Chapter 202: A Hundred Million Dollars in Ransom. Think About It?

Chapter 202: A Hundred Million Dollars in Ransom. Think About It?

Old Dao’s face had changed. Wu Chen’s had not.

Barely more than ten minutes had passed since he called Li Ruotai. Li Ruotai and the ambulance were certainly still on the road.

But before that, Li Ruotai had already put the word out to every man in Donghai’s underworld to search for Old Dao.

So when Wu Chen gave him the address, some of Li Ruotai’s people were bound to be somewhere near Shuangqiao. They would arrive first, come to “back up” Wu Chen.

The stairwell outside went abruptly quiet.

It was easy enough to read: the whole group had reached the door, and all of them had fallen silent at once.

Knock, knock.

Wu Chen got up, walked to the door, and opened it.

Outside stood a red-faced, heavyset middle-aged man with one hand tucked inside his coat — plainly holding a gun. The instant the door opened he tensed, then, seeing it was Wu Chen, eased considerably.

Behind him crowded more than a dozen men, some of them standing back down the stairs.

“Mr. Wu…” the red-faced man said quietly, his eyes flicking past him into the room.

He knew Wu Chen. By now Wu Chen was very well known in Donghai’s underworld. Some low-level thug might not know his face, but a heavyweight like this one certainly did. At the very least he had seen a photograph.

His name was Dai Lin, one of Crooked Zhao’s trusted men.

“Go wait downstairs,” Wu Chen told him. “If more of our people show up, don’t let them come up. We don’t need this many. Send home whoever can be sent home, and don’t disturb the residents.”

“Ah — right.” Dai Lin agreed, and did not dare ask anything further.

Wu Chen shut the door.

A moment later came the scuffed, uneven noise of a crowd heading back down.

Wu Chen returned to the sofa, sat in his original place, and looked at Old Dao again.

Old Dao knew there was no danger now. The men who had come were apparently “Wu Chen’s people.” He turned back to the phone, checked the message again, then entered a number and sent it.

Then he called that number.

“Brother Dao…” A man’s lowered voice came through.

“You in Nanguang?” Old Dao asked.

“Yeah.”

“How many brothers with you?”

“Right now? Six, seven… What is it, Brother Dao?”

These were Old Dao’s men in Nanguang. Clearly the man did not yet know anything had happened to him. Word would not travel that quickly, and the Ding family certainly would not have told them.

“I just sent you an address. Take the men there. Now. Jiang Chuan is going to show up. Grab him for me,” Old Dao ordered.

“Grab Master Chuan? Brother Dao, is this—”

“Cut the fucking questions. He nearly got me killed. Do it clean. I want him alive — don’t hurt him yet.”

“All right, Brother Dao. Don’t you worry…”

Old Dao finished the arrangements, hung up, and looked at Wu Chen again.

He was not, in truth, taking Wu Chen’s orders. He was not Wu Chen’s man. Technically they were still enemies.

The reason he did what Wu Chen suggested was that Jiang Chuan had already “admitted” Ding Ruilong killed Ang Tun, and Jiang Chuan knew the inside of it.

So from Old Dao’s angle, taking Jiang Chuan meant getting the truth, learning exactly what had happened.

Seeing him look over, Wu Chen went straight into it.

“Five years ago, Ang Tun brought men across the border into China to talk business himself…”

He meant to tell Old Dao outright why Ding Ruilong had killed Ang Tun.

One point is worth mentioning.

The Golden Flower Group had nothing whatsoever to do with drugs.

Wu Chen had mentioned Golden Flower to Li Ruotai around noon the day before, and Li Ruotai had immediately jumped to the wrong conclusion, assuming Ding Ruilong’s dealings with them involved drugs.

He was wrong.

He simply did not know the terrain. He had no business in Myanmar, no interests tangled up there, so he understood little of it, and like most people, the moment he heard “warlord” and “Myanmar border” his mind went straight to drugs.

That was wrong.

The main part of Myanmar associated with drugs was the Golden Triangle, not northern Myanmar along the Chinese border.

What the small warlords of northern Myanmar fought over, and where their money came from, were the jade mines.

The profits were vast, and the resource itself cost them nothing to create. The mines were already there. Whoever held them owned them. Different warlord territories drew the money differently. Some levied crushing taxes on mine owners, pulling in astronomical sums every year. In other areas the warlords controlled the mines outright.

Ninety-five percent of the commercial-grade jadeite on the global market came out of Myanmar.

Myanmar had jade mines by the tens of thousands, and across the whole of northern Myanmar, annual profits from jade smuggling ran to more than thirty billion U.S. dollars.

Jade smuggling was the Golden Flower Group’s business with China.

Five years ago, with enforcement pressure especially tight, Ang Tun had personally led men across the border into Yun Province to negotiate and open channels. Afterward he went on to Nanguang.

Some wire had crossed in his head, because he decided he wanted to work with Ding Ruilong.

Ang Tun made the call on his own and altered his itinerary on the spot. He wanted to prove himself by opening up a connection like that. If he pulled it off and secured the Ding family’s help, his standing inside Golden Flower would climb further still.

But Ding Ruilong did not touch smuggling.

He had too many ways to make money, all of them legal. There was no reason to take a risk like that.

Even so, the two men met. Ding Ruilong met Ang Tun in person and refused him to his face, saying he had no interest.

And then… for some reason, Ang Tun made another reckless decision. He began to threaten Ding Ruilong, in his words and between them. Old Dao had handled several matters for Ding Ruilong, and Old Dao was Golden Flower’s man, which made them Golden Flower’s jobs.

Ang Tun thought far too highly of himself, and he did not understand Ding Ruilong.

He used those old jobs to press Ding Ruilong into “cooperating” with him.

Ding Ruilong’s manner changed. In the end he told Ang Tun he would consider it, that he needed to consult the family.

Ang Tun left full of expectation, ready to wait for word and hand his uncle a surprise. He took the Yun Province route home to cross back into Myanmar — and on the way, passing through Yun Province, he was killed by men Ding Ruilong had arranged.

Ang Tun and the five men traveling with him. Six people, vanished overnight without a trace.

Jiang Chuan had led that operation personally.

Ang Tun was a foreigner with a deeply criminal background who had even entered China illegally, so arranging his death did not weigh heavily on Ding Ruilong. All he had to do was make sure Golden Flower never learned who was responsible.

As for Ang Tun’s death — his fatal error was telling Ding Ruilong during their talks that this was his own decision. Ding Ruilong drew it out of him and learned that Golden Flower had never wanted to work with him, had never intended to threaten him. It was all Ang Tun’s idea. He wanted to close it quietly, then go home and claim the credit.

So Ang Tun died.

And there was no possible way for the Golden Flower Group to trace his killer, because they never even knew Ang Tun had gone to Ding Ruilong.

Old Dao sat in silence a long time after hearing it out.

He understood now.

Ang Tun had brought it on himself. You could hardly even call it Ding Ruilong’s fault. Ang Tun had gone looking for trouble, and worse, he had damaged Golden Flower’s reputation. Using past jobs as leverage against a client? Selling out an employer?

And Old Dao knew that doing something like that fit Ang Tun perfectly. The man’s ambition had been enormous and his methods aggressive. He wanted to inherit his uncle General Khun Han’s position and become the future head of the Golden Flower Group.

While Old Dao sat there in silence, Wu Chen took out his own phone, entered an international number, and dialed.

Ring… ring… ring…

More than ten seconds passed before anyone picked up.

“I have Old Dao. A hundred million U.S. dollars in ransom. Think about it?” Wu Chen said, straight out, smiling.

The man on the other end was the head of the Golden Flower Group.

The warlord Khun Han.

Old Dao stared at Wu Chen, stunned.