Malaysia
Alan Wong did not enjoy the flight from Hong Kong to Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia. In fact, Alan Wong never enjoyed flying. The longer the flight, the more he felt dead inside. He thought that flying was the worst torture invented since Biblical crucifixion. Well, perhaps waterboarding was a close second.
Alan had never read the Bible, whether the Chinese or English translation. He knew the original version was in Greek and Hebrew, so he did not trust translations. His lack of faith in translations was rooted in his own bilingual experience. Whenever he read the English version of events in China reported in the New York Times, after he had read about the same incident in Hong Kong's newspapers, it was as if they were two different incidents.
His distrust of the New York Times, which he read religiously, and American media in general, grew stronger after September 11. In Alan's mind, American reports simply were too different from what he read in Hong Kong and what he heard on the BBC. He chalked in up to the complacent self-sufficient attitudes of the Americans he dealt with in business.
But until recently, Alan Wong could not have imagined he would play a major role in terrorism. He used to be a rich man but his fortune had been wiped out in a single decision made by a single buyer in Bentonville Arkansas, the small city that hosted the biggest retailer in the world. That decision led to a cascade of events that explained why he was speeding at 500 miles per hour to the biggest city in Malaysia.
Alan looked out from Seat 1A of Cathay Pacific, cutting through the clouds that surrounded the city, a metro area of more than five million souls. He could make out the twin towers of the Petronas Tower, the tallest twin buildings in the world.
He was not looking forward to the next twenty-four hours. When he first heard that an American woman had been captured, and that she somehow knew about his involvement in the conspiracy, he had assumed that his sponsor would send someone to interrogate her. After all, this was not really his war.
But his sponsor had insisted that he personally see to the interrogation.
Alan thought silently that he was not a terrorist or a gangster. "I am a businessman, not equipped with the skills necessary for successful extraction of information from a captive," Alan had pleaded on the phone with the Sponsor.
"I have several highly skilled men who can do the dirty work," the Sponsor spoke in a calm business-like voice. "But I need you to be the leader of the interrogation."
"If you already have experienced men who can do it, is there a need for me to be in Malaysia?"
"I want your negotiation skills, which I am sure you have accumulated throughout your highly successful business career. My men are brute animals that could physically break her down. But they don't have the same background as you to play the mind game."
"What kind of mind game do you have in mind?"
"Good cop bad cop."
"Oh," Alan thought that could not possibly work. The good cop bad cop routine had been portrayed a million times on TV and in the movies. It worked only with naïve civilians with no prior training. Everything he heard about the female captive told him she must have had some kind of resistance training.
"Don't worry, Alan. You get to play good cop."
"Who says I am worried?"
"I can tell from your voice." One reason the Sponsor was so successful and had outlasted his peers, who were mostly dead from drone strikes, was his ability to read minds, even from thousands of miles away merely from the digital signals that bounced off satellites and cell phone towers. "I am sending you an expert who used to be the top interrogator of female suspects captured by the former KGB. He will direct the muscles who will do the dirty work of racks and ropes. All you have to do is get her to trust you."
"You want me to make her believe I will spare her life if she talks."
"Not necessarily. There are many things that can happen to a woman that are worse than death."
