The Curse of the Dragon God (14 page)

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Authors: Geoffrey Knight

Tags: #Mystery, #Suspense, #Adventure, #Gay

BOOK: The Curse of the Dragon God
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“Bradley did the right thing and chose to stay in San Francisco,” Chad answered. “He told me he needs to be hands-on with the investigation right now, which will no doubt take up all his energies. He’s more help to the authorities than he is to us.”
The members of the board looked at each other and nodded, some of them sorrowfully, concerned for Bradley and his uncle. None of them could deny that Chad was the obvious man for the job.
“Gentlemen,” Chad continued, ready to close the deal for leadership once and for all. “This company’s future now hangs in the balance. The mines in Shandong are producing diamonds at a record rate, more than twelve thousand carats each month, with more and more deposits being tapped every week, not to mention the plans for our expansion into the U.S. We are about to reach a pinnacle in this company’s history. We don’t have a lot of time for discussion.”
“How about another ten minutes? Just to let me have my say!”
Suddenly, the entire room turned to see Bradley Zhang in his disheveled tuxedo standing inside the glass doors of the boardroom, behind him a young American in a slightly ripped T-shirt and jeans.
Chad simply smiled. “Bradley, it’s so unnecessary of you to—”
“You knew I was coming to this, Chad. The last time we spoke—”
“The last time we spoke, you were clearly shaken. You were worried about your uncle. My God, there were guns! An explosion! Nobody blames you for giving me control of—”
“I gave you control of nothing.”
Bradley glared at him angrily while Chad took on a caring, sympathetic facade. “We all understand you’ve been through a lot. It’s your job now to help find your uncle, not to be burdened with
this
.” With a sweep of his hand he gestured to the board members, the room, the entire office.
“
This
is what my uncle would want me to take care of.”
“Are you sure about that?” Slowly Chad’s caring expression transformed into the shrewd look of a calculated businessman. “Bradley, do you truly understand what’s at stake here? Sen’s been kidnapped and the chances of him returning in one piece are remote to say the least, given his financial standing. It’s a crisis point for this company. We have to take certain steps to get through this. It’s time to sort out the men from the—” he paused, eyeing Bradley up and down, no longer with a look of concern, but a look of doubt, something he wanted the others to see. “It’s time to sort out the men from
your
kind.”
Bradley cocked his head, at first puzzled, then appalled. “What the hell are you trying to say, Chad?”
“Admit it, Bradley. You may be blood, but what you lack is courage. Leadership. The kind of fortitude that will ensure that this company grows from strength to strength toward a bright shining future. You lack the fortitude of a real man.”
Will suddenly stepped forward, ready to take Chad for every swing and punch he was worth, but Bradley put his arm out and stopped him. His hand settled on Will’s chest with a certain familiarity and stayed there, feeling the angry hammer of his heart. Everyone present stared at Bradley’s hand positioned on the young American’s chest, and a sense of unease rippled through the room. The board members whispered into each other’s ears and looked at Bradley with misgiving and mistrust.
Bradley didn’t care. Instead he cast a quiet, controlled remark over his shoulder to his blond friend. “It’s okay, Will. Wait for me in reception. I can handle this.”
Fighting the instinct to stay and defend his friend, Will respected Bradley’s decision to stand his own ground and slowly backed out of the room.

 

Will didn’t quite get as far as reception. As he made his way through the silent, empty corridors of the Zhang Corporation’s Hong Kong offices, Chad’s words rang through his ears:
The kind of fortitude that will ensure that this company grows from strength to strength toward a bright, shining future
.
They were words he’d heard before. Almost verbatim.
Will suddenly took a detour through the building. Instead of heading back to reception to wait for Bradley, he followed a nagging suspicion that led to an office door with Chad Chambers’s name on it. He opened it and disappeared inside.
Chad’s office was enormous, elegant, minimalist. All his furniture was white and silver and perfectly streamlined. The place was almost too sleek and cool. It was practically icy.
Swiftly Will made his way through the vast space, past the lowlying furniture to Chad’s desk. He didn’t know what he was looking for, but something told him Chad Chambers was a man with secrets, one of which might well be the whereabouts of the stolen diamonds, and of Sen and the Professor.
Chad’s pencil-thin laptop computer sat closed on one side of the desk. Will sat himself in Chad’s high-back chair, swiveled to face the computer, and opened it. The screen came to life with a welcome message.
Good morning, Chad.
Please enter your security password now.
Below the message was a text box containing four individual spaces. The computer was waiting for four digits or letters to be typed.
Will tried the obvious.
C-H-A-D
A new message appeared.
Incorrect password. Please try again.
Will realized his chances to get this right were no doubt limited. Chad was not the sort of guy to use his year of birth or a cute nickname, and he definitely didn’t strike him as the kind of guy who’d ever owned a pet.
He was, however, a numbers man.
Will glanced at the phone on the desk. As with any Touch-Tone phone on the planet, each letter had a corresponding number, 2 to 9. Will typed Chad’s name on the computer keyboard using the corresponding number sequence.
2–4-2–3
A message flashed up on the screen.
Incorrect password. Please try once more. Failure to enter correct password will result in a security alert.
“I know you’re a numbers man, Chad,” Will muttered to himself. “And you’re arrogant enough to use your own name. What clue am I missing? What is it about you that—”
Will stopped, suddenly recalling Chad’s philosophy for achieving anything. Determine your goal first, then work through the steps backward to reach that goal. “Go through things in reverse first.”
Quickly, confidently, Will typed the numbers into the computer in reverse order.
3–2-4–2
The screen went blank for a heart-stopping moment and Will clutched his breath. Then a new message appeared.
Password accepted. Thank you, Chad.
Will smiled to himself. “Yeah, thanks Chad.”
Now that he was inside Chad’s system, he was granted access to the network. Instantly he began searching the archive for certain file names.
He was sure that if Chad was up to something, he certainly wasn’t stupid enough to bury it within the archive. But he may have left a thread
through
the archives, a trail of breadcrumbs, and maybe, just maybe, Will might be able to trace the file names back to Chad’s personal folders.
He typed in
Zhang Sen
.
Just about every file in the archive began spilling down the screen. Will canceled the search instantly. He knew it was just a matter of time before the meeting in the boardroom ended and Chad returned to his computer.
Will had to think outside the box, and fast.
He typed in
United States
. That’s where all of this had begun. Half a dozen files came up immediately:
SF_HQ_Contracts and Legal
SF_HQ_Town Council/Project Plan
SF_Launch
SF_Strategy_5 Year Marketing and Sales
SF_Submissions and Quarterly Projections
Will could only assume the
SF
referred to San Francisco and that these files contained documents pertaining to the setup of the U.S. office. But a single file name stood out:
MT Project.
“M-T,” Will pondered. Not a reference to the word
mountain
—the
T
wouldn’t be in upper case. No,
MT
was a state.
Quickly he left the archive and returned to Chad’s personal files. He went straight into the search function and began to type
Monta—
Suddenly he stopped, deleted the letters, and typed
Tcejorp Anatnom
He pressed ENTER.
A single file appeared. Will opened it quickly, only to find the
entire
document had been written in reverse. Every word. Every letter.
“Jesus Christ,” Will whispered to himself, hurriedly rummaging through Chad’s drawers. He knew Chad was a neat freak, the kind of guy who would surely possess—
“A grooming kit.” Will smiled, pulling a slender silver box out of the drawer and opening it up. He took out the mirror, spun the laptop around, and held the mirror in front of the screen.
The letters were reversed in the mirror’s reflection, but the words no longer were. They were in the right order now, giving him enough of a clue to piece together the document’s headings:
The Montana Project: Confidential
To begin implementation prior to The Beijing Project
Head of Insurance Portfolio: Chad Chambers
Head of Planning & Execution: Mya Chan
Head of Excavation, Engineering & Construction: Richard Conrad
Will stopped reading and turned the computer back to face him. He frantically clicked PRINT. A beep sounded behind him. Swiveling in the chair, he saw the printer light flashing
Out of Paper
. He shot a glance at the glass doors, feeling the seconds slip away. There was no sign of anyone outside in the corridor yet, no indication the meeting had finished.
Desperately he began opening drawers once more, sifting through cupboards, looking for paper to refill the printer. He shuffled through stationery supplies as fast as he could, knowing full well he couldn’t afford to be held up another moment. Time was running out.
Time was running out. The holdup in Beijing had cost Mya Chan valuable hours, but Mya was a beautiful woman, and beautiful women had a way of forming friendships with the wrong people in the right circles. Or, in her opinion, the right people in the wrong circles.
Regardless of perspective, those people in those circles meant that, in an air traffic delay, while all the usual domestic and international passenger planes queued up and circled the skies over Hong Kong, Xi managed to land the Zhang Corporation jet at a completely different location—Hong Kong’s infamous Kai Tak Airport. The old airport proved to be the perfect place for discreet landings and departures. Like getting the Zhang Diamond Corporation jet in and out of Hong Kong as quickly and quietly as possible.
And while Mya Chan was now considerably late for the boardroom meeting at the Zhang Diamond Tower, from Kai Tak she could take the Zhang high-speed motor cruiser directly across the harbor and still be at the company’s Hong Kong Headquarters in time to help solve the problems that really mattered.

 

“The problem is obvious,” Chad declared to Bradley in front of the entire board. “Everybody knows your—how shall I put it—
leanings
.” With that he pointed to the glass doors through which Will had exited earlier. “And leanings like yours give you a tendency to be flippant, feeble-minded, unpredictable—”
“When have I ever been any of those things?” Bradley challenged confidently.
“—and as I was about to add, defensive. I’m simply stating the facts.”
“You’re simply stating your prejudices!”
Chad suddenly turned, his patience gone, his agenda pressing. He hammered the boardroom table with his fist. “Let’s face it, Bradley—and I speak for every last member of the board when I say this, including your uncle—you know as well as I do that you’re not capable of running this company.”

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