Dusk hangs in the air. The sun on its way out reluctantly, leaving tendrils of pink and orange behind. Our faces are lit by paper lanterns strung over the back patio. Lam’s sobriety matches mine and Brazuca’s, for once, but his face is flush with some emotion. Excitement, maybe. Our motives are unclear to one another, maybe even to ourselves, but we’ve come too far to go our separate ways. In all honesty, I might be in this for Lam’s private plane, but I’ve never made Lam any promises. Who knows what’s going on with Brazuca, except that he is most undoubtedly being paid—and paid well—to be here.

The best I can figure out is that I want Dao because he’s hunting me. Lam wants Three Phoenix, which he thinks he can get through Dao. Brazuca is collecting a paycheck but wants this to be over so he can go back to healthy eating. Whatever our reasons, we are together now, outdoors on a warm night. In a shaky paradise.

So we get into it, the legend of Dao.

37

David Tao was born in Vietnam. At the age of two, his widowed mother fled to a refugee camp in Hong Kong. She and her son were resettled not long after in East London. When he was eighteen, he signed up for military service and served with the British army’s peacekeeping force in Bosnia. Whatever he saw there must have put him off keeping peace for life because he left the military right after that. He found some work in private security and was assigned a detail for a high-profile diplomatic event. At that event there’d been a security threat to one of the VIPs. Dao was the man who identified it and managed to avert a crisis.

Ray Zhang of Zhang-Wei Industries was the VIP.

“That’s where they met,” I say.

“He caught Ray Zhang’s eye,” Lam replies. “Poor school performance but he had a gift with languages. Military training, and he spoke English, Vietnamese, and Cantonese fluently.”

“A good close protection officer is hard to find,” says Brazuca. “He had the skills.”

“It’s about loyalty, too. Ray Zhang and Dao were loyal to each other. Dao stayed with the Zhang family for years. He became head of their personal security detail and their fixer.”

“What’s with his name, though?” I ask. “How did it become Dao?”

Lam shrugs. “Maybe someone got it wrong once and it stuck. Maybe it’s a nickname. One of the meanings of Dao is a sword.”

“Nice bit of orientalism there,” I say. “So he went into the military, not a gang.”

Brazuca nods. “But it doesn’t mean he didn’t have dealings with organized crime. Ray Zhang was rumored to have some shady links. He gambled recreationally, too. It’s possible that Dao’s connections to Three Phoenix came through him.”