Mahoganys Dream | Page 9

realized
that he had become Dunleavy's new recruit.
Brian's cell phone automatically dialed 911 if he held down the 9 key.
His thumb rested on that key. He wondered if pressing it would really
make him an infidel. He pressed it and held it down. The phone's
screen displayed, "Calling 911..."
Tsang began to stir on the floor.
Brian raised the phone to his ear. A Police dispatcher answered the call.
"9-1-1. What is your emergency?" Brian didn't speak. "9-1-1. What is
your emergency? Hello?" Brian just breathed into the phone, staring at
Dunleavy's back.
Suddenly, Tsang began yelling, "Air Force Base! Air Force Base! Help
me!"
Brian's eyes nearly popped out of his head. He swiftly snapped his
phone shut. Then he did something he couldn't believe: He kicked
Tsang in the ribs with the point of his shoe and shouted, "Shut up! Who
told you to talk?" Then he slammed his cell phone down into Tsang's
forehead, shattering its plastic display screen into tiny shards. Some of
the shards pierced Tsang's skin, causing him to cry out in agony once
more.
Dunleavy grinned at the wall. "I guess his other ear still works."
Brian didn't say anything. He was too busy wondering how many trees
there were in Paradise.

CHAPTER 2
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 2009
In the spring, Dyson Conwell decrypted an email that contained this

message:
He stared at the message a long time, debating how to respond, or if he
should respond at all. Everyone with his real email address knew his
policy.
When he couldn't reach an immediate decision, he got up from his chair
and strode toward the bank of picture windows that flooded his
spacious living room with sunlight. As he made his way across the
room, a network of sensors spread throughout his ceiling calculated his
trajectory and notified the central server in his basement. The server
immediately tinted the windows with an electrical charge so the
sunlight would be neither too bright nor too warm when he stood
before them a moment later. All this happened in nanoseconds.
The view was not impressive. Instead of a glistening skyline or lush
green park, all he saw was a long formation of starveling rowhouses
stuck together like a gigantic pack of multicolored dominoes.
In the middle of the street, a group of young girls jumped rope and sang.
He focused on them. His windows were completely soundproof so he
couldn't hear them, but he knew from his own youth that the songs
probably contained some fairly scandalous lyrics. For most of those
girls, childhood would be but a fleeting moment of carefree joy
followed by a lifetime of struggle. This fact briefly troubled him. That's
when he made up his mind about what to do.
He walked back to his desk and sent this reply:
AGREED.

CHAPTER 3
The Spratly Islands, South China Sea
Soft tidal waves gently rocked Chen Tsang's yacht. He came to the

Spratlys often during the spring and summer months to watch the
spectacular cliff diving at Layang Layang. But that's not why he was
there today.
"Were there any problems with the wire transfer?" Benjamin Lui asked
him in English. Lui thought that speaking in English would keep their
discussion beyond the understanding of Tsang's Taiwanese crew.
"Meiyou," Tsang replied. None. Tsang only spoke in English when it
was absolutely necessary, which had been hardly ever in the fourteen
years since he had returned home to Taiwan.
Lui smiled and sipped some wine. The thirty-six year-old
communications engineer was pleased the old man had kept his word.
The world didn't look any different as a millionaire, as he had
wondered if it might. "This wine is excellent," he said.
"It's a German Riesling," Tsang informed him. "Schmitt Sohne."
Lui raised an eyebrow. "I've never heard of German wine."
"Then you won't forget it. Did you bring the data?"
Lui removed a compact flash memory card from his pocket and passed
it to Tsang. His host immediately pushed the card into a slot in his PDA,
busying himself for the next ten minutes examining the data stored on it.
Finally, Tsang smiled. He knew his comrades in the KMV would be
pleased with what he had just obtained.
"I guess this deal is a wrap then," Lui said.
Tsang smirked. He hadn't heard that American idiom since Dyson had
returned to the States. He briefly wondered how his golden goose was
making out these days. He was curious to know if Dyson had gone
ahead and married the pretty young legal eagle who had driven such a
hard bargain on his behalf. Then, with only a tinge of regret, he realized
that none of that would soon matter. "Not quite," he told Lui. "There's

someone I want you to meet first."