EPThttp://www.teamliquid.net/blogs/viewblog.php?id=392425
Sometime in 2001
+ Show Spoiler [mood music] +
"Three fingers and a jawbone. Guess what didn't burn down to ash dissolved in that puddle of... hy-dro-chloric acid and red phos-phate."
Gu Zhenlun, thirty-five, balding, lit a Hongtashan filter, then resumed reading from the thick manila folder spread on the table. Next to him, a twentysomething man sat, watching him quizzically. He spoke.
"It's not our apartment, Gu."
Gu fidgeted a moment, then put out the cigarette. "Poor girl. How much are we paying her?"
"A hundred and twenty five thousand."
"That's a lot of money. Maybe we could just scare the shit out of her. It'd be cheaper."
The younger man shot him a look.
Gu ignored it. "Back in the day..."
The young man spoke. "Back in the day, people who fucked up knew enough to shut the fuck up."
"Aww, look at you. First field trip out of the office, and you're gettin' all uppity. Bet you're just sayin' that 'cause she looks so cute." Gu pointed at a photo of a smiling, twenty-something girl clipped to the bundle of files. The name read Xia Yilin.
"Maybe I'm saying that because you look so ugly. And I just got engaged."
Gu stopped, a little surprised. Then he smiled. "Son, not everyone thinks I'm ugly. And not everyone cares that you're engaged."
Click-clack. From the door: a crack of light from edge, now opening. A stunning young woman walked in, bag of groceries suddenly clattering to the floor beside heels. One, sudden, gasp.
Quick--to his feet: Gu and the younger man, who extended his hand in a polite handshake, as if this were a corporate meeting, not a B & E.
A polite, if puzzled, handshake. One hand wide, confident, long-fingered--an air-element hand--the other a thin-fingered, delicate water hand. "Hi, I'm Zhang Shenghan, and this is Gu Zhenlun. We're here from Jia Li Group." At the mention of the firm's name, Yilin wrenched her hand away, drawing a quick five fingers across Shenghan's face. Gu stood to one side and fought to control his laughter.
Shenghan rubbed his sore cheek. Gu picked up his line without missing a beat. "Anyhow, we believe in fulfilling our social responsibilities, and we are deeply sorry about your husband, Mr. Feng Yixian."
She spoke. "Yixian wasn't my husband. We were... we were due to be married in..." She cut herself off mid-sentence, then ordered the two men to leave her apartment and perform an anatomically impossible sex act with each other.
Gu shrugged, starting for the door. Shenghan stood, unmoving. Gu--a look at his partner. Shenghan ignored it, instead keeping an intent stare on the gorgeous lady. "Miss Xia, you're twenty-one, aren't you?"
Silence. Shenghan offered Yilin a smoke. She refused. He withdrew the cigarettes, staring at a faint ring of white around her collarbone. "Did your necklace cover this month's groceries?"
The temperature of Yilin's expression plunged, but she held her tongue.
Shenghan noted the newly decorated walls around them, then moved his eyes back on Yilin. "You met Yixian in Zhengzhou, didn't you?"
Yilin's cheeks flushed. "How does that matter?"
"Did he ever tell you about his ex there?" Offscreen, Gu smiled. Shenghan continued. "I heard she came up last month, might have met him right in that bedroom. Come to think of it, I'm not even sure your husb--I mean, fiance--wrote you into his will."
The room was silent, save for Yilin's breathing. Her cheeks were beet red.
"Anyhow, you're twenty-one, right?"
"Why do you keep asking me that?"
"Twenty-one means you're an only child. I guess if times get hard, you could always sell this place, move back in with your mother and father." Shenghan leaned in. "Speaking of your parents, how's their health?"
Her shoulders sagged, shifting her long hair with them. "How much?"
Shenghan, quickly. "A hundred thousand." Gu, offscreen, raised his eyebrows.
"Was he really that cheap?"
Shenghan didn't respond. Yilin stared into the young man's eyes for a long minute. Then she signed the document.
As she handed back the pen, Gu spoke. "The county hospital will be around with the death certificate and photographic evidence."
The two men turned and left. Shenghan expected the door to slam shut behind him, but when he turned around, he found her standing, still looking at him. He lowered his eyes and looked away.
Daylight, fighting through blinds, spilling over a crowded desk onto a scuffed beige carpet.
Wang Baosen, forty-three, sat. Hanging limply off only one shoulder, an army greatcoat hid twenty years of fat and searched in vain for an arm left on the hills outside Lang Son.
In front of him, his VP of Finance--Zhang Shenghan, county valedictorian, three years out of Harvard Business School, the only Harvard MBA in the entire province--stood, waiting to be judged.
"You gave out all the money?"
Shenghan glanced out the window, then to his boss. "Almost. I've still got fifteen thousand left for Doctor Zhao. Any reason we're paying more than the usual rate, sir?"
"Skipping right to the point, aren't you? Well, let me be frank. That accident was pretty bad--and what's more, we need to keep things quiet for nine months, instead of the usual six." Baosen leaned forward. "The team from American Bromide that's coming to visit--it's going to include their head of Asia ex-India."
Asia ex-India. A single inward chuckle. Asia, minus the one time we gassed ten thousand people.
"Is something about that funny, Xiao Zhang?"
Shenghan shook his head. "No, sir." His thoughts drifted back to snippets of a vodka-soaked conversation with a corporate strategy associate in a dumpy Shanghai bar. We're looking for a way into the Chinese market, but the regulators keep giving us hell with a complete buyout. My boss is in Beijing right now trying to sort it all out.
Baosen continued. "Anyhow, get this. Their Asia head just finished meeting with the Premier as part of a business delegation for the WTO negotiations. He changed his schedule and flew straight back to New York, non-stop. Then he's coming here."
"Their headquarters are in Michigan."
"Yeah, but what was it you said about America? All their banks are in New York?"
"So it's true. They do want to buy us." They wanted in, they had a green light from Beijing, they had three months to get the deal done before the WTO train would choo-choo out of the station and leave them behind forever. There's blood in the water, let's go kill'em, his boss at DLJ used to say. Shenghan smiled.
Baosen, nonplussed, leaned back into his chair. "I'm not putting the whole company on sale--just a forty percent stake. Negotiations should take six or seven months." Wang took a deep breath. "After the deal's finished, I'll be stepping aside."
Shenghan straightened. "Sir, I'd like to run the resulting company."
Baosen's face clouded. "Are you sure?" He leaned forward. "Xiao Zhang, you're smart--but principled. You have the eye for human weakness, but not the stomach."
Shenghan looked directly at his boss. "You're wrong, sir."
"Would you be willing to bribe bankers, in order to make them less likely to finance your rivals?"
"Boss Wang, we've been over this."
Baosen, firm. "Yes or no, Xiao Zhang."
"No."
"Would you be willing to help entrap an honest government official on false charges, so that his more flexible colleagues may gain power?"
Shenghan, emphatic. "No."
"Would you be willing to cause an incident, or even a fatal accident, at the production line of a competitor, to--"
"No!"
Baosen shook his head in exasperation. "Then for heavens' sake, Zhang Shenghan, stick to assignments where you won't have to make those choices. Don't be a leader. Especially not in China."
Shenghan stood his ground. "I know you mean well, Boss Wang, but I don't need to do it the way you did. Or my father."
A long, mutual stare, like mantises--then the tri-tonal beeping of a cheap plastic push-button phone. Baosen, annoyed. "Yeah?... alright... well, thanks for the advance notice."
He put down the receiver. "Okay. You're in luck, hotshot. Gu just called, he can't make it to the dinner with our bankers tonight. His aunt's sick."
"You mean he has a new mistress." Shenghan snorted, bitter. "How could you even think of letting him on the deal team, after the accident?"
Baosen smiled. "Because he's a man who can answer yes to those questions I've just asked you. Anyhow, you get to take his spot tonight."
"I'll need to meet Zhao at the hospital first."
Baosen nodded, then turned to his computer. Shenghan left.
Read part 7 here:
http://www.teamliquid.net/blogs/viewblog.php?id=393480
