Code Name Komiko (18 page)

“What’s clear to me now,” she heard Harrison saying, “is that the Hong Kong government doesn’t look favorably upon my enterprise. Which, frankly, I find quite insulting.”

“No, Mr. Harrison, sir,” her father replied. Lian felt herself tense at the deference in his voice. “I assure you, your company’s contributions to our economy are a great boon. The government would not dream of interfering.”

“But that’s just it, Hung. They did dream, and late last night their dream came true. And I found it very hard to sleep after that dream.”

Well,
thought Lian,
that’s the difference between you and me.

“A raid by the Labor Department?” Harrison continued. “It’s embarrassing, Hung. It’s offensive. When you and I both know that I’ve gone well out of my way to act on the recommendations made by Dr. Lan and her ridiculously named MedInstigators.”

Lian’s father cleared his throat. “The, ah, their name is—”

“Immaterial,” Harrison interrupted. “You’re right, of course. But nevertheless we bowed to their findings, and in so doing I was under the impression that you and I had an
understanding
.”

He spat out the end of the word like it left an awful taste in his mouth. Lian’s hand began to hurt, and it took her a moment to realize that she’d made a fist so tight that her fingernails were digging into her palm.

“We do, of course,” her father said quickly. “I don’t know where any of these problems are coming from. But I’ll get to the bottom of it all. That’s my job.”

“For now,” Harrison uttered. “Though, I couldn’t help thinking this morning that it wouldn’t be hard to find someone else better suited for it.”

“Mr. Harrison, no, I hope you’ll give me a chance to make this right.”

That was it. Her father’s fawning words curdled in Lian’s ears. The idea of such an honorable man being forced to suck up to a slimeball like Harrison was too much to bear.

Lian spun on her heel to stand in the study’s doorway. The violin cadenza that had been building in the background swelled with expertly bowed semiquavers.

Her father was seated facing the door, and Lian saw his eyes go wide at the sight of her. Before he had a chance to wave her away, she spoke.

“You know, Harrison,” she said, and the man and both his goons turned to drill their icy looks into her. “If the Department of Labor cracked down on you, they must have had a pretty good reason. They don’t generally raid businesses that are on the level.”

“Lian!” her father barked, his face reddening. “This is a business meeting!”

“Really?” she said, directing all her words at Harrison now. “I was told that it was just a ‘friendly chat.’”

Harrison smiled his horrible smile at her. “What a lovely ruse you and Mr. Mendelssohn have concocted.”

His face fell, and he turned back to her father. “I was under the impression, Hung, that you people took a stern hand to your children—kept them in line, kept them obedient. Or is that yet another myth I’ve been fed about the wonders of the Orient?”

Lian saw her father twitch. “To your room,” he said, pointing at her. “Immediately!”

She stood seething for a moment, watching her father’s eyes dart from her to Harrison and back. She saw the vein in his forehead throb, heard his clipped breathing.

At last, she hung her head and walked away, shutting the door behind her, retreating to the tempo of a coda being perfectly played, wondering if Janine Jensen ever got into this kind of trouble.

She doubted it.

Even with the pillow over her head, Lian heard a soft knock on her bedroom door.

“Come in,” she said, though it came out muffled.

She heard the door open and felt the mattress sink as someone sat down near her legs. Felt a warm hand on her arm.

“Thank you for knocking,” Lian said.

“I thought about not doing so,” her mother said. “A knock is a display of respect, and respect appears to be in short supply this morning.”

Lian groaned and rolled over, tossing the pillow to one side. “I hope you’re not asking me to respect Rand Harrison,” she said. “There’s not a yacht party in this world that’ll make that happen.”

“You don’t think your father felt disrespected when you spied on his meeting?” her mother said, her voice low in volume, but high in reproach. “When you shamed his guest? You don’t think I felt disrespected, watching you slink back to your room when I thought you’d been in there practicing your concerto all along?”

Lian had no response. She looked away, out the window, to the skyline of the Central District. It was the most sickening vista she could imagine at the moment.

“Have we been terrible parents?” her mother asked. “Have we not always treated you with respect?”

You never knock
, Lian wanted to say. But she knew these questions were all rhetorical; they were the perfect parents, and she was their dutiful daughter. That’s the way things had always been.

How, then, to tell such parents that the life of privilege her father’s work afforded her felt like a curse and not a blessing? That guilt gnawed at Lian when she opened her closet, or fired up her scooter, or dined on octopus carpaccio, or gazed from their apartment in the clouds down to where the money never touched?

Of course, these were unanswerable questions as well. Her mother wouldn’t understand such sentiments, could never wrap her head around something like 06/04. Every day, Lian felt the gap between them widening. One day, she feared, she would no longer be able to see her parents from the other side.

“Despite your outburst,” her mother was saying, “your father has been able to placate Mr. Harrison for the time being. Once the deal goes through, perhaps his sleepless nights will end. And perhaps you will remember where you last left your manners.”

“Wait,” Lian said, sitting up. “What do you mean, ‘once the deal goes through?’ The raid didn’t kill the deal?”

“Why should it have?” her mother said. “The Labor men found nothing out of the ordinary at the complex. No toxic chemicals, no unsafe working conditions. All the paperwork was up to date, all the initials in the right place.” She smiled. “They couldn’t even find a dropped stitch on the new fall collection. If anything, the raid has made the deal more likely.”

Lian felt sick to her stomach.

“The lawyers will be finalizing the contracts over the next few days, the press conference should be held next week. And after that, I imagine your father will sleep for days, and then we’ll go celebrate his commission with the fanciest dinner any of us have ever eaten.”

She looked delighted at the prospect. This was all just paperwork to her, Lian realized. Stacks of photocopied A4 sheets being pushed back and forth across desks, signatures in triplicate, corporate seals. The contracts went out, the money came in, a nice dinner was had to celebrate.

The human cost was not factored in—not for a single moment.

“I think I’d like a little time alone, Mother,” Lian said. “I’m not feeling well.”

Her mother gave her a concerned look, patted her arm again, and stood to leave. “Let us hope it isn’t contagious.”

Lian looked away.
Upper-class guilt is not in any danger of catching around here.

She grabbed up the pillow again as her mother left the room, flopping onto her stomach and closing her eyes against the chalk-white cotton. Despair settled on her like a threadbare blanket; she wrapped herself in it and felt colder still.

Torch had once posted a quote she’d really appreciated, a handful of words attributed, perhaps incorrectly, to one Edmund Burke. She felt they were a perfect summary of 06/04’s reason for existence: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

But what happened when good men, and women, like 06/04 did
something
, and it still wasn’t enough? What happened when evil was simply too well connected?

Clearly, Harrison had friends in high places. Someone had to have tipped him off that the raid was coming; there was no other explanation for Zan’s bus being turned around, or for the women and underage workers being pulled from the factory floors. When the Labor Department had arrived, everything had appeared on the up-and-up. Strong male workers, no code violations, paperwork showing the government men exactly what they wanted to see.

She’d known that Harrison had his potbellied lapdog working within the police, but now it was plain that he had a mole seeded in the Labor Department—someone senior enough to know about the raid and give ample warning. And if that were the case, how many other arms of the government had Harrison infected? How informed was he?

Informed enough that 06/04’s best play had been doomed almost as soon as it was set in motion.

10:42 AM HKT —
Komiko has logged on

Komiko:
A bit of a roller coaster since last I checked in.

Lian scrolled back through the conversations that had taken place without her. Crowbar was despondent, all frowny emoticons and not knowing “what 2 do next.” Blossom had made a couple of feeble stabs at encouragement and team spirit before largely falling silent. And Torch was on a furious tear, a raw nerve with a hair-trigger Caps Lock key.

Blossom:
Roller coasters are fun. This isnt.

Crowbar:
We did everything right, played by the rules, told the authorities . . . & we still lost

Torch:
The battle. We lost the battle. NOT THE WAR.

Crowbar:
Hard to C right now how 4 people can win a war

Lian typed quickly, hoping to post before Torch banged out an angry rebuttal.

Komiko:
It’s not just the four of us.

Komiko:
Don’t forget, Zan’s working for HC now, spying for us. Our work is inspiring bravery in others.

Torch:
Really? He’s being brave? Because from where I’m sitting, it looks like he’s being USELESS.

Torch:
For a “spy,” he hasn’t fed us one bit of worthwhile information yet. Where’s the list of chemicals? Where’s his sister’s paperwork?

Torch:
Where is ONE SINGLE ADVANTAGE that brave, brave Zan has given us against Harrison?

Komiko:
Okay, we’re all angry at what happened with the raid. But let’s remember who the enemy is here.

Torch:
Oh, I remember. Believe me. And I’m actually DOING SOMETHING about it.

Lian pushed back from her laptop for a minute. The best way to handle Torch when he was in this mood was not to handle him at all. Just let him post uninterrupted until he started to run out of steam. She only hoped that Crowbar and Blossom figured out to stay clear as well.

Torch:
Earlier today I hacked the firewall for the contractors who did the refurbishment on HC’s Central offices.

Torch:
I snatched every scrap with Harrison’s name on it. All the blueprints, details of the layout—where the physical files are stored, where the server room is.

Torch:
But that was just a warm-up. The main event is to crack that server and dig up the payroll files. They’re required by law to keep them.

Torch:
If Jiao worked there at all, there will be SOMETHING in their system. Even if they purged every mention of her, there are data ghosts.

Torch:
Unlike in the real world, Jiao can’t be erased completely online. And I will stop at NOTHING until I find her.

Torch:
Any official document that places her at that factory will be enough to implicate Harrison.

10:58 AM HKT —
Torch has logged off

Blossom:
And just like that, Torch is gone. I guess the conversation was over.

10:58 AM HKT —
Blossom has logged off

Crowbar:
Maybe thats 4 the best, I dont feel like thinking about this right now NEway

10:59 AM HKT —
Crowbar has logged off

Lian sat for a moment, pondering how utterly alone she was—in her bedroom, in her chat room, and in her fight against the forces of corporate greed.

At least she’d got in one good night’s sleep before her whole world fell apart.

11:00 AM HKT —
Komiko has logged off

By the time she got to the computer lab during her free period—after a trip to the restroom and a quick stop by the library to check out an annotated study guide to
Anna Karenina
—Lian’s preferred workstation in the corner was already occupied. She stood at the room’s threshold, watching Matt working the trackball, his eyes glued so intently to the monitor that he didn’t even look up when she stepped into the room.

She watched him for a moment. The lab was sparsely populated, but somehow the four empty chairs on either side of him seemed to highlight Matt’s isolation here—his
otherness
. He could have been outside with the other boys, chasing a ball around the grounds as if it actually mattered. But he was in the computer lab and was probably writing e-mails to his friends back home. Friends that he missed.

Lian backed out of the doorway, deciding not to disturb him. She had only taken a couple of steps when her cell phone vibrated in her pocket, two staccato bursts to let her know she had a new text message. She reached for her phone, and, in the same instant, Matt picked up his from the tabletop and read its screen.

Little wonder; it was a message from Mingmei, addressed to the two of them.

The Stephen Chow revival at Central Cinema rolls on, and tonight is Kung Fu Hustle with English subtitles. Something for everyone! I’m declaring this a double date, Lian, which means you pick a boy or I’ll pick one for you. And as you know, my taste in men is excellent ;)

Lian stepped out into the hallway and replied:

I’ll pick my own prince; I’m scared you’ll find me a frog.

She had agreed to go to the film with Mingmei when it had been announced a month ago, before Matt was even in the picture. It seemed a little unfair that his arrival made it necessary for her to find a date as well, but she realized that she actually knew someone who might fit the bill very nicely.