Thai Horse (42 page)

W
hen they reached the crest of the hill, the truck stopped in front of a small hooch, a box of a house with one door and one window, which sat apart from the rest of the village. An armed guard stood at the side of the door.

‘Just watch how it is done,’ Fong said.

The formalities dated back to the time of the Opium Wars in China, almost a hundred and fifty years ago. Fong posted Soon on the opposite side of the door and entered the hooch with the Fan and Billy Kot.

It was a small room with four mats on the floor in the center, two facing each other, two stretched between them, forming a square in the middle of the room. Dao stood in front of one of the mats with two of his troopers posted in each corner of the room behind him. Beside Dao stood the
fai thaan,
a man whose face was etched with the crevices of time and whose teeth were stained dark brown from chewing betel nuts. The
fai thaan
was the cook and chief refiner of the Hsong tribe. At his feet was a small package wrapped in flat green leaves.

Fong walked casually to the center of the room and, facing Dao, pressed the palms of his hands together and bowed in a
wai
to show his respect for the Hsong leader and the brewer of magic powder. Dao answered the
wai
and then the Fan took his place facing the old cook and put his black bag at his feet. Kot stood behind Fong.

‘I would like to introduce my
bing yahn,
Billy Kot, to the general,’ Fong said. ‘He will soon take my place as White Palm Red Pole.’

A look of concern crossed Dao’s face. ‘Is something wrong?’ he asked.

‘No, no,’ Fong answered hurriedly. ‘I am to become
san
wong
of the Chiu Chaos. From this day on, Billy Kot will be my eyes and ears and voice. He will speak for me and he will negotiate fairly with all the tribes that supply us with powder.’

Dao looked at Kot for several seconds, studying the young man’s smooth features. He had eyes like his boss’s, hard and glazed with abstract menace.

‘So he is learning?’ said Dao.

‘Hai,’
Fong answered.

The general appraised Kot once more and nodded curtly with a smile.

‘Ho,’ Dao answered, slapping his right fist into the palm of his left hand, a sign of acceptance. They did not shake hands, because to touch another in Thailand is considered an insult. He sat cross-legged on the mat in front of him. Fong did the same, followed by the Fan, the new Red Pole, and the
fai tha
a
n.
It was only after they were seated that Dao acknowledged the Fan.

‘Are you well, Phat Lom?’ he asked. The old man nodded and smiled faintly as he opened his bag and took out an abacus. He placed it in front of him.

‘Hai, ha
i
,’
Dao said, nodding briskly. Then he slapped his hands together and s
m
iled broadly. ‘So, now it is time to deal,’ he said, arid nodded to the
fai thaan,
who carefully unfolded the leaves from the package. The white brick branded ‘999’ gleamed on the mat before them. He picked up the snow-white square with both hands and offered it to
t
he White Fan, who
took
it, held it in one hand, and weighed it by feel, first holding it on its side in the pa
lm
of his hand, then turning it on end. He nodded once, curtly, indicating the weight was proper. He stood and walked to the window and held the brick in the sunlight and studied it for several minutes, blowing gently on the surface. He scraped up a fingernail
fu
l
l and, holding it to a nostril, slowly inhaled it. He waited for another minute or two for it to take effect, then he scraped up another fingernail
fu
l
l and put it in his
m
outh and tasted it. Finally he returned and placed the brick in front of General Dao.

He held up three fingers to Fong.

Khuna-phaap di thi soot.
First q
u
ality.

‘Excellent as always,’ said Fong. ‘How much did you get this year?’

‘Ninety hundred and thirty-five
joi,’
Dao answered, obviously proud of the yield. Fong, too, was delighted. Almost fifteen hundred kilos of gum, a hundred fifty kilos of heroin.

‘That is fifty kilos more than last year,’ he said.

‘A very good year,’ answered the general.

On the previous buy, Fong had paid nine hundred dollars per kilo. He looked over at the Fan, whose fingers were shooting the small colored balls of the abacus back and forth. The Fan held up two fingers, then three, then one, then a fist. It was a simple code, which only Fong and the Fan understood.

Although Kot did not understand the code, he made some quick calculations in his head. Not bad, he thought. A mere $135,000 for 15 keys of pure smack.

Fong turned to him and asked him what he thought the price should be. It was an unexpected test. Actually the price was immaterial. Considering the Chiu Chao profit margin, they could easily afford to pay Dao four or five times the normal price and hardly feel it. But this was business, and a dollar was a dollar.

Kot tried to think like the Red Pole. He had to weigh two things: first, whether to raise the price at all and, second, if so, how much to raise it without spoiling the general. Upping the price fifty dollars
a
joi
would not hurt them that much. It would be significant enough to impress the hill chief and still not appear overly generous.

‘Fifty more
a
joi,’
Kot answered.

Kot knew from the slight twinkle in Fong’s eye it was a good answer. Fong turned back to the general. ‘My bid would have been twenty-five,’ he said with a smile. ‘The new Red Pole is more gener
o
us than I.’

General Dao was obviously pleased. The Fan showed no expression. His fingers were busy working the colored marbles on the abacus. He held up another combination of fingers.

The entire package would cost $142,500, or 2,850,000 bahts.

‘How does two million eight sound?’ Fong asked. ‘I am most pleased,’ Dao said, slapping his fist into his palm. The deal was concluded. Fong reached into the black bag and took out several packets of purple baht notes and stacked them neatly in front of Dao. When he had stacked the entire two million plus, he did a
wai.

‘The entire amount as agreed. When can Mr Kot expect delivery?’

‘Will three days be satisfactory, starting in the morning?’ Dao asked.

‘Excellent.’ And he, too, smacked his fist in his palm. ‘And if it will not offend the general, I would like to make the Hsong a gift of two new
t
rucks, to celebrate the new Red Pole.’

Dao was both surprised and pleased. Two new trucks in the bargain! ‘You are very generous, my friend,’ he said. ‘The Hsong will be most happy to work with Mr Kot.’

‘Mai,’
Fong said with a nod and rose. They left the hooch and Soon joined them as they walked back to the truck.

Fong was pleased with his choice of Billy Kot and he slapped his new Red Pole on the arm.

‘You did very well in there,’ he said reassuringly. ‘I do not think you will have any problems.’

‘Mm goi,’
Billy Kot said with a
wai.

‘One hundred and fifty kilos of pure for a hundred forty
thousand
dollars and two trucks,’ Fong said. ‘What does that come to, White Fan?’

The Fan had already figured up the profit, based on the morning street price in Manhattan. He flashed his fingers in the code. ‘Three million, seven hundred thousand dollars,’ Fong said, beaming. ‘Fair work for one day.’

Wherever there were human beings, there were dope traders ready to prey on them. In the Hotel Vitosha in Sofia or L’Hotel Pique in Marseilles or the Garden Hotel in Amsterdam, Syrians, Turks and Lebanese met with Chinese, Sicilian and American gangsters to trade in heroin, cocaine and marijuana. They were the power bosses of the dope trade. They had developed the shipping routes from the Orient to Amsterdam, London and Rome, and from there
to
major ports in North America, where one thousand kilos
—
2,200 pounds
—
of heroin wen
t
for a billion dollars and change before it was even cut for the Street.

Their partners were the Sicilians, for in the years since the end of the Vietnamese war they had made their agreements with the American mobsters and spread their deadly powder to
m
ost of the major cities in the United States.

The drug lords had turned smuggling into a bizarre art, a deadly game of hide-and-seek between ‘mules,’ the couriers who did the actual heroin smuggling, and drug and customs agents. The lethal powder was smuggled in hollow gemstones, icons and statues. In Tampax and condoms. In dolls, books, diplomatic pouches, and major shipments of coffee, soybeans and bamboo. It was dissolved in water and then suitcases, paintings, rugs and clothing were soaked in it and carried or shipped into the United States. Smugglers buried it in the desert until they made their deals, then sent it across borders by feeding it to their camels, addicting them, and training them to follow specific routes in order to get more.

For every drug bust there was a new scheme. For every pound that was confiscated, ten pounds got through.

In Bangkok and Hong Kong, Tollie Fong and his White Palms had developed the most obscene and terrifying smuggling techniques of all. Now it was time to make a major drug move on the United States. They had almost three tons of 99.9 percent pure China White secreted in Bangkok ready for a mass shipment to America.

The prediction made by Tollie Fong’s father twenty- three years earlier was finally coming true. The years had been good to them. And Fong had the perfect plan. It had been approved by the old
san wong.

Tollie Fong was positioned to make war on the sworn enemy of the Chiu Chaos, La Cosa Nostra
—
the Mafia.

A SUGGESTION

Earp came out of Sweets Wilkie’s office and went up the steps and through the glass beads into the Longhorn Saloon’s ‘Hole in the Wall.’ The Honorable was seated in his stuffed chair, his imposing presence making it seem like a throne. He was reading as usual. The fringed lamp was the only light on in the large alcove. There was no one else in the room, and the lights over both the poker and pool tables had been turned off. Earp pulled up a chair and sat down beside him.

‘Little late for you, isn’t it?’ he said.

‘I’m engrossed,’ the Honorable said, without looking up.

‘My man in Hong Kong just called.’

‘Urn-hum,’ the Honorable said, still reading his book.

‘A man named Hatcher is coming in on the morning plane. Hatcher is an assassin. He works for Sloan.’

‘Perhaps a coincidence?’

‘Not a chance. Sloan comes in. Now Hatcher follows him. No, he isn’t coming for the fucking waters.’

‘And this Hatcher is dangerous?’

‘He’s wasted half of Hong Kong in the last forty
-
eight hours. The guy’s a walking plague.’

‘Would you like a suggestion?’

‘Don’t I always?’

The Honorable dipped his finger in wine, turned the page of his book and licked his finger. ‘Arrange for him to come here,’ he said. ‘Check him out up close and on friendly territory.’

‘That’s a little dangerous, isn’t it?’ Earp said. ‘Bringing him right into the living room?’

‘If he’s as dangerous as you say and he’s here to assassinate Thai Horse, he’s also very smart. He’ll wind up here sooner or later anyway.’

The Honorable looked up and what might have passed for a smile crossed his lips.

‘As the Thais say, “It is easier to kill a friendly tiger than a mad dog.”

KRUNG THEP

Hatcher stirred as the 747 banked sharply and swept over Bangkok on its approach to the city and the flight attendant announced their approach to Don Muang airport. Still half asleep, Hatcher remembered Bangkok as a city of gold and silver temples, of spires and domes, and delicate, beautiful women, as fragile as china, swathed in radiant silk.

He pulled back the curtain arid it was like looking down on a painting. Even in the gray predawn light with the sun a shimmering promise on the horizon, Bangkok was like a gleaming jewel in the palm of Buddha’s hand, and the Chao Phraya River was an endless life line stretching from little finger to thumb. Hundreds of golden domes and spires reached through the morning mist like flowers seeking the sun. It was these holy places and the canals which coursed through the city that defined Bangkok’s character and personality. Centuries ago there were no roads in Bangkok; its streets were dozens of canals called klongs that wound through it, their banks draped with flowers arid trees. Progress had changed that. A few major water arteries still served the city; the rest had been filled in to become boulevards and lanes. But the flowers remained and the streets were demarcated as much by orchids, bougainvillea and palm trees as they were by gutters and sidewalks. Through the mists of morning, Hatcher occasionally caught a glimpse of the canals jammed with slender, long-tailed
hang yao
laden with fresh fruit, flowers and wares as the river people made their way to the floating markets on the banks of the main river.

As the plane began its descent the sun rose over the horizon, and the morning mist, set ablaze by the fires of dawn, turned to steam, vanished, and revealed in stunning glory a sparkling city of gold.

This was a land so alien to Westerners that it was like flying into another planet. The tourists ‘oohed’ and ‘aahed’ at the sight. Everything below them seemed clean and fertile and seductive. And yet he knew that beneath the beauty there was also the agony of great poverty, that children bathed in their own refuse and were sold on the streets, that heroin was part of the rate of exchange, that there were sixty or seventy homicides a month, that the cold steel and mirrored glass towers of the Westerners were slowly corrupting Bangkok’s ancient and exquisite beauty, and that automobiles were polluting the city’s air. Perhaps, he thought, the Thais would tire of the foreigners and throw them out, as their ancestors had done two hundred years before when the
farang
had tried to replace the gentle compassion of Buddha with the rigid, intractable arrogance of Christianity.

To survive as a
farang
in Bangkok, Westerners had to accept its philosophy even if they did not understand it. Here Buddha was the benevolent saint. Rich Thais bought buttons of gold leaf and pressed them on temples and icons. The poor covered statues with broken teacups. Everyone paid tribute and came to pray, to ask for favors from Buddha, for the Thais thought nothing of asking for a big fish on their line or a winning lottery ticket or a beautiful woman for the night or a handsome man to curl up with when the sun vanished. The subtleties were lost to those from the West whose God, modeled by pompous, arrogant, self-appointed intermediaries, was an angry God, less compassionate, less forgiving, and devoid of any sense of humor. To the Thais, who believed the smile was born in their country, Buddha was a kind and generous God, capable of impish tricks, laughter and infinite joy, a God who asked nothing, demanded nothing, and smiled on those who laid tribute at his feet.

Perhaps that is why, to the Thai, arguing was a sin, raising one’s voice was an insult, and anger was intolerable. One had to love a people whose philosophy of life was summed up by their reaction to almost everything:
Mai pen rai—
‘Never mind.’ While Hatcher did not begin to understand the intricacies of Hinayana Buddhism, one thing he did understand was that Buddhists believed that our temporary existence on earth was uncertain at best; that concern was folly and anger was futile; that confrontation was an embarrassment, anxiety was a sin, and life was a process of forgiving. It was a philosophy be had tried to embrace, but there were psychological responses so ingrained in Westerners that it was difficult for a
farang
to ignore them.

And while Hatcher had understood and tried to practice the Thai philosophy in the past, this time it was not working for him. He was overwhelmed with anxiety, and what he feared most was what he would learn about Cody in Bangkok. The closer the plane got to the airport, the more his anxiety grew. Even identifying his former friend would be a major problem. Would he still recognize Cody? It had been almost twenty years since he had last seen his friend. And he had probably changed his name.