member” of the Chad Huang Foundation.
Cutting right to the chase, Noah opened, “So, what are we going to do? There might be three billion dollars.”
“Stick it in a bank and collect the interest,” piped up Sam. “I’ll take ten percent for coming up with the idea.”
Noah laughed. “Naturally.” Getting serious, he continued, looking right at Olivia. “We’re going to have the same problem that Chin used your dad to solve. They didn’t teach money laundering where I went to law school and I doubt they taught it at Harvard either.”
“Not officially,” shrugged Olivia.
Noah rolled his eyes. “Come on, Olivia. Seriously… Listen, I don’t want to exaggerate the problem but look at what we have. Two newbie lawyers. One kid. One singer. One martial artist. How the heck are we ever going to hide the cash?”
Now it was Olivia’s turn to smirk. “Noah, I am my father’s daughter. He and I may not have spent that much time together and we may not have gotten along that well but… I did take several courses in the Clinical and Pro Bono program, as well as business and tax structure.”
Olivia laser-focused on Noah. “But I am more concerned about you, whether you’re up to the task.”
“What’s wrong with me?” asked Noah defensively.
“Because you are the face, the chief evangelist and rah rah guy for the Foundation. You’re also a guy, which means you can get in through a lot of doors I can’t.”
Noah’s lips pursed. He hadn’t quite thought of it like that and the responsibility Olivia outlined sounded overwhelming.
Master Wu saw his protégé’s discomfort. Before Noah could protest, he said, “Noah, you will be able to do it.” With steely eyes, he quoted, “‘Wisdom, compassion and courage are the three universally recognized moral qualities of men.’ That is what I have trained you with. Everything you’ve gone through was to prepare you for today.”
Master Wu had stated those words of Confucius to him over the years, but the challenge was still staggering. As Noah inhaled, a verse his missionary parents drilled into him came back to him. “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.”
As he pondered the wisdom of East and West, of Christ and Confucius, tranquility came over him. He grinned, “Hey, I got nothing else to do.”
Tension broken, all laughed and lifted their cappuccinos in a toast.
“I knew you’d agree,” quipped Olivia. “That’s why you’ve got to get packing.”
“Why? Where am I going?”
“We’ve been on the phone,” said Abby. “Beijing, Shanghai and Nanjing are lined up. Then a few short hops across Asia before you head to North America.”
Noah was tired just thinking about it.
Chapter 3
Three Months Later
Chin hated doing nothing. The enforced isolation and physical inactivity in the secluded Himalayan cave was making him more tense than a battle with the tigers that were his now regular diet. While he had made progress, Chin was by no means ready to take a piss by himself, let alone lead a charge to recover his hijacked fortune.
The Noah Reid Action Thriller Series: Books 1-3 (plus special bonuses) Page 24