The Gaze of Caprice (The Caprice Trilogy Book 1) (72 page)

              “How do we know you’ll keep your end?” asked Ambassador Sosa.

              “You choose between the devil you know and the devil you don’t,” said Mr. Li, “You don’t know us but you know the LAPD.  They’ll come in here and they’ll ask questions.  If we tell them what
Costas
is really for they won’t believe it.  But it will give them an idea.  They might believe it if they have a look around this place.  We have their attention now.  They’re outside.  Do you really want their attention, Ambassador?”

              “The answer is obviously no,” said Ambassador Sosa.

              “Then pull their leash,” said Mr. Li, “We’ll be in touch.”

              “How do I know we’ll hear from you?” asked Ambassador Sosa.

              “I gave you a name,” said Mr. Li, “Mason Keig.  If you don’t hear from me he’s your token.  You cash him for $308 billion.  He knows who I am.”  Mr. Li hung up.  Then dialed Li Tao, parked outside.  He told Li Tao to pick them up at the back entrance when the police drove away.  Mr. Li broke into an office labeled
Gerald Berger, CPA
.  It had a window with a view of the street forty-two floors below.  This time he didn’t just wait.  He watched.  There were eight police cars.  He gave allowance for two more out of his line of sight.  The police hadn’t come into the building.  It was a good thing.  They hadn’t discovered the five bodies in the security room.  They didn’t know they had a crime scene.  They had only responded to an alarm.  Mr. Li waited along with the police—along with his five men—four inside and one outside.  Forty-two minutes went by and the police never came in the building.  In the forty-third minute, they all retreated back to their cars.  By the forty-eighth minute they were all well down the street.

              Mr. Li called Li Tao.  Li Tao said the streets looked clear.  Mr. Li told him to circle the block casually while they descended the stairs.  Mr. Li was the only one with a cell phone, a precaution if they were caught.  He couldn’t phone the others he had to call out to the others.  He yelled from inside Gerald Berger’s office and walked out into the hall.  Liu Ping and the other three were gathered in the foyer. 
We go down
was all Mr. Li said.  Mr. Li lead the way to the stairs all the way down to the sky mezzanine.  There was no break on the way down.  They kept going.  The bottom floor was their only break.  They exited through the back door that Liu Ping and Huang Sitian had entered.  Li Tao was on the other side sitting in the
Neon
.  The car could seat five.  They were six.  They put their weapons and vests in the trunk.  The car was weighed down but according to plan it didn’t matter.  They didn’t need the speed.  Li Tao drove cautiously obeying every traffic signal, like the Moon Dragons did when they had Uncle Woo.  They didn’t end up in Van Nuys they ended up in Montebello.  The
Escort
was parked at the end of the street in front of a beige stucco house in a neighborhood that was still sleeping.  It was nearly 6:00am.  They exchanged the
Neon
for the
Escort
and the trunk full of fight for an empty one.  Wang Xi took the plates off the
Neon
and the VIN number.  They left it empty and bare.  They drove at a steady pace—Moon Dragon pace—back to the warehouse in Van Nuys.

• • •

              The night was unlike any other but it affected them the same.  They hadn’t realized how tired they were until they stopped moving.  With the
Escort
parked in the warehouse, they felt a return to Mr. Li’s dimension.  Anything left outside was gone forever.  They felt a return to the label, Sheltered Ones.  They were bred to follow leaders and that’s where they felt most comfortable.  They slept in an almost hibernation, a return to a stillness state.  They slept well under Mr. Li’s watchful eye, Mr. Li himself the only one who didn’t sleep.  They were comfortable knowing Mr. Li had thought of everything.  With him they were in the best of all worlds.  They could live on the edge and sleep there.  Mr. Li had taken care.  They followed his leadership.  They had learned to accept it. He had learned to accept it.  He thought about it because the thoughts came about.  And words came as well.  He thought about what the old man said.  He was the last Jade Soldier and he had been for many years.  

              It was lunchtime.  Georgia ate grilled chicken in her office—at her desk—alone.  She was three bites from the end of her meal when the phone rang, her cell phone.

              “Where are you?” asked Mr. Li.

              “In my office,” said Georgia, “Where are you?”

              “Los Angeles,” said Mr. Li, “Working.  Are you alone?”

              “Good man,” said Georgia, “I am alone.  Do you have it?”

              “All of it,” said Mr. Li, “Time for you to work.  I’ve given you $308 billion worth of leverage.  If you can’t get the Venezuelans to deal, you’ve lost your touch.”

“Parish the thought,” said Georgia, “Where’s the money?”

              “Hidden,” said Mr. Li, “When you’ve got a deal, I’ll tell you where it is, so you can tell them.  It’s easier for you to negotiate without thinking about specifics.”

              “You learned well,” said Georgia, “OK then. We play.”

              “How are you?” asked Mr. Li.

              “Well, that’s why it’s called a mole.  He’s dug in deep,” said Georgia, “And it’s been a while since I went hunting.  I’m looking at the documents Mason sent me.  All six of them could get these files.”

              “Call me when you’re ready,” said Mr. Li.  He hung up his Spare Tire to severe the link.  It was seven minutes passed 9 o’clock in the morning.  Mr. Li hadn’t slept.  He planned around sleeping.  His five guests were asleep in the cool darkness of the warehouse.  It was its own planet.  The sun was up in Southern California, in the warehouse the stars were out—glowing from the ground.  Mr. Li navigated around the warehouse as if he built it.  A fallen angel, he committed a necessary evil.  He took a white-topped spray can to the far corner and sprayed his arms, neck and chest, hiding his dangerous side.  He slipped out the side door silently as if he walked through it, like a tree falling with no one to hear.  He walked ten minutes to the nearest bus stop then waited.  The wait was fifteen minutes long but crept along like early morning time.  The day needed time to wake up.  Mr. Li sat in the back of the Commuter Express and did something typical on the city bus.  He slept.  The bus ride was just under two hours from Van Nuys to Westwood, ending on Hilgard Avenue.

• • •

John Edward Anderson was an accomplished educator and businessman.   As a businessman he owned real estate, insurance companies, car dealerships and oil concerns.  He was a billionaire.  And he graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of California Los Angeles.  He enjoyed his time at the University as measured by his considerable donations.  His generosity was recorded on the north end of the University campus in the form of his name.  The UCLA Anderson School of Management was a six-building goliath.  It was a massive pink-bricked structure with a pull of its own—another force, not gravity.  Mr. Li got off the bus and headed west across the University campus, passed the Fowler Museum toward the Anderson building.  The sun was up but the environment was cool.  The atmosphere was chill.  Students made use of comfortable spaces to take in the cool air and warming sun.

              Mr. Li walked up the steps and lost himself in the structure, like any newcomer.  He asked for directions.  The directions were accurate.  He led himself to a third floor hallway with very little activity.  He walked slowly down the hall looking at names written on doors.  At the end of the hall on the right, the second door from the end had a name he half-recognized.  He had seen the name once before, but it was as awkward the second time as it was the first.  On the light-colored wood grain door was the name, Professor Wendy Lee.  The irony was the name had been legitimized.  Wendy Lee was the name on her passport and certificate of naturalization.  When she took the oath to gain American citizenship, she automatically surrendered her Chinese citizenship.  And she surrendered the name Li Xiaofeng. 

              The office door was locked.  Mr. Li let himself in.  The office was small compared to what he had imagined.  There was a chair against a desk on one side and a chair against a table on the other.  The office was easy to decipher.  The chair against the desk was the professor’s chair.  The chair against the table was for students.  Her desk was well organized.  A day-planner was open on the desk keeping track of the day and the day’s events.  There was a drawer that was never locked.  Inside was a tablet PC neatly tucked away in a leather grain case.  A file cabinet was against the far wall.  Plaques and accolades were on the wall against the table.  Several pictures were on her desk.  There was a family of four:  husband; wife; son and daughter.  The daughter was already in her teens—smiling.  The son was just a boy—aloof.  He didn’t recognize the children only their parents, Baba and Mama.  The children had to be his mother and her brother.  There was another picture of Baba and Mama as a young married couple, before the children.  Then their were the lonely looking photos both eerily similar.  One was of his mother and Xiaofeng.  His mother looked much different from the picture of her as a teenager.  Her expression was more serious, no smile.  Xiaofeng looked about eight years old in the photo and echoed her mother’s seriousness.  They appeared as soldiers—weaponless but ready—a lost regiment of two.  The last photo was of a woman and child, standing exactly in the same position as Xiaofeng and her mother.  But the picture was of a woman and young boy—not mother and son—brother and sister.  The picture was of Xiaofeng at nineteen and her five year-old brother, Mr. Li. 

Mr. Li stared at the picture for a full minute.  Then he stared at the picture of his mother and sister together.  Returning his eyes to the picture of his sister and his five-year old self, he placed the image of his mother behind them with her arm around Xiaofeng and her hand on his shoulder.  His imagination couldn’t hold the image.  Before long, it melted away.  The pictures separated back to their frames.  Memories were hard to put together and easy to be torn apart.  It was so long, the time had stretched the truth.  The photos told facts but there was so much truth in between the pictures.  He wasn’t sure if he had met his mother or not.  He had always remembered it that way.  They had never met.  Suddenly, he was unsure.  He remembered someone.  He had always remembered it was Xiaofeng, his sister.  The photos made him doubt.  He was sure Xiaofeng was there when he was a boy, but could his mother have been there as well, even for just a little while?  Xiaofeng left her out, speaking as if only she had known their mother.  He felt he had as well.  The years had turned him against his sister.  His feelings of abandonment permeated.  She had become an anti-hero not a villain.  Perhaps he wanted to see her again to be sure.  He had seen his share of false flags, even waving one.  He started to wonder if his life and all others were built on pretenses.  It didn’t matter whose side his sister was on. It wasn’t his side.  But he had come to see her. 
Why?
  He stared and thought.  His eyes rested on his right hand.  It was tattoo free, reminding him of his own deception.  He was also false.  They were siblings indeed.  That’s why he came.  They were two of a kind.  He felt she was the better half.

              He left the office locking the door.  He walked down the hall and downstairs to a classroom on the second floor.  He had read her schedule.  She was inside the classroom.  But he remained outside, ear to the door.  The room was small judging by the echo or lack of it.  Her voice was steady under the tedious labor of explaining global economics.  It was strange.  He recognized her voice.  It was more fluid like she was repeating things she knew well, telling a story.  It brought back something he had forgot.  She was a great storyteller.  She had read him Shakespeare in English but reading and reciting were two different things.  He could hear her voice.  Whether she was reading or reciting he didn’t care.  It was her voice.  He was sure.  He walked down the hall, away from the stairway.  He put his back to the wall.  He brushed the wall as he slid to the ground.  He sat on the floor wrapping his arms around his knees—boyish.  He heard a name echo in the hall.  He hadn’t heard it for years.  It echoed unnaturally, undying.  It just kept coming until it stirred inside him.  He felt something he hadn’t felt before.  He felt like himself.  He turned his head to look at the source of the echo and found an empty hall.  The name had echoed in the halls of his mind, something had come back.  He heard it.  He felt it.  It was his name—his real name—Xiaoyu. 

He was in the hall for a total twenty-eight minutes before the door to the classroom opened.  It wasn’t the door, just a door.  Young students with weighted bags thrown over their shoulders stormed the hall.  They flooded out of one door and turned the silence of the hall into loudness.  It was inappropriate considering the scenario.  Mr. Li summed up twenty-two years by sitting like a child in an empty hallway.  Several dozen twenty-something students passed him in the hall labeling him as they went by.  Despite their education they were ignorant.  To them, he was a curiosity, an entertainment.  But the entertainment was fleeting.  They had more important things to do than stare at the unimportant man.  The last person out of the room was an older man with younger clothes.  His shirt was clean and white.  His sleeves were short.  He wore khaki shorts with brown loafers and his belt labored under the pressure of his protruding stomach.  He looked down at Mr. Li. Mr. Li looked up at him. 

              “Can I help you?” asked the man.

              “I’m waiting for Professor Wendy Lee,” said Mr. Li.

              “Are you her student?” asked the man.

              “Her first,” said Mr. Li.

              “Wendy’s always willing to help her students,” said the man.  Mr. Li looked him in the eye and nodded. 

              “She should be out in a few minutes,” said the man, “They stagger our classes by five minutes to avoid a crowded hall.  Too many students is a disaster.  There are accidents on the stairs and they overcrowd the elevator.  Not good.”  Mr. Li looked up at the man.  It was a look of privacy.  The old man understood.

              “Why not stand up,” said the man as he walked, “She’ll be coming out soon.  You don’t want her to see you sitting there like a little kid.”

              “Yes, I do,” said Mr. Li in his head.  The man kept going knowing he had lectured enough for one session.  But he was right.  As he headed down the stairs a second door opened.  Mr. Li was right.  The room wasn’t big.  Around thirty students walked out of the room.  Some were together.  Others were alone.  He watched them from his huddled position twenty feet away.  They didn’t notice him.  They all headed away from him toward the stairs.  The hall was empty again.  But Mr. Li sat with his head angled toward the door.  It had been closed after the last student left.  It had been closed for a while.  The door opened.  A woman walked out of the room and turned the lights off as she left.  The sound of heeled shoes echoed through the hall just as the far off voices of students disappeared.  She wore a black suit skirt and pantyhose.  Her hair was not long but it flowed.  It was blacker than the suit she wore.  Her hair was in a medium-length Bob cut; it bounced as she walked away.  It was her. His heartbeat went irregular.  It skipped a beat then thundered back, hurting him.  The last time he had seen her she was going away.  She kept walking.  Her heels echoed on the polished tile floor. With each step the echo dulled just a little bit.  The feeling was different.  He didn’t have the same boyish desire to run after her.  He didn’t have to. He could stop her.  He opened his mouth and prepared his voice to be louder than the sound of her shoes.  His voice was deep but echoed.  He said only one word,
jie
—sister.

She froze before turning.  Her body just stopped, from the bounce of her hair to the flow of her skirt.  The echo of her heels died immediately.  She turned around quickly and saw a man sitting against the wall.  He was staring right at her.  Her instinct told her to run.  She was alone in the hall with a stranger.  He was seated about forty-five feet away.  She was four steps away from the stairwell.  She could make it.  She should have.  But there was that word,
jie
.  Only one person called her that.  She had completely switched lives and her identity along with it.  Few of her colleagues even knew her birth name.  She was either Wendy or Professor Lee.  Even her Chinese colleagues called her Xiao Wen.  She left the name Xiaofeng behind, switching names as she switched continents.  But one word had followed her,
jie
.  She left the name Xiaofeng when she left China but she left the name
jie
when she left him, her brother. 

Her heart skipped for several seconds before it found its rhythm.  Her mind had a twenty-two year old picture of an eight year-old boy, small but strong—head shaven.  The stranger in the hall was clean-shaven but had a full head of hair—long and wavy, combed back.  The stranger’s face was an explanation.  It told what happened to the eight year-old boy, especially the eyes.  They said the story was long. 

• • •

              Faced with the inevitable truth, she put her hand over her mouth.  Her face turned red.  Guilty tears scratched her cheek but kept going.  Her eyes closed.  Her face felt a tremor.  She stood in the hall erupting with personal turmoil.  She had so much buried.  And it came up.  Not seeing him pushed her guilt downward on a ramp.  But it was a ramp not a pit.  His presence pushed the guilt back up.  She had left him; he had found her.  She walked straight toward him.  Her heels echoed her determination on the tile floor.  Mr. Li didn’t move at all.  She knelt down.  She threw her arms around him.  She was defenseless.