However, they did know that no one wanted to be considered a charity case, especially a middle-aged Chinese man, monk or not. Sarah noticed Master Wu’s tired eyes and the stubble on his face. Her maternal instincts told her he needed something to eat, and she excused herself.
George smiled and offered his hand. “Very nice to meet you, Master Wu. Noah wants you to stay with us. If you are willing, we would be most honored if you would.”
“I accept.” Master Wu gave the Shaolin handsign to George.
Noah nudged Master Wu. “You’re supposed to shake his hand. Like this.”
Noah took Master Wu’s hand and shook it.
“Oh.” Master Wu shook George’s hand.
Sarah re-entered, carrying a plate of cookies. She tripped on one of Noah’s toys on the floor, sending the cookies flying. With lightning speed, Master Wu snatched the tiny delicacies out of the air before they hit the ground and put them back onto the plate.
How was that for an introduction?
The wide-eyed Noah pulled on Master Wu’s jacket. “Can you teach me how to do that?”
“It will be my privilege, Noah.”
Chapter 4
Leaving Master Wu was the beginning of the beginning or the beginning of the end, depending on how you looked at things.
Garret and Tommy suspected but did not realize how far along the path to darkness Chin had traveled.
And now it was in the open.
The reason that Chin had so wanted Master Wu to be successful was not for the sake of the Shaolin or meditation or metaphysics or martial arts. It was for the sake of materialism. Money. Power.
In his dealings with the Triads, their leaders thought Chin would make an excellent enforcer. They drove him in expensive cars, let him eat at the best restaurants and introduced him to some of the most alluring and accommodating women in Asia.
There was no way Chin was going to remain a chaste, poverty-stricken Shaolin monk.
But he tried. However, one day the temptation was just too great. He fell. What was the cause? The offer of a starlet? An attempted gift of a Mercedes? Seeing the fabulous success of those who wanted to recruit him?
No. It was much more complicated—or simpler—than that.
Psychologists would have had a field day with Chin if he ever let them close to him.
As a three-year-old, he asked his father for a stuffed Panda bear. His father’s response? “I’m not going to waste my money on you.”
His mother bought him the bear, and he was so happy he kissed her over and over again.
Her response? Her son became her sexual plaything. She taught him how to please her, how to drive her to ecstasy… he just did it.
When Chin was seven, Chin’s father found the two of them in bed together. The father was so angry he got a kitchen knife and stabbed the mother over and over and over again. The little boy tried to stop the father, but of course he was too weak to do anything about it. Finally, Chin jumped on his father’s back as he knelt over his wife. The knife blade dislodged and flipped around. The downward force of the little boy drove the knife into his father’s heart. It was over in moments.
Chin raced right out the door. He wasn’t going to tell anyone. He didn’t want to go to jail.
Guess how a seven-year-old kid on the streets supports himself?
And then, when he was nine, a miracle. An expatriate American businessman and his wife somehow decided to take him in. It was a crazy decision on their part, but they wanted to have children. Chin’s happy life lasted four years. Of course, he had to perform certain chores. Five times a week, he spent the night alone in bed with either or both of his “parents,” but that was nothing compared to what he had been doing previously. After all, they loved him so much, he would do anything for them.
And then the businessman’s parent company went bankrupt. There was no more job, and the expat and his wife had to return to America. They tearfully told Chin they loved him but couldn’t afford him and, even if they could, they had no formal adoption papers to bring him back to Seattle with them. Giving Chin fifty dollars and dropping him off at a bustling market a few miles away, they told him he would always be in their hearts.
Grief-stricken, the thirteen-year-old made his way back to the apartment and sat across the street in one of the family’s favorite noodle shops. Chin saw the couple get out of a cab with a nine-year-old boy and heard the man saying to the boy, “We are going to love you forever.” The wife kissed the boy and pulled him into her arms as they walked through the apartment doors.
Chin was a survivor, and he survived…
Within a few months, he met Master Wu, Garret and Tommy. He was ready to be a monk, and he dove into Shaolin Hung Gar with every ounce of intensity he was capable of. He was going to prove to the world that he was worthy. He was going show all that he was better than anyone else.
And now that he was free from Master Wu, Chin was free to pursue it in any way he wanted to.
***
In the process of being wooed by the Triads, Chin took good notice of their operations. The Triad leaders thought Chin was showing interest in their work. Yes, he was, but not because he was interested in working with them.
He was going to be one of them.
Furthermore, he was going to be the best of them.
The easiest thing to start with was the women. They loved his hard body, and his creativity and his athleticism were more than any of them had ever experienced. They gladly worked for him with the promise that, every now and then, Chin would spend half an hour alone to take them to heights they never even knew existed.
However, even a large stable of hookers was not going to make enough cash to make Chin happy. He needed to expand, and what else was there other than the age-old Chinese vices of drugs and gambling?
But there, there was huge competition, not just from the Triads but from anyone with a spare room to set up Fan Tan or mahjong tables. And anyone with a few hundred bucks could buy enough supply of heroin, crack or opium to open shop.
How was he going to attract business and then, once he got it, how would he enforce it?
Chin needed an angle, but what? There were thousands of tough guys in Hong Kong trying to make a buck. What was going to set him apart?
The answer was Master Wu. Or at least the training he got from his sifu.
Hung Gar. Tiger and Crane. That was his style of martial arts. How he would differentiate himself was that he would show the world something that had never, ever been seen before.
***
Inside a makeshift mini-arena somewhere in the middle of nowhere on the China side of the Hong Kong/China border, a bloodthirsty Bengal tiger was held at abeyance with two ropes tied to its neck. The ropes were snaked through a chain-link fence and controlled by two men on the outside of the arena.
At the other end of the fighting area stood Chin. There were a couple of hundred people in the audience watching the renegade Shaolin monk as he took off his shirt. Gasps of delight and screams of wonder came from the women in the audience while their male dates could only look on in jealousy.
“Take me! Take me!” cried the women, hoping they might be the lucky recipient of the martial artist’s legendary sexual abilities.
Chin merely smiled at them, and then proceeded to remove his trousers.
With Chin clad only in a loincloth, the only thing greater than the supercharged sexual energy emanating from the women was the lust of the tiger for food as it stared at Chin. The feline had not eaten for several days, and the promise of fresh meat made it pull like Ulysses on the ropes that restrained it.
“Cut the cords!” commanded Chin.
The handlers slashed the ropes, and the tiger broke free.
The distance between Chin and tiger was seventy feet. They raced at each other but, just before they collided, Chin lunged, arms extended, at the animal and did a handspring using the feline’s head as his springboard.
This knocked the tiger to the gro
und. Chin did another two handsprings to land by the fence.
His men sprayed Chin’s body with fresh blood, further fueling bloodlust in animal and audience.
The tiger rose and flew at Chin again, roaring with anger and hunger.
This time, Chin stood his ground, arms in ready position.
The tiger leapt at Chin with jaws open, but the Shaolin man of war was ready.
Like lightning, Chin’s fists launched like cannonballs in the heat of war.
They collided with the tiger’s eyes, breaking the sockets in each of them.
Stunned and blinded, blood began to stream from the tiger’s eyes.
But it didn’t damage its sense of smell. The tiger valiantly snapped and bit in the direction of the scent of blood.
However, without being able to see, the tiger was no match for Chin. The martial arts master kicked and punched like an avenging fury.
Relentless. Powerful. Dominating.
Finally, one hammer fist into the animal’s temple sent it to oblivion.
Chin glared at the audience.
Unbelievable.
Even with husbands, sugar daddies and boyfriends present, the women yanked off their tops, displaying their wares, chanting, “Me! Me! Me!”
And, sometime in the next month, Chin would take every one of them because every one of them would generate income for him.
But there was something even better created that day than the dollars that would come from the sex-crazed women.
Buzz.
Buzz about this invincible Shaolin monk turned rogue.
And there was nothing better than buzz to generate business.
***
Word of mouth spread like wildfire. Sexual supernova. Martial arts rock star… And one of the most ruthless people on Earth.
If you did not go to Chin’s gambling joints, if you would not buy drugs from Chin’s dealers, if you would not spend money with Chin’s girls, well… remember the tiger.
Because Chin was not afraid to execute on threats.
Business grew like gangbusters. There was no end of suckers, girls and druggies that wanted to be associated with Chin.
But Chin couldn’t do it all. Even Superman could burn himself out.
That’s why Tommy was such a good fit for Chin. Tommy loved to party, loved to womanize and loved to be in the limelight. In other words, he was perfect for “public relations.”
Garret wanted in on the action, too, but Chin had another plan. Thinking long-term, Chin realized he needed a trusted person who could develop legitimate operations—he couldn’t hide that much money in a mattress. Chin financed the completion of Garret’s high school, college and law school education. It was an incredible grind, but Garret managed to finish it all within eight years.
Garret realized that, in order to have credibility, he needed to be with a large multinational law firm. However, a suspect history trumped his Harvard law degree in making him desirable for most reputable firms.
That was okay because Garret was not looking for any ordinary mega-law firm. He wanted one where he could control his own destiny. He approached Pittman Saunders, a large British firm, and offered to start up a new division of the Asia Pacific to be headquartered in Hong Kong. He would provide the start-up funding, find the clients and be responsible for the office overhead. Pittman Saunders could find additional clients on their own. In return, Garret would be a partner in the firm, have no interference from the Head Office, and give ten percent of the billings to the Head Office.
This proposal was laughingly rejected with a one-sentence letter.
We have carefully considered your offer but regretfully must inform you that we must decline at this time.
Garret faxed a letter back and suggested that Pittman Saunders reconsider. He set a deadline of one week. In the letter was the enigmatic phrase: I recognize situations may change, often rapidly…
During that one week, three events happened involving Pittman Saunders:
1. One of the managing partners was found dead while on vacation in a Beijing hotel room, along with a prostitute.
2. A Chinese dissident whom Pittman Saunders had helped achieve refugee status was caught with one hundred pounds of Mexican marijuana in his Los Angeles apartment.
3. A Chinese company that Pittman Saunders represented that had been supplying dolls to international retailers suddenly had a hundred of the dolls catch fire in a large American toy retailer, causing a huge international furor.
Garret faxed another letter to the managing directors of Pittman Saunders.
In light of recent events, I am changing the terms of my offer. Pittman Saunders will pay 100 percent of the overhead of the new Hong Kong office for five years, and the percentage that goes back to the firm will be reduced from ten percent to two percent and zero percent from any billings that I personally generate. As you have witnessed, dealing with China and the Chinese is not an easy matter. None of this past week’s difficulties would have happened had I been in charge, not because I have any special ability, but I have extensive personal knowledge and insight into the complexities of Asian situations. Moreover, I bring the ability to rectify the current problems with minimal damage to Pittman Saunders, its reputation and, most importantly, its bottom line.
Garret was hired the next day.
Garret discovered that the hooker in the managing partner’s room had run into it when he opened the door; she was trying to hide from a drug dealer to whom she owed a huge debt. The dealer was fast on her tail, and the Pittman Saunders partner was collateral damage in her execution.
Garret obtained surveillance footage from a convenience store in San Ysidro on the American side of the Mexican border. It showed that the trunk hood had been popped open and drugs discreetly placed in the Chinese dissident’s car by a neo-Nazi motorcyclist when the dissident went inside the store to buy a soda and use the restroom.
Garret found out that the large toy retailer was about to be taken over by a giant retail chain, which would have meant the loss of half the jobs in the store. Further investigation revealed the fire was not due to a manufacturing defect but was set by the employee who discovered the burning dolls.
The drug dealer, the prostitute, the Chinese dissident, the neo-Nazi and the arsonist were all part of Chin’s network. The only one who did not get paid was the prostitute, but the night before she died, Chin spent an entire hour with her. She was convinced that nothing in life could ever beat that.
Garret was now thirty years old.
***
The combination of Chin, Garret and Tommy was unstoppable. For the next decade, they went all out. A new umbrella corporation was formed: Golden Asia Enterprises. Tommy was the president, chairman of the board and CEO of every one of Golden Asia’s companies. As senior partner for Asia Pacific for Pittman Saunders, Garret was Golden Asia’s chief counsel.
There was no mention of Chin anywhere, in any document.
Garret was a master of strategic organization, negotiation, corporate structure and finance.
For all appearances, Golden Asia Enterprises was composed of a blue-chip, conservative, straight-as-an-arrow group of companies involved in real estate and the import and export businesses.
A well-oiled and functioning machine that looked like it could go on forever.
But things always managed to change.
While Chin stayed single, Garret and Tommy both got married. Their wives had a few things in common: They were gorgeous; they had humanitarian spirits; their husbands loved them dearly; and they each bore one daughter and had no more natural children after that. Olivia was Garret and Mary’s daughter; Abby was Tommy and Jocelyn’s.
Ostensibly, Mary and Jocelyn were perfect life partners for Garret and Tommy. While they were definitely not socialites, they were charming and entertaining to anyone their husbands connected with. Philanthropy and generosity of spirit was also important, and they served on the boards of the museum, the art gallery and their daughters�
�� private school. They hosted soirées for visiting dignitaries, drank white wine at opera openings… and they hadn’t a clue as to their husbands’ real jobs.
Every now and then, they did something for their souls. Like going to Africa and working in an AIDS hospice, flying to a remote village in China to help the victims of an earthquake or assisting in an orphanage in Mary’s native Czechoslovakia.
What they didn’t know was that this added to the credibility and legitimacy of one of Asia’s largest criminal empires.
They also didn’t realize the effect it had on their husbands. How could Garret attend a fundraising event to help prostitutes get off the street, yet know the girls’ work helped keep him in business? How could Tommy live with himself as he accompanied Jocelyn to a women’s shelter, knowing that the women were there because he supplied the drugs that fed their addiction?
The more Mary and Jocelyn did, the greater the unease of conscience for Garret and Tommy. They hid it well, but not from Chin. However, the Tiger master was wise enough to say nothing.
The biggest concern for Garret and Tommy was their daughters. Olivia and Abby hadn’t hit puberty yet, but both men wanted to live long enough to give the girls away when they got married. Because of the nature of their business, that was by no means a certainty.
When Mary and Jocelyn told Tommy and Garret they were going to Thailand to assist in tsunami relief, the two men decided it was time to tell Chin they were getting out.
They were totally unprepared for Chin’s response.
***
“Okay.”
“Omigod. Thanks, Chin. I wasn’t sure you’d understand,” said a greatly relieved Tommy.
“It doesn’t matter whether I understand or not; a man must do what a man must do.” Chin leaned his elbows on his desk, fingertip steepled.
The Noah Reid Series: Books 1-3: The Noah Reid Action Thriller Series Boxset Page 3
