At three p.m. Fan leaned back in his chair and rubbed the fatigue in his eyes. He had been working nonstop for nine hours, but his labors had borne fruit. He had just successfully breached a German-based mortgage company and pulled out all the personal data of over 134,000 individuals who had bought homes or condos in and around Berlin. With all the data on these German citizens, the men and women working in the massive boiler room down the hall could then open up credit cards, set up offshore shells in fictitious names, and purchase goods virtually using the fraudulent identities. The goods could be shipped and then sold, and the received funds wired into the offshore accounts in small increments that raised no suspicions.
An hour after he sent all the personnel data in a file to the men and women working in the boiler room, Fan Jiang shoveled stale rice into his mouth with his chopsticks. As he reached for a sip of tepid tea, he was surprised by the sound of the bolts sliding on the door to his room.
The door opened and a young man in a black suit, a tie, and a dark purple shirt entered, flanked by two other men, both wearing suits and ties themselves. Fan saw the butts of handguns sticking out of the belts of all three men.
They all eyed Fan up and down as if he were a caged animal, but he knew the one in the middle was in charge.
“My name is Kulap Chamroon,” the man said in English. “You might know that my father started this organization thirty-five years ago. But you might not know he is just a figurehead now. My brother and I share ownership of the Chamroon Syndicate.”
Fan thought the man seemed defensive, agitated, and a little jittery. He knew nothing about the man’s father, nothing about the structure of the organization at all, for that matter.
Still, Fan bowed. “Yes, sir.”
Kulap Chamroon said, “The records you stole from the company in Germany have my people working very hard. That is good. How long till you get into the other networks on the list you were given?”
Fan cocked his head. He had been given a file with desirable targets on the first day he arrived. But there were hundreds of companies listed. Surely this man didn’t expect Fan to break into all of them. That would take years.
He said, “I can try the next on the list. But… may I ask how long I will be kept here?”
Kulap smiled, glanced to the two men with him, and then raised an eyebrow. “You don’t like the accommodations?”
“It’s just… I wish to go to Taiwan. I had an arrangement with two other organizations. I would provide them with help in my field, and then they would repay me by helping me get to Taipei.”
Kulap Chamroon nodded dramatically. “An interesting proposition. You are saying you can work for me for a short time, and then I can help you be on your way. Is that it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Here’s my counterproposal.” The young man drew his pistol and stepped forward. He jammed it in Fan’s left ear and pressed it hard, then took Fan’s head with his other hand and pushed it in even deeper. The seated Chinese man let out a squeal of terror.
Chamroon said, “How about you work for me for as long as I tell you to, and in exchange for that I don’t kill you? Does that seem like a fair deal?”
Fan just sat in front of his computer, his eyes shut tight and his hands squeezing the desk. “Yes. Thank you, sir.”
Chamroon pulled the gun away, spun it on a finger, and jabbed it back in his pants. “Di mak.” Very good. “Just remember. We don’t fuck around here in Bangkok like they do in Saigon and Hong Kong. The Syndicate is the biggest and the best. We have the most money, the most guns, and the most power. You do what you are told, when you are told, or else you are a dead man. There is nothing else for you to worry about.”
Fan just looked down to the floor.
Kulap Chamroon turned and left through the door without another word.
CHAPTER
THIRTY-EIGHT
The sleek black Mercedes sedan turned onto Royal City Avenue Alley, slowed to allow well-dressed pedestrians to pass at a crosswalk, then immediately found itself locked in bumper-to-bumper traffic. It was midnight, still just a little early for the real action in all the nightclubs on both sides of the street here, but the crowds seemed to be out in full force and the lines at the best clubs were already long and getting longer by the minute.
In the back of the Mercedes a white man in his thirties adjusted his cuff links and looked out at the mass of people all around him. It was a Thursday night, but the sheer number of partiers in the area cast a vibe that felt like New Year’s Eve.
And all these civilians made Court Gentry a little nervous. He had a feeling about tonight, a sense that something could go wrong, and in Gentry’s world, wrong usually involved danger to those in close proximity to him. So as he looked around from the back of the luxury sedan at the hundreds of people here in the flashy Royal City Avenue neighborhood of Bangkok, he did not see happy young partiers out for a good time.
He saw potential innocent bystanders. Would-be collateral damage.
He pushed away the thought; he had every intention of taking things slow and easy this evening, and anyway, how much trouble could he really start himself without a damn gun?
He’d asked for a piece when the Agency outfitted him for his work here in Bangkok, but Brewer had forbidden it. He was here for recon only; he wouldn’t need a weapon, or so said the woman who Court imagined hadn’t left the safety of Langley in years.
He let it go. He wasn’t thinking about shooting up Bangkok. He was thinking about Fitzroy, about Fan, and once in a while he was even thinking about running from all this, but he knew that was more a fantasy than a plan. He had a deal with CIA and an obligation to Fitz, and he had a feeling that if he didn’t get to Fan Jiang first, the Chinese or the Russians would, and either of those outcomes would be damaging to the interests of the United States.
As he rode in the back of the Mercedes, the stark change in Court’s situation was not lost on him. Four nights ago he had been chest deep in muck in the Mekong Delta, tearing leeches from his waterlogged skin and swatting bugs on his face. Now he sat here in a sleek black Mercedes S550 as it caught the eyes of many of the passersby. He wore a gray virgin wool Tom Ford suit and a black silk Forzieri necktie. His black leather Dolce & Gabbana derby shoes cost more than most people in Thailand made in four months, and the watch on his wrist shone gold, the face read Panerai, and it was a style that went for no less than twelve grand in the luxury shops around Bangkok.
But as was normally the case with the American in the back of the hired car, all was not as it seemed. The watch was a knockoff, the suit was off-the-rack and was to be handed back to CIA station before he left town, and the Mercedes, while expensive, was only here to drop him off. He planned on taking a rented four-door Toyota parked near his destination back to his hotel.
Court had been in Bangkok nearly four days, and in that time he’d accomplished little other than establishing his cover. He had a room at the five-star Okura Prestige, he had clothes and accessories from the upscale shops, he had a new haircut, and most of the visible bug bites, scrapes, and bruises from his time in Vietnam and Cambodia had disappeared from view.
But as late as this afternoon, he did not have any idea where to find Fan Jiang.
Then Suzanne Brewer came through. He called to check in, as he had done each day since he arrived, and she explained that Fan himself had slipped a cryptic identifier into a message received by the U.S. embassy in Taiwan.
Brewer explained, “We know he is being held by the Chamroon Syndicate, and we know he is trying to inform Taiwan of his situation. His correspondence must be monitored by the gangsters with him, because all he communicated was an encrypted SOS and the Chinese characters for ‘Funky Monkey,’ his handle.”