The Mandarin's Vendetta (Rayna Tan Action Thriller Series Book 2)

by Wesley Robert Lowe

  There was no doubt in any of the lunch guests’ minds that there was an opportunity somewhere. Male chauvinists that most of them were, their discussions were focused with Arthur, Barry and Chuck.

  This gave Mary a chance to approach Rayna. “I’m Mary. You are very impressive, Rayna.”

  Rayna sized the executive assistant up. Even though Mary was a substitute for her boss, that she was there meant she had some connection to the Zongtian affair. Rayna had already noted Mary’s sexual interest. This info might or might not be used. One thing that was out of place was Mary’s outfit. What she was wearing could easily have cost five thousand dollars or more. Maybe she had a sugar daddy—or sugar mama—somewhere. But wouldn’t someone like that prefer a younger plaything?

  “You’re so kind to say that. What brings you here?”

  “This and that…” answered Mary evasively. “Do you have any specialties?”

  “What I thrive on is challenges. Making the impossible happen when no one else can pull it off. Life’s too short to be satisfied with the ordinary.”

  A sigh escaped Mary’s lips. “I wish I could say that for myself. I look after the details of running my boss’s operations. You know, a little bit of this, a little bit of that.”

  That’s twice she didn’t answer. Rayna tried a new tactic. “I know how you feel. There are many things I do as well or better than Arthur but he has me running around doing the things he doesn’t want to do.”

  Mary nodded with complete empathy. “That’s me, too. We manufacture women’s clothing and accessories. It is extremely profitable and I’m the one handling all the work. Do you know I can make a fake Salvatore handbag that can fool the Italians at ten percent of the cost? Not only Italian, but French and New York, too.”

  Gotcha! “You’re kidding. I’ve got to get to know you better. I spend a fortune on purses and handbags. Five hundred here. Two thousand there. All genuine designer labels. Costs me a fortune.” Rayna pointed at Mary’s handbag. “Like I’d love to have a Bartolini but no way I’m going to pay thirty-five hundred for one.”

  “You want it?” Mary sensed an opening. “I’ll give it to you.”

  “What? No way.”

  Mary took a napkin from the table and began placing the contents of her handbag on it. “I can get another from our factory.”

  Rayna’s lips pursed in a silent whistle, then uttered quietly. “I’ve got fifteen thousand in cash upstairs. You think I could do a little shopping? I mean, if that’s okay and everything.”

  “It’s… not exactly nice.”

  “I’ve got fifty girlfriends and nieces back home. I would be a star if I brought them all a designer bag. They wouldn’t be able to tell the difference, right?”

  “There is no difference. A lot of our staff worked at the big shops before we convinced them to join us.”

  Convinced? Right. “So it’s okay? I’ll buy as many as you’ll let me take for the money.”

  “I won’t sell any of them for your friends, but I’ll give you six for yourself.” Mary’s eyebrows raised in amusement as Rayna’s face lit up. Girls will be girls.

  “Omigod. That’s like twenty thousand. When can we go?”

  “Now,” said Mary. “But there are some trade secrets that I have to guard.”

  “Guard away.”

  As Mary and Rayna walked to the door, one of the bodyguards joined them at the door. Rayna noted that he was lithe, muscular and had the aura of a martial arts grandmaster. A quick glance indicated that Jun had seen Rayna’s demonstration and would be more than willing to take her on.

  “This is Jun,” introduced Mary simply. “I don’t advise you cross him.”

  “Nice to meet you, Jun,” greeted Rayna cheerfully as they stepped through the door.

  After they exited, the men all looked at each other. Some smiled knowingly; others snickered; a few out and out guffawed.

  Arthur summed up their feelings perfectly. “Women, they are all the same. Shopping. Shopping and more shopping.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  A valet brought a beat-up, made-in-China Great Wall Motors SUV to the front of the Oceania.

  Mary was apologetic. “This will be nothing like the vehicles you’re used to riding around in, but when we get to our destination, you’ll understand.”

  “Mary, a car is a car as long as it gets you from one place to another and you don’t get shot at like what happened all the time I was in the Middle East.”

  As the valet opened the doors, Jun took out a sleeping mask and handed it to Rayna.

  Mary gave Rayna an apologetic look. “Precautionary measure. Until we know that we are going to do business, the Mandarin doesn’t like anyone to know the exact location of our factory.”

  The Mandarin! That’s who Ling said got her the job for Ming. She wished she could send this info to Barry and the boys but she couldn’t risk being caught. “I understand. My boss has crazy ideas, too.”

  Rayna put the sleeping mask over her eyes, then allowed Jun to tie an additional blindfold around her head.

  Let the games begin.

  ***

  In China HQ, Barry, Arthur and Chuck were wrapping up the post mortem of the luncheon presentation.

  “I’ve got everything I need right now,” said Julio. “I’ll dig up more about the potential targets. It’s too bad the “big fish” didn’t come.”

  “Rayna’s working on it,” said Barry.

  “Yeah, well, she better be careful. Just a cursory look at what you’ve given me shows that some of them are bad dudes and, if Wen says someone is a ‘big fish…”

  ***

  While Rayna couldn’t see anything, she and Mary maintained an almost constant conversation. However, little of what was discussed was of any substance—neither wanted to or could share business or personal details. Music they liked, hobbies, places they’d been to, the kind of men they found interesting.

  Both of them were lying about almost everything. They both knew it but kept up the pretense. There was a possibility that they would do business at some point and the relationship had to start somewhere.

  After what Rayna guesstimated to be about three-quarters of an hour, the car slowed down considerably. There were a lot of stops, starts and turns for the next fifteen minutes until the SUV stopped and Jun announced, “We are here.”

  Rayna was let out of the car. The blindfold and sleeping mask were removed.

  She opened her eyes and was in complete shock. Instead of the prosperous metropolis with an eclectic political, economic, scientific, educational and cultural center, she was in the center of poverty. Housing and buildings were old and in disrepair. The “houses” were made out of plywood and scrap metal, patched tin houses and dirty cloth tents. The tenement buildings weren’t much better. The sinks by the front doors indicated that many didn’t have running water and that no air conditioners hung out of most windows showed that electricity was non-existent.

  While she had never visited one before, she knew she was in a “migrant city,” an area those from rural areas, farms and villages inhabited when they first came to the city. Without proper working papers, they worked for substandard wages and lived in places that should be condemned.

  The place was brimming with people. Young people. No one in sight over forty. With no place to bathe and sleeping in flea-infested beds, no wonder the inhabitants were chronically ill, unwashed, unkempt and wearing raggedy, filthy clothes.

  And sadly, there were plenty of the lowest tier of prostitutes. “Women who live in a shed.” Not attractive or young enough to work in a bar or hotel, these women sold themselves for a bowl of noodles or a fried bun to end the loneliness of the male migrant workers who lived in this shanty town.

  The denizens of this poverty-stricken ghetto looked with curiosity at this trio wearing clothes that were clean, pressed and new—in contrast to their own T-shirts and jeans that hadn’t been washed in weeks, maybe never.

  Mary pointed to an old, d
ilapidated six-story property halfway down the block. “That’s our building.” Blending right in with its neighbors, Mary commented as they waded through the inhabitants, “The whole building is ours. The main floor is for packing and shipping. Our customers come here to pick their orders up.”

  Unlike its neighbors, the Mandarin’s building had extreme security. In front of the double doors were iron bars that gave a prison-like feeling. Behind the bars was a protective metal door. Jun reached his fist through the bars and banged loudly on the metal door, shouting. “Hey, you. It’s us.”

  A six-inch window in the metal door slid open and Rayna saw a young man with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth checking them out.

  “Okay.” The heavy door opened and the young man unlocked the “prison bars” with one hand. He had an assault rifle poised to fire with the other.

  Rayna furrowed her brow as she looked over the surroundings. “Looks like you have a huge theft problem. Or at least you believe you have a theft problem. You should let us handle that for you.”

  Mary pushed the weapon away, nodding in the affirmative. “Once every few months, we have to clean up a hell of a mess. Someone always thinks they can out-tough us, out-gun us.” She glanced at Jun. “Not a chance. Right, Jun?”

  The muscle grunted in agreement.

  There was no elevator so the trio began trekking up the stairs.

  “Six flights,” said Mary, not missing a beat.

  “This your way of getting cardio?” teased Rayna.

  Mary’s response was matter of fact. “No, but it’s harder to steal stuff the higher you go.”

  On each floor was another bolted door with another armed guard. While Mary and Jun were immune, the filth and stench of stale sweat, cigarette smoke, urine and feces were almost unbearable, even to battle-hardened Rayna.

  Arriving at the top floor, Mary declared, “The top floor is one of the safest places possible for an operation like this. Thieves, police and inspectors are reluctant to do the climb.”

  The sixth floor guard took out a set of keys and opened the bolted metal door.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Inside was a sight of mammoth exploitation and abuse. There were almost two hundred young women and children, some not even ten years old. So focused were these inmates that none bothered to look up as Jun, Mary and Rayna entered. Each sat at a sewing machine, with a huge mound of cloth or leather beside them. Each piece in the pile was pre-cut to exactly the same dimensions as every other piece. For daily wages of less than a double non-fat latte with caramel drizzle, all were industriously sewing luxury handbags that would sell for hundreds, even thousands of times what the women and children earned.

  There were ten rows of twenty drenched-in-sweat workers with hands moving expertly and with incredible speed at the sewing machines. So as not to waste any time, children with wheelbarrows continuously made the rounds, picking up the bags as the sewers completed them. That way, no one had to take a break to move them to the packing area themselves. At the head of each row was the name of a well-known Italian designer. Venezia. Bertolucci. Caravaggio. Puccini…

  Mary stopped one of the children with a wheelbarrow. “Check the quality of these out, Rayna. Give me your honest opinion.”

  Rayna reached in and pulled out several bags and examined them closely. The stitching was perfectly even with no loose threads. The seams all matched. The leather was top grade. The hardware was solid—not hollow like cheap fakes. Most importantly, all the bags had the feel of quality. “These are beautiful.”

  Rayna saw another wheelbarrow emerge from the row called Salvatore.

  She walked over and took out one of the handbags. She carefully ran her finger over the stitching and rubbed the leather to check its quality—again, both top grade. She then took the metal frame, clasps and buckle, running her fingernail along them. Solid and with heft. She looked inside the bag to see engraved on the leather Handmade in Florence at the Salvatore Design Studio.

  Rayna looked at Mary. “I have one exactly like this. It cost me eight hundred and fifty dollars and that’s with thirty percent off.”

  “That cost less than twenty dollars for us to make.”

  “That’s impossible. I swear it’s the same one I bought in the store.”

  Mary grinned. “It may be; it may not. When the ladies see them and touch them, they will pay. You’d have to be an expert to tell the difference. But, even then, that might not be good enough. I had a buyer from Rome come last week. When he saw what I had, he tripled the order right away. Didn’t even ask for a bigger discount.”

  “You’re getting Italians to buy fake Italian bags?”

  “Of course. If no one can tell the difference, why should they pay more? I wouldn’t be surprised if half the stores in Rome bought their bags from places just like mine.”

  “How do you do it?”

  “So easy. I get the foremen from three of the “real” designers to sell me their secrets. I use the same methods and patterns they use in their factories, only fifty miles away. And a lot of our workers come from the designer factories.”

  “What are you selling your bags for?”

  “About forty-five dollars each for bulk orders.”

  “That’s too little!”

  Mary exhaled. It was a losing discussion she’d had many times with the Mandarin. “We know what we’re good at and we focus here only on manufacturing. We just sell to customers at our factory. They look after the shipping and distribution… And my boss hates working with white people.”

  Rayna put the bag back in the wheelbarrow. “You need to work with us. We can make you at least three times as much money without doing anything more than you are already doing. And tell your boss, he never ever would have to look at a round eye. I’ll do it.”

  As Mary gave a slight shake to her head, Rayna saw something that disturbed her more than seeing the worker abuse—Jun emerging from the aisle at the side of the room, buckling his belt. Two seconds later, a naked, crying young girl ran out from the same aisle, carrying a ripped T-shirt and shorts. It took every iota of self-control for Rayna to not pulverize Jun’s penis when she saw the red splotches on the child’s body.

  Rayna noted something almost as awful—no one in the room paid any attention to the girl. She realized her initial impression that the workers were focused on their tasks was wrong. Theirs was not an expression of concentration. It was avoidance… and fear.

  As Jun walked toward Rayna and Mary, Mary asked him, “You done now?”

  “I’ll wait for you,” replied the big man.

  “No, take Rayna back first. I’ll be a while.” Mary turned to Rayna. “Jun will give you a ride back to the hotel. Hope you like what you saw. It gives you an idea of our operation.”

  “It certainly does. Gives me some good ideas…”

  Mary gave Rayna a large plastic bag. “There’s six of them. Enjoy.”

  Rayna beamed. “Thank you so much. I hope we get to do real business!”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  After clearing United States customs, the Mandarin spent a few minutes searching on his smart phone for a Chinese-speaking Uber driver who could also act as his translator. Morgan Xi fit the bill. He was a graduate student in Chinese studies from Shanghai and drove a nondescript three-year-old Ford Fusion, a perfect vehicle to hide in plain sight with. Including fighting the traffic, it took three hours to get to San Roca. It was a friendly chat as the Mandarin asked Morgan about his background, his family and aspirations in America.

  The first stop was the town’s police station.

  “Come with me. Tell them I am Jackson’s father,” ordered the Mandarin. Morgan reluctantly obliged. Like many immigrants, he was reluctant to have any dealings with the law, even when he had done nothing wrong.

  When Morgan explained the Mandarin was Jackson’s father, the two were admitted immediately to speak with the sheriff who had used Jackson’s cell phone to call the Mandarin. In person, Sheriff Cleme
ns was an imposing figure, bigger and blacker than the Mandarin imagined. Only a few sentences of translation were needed for the Mandarin to assess that Sheriff Clemens had a complete lack of investigative expertise. Two minutes of conversation later, he concluded that Jackson’s death was inevitable in the small town. Without a hospital or even a paramedic available, there was little chance for survival for anyone suffering more than a cold.

  “You know your son had problems. Spending money like it was going out of style. He was dealing prescription drugs. I don’t want to say your son had it coming but, the way he was living, sooner or later something bad was going to happen.”

  As Morgan translated, he was amazed at how calm the Mandarin was. If it had been his son that Clemens had so callously discussed, he would have gone ballistic.

  Speaking through Morgan, the Mandarin said, “Thank you, Sheriff Clemens. I know you are a busy man, but would you mind if I took a look at the crime scene?”

  Clemens nodded at Morgan. “Tell your boss, ‘Sure.’ I got to go there anyway to clean up the details,” was his insensitive response.

  ***

  The husky black sheriff unlocked the door to Bangers. “We sent blood samples to LA to get an analysis. Final report will take a while, but preliminary results are that there was a whole lot of shit in his system. Coke, Ritalin, Adderall and some more stuff they’ve yet to identify. You combine that with a blood alcohol content of over two percent, and you knew bad things were going to happen. Funny thing, though. Jackson’s buddy, Sonny, was just as messed up, but managed to survive.”

  That was really funny.

  The sheriff, Morgan and the Mandarin entered to see the empty bar room in disarray with broken chairs, upturned tables and glass fragments all over the place. The Mandarin noted that there was only one chalk outline of a body and walked up to it.

  “Where is everybody?”