A cold rain slicked the poorly paved streets. Aging Russian hydrofoils banged against rotting piers. Crumbling French architecture struggled with leaks. Life in Vietnam’s third largest city was miserable. Inclement weather only made it worse. Andre Weber couldn’t wait to leave.
Looking at his host, he commented, “Counting machines are quicker.”
Lieu Van Trang smiled. “But they are far less attractive.”
Weber shook his head. Trang was known for his eccentricities. A coterie of young women, stripped naked so they couldn’t steal while tallying his money, was completely on brand. It was also a total waste of time.
Electronic currency counters could have done the job six times faster and would have eliminated any human error. They also didn’t steal. But Trang liked to play games. He liked to fuck with people’s heads. He knew his visitors wouldn’t be able to take their eyes off the girls.
As far as Weber was concerned, it was unprofessional. They were here to conduct business. There was a shit ton of money on the table and that’s where his team’s focus needed to be. The girls were distracting. Even he was having a hard time not looking at them. And if it was difficult for him, it had to have been almost impossible for his men.
This was not how he liked to do things. Weber preferred encrypted communications and washing money through shell corporations or cryptocurrencies. Trang, on the other hand, was old-school. So old-school, in fact, that he refused to conduct any business electronically. Everything was in cash and everything was face-to-face.
The two couldn’t have been further apart in their approach. Even in their appearances they were strikingly different. Weber, the Westerner, was tall and fit. With his short hair and his expensive, tailored suit, he looked like a young banker or a hedge fund manager. Trang, thirty years his senior, was impossibly thin with long gray hair, a wispy beard, and translucent, vellumlike skin that revealed a network of blue veins.
The only thing they shared in common was a lust for money and a talent for taking care of problems. While Weber didn’t want to be here, he had been paid a huge sum of money, a sum equal to what Trang’s girls were currently counting out, for this assignment.
When all was said and done, it would be the highest-value contract killing ever to hit the market. It had already been deposited in a secret account and would be payable on confirmation of the subject’s demise.
But like Weber, Trang was just a middleman—a headhunter, skilled in identifying the right professionals for the right jobs. His fee, payable up front, was a fraction of what the successful assassin would receive. It was quite fair as he was taking only a fraction of the risk.
Anyone whose murder commanded that sort of a price had to be very dangerous and very hard to kill. Trang would have to take extra steps to make sure none of this blew back on him.
Once the girls had finished counting the money and had confirmed the total, he dismissed them. Every set of male eyes, including Trang’s, watched them as they filed out of the room. Several of Weber’s men shifted uncomfortably as they adjusted erections.
“One thousand dollars each,” said Trang, enjoying the men’s pain. “Best money you will ever spend. I will even throw in rooms for free.”
The man had just collected a ten-million-dollar fee, yet he wasn’t above pimping out his girls for a little bit more. He also wasn’t shy about his pricing. One thousand dollars? No matter how good they were, Weber doubted they were worth a thousand dollars—not even for all of them at the same time. Trang was as shameless and as sleazy as they came.
It was time to wrap things up. Weber didn’t want to stay a minute longer than he had to. Removing the folder, he handed it over.
Slowly, Trang leafed through it, employing the freakishly long nail of his right index finger to turn the pages.
When he was done, he closed the dossier and asked, “So what can you tell me about the client?”
“Only that it’s someone you don’t want to fuck with.”
“Apparently somebody fucked with whoever it is or you wouldn’t be here opening this kind of a contract. What transgression, what sin, could be so egregious that it would call for a one-hundred-million-dollar bounty on a man’s head?”
Weber had his suspicions, but as his employment had been shrouded in secrecy and also handled by a cutout, he couldn’t say for sure.