Red Phoenix: A Thomas Caine Thriller (The Thomas Caine Series Book 2)

by Andrew Warren

  She was wearing a black and white polka dot dress. The fabric was faded, and the garment looked old and worn, as if purchased from a thrift store. Something about her was familiar, but Caine couldn't quite put his finger on it.

  “You look like you’re about to kiss,” she continued. “And on a lame tourist trap like this? Please don’t make me barf.”

  “Who are you?” Jia snapped.

  The girl stared at her over the rims of her glasses. “Who do you think I am?”

  “Betty?” Jia asked.

  “My name’s Shirley Chen. Betty Binary is just my online name.”

  Caine relaxed the grip on his pistol. “You must be with the Enclave.”

  Shirley rolled her eyes. “Brilliant. Where did you find this ben dan?”

  “Beg your pardon?” Caine drawled, an amused smile on his face.

  “She called you a stupid egg,” Jia said. “In Chinese to call someone an egg is a mild insult. It implies your lineage is of animalistic origin.”

  Shirley shook her head and her black hair swayed back and forth, revealing her large, pale ears. Each ear was pierced with a shimmering series of silver studs and rings.

  “Juewang de shagua. Hopeless,” she muttered. “You have to explain all that to him? Way to kill the moment.”

  The electronic music changed to a slower tempo, and Caine felt the tram car slow down. The lights outside began to dim and fade away. The tram car rose up from the tunnel and crawled along the track into a small, well-lit station.

  “Thank God,” Shirley muttered. “This stupid wannabe Disney ride is over. When we get outside, follow me.” She eyed Caine. “Leave the gun in your pants. If the cops catch you with it, they’ll beat your ass and throw you in jail.”

  Caine turned to Jia. “She’s a real charmer.”

  Again, Shirley rolled her eyes. She exhaled sharply. The sound was somewhere between a sigh and a gag. “Hey, you came to the Enclave for help, remember? Zhishi zou wo shuo ni laipigou.”

  Jia stared at the girl for a moment, then burst into laughter. She covered her mouth as she snorted in amusement.

  The glass doors of the car slid open with a hiss. Shirley waited for the other passengers to exit, then she followed them out into the station. Jia was still chuckling as she and Caine stepped out of the tram car.

  “Do I even want to know what she said?” he asked.

  Jia managed to stifle her giggling for a few minutes and waved her hand at him. “She called you a … never mind, I’ll tell you later.”

  “That bad, huh?”

  She continued laughing as she ascended the stairs that led up to the street. Caine cracked a smile, shook his head, and followed them up into the sunlight.

  Shirley led them up to the street level. They crossed Lujiazui Ring Road and followed her to the Oriental Pearl Tower complex. It was late in the afternoon, and the sun hung low in the sky, casting a shimmering glow through the hazy air. Its light bounced off the enormous mirrored sphere at the base of the tower.

  The bulbous lower sphere was over a hundred feet in diameter. A smaller sphere hung above them, fifteen hundred feet in the air. Suspended near the top of the tower, it reflected the burning glow in the air like a second sun.

  “We only need tickets for the lower sphere,” Shirley said. She eyed the famous structure with a sneer of distaste. “There’s nothing in the upper level but boring art galleries and an over-priced restaurant. Total tourist trap.”

  They purchased their tickets and moved through the line of people that led to the base of the tower. As they waited, Shirley turned and squinted at them through her thick pink glasses. “So are you two an item or what? I was sure you were gonna start making out on that tram car.”

  Jia blushed and muttered something in Chinese. Caine gave the teenage girl a thin smile. “Actually, a couple hours ago she tried to kill me.”

  The girl blinked and pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose. “So? That doesn’t mean anything. I wanted to kill Monk all the time.”

  “Monk? You mean the hacker, The Monkey King?” Jia asked.

  "I thought you looked familiar," Caine said. "I saw your picture in his apartment. You're his girlfriend."

  Shirley looked away and ran her hands through her long dark hair. “I was. Nobody’s seen Monk in weeks. I mean, he must be … I’m sure Fang had him …”

  Jia put her hand on the girl’s shoulder. “I’m sorry. But you mustn’t give up hope."

  The girl pulled away from Jia’s hand and wrapped her arms around her chest as if she were cold. “Don’t give me that crap. I'm not an idiot, you know. Monk went up against Fang, that means he was taking on the Triads. If you disappear doing that, everyone knows what really happens to you, okay?”

  She lowered her voice. “He was a pretty shitty boyfriend. Lately, he spent more time with Sean than he did with me. He cheated on me with all these skanks he met online. And he always smelled like warm soda and dirty socks. But yeah, he was my boyfriend. And now he’s gone. So let’s just shut up about it.”

  They were silent as they stepped into the glass cylinder that served as the tower’s elevator. Caine caught a quick glimpse of the Shanghai skyline as they rose up into the air. It was a vast expanse of glass and steel, bristling around the banks of the muddy brown river. As they climbed up the tower's base, he spotted more construction cranes perched around the buildings. They seemed to be everywhere.

  “It never ends, does it?” Caine said. “More construction, more buildings.”

  Jia shook her head. “They are tombstones. You see buildings? I see a graveyard. We are burying the China I know, one piece at a time.”

  Shirley gave her a strange look from the corner of her eye, but said nothing. Then the glass elevator carried them into the cavernous darkness of the lower sphere.

  The doors slid open, and Shirley sauntered out. Caine and Jia followed. They found themselves in an enormous arcade that circled along the outer ring of the sphere. In the center of the ring, signs in Chinese and English advertised a Virtual Reality Theater. Caine watched as a small group of patrons put VR headsets over their eyes and sat down in roller coaster cars. The cars crawled forward into the darkened tunnel of the theater.

  “This place is so lame they don’t even have a real roller coaster,” Shirley said. “Just one of those stupid VR ones. It makes you sick, and it doesn’t even look real.”

  They walked past row after row of skill cranes, video games, and other amusements. The smell of sweat and rancid popcorn infused the stale air. Here and there, a teenager smashed buttons on a video game. A girl jumped up and down with excitement as one of the cranes dumped a prize at their feet. But most of the machines were empty, and the area was devoid of crowds. The blinking lights and electronic squawks seemed lonely and muted without an audience to enjoy them.

  “Nobody comes here anymore,” Shirley said as she led them towards a pair of grey utility doors. “It’s so old and lame now, and everyone knows this place is just for the laowai tourists.”

  The doors were locked. Shirley pulled out a cell phone from her pink Hello Kitty purse. She tapped a few numbers, then waited, twirling a long strand of her dark hair around a finger.

  They heard a series of clicks. The doors swung open. A young Chinese man stood in the doorway. Unlike Shirley, there was nothing unusual about his looks at all. He wore a short-sleeved button-down shirt, slim khaki pants, and simple glasses. He looked a few years older than the girl, Caine thought.

  “Ni zenme zheme jiu?” he whispered, his eyes darting between Caine and Jia with a worried look. “Ni daile ma?”

  Shirley pushed past him. “Lengjing xialai. Chill out! They’re with me, it’s cool.”

  The man stood aside. Caine looked at Jia. She shrugged and walked through the doors. Caine followed, eying the young man as he entered the chamber beyond.

  The room was dim and seemed to be a storage area. Old arcade game cabinets, their electronic guts removed, stood beneath the sparse
overhead lights. The bright, garish designs painted on their empty frames were covered with a layer of dust. They looked like they had not been moved in years.

  “This is where they keep the old games,” Shirley said, her voice echoing off the curved walls of the room. “I mean the really old ones, the games so lame even this place doesn’t put them out. The owner owes me a favor, so he lets us hang out here.”

  The young man hurried to catch up to Shirley. “Wo bu xihuan zheyang. You shouldn’t bring people here!”

  They marched past the rows of dead machines and came to a small desk in the center of the room. Several computer towers and monitors stood on the desk. Every inch of the desk's surface was covered with USB hubs, tangled cables, and computer equipment.

  Shirley sat down in the chair and threw her feet up on the desk. Her neon-green combat boots rested on a filthy, battered old computer keyboard.

  “You’ll have to forgive my brother. Edgar’s been kinda paranoid since that railway hack in Beijing.” She shook her head. “Whoever did it framed the Jade Enclave. The Ministry of Security hated us before. Now, we’re like public enemy number one. All those people dead, all that blood … as if we would ever!”

  She reached down and flipped some switches on one of the monitors. It sprang to life. A colorful graphic of a cartoon monkey rolled around the screen, making a noise each time it bounced off one of the corners. "Ooh ooh ooh … eee eee eee …"

  “So this is it? You two are the Jade Enclave?” Caine asked. “A couple of kids working out of an old arcade?”

  Shirley glared up at him. “No. But we’re the only ones willing to risk meeting a pair of strangers. Now, do you have Monk’s data or not?”

  Caine paused for a moment, staring at Shirley and her brother. It seemed ludicrous that this unlikely pair held the key to saving Sean. But what other option did he have? He sighed, reached into his pocket, and pulled out the USB drive.

  “This is what we found. Monk encoded the data in an audio file that he emailed to Sean. I think it might explain why Fang was after him, as well as the hack you were framed for.”

  Shirley took the drive and plugged it into the massive computer rig. “What do you mean? How do you know anything about that?”

  “It’s a long story. But Fang may be in possession of a cyber-weapon that allows him to—”

  “TANGENT,” Shirley said, her eyes locked on the screen. The cartoon monkey had disappeared. Line after line of code filled the monitor. The numbers and symbols scrolled across the screen so quickly, Caine could barely make them out.

  “Yes, how did you know that?”

  “Monk left information about it here.” Her eyes darted left and right, drinking in the data. She spoke as if she were in a trance. “TANGENT. NSA cyber-weapon. Capable of perfectly mimicking techniques and patterns of all known hackers profiled in U.S. cyber-crimes database.”

  Edgar paced back and forth behind them, running his hands through his short black hair. “That’s how they framed the Enclave! Something like that, in the hands of a Triad gangster? He could start a war!”

  Jia stared at the monitor. Caine wondered if she too could decipher the code rushing across the glowing screen. “But why did Fang kidnap Sean?" she asked. "If he already … if Monk is dead, and Fang wants to keep this a secret, why didn’t he just kill Sean too?

  Shirley continued tapping on the keys. “There’s more. When Monk found TANGENT on Fang’s mainframe, he put a lock on it. When Fang used it on the Beijing hack, he triggered the malware, and the program was frozen. He needed the key on this drive to unlock it again.”

  “He must need to use TANGENT again for some reason. Fang needs Sean alive, because he thinks he has the key to unlock the program. But if Monk knew it was so dangerous, why didn’t he just erase it as soon as he found it on the mainframe?” Caine asked.

  “Wo zhu ni gun. Give me a minute!” Shirley snapped. Her fingers danced over the keyboard.

  She highlighted another section of code. “There. That’s why. The TANGENT program contains a database of all the hacks it was used on. If Monk erased it, he would erase that database as well.”

  “And the database would prove The Enclave was innocent of the hack," Caine said. “It would prove Fang framed you.”

  “Exactly. The data on this USB drive is meant to look like the key. Fang thinks he can use it to unlock TANGENT. But Monk was working on something else … a trap.”

  She moved the cursor to another section of code. It flashed red on the screen. “There’s another program hidden in the decryption code. Or at least part of one. It looks like Monk wasn’t able to finish it before …” Her voice trailed off.

  Jia crouched next to her and once again rested her hand on the girl’s shoulder. This time, Shirley did not flinch away. She continued to stare at the screen, the blinking red light reflecting in her glasses.

  “Shirley, can you finish the program? Can you finish the code he was writing?”

  Shirley swallowed, then nodded. “Yeah. I was a way better hacker than he ever was, anyway.” She looked up at Caine and blinked. Her pale cheeks were flushed a light pink. Her eyes narrowed.

  “You have a gun. What are you, a cop? Or a gangster?”

  Caine shook his head. “Neither. But I need what’s on that stick to save Sean.”

  Shirley bit her lip. “That smell I told you about … warm soda, dirty socks?”

  “Yes?” Jia said softly.

  “I miss that stupid smell. If I finish this code, you’re going to use it against Fang? You’re going to hurt him. Maybe kill him. Right?”

  Caine clenched his jaw. “I’m going to get Sean back. If Fang tries to stop me …” He did not finish the sentence. Shirley stared into his emerald-green eyes. They were hard, cold, and unyielding.

  She nodded and focused her attention back on the computer screen. “Okay. Then shut up, and let me work.”

  Jia stood up and moved next to Caine. He felt a tingle run through his body as her arm brushed against his. They glanced at each other for a moment, but said nothing. Edgar muttered to himself in Chinese and stormed off into the depths of the storeroom.

  The only sound in the dark chamber was the clicking of Shirley’s fingers as they darted across the keyboard.

  Chapter Forty-One

  David Fang’s mouth twisted into a snarl. Beads of sweat dripped down his tan, chiseled face. His slick, dark hair was mussed and disheveled. Behind him stood Lewis and two of their Red Pole enforcers.

  Across the room, Iris chanted to herself. She rolled her sticks across the surface of a small table, oblivious to the violent tableau playing out before her.

  “Boss, please,” Lewis murmured, staring at Sean with hate-filled eyes. “Dealing with la shi like this … I should not allow you to dirty yourself by touching him.”

  Fang took a deep breath, then smiled. “The great man is hard on himself. The small man is hard on others.” He panted, then looked down at his bloody, bruised knuckles. “Perhaps right now, I am a bit of both, eh?”

  Sean’s head lolled forward, hiding his battered face. His arms and legs were strapped to the chair. His filthy t-shirt had been torn from his body.

  A light breeze blew through the room. It rustled the sheets of plastic that covered the unfinished structure of The Fang Plaza Building’s upper levels. Fang tipped his head back and let the wind cool his face.

  Then he lurched forward, powering another blow into Sean’s abdomen. The young man coughed and gasped for breath as he struggled against the bonds holding him in the chair. His sputtering wheeze turned into a gagging retch of pain.

  “Where is it? Where is the key?” Fang shouted.

  Sean said nothing and continued coughing.

  “I can admit,” Fang said, after panting for breath. “I was hasty. Impatient.” Reaching forward, he grabbed a handful of Sean’s hair in his fist and jerked his head up. He stared into the young man’s puffy, bruised eyes. They were bloodshot, wild with pain and disorientation.
But they focused and held Fang's gaze with steely determination.

  “I should have made sure," Fang hissed. "I should have checked the server you two accessed before I took care of your yikuai gou shi partner. What was his ridiculous name again? Sunwukong?”

  Sean spit blood on the concrete floor, never taking his eyes off Fang. “His name was The Monkey King. He really screwed things up for you, huh?” The young man barked a short, pained laugh. “Monk was always good at pissing off assholes like you.”

  Fang stare at him, then chuckled. “You think that is a useful talent? To anger men who are your superiors?”

  “Superior? Don’t make me laugh. Why don’t you untie me from this chair, and we’ll see who gets a superior ass kicking?”

  “I have a better idea,” Fang snapped.

  He grabbed the back of Sean’s chair and dragged the young man across the concrete floor, towards the edge of the building. As they reached the ledge, he tore away a curtain of plastic, revealing the blood-red setting sun. The jagged skyline of Shanghai was silhouetted in distance.

  He set the chair down at the edge of the skeletal structure. Sean looked back, his eyes wide with fear. The shadowed buildings and streets loomed below. The wind picked up, rustling through the plastic sheets with a crackling whisper.

  “Let’s see if the gods favor you,” Fang snarled. His leg shot forward, kicking Sean in the chest. The young man screamed as the chair tipped backwards over the abyss. Fang dropped his leg and braced his foot on the bottom rung of the chair. He leaned forward and smiled. His weight was the only thing keeping Sean from toppling over the edge of the building and falling to his death.

  “Let’s see if they will grant you the ability to fly,” he said. “Your friend, the American man who freed you in Beijing … this is how he killed my brothers. Lucky Si and Lucky Liu. They fell to their deaths, squashed like common vermin.”