If the drones at the airport had been the scouts, then the armies were waiting in the courtyard of the YLHI tower. Legions of reporters-real human ones this time -jostled one another for a glimpse of the starlet as her ride came to a stately halt outside the opulent entrance. Rope stepped out first and took Juno’s hand. The girl’s foot touched the stone steps and ignited a lightstorm of flash strobes and camera floods. She hesitated and turned her head up to look at them. Somewhere along the way Juno had ditched the sunglasses. The singer threw the world her dazzling smile and with a playful flourish, she took off her hat and spun it into the crowds where her fans pressed in a hundred people deep.
“Hello Hong Kong!” she called, her voice chiming like crystal. “I love you.” She blew kisses and detached herself from her manager in a jubilant pirouette. Juno skipped to the closest reporter, a local correspondent for the Chinese State Channel, and beamed at him. “I’m so glad to be home again,” she said, “I’ve missed my city and my friends so much.”
Her behaviour couldn’t have been more different from the cold aspect she displayed at the airport, as unlike as night and day. The crowd roared, jarring the stunned journalist to life. “Miss Qwan, what are your plans now you’re back?”
She flashed that billion-yuan smile again. “I’m going to have some fun and unwind, but you can be sure I’ll be singing for you all very soon.”
The elation crossed the courtyard in a wave. “Are you going to perform at WyldSky?” called the reporter as she drifted away from him.
Juno laughed and threw him a coquettish theatrical wink. The chorus of her name followed the starlet into the building like radiance from the sun.
“Here we are,” said Alice, as the elevator chimed. The doors parted and a wave of laughter and music swept over Frankie. He followed her out into the atrium. They were somewhere close to the upper levels of the YLHI tower, below Tze’s jade castle. A broad open space some three storeys high, the atrium was a festival under glass, a classical string quartet in one corner, a massive indoor waterfall in the other, and between them knots of people indulging themselves in whatever was on offer. Frankie spied tables laden with wines and liqueurs, others with endless swathes of food, including what had to be real meat. There were more discreet offerings too, vircade pods in the shadow of the stone pillars holding up the roof, or circumspect waitstaff with dishes of capsules and droppers. Alice handed him a flute of champagne and he sipped it gingerly.
“Make yourself comfortable,” she told him. “Mingle.”
“Right,” he said, covering his hesitation with another sip. Over the woman’s shoulder he saw Phoebe Hi and a group of ruddy-faced men. He blinked as he recognised Lasse Illstrom among them, the CEO of the Midgard Securities Group; only last month the Norwegian billionaire had been on the cover of both Business Week and CORP Magazine.
Alice glanced around. “Do you like films?”
Frankie blinked. “Uh, sure, I guess. ”
She nodded. “Do you know that man? He’s an actor.”
“Where?” Frankie turned to see Hazzard Wu in close discussion with three men who could only have been the Wachowski Triplets. He was miming the motion of cocking a handgun. “Uh… Yeah. I think so.” The more attention Frankie paid them, more A-list faces came into view about him. He saw the lead drivers from the Tiger Beer highway duel team, the host of You’re Out, You Loser, a few senior men wearing officer tabs from the Army of the Peoples Republic of China. Alice excused herself for a moment and Frankie decided to sample some vat-grown salmon.
“Try the little crab things, man, they’re preem.”
Frankie turned to see the lead vocalist from Charlie Fish, an indie band who were big with the ghettobomber crowd in SoCal. He blinked.
“What?” drawled the singer.
“Nothing… I’m just, well, surprised to see you here. Your music, its all that anti-corporate stuff…”
Frankie received a weak smile. “Oh yeah. Well. We all gotta change some time, right?”
The man wandered away and Frankie found himself at the window. He dropped onto a comfortable sofa, and his hand drifted to the PDA in his pocket. He popped it open and studied the files Alice had reluctantly given up when he pressed her about Alan’s death. Yuk Lung had used contacts with the metropolitan police division to unlock the incident report, and here it was in brutal colour on the palm-sized screen of the handheld. The cops said Alan had been walking along a Mongkok side street when a car had hopped the curb and slammed him into a shuttered storefront. He died on impact, so the coroner’s report had it. The car and driver hadn’t been found, but eyewitness testimony suggested that the attack had been gang-related. The conclusion was a triad hit gone wrong, most likely a case of mistaken identity. Not that this made dealing with it any simpler. YLHI had already dealt with Alan’s remains, cremating him and placing the compacted ashes in a bullet-sized capsule, to be buried in the company memorial park overlooking Clear Water Bay. Frankie paged through the data again. It was all blurring into one long string of dispassionate scrawl.
“Francis,” said Mr Tze, his reflection appearing in the window like a waking phantom.
Frankie snapped the PDA shut. “Hello, uh, sir.”
Tze gave him a paternal smile, and Frankie absently rubbed his hand, tracing the lines of the knife cuts. The strange little ritual had unnerved him more than he wanted to admit. Tze guided him off the sofa and back towards the party. “I want you to enjoy this evening, Francis. Put behind you the pain of things past and look ahead. Will you do that?”
He managed a nod.
“That is good,” Tze took a capsule from a passing waiter and swallowed it down in one gulp. “We’re on the verge of a new acquisition. Something that is going to alter the landscape we move through on every level. Yuk Lung’s reach will truly be global, and we will need men like you to take us there.”
“Me?” Frankie let out a laugh. “Honestly, sir, I’m flattered you think so much of me, but I’m only a minor echelon executive. I’m not sure I have the right stuff-”
“You do,” said Tze firmly. “I don’t want men who look good on paper. I want men who have spirit.” He prodded him in the sternum. “Courage, Francis. You’re not some milksop choirboy with an MBA. You came from the street. You have an edge that none of these men raised on the corporate teat can even grasp at. I want you to make that available to me. I want you to understand that your participation in Yuk Lung’s future plans is, in a very real way, of universal importance. I know that you can fill the terrible void left by Alan’s passing. I know it. He knew it too, Francis. He told me so.”
“Really?” Something rang a wrong note in Frankie’s mind. Not since they were teenagers had Alan been one for brotherly love.
“Oh yes. And there will be rewards the like of which you have not dreamed.” He leaned closer. “Men crave power, Francis, all of us. I can give it to you, if you have the will to claim it.”
Something deep inside Frankie was forcing its way up, and it manifested in a feral smile. He thought of Alan’s dismissive emails, of Burt Tiplady and a hundred overlooked promotion opportunities, of a lifetime of second place. It all came together in a hot rush. “Yeah,” he said quietly, “I’d like that.”