Year of the Dragon (28 page)

“You don’t speak the language. You don’t know the city. You wouldn’t have a chance. It would be wasting your time and the City’s money.”

“It wouldn’t cost very much.”

“Too much.”

“I’ve worked out the costs and the possible advantages. I’ve written you a forty-nine on it.” Power’s attempted to present the memo, but Duncan ignored it.

“Let me tell you my plans when I get there.”

“The answer is no.”

“But-”

“The subject’s closed.”

Powers spun on his heel and strode toward the door.

“Come back here,” said Cirillo. “I want to know more about that wiretap.”

“I want to know why I wasn’t informed about it,” said Duncan.

Powers, at the door, said, “You’d better talk to the district attorney.” Though he might have walked out slamming the door, he did not quite dare to do it.

There was a long pause. Finally the chief of detectives said: “I spoke to the DA last night.

“What did he say?”

“That it was too sensitive to talk about over the phone.”

And when you offered to go over and see him in person, thought Powers, he refused to see you.

“So why don’t you tell me.”

The two men eyed each other.

There was no other explanation, thought Powers. The elected district attorney of New York County did not need to answer to Cirillo. To prove his stature, or because he was annoyed, or to humiliate Cirillo perhaps - who knew why? - he had decided to protect the wiretap, to protect Powers.

“I’m sorry,” Powers decided to say. “I can’t help you.” And he went out. Behind him a fist - either Cirillo’s or Duncan’s - was slammed down on the desk. He heard it through the door, but felt no satisfaction. He was trying to figure out a way to follow Koy to Hong Kong.

From a pay phone in the lobby, he dialed the district attorney, and to his surprise was accorded an immediate appointment. Ten minutes later, having walked briskly up Centre Street, he stood in front of the man’s desk and again explained where he wanted to go and why. All he needed was money.

“Why come to me? The police department has far more money than I do.”

“You have a special fund you can draw on for cases such as this.”

The district attorney stepped to his window and stared out. “But I think it’s a crazy idea too. I don’t see what you imagine you can do when you get there. It’s his city, not yours. And if he spots you - you wouldn’t be the first individual to disappear in that place.”

Powers had his hands on the DA’s desk, leaning forward over it, and he was pleading. “Why is he going to Hong Kong? He hasn’t been back in five years. We know there was an open investigation on him there until a short time ago. He’s taking a risk to go back. Something important must be about to go down. Whatever it is, it’s connected with Chinatown here.”

The DA had turned from the window. He studied him silently.

“Look,” Powers pleaded, “It’s the only chance we’ve got.”

The district attorney shook his head again. “I have too little money to give you any of it.” But after a pause he added: “I’ll do this for you. I’ll call the PC and tell him I think you should go. I won’t lean on him. I’ll simply tell him that much. I think you are being foolhardy, but in a way I admire you for it. If you go, be careful, and good luck.”

THERE WAS a leather box on Powers’ dresser. It held cuff links and tie bars that his sons had given him over the years and that he never wore. Flipping open the cylinder of his off-duty gun - the other was in his locker at the station house - he ejected the five bullets into the box with the other jewelry, then went downstairs to the laundry room where, because he could not bring it with him, he handcuffed the gun through its open cylinder to a water pipe. This done, he was ready to leave the house. Eleanor was already waiting with the car in the street, and he went out through the garage, slung his suitcase into the trunk, and they started for the airport. All the way out he was afraid he might observe a crime in progress. Without his gun he felt totally impotent. If they came upon a crime, what action would he take? Should he intervene anyway?

At the Pan Am terminal he kissed his wife goodbye and watched her drive away. He had an hour before takeoff and knew he would need most of it, and after checking in and passing through security, he phoned Carol Cone.

“Look, I have to go away for a while,” he said to her. Since late yesterday, when the okay had come down, he had been deliberating how - and how much - to tell her.

“When do you go?”

“Today.”

“I don’t like the sound of this. Are you really going away?”

“Yes.”

“You don’t seem unhappy about it.”

“Well, I have to go.” How he hated the telephone, which promised so much more than it gave. It was as if its capacity to convey emotion was limited by the thinness of the wire. It was unsuitable for any message more complicated than you could send by Morse code.

“How long will you be gone?”

“A week, a month. I don’t know.” He hoped it would be for long enough so that he might decide where his life went from here. Perhaps whatever hold this woman had on him would be broken.

“Will I see you before you go?”

“There isn’t time. I leave in about an hour.”

Communication by telephone was simply not normal, and perhaps was not even possible. One interpreted the sounds and one measured the pauses. These were the only clues to whatever messages one hoped to exchange. Powers measured Carol’s pause now and judged it to be an unhappy one. But her next words betrayed no emotion at all.

“Where are you going?”

There was no reason not to tell her. “Hong Kong.”

“Is your wife going with you?”

“No.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes.”

“Don’t make me interview you. Why are you going to Hong Kong?”

“Because the guy I’m chasing is going there.”

“Then the police department is sending you.”

“Yes.”

“It seems odd.”

“Well, maybe it is. But the PC approved it.”

“The man you’re chasing - it’s the same one you told me about the other night?”

“Yes.”

“What’s his name?”

“I can’t tell you that.”

Another pause. Powers wished he could see her face, watch her chest move as she breathed, touch the life that was in her, instead of guessing at the timbre of a few words that, these days, might just as easily be coming from a machine.

“What hotel will you stay at?”

“Why? Are you going to call me up?”

“Sure.”

“The Hotel Mandarin.”

“Well,” said Carol, “I have to get off. Have a good trip.”

Powers stared at the dead phone in his hand, and thought that it isolated those who used it into worlds as small, as sterile, and as separate as their individual phone booths. It was perfect for causing pain.

He spent most of the next twenty-four hours in the air, staring out the porthole at vacant sky. The plane set down in San Francisco and Tokyo to refuel and he did not leave the transit lounge in either place. It was midnight in Hong Kong when he checked into the Mandarin. The Chinese bellhop led him to his room, stood his suitcase upright on the low baggage rack, accepted the tip and left, and Powers pushed open the sliding glass door and stepped out onto the small balcony. The air was balmy, and the city quiet. All around him slept millions of Chinese and he looked off across the black water at Kowloon and the mainland. There were ferries crossing, and cargo ships anchored here and there in between. It was noon New York time, he was not particularly tired, and he came in off the balcony and began pacing the room. He felt very much alone.

AS SOON as she had hung up on Powers, Carol dialed the Flowering Virtue Funeral Parlor still again. She had left messages each of the last three days, but Koy had not returned them.

Again a Chinese voice answered. “Boss no here.”

“Is he on a trip?”

“Gone oversea, mebbe.”

“He’s gone to Hong Kong?”

“Mebbe. Hong Kong mebbe.”

Carol rushed down the hall to see Lurtsema. Her story, she told him, had just gone to Hong Kong and she wanted to go there after it.

“Why don’t you let me give the assignments around here, Carol? That’s my job.”

“All right. How about giving me this one.”

She had, once again, walked into Lurtsema’s office uninvited. She was once again usurping Lurtsema’s role and he did not like it or her. But instead of saying so he pointed out that such a journey was costly, nothing was prepared for her at the other end, and that the focus of her story was here, not there. Besides, they had a news show to put on every day, and needed her on it. The answer was no.

So Carol took the elevator up to the tower, where she walked in on the network’s executive vice president for corporate affairs, to whom she complained that Lurtsema’s well-known antagonism toward female talent was hampering the network’s news-gathering capability once again. The vice president said he would look into it, and Carol was satisfied, for she knew television. She knew where the power lay. She knew all the peculiar rules of this extremely peculiar game. She had only to go back to her office and wait, and she did so.

The vice president phoned down to Lurtsema, heard him out, and then advised him cordially to give Carol Cone any goddamn thing she wanted. When Lurtsema asked why, he said, “Because her contract is up in three months, and NBC has already made her an offer. Do I make myself clear?”

“Perfectly,” said Lurtsema huffily. “Why don’t you give her the job of producer, in addition to the one she’s already got?”

Having made his decision and his point, the vice president, who was always smoothing someone’s ruffled feathers, was obliged to spend the next ten minutes smoothing Lurtsema’s, which he succeeded in doing, more or less. In any case, air tickets to Hong Kong arrived on Carol’s desk that very afternoon, and she sat down and tried to decide what preparations she ought to make first. What contacts could she use? Did she have the right clothes?

KOY, meantime, was circling the globe in the opposite direction, moving fast, making local stops. Some stops were business-mandated. He was setting up his organization. At others he only changed planes and airlines so as to leave a trail that turned cold as he made it. He flew more or less in a straight line. There was no need to exaggerate. But he had no reservations and no through ticket - he bought each ticket in cash just before boarding each plane.

The essential thing was to stay off any one central computer. Instead he would appear – briefly - on many. Computers had memories that were almost human - the press of new customers caused the memory of old ones to recede; very soon it obliterated them. It would take law enforcement weeks to figure out where Koy had gone and when, much less why, and if any single computer lost his name, it would be impossible. Past fugitives stepped in and out of streambeds to throw bloodhounds, if any, off the scent. Modern man – Koy - stepped in and out of computers.

This was a precaution only. He had no reason to believe any agency of any country was interested in him. Old cases, like old clothes, went to the bottom of the trunk and were rarely seen again. He had lain quiet, after all, five years. Law enforcement had fewer computers than airlines and, to be blunt about it, even more new business. Case closed.

He knew of course of the existence of Luang, not his name or function, just that he had turned up in two widely separate corners of Koy’s life. It was bizarre. It defied explanation. It was surely not coincidence. It was probably Ting’s work, and he had men working to find out more. That a New York police captain was single-mindedly pursuing Koy almost on a free-lance basis would have seemed to him inconceivable. He knew law enforcement and it did not work that way. The idea simply never occurred to him.

He landed in Heathrow Airport, London, at 8 A.M. Because it enabled him to get in and out of airports quickly, he traveled light, only a single piece of hand luggage plus $10,000 in hundred-dollar notes in an envelope in his breast pocket. His journey was a long one - more than 25,000 miles - and he would be able to replenish his funds only in Hong Kong. He also carried two passports, which would further confuse the computers. He planned to use them more or less alternately, beginning with his Hong Kong passport, made out in the name of Koi Tse-ven, here in England. The name on his new American passport, unused until now, was Jimmy Koy. By marrying an American citizen, and by completing the required years of uninterrupted United States residency, he had qualified for naturalization, which, among other benefits, gave each new American the right to choose whatever new name he wished to be known by. And so Koi Tse-ven had become Jimmy Koy – legally - and had taken out a passport in that name.

For five years Koy had not budged - had waited for citizenship, had waited for the return of Marco, his distributor, had waited for an incident that would enable him to take over the Nam Soong Tong, for he needed the tong’s sanction in order to move goods in and out of Chinatown. The first two events had occurred but not the third, preventing the fourth, until at last Koy had felt obliged to create the incident he needed - the restaurant massacre.

This had been somewhat out of character for him, because it was an impetuous act. He was a man of immense power in the only true meaning of the term - being rich, shrewd and most of all patient. Until then he had always considered patience the most important of his three great gifts because it alone permitted optimum use of the other two. But New York had come to feel like a jail cell to him. He came to see himself as a virtual prisoner. He was a man who obeyed no laws except those he set personally, and those he set he could also change. At last, instead of condemning himself to further patience, he had allowed his restlessness and especially his vast energy to overcome him. He had sent the Hsu brothers into Ting’s place.

The result was that he now could move forward again - had to move forward. For the first time in a long time he felt completely happy. He felt as eager as a sprinter bolting from the starting blocks. He felt rejuvenated, a middle-aged man granted a new life, a new career, the chance to earn a second fortune. He was on the move again.

In London he walked out through customs, bought himself a ticket to Amsterdam, and walked right back in again. Within an hour he was in the air, and less than an hour after that, stepping in and out of streambeds fast, he was in a taxi between Schipol Airport and the city. He rode past fields of wet green grass delineated by canals. In the distance, here and there, windmills poked up. It was the flattest, wettest-looking country he had ever seen. The taxi driver who dropped him off at the Rijksmuseum had deposited a thousand others there this year, and would not remember him. He went inside and stood in front of Rembrandt’s “Night Watch,” one of the most famous paintings in the world, but to Koy only a landmark, neither more nor less, a place to meet someone. He was not interested in Western painting, and this one, a grouping of seventeenth-century Dutch burghers occupying an entire wall, seemed to him heavy and gross, lacking the refinement and delicacy of Chinese art. Chinese artists, to Koy, painted with butterflies’ wings; Western artists painted with tree stumps. The one was subtle, with three or four thousand years of civilization behind it, and the other was as violent as the violent games - football, hockey, rugby - that the foreign demons so much admired.

Waiting, he stared dutifully at the painting, his mind elsewhere, the perfect tourist, a tall Chinese wearing dark glasses that rendered him, like film stars, both conspicuous and anonymous - definitely someone, though who? His hands hung crossed at his crotch, as demure as a Greek’s fig leaf, as protective as a fighter’s cup, though the blow, if any, would not fall there. Behind him he heard tour groups moving in and out of the room, heard the painting described by guides in many languages, none of them Hakka.

Having traveled three thousand eight hundred miles overnight, Koy was early by five minutes, and Hung Hsui-ch’uan, the Hakka Chinese he had come to see, was late by the same amount, having had to cross the city through traffic by taxi. They came together with proper smiles and bows, formally, almost distantly, speaking Hakka. There was no handshake, no embrace, no touching, even though they had grown up together in the same village in China, had served as station sergeants together in Hong Kong, and had not seen each other in five years. Hung had been part of the combine - Koy’s combine - that had dominated the Hong Kong police department. He was one of the five dragons. Koy would meet the other three in Hong Kong in a few days, but Hung could not go because there was a warrant outstanding for his arrest.

In Amsterdam, where the Chinese community had always been dominated by Hakkas, Hung had established himself in the import-export business against just such a day as this. He moved legitimate goods to and from many ports, including Hong Kong on one side of the world and New York on the other. For Koy’s purposes he was both ideally placed and, up to a point, totally trustworthy. Betrayal, in the normal course of events, would not come via Hung. However, life did not always proceed according to one’s wishes. Hung too had his investors, had payrolls to meet. He and his people had waited a long time. Money had been spent. Profits were wanted. He would follow Koy’s lead only as long as these profits seemed assured, and he was perhaps growing impatient. They were boyhood pals, and he would abandon Koy, would switch allegiance to another, only with regret.

Koy, therefore, would tell Hung no more than he needed to know. The two men began to stroll through the museum, being careful to determine that no one tailed them from room to room, sometimes standing a long time before individual paintings to be certain. But they noted no evidence of any interest in them whatever, and the business discussion both had come for at last began. By the end of the week, Koy said, each piece of the organization would be in place, which would be a satisfaction to all of them.

“You’re going to Thailand next?” said Hung.

“Yes.”

“You’ll see the general?”

Koy shrugged. “It’s been arranged.”

“He’s not happy.”

“So I understand.”

“Whoever you sent didn’t get the job done.”

Koy said nothing. Hung was not so much criticizing him as pointing out that they were all under pressure that would be relieved only when the goods started to flow.

“The general expected you before this,” said Hung.

“You yourself were unable to go,” Koy pointed out.

When Hung was silent, Koy said, “The first shipment should reach you here in under a month.”

“As fast as that?” said Hung in surprise.

The bane of the narcotics business was that the merchandise was condemned nearly always to move so slowly. Most large shipments had to be welded into the entrails of tramp steamers which then set out at five knots per hour on journeys of many thousands of miles. This tied up great amounts of capital for months at a time. In these days of high interest rates it was a problem. A very expensive problem.

“Yes, as fast as that,” said Koy, but he did not elaborate.

Hung clapped his hands together in delight. “You’ve thought up a way to move big shipments by air, haven’t you?

“I think so,” said Koy. Business being a serious matter, he did not so much as smile.

“Are you going to tell me what it is?”

“No,” said Koy.

Hung began to laugh. “You are one smart son of a bitch,” he said in English.

“If we can move the new system into Amsterdam,” said Koy, “of course you and your people will be part of it.” Age and overuse dim all emotion in the same way that they dim a man’s eyesight and hearing. Nonetheless, Koy had once been extremely fond of Hung, and some of this fondness remained, so that he added, “I wish you could come on to Hong Kong with me.”

“Me too.” Hung’s voice was wistful. “It would be swell to see all the guys again.”

Koy lunched alone on the terrace of the Excelsior, Amsterdam’s most expensive restaurant, which stood at the confluence of two canals. The banks of the canals were planted in rhododendron and mountain laurel, both in bloom now in late spring, so that the colors of the flowers were mirrored in the water at his feet. The red brick buildings of the city were reflected too. Koy watched the launches go by, watched the fracturing of the colors into slivers of shattered glass. When the boats were gone, he watched the mirror reform itself over and over again as no true mirror could ever do.

It was an elegant lunch in an elegant place and he was enjoying it. He was pleased to have seen Hung again, pleased that the Amsterdam-New York connection, the final stage in the journey of the merchandise, was firmly in place, and he was in no immediate hurry to move on, for at his next stop he would have to deal with the general in Thailand, and it would not be this simple. Koy was like a director shooting his movie out of sequence, last scene first, because it was more economical and efficient that way, and also because it gave the director (Koy) and the cast (also Koy) confidence to start with something easy. One scene at least was already in the can. But the most vital scene of all had to be shot next; it would be a good deal more complicated, and it was time to move on to it. Koy paid his check, caught a cab out to the airport, and boarded another plane.

Twenty-two hours later, freshly shaved and fed, still wearing his tan silk suit, he landed at Bangkok’s Don Muang Airport, cleared customs and crossed to the domestic side, where he bought a ticket aboard a propeller plane for the local flight to Chiang Rai, about 600 miles north, the last major town below the Burma-Laos-Thailand border and the closest to the Golden Triangle any airline flew. It was steaming hot in Bangkok, but much cooler on the Chiang Rai plateau, where Koy was met by a Chinese Thai wearing army fatigues and thong sandals, who handed him a letter, then led him outside to a jeep. Koy, after tossing his small suitcase into the back on top of what looked like an M-16 automatic rifle lying on the floor, opened and read the letter. Bad news. The calligraphy was crude, and in some places illegible, which was neither here nor there perhaps. But the news was very bad indeed.

Koy had been as far as Chiang Rai, but no further, about ten years before. A Hong Kong police sergeant at the time, he had done his business at the airport with a one-eyed Chinese general known as Sao Mong Khawn, then the principal opium warlord of the region, and afterwards had gone back. This time he was to deal with the new warlord, Khun Sa, because Sao was either dead or deposed, and he had expected to meet him either at the airport or in the city. But Khun Sa had refused, according to this letter, to leave the hills. He would await Koy at his headquarters in the jungle.

Koy tried to decide what to do. He could not argue with a letter, and if he sent a message in with the driver and waited in a hotel it might take days for an answer to come back. With important appointments in Bangkok and Hong Kong, he did not have time for that. Were there other warlords who could supply the merchandise? Yes, but none had access to the same quantity as Khun Sa, and it was this quantity Koy needed. Besides, it was nearly harvest time and he was not in contact with them.