S.I.D.

Chapter 8

Maybe Shen Wei was right; this seemed to be a better fit for him.

Zheng Daqian rubbed the sleep out of his eyes as he groped for his ringing phone. His secretary next to him grumbled and turned away from him and went back to sleep. Who was calling at 5:00am???

"What?" He said irritably.

"Is this Zheng Daqian?" A voice with a slight accent asked.

"Who is this? Do you know what time it is here?" He was ready to hang up on this rude person.

"I'm sorry, I forget the difference in time," the voice apologized. "It's 11:00am here. I will call back later."

"No, wait. Give me a few seconds to wake up," Zheng Daqian tried to think. Someone was calling from an area 6 hours ahead of China, and with an accent. Definitely a foreigner.

"Yes, this is Zheng Daqian. May I ask where you are calling from?" The grumpy man was replaced with a gentleman.

"I'm calling from my home in Hawaii. The sun is up, and my brain has left my body. I must have woken you. I am an apology."

Hawaii? This guy must have some money. He tried not to laugh at the man's funny grammar.

"You speak Chinese very well," Zheng Daqian knew that praising a person for speaking a foreign language always worked.

"No, no. I move here from China over 20 years ago and have forgotten most of my words," the voice sounded happy.

"How can I help you, Mister -"

"Fat Cat."

Fat Cat? He must have gotten his Chinese all mixed up again.

"Okay, Mr. Fat Cat. So what can I do for you?"

"I am wanting to invest in stocks but don't have much time to wait to make money. I heard you are skilled to make money fast."

Bingo. Zheng Daqian smelled easy money. Foreigners tended to be naive and wanted to get into the highly volatile but often lucrative Chinese stocks. They needed someone to translate the complicated language. Fortunately Mr. Fat Cat spoke passable Chinese; the stock market part would be up to him, and no one would know if some funds went missing in the "translation."

"Maybe I can help you. Do you have a particular stock in mind?"

"Actually, I do. It is small computer company called Saiyan Systems. My friends and I have stock in it, but price does not move. We want price to go up and then we sell to make the profit."

Ah, stock manipulation. Dangerous, but he was successful at it.

"Let me look up this company and I will get back to you at this number."

"Yes, much xie-xie, Mr. Zheng."

Zheng Daqian went to work immediately, looking up Saiyan Systems. It was a small, unassuming company, with nothing remarkable about it. No wonder it was stagnant; why did this company catch Fat Cat's eye? He kept looking at websites, articles, not much about them. Then he came across a gaming site and there they were, rumors about a new mystery game called, "Vigilante" that was in the works and promised to be both challenging and exciting. All it would take was one good game, and the company could be set. The success of the Tomb Raiders and Angry Birds games were good examples - toys, movies, books, amusement park attractions, and they were still creating different versions, years later. If gamers were already praising this "Vigilante," this would be a good time to get some stock before the game got released. He tapped the CALL icon on his phone.