I was halfway down the dark hallway outside the room, almost to the elevators, when Tunde’s e-mail arrived. I had stupidly turned the phone’s ringer back on out of habit and it made a cute chiming noise like a cartoon birdcall.
“Who’s there?” Mr. Lu’s voice rang out.
As the lights suddenly flashed on, I stood, frozen.
Mr. Lu and Mr. Shifu were still at the elevators. Both of them turned around to see me: a young woman in a janitor’s jumpsuit.
“Hey,” I said to Mr. Lu and Mr. Shifu as I backed away slowly, hiding my video camera behind my back. “Quite a storm, right?”
They looked at each other, confused.
“Who are you?” Mr. Lu said, walking toward me.
“Me?” I said. “Janitorial staff.”
“Where is your badge?” Mr. Lu asked. “I want to see it.”
“Uh, it’s with my cart. Seventy-first floor. I can run down and get it.”
I started walking backward, quickly.
Mr. Shifu followed. “This floor is closed.”
“Didn’t look closed,” I replied, still backing away.
That’s when they started running toward me.
Without a second’s hesitation, I turned and bolted.
I hit the stairs running as fast as my Nike Roshe Runs would take me. Two, sometimes three steps at a time. I was flying! But I could still hear them barreling down the stairs behind me. Mr. Lu was on his cell with security.
They were going to try to block my exit.
At floor fifteen, I left the staircase and ran, zigzagging down dark hallways, to the elevator bank. I wouldn’t say I’d studied the layout of the building, but I knew the floor I was hiding on and made a fairly good guess that the rest of the floors would be the same. Modern Chinese architecture is nothing if not consistent.
The elevator dinged its arrival just as the staircase door burst open. I could hear shouting and feet slamming against cheap carpeting. I ducked around a corner and listened, again holding my breath, as my pursuers raced to the elevators and punched the buttons.
Mr. Lu said, “She’s heading to the lobby. Can’t let her get out.”
Another elevator arrived and they jumped on board.
As soon as the doors closed, I made my way back to the stairs and scrambled down, past the lobby to the basement. It was empty and lit by only a few fluorescents. I crept through the tunnels, making sure to stop and peek around every intersection and behind me every few meters. It felt like forever before I reached the docking platform at the back of the building.
The metal door to the parking lot screeched as I opened it and I was sure someone would hear. Maybe a night guard on patrol outside? Or a passing officer, alerted to a break-in by the alarms? Didn’t happen.
I ran the rest of the way to my subway stop and didn’t slow down once.
3.1
On any other night it would have taken fifteen minutes to get home, but that night it took more than an hour.
My parents had important guests over for dinner and I cursed the weather for making me look so forgetful or, worse, rude. There is really no good way to sneak into my parents’ apartment. It’s a two-bedroom on the fifteenth floor. So I knew as soon as I stepped out of the elevator, soaking wet, that none of my excuses would make my being late any less disappointing.
There was simply no point in trying to talk my way around it.
I stuffed my wig in my purse, tried to sort out my hair and smooth the wrinkles from my clothes before I opened the door.
My father sat at the dinner table with an older man who wore a suit and tie and had a face that seemed carved from stone. I doubted he had ever shared so much as a smile, certainly not a laugh. I recognized him as Mr. Hark, an unscrupulous businessman from Beijing. His photo had been posted on Weibo in connection with a scandal around the new airport. To see him sitting at our dinner table worried me. I was certain that my father didn’t know the man’s reputation. He was too honest a man to see what I saw.
But why was Mr. Hark here?
This wasn’t good. Mr. Hark had no business meeting with my father. And yet, my father was smiling. Clearly, this had been arranged. Was my father being dragged into something? Was he hosting Mr. Hark against his will?
Despite being overwhelmed, I bowed respectfully.
They stood and bowed in response.
“I apologize for being late, Father.”
His expression was one of deep disappointment and yet he covered for me, turning to his guest and saying, “The trains were very delayed tonight.”
Mr. Hark laughed softly. “We haven’t had a storm like this since I was a very small child. But I have always found the rain brings on quite an appetite.”
I nodded at his less than subtle hint and then, without a word, scurried into the kitchen to help my mother prepare polenta with shrimp and mushrooms.
Seeing my mother scrambling around the kitchen, multiple pots boiling, the oven alarm chiming, steam blurring her glasses, I felt terrible. I rushed in to take over the soup and apologized for my tardiness.
“How many times must I lecture you about responsibility, Cai?”
“I’m sorry, Mother,” I said as I stirred the soup. “I have no excuse.”
I needed to know what was going on. Why was Hark here?
“You did not answer your father’s calls. Why do we pay for your cell phone? We have very important guests over tonight,” Mother said as she cut onions.
I tasted the soup. “It is delicious.”
She nodded. “Your aunt’s recipe. A taste of Karamay.”
I had to know what was going on.
“Who is the man Father is meeting with?”
I floated the question cautiously, hiding my concern.
Stirring the soup, Mother smiled. “A business partner. They are discussing a deal that could be very beneficial for our family. You must be very respectful.”
“Of course, Mother. Do you know what the deal is about?”
Mother stopped stirring and looked over at me. I’d already crossed the line.
“Why so many questions, Cai? I’ve already told you all you need to know.”
“But Father doesn’t often meet with guests like—”
“Like what?”
I decided to let it go. There was no use in antagonizing my mother further. She likely could not answer the questions I had. Besides, I had to be careful.
“Listen, I know the transition hasn’t been easy for you,” Mother said. “The world you were born into, the one you grew up in, was so different from this one. Like winter from summer. But the successes are not just your father’s. They are not just mine. They are ours. We moved here for a better life. We worked hard to get to this place. And we will continue to work hard. Not just to make more money. Not just for a larger apartment and a car. But to make sure that you have what you need to succeed, that you have what you need to be the best student, the best friend, and the best person that you can be. You are a brilliant girl, Cai, the most brilliant that I have ever met, but sometimes, you let your mind remove you from the reality of right now. And right now, we need your help.”
I nodded, understanding completely.
I was born in Fujian where my father was a professor of economics at a small university that primarily served the children of party officials. My mother was an elementary school teacher. They both worked hard. Very hard. Growing up, it wasn’t uncommon for me to not see my parents for days on end. There were no vacations. No lavish parties. No gifts. No movies.
Their industriousness paid off when I entered middle school. My father’s efforts had not gone unnoticed and he was recommended by a student’s father to a position at the Harbin Institute of Technology. That was followed a year later with a job in Beijing working as an economic adviser in the government. Each time we moved, I left behind my friends. From house to house, our family grew wealthier (though we were still firmly middle class in comparison with Europe or the United States), but
my parents worked just as hard, if not harder.
I could never let them know what I did in my free time. If they were aware that I was Painted Wolf, a blogger who exposed corruption, they not only would have been deeply ashamed but also in very big trouble. Despite the fact that I believed my work was morally correct, it was truly unacceptable in our society. I was a sixteen-year-old girl. I should have been studying and hanging out with my friends and texting with boys.
With the meal made, I helped my mother bring the dishes out to the table. Entering the room, I noticed that the mood had changed significantly. Instead of the dour, businesslike atmosphere of earlier, now there was a festive, cordial air. My father was laughing. There was a new guest at the table.
He was young and Indian, perhaps only a few years older than me.
Dressed in a perfectly tailored suit but wearing sneakers, he cut an interesting figure. His smile was bright, his teeth were perfect, and his eyes were as sharp as daggers.
The young man stood and bowed to me.
I knew who he was immediately and it was the first time in my life that I can honestly say I was starstruck.
“Hello,” he said in flawless Mandarin. “My name is Kiran Biswas.”
Kiran Biswas, founder of India’s largest tech firm; Kiran Biswas, creator of the Game; Kiran Biswas, the eighteen-year-old genius championed as the next Steve Jobs or Leonardo da Vinci. He was a phenomenon. A luminary.
So what in the world was he doing in my parents’ apartment?
3.2
The dinner that followed was unlike any I’d had with my family before.
Kiran was, of course, the center of attention. He was humble about it, though, and seemed somewhat uncomfortable at overshadowing the evening. An autodidact, he could speak on nearly any topic: Chinese politics, weather, stock market fluctuations, particle physics, cubism, botany, and computers. By his own admission, computers were his life.
Throughout it all, he spoke directly to me and included me in the conversation. And despite my natural wariness, I found myself absorbed in everything he said. It wasn’t his words or his perfect pronunciation but the fact that he listened so attentively. He was not the cold guru I had imagined but an honest, down-to-earth, nice person. Perhaps the Cult of Kiran wasn’t just a marketing ploy?
He asked me what I thought of technological advances and opportunities.
I answered as best I could without offending or insulting my parents.
Kiran talked about how much his company had achieved, about the thousand new patents they’d filed that year, about the small tech firms they’d acquired. He gave an impressive presentation, but my father had questions that went deeper.
I still hadn’t figured out exactly what this meeting was about, but my father’s probing questions suggested it involved a potential partnership.
When my father asked Kiran what he wanted for OndScan twenty years from now, he smiled.
“I pride myself on thinking of our company less as a portal to the Web than a portal to a new life. Changing the playing field for not just the first world but also every world beyond.”
“What is that supposed to mean?” I asked.
My father shot me a look that told me I should be more careful. Kiran was a guest after all. But I had to know what was going on. It made no sense that Kiran would be at my apartment, let alone with someone as corrupt as Mr. Hark.
What was my father doing? Was he in trouble?
“I have a vision,” Kiran said, eyes locked on mine. “As a small child, I’d spend the day begging in the railway station until I was exhausted. I remember climbing onto the roof of an unused train for the night, but I couldn’t sleep. Staring out at the distant lights of the city, I felt hopeless. Those lights seemed so far away. Unreachable. Even if I ran all night, it seemed as though I could never reach them. That’s when it occurred to me: Why should I strive for something that I could never reach? Instead, I should make it come to me. That is my guiding principle. I don’t want to provide people with a means to access the world; I want to bring the world to people.”
My father nodded at this. Mr. Hark appeared a bit put off.
“I find it hard to believe someone as successful as yourself would believe something as impractical as that. I mean, we all have our guiding visions—mine is to make a lot of money!” Mr. Hark laughed at his own joke.
Kiran did not.
“My vision is what drives me,” he said. “It is what made me successful.”
Mr. Hark scoffed. “Your hard work is what makes you successful, friend. It’s persistence. It’s sweat. It’s never taking no for an answer. These days, the fight is harder than ever. Seems as though every time I try to make a deal, try to get something going, some punk-ass kid with a cell phone and a moral superiority complex tries to stop me. I’m telling you, here in China it’s nearly impossible to make a decent living, let alone become a true success.”
Punk-ass kid with a cell phone? He couldn’t be talking about me, could he?
“You’ve just got to adapt, Mr. Hark.”
“Adapt?” Mr. Hark slammed a fist down on the table, hard enough to rattle the dishes. “These people are parasites. They don’t have jobs. They crawl out of their parents’ basements to make my life a mess and then, as soon as they’re challenged, they crawl back and hide. I’m telling you, they need to be eliminated.”
“Eliminated?” Kiran shook his head. “That sounds rather reductive. Some of these parasites, as you call them, are brilliant. With the right focus Rodger Dodger or Painted Wolf, for example, could become entrepreneurs in their own right. Imagine if you convinced them of your cause? If, instead of fighting them, you converted them to your way of thinking?”
I was so flustered at hearing my name that I knocked my teacup over.
My father frowned as I apologized and soaked up what I’d spilled with my napkin, hands shaking. Mr. Hark just looked on, bemused.
Kiran reached over to help me.
“That’s okay, thank you. I’ve got it,” I told him. “I’m sorry.”
I couldn’t imagine why he was talking about Painted Wolf.
How did Kiran know?
I had a sudden, sinking feeling that made me choke. The name Painted Wolf had never once been uttered in our apartment. I’d kept the lines dividing the two sides of my life so far apart for so long that I’d convinced myself that my parents had no idea, no inkling, of who I was. And now, at our dinner table, Kiran Biswas, one of the world’s leading tech celebrities, was threatening everything I’d carefully set up. My acting nervous wasn’t exactly helping anything, either.
As I wiped up the last of the tea, my head bowed, Kiran turned to Mr. Hark and asked, “Surely you’re familiar with Terminal?”
“No,” Mr. Hark said, defiantly. “I have no time for those people.”
“Well”—Kiran clasped his hands sagely—“while you’ve had to swat at parasites, I have had predators to deal with. Terminal is a global hacking network. They’re terrorists with keyboards and software instead of guns and ammunition. They’ve spent countless hours attempting to hack their way into OndScan.”
“Why?” My eyes were locked on Kiran’s, my heart pounding in my ears.
My father sat up in his seat stiffly.
Kiran smiled. “They are afraid of me.”
That gave Mr. Hark a great laugh. Even my father smiled.
“Are you familiar with my company’s logo?” Kiran asked.
“Yes,” my father said. “It’s the god Shiva. Very stylized.”
Kiran nodded. “Correct. It’s a bit abstract. You know how designers are. But the key thing to notice is that Shiva’s right foot is placed upon a small figure.”
“I assumed it was a stone.”
“It is Apasmara, the demon of ignorance. In Hindu mythology, it is believed that you can’t completely remove ignorance from the world. To do so would upset the balance of everything, and even knowledge would be devalued. We can’t remove ignorance but w
e can suppress it. That is how we deal with bloggers and hackers and those that seek to destroy us. You don’t crush them, you keep them where you can see them and you render them harmless.”
“Ha,” Mr. Hark snickered. “Sounds like you are telling me I need to employ these idiots. I think you and I have very different interpretations of reality, friend.”
“That is certainly true,” Kiran replied. “But, we’re not here to debate philosophy, right? We’re here to do business.”
My father stood. “Cai, will you please help your mother in the kitchen?”
“Yes, Father,” I said as I stood and bowed. “Excellent to meet you, Mr. Biswas. Thank you, Mr. Hark. Father.”
Kiran bowed in return.
“My pleasure,” he said. “And, please, call me Kiran.”
I pride myself on being able to read people, on being able to anticipate their thoughts. Kiran wasn’t having dinner with my family to make an offer. He was here for something bigger, something beyond my father, something I couldn’t understand.
My father would never knowingly meet with someone unethical. So Kiran must have brought Mr. Hark to the meeting. But why? Kiran was a luminary. He even spoke like a visionary. How could he be untrustworthy? And yet, as I walked away from the table, I was certain that Kiran was hiding something from my father, from Mr. Hark, and from me.
I needed to know what it was.
3.3
My heart raced as I helped my mother clean the dishes and prepare coffee.
Outside, the rain fell so hard and fast. The world was being washed away. No thunder. No lightning. It was as if the sea had risen to take the land, just as my thoughts about my conversation with Kiran were drowning my focus.
As I cleaned, I replayed Kiran’s responses over and over in my head. Every word. Every gesture. I drilled down into each of them, took them apart to analyze the pieces and see if I could deduce some veiled meaning from them.
It just wasn’t adding up and it was driving me crazy.
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