Jeff contemplates over what he has been told. From what he remembers, he stumbled upon Scylla and Charybdis when he was still working in Le Cargaison. "So, you're telling me that Le Cargaison is taking in money from under the table? And only Sutthirak knows about it," he asked Folk after.

"There ish a high chansh, yes," answered Folk in the midst of his mastication.

"Impossible. Sutthirak may not be a very nice human being, but he is not that corrupted: he would not take it to this level," said Jeff, picking up the steak knife to cut a piece from his Torikatsu.

"Ish he?" Folk downs his food and locks eyes with Jeff's. "When money is on the line, my friend, even the most meek can turn feral – believe that."

"But if this money you are talking about is indeed payments to Le Cargaison, whoever is paying can just write checks, course it through a bank, and that's it – payment made – right? Why use two computer systems?"

Folk raises the pointer from the same hand that holds his spoon. "These are not MS Word or Framemaker we are talking about here, Jeff. You could be forgetting that they are two off-the-radar systems: they are not in the company's server," he said, dropping the finger after.

"Oh yeah. I almost forgot about that," replied Jeff, dipping his fried chicken into its sauce – a dark, sweet-smelling liquid in a small saucer.

"Tell me, Jeff. What do you remember from Scylla and Charybdis?"

"One time, I was doing a system audit just to make sure that all is accounted for."

"So, if one messes up, we can fix it easily, right?"

"Correct. While I was at that, I ran into one server under Sutthirak. It was stand-alone – separate."

"That's TST's personal server, which is not under Le Cargaison's system assets."

"That's right. It's strange because it has an unusually large memory capacity: its hard disk rivals most of the company's production servers." Jeff puts the breaded chicken in his mouth, then segregates a small portion of rice from his plate with his spoon as he chews.

"After that, you did something, right?"

Jeff momentarily stops breaking his gnawing. "I called for a meeting with Vittawin and Sutthirak."

"You wanted to discuss about that server of TST if it can be included in the Asset List, right? I remember that you told me about that."

Jeff nods again and resumes grinding the food in his mouth – rice and meat at the same time.

"Then, what happened after that?"

Jeff swallows, eager to answer the other's question. "The meeting never took place; I went to a pub to have some shots; I was found in my car on top of another guy letting off some steam; I was sued; the rest – as they say – is history."

"Let me fill a gap there, Jeff. While you were in jail, I went to work: I promised to do a job for you," said Folk, taking in another spoonful of food after.

"And I take it that you kept your word, right? Or should I be disappointed?"

Folk shrugs with a wide smile on his face, looking like the Grinch himself and relaying to Jeff that he has accomplished something challenging.

"Let's hear it, then."

Folk finishes what is inside his mouth and drinks his juice to bring them down. "Before we do, do you know what Scylla is? The very term itself?" he asked after.

"No," replied Jeff lazily, taking into his empty mouth a spoonful of sautéed vegetables.

"Poor you. Scylla is a mythological creature that kills seafarers. Whenever a boat passes through the channel where she is, she picks up six from the crew using the serpents on the lower-half of her body. Those serpents, then, chomps those sailors like bubble gum."

"Bravo," mocked Jeff with a poker face, raising his glass to Folk to imitate a toast.

"Props to Wikipedia for that."

"Okay? Then?" Jeff's eyes round while his eyebrows are at the crest of where they can be. The need for a little elaborating from Folk is mandatory at this point.

"Don't worry. All these will make sense," assured Folk upon seeing Jeff's facial expression. "How about Charybdis? Do you know it?"

"Let me guess. Hmmmm... A blind fish that can see the future?"

"Silly. Charybdis, like Scylla, is also a mythological being who has been described as a giant kraken and is also a danger to sailors."

"An octopus?" chuckled Jeff.

"More or less. It sucks water thrice a day from the sea where it lives, then spews it back. Charybdis has been the foundation of the beliefs about whirlpools."

"So when there is a maelstrom, Charybdis is at work? Is that right?"

"Yup."

"And that is from Wikipedia again, right?"

"Yeah." Folk spoons a calamari and puts it in his mouth.

"I don't follow you, Folk. You lost me ever since Scylla from mythology." Jeff stops eating, putting his hands down on the glass table with a look of exasperation.

"Okay. Be patient."

"I just hope you get to your point sooner."

"Is there a cab waiting for you? Why are you in a hurry?" Folk's brows furrow at Jeff's display of impatience. "Just remember that Scylla has six snakes from the waist down, and Charybdis takes in water and spits it back."

"Okay, grandpa. Proceed." Jeff cuts a portion from his deep-fried chicken meat.

"Don't talk. Just listen, child."

Jeff rolls his eyes in reply.

"I ran a database search for Le Cargaison's clients and cross-checked it against a report from Scylla. I found something peculiar," said Folk, smirking.

"What?"

Putting down his spoon and fork, Folk reaches for his bag at the side of his seat. He opens it and gets a folder labelled Scylla, which is full of hardcopies of something. Laying the pile down on the table, he is careful so that the papers don't touch their food, and possibly contaminate them. "Here is a report I got from Scylla," he said, showing Jeff a piece of paper.

"This is a report?" asked Jeff, incredulous and finding everything in the printout suspicious. "No column headers; named simply Report 1; this could be mistaken for a test printout from how it looks."

"And could be thrown directly to the bin, right."

"Yeah."

"Now look at this here," Folk points to the second column of the report. "Does this ring any bell, Jeff?"

"SEA Airlines? This is one of the oldest airline companies in the country."

"It is. Go ahead and continue down one at a time."

Using only his twin ebony orbs, Jeff scrutinizes each entry on the rows after the one with SEA Airlines. "These are no small-scale businesses, Folk," he said, after which, he looks at Folk to find some sort of explanation.

"No indeed. MMG Body Wears and Bright-Win Textiles are the two leading global producers and exporters of Grade-A cloths. Go and look further down."

"Fiat and Chimon's Meat Inc.? Yuuki Dairies? Zee-Max Agri Produce Co.? I see their products in the supermarket."

"The first one is a renowned meat supplier; I heard it even has clients outside Thailand; the second is a dairy products distributor that has its own farm here in the country; Zee-Max is a wholesale seller of grains, vegetables, and fruits that does export as well."

"Six companies?"

"Six serpents, remember? The catch, however, is they are not in the list of Le Cargaison's clients according to the database query I ran."

"Okay. Okay," Jeff straightens on his chair before he slides off. "So, if they are not clients of Le Cargaison, what business to they have with the company, then?"

"That's a good question, Jeff. My answer is this and I want you to pay close attention."

"Go."

"I ran a search for a transaction from a legitimate client, and it pays around a hundred to two-hundred grand per crate of goods or item to be transported. This amount varies though, because of many factors: Le Cargaison uses a formula to determine the amount."

"But for valid clients, the payments they make can be tracked using SQL, right? Afterall, they are recorded in databases." Jeff hasn't taken anything ever since he got a glimpse of Report 1 earlier.

"Correct." Folk drinks from his glass of juice.

"What about for these six? I know you can't run SQL query codes on Scylla."

"You don't have to." Folk puts his glass down. "Look at the fourth column."

When he sees the figures, Jeff's mouth drops in surprise like Genie did when Jasmine kissed Jafar in a Walt Disney cartoon film. "Six hundred thousand Baht?" he exclaimed with eyes wide open.

"A hefty amount for a delivery fee, right? Also, I want you to look at the frequency of how many times that six hundred grand appeared on the report. Take Zee-Max for example."

"This is from...1997? They have been doing this since that time?"

"Probably. Yeah."

"It's not uniform. Is this normal for someone who wants to deliver in wholesale?"

"No." Folk stoops again to get another marked folder from his bag, while Jeff takes in another spoonful of food. "Here, look at this," he continued, showing Jeff a printout from the new folder. Jeff observes that this new one has all the elements that Report 1 does not have.

"Client Payment Report?"

"This shows the summary of the payments that a client – a legal one – made for a defined date range. As you can see, a legal client of Le Cargaison sends an item for delivery every five days, then pays the total charge on the seventh day," said Folk, tracing his pointer row after row of entries to show Jeff what he means.

"But that is not the case here in Scylla's report. Zee-Max, on December 12, 1997, paid...what the fuck!"

"Zee-Max paid six hundred thousand Baht three times on the same day, which I am guessing are for three different shipments that were made on that same day as well, just in different times," said Folk, somewhat finishing Jeff's statement.

"But why would a company pay Le Cargaison this much for a relatively mediocre transport of items?"

"That, I can only guess, Jeff. Now onto something more interesting. I tried querying Scylla for anything from 1996 and earlier, but it returned nothing," he continued.

Jeff looks at the rest of the other parts of the report from Scylla. "Money has been continuously wired from 97 up to this year, and at irregular intervals too. But don't you think six-hundred grand is quite a big amount for a service fee?"

"It is, Jeff, which raises suspicion at the highest level." Folk scoops some vegetables from his plate and puts them in his mouth

"And this must also be the significance on why the system has been named Scylla, right?" asked Jeff.

"I'm impresshed at your persheptivity, Mishter Sathur."

"Six companies using Scylla to wire money to Le Cargaison whenever they like," said Jeff as he hypothesizes.

"The real question here is what is the money for." Folk downs another mass of food from his mouth.

"I agree. Do you know?"

"Sadly, no."

------

Author's Note

Folk's efforts must be lauded, IMO. He had to go through all those perils to make true to his promise to Jeff. However, what he did is not something an ordinary friend would do for a favor, don't you think? So what made him do it for Jeff? Hmmmm, sounds like something to watch out for and look forward to.

And now that you got a glimpse of Scylla - yes, just a glimpse - I won't  leave you hanging for other details about Jeff and Folk's conversation: I would release the next chapter sooner than expected - maybe in days and not a full week like my usual publishing schedule. Like I said in my post, this is where it gets interesting: this is where business is about to pick up.

Stay tuned for release of the next chapter - Charybdis - my fellow SaturnRabbits.

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