But as much as some are calling him a saint, Noah is undoubtedly human and seventeen cities in twenty days and two hundred meetings on two continents during those twenty days is too much. Beijing, Shanghai, Nanjing, Tokyo, Taipei, Osaka, San Francisco, Denver, Chicago, New York, Vancouver, Toronto... and those are the just the formal scheduled meetings that he thinks he remembers.
At a certain point, the daily routine becomes a blur, no matter how much you try to focus. Breakfast number one at 6:00 a.m. Breakfast number two at 7:30 a.m. Coffee number one at 9:00 a.m. Coffee two at 10 a.m. Coffee three at 11:00 a.m. Lunch number one at 12:00 p.m. Lunch number two at 1:00 p.m. Lightning meetings of twenty minutes each from 2:00-5:40 p.m. Dinner at 6:30 p.m. Drinks with whomever from 8:30 - 10:30 p.m. A terrific schedule for a guy who hates coffee and doesn’t drink alcohol.
If he counted every conversation on elevators, in line-ups and in mini-meetings within meetings, there would easily be another hundred. He’s tired just thinking about it but what keeps him going is that in every meeting, there is the potential for lives―even thousands of lives―to be impacted positively. There’s no such thing as a throwaway meeting because in Noah’s universe, there’s no such thing as a throwaway human.
And there’s another meeting that he’s going to now, but at least there won’t be any business discussed.
Simon, the middle-aged Chinese driver, throws Noah’s suitcase into the trunk of his awaiting limo.
“Welcome back, Mr. Reid,” smiles Simon, “Shall we go home?”
“Not quite yet. We’re going to the Gateway Pacific. I’m meeting Olivia there. And when’re you going to stop calling me Mr. Reid? I keep telling you, Mr. Reid was my father and great-grandfather.” (Noah’s grandfather was Dr. Reid.)
“Of course, Mr. Noah,” says Simon with an impish grin.
The limo makes its way out of the airport terminal and begins its trek toward the city.
“Successful trip?”
“Well, we’ve agreed to have more meetings, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“If you don’t mind my saying so, that sounds like a merry-go-round.”
“Yeah and I’m the dummy that keeps riding the horsy.”
“All this traveling must be hard on your love life. Only someone with fanatical devotion would put up with that.”
Thanks for reminding me. “No worries at all. Thanks for your concern. Olivia and me, we’re good.”
“She may be but remember that ‘absence make the heart grow fonder... of the other man.’”
“That’s why I hired you, Simon. Such a great encouraging ray of sunshine on my dismal world.”
Before Simon can respond, there is a thunk on the side of the limo. A quick glance to the left shows that the sideswipe came courtesy of a cement mixer.
Simon grips the wheel tightly, trying to keep the limo from crashing into the metal ramp at the side of the highway.
The truck turns sharply and rams the limo again. This is no accident and definitely not good.
There’s no point in Simon trying to counter the onslaught by ramming the cement truck―it’s way too big. He tries to speed up to escape but the truck has him pinned against the ramp at sixty miles an hour.
His heart sinks when he sees half a mile ahead, there are flames and a police barrier blocking traffic. He can see two mangled cars. A head-on collision, some idiots played chicken and they both lost.
There’s one open lane to the side and he guns it. With cars coming head on in the other direction, Simon pulls half the car up onto the sidewalk.
With the car precariously balanced, Simon blasts through but now up ahead there’s another problem: a stalled car blocking the road two hundred feet from the police barricade.
It’s too late to swing wide to avoid the car so Simon tries to squeeze through the tiny crack between the stalled car and the guardrail. But the space is too narrow. He hits the stalled car, knocking his limo for a spin.
Twirling and twirling, the car only stops when it crashes into a ramp and stalls.
Simon frantically tries to start the car but no luck.
Looking behind, Noah sees that the cement mixer has crashed through the police barricade as if it were Lego blocks.
“The truck’s coming,” screams Noah as the cement mixer charges toward them not twenty yards away.
Suddenly, the ignition catches and Simon floors it, but not before the cement mixer is able to ram the back of his vehicle.
However, there’s a straightaway and Simon guns it. A car built for comfort not speed is clipping along at a hundred fifty miles per hour. Trouble is, a cement mixer is going a hundred and fifty-five and gaining fast.
Eyes darting ahead, there is a second cement mixer at the side of the road and it starts coming right at them. With the first cement mixer pulling up on the opposite side, there’s nowhere to go. The two cement mixers bang the limo back and forth.
Simon tries to accelerate but the cement mixers have the limo boxed in between them. Sparks and smoke fly off the tires and the limo cannot escape its captors.
Pure chaotic nightmare.
The cement mixers start to squeeze. More sparks. More smoke.
Damn, damn, damn. One of the trucks unloads its payload onto the limo’s windshield.
Simon is frantic. His hands are glued to the steering wheel trying to keep the limo from spinning out of control.
Now moving completely blind, Simon shouts, “What are we going to do?” shouts Simon.
“Jump,” yells Noah.
“I didn’t hear you. Did you say Jump?”
“Yes. Floor it and try to get free. When we do, angle the car left. As soon as we hit the railing, open the car doors and jump out.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Please give me another suggestion,” says Noah grimly.
With cement covering the car, visibility is zero, but Simon shrugs. What the hell. He puts the pedal to the metal.
At first, the limo is spinning its wheels—no change in status quo. Then suddenly, the car breaks loose from its captors.
Simon turns hard left, praying there’s no other car beside him.
The limo hits the metal fence. Noah and Simon fling open the doors and leap out over the guardrail that separates the highway from the mountain.
They land on the mountainside and roll down. Sixty miles an hour and gaining speed.
Things are going so fast they can’t see clearly but they do hear gunshots firing. Some are wildly inaccurate; some are so close Simon and Noah feel slight gusts of wind created by the bullets’ wake.
Tumbling uncontrollably, moving too fast to grab onto anything, they roll to a stop seven hundred feet later at the base of the mountain.
Noah peers over at Simon and crawls to the motionless limo driver: Simon is dead. In the dim moonlight, Noah sees a thin trail of blood from Simon’s head leading up the hill. One of the shooter’s bullets hit Simon soon after they jumped. Exsanguination began immediately and by the time the driver stopped rolling, he had bled to death.
However, with gunfire ringing around him there is no time to mourn.
Keeping low to the ground to stay inconspicuous, Noah crawls noiselessly. He disappears into the woods.
This is not the first aggressive action inflicted on Noah since he became head of the foundation, but it is the worst. He has no idea who his assailants were but does know there is no end of brazen nasty people who believe that holding the CEO of an organization worth billions for ransom will be their ticket to prosperity.
They are sadly misguided. Noah has given specific instructions that under no circumstances will extortion fees be paid for him or anybody else connected with the foundation.
In a perverted kind of way, it’s liberating. The foundation’s work would go on, whether or not there was a Noah Reid.
Chapter Four
It’s an eight-hour flight and trek back to the cave in the Sundarbans. However, King doesn’t have a whole lot of choices. When y
ou try to kill someone, especially if that someone is your father, saying you’re sorry over the phone is not going to cut it. And of course, there is the real possibility that he’s not going to answer your call even if he is alive.
King sits himself in front of the heavily bandaged man.
“What’s wrong, King?” asks Chin hoarsely.
“You tried to kill me,” snaps King.
“And you survived. You survived. Don’t you get it? That was the point,” says Chin sounding a lot like Marlon Brando in The Godfather. “If you didn’t, you would not have been worthy to be my son. Life is a series of challenges and tests. Live or die, it’s up to you.”
Chin does not say anything about the fact that King also tried to kill him, adding an extra strain to the uneasy conversation.
“So what did you do?”
Chin slowly sits up and pushes the pillow onto the floor, revealing the small adder with a tiger’s fang in the middle of its head.
“When you steam a tiger’s head for hours, the meat becomes very soft. I pulled out one of the teeth. When the snake came onto the bed, I just pushed the tooth through it... I didn’t move fast because I couldn’t. Seeing I wasn’t moving fast, the snake just took its time... it never knew what hit it. But checking up on my health is not why you’re here. What is it?”
Son regards father for a moment. They are equal. Father tested Son and Son tested Father. Both passed each other’s lethal test.
“I know why you couldn’t find the money. I found a huge empty space under a long table at Master Wu’s studio. More than fourteen hundred cubic feet.”
There is a moment of silence as Chin digests this. “Garret hid it under my nose...”
King nods. “At one point it was filled with cash. There were still a few fragments of paper currency from different countries there.”
King holds up the hundred dollar bill fragment as proof.
“I’ve been doing my research. Noah is running around the world spending millions on different charities and organizations. And he’s planning on stepping that up big time.”
“What do you want from me then?” asks Chin.
“I need advice on how to proceed.” King forces himself to admit, “This is beyond anything I can do on my own.”
This is classic Chinese social interaction or giving face in action. Acknowledging your need for assistance, something you could get from no other source. For a person with traditional Chinese values—even a Triad leader like Chin—this is sacred.
The bandaged man nods. “This is war and to succeed in war, you must know your enemy, know your battlefield, know yourself.”
“Yes, I know. You gave me a copy of Sun Tzu’s Art of War. How does this apply?”
“Garret wouldn’t give up, not even when his daughter’s life was at stake.”
“You sacrificed Duke.”
Chin nods. “That is who we are, King. That’s why I trusted Garret, why I trusted Tommy. We are cut from the same cloth. So the first step is for you to realize that you must be willing to sacrifice everything to achieve victory because your enemy is willing to do so. Garret and Tommy gave up their lives.”
“How does this get us the cash?”
Chin speaks slowly, measuring every word. “The essence is more important than the individual. You attack the soul and the body will die. The mantle is passed on to Noah. Noah is shaped by Master Wu. Master Wu’s soul is shaped by the Shaolin. It is a holistic world of martial arts, Chinese understanding of the human body and religion. That’s where he’s vulnerable.”
“So you cannot win just through force.”
“That was my error.”
King smiles. The pieces are coming together. “So are you coming back with me or do you plan to live in this cave for the rest of your life?”
Chapter Five
Hong Kong’s Gateway Pacific is part of the new breed of Asian hotels. For many years, the trend for new Asian hotels was to go loud and louder; to flaunt every bit of wealth that you had.
But times have changed. For an ever-increasing number of wealthier Chinese, especially from the mainland, showing off your money is not only unfashionable, it’s dangerous to your health. Showing off a Rolex in public is an invitation to having your arm chopped off just as anyone driving a Maserati GranTurismo Convertible with the top down is begging for a criminal or terrorist to carjack your toy. Yes, there is growing prosperity but there is bigger growth in the poverty-stricken and radicalized population. One group will do anything to keep fed, the other to support their political or religious causes. Best not show off what you have. You’ll live longer.
That is not to say you don’t spend a whacking pile of money. You just don’t make a big deal of it.
The Gateway Pacific caters to this group who consider themselves as post Asian or fusion Asian. There is an understated contemporary elegance throughout. Instead of multicolored extravaganzas for furniture, there are simple, stylized creations emphasizing the natural woods and solid colors. Instead of the traditional Chinese paintings of ancient landscapes, muses and mountains, the art displayed draws its inspiration from the twentieth-century and could just as easily hang in New York’s Museum of Modern Art. It’s not nouveau riche but simply nouveau.
In an hour and a half, Noah has made a remarkable transformation. Instead of the dirty, haggard wanted man running to escape with his life, he is especially handsome in his tailored tux. Not that this was easy to achieve. Investigators combing the building for clues to the mysterious death of the concierge had Noah locked out of his apartment. He got the police to make a protocol exception for him so that he could get the tux out of his apartment just as he got them to expedite the paperwork with his adventure with the cement mixers. Giving three million dollars in three months to fight local youth crime earns you a lot of leeway with the constabulary.
He is determined that nothing will interfere with the special plans he’s made for tonight and a quick trip to his foundation office allowed him to change, shower and shave before arriving at the Gateway Pacific.
“Ms. Southam, it should be against the law for a girl to have your combination of beauty and brains,” whispers Noah into the ear of Olivia Southam as they meet in the hotel lobby.
“Well, Mr. Reid. That sounds like workplace sexual harassment,” replies the lithe, leggy blonde.
“Except we’re not at work.”
“You are always at work, Noah.”
“If you’re not getting paid, are you still considered to be doing work for what you do?”
Noah is referring to the fact that he’s not getting a salary from the foundation. His living expenses are of course covered.
“You’re incorrigible,” chastises Olivia.
“No, I’m very corrigible. I ‘corridge’ all day long. And night too.”
Olivia sighs. “I give up. How did your day go?”
If I could only tell you... Noah smiles at Olivia. “Just a quiet day at the ranch. A little car trouble but nothing a little jazz wouldn’t cure.”
The two of them appear to be a perfect couple. Although they’ve known each other just a few months, what they’ve gone through together has been more than most couples go through in several lifetimes.
Both new lawyers, they met on the first day of work at Olivia’s father’s prestigious law firm, Pittman Saunders. Noah was immediately smitten by “the boss’s daughter.” They were assigned to the real estate legal division of the firm’s anchor client, Golden Asia―yes, the company run by Chin Chee Fok—both ironically thinking this was the cure for insomnia.
What neither of them knew was that Noah’s arrival would not be the beginning of a pleasant, safe and mundane existence but the trigger for unleashing Olivia’s father Garret’s bloody and deadly revenge upon Chin. Yes, he put Olivia in jeopardy but he felt it better for her to be dead than to be Chin’s pawn or even worse, his whore. Noah, neophyte lawyer and untried martial artist, overcame personal uncertainty and cowardice to unleash his inn
er tiger to defeat Chin and win Olivia’s heart.
They approach the Birdland East Lounge, named after the legendary New York jazz club.
Olivia smiles. “So how did it go?”
“I thought you didn’t want to talk business.”
“If we don’t now, you’ll be thinking about it all night. Might as well be done with it.”
Be done with it? That’s harsh. “We’re offering free gyms and staffing for two years. Everyone wants in. At 500k average per pop plus operation expenses. Almost a million bucks committed per project. We’ve got enough cash to build an armada of community centers and gyms… How’s it going with you?”
“I’m pretty well done.”
“You mean, you got all the money legalized and sanitized?”
“The Southam name means a lot. When I said it was from my father, no one questioned how I got it.”
“Your father did an amazing job. Everywhere I went, people spoke highly of him. And even more amazingly, no one had the slightest inkling of anything that might not have been above board.”
“Of course not. That was his job with Chin.”
***
Every jazz musician should have the opportunity to play at a lounge like the one at Gateway Pacific. Patterned after upscale New York style jazz clubs, with seating for two hundred, it’s roomy enough for an appreciable crowd yet small enough to be intimate. Tables with granite tops, two thousand dollar chairs so comfortable you never want to get out of them―but the main attraction is an eight foot handcrafted Bosendorfer grand piano. Unlike the bright, exuberant sound of a Japanese piano, this German masterpiece emits a velvety smooth sound, perfect for George Gershwin’s classic, Summertime.
Twenty-six-year-old Abby Sung with her Chinese diva looks and voice, makes the song her own.
Abby and Olivia were childhood friends. They got closer after an airplane blast arranged by Chin killed their mothers. Both wound up going to universities on the US East Coast, Abby for music and Olivia for law. Abby, like Olivia and Noah, is one of the founders of the Chad Huang Foundation.
The Noah Reid Series: Books 1-3: The Noah Reid Action Thriller Series Boxset Page 26
