Kingmaker Read Online Free PDF Page A

Paris and Barcelona and Munich and go straight for a first-class, nonstop flight to Beijing.
    From Capital International Airport, Alexei traveled east—first by train, then by bus—to the Port of Tianjin. He spent two days in marinas and yacht club bars until he finally found a boat willing to sail across the Bohai Sea, down around the tip of South Korea, north past the Japaneseisland of Kyushu, and then finally inland again and up the Tumen River to where China, North Korea, and Russia all converged—a region claimed by all three countries, yet controlled by none.
    Alexei’s final destination was the top floor of a low and rugged industrial structure. From the windows on the southeast side of the complex, it was possible to see into all three countries at once. When the wind blew the smog from the factories and forest fires further inland, you could even see all the way to the Sea of Japan. The Hunchun region was the easternmost territory of a trade route established over three thousand years ago for transporting goods and slaves across Asia, Europe, Africa, and more recently, the Americas. Fangchuan City was the end of the Silk Road.
    The four floors below him were devoted to the nurseries which no one offered to show him, and he did not ask to see. He smoked while he waited and set up his makeshift testing station. His notebook computer was open on a long plywood table that was bisected by a strip of nylon stretched between two old metal C-clamps, presumably forming an improvised ping-pong table. Beside the computer, there was a clear plastic pouch containing several sterile genetic profile testing packets, and on the floor below, a dented and rusted metal trash can. Alexei’s pack and coat were behind him, leaning against the wall below the windows.
    “You came alone,” Lao Ban announced in English. He was standing beside the table, watching Alexei with a slight and indecipherable smirk.
    The autonomous Yanbian prefecture was neither wholly Chinese nor Korean. What was once a collection of protected national parks providing the final and failed refuge for the Siberian tiger and Far Eastern leopard was now one of the busiest global exchanges in the world. Commerce was the lingua franca.
    Alexei looked up, then stood slowly and deliberately from his stool. The remainder of his black cigarette fell to the floor and was ground beneath his boot. He was significantly taller than the Chinese man, and he stared down at him with narrowed gray eyes. Alexei’s head was entirely shaved, emphasizing the deeply furrowed scar which began above his left eye and terminated somewhere well beyond his scalp. He wore a heavy golden goatee with flecks of gray at the chin, and his lips were thin and tight. Lao Ban looked up at the Russian man, his smile unwavering, his tattoos creeping up his neck from beneath the high collar of his silk shirt. He was thin and intense, with wild eyes, cropped hair, and heavily pockedcheekbones. There was an incongruity in Ban that Alexei had seen many times in his life, and that he particularly despised: the man had chosen a line of business where people tended not to live long, though he gave the impression that there was nobody he would not sacrifice to save himself.
    “I didn’t bring anyone with me,” Alexei told the man, “but that doesn’t mean I’m alone. Do you understand the difference?”
    Directly threatening men like Ban was usually not productive—especially within their own territory—however it never hurt to give them a little something to think about.
    “Your English is perfect,” Lao Ban observed. “You’ve spent time in America.”
    “I do business all over the world.”
    “Where will you take our product?”
    There was an open stairwell in the front of the room, and an elevator beside it. The panel in the wall illuminated and the doors parted.
    “Wherever I find the highest bidder,” Alexei said.
    There were three carts in the elevator, each guided gently into the room