CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER TWO
The Negotiation
Evelyn had set the call for five p.m., the end of our workday and the start of China’s. It was also the next day in Beijing, but I tried not to think about that. The globalization of time across the planet was a weird thing. It was hard to imagine how Wong could make trips back and forth while adjusting to the time difference.
I’d spent the day resurrecting my permissions on Build-A-Dragon’s servers and clearing out the design queue. When I’d left the company, we had orders popping into the custom queue constantly. It signaled that the mainline models were selling well; only a fraction of our customers ponied up the extra expense for customization. Still, I liked the challenge of it, of taking a customer’s often-ridiculous request and finding a way to make it work. Other than designing the occasional prototype, it was my only chance to do real engineering.
Fifteen minutes before the call, I forced myself to log out. By impulse, my feet took me to Evelyn’s office down the hall from the design lab. It was empty inside except for the desk and chair; Evelyn must have already claimed the CEO’s office upstairs. The nameplate outside had changed, too. Now it read Noah Parker, PhD on a framed placard with my title.
Director of Dragon Design.
Six months ago, this was a coveted position in biotech. Now it meant leader of a team of effectively one. The office was still nice, at least. I took the chair and savored the way the leather enveloped me. Not to diminish the chairs in our design lab, but they simply didn’t compare. Something about the material. It had the same texture of the driver’s seat in my Tesla, which made it Nappa leather. Pure luxury. Well, I wouldn’t keep it long if I didn’t start rebuilding the team. With that grim thought, I headed to the elevator.
The C-suite of the Build-A-Dragon Company naturally occupied the top floor of the company headquarters. I’d attended a few meetings in the executive boardroom but had never seen the CEO’s office. Entering it was like storming a castle. First there were the outer doors, then a sort of antechamber with a small desk. If Greaves had had a secretary, he or she was no longer employed here. I skirted the desk and entered the inner sanctum, a spacious corner office that made mine look like a janitor’s closet. Evelyn wasn’t there, but she’d probably run in thirty seconds before the call. I admired her office while I waited.
The outer walls were glass floor-to-ceiling and offered a spectacular view of downtown Phoenix. The only thing that obscured them were Evelyn’s plants—all carnivorous species—which seemed to be thriving in their sunny new home. I had a theory that each one represented some milestone she’d achieved in her career. I was curious to take inventory.
Sure enough, there was a new addition: a handsome ceramic pot decorated with Mandarin calligraphy—which I couldn’t read—that held six or eight slender shoots, each one shaped like a chunky golf club. Cobra lilies. A fitting choice for her ascent to CEO of Build-A-Dragon. They even looked a little like dragon heads.
Evelyn hurried in juggling her tablet and a bunch of papers and saw me inspecting them. “What do you think?”
“About the office, the view, or the cobra lilies?”
She laughed. “All three.”
“Nice, very nice, and I thought they were illegal.”
“Buying and selling cobra lilies is illegal. Owning them is not.”
That was a convenient loophole if I’d ever heard one. “Possession is nine-tenths of the law,” I said.
“So it is.”
“Speaking of which, what’s our plan to repossess Wong?”
“There are two steps,” she said. “First, we find out what they want, and second, we figure out a way to give it to them.”
“What if they want something we don’t have?” I knew Evelyn had contacts with the U.S. government, but if China wanted a prisoner released or something, that was beyond even her power.
“Let’s hope it does not come to that.”
“So, what do you want me to do? Sit here, stay quiet, try not to insult anyone?”
“I’ve been thinking about this, and I wonder if you should do the opposite.”
“Really?”
“They are not expecting you on the call, so we will introduce you as Wong’s immediate supervisor. Feel free to unleash your inner . . .” She trailed off.
“Ignorant white man?” I offered.
“Your words, not mine.”
“Well, then.” I grinned. “I can do that.”
“I knew I could count on you.” She was already opening a new projection monitor in midair to initiate the call.
The window didn’t expand the way I expected for a video feed. It remained wide and narrow; even though I couldn’t see what Evelyn could on her side, I knew it was audio only. “No video?”
“They prefer it that way.”
“Who are we speaking to, anyway?”
“Someone at the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs.”
The call connected a moment later. I recognized the greeting of whoever answered on the other end, but the Mandarin between them and Evelyn that followed was so fast that I didn’t catch a word. It reminded me that I was a long way from speaking the language with any kind of proficiency. There was a pause, and Evelyn made a flicking gesture to put her microphone on mute.
“We’re being connected to someone high up,” she whispered. “A deputy minister.”
“Is that unexpected?”
I pulled up my tablet and ran a quick search. There were two possible names. Both were surprisingly high in the organizational chart of the Chinese government.
A man’s voice spoke to us. Evelyn replied, and I recognized an extremely polite request to speak English. Thank God.
“Of course,” he said.
“Minister, I’m here with Dr. Noah Parker, who is Wong’s immediate supervisor,” she said.
“Hello, Dr. Parker.”
I fought the instinct to reply with the correct Mandarin response to an introduction. I even knew the polite version. Instead, I cleared my throat and kept my tone neutral. “Nice to meet you.”
“We are familiar with your work on biological simulation.”
A deputy minister knows about my work. Somehow that was both flattering and terrifying. “Oh. Wow.”
“And your brother’s gene therapy, of course. What a story.”
So that could easily be a compliment or a threat. Evelyn’s face didn’t clue me in to which it was, but I remembered her advice. “I’m happy to say that he’s doing well, thank you.”
“And Dr. Chang, of course, we have watched your career with great interest.”
I smiled in private amusement at the unintentional Star Wars reference. Or was it intentional?
“You are too kind, Minister,” Evelyn said.
“What you have done at the Build-A-Dragon Company over the past year is truly remarkable,” he said. “I have a personal interest in dragons, as do many Chinese.”
Evelyn’s eyes narrowed like a hawk that had spotted a mouse. “Yes. It is unfortunate that ordinary citizens can’t buy them.”
Oh, beautifully played. China had an import ban on our dragons, which was a bummer because the market was huge. This guy worked in the ministry that had implemented the import ban, just as they’d implemented Wong’s exit ban.
“Well, we must be cautious about foreign technology,” he said.
“Our dragons are infertile by design,” Evelyn said. “We have numerous safety studies, which I’d be happy to share.”
“Perhaps if we understood more about the underlying technology . . .” the minister said.
“The dragon genome is public domain,” Evelyn said.
He paused. “It’s my understanding that the genome itself is more of a blueprint. Going from that to a living organism is more challenging.”
“Of course,” Evelyn said.
I admired how she limited herself to those two words, which themselves could carry more than one meaning. Now the conversational ball was in his court.
“Our laboratories in Shenzhen have managed to perfect much, but not all of the process.”
But not all of it, because you don’t have Simon Redwood. The Redwood Codex was the heart of our biological printer and a closely guarded secret. Also a possible fire hazard, based on its appearance. But the ugly jumble of wires and circuits somehow rendered our dragon eggs viable. It was why our company had succeeded where so many other would-be purveyors of synthetic organisms failed.
“It’s difficult work,” Evelyn said.
“Perhaps there are insights that you could offer, in the spirit of international cooperation.”
Oh, hell no. They wanted to duplicate our confidential processes to produce their own organisms. This was what they wanted, and it was exactly what I’d worried about. Something we were unable to give.
“Unfortunately, some of the process is proprietary.”
“I see.”
Now he was using two words, and again they could carry multiple meanings. At least one of which was You’re not getting Wong back. Evelyn sighed, which told me this was going about as poorly as I thought it was. There was no way we’d give out trade secrets, no matter how much we wanted Wong back. Which sucked. So many of my plans for dragon designs relied on him, on his dauntless work ethic. That gave me an idea. I should probably have cleared it with Evelyn first, but that wasn’t what an overconfident white man would do.
I leaned forward. “However, since you do have an interest, it would be our pleasure to send you one of our dragons as a gift.”
Evelyn smiled at me, which I took to mean that I hadn’t overstepped.
The minister paused. “To me personally?”
“In the spirit of international cooperation,” I said.
He was silent a moment while Evelyn and I waited on tenterhooks. “What kind of dragon?”
“A custom model, so it would be one of a kind. I’d design it myself.”
“Could it be . . . black and red?”
“We can do that.”
“I would appreciate that very much,” he said.
I pumped a fist. It would take a couple of weeks to print the egg and get it to Beijing, but this was something.
Evelyn gave me a thumbs-up. “Well, I’m certain we’ve already taken enough of your time, Minister.”
They said goodbye and the call ended. Evelyn leaned back in her chair and exhaled heavily.
“Well, that was interesting,” I said.
“Good idea on sending him a gift.”
I spread out my hands. “Dragon diplomacy.”
She laughed. “Our version of panda diplomacy.”
“Do you think it will be enough to get Wong back?”
Her brow furrowed. “Let’s hope so.”