Season One, Episode Fourteen: The First Elder

Charlo' returned to their room at the Brother Hotel at 9 p.m. She found Markus changing, preparing to go out.
‘How was Taipei 101?’
‘Awesome. The tallest building in the world. The mall was too expensive for me though. I thought everything in Taiwan was cheap.’
He let that one go.
‘There is one in Dubai that's taller. It's called the Burj Dubai, 160 floors high. But since it's not completed yet, this one is still officially the tallest one.’
‘I see you've done your research. Anything else while I was away?’
She picked up the book from the sofa. American Gods by Neil Gaiman.
‘So are you going somewhere?’ she asked as he was rifling through his bag. ‘Without me?’
He picked out the statuette of the three Chinese men, the thing he called the Three Elders.
‘We're going somewhere, so get ready,’ he said.
‘I only just got back. Can't I get some rest for a change.’
‘Later. We've got an appointment.’

Markus marched around the Renai Circle, looking into a side alley for a pub he used to know, but it was no longer around. Fancy French bakeries and Japanese design stores were the new standards around here. The circle was a major traffic intersection on Taipei's tony east side. Charlo' walked behind him, as if they were on separate trips. She had had no time to change, so she felt sweaty and self-conscious in her pink T-shirt and jeans. She wasn't dressed for an important visit, but maybe the target of their visit wouldn't mind.
Markus kept looking left and right, as if lost. Asian cities changed much faster than American ones, and Markus Bentley had been away from Taiwan for at least five years. He looked foolish, but then Charlo' couldn't know.
He stepped into an alley where local couples were leaving a restaurant through a garish red gate. Charlo' didn't read Chinese characters, and she wondered whether Markus could.
He turned right, she followed. He turned left, she followed. Several times, she had to press herself against parked motorcycles as some black limousine worked its way through the narrow alleys built for, well, motorcycles.
It was 10 o'clock sharp when she saw Markus stop outside the doorway to a five-floor apartment building and press the bell. She couldn't hear what he was saying, but she slowed down, as he had told her to. The buzzer rang, he went in, and turned around, motioning at her.
‘I'm in?’ she asked.
‘You're in. But don't say too much. Don't say anything about what we did back home together.’
A concierge in the marble and gilt lobby gave them a magnetic card that allowed them to take the elevator up to the fourth.
The welcome was warm. A bulky man in a Hawaiian shirt, about sixty, long gray hair and a beard covering his smile. He embraced Markus in the doorway and then let them in.
‘I am Lassiter, so you can call me Lass,’ he told Charlo' as he shook her hand.
The apartment had bright white walls, but dark wooden furniture, most of it Chinese, giving the place the appearance of an antiques store. Lassiter signaled them to sit down on a cream leather couch, while he disappeared out of view for a minute before coming back with three bowls filled with a dark brew.
‘Red bean soup, the best sweet in the world. Watch it, it's hot,’ he told Charlo' with a smile.
The conversation was thin, the brew wasn't. Lassiter and Bentley obviously were aficionados, Charlo' was the newcomer to Chinese food, the odd one out.
‘We have something in common,’ Markus said when the two men were reaching the bottom of their bowls.
He pulled the statuette out of his bag and put it in the middle of the table. Lassiter stared at it with an expressionless face and turned back into an adjacent room. He returned with what looked like a precise copy of the same Three Elders.
‘Where did you get yours from?’ Lass asked.
‘My sister gave it to me before she died.’
Lass looked taken aback but didn't say a word.
‘Your sister died, my condolences,’ he said, as an afterthought. ‘Who told you?’
‘A man came to my house one morning with a laptop showing what happened.’
‘You mean like on YouTube? What did he look like? Who was he?’
Markus gave the story of the man in the car who deposited the computer at his place, and continued with the visit later that morning.
‘He was really messed up. Blood all over, falling, moaning. He called himself Riot. Never seen him since.’
Lassiter didn't register any reaction.
‘So you think I can help you?’
‘My sister had this guy bring me the Three Elders. That must have been her way of telling me the solution lies here,’ Markus said.
‘Did this Riot guy pass on anything else?’
‘Nothing significant,’ Markus said.
‘Where are you staying? Just in case I can reach you with new information.’
‘At the Brother Hotel,’ Charlo' cut in, just too hastily. Bentley shot her a look of why don't you shut up you were doing so well.
Lassiter refilled their red bean soup. The conversation turned to memories of old Taipei from there on. Charlo' was fascinated.
‘The man looks like the pilot from Lost,’ she told Bentley after they had left the building.
Markus pulled out the Three Elders and pointed at the one wearing yellow.
‘That's Lassiter?’
‘That's Lass.’
‘Where are the others?’
‘We need to find one more,’ Markus said.
A dark BMW turned into the alley, careful not to scrape against the parked motorcycles.
‘What about the third one?’ Charlo' asked.
‘He's my father.’

NEXT: Markus Bentley looks for the second elder in Taiwan in Season One, Episode Fifteen before February 13.

Season One, Episode Three: Camry

'Hitchcock it ain't, but it will do,' said the man.
He looked at the fading image of the woman looking up at the camera in the parking lot, and then clapped the laptop shut.
He was sitting in the back of the Mercedes F700, only barely acknowledging the presence of the bulky man in the front passenger seat who was trying to face him.
'Do you know how to get this to him?' he asked.
'The old-fashioned way, Mr. Camry.’
Camry disliked strangers using his name. Or using names anywhere, for that matter. Camry looked away to the chauffeur's neck, then to the passing cityscape outside. Five-lane highways.
He was wearing a nice Italian suit, but he still looked like the scrawny Eastside punk he grew up as. He'd rather be lounging around the house in shorts and Hawaiian shirt at his private pool, but today it just wasn't possible. There was work to do. The Brother Hotel wouldn't take types like him in half underwear.
'Make sure it's clean ten out of ten,' he said as he reached across the car to hand the laptop to the passenger.
The fat guy mumbled something. In another place, Camry would've slapped him for being disrespectful, if not worse. But he needed his suit to be immaculate for the meeting. So all he allowed himself was a look of disdain. Make the guy feel like he's shit, Camry thought.
He waved so the chauffeur caught the gesture. The car left the highway and stopped at the next intersection. Out stepped the passenger, clutching the laptop as if it were a treasure. It was.

Markus Bentley was reaching for a stick of marzipan on the plate next to his laptop. He was going through one of those forums for whining and homesick expats in an Asian country. He had never liked the word expat, it made him think of spoiled brats in suits, living in luxury apartments with swimming pool and chauffeur-driven cars paid for by the company back home. If they had kids, they sent them to astronomically expensive schools where they grew into the perfect copy of the spoiled brat their father was. Bentley had never been an expat of this type, and he didn't miss the life. He just wanted to stay aware of what was happening on his former home turf.
The sound of the car penetrated his spatial awareness like a fly suddenly turns up in your peripheral sight. You know there's something there, but it's only later you notice what it is and you know you don't like it. He looked up at the window on his right, even though you couldn't see the road from there.
Dry fields with lines of dry knob trees stretching between them, providing his place with a false sense of privacy. That was the reason he had chosen this place. Fortunately, he was not the one who had to get up early and toil in those fields all day long. That was the task of the farmer who lived across the road and who owned this place.
The farmer drove a truck and a couple of nasty-looking vehicles farmers drive on the fields. None of those machines produced the type of rhythm he was hearing now.
Bentley folded the laptop screen and stood up while munching on the marzipan.
At the end of the lane he could spot the mailbox. The farmer's house was hidden by apple trees and brushwork, a natural screen to stop curious looks in both directions.

'Here comes Mister Paranoia,' Markus said to noone in particular.
The dark red car drove up to his mailbox. With the engine still running, a fat guy in a suit stepped out, carrying a rectangular black object. Markus kept himself in the background, so the guy couldn't spot him. Even from inside, he could tell the guy was carrying a laptop or something like it. The fat man seemed to be checking the number on the mailbox, and then deposited the object at its foot. Before Markus had the chance to recover from his surprise, the man turned around and drove off.
Markus waited until the car had vanished and counted to ten. Then he grabbed a knife from the kitchen and walked out, digesting the last of his marzipan.
He approached the mailbox like it was a snarling mountain lion. With one more look in the direction of the empty road, he crouched on the dusty ground and looked at the object. It was a laptop alright, without a bag. Just sitting there in the dust. What kind of freak dumped a laptop like this on a stranger's front step, in the middle of the countryside? He must have driven here especially for him, otherwise he just could have dumped in a river or in the sea, or somewhere behind the bushes. Markus looked around once more and did the human thing. He picked up the thing, turned it around to see if it wasn't boobytrapped, and took the thing home. The battery had been taken out, so he had to plug it in.
While the thing warmed up, he went for another stick of marzipan in the fridge. If this were a movie, the laptop would blow up and smash his house into a fireball. Instead, it went on forever loading up. No password requested, but it ended with the arrow of the forward sign for a video recording. Was this guy going to share his exploits on YouTube?
Markus took another bite and risked it. He clicked the arrow.
Bentley swore and sat down. His appetite for marzipan was taking a break.
What was she doing, and what was that fat guy showing him this? Was this a new way of delivering a ransom note for a kidnap victim? He watched as the woman walked around the office and started packing up everything in sight. Markus had never been to her office. In fact, he hadn't met up with her in years. A phone call here and there, around Christmas if he remembered, because that was the old way of doing things.
One thing was certain. The laptop wouldn't blow up, not before the ending anyway. The fat guy in the car wanted him to see all of this.
Just like the guard at the office block had done before him, Markus peered at the screen trying to discern the objects the woman was taking away with her. Office equipment, pictures, but then there were the knickknacks to think about. Bentley leaned closer.
He froze when he saw the guard in his room watching the woman on camera. He tried to memorize his face, but there was not that much to go on.
He recognized the small porcelain effigy of the three men which the woman put in her cloth bag. He didn't recognize the faceless red doll. Was that a cat, or a red snowman, or what other creature. The thing wore Chinese characters on its chest.
He saw the guard reach for his gun. The woman in the elevator. Not getting out through the front door. The woman alone in the parking lot. The camera turned away.
Markus pushed his chair backward and slammed his fist on the table next to the laptop. The screen returned to the arrow. He could watch it all again if he wanted to.

A low buzz reached him from under the table. He had installed the sensors in the middle of the night, to avoid attracting his only neighbor's attention. Country folks could be nosy. The sensors didn't cover the mailbox and the side of the street, only the immediate vicinity of the house.
Markus stood up and pressed himself against the wall, near the same window from where he had watched the fat guy dump the laptop. Was he coming to take back his prized possession?
Bentley moved ever so slightly forward. The door bell rang. It sounded like a waterfall compared to the whisper of the alarm buzzer. Why hadn't hear the car approaching?
Markus edged closer to the window. Until he saw his uninvited visitor. Definitely not the fat guy with the laptop. A wiry thin guy, shaking, holding an object in his left hand. The porcelain figurine of the three men Bentley had seen his sister remove from her office.

NEXT: A Riot comes down in Episode Four of Concentric before October 12.