6/6/66

by JN Lenz

  The Blogger known simply as “China Syndrome”, proved to be an invaluable resource for Clyde, helping to patch together other the details salvaged from a variety of search engines and cloud computing resources. There would be no way to verify the legitimacy of much of the information taken from the blogs and web sites, but it would appear that Faol Dung had operated as an informant for the Communist Parties secretive ministry of State security force.

  The primary mandate of this branch of the MSS was the identification and submission of anti-government dissidents. Faol Dung may even have been a trained MSS operative, with rumors of him being recruited at a young age. His first purported assignment had come as an informant while attending a Beijing University, reporting back to the interior ministry on those students who propagated anti- government literature and dialogue with fellow students.

  Members of these secretive groups would gather to discuss ways to further pressure on the government to loosen policies on rights and freedoms, since Faol Dung was also a student he penetrated the inner circle of one such group. Using simple tactics such as dressing in particular American clothes and frequenting all the watering holes frequented by the rebellious youth, allowed Faol Dung to gain the group’s acceptance. Faol Dung would prove to be very effective in deriving information after infiltrating these student activist groups, his impressive record of reporting back the names of these members to the MSS, led him to several schools over a five year period.

  Any student identified by Faol Dung, would be paid a visit by the specialized interrogation teams of the MSS, used to intimidate the individual into abandoning their anti-government activities. Refusal to do so, would result in severe consequences and punishment to both the individual, and their family. The blogger went so far as to say that a number of students found murdered, had their official cause of death reported as suicide. The CS blog claimed stories of intimidation in several universities across China, along with reported beatings and students disappearing.

  There was little to no Chinese media coverage, of the disappearances, murders or suicides among its university students. There was no official record of Faol Dung working for the communist party, or the government that Clyde could find. The CS blogger would become his sole source of information on Faol Dung in his younger years. The blog claimed that the two years that followed Faol Dung’s work in the universities; he had been assigned to the factory floors of several large scale manufacturers throughout the city of Deeppew. His assignment similar to his work in the universities, unearth members of anti-government organizations and identify those individuals attempting to form and lead workers’ rights groups.

  The effectiveness Faol Dung displayed in being an informant for the authorities in the large universities in and around Beijing would be repeated over the next two years on the factory floors, in the heart of China’s manufacturing heartland. The CS reported Faol Dung had been one of many moles planted to stem uprisings among the workers, working in a dozen large factories in two years. It was reported that Faol Dung had in one case, required less than two weeks in a factory, to identify key members ready to stage a massive work stoppage.

  Those identified by Faol Dung, fired immediately from the factory floor, black listed from securing employment in any of the remaining manufacturers in the Province. These individuals, forced to return to their small rural home towns, in shame and back to poverty. Over time, the fast rising inflation had eroded the workers’ wages buying power to such a degree that the MSS program of selectively removing instigators from the factory floors failed. The demands of the nation’s workers could no longer be ignored as industry and government met the demands of the workers to avoid civil unrest. Tyrannies began to fall across the Middle East and eventually all of Africa, the communist rulers of China had no intention of being next

  Within months of Lee’s father having been killed, there would be a series of high profile large manufacturers where the entire work force walked off the job, demanding higher wages and better working conditions. The world media showed the strikes take place across China, the government and the corporations whose work place ethics had been thrown into the spot light, acted quickly to improve wages and conditions for the workers. Smaller manufacturers across the country quickly followed suit with similar wage increases and workers concessions, averting civil unrest among the world’s largest workforce.

  Following the two years Faol Dung served for the MSS on the factory floors, and the countless names he had provided to the secret service, they would reward him his own funding for a new industrial factory of his own. The bank would provide Faol Dung with the financial backing, based on a multi-year contract he received from the government to supply wiring harnesses, to a newly constructed automotive assembly plant. The new assembly would be surrounded by various parts manufacturers and suppliers, with parts of the project supported by the government, allowing for increased control from the communist rulers. The new factories all built in the newly burgeoning heavily industrialized Dugan section, in the center of the country. The wages and operating costs for factories located in China’s interior back then were far less than those which were located in the mega cities, located along the Pacific Rim.

  The rewarding of contracts, along with the loan assurances and land allowances, a popular tool for communist rulers to reward exceptional acts performed in the name of the State. The electrical harness factory Faol Dung was to own resided in an industrial park full of accompanying parts manufacturers, they all supplied the assembly plant which was linked to the industrial park with a private road. He would name his company Dung Motors, the sprawling complex would employ over a thousand workers. With Dung Motors being privately owned, there was no listing on the Chinese stock exchange; information on the company was limited to what they posted on line.

  There would be small pieces of information in local papers, articles when the factory was built, when it had expanded from the original three hundred employees, a short article when peak employment was reached in the year two thousand and eighteen. By all accounts Faol Dung’s service as an informant to the Ministry of State Security or MSS must have been indispensable, based on the size of his compensation which would not be common amongst Chinese intelligence agents. Their ranks would be in the thousands, estimates of China’s foreign intelligence agents had their numbers triple that of American agents, posted throughout the world.

  Soon after the opening of Dung Motors; Faol began to realize wealth unimaginable to him as a child. The profits Faol Dung extracted from his low wage workers began flowing back into Faol Dung’s coffers, turning him into one of China’s new millionaires. By that year there would be well over a million, millionaires in the country. The most exciting information that Clyde would garner from his search in blogs was a claim that Faol Dung had purchased property in the city of Vancouver, British Columbia.

  Although Faol Dung was believed to still spend the bulk of his time in China, his wife and children had been living in Canada since the purchase of the condominium, in the year two thousand and twelve. Faol Dung’s two sons, both teenagers, attended high school in Vancouver’s West Side, close to the family condominium. Another blog speculated Faol Dung was currently living in Canada, returning to China not more than a few days each month.

  Until that point, Clyde believed his only opportunity to murder Faol Dung would be in China; I remember him mentioning years ago his desire to climb the Himalayans. A trip he was never to make, with Faol Dung living here there was no need for a risky murder on the other side of the Pacific. Detailed information of Faol Dung’s precise place of residence in Vancouver was not easy to uncover, the condo had been purchased in his wife’s maiden name, which Clyde did not know. Their phone numbers were unlisted, and Clyde could not find any vehicle registration in the province of British Columbia for Faol Dung.

  The break came from a long forgotten social networking site called My Space; the site was now more a musician site than anything else. One night when Sid
had called Clyde on Skype Pactiv from university, he mentioned using My Space to watch his favorite band from Vancouver; they were set to play in Toronto the following week. After he had ended his Skype with Sid, Clyde realized he never tried searching for Faol Dung on any social media web site. Using the full name of Faol Dung produced no matches on any of the wider used social networking sites, but when Clyde searched for simply Dung there would be six matches in the Vancouver area.

  Of the six matches there would be but one set of brothers, the pair had listed their ages at fifteen and sixteen. Not one, but two of the moles on Clyde jabbed him with pain after reading of the twin Dung’s. These were the offspring of Faol Dung, he could sense it.

  From the boys posted photo graphs, taken inside and outside of their condominium allowed Clyde to piece together the location of the tower. Using the images of the two boys from their respective home sites, he scanned them with his Blackberry which provided a matching address. The building was situated in an upscale area of West Vancouver; the high rise was located in a neighborhood of upper end homes and condominium developments. The bulk of the area towers had been situated to capture views of both the Vancouver Harbor and the snow covered Rocky Mountain’s.

  From here Clyde felt the only thing left was to travel to Vancouver and see for himself if Faol Dung was in fact living a life of comfort, luxury and freedom, on the streets of a Canadian city. With the Canadian airports using the same DNA screening of all commercial flights, regardless of being domestic or International, Clyde would need to travel by a different means to make his way to Vancouver. The choices ranged from taking a private jet, to the train or simply driving out himself, deciding on the later, he rented a motor home using the last of his spare identifications, from a homeless man he had murdered over a decade earlier.

  The choice of a Motor Home for his source of transportation to Vancouver had been based on several factors beyond the airport DNA scanners, number one being the ability to arrive in Vancouver with a number of weapons. The riffles would be concealed in the roof and floor of the motor home before departing Ontario. The arsenal Clyde would bring along to Vancouver included a high powered .300 Winchester Magnum sniper rifle the scope of which having visual enhancement tools including, night vision, a carbon dioxide detection laser and a heat sensor. The riffle had the option of being configured with a silencer on the end of the barrel as well, a pair of pistols and a favorite hunting knife would be the sum of his arsenal.

  Before departing he debated leaving the pistols, a distance sniper shooting was the intended means of eradicating Faol Dung. Not knowing for sure if that plan would work once in Vancouver, Clyde would pack the pistols as well. Not wanting to be halfway across the country without the tools he required, Clyde would carry enough weapons for contingency plans.

  The slow moving speed of the Motor Home made its choice in a vehicle perfect for the long drive to the west coast, he wanted there to be no temptation to speed on his drive, this to avoid being pulled over by the Police along the way. The Motor Home he had decided on was thankfully under powered, incapable of breaking a speed any higher than about one hundred and ten kilometers an hour. The Motor Home would provide Clyde the privacy he required to stage weapons while in Vancouver, eliminating the need to transport weapons in and out of Hotels.

  I clearly remember Clyde, leaving for that west coast trip a couple of days after News Years day. His story to all of us had been of a planned ski venture around British Columbia; maybe spend some time in Vancouver. The Motor Home was ideal because it could hold all his gear, the unit was a winterized model with additional insulation and heating allowing remote use in the cold. Clyde would strap a scooter to the back, to be used in Vancouver; they rarely had enough snow even in the winter. He had limited his driving in the years prior to this and I was surprised he was planning on driving instead of flying.

  “Time for a new adventure” was his response

  Clyde would leave from his farm north of Toronto on January 3rd. It would take him a full six days to reach Vancouver, including stopping for a day of skiing at Whistler on his way through the Rocky Mountains. He made note of how much he enjoyed driving the motor home across the country, it was a mode of travel he had never considered in the past.

  Arriving on the streets of Vancouver on January ninth, Clyde found the first Big Box Retail Mall he came across and pulled the motor home into the lot for the night. The rain had been falling steadily for the last three hours of the drive after leaving from Whistler. There would be a number of parking lots and year round trailer parks that Clyde had to choose from to park the Motor Home; he decided on a trailer Park located only twenty minutes from the edge of Vancouver’s West Side, the place was listed on the Sat Nav.

  The location of the trailer park would be close enough to use the scooter, but the continuous rain would mean days of being soaked. Preferring to stay dry, he decided on the use of a rental car instead. The same identification he had used for the Motor Home rental in Ontario would be used to rent a Chrysler minivan with blacked out tinted windows. The back captain seats would be ideal while the van was stationary and Clyde searched for Faol Dung.

  Clyde would waste little time once in Vancouver in Foal Dung’s condominium, he had parked and hooked up the motor home up in the trailer park and rented the van on his first day in the city. Leaving the parking lot of the rental car company, Clyde would head straight for the Vancouver West Side address of Faol Dung. Removing the portable Sat. Nav from out of the Motor Home he followed the preprogrammed route to the building he believed to be Faol Dung’s. The Sat Nav led Clyde from the rental lot directly to the base of the building in less than thirty minutes, turned out the drive back to the trailer park where the motor home was parked, was less than twenty minutes.

  This would be the first of sixteen days, Clyde watched the apartment complex in search of Faol Dung, and it would take until the fourth day before he would spot the youngest son of Faol Dung first. The two full days spent after settling in on the first day had come up empty; the complex contained three towers, all connected on the bottom floor with some retail and underground parking. With all three towers identical in appearance, he had yet to discover which of the high rises contained Faol Dung, the exterior pictures from Sum Dung’s site led Clyde to believe the Dung’s resided in the center building.

  The morning of the fourth day, Clyde would spot Sum Dung pull his heavily window tinted Mercedes to the main front doors of the center tower. Residents typically parked in their allotted underground spaces. Sum Dung must have forgotten something inside, pulling up into the valet area under the canopy; this was the break Clyde had been hoping for.

  Watching the Mercedes as it approached through a set of high powered digital binoculars, he watched as an oriental man in a quality suit jump out from behind the wheel of the Mercedes. Pulling his glasses off as he spoke to the valet attendant, before walking thru the front entrance, disappearing into the building.

  The same man returned to the car fifteen minutes later, clutching a black bag which hung from one shoulder. The man was Sum Dung, Clyde was certain his features matched those on the network. Late for school he reasoned, as the clock in the rental can read eight thirty six. Sum Dung had led him to the tower of Faol Dung, now he needed to find out which unit in the building contained Faol Dung.

  He would return to the motor home to eat, returning to the tower an hour after classes at the private schools and public alike were set to end, Clyde had a good look at the plate of Sum Dung’s Mercedes and now waited for its return.

  Parking the rental van along one of the side streets, directly across from the entrance to the underground parking entrance of the center tower, the clock would read five thirty six as he turned off the ignition and exited the van. The residents of the three towers had begun to return home in ever steadier numbers by this point, the winter skies had long ago turned black.

  Exiting the van, he would hide close to the large garage door, waiting in the
darkness for a vehicle of a returning resident. Once the overhead door was open, and as the vehicle was entering the garage entrance, he simply tucked himself behind the vehicle, crouching low enough not to be seen in the vehicles mirrors. The first few cars had been smaller, which he would let pass by, soon an Escalade made its appearance at the door.

  The parking garage veered sharply to the left after the entrance, Clyde easily slid behind the Escalade unnoticed, coming from the passenger side of the vehicle. The driver’s head pointed and focused on the left hand corner, as the woman navigated the large vehicle between the narrow concrete walls. Clyde would shuffle along behind the Cadillac, as it slowly rounded the concrete tunnel that entered into the open lot, ducking behind the first row of parked cars.

  Waiting as the Cadillac disappeared deeper into the parking garage, Clyde went in search of the black Mercedes coupe that he had seen Sum Dung in earlier. The British Columbia vanity plate reading #1 SD would not be hard to find if the vehicle provided it had returned. The parking lot was spread out across three underground levels, most of the condo had between two and three parking spots, plus a locker. The towers cheapest condo was well above a million, he made note that almost everyone living here drove a Mercedes or a BMW. Checking plate by plate, level by level, he would utilize the time to also make note of the cameras located throughout the parking area. Wearing a ball cap and a fake beard, Clyde attempted to avoid as many of the cameras as possible. He would hold the rental car keys in his hand, in an effort to look like he heading to his car.

  Finding the black Mercedes coupe parked on the lowest parking level, alongside sat two other Mercedes, a large six hundred SEL which Clyde pictured as being Faol Dung’s, with a M series SUV beside that. The condominium number on the plaque that sat above the parking space numbers read 2323. Throwing his hands up, in attempt to look as if he had just forgotten something, Clyde turned and walked quickly towards the elevator and staircase. The act was in the event he was being watched on a security monitor, from somewhere in the building. Taking the stairs from the basement as he ascended up the full twenty three above ground floors and the three below stories, certainly the elevators of the condominium would have cameras he reasoned.