The Gaze of Caprice (The Caprice Trilogy Book 1) (64 page)

Diana saw some familiar faces.  Joe was there.  Mason was there.  Alex and Bobby were together.  The conversation was lead by Diana.  She felt comfortable around men.  Women were competitive.  Attention was best if undivided.  It was wasted if vied for by a multitude.  Diana had a shyness that turned itself inside out with an audience.  Mason didn’t see what Xiaoyu was talking about.  The self-conscious woman with dissolving jealousy didn’t arrive.  But Diana—the cosmopolitan—did.  She held her champagne flute just right, tilting her head just so.  It became immediately clear why a girl from a small town in Manchuria hadn’t gotten homesick and gone back there.  The key to Diana was in her conversation.  A skinny doll-faced girl living in the city didn’t look tough enough for the town.  But the big city didn’t cater to the tough.  It catered to those who did anything to survive.  Knowing what Diana was involved in made it all the more obvious.  She helped
Malpen
forge currency because it was a way to come up in the city.  By the time the evening was done, they all understood.  Her skinny frame was deceptive.  Diana was the type not to go down without a fight.

              The night ended without Xiaoyu or Diana saying much when they got back to Xiaoyu’s apartment.  It wasn’t long before they fell asleep.  The next morning was surreal for Diana.  For Xiaoyu, it was as real as could be.  She woke up to a lonely bed.  But she had space.  She didn’t see Xiaoyu so she stretched out her arms and legs to feel for him.  She felt nothing.  She idled on top of the bed for several minutes before she heard the shower and realized he was still around.  She got out of bed out of curiosity.  She put her t-shirt on.  The apartment was a one bedroom.  Besides the bedroom, there was only a small foyer, a sizeable living room, a medium kitchen and a bathroom.  The living room had a modern glass coffee table.  Apartment management kept current magazines on the table for guests.  The magazines were gone.  They had been replaced.  Where the magazines should have been were dollar bills, stacks of bills.  Five rows of hundreds were neatly stacked with one row of fifties.  Diana stood staring at the stacks of money.  She thought nothing.  The shock wore on and on.  Her mind’s eye was snow blind, lost in a white maze.  There was nothing to think, only to look and be lost. 

              She was in a stupor that she couldn’t be brought out of, but distracted from.  The distraction came when Xiaoyu emerged from the bathroom covered only by a bath towel wrapped around his waist.  There was nothing else covering him, not even his polymer skin.  Xiaoyu stood in full view of Diana.  Diana had a full view of his tattoo.

              “
What is that
?” asked Diana pointing at the tattoo

              “
It’s called the Reverse Mark or the Backward Scar
,” said Xiaoyu.

              “
The tattoo
?” asked Diana.

              “
Yes
,” said Xiaoyu.

              “
Why do you have it
?” asked Diana.

              “
I earned it
,” said Xiaoyu, “
Otherwise I wouldn’t be here
.”

              “
What do you mean
?” asked Diana.

              “
In Hong Kong, the Triads choose one boy to carry this mark
,” said Xiaoyu, “
But he earns it by living.  They put him in a cage and he has to fight for years.  Killing anyone else in the cage with him.  If he can do that for eight years, he earns the Mark
.”

              “
What are you talking about
?” asked Diana, “
Triads
?”  Xiaoyu nodded his head staring at Diana.  The bubble full of idiosyncrasies in his behavior spooked Diana.  She ran for the door.  Xiaoyu was faster.  Before Diana had time to open the door Xiaoyu used his body weight to pin her against the door.  She didn’t scream she squeaked.  He took off his towel and used it as a tie for her hands, grabbing one hand then the other, tying them behind her back.  He pulled her by her arms back into the living room and threw her down on the sofa.  She was still warming up her voice to scream.

              “Liu Dan,” said Xiaoyu, “
If anything were going to happen to you it would have happened by now
.”  Diana looked at Xiaoyu standing in front of her covered only by his tattoo.

              “
It’s nothing you haven’t seen before
,” said Xiaoyu.  He was half right.  She had seen him naked.  The dragons suspended on his body were new.  He appeared more animal than anything else. 

              “
You want to know what I want
,” said Xiaoyu, “
I want to save your life
.”  The mention of her life made Diana panic.  She started to scream for help.

              “
If you leave this apartment with anyone but me you’re going to regret it
,” said Xiaoyu.  He didn’t tell her to stop screaming.  He wanted her to figure it out for herself.

              “
Those bills over on the table are from Malpen.  The Americans know Malpen is counterfeiting Ameican bills and you are one piece of it
,” said Xiaoyu.  The mention of her company name made her choose hearing over yelling. 

              “
I’m being honest with you because now is the time
,” said Xiaoyu.

              “
For what
?” asked Diana.

              “
Honesty
,” said Xiaoyu.

              “
I took you to the reception last night so you will believe what I’m saying
,” said Xiaoyu, “
I do not work in finance in Hong Kong.  I work for American intelligence.  So do my friends, the guys you met.  This tattoo you’ve never seen.  They give me a high-tech spray to cover it up.  Everything is to disguise who we really are
.”  The story wouldn’t have been believed the first time they met or on their first date.  But he knew about the counterfeiting and his tattoo showed he had been hiding something.  She was inclined to believe him.

              “
Why are you telling me this
?” asked Diana.

              “
Because of Yamila
,” said Xiaoyu, “
They have decided that she is a priority over you
.”

              “
What do you mean
?” asked Diana.

              “
The Americans are getting close to pulling the trigger
,” said Xiaoyu, “
Shutting down Malpen.  Malpen will not have any fault for this.  I’m going to say this again.  Malpen will not have any fault for this.  It is too important to this country for them to let this get out.  My guess is they will pin it on you and other members of the company.  All executives will deny knowledge and you and a few others in your department will be left to hang.  They’ll prosecute you or deport you.  The Americans will not protect you.  Yamila they will protect if she cooperates.  When this is over, if you’ve lost your job and that is all that happens to you, you will be so very lucky.  Malpen may even kill you as a cover up.  It depends on them not the Americans.  I want the Americans to choose you over Yamila.  If the Americans agree to take you in, you’ll be alive and you’ll avoid prosecution.  Either way your job at Malpen is gone.  Start thinking of it as such
.”  Diana was startled by how much Xiaoyu already knew.  She decided that he had weighed her options for her and trusting him was her only option.  She told him what she knew. 

She was in charge of logistics programming.  She created a curtain that allowed
Malpen
to mask their counterfeiting by hiding it in a separate database that ran invisible on the servers at
Malpen
.  It automatically fudged raw materials such as cotton to show a reduction in output for any cotton that was used to make fake bills.  They also logged all fake bills they had printed.  They were over halfway to a billion dollars counterfeited.  Diana maintained the database system herself.  The less peopled involved the better.  Only three board members knew about the counterfeiting and her immediate boss who suggested her as the one to run the database.  He was also the one who promoted her every year.  Yamila was her liaison.  The
Kejadian Tempatan
was responsible for all shipping and receiving.  The paper was processed in India and the bills were printed in Australia and Singapore.  They let certain presses lie fallow for long periods to avoid any suspicion.  Production had to be shifted and she worked on the entire system.  After the bills were produced, she didn’t have working knowledge of where the bills went.  The
Kejadian Tempatan
kept a large quantity for their own purposes.  She didn’t know why.  But there was one other thing she knew that was worth its weight in gold. The database program she developed was also used by the
Kejadian Tempatan
.  The program was highly compressed with only administrative access.  It took up virtually no memory.  It could hide in plain sight.  Diana had given the program to Yamila.  Her boss at
Malpen
required it.  Yamila was to pass the program over to the
Kejadian Tempatan
so they could hide their own accounting and update between
Malpen
’s database and their own. 
Malpen
required this to make sure no members of the
Kejadian Tempatan
were stealing the money for themselves.  It wouldn’t just be theft.  It could expose the entire counterfeiting program if a member of the
KT
was stealing the money to get drunk in a bar or gamble in a casino.   Anyone asking serious questions would be serious enough to admit the
Kejadian Tempatan
didn’t have resources for high quality fakes. 
Malpen
’s three rogue board members were familiar with organizations.  They knew organizations were never as organized as they seemed.  They forced the
KT
to be more professional.  Fake money couldn’t be spent so liberally.  The supply chain was as strong as its weakest link. 

The
KT
had the database that Diana developed and Diana could access it.  To Xiaoyu that made Diana more valuable than Yamila but she had to get the database from the
Kejadian Tempatan
.  She didn’t know where the
Kejadian Tempatan
kept the database but Yamila said the
KT
owned an exercise gym and hid the database on their computer system but she didn’t know where the gym was.  Retrieving the database would make Yamila obsolete to the agency.  Xiaoyu knew it.

              The gym was in a shopping center on the west end of Kuala Lumpur.  Xiaoyu waited until several hours after the gym was closed.  The gym closed at 11pm.  Xiaoyu and Diana arrived in a rented SUV.  Diana had to take responsibility for her situation.  She would have to go in and download the database to her hard drive.  She would do it alone.  Xiaoyu would park the SUV across the street and wait for her.  She would call him when she had the database and he would drive over and pick her up.  Xiaoyu dropped Diana off at the back of the complex.  The back door to the gym had the store logo,
Fondness Fitness
.  Xiaoyu picked the door lock for Diana and used a magnetic keycard to disable the alarm system.  He got back in the SUV and drove across the street.  He had nothing to do but wait.

  The night was warm.  A light mist hid in the darkness but was revealed under lampposts.  Xiaoyu stayed parked across the street and watched the front entrance of the gym.  The engine was off forcing him to periodically turn over his wrist to look at the dial of his watch.  His phone rang.  It wasn’t Diana.  It was Mason.

              “Where are you?” asked Mason.

              “You should see me,” said Xiaoyu, “Turn on your computer.”

              “It is on,” said Mason, “I do see you.”

              “Why are you calling?” asked Xiaoyu.

              “Wondering why you’re on the west end this late,” said Mason.

              “Diana is taking the database from the
KT
gym,” said Xiaoyu.

              “Why?” asked Mason.

              “It’s her program,” said Xiaoyu, “She wrote it, she knows it.”

              “Then why is she taking it in the middle of the night?” asked Mason.

              “She developed it for
Malpen
,” said Xiaoyu, “They gave it to the
KT
so they could keep adequate records.  They didn’t want to lose track of any of their cash flow.  If we have the
KT
database we know where the rest of the bills are going.”

              “I’ll bring the database to you tonight if you want,” said Xiaoyu.

              “Remember what I told you?” said Mason, “
About following instructions
.  We’ve made a decision, Ray.  That doesn’t involve you stealing this database in the middle of the night.”