The Yellow Agent from Hong Kong

A Frank Corso Mystery

Description

A time capsule of the former British Colony's transition to Modern Hong Kong.

On a field trip to Hong Kong, the Wall Street field analyst is spun into motion on a course that could change the balance of world power. Highly influenced by the powers of suggestion, Corso must use his unique skills to move through a complex web of triads, assassins, and evil political agendas that plot a course for the equivalent of a single world order. Summoning the Art of War and Kung Fu, he must uncover the axis of rotation around which the script he has written himself into revolves. He must find…The Yellow Agent from Hong Kong.

Sujets

• Suspenso
• Romance
• Suspense
• Danger
• Fiction
• Hong Kong

Informations

• Publié par: Archway Publishing
• Date de parution: 24 février 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781665737289
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

The Yellow Agent from Hong Kong
A FRANK CORSO MYSTERY


Copyright © 2023 A Frank Corso Mystery.
 
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
 
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
 
 
Archway Publishing
1663 Liberty Drive
Bloomington, IN 47403
www.archwaypublishing.com
844-669-3957
 
Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.
 
Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.
 
ISBN: 978-1-6657-3729-6 (sc)
ISBN: 978-1-6657-3727-2 (hc)
ISBN: 978-1-6657-3728-9 (e)
 
Library of Congress Control Number: 2023900896
 
 
 
Archway Publishing rev. date: 03/24/2023
CHAPTERS
Art of War
PART ONE
CHAPTER I:Laying Plans

CHAPTER II:Waging War

CHAPTER III:Attack by Stratagem
PART TWO
CHAPTER IV:Tactical Dispositions

CHAPTER V:Energy

CHAPTER VI:Weak Points and Strong
PART THREE
CHAPTER VII:Maneuvering

CHAPTER VIII:Variation in Tactics

CHAPTER IX:The Army on the March
PART FOUR
CHAPTER X:Terrain

CHAPTER XI:The Nine Situations

CHAPTER XII:The Attack by Fire
PART FIVE
CHAPTER XIII:The Use of Spies

Frank Corso Mysteries
The Divine Travel Agency
The Yellow Agent from Hong Kong



Frank Corso runs his own Wall Street Research consultancy. On a planned research trip to Hong Kong, a long-time friend unexpectedly turns up for the ride. In early March 2005, the city is on a razor’s edge attempting to balance a culture of free enterprise with its new protectorate, China. The Chinese Communist Party’s disposition for political and controlled economic freedoms is at the cross-currents.
Tung Chee-Hwa, a shipping tycoon, who was hand-selected by an Electoral College hand-picked by the Chinese Government as the former British Colony’s first Chief Executive, is facing enormous pressure to suppress dissent. In a city from which personal independence and free enterprise sprang a colossus international finance hub, Corso comes into the cross-hairs of some of its most powerful men. In a combat that could threaten humanity, he inadvertently becomes a central actor in a power struggle whose proxy is…The Yellow Agent from Hong Kong.
The South China Sea is an important body of water, collectively surrounded by China, Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines. When you add the large economies of Japan and Taiwan, in the Indo-Pacific, half the world’s maritime trade, and as much as a third of the seaborne trade of crude oil passes through the South China Sea. If the South China Sea were a human body, Hong Kong would be its heart. It is blessed with conceivably the finest natural harbor in the world, and trade and finance are its lifeblood.
There are three types of agents: A person who acts for another person or entity; chemical agents; and, secret agents. Corso is about to encounter all three at the center of a power struggle for the dominance of world trade and finance. He is about to match wits with Asia’s most dangerous assassin – in a desperate search for…The Yellow Agent from Hong Kong.

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
– Lord Acton


Author’s Note
This is a work of fiction. Certain main persons, however, who appear as: Smokey, Chips, Fresco, and Archangelo Francesco Corso, A/K/A, Frank Corso (my alter ego’s alter ego), perhaps have some basis in reality – as do some of the events and places during the timeline that supports the internal logic of the story. There are also actors like Nino, Sven, P. Diddy, Jack, Lara Flynn Boyle, Kevin O’Donnell, Sky Dayton, George Magnus, Li Ka-shing, Tung Chee-Hwa, Michael Steinhardt, and John Lattanzio that populate the story; and who, are actual individuals. All other characters and dramatizations of real persons are an invention.
Similarly, some of the locations, establishments, and events that move the story along are factual and necessary to provide a reference structure for readers looking forward to experiencing Hong Kong. Writers of fiction often use a combination of fact, fiction, and history to immerse their readers, and to make their stories, ‘work’ in what is often referred in novelists’ parlance as ‘faction’. As you may learn from a reference to a Shanghai born businessman who became the first chief executive of Hong Kong after the transfer of sovereignty to the Chinese, ‘faction’, like an autonomous one country - two systems constitutional principle, is more fiction than reality. Accordingly, many of the places, businesses, and incidents are the product of my imagination, and/or are used fictitiously. Thus, any resemblance to any real situations (including fictions of events with real persons noted), establishments, political or otherwise, and/or episodes, may be purely coincidental.
Lastly, as a writer, infusing flavor into the setting can be a difficult task, and ascribing diction to Chinese dialects is daunting. Given the vast number of variations, I have chosen to distinguish between light vs. heavy accents for each Chinese character, with substitution of ‘h’ for ‘r’ where I felt appropriate, and removed the articles from some of their spoken words, as many not sent abroad for higher education tend to omit. In addition, I have attempted to add certain inflections, in what I call “Cantonized English,” in each character’s speech. If I have failed in these efforts, please forgive me.
Introduction
I had always wanted to set a novel in China, and to this day The Yellow Agent is the closest I’ve ever come to doing so. For years an unfinished outline rested in my laptop, which I referred to off-and-on 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 begin 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 a 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 chose an area near 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 shadow war on commerce. I wanted the story to be told in contemporary time. The antagonist 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. In my original outline, he was a 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 SAR or, Special Administrative Region of Hong Kong, was facing a first real crisis of dissent after the former British Colony transferred sovereignty to China.
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 mayhem its wrath has wrecked on the planet, this story does hopefully expose the scale of havoc which 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.
CALCULATIONS OF A YELLOW AGENT
PART ONE:
The Moral Law – Causes the people to be in complete accord with their ruler, so that they will follow him