An hour later, Mr. Chen would emerge, looking pensive and smoking a cigarette.
Greedy, greedy, the boss said, shaking his head.
On Friday afternoon, he handed out ties, jackets, and machine guns, and the gang, now camouflaged in business attire, set off with military precision. There were fourteen men and four cars in all-one to retrieve Chen, two for the factory, and one for the special errand.
Pulling up to the discreet sign that said only RIC Corporation, the men swarmed the entrances, overpowering the $9-per-hour guards and disabling the alarms, which were right where the mole had said. After taking everybody’s cell phones, they herded the workers into a room.
They ignored the offers of purses and wallets. They were after the silicon chips, a negotiable tender akin to diamonds, gold bullion, heroin, C4, and enriched uranium. Lacking serial numbers, chips were untraceable and no law prohibited their flow across borders. Best of all, twenty million dollars’ worth fit neatly into a slim briefcase, with room left over for a passport, airline tickets, and a paperback novel. You could stroll right through security and onto a plane. Within sixteen hours, they’d disappear into the gray market that flourished in the backstreets of Hong Kong’s hi-tech district. Silicon Alley, they called it. Eighteen more hours and the chips would circle the globe, coming to rest in Zurich and Johannesburg and even boomeranging back to California’s Silicon Valley.
Except in this case, the chips weren’t in the locked metal cage where the mole had sworn they’d be. They relayed the news to the boss, who cursed but didn’t despair. This, too, was a contingency he’d planned for. In the black town car inching through rush-hour traffic along Interstate 10, the boss applied the screws to Chen.
“In your office, there is a safe built into the wall,” he said, watching Chen the way a butcher assesses a slab of meat. “We need the combination.”
For emphasis, cold metal nudged further into his ribs.
Chen pressed against his other captor, who shifted and gave off a garlicky body odor. How was it that garlic could savor food so divinely, yet be such an abomination when released through human pores, Chen wondered, as he considered their demands. He was amazed he could hold both thoughts at the same time. What a supple organ the brain was. He hoped he would not lose control of his bowels.
The prodding grew more insistent. Oxygen ebbed out of the car, making his chest tighten. Was this what a heart attack felt like? If he died, they’d never get the combination. It would be a fitting trick from a god he’d stopped believing in five minutes ago. No. He wouldn’t tell them. He’d be ruined, his family turned out. This was his biggest order yet, twenty million dollars’ worth of chips with a bonus for early delivery, and he was days away from completion. He’d gambled everything, even borrowed money from loan sharks to hire more workers. How could success be snatched from him now? Chen would rather die. If he sacrificed himself, his wife could take over. At least his children’s future would be assured-all of them. He had amended his will last month to reflect the birth of a male heir. His mistress Yashi hadn’t believed it until he’d shown her the papers. Chen had even left a generous gift for Mieux Mieux at the brothel.
The butt of a gun came down against his temple so hard he felt his brains slosh inside his skull. His head throbbed and something splashed off his brow. He stuck out his tongue and tasted warm salty liquid. Red tears, he thought. I am crying red tears. He raised a hand to probe the wound, but someone grabbed his arm and pinned it to his side. Other hands tugged at his tie and he felt a ripple as it slid loose. Now his hands were shoved together and the tie, still warm from the heat of his body, was looped around his wrists and tightened.
His wife had given him that tie. It was silk. Some Italian designer whose name he couldn’t pronounce. Now it bound their love together, he thought. What he would do to save his family.
“The combination,” the boss repeated.
Again Chen shook his head, bracing for further blows. He hoped he’d pass out if they hit him again. He knew his life hung by a filament not much thicker than the fiber optics that wrapped his beloved and lucrative circuits.
“Open your eyes,” a voice ordered.
Chen did and beheld a photo of himself, his wife, and the two girls, at a park near their home in San Marino. Chic and perfectly coiffed even on the weekend, Leila wore a quilted pink warm-up suit and clapped her hands as the children rocked on a seesaw. Chen stood off to the side in blue jeans, a white polo shirt, and tasseled loafers, talking into a cell phone. He remembered that day. An unseasonably warm Sunday in February. They’d eaten dim sum at a new place on Valley Boulevard and then, bellies full and relaxed, had given in to the girls’ pleas and taken them to the park.
“We have people inside your house,” the boss said, his voice the sibilant hiss of a snake that Chen had been told lurked in the arroyo, with diamonds on its back and rattles that sang as it struck.
At these words, Chen’s vision constricted to a pinhole, seeing only his children, their fragile limbs, their trusting eyes. He thought of the evil that lay camouflaged, coiled in wait in this hot dry land so unlike the humidity of home. He and Leila had made a safe place for their family in this New World, though Leila had never stopped pining for the southern province of her youth. They had sheltered their children in ways their own lives had not been, growing up under the lamentable excesses of the Cultural Revolution. Chen himself had been guilty of an excess of zeal, but that was all in the past. The American gold rush was on, and so he had emigrated and found a little door when the big one was closed and built up his business and used his skills. It meant long trips to Asia to search out the best price for raw materials, and he missed his family terribly, but such was the sacrifice one made. And after all, hadn’t he met Yashi there, and banished his loneliness in her arms, and brought her back and set her up in Arcadia as his mistress? He’d even bought her a townhouse on Huntington Drive. He hadn’t expected her to be so hot-tempered, his Yashi, with her flashing eyes and ebony hair rippling like a curtain. Yashi with her greedy red mouth fastening upon him, fingertips fluttering like tiny moths against his skin.
The boss gave a buzz-saw laugh. He punched some numbers into a cell phone and gave an order. Then he put the phone on speaker.
“Russell.” His wife’s quavering voice filled the car. “They promise that if you do what they say, they won’t…” her voice choked. “The children…” she said hoarsely. “They’ve got the children.”
There was a scuffling as the phone changed hands.
“Say something to your father,” a male voice demanded.
Then a wet whimper. “Daddy?” said six-year-old Pearl.
And when he heard that voice, usually so bossy, now reduced to a high whine of fear, something broke inside of Chen, and he slumped in his seat.
How could he give these people what they wanted? How could he not? Even if his family was saved, all would be lost. He knew his wife-she expected a certain standard of living. A big house. Country club membership. Fancy cars. Ivy League schools for the children. The education they had missed out on, because of the situation at home. Then he heard his daughter’s gasp again, and he knew there was only one solution.
He told them.
The boss turned in his seat and his lips parted in a ghastly smile. Then he made a new call and repeated the sequence of numbers into the phone. In the chip factory, with its modest gray carpet, black lacquer furniture, and framed invoices for ever larger orders, Chen knew that someone was giddily twirling the dial.
He closed his eyes again. Soon they’d have what they wanted and they’d let him go and his family would be safe. He could always start over. What did it matter, balanced against their well-being? These were white-collar criminals. They didn’t like leaving behind bodies, messes.