by Nova McBee
I cut through a clearing in the trees to the warehouse’s road. A large gray building appears. The warehouse. I take a minute to calculate dimensions and devise a strategy.
The doors of the warehouse are opened wide. Inside sits a container etched with big gold letters that read Golden Shipping, the company Madame uses for shipping cargo. Now I must enter.
I sneak over to the warehouse.
Industrial fluorescent lamps provide a harsh light inside the warehouse. Three people are visible. Two of them in guards’ uniforms. They’re occupied with a card game. One is smoking and overweight, the other guard fiddles with his phone. The guards were never very vigilant. The only one who worked hard was Bo Gong. Even back then, he tried to do something right.
The third man worries me. He wanders around the warehouse, searching intensely for something. I can’t identify if I’ve seen him before. He’s foreign, tall, dark hair. Could be a buyer. Or an associate. Which wouldn’t necessarily be a threat.
All the dimensions of the warehouse are still logged in my brain. I have measured and planned my escape in this place before. Getting in and out should be no problem. In fact, every equation tells me it’s safe to proceed.
I allow a span of eleven minutes for my purpose: get the records, schedules, and if the girls are there, I will have to recalculate. The distance between the guards and the front opening is 40 feet. The other man circles the back of the warehouse. I walk closer.
Passing the guards is a piece of cake. Even now, I feel no threat, because the guard who is 29-percent overweight is favoring his right leg and the other is still consumed with his phone. I can outrun both of them if I must. The last man, in the suit, is fit but seems lost in another world on the south side of the warehouse. I play to his distraction and go in the opposite direction.
I creep up to the first container. Its cargo door is open, and it’s empty. Half of me is relieved, but I’m not satisfied. I check another container. Empty. There are steel boxes lying around. All of them are marked with an X but they are all screwed shut. Weapons, drugs, or textiles?
After searching the warehouse for three minutes and 45 seconds, there’s no sign of any cargo or anything incriminating. I veer towards the office. I need those records and schedules.
My eleven minutes are almost up. I don’t want Kai to worry. I have three minutes. One minute to retrieve the schedule and two to slip out unnoticed. I’ve got this. I sprint towards the office.
All of a sudden, a voice yells. “Private property!”
I jump, assuming they are referring to me. But how could they be? I sneak a peek and there’s Kai, snooping around the corner, mumbling about looking for a friend.
“Ugh, did he follow me?” I groan under my breath. “I said fifteen minutes.” Why do people always have to mess up a precise plan?
My equations recalculate. They’re all negative. There’s no way I can grab the schedule now. Worse, the two guards stalk the door. I won’t get out that way—not if I don’t want them to identify me. Through the shelves and boxes, I see Kai back off while still searching for me with his eyes until finally he walks back down the trail. I’ve lost sight of the third man in the suit.
“Close the gate,” the one with the phone yells to the guard with the hurt leg. He hits the automatic door and the garage top descends downward. The back door is my only option.
I dash down the hall. An alarm sounds with a loud beep signaling an automatic lockdown. A loud click secures the office door. Another at the back door. No! I have to get out! I can’t get trapped here!
The back door is not coded. It’s an old school lock. I have to use an ID or a key. I drop around the corner, deeper inside the warehouse. Think. There’s a bathroom to my left, ten feet. Factoring the number of footsteps and the distance of the voices, my numbers predict that the two guards are fifty feet from me and haven’t seen me yet.
If I can make it to the bathroom, I can escape through the window. If I turn this corner, the odds of making it unseen are slim but I’ll have enough time to escape. It’s worth a try.
Before I put my right foot forward, another voice yells, “Stop!”
That voice. I recognize it. The man in the suit? I freeze and look around. Run, you idiot. But I can’t. Numbers go crazy.
Slight accent. Low, just like his father’s. Could it be? I hesitate, and that leads to—
The man catches me by the wrist. I struggle. My sunglasses fall to the ground. Obviously, he’s not trained because it distracts him. I break free.
I should run, except the brown curls, green eyes, and dimples stop me.
It’s him. Rafael. The only boy I thought I could trust.
23
Past: Mila
THE PRATT, SHANGHAI, CHINA
Workdays were the worst. The guilt that followed was so heavy, so dirty it took days to compartmentalize. My only compensation was the brief time above ground.
Tonight, the Shanghai sun set in a blemished sky of brown haze as a black Mercedes pulled up. A voice barked out behind a puff of smoke as a tinted window scrolled down. “Get inside.” A face, dark and scarred, cracked a brown smile. He gave me a wink. I shuddered in disgust, as I did each time King winked at me.
The massive hand holding my arm belonged to Guard San. He looked down, a permanent scowl on his face. “Come on, you heard what King said.” Inside the car I was enveloped in a cloud of cigarette smoke. I hopped onto the leather seat, instinctively looking for a seat belt that wasn’t there. It was tucked under the seat like always. Why did I bother?
Two cars drove ahead of us and disappeared around the corner. We were driving to the port for another delivery.
Sand and dust kicked up around us as we maneuvered out of the Pratt. We passed the collection of seven buildings. They huddled together like a kind of small Asian ghost town. Although they all appeared to be stripped of anything useful, within them a very complex operation hid in plain sight. Building three was for transactions. Building seven was the entrance to the Pratt. The rest were for storage, except the lighthouse.
Rubble of cement blocks, old Twenty-foot Equivalent Units, or TEU’s, and broken beams lay weathered on the land. This junkyard was what King called his kingdom. At the main road, Guard San barked at me, “Blindfold.”
“Who’s coming today?” I asked, slipping it over my eyes. King brought me on days where two parties signed an agreement. He needed my eyes and my numbers to make sure he won in every deal. No one ever asked who I was. It was terrible and nice at the same time because I got to be out of the Pratt.
“Alexi and Cesare.”
I perked up. Alexi was Madame’s point man in Russia. He’s dangerous, one of Madame’s seven leaders. Lately, he’d been in China far too much.
Cesare Di Susa was a fat Italian man, reeking of cologne and steeped up to his black mustache in crimes of all sorts. Essentially, Cesare was a smuggler just like King, but he was ignorant party of Madame’s empire, which made him expendable. He was here for fast cash, which King provided. Cesare exported Chinese goods to Italy and occasionally picked up payments for Madame via King. Out of all of King’s associates, he was the most arrogant and oblivious. That was why it was so hard to believe he’d fathered Rafael, a boy whose smile brought out the sun.
“Oh?” I tried to act normal. “Is Cesare’s son coming too?”
“Lai,” Guard San replied, giving me his growl of a smile.
Rafael was seventeen, two years older than me. The first boy my age I’d seen in eleven months. When he first came into the Pratt, I couldn’t take my eyes off him. Wispy brown curls. Eyes the color of evergreens. Big dimples. He was smart too, apart from not knowing what a thief his father really was. I didn’t blame him. Love hides all kinds of things that were right in front of us.
Rafael never sat in on the meetings. From the two other times we’d spoken, it appeared he truly believed his dad was doing legitimate business with King. Who knows, maybe Cesare did too. Although, there were very low
odds of that.
But if Cesare didn’t know this much, Rafael knew even less. To them, I was King’s associate.
As we reached the end of the road, past the warehouse and entered the main port, they removed my blindfold. The Port of Shanghai was a sea of its own—swimming with large container ships docked at every post, thousands of TEUs set in systematic rows, any number of cars, trucks, cranes, and equipment for unloading and loading the cargo. It was not surprising that things went unseen in this metal and iron realm that was the world’s biggest port.
We pulled up to King’s private dock. I stopped, suddenly dizzy. Numbers exploded in my mind. I squeezed Guard San’s arm to steady myself. My mind sometimes calculated what was coming faster than I could comprehend. The numbers knew what would happen before I did.
I forced my eyes open. I promised Red I’d pay attention when this happened.
I concentrated on the port as numbers revealed my surroundings. Distances, heights, speeds, sounds—everything within a 100-foot radius. The numbers linked and assigned equations first to the ship, its dimensions, the men unloading the boat, the containers coming down the ramps; the ballast control; a flat calm sea, King’s associates, the license plates of their cars; time of day, 12:45 am, Sunday; the numbers of workers on hand tonight, more than usual; most of them I didn’t recognize. The list went on.
It was all wrong. And I wasn’t referring to just another day with King, because frankly, everything he did was wrong.
In just a matter of seconds, my mind scrolled through variables, possibilities, predictions. I was soon nauseous, trying to calculate them all, until they narrowed their focus to the boat itself.
Negative.
The ship was dangerous, but I wasn’t sure why yet.
While numbers spun mathematical equations inside my head, I looked around. I couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary.
King got out first and walked on board. He motioned for us to follow. He’d sign the customs papers, receive cash for Madame, the guards would take the containers to the warehouse while King completed the deal on the boat, same as always.
King wasn’t the sort of guy you disobey, so I knew I had to have a good reason for not getting on that boat. All I had was a negative number in my head telling me not to. That wasn’t good enough.
Guard San opened my car door. I didn’t move. He peered down at me as I shook my head. San, quick to pick up on hints, understood I was hesitating. He surveyed the premises, but nothing was out of the ordinary.
“Let’s move,” he said coldly. Then added in a softer tone, “I’ll be here the whole time.”
I inched my feet forward because I didn’t have a choice. I did feel safer with Guard San at my side. Besides, I didn’t know why the numbers highlighted what seemed to be a perfectly normal, totally illegal deal. But I’d learned that the numbers didn’t lie.
Lights on the dock came on as the last of the sun sunk below the horizon. We walked on board and watched the unloading of the containers. I was immediately ushered into a small compartment with a wooden bench where I would sit and wait until I was needed to okay the deal. A different guard stood close by. King set his briefcase down beside me along with a bottle of baijiu.
I waited. I’d only come to the boat a few times, but I didn’t remember seeing the barrels that sat by the other ballasts.
Exactly four minutes later Cesare and Rafael walked on board. King greeted them with handshakes. Cesare’s oily black hair shone in the dock’s spotlights and even from ten feet away I smelled alcohol on him.
In contrast, Rafael was a breath of fresh air. His head twisted, looking around. Probably for me. It’s funny how people of the same age hone in on and migrate towards each other. Finally, he caught sight of me. We locked eyes.
The first time Rafael came to the Pratt, Cesare and King had something private to discuss before some deal. Cesare must have experienced a brief moment of morality because he wouldn’t let his son sit in on the meeting. That day I was left alone (in a locked room in building three) with Rafael for a full 32 minutes I won’t forget. I wasn’t sure why King let it happen.
I stood frozen and blank-faced, as the cute Italian boy asked me my deepest, darkest secrets, like what my name was. Double-8? Josephine? Octavia? None of those would do. Then he asked a long string of other perfectly normal questions—what I was doing in China, where I was from, what language I spoke—all of which I couldn’t answer either.
Finally, he asked one question I could answer. “You can speak, right?”
“Yes.” I let out an embarrassed laugh.
Instead of my awkwardness turning him off, he just laughed.
“A girl with a thousand secrets,” he said. “So, I will call you Mila. It means 1000 in Italian. Va bene?”
I smiled. Mila sounded pretty, much better than Double-8. “Okay.”
The rest of the time we compared Roman history to Chinese history and talked about whether or not he should return home for university or stay in China to work with his father in his export business. I urged him to return home.
“China wouldn’t be so bad,” he said, gazing at me. “Especially since I’ve found things I wouldn’t mind exploring.”
My cheeks burned for eight minutes straight. A world record for blushing, I’m sure.
I thought about that night for 53 days—replaying how Rafael talked with his hands, the warmth of his kiss-greeting on both of my cheeks, his silly imitations of opera. Spending time with him felt normal. It filled me with hope, like he could save me somehow.
Today was our fourth face-to-face meeting.
Alexi boarded the ship next and my mood darkened. I’d never trusted Alexi. His body language betrayed his mind. If anything, he was King’s equal, which meant we were never safe when he was around.
Alexi was with two Chinese men I didn’t recognize. As I sized them up, their clothing looked peculiar. It had a weird shine to it. So did Alexi’s. They were also wearing gloves and it was spring now. Were they planning to help with unloading the boat? Their back pockets were bulging. But what was in them? Alexi ordered his men to unload the containers. That explained the gloves. Negative numbers pulsed around them.
As one of them turned, I saw words tattooed on the side of his neck. The Chinese characters cai and li—money and power. I laughed bitterly for a moment. That summed up my whole world at the moment.
King walked over to my small compartment, leaning in through a paneless window. “Double-Eight.” He slid a finger down my face. “Where are the documents for my client?”
“Here.” My head dipped. I’d had a week to prepare them, even though I finished what he wanted in under an hour. I’d never tell him that, though.
“Good. Stay here. Guard San will call you before any decisions are made. You belong to me. I come out on top you hear me?” He watched my reaction. I nodded again, keeping my eyes on the ground, like a trained dog who had learned not to challenge its master. “Remember, mei nu. It’s money time.”
King walked back to Cesare and Alexi and headed below deck. My gaze returned to Rafael, who walked my way. The boat lurched slightly. Rafael lost his balance but caught it before he fell. He laughed it off and shrugged. “That was strange.”
He was right. The water was not choppy enough to bring on that kind of lurch. I fixed my eyes on the containers being unloaded. King’s men unloading the boat had that same shine on their clothing as Alexi’s Chinese associates and they also reloaded new containers. More numbers spun.
I stretched my head out the compartment. Rafael thought it was to greet him, but really, I just felt nauseous and the small space made me feel worse.
“Ciao, Mila,” Rafael said. “Can I join you?” The guard allowed him to enter the compartment.
His smile made me forget the nausea for two seconds until I noticed the man with the tattoo stabbing something in the corner with a knife. Alexi’s other associate transported a barrel downstairs with the help of another man. I wanted to see i
t more clearly, but Rafael planted a kiss on my left cheek in greeting. I tried to act natural, but I couldn’t hide the mixed emotion I felt in this small sign of affection. I awkwardly turned my head for my right cheek to be kissed as well.
“Come stai?” he asked, three inches from my face.
“I’m okay, thanks. How are you?” I asked. His hair fell across his smooth face, and with each bat of his eyelashes I calculated the odds of him being adopted. It was impossible for him to be related to that sleazeball dressed in Armani, downing his first whiskey with King.
Rafael recounted his vacation in Sicily—climbing the volcano Etna, ferrying to Stromboli…I realized I was only half listening because I couldn’t stop watching Alexi’s men. Why were King’s and Alexi’s men leaving certain containers behind and bringing new ones on? If they all worked for Alexi, then King’s men were greatly outnumbered. Why were the barrels being taken downstairs?
“So, after visiting Ginostra,” Rafael explained, “I have been to both the smallest and the largest port in the world!”
“Fascinating,” I said, completely distracted. Newton’s second law of motion was playing out in my brain, suddenly configuring a function for balance. Dynamical systems graphed out the scene in front of me.
My mind charted and analyzed everything: the tanker’s dimensions, the weights, the containers as they were carried out.
The tattooed man bumped his hip on a railing and the bulge in his back pocket dropped to the ground. It looked like a mask? More men went downstairs. Guard San moved into a new position by the stairs. I’d never been left unguarded so long before.
Another slight lurch of the boat edged me into Rafael’s side. He was warm. Strong. Smelled of salt air and mint.
Embarrassed, I pushed myself to the side again, but I was pulled back towards Rafael, and it wasn’t because he was cute. Was the boat listing? A string of negative equations shot across my mind concerning the barrels.