The Yellow Agent From Hong Kong

I had always wanted to set a novel in China, and to this day The Yellow Agent is the closest I’ ever come to doing so. For years an unfinished outline rested in my laptop, which I referred to on and off and never could quite immerse myself in writing the story I had in mind because I never really spent any time in mainland China. By the time I finished the outline, on eight long haul flights for my consulting business to Central Asia in 2019, I was determined to scout-out and immerse myself in Shanghai for a time in 2020 and began writing a story with a Chinese main protagonist in earnest. It did not contain Frank Corso, my alter ego’s alter ego, at all, but instead opened with zooming view from the sky down to the face of the antagonist atop the tallest Shanghai skyscraper surveying the world as his future oyster.

In the movie I imagined in my mind, I had chosen an area of the Yangtze River Delta, where I knew China’s shipbuilders were intent on a grand plan of building ships in the spirit of Henry Ford, using assembly lines on land. My evil man’s plan was to disrupt the world of shipping, making China the financial center of the earth through a war on commerce. I wanted the story to be told in contemporary time. He was corrupt, abrupt, mean spirited, and had hidden scars as well as a rather mysterious origin and history that even those closest to him were unaware of – not unlike Astor Choi in this story. My original plan was to make him the mastermind of a world plot where controllable biological weapons would eliminate the human inhabitants, but keep the grounds and infrastructure safe to move in and occupy after a period of sweeping for still living beings. But when I got down to a serious writing, there was no path to compete with the stories of coronavirus. The subject of daily press would make the story less plausible than any reality. So I returned to my comfort zone, and a period in 2005 when the first supposedly ‘elected’ Chief Executive of the Special Administrative Region (SAR) of Hong Kong, and the former British colony’s new Chinese protectorate is facing a first real crisis of dissent.

Thus, the Frank Corso Mysteries series was born, and The Yellow Agent is the travelling sequel to The Divine Travel Agency. Despite all the press revelations about Covid-19, its origins, and the may-hem its wrath has wrecked on the world, this story does hopefully expose the scale of havoc that can be exported to enemies by autocratic regimes and their dark proxies. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I did writing it.

                                    So, where to begin...

March 14, 2005

           In the 5^th century BC, someone with authority on military matters wrote an ancient Chinese military treatise, The Art of War.

          The underlying theme is: all war is based on deception. The writing stresses execution through espionage, with important roles played by intelligence operatives. To this day, it remains a strategic reference for politicians motivated by a lust for power.

          The book is attributed to Sun Tzu, who is, by all accounts, an analyst by nature, applying himself to military matters. Detailed guidance for leadership, explanations for use of weapons, and timing of strategies, form a basis for the over-arching goal – which is: to win.

         This book is dedicated to all world leaders, and the politicians who surround them. You know who you are, and the public will come to know you by your conduct – not your rhetoric.

                     From a Frank Corso handwritten Journal.

                     (Reproduced in Rock Salt type)

Excerpt...

"We took a taxi from Chek Lap Kok airport, which was built on land reclaimed off Lantau Island to the west of Hong Kong Island. I had been here once before in 1996, and recalled my shock when the plane literally grazed the rooftops of Kowloon on approach at the old Kai Tak airport before the British ceded their leases back to the Chinese. I spoke with the pilot disembarking then, who told me the Kai Tak runway was one of the shortest in the world; required the steepest angle of descent; and, was one of, if not the, most difficult landings for any pilot. However, the scary landing of the old airport across Victoria Harbor, on the Kowloon side, was offset by an easy access into Hong Kong, and paled in comparison with the one hour kill-or-be-killed, and laugh-in-the-face-of-death, speeding taxi driver dodging traffic on this morning. 

       The motorways and tunnels were jammed with a speeding mix of crisscrossing drivers, making for the most dangerous roadway I had ever seen. Time is a nitrous oxide oxidizer on steroids and rocket fuel to a Hong Konger. This frenetic pace of pure capitalism suits the free driving Cantonese culture to squeeze as much of it into one day as humanly possible – if, they don’t get killed racing between meetings. 

       Hong Kong is unmistakably unique, and like no other city in the world. It’s more densely populated than New York, and vibrates with a jet set fueled fusion of East meets West. This island miracle is built mostly on the north side of a mountain range, along a harbor facing The New Territories and Mainland China. Its skyline is stacked with ever taller skyscrapers, constantly multiplying in a building race of its property tycoons to break their last competitor’s height and design award records. The insatiable appetite for offices and housing was, heretofore, driven by multinational businesses' desire for access to China. More recently, however, a growing Chinese wealth class was choosing Hong Kong as a way station for moving themselves, and their money, west. 

       The dense concrete jungle is built into the sloping crevices under Victoria Peak, and is accessed by pedestrians via the largest network of escalators ever built. Both reach high into a persistent low lying fog that hangs over what local’s call, ‘The Peak’, which is the highest elevation on the island. An untamed jungle, that in 1996 had limited development by comparison, flows down the other side of its steep mountain range to its Southern District and beaches of Repulse Bay facing the South China Sea. 

       On this and every morning, ever-present crowds of Chinese, and a dwindling number of expats, jostle for space on streets overflowing with merchants selling their meats, fish, and fowl, in huts alongside glitzy street shops, wedged in-between modern stone and glass sky-scrapers, and street food merchant carts – reminding one, the culture has always been Chinese dominated.

       The taxicab driver almost killed us making a U-turn at the Star Ferry terminal to swing us around to the Mandarin Hotel entrance on Connaught Road, which is the main harborside commercial road running through Hong Kong’s Central District. My escort, as with all locals accustomed to Hong Kong cabbies whose driving credentials seem to be purchased rather than requiring a test, wasn’t fazed by a near miss of a Volvo truck piggy backing two lorries of live chickens."

The Yellow Agent From Hong Kong — A Frank Corso Mystery