Insider X (2 page)

Minimum standards…
now
that had a nice aristocratic ring to it.  Just like Paris Hilton would probably say.  She imagined with that shirt off he’d look even better.

The other one, though…

No offense, but he could leave his silly barfy shirt on.  Short, going bald, and in desperate need of a
Slim Fast
program.  Hmm… those two did make an odd pairing.

Hmmt!  Enough looking around.  It was obvious that things were fine.  Na took the phone from her ear and rapidly typed on her phone.  Her letters did their plunking, making their cute little sounds.  She accessed the Wi-Fi connection that was available from this exact spot.  It required a password, which she typed in.

It had taken some doing to acquire that password.  It wasn’t exactly something just anybody knew.  Only certain park employees possessed that piece of confidential information.  A second passed.  Then two.  A screen change blipped on her screen and she
was connected.

She made short work of it, and accessed the back office site that she’d navigated several times before.  With a few rapid clicks she dropped her package.  A couple clicks more and she was done.

Out. 
Fine.
  That meant ‘the end’ in Italian.

In a very diva like manner—an affectation she’d practiced many times, with a hair toss and a bored look—she put the phone in her purse.  She took one more causal look around, and then stood up.  It was time to go home.  She’d earned her keep for the day.  Three minutes of work and she’d just earned double her entire annual salary.  Crazy.  She felt like a celebrity doing a brief appearance and getting paid insane amounts of money.

Yah
, no doubt about it.  She was definitely an it girl.  Or on her way, at least—with a big sashay and a sparkling white smile.

Na walked away feeling exuberant.

3

Facility 67096

THROUGH THE OVAL openings in his cream-colored mask—a mask usually used for burn victims—the man looked down from his perch and took in the minions below that were busy at work at their computer stations.

It had been months since his last visit to see the PLA’s Online Blue Army, also known as
Big Blue
.  Both names had been bestowed by the Standing Committee.  His former colleagues were sometimes obtuse.  It was doubtful even one of the seven on the Standing Committee knew that IBM had a nickname; let alone they’d dubbed their elite cyber warfare unit the same nickname:
Big Blue
.  They said it with reverence, completely unaware they were blithely paying homage with each utterance to an American company.

The nickname, though, didn’t bother him.  What irritated him was the utter ineptitude of those training Big Blue.  Facility 67096 was supposed to be an elite force of technicians and specialists.  Yet most of those he was looking down on now seemed barely older than teenagers.  And, as for the instructors, they were not much older.  And from what he had seen so far, pulling up some of their work on the screen, there was nothing elite about what they were doing.

It was a joke. 
But.
  And this, he had to admit, was a surprise.  It was actually quite a good joke.  Big Blue may have been comprised of college-aged kids fresh out of Engineering school, but their work was so stupidly simple that it was borderline brilliant.

For once, he was pleased.  Perhaps today no one would need to be disciplined.  But then again, that would defeat his entire point of coming here.

Looking through the eyeholes in his compression mask, he surfed the screen in front of him looking for something to use as an example.  Some flub.  Some minor error.  His eyes glossed over the work of dozens, clicking to various screens.  He had the unique ability to process faster than most could read.  It was one of his more useful talents.

Ah.  His eyes settled on one passage, being typed this very second.

As an American, one among 600 million, I can only say I am disgusted by the incompetence of Congress…

Ingrate.  That number…
600.
  The population of the US wasn’t 600, it was half that.  313 million to be exact.

The man in the mask looked at the expectant colonel that was standing next to him.  So obsequious, so wanting to please.

“Bring that one to me,” the man in the mask said.  “And the individual who was responsible for training him.”

The colonel nodded twice, bowed, and went to leave the room.

“And, colonel!”

The colonel stopped.

“I will need the usual disciplinary tools,” the man in the mask said.

The colonel blinked, let slip a smile, and strode from the room.

600 million.

The man in the mask had no patience for fools. 

Speaking of which…

It had been less than a year, but it still felt like salt in his wounds.  The fools!

How dare they seek to marginalize him.  Voting him off the Standing Committee. 
He
who made them. 
He
who allowed them to have their power. 
He
who fed their coffers with gold.

Their day was coming.

Oh yes… it was definitely coming.

4

Den 3577

(Q_Q)

DAY JOB.  SAD.  No more moonlighting as Paris Hilton.  Na had cut it close.  Four minutes more and she would have had to work for no pay today. 

She avoided the eyes of her colleagues and went to her desk.  Well, ‘desk’ was a little bit of an exaggeration.  It was actually a long continuous table made of five cheap fold-up tables arranged end to end.  On the tables were fifty-two computer stations, back to back, all shoehorned to fit.  The wires to the stations were bundled, wrapped in plastic zip ties, and threaded through holes that had been power drilled through the centers of the tables.  The cables and wires tracked to the floor where they connected to desktop units and dozens of power surge protectors that were on the floor along with dust bunnies and bits of particle board that had come off the tables.

The room itself was a long narrow space.  It was uncomfortably warm.  There were no windows in the space.  Just dim fluorescent lighting.  An oscillating fan that was on a rusty stand was at one end of the room.  It did little to alleviate the stuffy conditions, other than push around the warm air.

Na squeezed past the last of her colleagues who were sitting in front of their workstations, and took a seat in her metal fold-up chair.  On her right, Jing-Wei, a petite girl in her teens, looked up from her typing and smiled weakly.

“Morning, Na,” whispered Jing-Wei.

“Hi, Jing-Wei,” Na whispered back.  “How was your day yesterday?”

They both spoke in English.  That was a cardinal rule around here.  Only English was to be spoken.  Anybody caught not speaking English was disciplined immediately.

“It was…” Jing-Wei paused, as if searching for the right word.  “Fantastic!” Jing-Wei gave a bigger smile showing off her uneven teeth.

Next to them, Chun grunted, unimpressed.  Chun was a short squatty woman with deep jowls.

“Morning, Chun,” said Na.

Chun didn’t grunt back.  Chun was three times Na’s age and not one for conversation.

“You look very nice,” Na whispered to Chun.

Chun seemed unimpressed.

“
Mmfff,
”
she said.

That was probably
thank you
in her language, Na figured, hiding a smirk.  Na took Chun’s steel trap for a mouth for what it was.  One slip up, not speaking English, was all it took.  If bossman overheard, it could be a bad thing.

Most in the room did like Chun did.  They’d adopted a fail-safe position.  Never talk or say anything.  That was Chun’s way.  She just did her job, hunkered down, typing with her fingers in a
tac tac
methodical manner.  She wasn’t fast, but made up for her lack of speed by keeping a consistent pace over the course of the day.  And, unlike everyone else, Chun didn’t stop when it came time for their midday break.  She just kept plodding on,
tac tac
, never letting up, hunched over her keyboard.  Her extra effort was likely an attempt to compensate for not having all her fingers.  With Chun missing digits on both hands, she probably needed all the time she could get to make her quota.

For a moment, Na felt guilty.  Some for Chun, but mostly for Jing-Wei.  Speaking with Jing-Wei, even just in greeting, was risky.  Jing-Wei’s English was terrible.

From now on, Na made a mental note, she would only speak to Jing-Wei when bossman was not in the room.  Right now she was pretty sure bossman was out of earshot, but she couldn’t be positive he hadn’t overheard their whispers.  The man had ears like a bat.  At the moment, he was standing in front of the oscillating fan in his usual blue chinos and yellow stained
wife beater
. 
Wife beater. 
That was Na putting to use her Rolodex of American vernacular.  She’d picked up the phrase from a blog and had thought it fitting for bossman, even with him being without a wife.

Na stared at her monitor as it crunched to life. 
C’mon, c’mon.
  If she wasn’t logged on before 3 AM she worked for free today.

It felt like forever, but her screen finally fired to life and the log-in page came up.  She typed in her name and user password and tapped ‘enter’.  Her eyes flicked to her watch.  3 AM. 
Oh, let that be right.
  Her monitor blinked and opened to her dashboard.  The time in the right corner of her screen said 3:01 AM.

Drat!
  That really stunk.  In more ways than one.  She felt him over her shoulder at that exact instant.  Or rather, she smelled him.  It was the punchy smell of greasy oniony body odor mixed with rank tobacco breath.

“No pay this week,” bossman said in that nasally voice of his.  It was a voice that made Na’s skin crawl every time she heard it.

“What?” Na said.  “It’s supposed to be just one day.”

“You late twice this month.  No pay.  One week.”

Na knew better than to argue.  Bossman walked off, squeezing past Jing Wei and eight others to take his position in front of the oscillating fan.  Na kept it together.  No pay for a week would spell doomsday for many of her colleagues, but Na reminded herself that she didn’t need the money.  It was abusively little as it was; not enough to even survive on.

No
, the pay was unimportant.  She had bigger things in play.  This job was a means to an end, and there was an escape route at the end of the tunnel.  She shouldn’t have said anything when bossman spoke.  But it had come out of her mouth before she could stop it.  That was dumb.  Dumb, dumb.  She could only hope there wouldn’t be repercussions like last time she was dumb enough to talk back.  Bossman had a habit of taking certain girls into the back room for the most minor of infractions.  It was usually for girls that didn’t meet their quota.  The young ones.

“I’m sorry,” Jing Wei whispered.

“It’s not your fault,” Na said.  She fixated on the big picture in her head and tried to find that inner place of calm.  Two thousand euros.  She’d earned that just yesterday.  Add that to the rest of her stake and she was almost there.  She didn’t need the
peanuts
here.  This would all be a bad dream someday.  Wait.  That was wrong.  Not the dream part, but
peanuts.
  She should have said,
the pay was peanuts here.
  That was how the phrase went.

Okay.  Work.  Focus.  She accessed her queue to see what orders had come in.  The screen pulled up.  It was a longer list than yesterday.  Many of the orders she noticed were small, and wouldn’t be a problem to handle.  Except for the order at the bottom.  It was from IDF.  Another huge order, just like yesterday.  And they were asking for two ‘shotgun specials’ on the competition.

Again?  They were so greedy.  Well, she didn’t have time to waste.  If she worked extra fast, and didn’t take a break today, she might have time to pay IDF another quick visit before the end of the day, and use the administrative backdoor she’d discovered and get some more stuff that she could sell.

She pulled up Facebook and went to work.

5

IDF

MARKS AND LIP stepped out of the black sedan.  It was 9 AM.  In front of them was IDF’s new twenty-seven-million-dollar facility.  A technological marvel in how it was constructed—all tinted glass and metal superstructure—the building was gleaming even without actual sunlight.  Marks and Lip were inside Chengdu’s Hi-tech Industrial Development Zone.  Over half of the Fortune 500 companies in the world had a presence in this area in some fashion or another.  An impressive statistic.  Chengdu wasn’t a backwater town.  The best and brightest came to play and do commerce here.

Marks looked at their guy.  Minder.  Tour guide.  IDF exec.  He was standing on the sidewalk about ten paces from their car with his hands clasped in front of him. 

Lip went up first.  He’d ditched the tee shirt he’d worn yesterday, and was sporting a suit.  Open collar.  No tie.  The ensemble took thirty pounds off him, easy, which meant Lip still had a dilemma.  Over or under?  A dilemma Lip solved by ditching the belt and going with braces.

Marks was wearing a suit, as well.  The suit was from a pricey American label, where if you bought into the advertising shtick, was only worn by ridiculously good-looking chaps, who liked horses, vintage cars, leather bridles, and wholesome girls in tall riding boots. 

Giddy-up on that boot part.

Lip had fun with him earlier when he was putting on the suit.

“Lifshitz,” Lip said.

“Not in my room,” Marks said.  “Go crap in yours.”

“No, you big dummy.  You’re wearing Ralph Lifshitz.”

Marks frowned.

“Look it up,” Lip said.  “That’s the dude’s real name.”

“No kidding?” Marks said.  “Have we used it, yet?”

“It’s on the roster,” Lip said.

Work habit of Lip’s.  When selecting names for potential passports he tended to prefer the “gently used” variety.  Washed once.  Worn little.  That meant real names of famous people, like Ralph Lifshitz (otherwise known as Ralph Lauren).  Lip saw it as his own private joke.  Joke being the operative word.  One of these days that predictive pattern of his was going to bite them both on the ass.  Currently Lip was going with
Shawn Carter.
 

“You look at the label?” Lip said.

“Why?”

“Just curious.”

Marks didn’t take the bait.  Not in front of him, at least.  He waited till Lip wasn’t looking to glance at the label inside his jacket.

Made in China.
  Typical.  WTF.  Man tries to buy American and instead he gets shat on by a guy named Lifshitz.

Lip and Marks exchanged handshakes with the guy waiting for them.  Dude was an SVP.  Big shot.

Just for kicks Marks was trying on
McKinley Morganfield
this time.  The name
was a stretch for a white dude with no rhythm, but Lip was an equal opportunist, and Marks got what he got.  McKinley Morganfield was also the real name of
Muddy Waters, the famous blues musician.  As for
Shawn Carter,
that was the birth name of Jay-Z.  Yep.  That was how Lip and he rolled.

Speaking of names.  SVP’s name was Hu.  Chance of that happening in China was probably 100 percent.  Either first name or last.  One of them was going to be Hu.  Course, if Marks asked Lip, he’d be a smartass and say it was something like 7.2 percent, as Hu was the 15
^th
most popular surname in China.  And that was one reason why Marks wasn’t asking him.

Lip looked at Hu and said something to him in his native Chengdu-Chongqing dialect.  Not ten seconds, and Lip was already showing off and bringing his A-game.  Marks waited till Hu stepped a few paces ahead.

“Alright, what’d you tell him?”

Lip leaned over and whispered.  “I told him I have an enormous Johnson.”

Marks refrained from shaking his head.

Hu held the door open for them and they walked inside.  Health and wealth.  Place had that kind of feel.  Granted, it didn’t hurt that those two words were in chrome channel letters over the receptionist’s desk.

“We’re so happy to have you here,” Hu said to Marks and Lip.

Hu’s face said differently.  Subtle.  But it was there.

Marks knew what the man was thinking, and it probably had nothing to do with being happy.
 
A visit from the States from “their investors” was the last thing this cracker probably wanted. 
McKinley
and
Shawn
just so happened to be fund managers with a 6% stake in IDF.

Recent investment.  Convenient how that worked out.  Lawrence and Johnny Two-cakes had taken care of all the details.  Temporary arrangement, of course.

“Are you ready to begin?” Hu said.

“Sure,” Marks said.

Time for the tour.