The Foo Sheng Key (2013), page 4
It had started going wrong a long time ago, even her father who had been one of the most passionate believers in the system, had seen that things were sliding in the wrong direction. They had both agreed that Jai at least had to be given a chance, that he should be able to grow up in a different world. But their first attempt had been a disaster and now her father was gone. The one saving grace had been that though they suspected much, they were able to prove nothing. The official findings had been that it had all been an unfortunate tragedy.
But they had separated her and Jai. Feng had said it was good for the boy and she would be free to concentrate on her work. Even then she had hoped it could work. If she played her part, showed her commitment, then maybe things would relax.
Things had seemed to be really looking up. The project was ultra top secret, they were working in Vincent Ho’s lab facilities rather than in a government lab, which marked it out as something special. They had done most of the early ‘Creeping Tiger’ work in Vincent Ho’s labs, so this was no different. Except that ‘Creeping Tiger’ had officially been cancelled over a year ago, on the orders of the Central Committee, and this project was still running.
She had always thought she was working to counter a threat. It was what justified everything she did. Until she had eventually found out the true nature of the beast they called ‘Creeping Tiger’. It was Chew who put the pieces together, whispers, gossip, a piece here another there. When he laid it all out, the scale of it took her breath away. They were not countering the threat, they were the threat.
But she had to continue, she had no choice if she wanted Jai to be safe. The work had been finished for weeks but she had told no one, not even Chew. She had kept the details encoded with her own key on her laptop computer. She was not sure why. Deep inside she knew she could not trust Feng, but in the end she had no choice, she had to tell them the work was done, that she had found the answer.
Suddenly Feng doubled the already tight security. Nothing could be taken out of the building. Feng had come into her office.
‘Is the project data on there?” He had pointed at her laptop computer. She could do nothing about it. He took it away. Insurance, he called it.
It wasn’t until that moment that she realised she was in deep trouble. She had put the final piece in place, and in doing that she had moved from being an asset to being a risk, and not just a minor risk, she had become a major threat.
She talked to Chew because he had become a risk too. She told him what she had to do, she had no choice, she had to worry about Jai, his safety was for her the most important thing. She told Chew to distance himself from her, get himself reassigned, break a leg, anything to drop under the radar. But Chew would not hear of it, he told her she needed him, and deep down she knew she did. The next day she had called the American.
They had first met in the Starbucks on Nathan Road. At first she thought he was attempting a rather clumsy pickup but it turned out there was much more to it than that.
‘Do you mind if I sit here?’ He had sat down without waiting for her reply and gave her a wide handsome smile. He reminded her of her husband, her ex-husband. Maybe that was why she did not like him. She had been seduced by a smile like that before.
She remembered he had taken a sip from his coffee then placed it on the table in front of him.
‘My name’s Joe, how are you today Professor Sheng?’
She remembered being shocked. ‘How do you know my name?’
Looking back it was obvious, she had been marked out, followed, and the right opportunity taken. Joe had kept on smiling.
‘Oh, I know lots about you, Professor. I just wanted to let you know if I can ever be of service to you, all you have to do is contact me.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Professor Sheng you’re a very intelligent lady, maybe today you don’t know what I mean, but sometime in the future you will.’
He had left his half drunk coffee on the table and stood up, leaning forward as if he was just saying goodbye.
‘When you leave this place turn left, a hundred yards down the street is a phone kiosk. On the back wall there’s a bunch of scribbled numbers. You’ll see one there for Joe. If you ever want to talk, just call me.’
So four days ago she had called him, she told him what she had and what she wanted. He had given a whistle down the phone.
‘Boy, you don’t want a lot.’
‘I can assure you Mister Joe, when you see what I have, you will know it is worth it.’
They had met the next day, in the same Starbucks. He was already there, sitting in the corner with his back to the wall and a laptop computer open on the table in front of him.
Luckily she had always been paranoid and worried constantly about losing her data, so every night she always copied her work from her laptop to a pen drive. So when Feng’s security had sealed off the lab with her laptop in it, the pen drive was at home in her desk drawer.
She sat down opposite the man. She remembered she had spoken first.
‘So Mister Joe, what happens next?’
‘Well, my bosses want to know more about what they’re getting. They want a taster. You’re asking for a big commitment on our side. I think it’s only fair.’
She had reached under the table and touched his fingers. He had smiled. She pushed the pen drive into his hand.
‘It’s all in there.’
‘What, everything?’
She nodded.
He had inserted the pen drive into the laptop and uploaded everything as they sat there. ‘All done,’ he said. “Can I keep this?”
She had nodded.
‘There we go, the wonders of the Internet. My bosses will have it all in time for breakfast.’ He gave her a look through one eye, his head cocked to one side. ‘You’re a very trusting lady. What’s to stop me just walking out of here right now and disappearing?’
She had studied the American across the table. ‘Mister Joe, you once told me you know everything about me. Do you think I would allow that?’
The American had given her a quizzical look then shook his head. ‘I guess not.’ He had shrugged his shoulders. ‘So tell me?’
‘The contents, or at least the important parts, are encrypted. There is enough there in clear files to explain everything, and to tell you what you have to do.’
‘In this day and age, encryptions can be broken.’
‘Not this one, I can assure you.’
The man called Joe had cracked a wide grin. ‘So how does it go? We bring you out, you bring out the key?’
Su Li had taken a sip from her coffee and shook her head.
‘No Mister Joe, you bring out my son. He is the key.’
CHAPTER FOUR
New Territories, Hong Kong
"Idiot!"
Yiang was stripped to the waist, his body wet and sticky with sweat. Colonel Feng pushed him aside and looked down at the bloodied wretch, lying limp in the chair, welts and bruises down his face and body. He reached forward and felt for a pulse in the man's neck. He could find none.
"He is dead, you idiot. I told you to take care."
Yiang started to protest but Feng silenced him with a raised hand. "Did he say anything more, anything at all?"
Yiang shook his head. "He had already told us everything." He looked down at the dead man as if he was expecting him to speak up in his defence. "He had nothing more to tell."
Feng knew he was right, Chew had told them everything, and what he had to say was not what Victor Ho would want to hear. He was running out of time, and he was meeting Ho in just over an hour. He looked across at Yiang. “Talk to Professor Sheng, she can tell us everything else we need." He raised a finger in warning. "But persuade her gently, or you will be sitting in that chair.”
Yiang swallowed hard and nodded, then hurried out.
Feng looked down at the battered and forlorn body of the lab technician, Chew. What the man had told him was not what he wanted to hear, but it gave him some hope. But could it save his worthless career and his life.
Hong Kong Island, Hong Kong
The Bell Jet Ranger helicopter was adorned in the black and gold corporate colours of Victor Ho Enterprises. Victor Ho flew it himself, alone and expertly. It relaxed him, and allowed him space to think. From up here he always had the right perspective. It was something he tried to keep in his head when he was standing on the ground. He flew low over the main harbour and in between Kowloon on his left and Hong Kong Island on his right. Thick rolls of slate grey clouds hung low in the sky as he brought the helicopter around to land on top of the tallest building in Hong Kong's most expensive area.
Two maintenance men rushed forward as the helicopter touched down and Ho climbed out on to the helipad. His female personal assistance stood waiting for him as he descended a short flight of stairs and entered the building.
“Colonel Feng is waiting in your office.”
“Good, see that we are not disturbed.”
Ho descended another flight of stairs to his office and entered. Feng was already sitting over by the desk.
"Colonel Feng, I hope you have good news for me." Ho walked over to a small counter in the corner of the office. He opened a small tea caddie and scooped two silver spoonfuls of Jasmine Mandarin Oolong tea into a china tea strainer that sat inside a larger china mug.
“Can I get you some tea Colonel?”
Feng declined. Ho filled his mug with hot water from a small kettle then walked over to his desk and sat down.
Victor Ho was everything that Feng was not. Handsome, thanks to a never spoken about ancestor, who added flavour to the genetic mix. It left him with his Oriental features in a strikingly handsome face. Successful, he was the capitalist face of the one country two system state, the largest pharmaceutical manufacturer in China, and one of China's largest exporters. His famous 'Hollywood’ smile adorned a myriad of posters, magazine covers, and TV shots. He was the face of modern China, the new economy, massively influential, regular dinner guest of most of the central committee. He was not smiling now as he tapped the report sitting on his desk.
"So, tell me what it says, the parts I don’t already know."
Feng’s face was tight and unsmiling. "We tracked her to a coffee shop on Nathan road, three days ago." He picked up a remote control from the desk and pressed a button. The large flat plasma TV burst into life. A picture appeared showing Su Li entering a small coffee shop. She looked around as if she was looking for someone then walked across the room and sat down at a table in the corner. "They knew exactly where to sit to avoid the surveillance camera. If you look at this piece," he froze the picture. “We think she is passing something under the table.”
He pressed the remote again and another picture appeared. "If you look here, at the edge of the screen you can see the table and right there, we can see something. We had our people blow it up, and enhanced. He pressed the button on the remote control and a still shot appeared. "We are certain that is the corner of a laptop computer."
Ho contemplated the screen for a moment. "Who is this person she was meeting?"
Feng pressed a button on the remote. "Five minutes after we see her leave the coffee shop, this man does the same."
The screen paused showing a dark haired, Caucasian male. "We think he is CIA. He left Hong Kong yesterday evening on a corporate jet with a flight plan for Manila, but it never arrived there.”
"So,” Ho said. “How bad is it?”
Feng took a deep breath. "Chew destroyed everything, every sample, every piece of data."
Ho lifted the tea strainer out of his cup and let it drain, then he placed it carefully on a small silver tray. He looked at Feng across the desk. “And Attila?”
Feng swallowed before he was able to speak. “Chew got into the lab yesterday morning and destroyed everything in the incinerator.”
“So you kept everything in one place, no backups, no contingency.”
“But it was all top secret,” Feng protested. “The security requirements would not allow it.”
“Whose security requirements?” Ho said simply.
Feng quickly moved on. “Is there no way we can retrieve what was sent out?”
“I have already spoken to Ling, it has already begun, there is no way we can stop it.” Ho studied the tea leaves in the silver strainer as if looking for an answer. “With Attila we have a chance. I have someone with special knowledge. It is going to take some reverse engineering, given that all the specifications and formula have been destroyed but hopefully we can reconstruct it. It is Professor Sheng’s work where we have the problem. Only she can reproduce that. Maybe we can persuade her to help us.” Ho paused. “As long as your men don’t kill her first.”
Feng took a deep breath. “Chew was unfortunate, we think he had a weak heart. But he did tell us everything.”
“Are you sure?”
Feng glanced nervously at the report sitting on Ho’s desk. “We know that Professor Sheng made a bargain with the Americans. We know the boy was the central part of that bargain. We know she set it up so they have to have him, physically have him, in their hands if they are going to unlock what she had given them. We have those same files on the Professor’s laptop computer. The boy is the key."
"And where is the boy now? How do we know the Americans don’t already have him?"
Feng took a sheet of paper from inside his jacket and laid it on the desk in front of Ho. "Here is a report we received. One of our border patrols reported an aircraft crashing in the mountains this side of the border, less than 100 miles from the monastery where the boy was staying. The US Army have reported a helicopter missing, they say it may have become lost during a storm and it may have strayed on to our side of the border. We are sure they were coming to pick up the boy."
"Maybe he was already on board?"
Feng shook his head. "We have a team on its way up there to find out, but we do not believe so."
"Why not?"
"Because we believe he was seen on the mountain near the monastery, two hours after the reported crash of the helicopter."
"Are you sure it was him?"
"No, but everything points to him.”
Victor Ho stood up. "So, Colonel Feng, we know the deal she made, we know what she gave them, we also know what they need to unlock their secret. It seems we need the same thing. All we have to do is find the boy and we are back in business.”
“We are already working on that. I am expecting results at any moment. We have men searching every house looking for him. The boy is trying to get somewhere, they will have prearranged it. Professor Sheng knows where, and she will tell us.”
Ho took a sip from his tea and looked across at Feng. "If she dies before we have what we want. I will hold you personally responsible. Your job is very clear, Colonel Feng. Find that boy."
“I can assure you we are working on exactly that. I will keep you informed on our progress.” Feng stood to attention, gave a sharp nod and left.
Ho studied the door as it closed. He knew Feng, knew what he was capable of, and what he was not. The clock was running and he had to make sure they stayed with it. He picked up the phone and hit one of the speed dial numbers. He tapped his fingers on the desk as he waited for the phone on the other end to ring. It was time to take out some insurance.
Xigaze Province, Tibet Autonomous Region
Gutu braked the truck as dawn peaked out across the eastern mountains. Jai jerked awake. He looked around taking a moment to remember where he was. They had travelled down the valley and now there was a scattering of buildings along the side of the road.
“Best if you get out here my young friend.”
Jai looked across at the old Indian.
“Road block ahead,” the old man said, indicating with his finger. “It looks like troops are searching vehicles. Somehow I do not think a young boy travelling on his own wants to meet them.”
Jai peered out through the windscreen. A truck and a bus were stopped just a few hundred yards ahead. A military jeep was parked by the side of the road and soldiers were inspecting the back of the truck.
“You can take the back roads into the town, it is not far. From there you can take a bus. The road to Lhasa passes close to your home. If you take a bus in that direction it should bring you near. You will have to walk the last part.”
Jai knew the bus to Lhasa passed through the town at the bottom of the mountain. From there it was a five mile walk to the village. He had walked it many times.”
Gutu glanced back out of the windscreen. “Quickly now, you must go before they start taking notice of us.”
Jai reached for the door handle and Gutu grasped his arm. His face wrinkled into a broad smile. “Take care little one, and may your Lord Buddha protect you.”
Jai thanked the old Indian and climbed out of the truck. He made his way around the back, then darted into a hedgerow lining the road. He wormed his way through on his hands and knees, then quickly scampered across an open field to the cover of a thinly populated wood. He squatted down in the cover of the trees, his heart racing, looking out across the field, but no one was following.
He took a deep breath, expelling the air slowly through his nostrils, trying to be calm. He just needed to catch a bus, and get back to the village, then he would seek out Gamu, who would take him to Jongba, and everything would be alright. He repeated it over again in his head like a private mantra, as if he might forget it. His master had always told him he should never pray for personal gain, only for others. Jai bowed his head and closed his eyes, holding his hands together with his fingers lightly touching. First he prayed for forgiveness to the spirit of his beloved master. Then quickly he switched to a heartfelt pleading to save his worthless life.
