White Ghost (22 page)

K
ai and Gage walked down a floor in the Nantong Center Hotel and knocked on the door to Zhang's room, hoping he and Ren had woken from their alcohol-induced afternoon nap. Zhang opened it on the second knock. They could see Ren in the bathroom combing wet hair away from his puffy face. The steam from shower and the scents of soap and shampoo clouded the doorway, then Zhang's stale cognac and pork breath broke through, and bile rose in Gage's throat.

Gage swallowed hard and then said, “The trucks from the south are on their way. They'll be here in a day or two.”

Zhang nodded. “We'll have time to arrange everything.” His tone was crisp, not the rough voice of someone who'd just awakened from an alcohol-induced stupor.

“We?”

Zhang glanced at Ren and nodded. He then pointed downward and said, “We'll meet you in a few minutes. He wants to show you how the people and companies are distributed around the city.”

Kai and Gage went down to the lobby where Gage made a room reservation for Cobra.

Z
HANG SNAPPED HIS CELL PHONE SHUT
as he and Ren left the elevator and moments later Ferrari pulled the mobile office to a stop in front of the hotel. The evening air was still and the streetlights were coming on as they entered the van. Ferrari reached back and handed each of them a map of Nantong in both English and Chinese, with all the businesses marked that had appeared in Ah Tien's address book.

Gage felt an uncanniness looking at the annotated map. It somehow reminded him of the CAT scan he'd done, a picture that would reveal a disease or, perhaps, a projection of a diagnosis onto a picture. It made him feel as though the next hour of inspecting the places shown on the map would be like an exercise in pathology, an examination of the social tumors, or at least their outer shape, that had led to the death of Peter Sheridan.

Ferrari first drove northeast to Lao Wu's Efficiency Trading, composed of a metal building, part office and part warehouse, the size of an American auto parts store. Its green paint had long faded, and cardboard covered a couple of broken second-floor windows. It had a single loading bay, its roll-up door closed, trash collected along the wall, and used cardboard boxes folded and piled by the rear fence. An old cargo van was parked on the street with the company name painted on the side with two laborers asleep in the front seat.

The mood of neglect suggested to Gage that Lao Wu was either irresponsible or a man at the end of his career, or both. And as he scanned the street, he noticed that the rest of the businesses were also small and old, suggesting that economic development in the area had started there twenty or thirty years earlier and had moved on.

Ferrari's next stop confirmed it.

Tongming Tiger stood along a four-lane road lined with factories and cold storage facilities on the western edge of town. Most of the businesses had luxury cars and SUVs parked in front.

A dozen loading docks gaped from the football-field-size Tongming Tiger warehouse, with laborers swarming from truck to truck, loading and unloading, while supervisors stood by marking off deliveries on bills of lading. Semis were lined up at the gate and extended thirty yards down the street, their exhaust seeming to create their own gray microclimate of clouds and fog.

Kai reached for Zhang's binoculars and read off the printing on the bags and boxes that workers were moving by hand or forklift: rice, wheat, dried corn, food preservatives, components for traditional Chinese medicines, including dried reptiles and insects and roots, mushrooms, and bark.

If the key to successful drug trafficking was to conceal it within normal business activities,
Gage thought,
then Tongming Tiger was ideal
. Millions of dollars in chips or hundreds of kilos of heroin could slip in and out unnoticed by the workers who bore it from truck to warehouse, even less by the fluorescent-lit clerks on the second-and third-floor offices.

Ferrari pointed to a middle-aged balding man walking from the entrance toward a Nissan sedan, then spoke a few words to Zhang in Chinese.

“That's Dong,” Zhang said. “The owner. A very modest person. He's worth millions, but he and his wife live like mice in a little house by the river. His only vice is a little gambling in Macao every few months.”

“Hold that thought,” Gage said. “In the next few days we'll find out whether modesty is just the part he plays.”

As they drove in silence back through Nantong, Ren and Zhang slid down in their seats and closed their eyes.

Ferrari turned left a few blocks before reaching the Nantong Center Hotel and pulled to the curb.

“Why are we stopping here?” Kai asked Ferrari.

“Tian Nan . . . Hotel,” Ferrari said in broken English, pointing at the sign over the entrance.

“And?” Kai asked.

Zhang stirred, then stretched over to peer out through the van side window, and said, “Ah yes, the Tian Nan Hotel.” He looked at Kai, then at Gage, and smiled. “A person by the name of Lew Fung-hao checked in here this afternoon.”

W
u and Lew sat together at a small table in the Tian Nan Hotel restaurant. Even though the rooms above were small and crowded with single beds, Wu had chosen it because it catered to Chinese, rather than foreign businesspeople, and the menu accommodated tastes from almost anywhere in China.

One of Ren's plainclothes soldiers secured a table next to them. She grasped at their words and at the sentence fragments that emerged out of the surrounding chaos of clacking dishes, murmured conversations and bursts of laughter, but the only ones that reached her seemed unrelated to smuggling.

“I can tell by your accent you're from the southern coastal area,” Wu said, as the waiter delivered plates of Lucky Fish and steamed vegetables and bowls of rice.

“I was born near Shantou and lived there until 1971 when I . . .” Lew stiffened and his voice trailed off.

Wu wasn't surprised by Lew's difficulty in speaking of the past. He'd met many like Lew. Diaspora Chinese who'd returned to do business, but who were unable to adjust to the political reality of a modern China that had ripped through the seams of its communist past.

“You can speak freely,” Wu said, glancing around the restaurant. “Things have changed. There's no need to worry. Even those who suffered the worst and fled to America and Hong Kong are now coming back to live here.” He pointed up at a television hanging from a bracket in the far corner of the room. “There are no secrets anymore. The state television shows documentaries about Red Guards harassing and beating people and about the famine.”

“My memories of those days have become a filter against the present,” Lew said. “I'm not sure I can see China very clearly.” He shrugged. “Maybe I never will.”

Wu slid a piece of fish into Lew's rice bowl, then said, “In some ways it was easier for those who stayed to adjust to the changes because we could watch them happening.”

Wu chose not to speak of the dead who hadn't survived to watch anything: those executed or murdered and the thirty million who starved to death.

“I was in my late twenties when the Cultural Revolution began,” Wu said. “I was working as a clerk at a collective farm just west of here. I was considered a necessary evil because I could read and write. Then the Red Guards came along. They didn't see me as necessary, only as evil, and sent me into the fields as a laborer. Two years later, everyone who depended on the farm was starving because there was no one left with management skills.”

Lew set down his chopsticks. “I was a history professor.” He shook his head as if to say that if he'd understood more, he might have suffered less. “The Party let me come back to the university after six years of hard labor and reeducation, but then everything turned upside down again when the students turned against us.”

Wu didn't expect Lew to describe what had happened to him—that generation never did—but the memories returned:
intellectuals dressed like clowns and paraded through the streets, to be beat and spit upon.

“Other professors committed suicide, but somehow I found the strength to resist and then to escape to Hong Kong.”

“A survivor.”

Lew nodded. “And you, too.”

“As it turned out, the communist leaders were right in their analysis of the danger the former capitalist classes held for the revolution.” Wu smiled. “Capitalism does seem to be genetic. I saw a chance to open a business and somehow knew how to run it. It grew over time into Efficiency Trading.”

“Maybe if I'd held out longer . . .”

Wu shook his head. “It's better to have left.” He smiled again. “America is a wonderful place. I've seen it. My son was a student at Columbia and I stayed with him for a month last year.” His smile turned into a grin. “And Las Vegas? Fantastic.” His excitement pushed him forward in his chair. “Have you been?”

“No, I've lived a quiet life.”

Lew picked up his chopsticks and poked at the fish, but he didn't pick up a piece.

In the silence, Wu inspected Lew's eyes. They were deadened by what Wu knew had to have been an unquiet life, or maybe a quiet one ruthlessly lived. The big boss in San Francisco never would've trusted a weak man with the mission that had brought Lew to Nantong.

Wu stared down at Lew's now idle chopsticks.

Was there blood on those hands?
Wu asked himself.
Maybe. Maybe not.

Wu settled on maybe, for the American end of the heroin trade was much more violent than in China where it's like any other kind of commodity. At the same time, organizations like Ah Ming's also needed people with fingers clean enough to handle the money without drawing suspicion. In any case, Wu
decided, it wasn't a topic to be raised at this table, for here they were just two old men whose lives by chance had converged.

“And what about the future?” Wu finally asked.

“I'm thinking about retiring.”

“Here?”

Lew shrugged. “Maybe. Though I find the thought surprising.”

C
obra nodded toward Gage and Kai as he entered the Nantong Center Hotel restaurant and then walked to the breakfast buffet table and served himself a bowl of
da mi zhou,
steaming rice porridge, and sprinkled
pao cai,
pickled vegetables, on top.

“What have I missed?” Cobra asked as he sat down.

Gage filled him in.

Cobra looked at Kai. “I had to leave your shortwave transmitter in Kunming. The airport security people wouldn't have let me take it on the plane. It's illegal to bring that kind of gear into China without a license. And your gun is at the bottom of the Panlong River.”

“No problem. I've got more.”

“We'll have to divide up,” Gage said. “Eight Iron might try to catch up with the heroin and make a grab for it, and Zhang might give up on the offshore account and double-cross us.”

“And Ren could double-cross Zhang,” Kai said.

They looked up to see Zhang heading toward them. Gage introduced Cobra using his Thai nickname.

“Jong Arng . . . Jong Arng. Sounds like a nickname. What's it mean?”

“Cobra,” Gage answered. “It means Cobra.”

Zhang's eyebrows rose a fraction. “Years ago, when I supervised a border trade land crossing in the south, I attended an intelligence briefing at the Chinese embassy in Bangkok. There was discussion of a troublesome Taiwanese MJIB agent known as Cobra.” Zhang smiled. “I was told it was an accurate name. You wouldn't be him, would you?”

“No,” Cobra said in even voice. “It must've been someone else.”

Gage didn't want Zhang to think about it further so he issued assignments.

“I'll work with Zhang on Lew. Kai will take Tongming Tiger. And Cobra, Efficiency Trading.”

As they walked to the vehicles waiting outside, Zhang made a call to share Gage's plan with Ren and his people.

Gage got into Zhang's van.

“There seems to be a certain toughness about Kai,” Zhang said, as Ferrari drove them toward Lew's hotel.

“She knows how to handle herself.”

“That's not quite what I meant. On the surface she can be very charming, but underneath she's like us. I'll bet she's really something in bed.” Zhang looked over and grinned. “You wouldn't happen to have any personal knowledge?”

“We've been friends for a long time. That's all there is between us.”

“I sense there's even less between her and her husband.”

“He's a little man in a big job. And he won't last. Even if his party forms the next government, he'll be dropped from the cabinet. It's embarrassing for Thailand to have a cabinet minister who can't get a visa to the United States because of a history of drug trafficking.”

Zhang already had plainclothes soldiers surveilling Lew's hotel, so he directed Ferrari to park around the corner. Ferrari
pulled down a black curtain to conceal the rear of the van, then moved over into the passenger seat so it would seem to passersby that he was waiting for the driver to return from one of the shops along the street.

Ten minutes later, Zhang's phone rang.

“A taxi just picked up Lew,” Zhang told Gage. “My people are behind it.”

Zhang stayed in communication with the surveillance team following Lew as he wound through Nantong.

Ferrari skirted Lew's route for ten minutes, then pulled over.

“We don't need to show ourselves,” Zhang said. “It looks like Lew is heading for Tongming Tiger.”

Gage called Kai, already there.

“You remember the guy from the trade bureau whose name was coded in Ah Tien's address book?”

“Mao,” Kai said. “Like Chairman Mao. Who'd have thought that someone with that family name would be responsible for making capitalism flourish.”

“I'm thinking you should try to pry some information out of him. I'll ask Zhang to work it out with Ren.”

Ferrari started up again. He drove around a corner and came to a stop a block away from where Kai was parked with a view of the entrance to Tongming Tiger.

Zhang called Ren and reported back to Gage. “Ren can meet Kai at the trade bureau and introduce her to Mao. He'll say she wants to move ginger through the port and needs to register a Thai-Chinese joint venture to handle it.”

“Are you sure Mao will meet her?”

“Don't worry. He'll meet with her whenever she wants. All these guys are greedy bureaucrats looking for their cut. And he knows that anyone referred by a port commander is for real and is ready to spend money.”

Gage called Kai. “Zhang will hook you up with Ren. Set the meeting around lunchtime so you can get him drinking.”

“You mean get his brain fuzzy?” Kai said, laughing.

“I don't get it.”

“Mao-Mao means fuzzy in Mandarin.”

“I've got one for you, too. Tell Mao-Mao you're with New Life Trading.”

“I like the sound of that one. Maybe I'll open a Bangkok branch for real.”

A
FTER AN HOUR OF INACTIVITY
, both Zhang's and Gage's cell phones rang.

“Lew just walked out of Tongming Tiger,” Kai told Gage. “He's alone.”

“We'll follow him. Stay there and keep an eye on the company until your meeting with Mao gets set up.”

Gage tapped Ferrari on the shoulder and pointed toward the driver's seat. Ferrari slid over and eased the van forward as Lew entered a red taxi. They followed the cab through town to an L-shaped compound located in the far eastern part of the city. Four or five businesses occupied each arm of the building.

Lew slipped from the cab, spoke briefly with the guard at the gate, then walked inside.

Ferrari stopped fifteen yards past the entrance, then Zhang walked back, but arrived too late to see which business Lew had entered. He used his phone to take a photo of the company names posted near the entrance, then returned to the van, and read them off: “Eastrade Electronics, Jinqiao Fish Wholesale, Qingdao Trading, Huang Medical, and Golden Export.”

“Can you find out if Eastrade Electronics or Huang Medical deal in computer processors or just in already manufactured products?”

Zhang made calls to obtain the information as they waited for Lew to reappear.

Gage checked in with Kai.

“We followed Dong in a big circle starting from Tongming Tiger,” Kai said. “He started at an herb trader, then went to a fertilizer factory, and finally to a huge pharmaceutical company. It has a guarded gate, so we couldn't follow him in and lost sight of him. It looked to me like they were just regular sales calls.”

As Gage and Zhang waited outside the business compound Lew had entered, Cobra called to say there was regular but slow-paced activity at Old Wu's Efficiency Trading, but no signs of Wu himself. There were two clerks working in the building and a few laborers resting outside after unloading bags of what appeared to be processed garlic from delivery trucks.

An hour later, Lew walked back out through the compound gate and caught a cab that took him to the Enterprise Tower at the far south end of the city. Zhang followed him inside and watched him enter an elevator at the same time as a delivery boy. Zhang watched the numbers light up as the elevator rose through the floors. It stopped on the eighth and eleventh. He checked the business directory framed on a wall and photographed them all, then focused in on the names of the companies on those floors. He identified two more that might use computer chips and called his staff to research them.

A
FTER ANOTHER HOUR,
they trailed Lew back to the Tian Nan Hotel, and Ferrari followed him into the restaurant. He returned after a few minutes and reported that Lew was eating alone.

“What do you think?” Zhang asked Gage.

Gage thought back over Lew's route.

“My guess is that he's confirmed all the links, but I think we're still about five steps behind him.”

A young man in a short-sleeved shirt and matching green
slacks walked up to Ferrari's window. He handed over an oversize envelope through the driver's window, then started to raise his hand in a salute. Ferrari stopped him with a shake of his head.

Ferrari handed the envelope back to Zhang, who tore it open and paged through what Gage could see were over a hundred bills of lading. His face reddened as he got to the last one and tossed them on the table.

“These are the shipping documents for all the boats due into Qidong tomorrow. There's nothing coming from Sunny Glory and nothing going to Tongming Tiger or Efficiency Trading or any of the companies we saw today.”

Gage felt a return of the same feeling of panic, fearing that he had wasted days of his life and had risked others, chasing a mistake about Ah Ming's plan, the same desperation he'd fought back when he learned that Sunny Glory had sent away an empty container. An image of the coast of China Sea came into his mind, then it expanded south to include Vietnam and Thailand—a thousand other ports and inlets toward which the chips might be headed.

Zhang glared at Gage and his voice hardened. “Is this what you Americans call a wild goose chase?”