Transmission #7-3-7-5; Addendum
Kowloon City, Hong Kong; Wok'n'Roll Restaurant
"Make them an offer they can't refuse."
1730 hrs; December 3rd, 1963
Truth be told, getting people to do what you want isn't hard.
All it takes is the right leverage.
Graham knew from the start what the head of the Triple Threats prided over anything else: propriety. For Hiashi Hyuga everyone had a place, and everyone will abide. Substance and status mattered to him above all things. If the man could aggrandize himself at the expense of his enemies, muscle out the competition to carve out his own little city-state, then that was all the cherry Graham needed to dangle.
Easy.
Karin, too, was another one.
Didn't take much to get a handle of the Moldovan sleeper agent. People condescend, write her off, see her as nothing more but an annoying triviality who glomps onto whichever flavor of the month catches her eye; I mean, hell, by the time Graham got to her, she was bouncing between professors like a circus flea in summer. But Graham saw past her psyche evaluation in her KGB file to see a girl who only ever saw her worth coming from others. If she could be of some use to them, it made her feel whole.
Yes, she was boisterous, haughty and condescending; as any coming through the ranks of the Kremlin.
And easy.
Which was no different for Mr. Rock Lee and Ms. Ten-Ten Bei.
Naive, precocious, undiscerning, and for the most part, wholly gullible; made all his training suffered in Camp Peary seem utterly pointless. Days and weeks spent learning to discern a target's habits, routine, wants, regrets; being able to know what they'd eat for breakfast three days out, noting every twitch of a cheek muscle or eyebrow and knowing what emotion sparked that response. Yet, in the end, Rock Lee was an open book; he practically gave him the answers soon as he met him in this ornate, ramshackle of a joint by the edge of Victoria Harbor. A place caught struggling between what was, and what ostensibly is the case.
Much like these two before him.
Rock Lee: after the war, Lee's father was one of the many soldiers who couldn't find work during reconstruction. Nameless, faceless, a nobody; the man was disheartened first by fighting the Japanese, then later his fellow countrymen. The civl war on the mainland took away much - his wife, his home, his soul. But for all his faults, he loved Rock dearly. So much so, he pushed past the drinking problem, the debts, and the shellshock to wind up at the door of a former friend.
Might Guy.
The man was a "Jap" by the smallest of margins - an austronesian mother, a "Karayuki-san" - who found herself on one of the coal ships heading out of Ishigaki. And a Chinese father. A miner, and a middling martial artist. Very much like this restaurant, Guy was a man caught between two realms of possibility. On the one hand, he was an outsider whose mother skated by on all fours or her back. Price depending. And whose father was a bumpkin who peddled dime-rag Shaolin booklets for extra cash. Yet, from this meager upbringing and mongrel heritage, an indomitable fire was born.
"Your teacher was well-travelled before he started his school," Graham goes, trying to rub out the biting pain in his thigh. "Bangkok, Okinawa, Uruma, Taihoku City before it became Taipei. Before your father fought with the Nationalists, he was one of his first students."
"Yes..." Rock Lee says hesitantly, carefully; muscles tense like a wound up cobra.
God, this kid is tense.
Ms. Bei was, too; her knuckles were white, having a death grip on Lee's arm. She glares daggers at Graham, and Tokuga, and Karin, too - who in spite of her best efforts was still having a hard time with the menu. When she finally blurts out an order for ngau lam mein, her Moldovan drizzles over the Cantonese like honey on one of those fried sesame sticks. Yet, it was neither sweet, nor did Ms. Ten-Ten Bei take kindly to it, either.
"This will go a lot easier without the dirty looks, Ten-Ten." The young Hyuga princeling says icily, minding the steaming cup of tea in his hand.
It does little to cool Ms. Bei down.
"You! The audacity of you! 咸家鏟, 做乜尻! Ptooah!" She spits.
"收聲."
"Neji, please, there's no need for that." Lee pleads.
Tokuga slams his fist on in the table. "你哋而家都冇權講嘢!" He shouts, the line between his anger and the terribly poor decision of pulling his p38 from its holster being mere inches.
"Happen to catch that?" Graham turns to Karin.
"Does this mean I'm not getting my noodles?"
Six years of training in Asiatic linguistics, my ass.
"No, no, no!" The chair scrapes against the mottled floorboards. Graham pushes himself off to ease his nagging leg, the cheap Chinese painkillers the Triad peddled did little to nothing. Fuckers and their goddamn rhino horn bullshit!, he thinks sadly. Ugh, what he wouldn't do for some good old fashioned dihydrohydroxycodeinone.
Or opium.
Opium sounded nice right now.
"Hand off the gun - OFF the gun." Graham "instructs" Tokuga - who emphasized he didn't liking being "told" what to do - to remove his hands an inch or two away from his sidearm. It wouldn't have ended well, judging by the bulging veins near the Hyuga's eyes. "We're not here for that; you're boss and I agreed this wasn't the priority...yet."
"Yet?" Rock Lee questions.
Well, if his bushy eyebrows wouldn't quirk up before, they certainly would now. "Yet", Graham reaffirms, but also emphasizing that eventuality wasn't a given: for what the dozen or so men posted outside do in the next twelve minutes or so totally depends on how this conversation would go. Ms. Ten-Ten Bei has to be held back as she spits, she kicks, and curses a man like Graham. To some boiling pot in Diyu or what have you.
S'fine.
People have said worse to him in the past.
Graham limps forward, passing around Neji Hyuuga who tries hard to hold onto his tea calmly. He assures Ms. Ten-Ten Bei it's not going to come to that - "he" won't let it, Graham nods over to Lee. Not after he lays down the one, non-negotiable, clumsy-as-fuck hook even the greenest of agents would know how to pull. The hook which this emotionally spirited and impulsive duo before him would have no choice but to consider.
"Give or take, there are around twelve slightly perturbed men of ill repute waiting outside," Graham says; Lee instinctively draws away as he trudges in closer. "They'd love nothing more than to put this place to the torch. Sure. You could put up a fight, but...I mean, c'mon? We know how that'll go."
"...The authorities will come." Lee tells him this as if it's foregone conclusion, and Graham agrees: they will.
Eventually.
And judging by Neji's snort, not in enough time to matter; too many of Hong Kong's finest are on the Triad's payroll. Even if the call were to be made, who's to say it'll make enough rounds fast enough for the response to count? How many of these few innocents in the Wok 'n' Roll right now are going to be put on the line, because Rock Lee made a bet on the law to do the right thing.
"But the right thing tonight doesn't rely on them, Lee, it's on you. You can do the right thing here, and make this night go on like any other. Where we've been sitting at this table, we order our food - as best as some of us can-"
"Hey!" Karin angrily directs at Graham.
"You come out, you serve us, we pay the bill, and we go off on our way. Till next time we call on you. For a job. A simple one."
"A job?" Ms. Ten-Ten Bei asks for Lee, who stands silent; his rosy cheeks are flush with nerves, and Graham can see the beads of sweat pooling around his shirt collar. "Lee won't be any good for the kinds of jobs his family are into."
The veins in Neji's face burst a little more as his anger almost boils over. Almost; Graham brings Ms. Bei's attention towards him. Along with most of the onlookers around the Wok 'n' Roll, who attempt at enjoying their meals.
"You're right, he's not. But that's not what we're asking him to do." He looks over at Lee, the black tint of his glasses hiding the spark in his eyes. "You're a security guard, and that's all Hiashi wants. Security. S'it. No more, no less, friend."
"I'm not your friend," Lee says; Ah, Graham thinks, the first little bit of push-back.
So the kid does have a spine of metal to go along with those fists.
"Like I said I can be. And a good one," Graham circles about them - not so much for the show of it, but because if he doesn't walk it off, this pain is going to eat him whole. He tries to play it off, leans off to one side, arches his back. But nothing; Karin appears to get a kick of how uncomfortable he is. "Because for your troubles doing us a solid, I will pay you for the time."
"We don't want money." Ten-Ten says to him.
"No, but you need it." Graham says smoothly, reaching into his back pocket to rifle out the "hook" he'd worked tirelessly to find. In this, Karin did prove her use. She was able to track down the right people, follow the right leads, and understand, through monotonous, tedious hours of study, the one time undecipherable code of the Northern Shaolin.
Thankfully, Might Guy's father kept a copious record in all the pamphlets he wrote down in the years prior to his death.
"But I know money isn't the only thing you'd like. No; so, I'm not simply offering cash - good American dollars, by the way. But also information regarding the man whom you, Mr. Lee, fought the night President Diem was killed...And what his relationship is pertaining to your old mentor."
Graham never liked strong-arming kids; they were too honest, too simple, too easy. Rock Lee wasn't a man you'd think could be pressured into doing what you need. The pride and glory of the Hong Kong martial arts scene, who'd taken his master's teachings and won countless accolades from Sichuan all the way to Beijing. He'd been a craw in the People's Liberation Army, for no matter how many times they tried to best this upstart from the stolen British territory, Lee trounced all their purported "masters".
But the look on his face says Graham landed the knockout blow.
Ms. Ten-Ten Bei, however, was another matter entirely.
Tough as nails, and about as sharp as the blades she is so proficient in; her skillset was honed on the Hong Kong streets. Ever since the Japanese occupation took from her parents everything they had. Then the Nationalists took whatever was left in their hasty retreat from the mainland. And finally, the Communist partisans here divvied up the remainder of their bones. She became cynical, skeptical, hard-working, honest, and never let her guard down. But once she did, Graham knew they were easy to manipulate. Bringing Neji along, too, was a bonus - it'd put in as much work on the Hyuga, as it did his "friends". Graham made a note to play on that later. Tokuga was only the parrot on his shoulder. Boy made noise, squawked, but he was only really something to look at.
No, but what really mattered was what Graham held now in the palm of his hand. It was up to Rock Lee to nod, say 'yes', and agree if he wanted to know what it was. What this small little bauble had to do with their Sifu Guy, and if praying at that small little tombstone in the back was worth their time.
Ten-Ten stands against Lee, face betraying her unease. To her, Graham is an enigma - too poised, too confident, and far too informed. His very presence feels invasive, and Graham's straightforwardness does nothing to earn her trust. Still, she doesn't speak - for Graham has put this squarely on Lee to to decide. "Well, they're waiting," Graham says, eluding to the mobsters waiting outside; it's less a threat, than it is a fact.
"Who are you?" She asks Graham.
Graham indulges.
He's Central Intelligence.
Working with the Triads is more a necessity, than a luxury. But one he needs if his employers plans are to be successful. Lee's too, if he's looking for a little payback against the man who essentially cost him his job.
Lee's response is measured but heavy. Standing solid like his namesake, yet there's a brittleness beneath, as though a single wrong move might shatter him entirely. His voice, steady, cuts through the silence, even if it's a bit choked up. "So be it," he responds.
Graham's smile is small, imperceptible, but it's there - a glimmer of satisfaction that lingers long enough to unsettle. With a casual flick of his wrist, he tosses the small medallion toward Lee. It spins through the air, catching the dim light as it goes, before Lee snatches it in one smooth motion. His eyes fall to the hexagonal chip's surface, worn and weathered, but its image of a white lotus flower being clear and apparent.
"Good," Graham says in a matter-of-fact tone, biting his bottom lip to take a bit of pressure off his throbbing leg. "Then I look forward to seeing how this all plays out."