White Ghost (16 page)

K
ai telephoned Gage at sunrise, unaware that Lucy had cost him most of a night's sleep. He made up an excuse about catching up with some work and put her off until noon. Over a lunch in the hotel café, she reported on her conversations with Eight Iron.

“Last night he went to a casino in the Khao San district, near the river. He talked to some
jao phor
godfathers. He didn't get any specific information about dates and routes, but he found out Ah Ming has been getting a regular supply of Triple K and 555 from the Wa State Army through a syndicate set up by United Bamboo.”

“How far do you think Eight Iron is willing to go?”

“It's a little complicated. If he asks about the heroin, then a load is captured right away, everyone will think he was behind it. And if it gets captured by U.S. agents, he'll look like a DEA informant, particularly since everyone knows he isn't in heroin anymore. People will assume he cut a deal to avoid prosecution for yaba.”

“Does that mean you think he'll bail on us?”

Kai shook her head. “He wants this too much. He put the
word out that he has an old customer who wants a big load. He made it sound urgent and implied that the customer is already in Thailand. He flew up to Chiang Rai early this morning. He may need you to go up there and pretend to be his buyer. He wants someone to blame if things blow up.”

“You mean me?”

“No, he means you,” Kai said, flashing grin. “I've got other things to blame you for.”

“Get in line.”

“Behind who?”

“Maybe the DEA. The last thing I need is to have my name show up in a DEA intelligence report negotiating for heroin. But the more serious problem is that I might know some of the people he's dealing with from the old days.”

“No one would wonder about Cobra.”

Gage shook his head. “If someone has to face off with the Wa State Army, then I'd rather do it myself. I've got less to lose.”

Kai's brows furrowed and she peered at him. “What do you mean, less to lose?”

Gage shrugged, then came up with a reason different from the one he was thinking, but no less true.

“Only that Cobra's got to live here after this is over. As long as he's in the shadows and the Wa don't know about him, he'll be okay. If we can't guarantee that, I'm not sure I want you involved in this either.”

Kai looked down and picked at her rice, then looked up with raised eyebrows and said, “Well . . .”

“Well what?”

“If this is going to be our last day together, maybe we should go up to your room and . . .”

Gage smiled at Kai as if at a persistent child. “You're what the kids in the States used to call scandalous.”

“That settles it. If I'm getting the blame, why shouldn't I at least get to commit the crime?”

“Because you'd have to make me a coconspirator to do it.”

“I promise I won't . . . what's the American word?”

“Snitch, you won't snitch.”

“Right, I won't snitch on my coconspirator.”

Gage leaned back in his chair and shook his head. “Would you explain to me how come wherever our conversation starts, it always ends up here?”

“I'm from an old and mysterious culture. We've learned to flow with the inexplicable current of events.” Kai smiled. “I think it would be better if the white ghost surrendered to the flow.”

“There's nothing inexplicable about the current. It's just you paddling.”

Kai released a fake sigh. “Apparently I have lost my subtlety.”

“And I take it that's somehow another reason we have to sleep together before I leave?”

“Of course, everything is a reason why we have to sleep together. I thought you understood that.”

T
he container arrived at Kaohsiung,” Cobra told Gage in a call from Taiwan. Kai was driving them toward Eight Iron's compound in northern Bangkok. They'd just passed the trunk of the flat-topped Elephant Tower office building. “Sunny Glory's was one of the first off the ship. It's in customs now. We're set up to follow it when it gets released.”

“What about security at their warehouse?”

“Nothing more than before.”

“Doesn't that suggest the chips might not be in there?”

“Maybe, maybe not. Adding extra security could raise questions. The workers might not know that there is something hidden in the container and it's better not to give them a reason to ask. If they don't know something worth protecting is on its way, they can't set up Sunny Glory from the inside to be ripped off.”

“Kai and I are in the middle of something, and I may need your help down here a little sooner than I expected.”

“Just let me know. My people are all ex–Ministry of Justice Intelligence agents, most with backgrounds in electronic intelligence. They'll follow through if I have to leave.”

Kai honked her car horn as they rolled to a stop in front of
a razor-wired metal gate, the only opening in the ten-foot-high walls surrounding Eight Iron's mansion. An eye appeared on the other side of a peephole. When the gate slid open, they discovered that the eye belonged to a guard cradling an AK–47 across his chest. A second guard stood at the bottom of the stairs and others at each corner of the house.

The interior that met Gage when they crossed the threshold into the living area was far different from the array of utilitarian chairs and couches that he'd encountered the last time. Mirrors, pieces of jade, and furniture whose placement seemed determined more by superstition than function told him that someone had made serious efforts to ensure that no good luck would ooze out of the house and no bad luck would flow in, feng shui and AK–47s willing.

Eight Iron met them in his teak-paneled office on the ground floor. He directed them to one of two facing couches. The low table between them and Eight Iron seemed to divide them into teams, voiding Gage's hope that he could generate a feeling of working together.

“Welcome to my modest home,” Eight Iron said as he sat down. Gage watched him rub the dragon head carved into the armrest as though it was a rabbit's foot.

“It's far from modest,” Gage said.

“My most recent minor wife is an interior decorator.”

Kai's voice hardened as she translated the words “
mia noi,
” minor wife.

Eight Iron made a regal gesture with his hand. “She suggested a few things and I allowed her to do them.” His hand swooped down and he poured white tea into small red clay cups, then handed one to each of them.

“I didn't expect to hear from you so soon,” Gage said.

“And I didn't expect things to move so fast.”

Gage tensed at the delight in Eight Iron's voice.

“There's a big load of 555 in production up there.” Eight Iron pointed northeast, toward the Golden Triangle. “And there's a lot of worry among the Wa about the financing. How the syndicate will pay for it and even whether they ever will. They don't like what they view as the novelty of it. And given the demand for China White these days, they aren't sure they should've bothered with it.”

“What did they mean by novelty?”

“They didn't say directly, but I got the idea that no money would actually change hands.”

“You mean the Wa is fronting the whole load?”

“They wouldn't do that. It's something else.”

Kai glanced over at Gage. He didn't look back, but guessed she was thinking the same thing he was. If it was Ah Ming's deal, the novelty would be that it would be barter, not cash: chips for heroin. Heroin into the bodies of American drug users, chips into Thai-made electronics. It was brilliant and exactly the kind of mutation in crime he'd talked about in his speech to the International Fraud Investigators Association. And it made him feel both insightful and stupid at the same time. Ah Ming had combined robbery and drug trafficking in a way Gage hadn't anticipated, but now knew he should have.

It was almost as if Gage hadn't been listening to his own speech.

Not only had Ah Ming figured out how to do a drug deal without money and without a money trail, but he'd obtain the heroin almost for free: just the cost of the robbery plus a few thousand dollars in shipping fees.

“Why were people willing to talk to you about it?”

Eight Iron smiled like an actor knowing he'd delivered the perfectly spoken line. “Because they thought I was approaching them about buying yaba pills. Apparently the Wa laboratory producing the heroin is also used for making yaba. They've
gathered all the ephedrine and other precursors to make a huge batch in the next few weeks. They want it sold in advance, so they're on the hunt for buyers.”

“Sounds like they're under pressure to finish the heroin first.”

“From what I gather, it's almost done. At a lab inside Thailand. It used to be in Burma, but the skirmishes between the Wa and Shan forced it to move across the border.”

Not only had the Wa and Shan been fighting to free themselves from China and Burma, but had been fighting each other over the heroin trade by which they financed their armies.

Eight Iron sipped his tea, then said, “But you're not really interested in those details as much as in the big news. Which is that United Bamboo is the buyer and the broker is one Ah Ming has used in the past.” He took another sip of tea and smacked his lips. “I've already sent Kasa to Mae Sai.”

“Hold on.” Gage locked on Eight Iron's eyes. “I don't want anyone grabbing the heroin. We don't even know for certain it's for Ah Ming, and we don't want to start a war.”

Gage then remembered Eight Iron had said he needed a fake foreign buyer and Kasa didn't qualify, both because he was well known in the Golden Triangle as Eight Iron's enforcer and because he was a Shan. The Wa would never sell to a Shan even through a broker they trusted.

“Why'd you send Kasa up there? You told Kai you just needed someone to play the part of a customer, and that's a part he can't play.”

“I only sent him up there to find the lab and arrange to follow the 555.”

Gage remembered Kai's image of Eight Iron as a bloodhound and decided that he needed a leash.

“I'll send Cobra up there to work with him.”

Eight Iron smiled again. “If you'd like. We can always use someone with his skills.”

A
S THEY WERE
driving away, Kai glanced over at Gage. “He plans to intercept the heroin. That's why he rushed Kasa up there. Has to be.”

“It's possible. I don't see Eight Iron spending his own time and money unless he expects to get something concrete in return. A warm feeling of having gotten revenge isn't enough. He wants to feel either white powder or someone's blood between his fingertips. And another thing. First he wanted someone to play customer and go meet the broker and now he doesn't. That tells me something else. He's trying to keep us from finding out what's really going on.”

“And whatever that is might account for his enthusiasm.”

Gage looked toward the crowded road ahead. His mind felt fogged like the gray haze enveloping the city. In the distance he spotted a northbound Skytrain rocketing along the elevated track, the smiling faces in the advertisements on the side mocking the economic disaster the city had become. His eyes lost focus as he stared at the red, white, and blue paint streaking the sides of the cars.

And the movement led him to an answer.

Gage held up his right hand. “The chips are over here in Taiwan.” He held out his other hand, lower and to the left. “The heroin is down here.”

“And they have to meet,” Kai said.

Gage lowered his hands and nodded. “That suggests the heroin probably won't be traveling the usual route south to the Bangkok port and then to the U.S. And even without understanding the financing, that might be what he's figured out.”

He pictured a Southeast Asian map, the three-hundred-plus degrees that would exclude Bangkok: Burma, Cambodia, Southern China, Vietnam, even Malaysia.

“That's why he needs Kasa up there, starting at the lab. And why we need Cobra right next to him.”

A
h Ming sat alone in his office, remembering his escape from Taiwan after he killed the gambler, being passed from one United Bamboo member to another, a chain that led from Taipei, to Hong Kong, to Singapore, to Bangkok. A trunk of a car, a fake passport, a night flight, an unlit tarmac, a dark SUV. And he recognized why these thoughts came to him now. He had broken the links between himself and the robbery, but with the cost that there was a broken link in his organization.

By limiting those who knew of his own role, he'd ensured that only two men would be in a position to inform against him: Lew and Ah Tien. But because of Lew's age and reticence to travel, over time Ah Tien had become too central to everything, especially the offshore operation, and now too dead.

He needed someone to send east and it could only be himself or Lew, and it couldn't be himself.

Ah Ming stepped to his door, spotted Lew standing by a near cubicle, and signaled to him to come to his office. As he waited, he noticed a new employee standing at the copy machine, a young Eurasian woman, poised and attractive. Her facial features, her nose and cheeks and skin tone, seemed familiar, but he
shook off the thought, deciding that he must've seen her before as he skirted the cubicles making his way to and from the warehouse entrance.

He followed Lew into the office, directed him to a chair, and then shut the door.

“Without Ah Tien, I need to make other arrangements.” Ah Ming sat down behind his desk and rested his forearms on the blotter. “I need you to manage the exchange.”

Lew didn't react and Ah Ming hadn't expected him to. He knew the old man had suffered too much in his life to react to words alone.

“But if you do it, all parts of the operation will connect to you. We need to make sure you don't leave a trail back to me.”

Ah Ming let the notion linger, then said, “My first thought had been that after the deal was done, you'd simply follow Ah Tien's practice and stay overseas until it's time for a new cycle. But then I realized I'd been taking you for granted in recent years and perhaps you've already been thinking ahead, toward retirement.”

Lew still didn't respond.

“I've relied on you as though you were my own uncle. The decision is yours, but to make your choice easier and to reward you for your service, I'll give you a percentage of this deal.”

Lew shook his head. “That's not necessary. I've saved enough and my needs are simple.”

“In any case, I owe you this.” Ah Ming rose. “The money will be waiting for you on your return. Do with it what you will.”

Ah Ming walked Lew back to his office, then returned to his own.

L
EW SAT DOWN AT HIS DESK
surprised that Ah Ming had divined his desire to retire. He wondered whether Ah Ming had sensed what he had just discovered himself: a longing to return to his
home village. He gazed up at a charcoal drawing of steep karsh mountains along the Lijiang River that he'd cut from a calendar he'd bought on his single trip back to China since his escape in the 1970s. He thought of his university colleagues who had tried to convince him during the visit that the Cultural Revolution that had destroyed his career as a history professor now existed in the Chinese imagination only as an embarrassment. But he'd felt a bitterness and a distrust that hadn't abated during the weeks he spent there. Indeed, standing outside of his ancestral home and looking down at the graves of his parents whose funerals he missed during his exile, he'd felt a hot rage he'd feared would never cool.

Through his open door, Lew caught the motion of Ah Ming walking from his office and through the back exit of the warehouse. He then imagined himself taking that same route and never coming back.

A
H
M
ING DROVE
to a Walmart five miles away where he bought a prepaid phone, then on to Coyote Point along San Francisco Bay and walked to the water's edge. He punched in a series of digits.

“
Yes?
” a man answered.

“I'm sending Lew to the northern place.”

“When?”

“Tomorrow.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Observe.”

“Should I call you if he's detected?”

“No.”

“Then what should I do?”

“Eliminate him.”

He then dropped the phone into the dirt, stomped it, and threw it far into the bay.