would place every baht I own on you. But this is a different sort of fight." Pracha leans forward, nearly begging. "Please. Do what I say. Bow before these winds."
12
How was Hock Seng to know that the tamade anchor pads would be shut down? How was he to know that all his bribes would be wasted by the Tiger of Bangkok?
Hock Seng grimaces at the memory of his meeting with Mr. Lake. Of crouching before that pale monster as though he were some sort of god, kowtowing obeisance while the creature shouted and swore and rained newspapers down on his head, all of them with Jaidee Rojjanasukchai on their front pages. The Tiger of Bangkok, a curse in his own right, as bad as one of the Thais' demons.
"Khun—" Hock Seng tried to protest, but Mr. Lake cut him off.
"You told me you had everything arranged!" he shouted. "Give me one good reason why I shouldn't fire you!"
Hock Seng huddled under the assault, forcing himself not to fight back. Tried to be reasonable. "Khun, everyone lost material. This is the doing of Carlyle & Sons. Mr. Carlyle is too close to Trade Minister Akkarat. He is always goading the white shirts. Always insulting them—"
"Don't change the subject! The algae tanks should have cleared Customs last week. You told me you paid the bribes. And now I find out you were keeping money back. This wasn't Carlyle, this was you. Your fault."
"Khun, it was the Tiger of Bangkok. He is a natural disaster. An earthquake, a tsunami. You cannot blame me for not knowing—"
"I'm tired of being lied to. You think because I'm farang that I'm stupid? That I don't see how you work the books? How you manipulate and lie and sneak—"
"I do not lie—"
"I don't care about your explanations and excuses! Your words are shit! I don't care what you say. I don't care what you think, what you feel, what you say. All I care about is results. Bring the line up to forty percent reliability within the month, or go back to the yellow card towers. That's your choice. You have a month before I fire your ass and find another manager."
"Khun—"
"Do you understand?"
Hock Seng stared bitterly at the floor, glad the creature couldn't see his expression. "Of course Lake Xiansheng, I understand. It will be as you say."
Before he had even finished speaking, the foreign devil was stalking out of the office, leaving Hock Seng behind. It was enough of an insult that Hock Seng considered pouring acid on the great safe and simply stealing the factory plans. In his white-hot rage, he got as far as the supply cabinets before good sense reined him in.
If harm befell the factory, or the safe were robbed, suspicion would fall to him first. And if he ever hopes to forge a life in this new country, he cannot have any more blackness attached to his name. The white shirts need few excuses to revoke a yellow card. To kick a beggar Chinese back across the border and into the hands of fundamentalists. He must be patient. He must survive in this tamade factory for another day.
So instead, Hock Seng lashes the employees forward, approves repairs that bleed more money, uses even his own carefully embezzled stores of cash to grease the skids so that Mr. Lake's demands will not escalate, so that the tamade foreign devil will not destroy him. They run tests on the line, rip up old drive links, canvass the city for teak that can be repurposed as a spindle.
He has Laughing Chan offering a bounty to every yellow card in the city for rumors of old Expansion properties that may have crumbled and revealed structural items worth harvesting. Anything that will allow them to bring the line back to full production before the monsoons finally pour down and make river transport of a new teak spindle practicable.
Hock Seng grinds his teeth with frustration. Everything is so close to fruition. And yet now his survival depends on a line that never worked and on people who have never been successful. It's almost enough for Hock Seng to attempt a little arm twisting of his own. To tell the tamade devil that he knows something of Mr. Lake's extracurricular life, thanks to the reports of Lao Gu. That he knows every place Mr. Lake has visited, of his trips to libraries and old family homes in Bangkok. Of his fascination with seeds.