First comes the leading edge of a squall, an underside roiling white beneath towering black storm clouds, forming a shelf low enough to give Kim the illusion that she can reach up and touch it. Thunder cracks explosively and makes Zak jump. Rain bursts onto the windshield of the wheelhouse. Yuan remains stoic and unperturbed, having experienced the same or worse many times over the years while steering the small, classic Chinese junk.
Lightning sparks, each time with a staccato strobe, outlining everything on the boat in stuttering flashes of pure candescent light. Ominous silence follows. Then, abruptly, they hear a crack of thunder that booms like cannon, rumbling on and on, rolling and echoing far across the water. The detonations of thunder strike the windows of the wheelhouse, rattling them in their frames. Kim pulls Zak’s arm closer around her. She points out to a place on the deck.
“You left your backpack out there, Sparky.”
At first he can’t believe it. He takes a second look. Sure enough, the pack sits beneath the foremast and it’s bound up sail.
Zak now recalls setting it down in order to help Yuan get the boat ready.
“Crap.” He disengages from Kim.
Zak disengages from Kim, observing how choppy the sea is getting. The junk is already starting to heave. Worse, it’s pouring buckets, like it’s never going to stop.
He looks at Yuan.
“You better get it,” says Yuan. “It could wash overboard.”
“You don’t think it’s going to get that bad do you?”
In a fashion that Zak has come to identify with Yuan Cheng, Yuan replies simply, “Hope not.”
On the varnished walnut back wall of the wheelhouse on a hook are two heavy raincoats with rain hoods, piled on top of one another. Zak grabs the top one, hurriedly puts it on, and takes hold of the door latch before eyeing Kim.
“I could use a wingman, Sherrie.”
Kim laughs.
“Oh yeah, right. Just make sure and hang on to something that not’s going anywhere.”
Zak opens the door, holds it for a second, long enough for the wind and rain to reach Yuan and Kim, before launching himself outside into the maelstrom. There’s the chop of course, Zak’s shoes slip on the moving deck, and the rain is pelting and cold. Rain runs down his neck and back. The raincoat is insufferably hot. By the time he returns to the wheelhouse he is drenched not so much by the rain as by his own sweat. At least he now has the backpack.
The storm continues to build. Lightning surges out of the clouds and randomly strikes the whipped up sea. Thunder claps suck all other sound out of the air, leaving a vacuum of quiet behind them. Waves peak and the boat rocks. They crest and the wheelhouse occupants feel a momentary absence of gravity as the junk drops. Kim feels her stomach leave her, as if she were at home in the Midwest, taking a hilly road too fast, soaring over a rise, falling weightless on the other side in some teenager’s car.
Yuan carefully watches the wheel and the monitor on the dash. He switches it from map to 3D imaging so that he can get a better view of the storm in front of them. There is no way to avoid its path. It lies directly in their way to Macau and is far too big to sail around. Min Chin is expecting them at a particular time. Yuan will not disappoint.
“I think this is the worst of it,” says Yuan.
“Geez, I hope so,” replies Kim.
The wheelhouse has become steamy and the windows have started to fog. Yuan reaches over, cracks a side window and a rush of cool air enters.
“You might as well get some rest,” he says, motioning with his head to the stair leading below.
Zak and Kim go below and before long the two travelers are sacked out and gone to the world. The motions of the boat eventually change to a gentle roll, lulling them to sleep. Two hours later Kim and Zak are startled awake.
“We’re here!” Yuan shouts.
They climb reluctantly into the wheelhouse and see an approaching pier.
“Zak, I’m going to need you to help me pilot this thing in. Do you think you can do that?”
Zak takes the wheel and Yuan positions himself on the bow.
They close on the pier.
“Cut it!” Yuan yells, just as he jumps onto the dock with a line in his hand.
The sky is partly clearing and the air has dried of the humidity, turning cool, as they tie up. Flags along the dock flap in the sunny breeze.
They walk over to an old stucco building housing the dock’s offices. Yuan stops to talk to a man behind a counter, while Zak and Kim head through the anteroom. They exit through an attached, modern seven story office building with tinted glass walls, and are greeted by a carriage drive with long, overhanging shelters and a broad expanse of curb. They sit on a bench and eat energy bars until Yuan shows up. He takes them past a taxi to a waiting limo.
“Please,” he says, as he opens a door and leans in so the driver can see him.
The driver, who has been sitting alone in the car with the window down, starts it up. He waves at Yuan.
Yuan turns back to them.
“Courtesy of the Casino. Please.”
The appearance of the car and driver puts Zak and Kim on edge, but they get in anyway. The car takes them from the private piers on the East side of Macau to Lisboa Avenue, past the distinctive cantilevered, stacked blocks of the Starworld Hotel.
The old Lisboa Hotel and Casino come up on their left, and across the street is the newer Grand Lisboa. The Grand Lisboa is a towering green shaded glass, Lotus shaped hotel and casino sixty stories tall. The Lotus shape at the top of the hotel spans outward, cantilevering large numbers of rooms at a great height above street level. The Grand is the tallest building in Macau and forms the central hub of the island.
The driver takes them around to the front of the block long Lisboa Hotel, which in and of itself houses thousands of rooms, to its main entrance. Zak and Kim climb out of the limo, looking across at the tower of the Bank of China. They then walk beneath the enormous and colorful, brightly lit lotus that stands above the entrance. It has large gold letters announcing the name of the casino, first in Chinese characters, then in English. Nearby is an attached twelve story, round tower of rooms with the characteristic and distinctive window trimmings of the hotel.
The circular lobby shines in highly buffed black marble. A massive, gold chandelier dominates the space. A lotus is etched into the ebony floor. Curved spiral staircases with elaborate gold trimmed iron railings rise on either side of the lobby. The railing continues, circling the second level, which is filled with high end shops for jewelry, designer clothes, and expensive perfume.
They step to the bottom of the staircase only to be intercepted by one of Yuan’s group, a much bigger guy wearing a bulky suit. A few words are exchanged with Yuan in Chinese before they are lead up.
“This is nuts!” says Kim in an aside to Zak.
They have been exchanging looks all along.
“Well, we can’t exactly walk home,” he says under his breath.
“No. We’ll just end up sleeping with the fishes.”
“Not a healthy perspective.”
“No. Just a realistic one.”
Yuan walks with the other man just ahead, who takes them past a small bakery featuring lavish desserts and down a shadowy hallway to a set of oversized black lacquer doors. Yuan knocks and opens one of the doors, gesturing them forward. The big guy stays outside in the hallway.
“This is the dragonhead.”Zak whispers in Kim’s ear.
“You mean the head dragon?” Kim whispers back at him.
“Both.”
“Funny.”
The room is dimly lit from box valances, tiny recessed lights pointing all around, and a variety of decorative wall sconces. More a living room than an office, a brick archway stands opposite with a wide English table serving as a desk to a man in crisp blue suit, white shirt and candy striped tie. Behind the man on a sand stone brick wall is a fish tank filled with peculiarly colorful irides
cent fish.
Yuan greets the man behind the desk obsequiously, but the man’s eyes are on Kim and Zak from the instant they enter his office and his gaze never leaves them. He immediately gets up and steps around his desk, stepping over to them.
“Zachary Miller and Kimberly Scott! How nice to finally meet you.”
Warmly he grasps their hands. The genial man is clearly totally at his ease and he seems anxious that they should feel the same.
“I am Min Chin.”
He lingers a moment, Kim’s hand in his.
“Yes, you are,” she announces.
Chin thinks this is humorous and produces a short laugh.
“I see that I have been googled, yet once again.”
He smiles in a way that could not be insincere.
“You chose to contact Professor Xu. That was smart.”
Chin steps back and sits on the edge of his desk table, crossing his arms. He motions for them to take the wing back upholstered chairs set in front of the desk. Yuan seats himself further away on a heavily cushioned divan where he busies himself with an electronic pad that has been left on a coffee table.
“Xu knows his way around. He contacted me directly you know.”
They didn’t.
“I have friends in Beijing. They are watching.”
“Watching?” asks Kim.
“What are they watching for?” asks Zach.
“A smoking gun. Of course.”
He reaches backward, almost without looking, and grabs a cup of tea, no longer so hot.
“The thing that can throw a wrench into the system, change the balance of power, wreck the status quo. Create upheaval, foment revolution. Any of the above. It would be dangerous for such a thing to exist.”
His words echo in the silence that follows.
Finally Chin asks, “Does it?”
“Does it what?” asks Zak.
“Does a smoking gun exist? Is that what Wang died for?”
“We don’t know.”
Zak reaches into his pocket and holds out the flash.
“How do I know this isn’t bugged?”
He rolls it between his hands, considering.
“Such things have happened, you know.”
Neither Zak or Kim have anything to say to that. It could be as Chin suspects. But if it were, surely Wu-pen would have noticed.
Chin carefully looks each of them in the eyes.
“Okay,” he says with finality.
Chin takes the drive, rounds his desk, and slots it into his pc. He finishes sitting down and uses his keyboard to pull the data to a screen on his desk. He hits another key and the fish tank becomes a monitor with the drive’s directory displayed.
“Are you seeing this?” he says, raising his voice to Yuan, with whom he is sharing what’s on his screen.
“Yes.”
“Can you do a decrypt?”
“Sure. It’ll just take a moment.”
Chin takes a sip of his tea, looking at Zak and Kim. He picks up a phone and orders a tray brought in.
“You know, I’m not really a dragonhead.”
Kim and Zak are startled, surprised that he could have heard them talking as they entered the room.
“You heard us?”
“Yes but don’t worry about it. I hear this all the time. It would be better to say that I’m an ex-officio member of a corporate board.”
There is a knock on one of the doors. It is opened by an employee of the casino who carries a large tray. He sets it down in front of Zak and Kim. They are grateful for Chin’s kindness and begin to help themselves.
“Mr. Ho, my long ago predecessor, once upon a time controlled all gaming in Macau. Now there is the Cotai Strip with the Galaxy, Cotai hotel, Venetian, City of Dreams, Versace and, of all things, the Sheraton. There are any number of casinos in Macau that are primarily American owned, such as the MGM, the Sands, and the Wynn. We are the world’s largest gaming venue and the competition is very great. Not so long ago the Lisboa was approached to redevelop the casino as the New Hotel Lisboa, which would rival the Grand Lisboa across the street.”
At this, Min Chin points to a framed picture on the wall of the proposed design: a winged, golden hued glass structure, bigger though not taller than the Grand Lisboa.
“But this building, which was built in 1970, has already become historically important to the history of Macau. I got my start by gaining control of many of the city’s high roller rooms. But now my position here with the Lisboa is special, unique. I campaigned to save the Lisboa years ago and now, as a result, I am here today. In a way, this place gave me my start. I own a major portion of it now and it will be my heritage.”
Zak and Kim see that the fish tank screen behind Chin has finally stopped zipping through dozens of screens. Chin notices the same thing on the monitor on his desk.
“I think we may have it,” states Yuan, typing furiously.
Chin takes control and begins to thumb through various docs that Yuan has managed to decrypt. His placid face becomes a scowl.
“I did not know this,” he says absently as his eyes flick over pages of what he is reading.
Finally he looks up, his face having lost color. He involuntarily shakes his head, as if in disgust.
“This is the Tiger let out of his cage.”
Then he looks over at Yuan.
“How are we doing on time?”
Yuan looks up without needing to consult anything but the schedule he has assembled in his mind.
“Fine. We’re good.”
“Well then,” says Chin, pulling the drive chip and handing it back to Zak, “You had better be on your way.”
Yuan quickly proceeds to run a careful wipe of their machines, obliterating any hints of the former presence of the chip or its data.
Chin rises followed by his two young guests.
“I’m afraid Professor Xu was right. It is best that you leave the country immediately. It is a matter of the passports of course. We can arrange for the two of you to pass through customs at Hong Kong international airport with your existing passports. We can do this even if the authorities have issued a hold.”
“We are so in your debt,” says Kim, offering her hand once again to the tycoon Min Chin.
“Just get that to where it belongs,” he says, watching Zak stick it back in his pocket.
Yuan finishes and joins them.
“Our friends can be useful, and they will see to it that you encounter no difficulties.”
Min Chin cannot hide it. He is impressed with what a couple of foreign students have managed to accomplish in getting this far. While he deals mostly in high rollers, women, and friendly police, the information that Zak and Kim carry he has long suspected. He has no patience for it. The oppressive conditions of his country may help him and his business flourish, but they has also brought about widespread corruption at all levels and done little to relieve the conditions of the hundreds of millions in poverty. He knows nothing of this UNK or whatever it is, which in his opinion could be nothing more than a pipe dream, a red herring or, possibly, even a trap.
He believes that Zak and Kim have no idea what they are really into. They are like a ship set to sea, left to wander blindly at the will of the winds, to be tossed this way and that. It is impossible to predict if such a ship will ever reach shore.
Chin shakes Zak’s hand, speaking to him in a hushed voice.
“Be careful. Take care of this one,” he nods toward Kim, “She is impetuous but will lead you to your better self.”
But Kim hears him just fine.
“Fortune cookie wisdom?” she asks. “It must be getting late.”
“Ah, you heard me! I am wounded, but only a little,” laughs Min Chin.
Yuan is becoming impatient. He has Zak by the arm of his jacket and is pulling him away.
Chin takes Kim’s hand.
“Good luck.”
The three of them depart
but just as they make it halfway down the hall, Kim suddenly stops and turns back. She races back into Chin’s office to give him a kiss on the cheek before finally running out the door.
Chapter 26
On Fire Page 25