by Ian Williams
“What are the little bags they’re carrying?” Liu said.
“That’s money. You’ll eventually get more points for whacking the ones stealing the most money, but that’s something else I have to work out.”
He said he was also looking at options to shoot the aliens or run them over with a car.
“Cool,” Liu said. “You should really get this out there. How much are you going to charge?”
“I think it will be free at first, then I’ll charge for add-ons. That seems best. Get people into the game, then offer them extras.”
“What are you going to call it?”
“Whack an Alien, Cleaning up Tiananmen Square. Something like that. It’s almost ready to go.”
“Well, the sooner the better,” said Liu, who wasn’t smiling anymore. He was back at his screen, the market falling now.
“The Government must have stopped buying,” he said. “Or else they didn’t arrest enough brokers.”
Wang played some more with his game. He was pleased with it, but it wasn’t an instant answer to their money issues. It might take time to take off.
He whacked a few more aliens, wondering how else he could improve it, thinking hard about maybe adding an optional boot to kick them off the screen, until a piece of paper hit him on the head, thrown by Liu.
“Wang, promise me you’ll get that game out, I mean soon.”
And Wang said not to worry, that he was almost ready to go live, and that he was convinced there were a whole lot of people out there just itching to whack some aliens.
– 20 –
Mr Fang
The next time Morgan got to speak with his wife he was in his Shenzhen hotel room, just after breakfast, on the second day of his trip down south.
She rang him just as he was cleaning his teeth, an electric toothbrush in one hand and with a mouthful of paste. The first thing she said was that Robert was feeling much better, but when Morgan asked to speak with his son she said he’d gone to the coast with his grandparents. That he’d just left. She said it was good for him to get away from the smog and cold of Beijing. That it would be a good break.
Morgan spat the toothpaste into the sink and said, “I’ll try and call him later.”
But Cindy Wu said that wasn’t going to be possible since Robert had left both of his phones in Beijing.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “I will get him to call you just as soon as he can.”
Then she asked about Morgan’s schedule.
“How’s your day looking?” she said.
Which surprised him, since she never asked about his day, at least she hadn’t for a long time, and he just said, “A lot of meetings. Factories, clients. The usual stuff.”
He said he’d pretty much confirmed the new partner and factory for Bud from Alabama, should Bud still want to go ahead. He was just waiting for a few technical details and the full quote, but that shouldn’t be an issue, since he knew this partner well.
Cindy Wu said that was good to know. And then she said, “And Drayton. What’s the latest on our American client?”
Morgan said he’d be catching up with him at some point, though wasn’t exactly sure when. He asked his wife whether she had anything more for him on the Drayton project.
She said she was still working on it and then told him again that Robert was fine. That he shouldn’t worry and that she’d get the boy to call his father later.
Then Morgan’s hotel room phone rang. It was the concierge, who said his car was ready and did he need a hand with the golf clubs? Morgan said he’d bring the clubs down himself and then went back to his iPhone, telling Cindy Wu that he had to go, that a client was waiting.
“Drayton?” she asked.
“No, not Drayton,” he said. “Another one.”
Then he hung up and hauled his golf clubs out to the lift and down to the lobby. He was halfway to the hotel’s revolving door when his phone rang again.
“Golf’s off,” said the man from Mr Fang’s office.
“Golf’s off?” said Morgan.
“Golf’s off.”
“And lunch?”
“Lunch is on. One o’clock at the Golden Phoenix Restaurant, at Magnificent Gulf View. Mr Fang will see you there.”
Then the man hung up, just like that, and Morgan was left standing in the middle of the lobby, phone in one hand, balancing the bag of clubs with the other and with a car warming its engine outside, ready to take him to a game that now wasn’t going to happen.
He’d been looking forward to the golf and a long lingering lunch at the club’s lakeside restaurant overlooking the first hole.
He went to the concierge, gave him the clubs to store and said he might need the car later, but wouldn’t be going anywhere for now.
Then he rang Sam Ching.
“Yeah, what?” said Ching, which is how he mostly answered the phone. Though he changed his tone when he realised it was Morgan, who asked him if he knew the place he’d just been summoned to.
Ching offered to take him over there, saying Magnificent Gulf View was a big new development along the coast, beyond his factory. He said it was a vast place, but pretty much deserted. Another crazy development. A ghost city. And he said it was construction waste from that place that was being dumped in the landfill beyond the protest they’d seen.
“There’s really a restaurant there? Really?” he said. “I thought there was nothing there but empty buildings.”
An hour later they were driving east in the black Mercedes van, Ching suggesting a detour, to check out the golf club, the Eternal Springs Country Club.
The club covered fifteen square kilometres, its eighteen-hole golf course sprawling around low hills and artificial lakes, the clubhouse with spa and restaurant at the heart of it. One of the finest in southern China, they claimed. Membership cost a quarter of a million dollars.
But when they got there the main gate was shut and chained; two security guards sat nearby, smoking. A light haze hung over deserted hills, but Morgan could see that trees had been planted where a month earlier there’d been fairways designed by Gary Player. The nearest bunkers had been filled with earth.
One of the security guards told Ching it was an illegal development.
“So what’s happening?” Morgan asked Ching.
“It’s illegal,” Ching said.
“What’s illegal?”
“Golf’s illegal.”
Morgan didn’t really get that.
“Since when?”
“Since 1949, or thereabouts.”
Ching told him that Mao hated golf, said it was bourgeois and when the communists came to power he banned officials from playing and had all the courses dug up.
“Then they banned it again, must be at least ten years ago. Said that was to preserve arable land. Farmers were getting pretty angry too, seeing their land stolen for golf courses.”
“But there’ve been hundreds built since then,” said Morgan.
“Yeah, but they call them country clubs, or resorts, which just happen to have a golf course. Same thing, different name.”
“You know a lot about golf.”
“I know a lot about communists.”
Morgan said he guessed it must be part of the Party’s anti-corruption crackdown, too many officials cutting deals on the fairways.
“I’m not sure about that,” Ching said. “Some have been shut down. But plenty are still open. Depends on connections. That’s why I’m surprised about this place. Owned by a big developer, close to the local Party, which is how they got the permissions and were able to throw so many farmers off their land.”
Ching said the people he spoke to thought the Communist Party leader in Beijing was just getting rid of his rivals, reshuffling the assets, and that he wa
s targeting officials in the south. But Ching said it was a dangerous game, that he was making a lot of enemies.
That sounded to Morgan a lot like the warning from his wife. Ching was well connected down south and good at reading the political mood. You had to be, to survive and thrive as long as he had in the jungle that was the factory business in southern China. That’s why he was so valuable to Morgan.
And Morgan wondered where Mr Fang fitted into all this.
They drove east, close to the coast for a while, and through another district of factories, and then more drab egg-box-like shophouses fronted by a clutter of noodle restaurants, print shops, an open-fronted tea house with pool tables. Beyond one hill a power station belched out smoke so thick that Ching’s driver was forced to put on his headlights.
Then more construction sites. Row upon row of tall apartment blocks, each wrapped in scaffolding and green mesh, framed by impossibly tall cranes, none of which appeared to be moving. In the distance, through the smoke, they looked like a marching army of grotesque monsters. War of the Worlds.
Morgan opened his window and took a photograph with his iPhone. He posted it to @Beijing_smog, and he tweeted:
Construction addiction. 70m empty homes. Ghost cities. Kicking the habit could be fatal. How much longer can they defy economic gravity?
Though the latest draft of the MB China Report, which he was continuing to work on, would be calmly reassuring. The Party’s mandarins are aware of the challenges. They can rise to it. Keep investing. You can’t afford not to be in China.
They were approaching Magnificent Gulf View now because that’s what it said on more hoardings along the roadside, with computer-generated pictures of a gleaming glass city of tall buildings and lakes, between which families relaxed, children ran with balloons in hand.
But beyond the hoardings Magnificent Gulf View was like a deserted film set, rubbish blowing in the streets between the shells of buildings in various stages of completion. Two workmen sat on a pavement on one corner eating noodles from plastic boxes. They were the only construction workers to be seen, and they pointed their chopsticks up the road when Ching’s driver stopped and asked for directions to the Golden Phoenix Restaurant, which was written on the side of the noodle boxes.
The restaurant had no sign, but two cars, one a BMW 7 series, Mr Fang’s ride, were parked out the front of the only plausible candidate, because this building was almost complete. A driver was asleep in the back of the 7 series. They were the first cars Morgan had seen in Magnificent Gulf View.
Morgan got out of the Mercedes van and Ching said he wanted to have a further look around because this was surreal, and to message when Morgan was through with lunch.
Morgan climbed a narrow staircase to the first floor, where a door opened into a large dining room, with small windows but fierce strip lights, the walls lined with paintings from Beijing Opera. A few people were sitting around, bent over bowls of steaming noodles, which seemed a speciality.
Morgan recognised one group of thickset men who always travelled with Mr Fang. One in particular was hard to forget. A bear of a man with closely cropped hair and a long pink scar from beyond his hairline to just above his right eye and wearing an orange ski jacket. He pointed with his chopsticks to a curtained-off area on the far side.
Morgan followed the chopsticks and pulled back the curtain.
“Ah, Mr Fang, good to see you.”
Mr Fang was on the phone, and didn’t look like he was happy with the conversation. There was hardly an acknowledgement for Morgan, just a downward flick of the wrist with the big silver Rolex, telling him to sit. He had gold rings on most of his fingers, except the little finger of his left hand. That finger was missing.
A server had followed him in, and Morgan pointed at Mr Fang’s noodles and tea. He’d have the same.
This sure wasn’t the Eternal Springs Country Club, where he’d have ordered the filet mignon, always rare, and one of their finest bottles of Bordeaux. Instead Morgan waited for his noodles and for Mr Fang to finish his call.
Morgan removed a file from a small shoulder bag he was carrying and shuffled some papers.
Mr Fang rubbed his dull sunken eyes. His face was red and getting redder, but this was from anger, not from any claret. And there was no lakeside view to calm him down, just a rather faded portrait of a pasty-faced opera singer.
Fang ran a hand back and forth through cropped hair and fiddled with a heavy gold chain, which he tucked into a white polo shirt.
When he’d finished ranting he put his phone face down on the table.
“So, tell me.”
Morgan told him he was sorry they couldn’t meet at the club. Made a joke out of the noodles, which had just arrived.
Mr Fang said he was sorry too. The club was facing some paperwork issues.
Morgan opened some spreadsheets and started his presentation. The cash balances were good. Investment income was strong. He recommended closing one of the three accounts based out of the Turks and Caicos Islands, perhaps opening another in Hong Kong or London.
MacMaster and Brown provided the nominee shareholders and management for the offshore companies.
Fang said to tell him about the real estate, sounding impatient, and Morgan said the purchase of the Hawaii resort was now complete, all cash through Rising Phoenix Holdings, one of the Turks and Caicos companies.
“These are the others I’d recommend,” he said, putting another file on the table containing glossy brochures: a beachside condo development in California, a ranch in Ohio, a big new development in Palm Springs, refurbished apartments on Central Park, New York.
He said prices were high, but Fang said that didn’t matter, and without even reading the brochures he said that he’d like to move ahead with them all except the ranch. He didn’t like farms.
Morgan said he was still working on the football club, though prices were high with patchy returns. Fang sniffed and wiped a hand across his nose. He told Morgan that price and returns weren’t important. That it was speed that mattered.
Morgan then asked if Fang and his partners still wanted to move ahead with the St Kitts passports, and now it was Fang’s turn to put a file on the table. It contained a summary page and seven sheets of A4 paper, one for each applicant. There were names, photographs and some brief biographical detail on each.
It wasn’t much, but more than Morgan had ever received from them before, and enough, he imagined, to satisfy the St Kitts immigration authorities.
Morgan said he’d arrange the payments from the offshore accounts, half a million dollars per applicant into a local St Kitts account. They could decide later how to invest it, just as long as it stayed in the country for at least a year.
Then Mr Fang stood up, picked up his phone and left, followed by the man with the scar and several others from the main part of the restaurant.
Morgan poked at his noodles and phoned Ching, who said he’d be outside in ten minutes.
He really didn’t know quite what to make of the meeting, or the venue. Mr Fang sure seemed desperate to get money out of the country. Which was just fine by Morgan.
He’d always known that Fang was the frontman for a syndicate of local officials, which he presumed was now feeling the heat and seeking salvation in US property and St Kitts citizenship. And Fang had done what he’d never done before: provide at least some details of the people he represented.
The private client business, or wealth management as they preferred to call it, was one of MacMaster and Brown’s most lucrative.
Morgan’s alter ego, @Beijing_smog, regularly denounced crooked officials, but as their investment adviser he was always scrupulously detached. How and where they got their money was not his concern.
There was a saying in the world of private banking: ‘Know your clients’. Which made Morgan smile as he
sat there, hand on the file he’d been given, thinking that he would finally get to learn their names.
– 21 –
Hand-Job Machines
As they drove back towards Shenzhen, Sam Ching gave Morgan a brown envelope and said, “Big winner this one, Tony.”
Inside was a photograph and drawings of what looked like a vacuum cleaner on adjustable legs, with an opening at the front that resembled the head of a toilet plunger, with a hole in the middle. A caption described it as an “Automatic Sperm Extractor – Mark 2”.
“Hand-job machine,” said Ching. “Could be big in America.”
“I’m not sure it’s going to catch on,” said Morgan.
Ching told him it was super silent and had seven different speeds, and that two Chinese hospitals were already taking a look.
“For fertility treatment,” he said. “And that’s a fast-growing market.”
“What’s with the mark 2?” Morgan asked.
“The Japanese have a model, so I don’t want confusion.”
“So you copied it?”
“Adapted it, Tony.”
Ching was never short of ideas, Morgan would hand him that. And the man could switch his production line overnight: selfie sticks one day, garden gnomes the next. So Morgan had no doubt Ching could make the thing. He just doubted any self-respecting American male would trust his member to a hand-job machine “Made in China”.
Anticipating that, Ching pointed to the small print, which said, “Made in Hong Kong”.
“You’re going to make it in Hong Kong?”
“Package it in Hong Kong.”
“Is that legal?”
And Ching looked at him as if that was just about the most stupid thing he’d heard all day.
When they reached Morgan’s hotel, Ching asked him to take a proper look at the Automatic Sperm Extractor – Mark 2, and said there was some additional technical information in the envelope.
