Gunmetal Gray

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

Fan Jiang had arrived in the capital of Thailand from Cambodia in an old Partenavia twin-engine aircraft, surrounded on the flight by Thai men with guns who had nothing to say to him about where he was going and what plans they had for him when he got there. From the airport he’d been taken directly to a large commercial building somewhere in the heart of the city. There he was led to an elevator, then back out again on the fifth floor. He passed through a massive open room the size of a city block with literally hundreds of men and women working at computer terminals in little cubes. Fan assumed there were more rooms like it on other floors of the building, but he could not know for sure, because he wasn’t given much of a tour. Instead he was simply led through this large room and then down a barren concrete hallway. A back room at the end of the hall was guarded by a pair of armed men in security guard uniforms sitting in plastic chairs. Fan Jiang was directed through the door.

That was three days ago, and he had not left this room since.

This windowless space that had become his home was set up like a cell, which Fan found appropriate, because he was, indeed, a prisoner. There was a sleeping mat on a cold tile floor, and a bucket for his waste, just as he’d had on the boat that took him from Hong Kong to Vietnam. But this room differed from the storage space on the cargo ship in that here he had a laptop computer on a desk that, it had been explained to him, was attached to the company’s network.

Even though the portions of the building he had walked through appeared to be just any other technology-based business, there was one feature in this tiny room that reminded him that he was being held by a criminal organization: a large steel eyebolt cemented into the floor in the center of the room. Fan bumped his feet on it while he sat at the desk, and he surmised others had been kept here at the desk in chains.

It was a horrifying thought, but from what he knew about this place and the people who ran it, it was not surprising.

The group that held Fan Jiang now was the Chamroon Syndicate, and Fan’s earlier research into criminal organizations had taught him this was both one of the most successful and most notorious transnational organizations in Southeast Asia. Not only were they in the business of computer hacking, identity fraud, and spear-phishing schemes; the syndicate was also heavily involved in heroin exportation and human trafficking, primarily bringing Eastern European women to serve as prostitutes for wealthy Asians and Asian women to work as prostitutes in Central and Western Europe.

Fan knew enough about the group to understand they were horrible people, and this was before he’d even met any of their leadership.

Fan realized he was now involved with thugs many orders of magnitude more dangerous than the Vietnamese gang and the Hong Kong — based Triad organization who’d protected him before and, unlike those instances, where Fan was a willing participant to earn his safety and shelter, here he was a simple captive.

When he first arrived, a severe Mandarin-speaking woman told him what they wanted of him. His captors somehow knew exactly who he was and what value he could provide them. As his captors were in the business of, among other things, computer crime, it was no surprise they demanded he engage in criminal acts of fraud via the Internet.

For the first two days he’d given them nothing, and the woman had told him the men watching his work were getting frustrated with his lack of output.

He decided he did not want to test their patience, so today he decided he would show some progress.

At three p.m. Fan leaned back in his chair and rubbed the fatigue in his eyes. He had been working nonstop for nine hours, but his labors had borne fruit. He had just successfully breached a German-based mortgage company and pulled out all the personal data of over 134,000 individuals who had bought homes or condos in and around Berlin. With all the data on these German citizens, the men and women working in the massive boiler room down the hall could then open up credit cards, set up offshore shells in fictitious names, and purchase goods virtually using the fraudulent identities. The goods could be shipped and then sold, and the received funds wired into the offshore accounts in small increments that raised no suspicions.

An hour after he sent all the personnel data in a file to the men and women working in the boiler room, Fan Jiang shoveled stale rice into his mouth with his chopsticks. As he reached for a sip of tepid tea, he was surprised by the sound of the bolts sliding on the door to his room.

The door opened and a young man in a black suit, a tie, and a dark purple shirt entered, flanked by two other men, both wearing suits and ties themselves. Fan saw the butts of handguns sticking out of the belts of all three men.

They all eyed Fan up and down as if he were a caged animal, but he knew the one in the middle was in charge.

“My name is Kulap Chamroon,” the man said in English. “You might know that my father started this organization thirty-five years ago. But you might not know he is just a figurehead now. My brother and I share ownership of the Chamroon Syndicate.”

Fan thought the man seemed defensive, agitated, and a little jittery. He knew nothing about the man’s father, nothing about the structure of the organization at all, for that matter.

Still, Fan bowed. “Yes, sir.”

Kulap Chamroon said, “The records you stole from the company in Germany have my people working very hard. That is good. How long till you get into the other networks on the list you were given?”

Fan cocked his head. He had been given a file with desirable targets on the first day he arrived. But there were hundreds of companies listed. Surely this man didn’t expect Fan to break into all of them. That would take years.

He said, “I can try the next on the list. But… may I ask how long I will be kept here?”

Kulap smiled, glanced to the two men with him, and then raised an eyebrow. “You don’t like the accommodations?”

“It’s just… I wish to go to Taiwan. I had an arrangement with two other organizations. I would provide them with help in my field, and then they would repay me by helping me get to Taipei.”

Kulap Chamroon nodded dramatically. “An interesting proposition. You are saying you can work for me for a short time, and then I can help you be on your way. Is that it?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Here’s my counterproposal.” The young man drew his pistol and stepped forward. He jammed it in Fan’s left ear and pressed it hard, then took Fan’s head with his other hand and pushed it in even deeper. The seated Chinese man let out a squeal of terror.

Chamroon said, “How about you work for me for as long as I tell you to, and in exchange for that I don’t kill you? Does that seem like a fair deal?”

Fan just sat in front of his computer, his eyes shut tight and his hands squeezing the desk. “Yes. Thank you, sir.”

Chamroon pulled the gun away, spun it on a finger, and jabbed it back in his pants. “Di mak.” Very good. “Just remember. We don’t fuck around here in Bangkok like they do in Saigon and Hong Kong. The Syndicate is the biggest and the best. We have the most money, the most guns, and the most power. You do what you are told, when you are told, or else you are a dead man. There is nothing else for you to worry about.”

Fan just looked down to the floor.

Kulap Chamroon turned and left through the door without another word.