White Ghost (23 page)

M
s. Chen represents a firm that wants to export ginger to Taiwan,” Commander Ren told Mao, after he and Kai sat down in his trade bureau office. He gestured toward the map of the Nantong Special Economic Zone displayed on the wall behind him. “She's already looked into renting office space.”

Kai suppressed a smile as Mao scooted forward and perched himself on the front edge of his oversize desk chair like a vulture on a low limb.

“My job with the trade bureau is to encourage economic development through the creation of trading relationships between local and foreign companies.”

Ren raised a palm and smiled. “No need for the welcoming speech. She's already committed to the project. It's just a matter of how she goes about it.”

“How about a joint venture with a local company?” Mao said.

“What would that cost to set up?” Kai asked.

“Nothing.”

“How could that be?”

“The government has instituted incentives to encourage for
eign investment. A joint venture designation, in tax breaks alone, can result in a twenty percent increase in profits.”

“And a joint venture opens a local company to the world,” Ren said. “If they have a foreign partner, they can obtain import and export licenses.”

“What kind of investment are you talking about?”

“The government will expect nothing less than two and a half million yuan, and you'd have to send it in dollars. That's about three hundred thousand.”

Kai drew back, feigning surprise. “That's a little steep for the small operation I have in mind.”

Mao looked at Ren with a raised eyebrow. Ren nodded.

“There's a trick. You make a wire transfer to the joint venture in that amount and we label it as the foreign investment.” He cast a coconspirator's smile toward both Kai and Ren. “Then we wire it out again and call it a purchase of goods or equipment. It almost zeros out.”

“Almost?”

Mao held his smile. “There are certain small fees along the way.”

By fees, they all understood Mao meant bribes, and Kai had no reason to think they would be small.

“Why are you telling me all this?” Kai asked. “An outsider.”

“Commander Ren vouched for you. That's all I need.”

“And if you succeed,” Ren said, “so do we.”

“Businesses in this area, far as they are from the major ports, have a hard time finding foreign partners. And unless you're part of a state enterprise, you need a foreign partner in order to make contacts overseas, but you can't get a foreign partner unless you already have the contacts.”

Kai glanced at Ren, then back at Mao. “How much does the foreign partner need to know about my business? I don't want them going around me to my sources and cutting me out.”

“All they need to know are the dates and times the goods will be received or delivered, and their destinations. They don't ask and don't want to know what is being shipped or where it comes from. And if you import the ginger through Qidong, there are no customs officials around to ask either.”

Ren looked at his watch. “Maybe we should finish this conversation over lunch.”

Mao took Ren's suggestion as an order and escorted them from the trade bureau building toward a restaurant a few doors away. As they walked, Ren and Kai scanned the cars and trucks parked on the street, the shoppers gazing into store windows, and suited businessmen and-women conversing on the sidewalk, checking for countersurveillance.

They noticed none.

A waitress led them through a chaos of greens and pinks multiplied by the mirrored walls and into a small dining room where Mao ordered lunch without looking at the menu.

Kai declined Mao's drink offers, saving face by claiming that she was taking a medication that advised against alcohol. He ordered beer and cognac for himself and Ren.

Toward the end of the meal, when Kai was sure that Mao had become fuzzy enough to feel as though she'd become his confidante, she picked up the trail of the conversation where they had left it.

“Three hundred thousand dollars is a lot of money to put into the hands of someone we don't know.”

Mao's eyes sharpened through the alcohol-induced haze.

“But they'll know Commander Ren. And the deal would be structured so that no one”—Mao spread his hands as if to take in not just the trade bureau, but others beyond—“gets a cut until the money is sent out again. We've done it dozens of times.”

Mao leaned forward, gripping his drink with both hands,
resting his forearms on the table. He looked at Ren as though seeking permission, but then pushed on without waiting for it.

“How about Mr. Zeng? He took over a state enterprise and formed a joint venture with his cousin in Taiwan. In the money came, and out it went.”

“But they're relatives,” Kai said. “They trust each other. I have none here.”

Mao glanced at Ren again.

“What about the old man?” Ren said to Mao. “I think his name is Wu. He took the same kind of risk.”

“Of course, Lao Wu. His Efficiency Trading was nothing more than a pushcart with a fruit topping until he got his partner in Sunny Glory. And the same with Guan at North China Produce and Hsu at Garden Trading and Gu at New Dawn.”

“Would any of these people talk to me?”

Mao leaned even further onto the table and put his finger to his lips. “Never. It's one of these things we know but cannot discuss except among partners such as ourselves.”

Kai reached for the cognac bottle and poured for Ren, Mao, and then herself. She knew that the symbolism of her taking a drink despite the perceived risk would play on him. She rose to her feet. The others stood and raised their glasses.

“To partners.”

They echoed the toast, gulped the cognac, then sat again.

“Have you ever dealt with companies in San Francisco?” Kai asked, knowing that she might be pushing Mao further than he would want to go without her having money in hand. “I'm thinking of opening a branch over there, too.”

“Yes, of course.”

“Is there anyone you could refer me to? Someone you trust.”

Mao nodded. “A young man . . . but he's now . . .”

“Now . . . ?”

Mao paused, his face sagging as he looked back and forth between Kai and Ren. “He's now unavailable.”

Ren caught her eye and shook his head. They'd gone far enough and there was no reason to risk going too far. They might need Mao later.

After a few moments of silence, Kai poured Mao another drink and then turned the conversation away from business. Once their conversation was safely bracketed with food on one end and casual chat on the other, Kai brought it to an end.

“H
E CONFIRMED THE LINK
between Sunny Glory and Efficiency Trading,” Kai told Gage, calling from the restaurant bathroom. She'd sent Ren and Mao ahead. “I'm pretty sure either the chips or the heroin are going through Efficiency Trading, and the man he referred to in San Francisco was Ah Tien. There was actual sadness on his face when he talked about the man being unavailable.”

Gage passed on the information to Zhang.

“Zhang checked the bills of lading for incoming shipments,” Gage said to Kai. “There's nothing coming from Sunny Glory and nothing going to Efficiency Trading. That tells me they must be using another one of the fake joint ventures for insulation.”

Gage paused, then nodded for Zhang's benefit, suggesting that Kai had filled a gap in their knowledge. He didn't want to provoke another wild-goose-chase outburst, so he composed a story to match the facts confronting them.

“Ah Tien himself must've set one up to receive the chips. That way ownership of the cargo would stay in his hands until he was sure the exchange for the heroin would happen. If no one except him knew which boat the chips were coming in on, then it would be hard for Old Wu or Dong or even Mao to double-cross him.”

“The problem is that we may not know which company it
is until Zhang does. Which means he'll be in a position to grab them.”

“Let's meet up at the hotel and leave Ren's people to take care of the surveillance. We'll put together a list of all the company names we've collected and pass them on to my office to see if they can mine anything out of them and maybe . . . Is it worth taking another shot at Mao to see what else you can get?”

“Probably not. It turned out that Mao wasn't so Mao-Mao after all. He's a cagy little snap pea who drank his weight in cognac.”

Z
hang paced the carpet in Gage's room. Gage knew what was on his mind. The general was about to allow heroin to pass through a port under his control, a capital offense if discovered. But if he missed the chips, he'd have nothing. No Hong Kong company. No bank account. No money.

“We won't be able to seize the chips if they pass through Tongming Tiger,” Zhang said, turning toward Gage, Kai, and Cobra sitting at the table. “There are too many trucks coming and going.”

“That depends,” Gage said. “Did you find out whether any of the companies in the places Lew visited deal in chips?”

Zhang shook his head. “My people are still searching the tax and license records. So it takes time. And who knows? Maybe he went to those places to throw us off.”

Cobra caught Gage's eye and gave him a look that said,
If Zhang doesn't find the chips, he's going to grab the heroin
.

“That's unlikely,” Gage said, answering Zhang. “Lew probably hasn't been here before, and it takes a lot of familiarity to mislead someone.”

Zhang stopped and bore down on Gage. “But we're running out of time to find out.”

G
AGE HATED SURVEILLANCE.
It's best when things happen. It's worst when nothing happens. It's just nerve-racking when almost nothing happens.

At the end of the day, Dong left Tongming Tiger, but only went home.

Wu finally left his house, but only to meet Lew at his hotel for dinner.

Almost nothing happened.

At midnight, Gage turned everything over to Zhang's people and returned to the hotel to try to sleep. He called Alex Z before lying down.

“Nothing, boss. I even had Annie go over Ah Tien's address book again, just in case any of the company names were coded. Nothing.”

“I'll need you to stay at the office this evening. Things should start to happen here tomorrow morning. Call me if anything breaks on your end.”

“You feeling okay, boss?”

“I'm fine, Alex. Thanks for asking.”

Gage called Faith, expecting to leave a message. She answered on the fourth ring.

“I'm so glad you called.”

“Don't you have a no cell-phone rule in class?”

“I'm the only one in the room with the letters Ph.D. after her name, so I get to make the rules. Anyway, I didn't answer it until I got out to the hallway.”

Gage heard footsteps as she walked.

“Dr. Stern e-mailed me your blood results. Everything is no worse than stable, and your red blood count is up.”

“So Mother Stern says I can stay?”

“But I miss you, and I'm trying to get her to change her mind.”

“I miss you, too. Another thirty-six hours and I'll be out of here and on my way home.”

At least he hoped he would.

Z
hang and Ren arrived at Gage's room before sunrise dressed in civilian clothes. Both were carrying handguns. Gage didn't express his concern about them arming themselves, but knew Kai and Cobra shared it. Zhang and Ren only needed their military titles to carry off their parts since no one in Nantong would go to war against the People's Liberation Army. He wondered whether this was the reason Ah Tien had chosen Nantong, a city so dominated by the military that the Ministry of Public Security's Department of Narcotics Control would leave it alone.

Zhang laid out a series of satellite photos of the Formosa Strait and the East China Sea, then looked up at Gage.

“You never really believed it was a wild goose chase,” Gage said.

“It still may be, but I thought it wise to keep track of the geese.” Zhang pointed at a group of dark slivers circled on each photograph. “We've been tracking these. They started from Taichung and have been moving together up the coast. They're now a couple of hours out of Qidong.”

A crack of thunder broke into their conversation.

Gage pointed out of his hotel window at the dark clouds and distant rain. “The storm might make it difficult. More for us than for them since we still don't know who's supposed to pick up the chips.”

“But we know this,” Ren said, laying a list on top of the photos. “Eastrade uses chips in its robotics factory, Huang Medical for hospital equipment, Hong Kong Micro for the military, and East China Electrosupply for security systems.”

“But none of them are scheduled to pick up a load at Qidong.” Gage looked at Cobra. “We'll have to do this the hard way. You and Ren go to the port.” Then at Kai. “You watch Old Wu.”

Gage needed to keep Zhang away from the chips. He decided to gamble that since Tongming Tiger didn't have an import license, the chips wouldn't be heading directly there.

“Zhang, you take Dong. Start at Tongming Tiger. I'll take Lew.”

Even as he gave the orders he worried that Zhang and Ren knew more than they'd just disclosed.

W
U ARRIVED AT
L
EW'S HOTEL AT 7 A.M.
While they ate breakfast in the restaurant Gage checked in with Alex Z and Annie.

Nothing new.

Cobra called an hour later from the military installation that overlooked the Qidong port.

“The storm has turned the sky black in the east. The boats are moving in from the Yangtze and they're getting pounded. Everyone on the water is racing toward Qidong. Fishing craft. Smuggling junks. Barges. They'll be jammed together when they arrive. Ren says that there won't be enough room at the dock, so some will have to ground themselves in the mud. Makes me even sorrier about not getting the GPS on the thing.”

“Where are you now?”

“In Ren's office. I can see all the way from the bridge at the
top of the inlet, down along the port and out to the river. And trucks are lining up. Lots of them.”

Gage looked over and saw Wu driving up to Lew's hotel. In the distance he saw Kai pulling to the curb. He disconnected and called her.

“If Lew and Wu leave together, I'll stay with them and you stay back and check whether they have anyone doing any countersurveillance.”

A
S THE GRAY HAZE
of watching and waiting was returning, Zhang called, his voice dry with excitement. “The trucks from Kunming are at Tongming Tiger.”

Gage clenched his fist. The heroin had made it. Cobra really had broken the trail between it and Kasa.

“We checked the license plates. They match. The trucks are gray with red lions painted on the doors.”

Gage imagined Zhang's heart pounding as he overproved the point.

“Are they unloading?”

“Not yet. The drivers seem to be waiting for something. Dong hasn't even come out to look. But there's a whole lot of activity otherwise. Trucks are coming in from the companies Dong visited yesterday and some others, too. They're lined up down the street for a block.”

Gage watched Lew and Wu emerge from the hotel together and get into a pale green van. The driver merged into traffic.

“The old guys must have heard the news,” Gage told Zhang. “They're on the move. I'll stay with them.”

Gage followed Wu and Lew to the Efficiency Trading warehouse. They walked inside. Moments later a truck with neither license plates nor a company name backed up to the loading dock.

Ferrari snuck along the side of the building, then returned.

“
Suan,
” Ferrari said, pointing at the truck. “You say . . .” He hesitated, searching his memory.

“Like
suan ni bai rou
? Pork with garlic?”

Ferrari smiled and nodded.

They watched as Wu's laborers unloaded the truck and as it drove away.

G
AGE'S PHONE RANG.
It was Cobra, his voice panicky. “The boat's not coming in. It's not even in the group.”

Gage could hear rain pounding Ren's office and window. Only a heavy mist was falling outside his van.

“How do you know?”

“Ren sent cutters out to tow one that had broken down and to stand by in case others have problems. They called in the ID numbers of all the junks.”

“How many boats do we have to deal with?”

“Maybe forty already in the port, and a couple of dozen more are still heading in, riding the incoming tide. But it's hard to tell. The rain is murderous. The front edge is just hitting us.”

“How much time until they reach shore?”

“Ten minutes. Maybe fifteen.”

Gage guessed that Ren had also told Zhang. The chips had to be coming in. He closed his eyes. He remembered the heroin being transferred from Thai to Chinese trucks in Kunming. It gave him an idea for a story to tell Zhang.

“They must've shifted the chips to another boat during the trip up the coast. Tell Ren I'm not surprised. Since they changed trucks in China, we suspected that they might also change boats. He'll pass it on to Zhang, and maybe that'll cool him down for a little while.”

G
AGE CALLED
A
LEX
Z. “A truck at Efficiency Trading has just unloaded a lot of garlic. That tell you anything?”

“Garlic . . . garlic . . . That's it, boss.” He heard Alex Z slap his desk. “The bill of lading in Ah Tien's briefcase, the one from Sunny Glory in Taiwan to Sunny Glory in the U.S., it was for processed garlic.”

“But that only tells us how the heroin could be hidden leaving here. Wasn't there another bill of lading?”

Gage heard Alex Z shuffling papers on his desk.

“Yeah. Rare mushrooms from one unnamed company to another.”

Gage disconnected, then called Cobra. “Are any of the boats bringing in mushrooms?”

Gage heard Cobra working his way through the PLA paperwork.

“Two. One is for China Food Resources and the other for North China Produce—hold on.”

Gage heard Ren speaking in Chinese in the background, then Cobra again.

“And North China Produce is one of Mao's joint ventures.”

“How many trucks are out there?”

“About a hundred. Hold on. We're scanning with binoculars, but with the rain it's like looking through fog . . . Wait . . . wait . . . wait . . . Got it. A North China Produce truck is loading up. Dark blue. Yellow lettering.”

Gage called Zhang and passed on the news.

“Dong finally came out to the Kunming trucks,” Zhang said, “but didn't even look inside. He just scanned the street and went back inside his office. I wonder if that means he suspects something.”

F
OR THE NEXT HALF HOUR
there was no movement around Wu's building, except for the storm front charging inland, wind-ripped rain swirling around them and pounding the pavement, each drop seeming to burst upward on impact.

Gage's cell phone rang, faint against the thudding on roof and the spray splashing across the windows. But the noise couldn't blunt the edge in Cobra's voice.

“We're following the North China Produce truck back toward town. And we're not the only one.”

“Zhang's people?”

“No way to tell.”

A rumble of anger started to build in Gage as he put Zhang's number on his cell-phone screen.

If this guy goes for the chips,
Gage told himself,
I'll bury him with the heroin. Bury him
. He took a long breath, tried to steady himself, and then pressed “send.”

“There's a car following the North China Produce truck,” Gage said, aware that a twinge of accusation was latent in his voice.

“It's not my people,” Zhang said. “If I intended to break our agreement, there were better ways to start than that.”

“What about Ren?”

“No, he's just leaving for Shanghai. He told me he didn't want to be here when the heroin arrived. I put him on leave until after the boat is out of Chinese waters again. His men are now under my control. In any case, he's too new to take a big risk like stealing the chips from me.”

Gage called Kai. “I need you to head east toward the Qidong port. Cobra's following a North China Produce truck carrying the chips. We may have bumped into countersurveillance, and Cobra will need to break off before he gets made.”

“I'm on the way. I'll call him to set up the switch. We can probably do it at the crossroads where the highway from Shanghai meets the one between Nantong and the port.”

Gage disconnected and looked at the map of Nantong Ferrari had given him. The chips were traveling east toward the city, but he still didn't know how the deal was structured, who was going
to do it, where it was going to take place, or, given Dong's behavior, whether it would take place at all. Even more, a chill told him that he could still lose track of both the chips and the heroin, and he'd lose his grip on both ends of the noose he'd hoped to slip around Ah Ming's neck.

G
AGE'S PHONE RANG.

“Dong came to his office door and waved to his crew and they started unloading the bags of cassava powder from the Kunming trucks,” Zhang said, “but slowly, like they don't want to uncover the heroin until they're sure the deal is really going to happen.”

“They must've gotten the go-ahead when the chips left the port.”

“And what about my chips?”

Gage didn't like Zhang's claim of possession. The insurance money would be his at the end, but the chips, never.

Gage kept his worry to himself.

“Cobra is behind them. Kai will trade off with him at the Shanghai turnoff so he doesn't get made.”

A
NOTHER TWENTY-FIVE MINUTES PASSED
, then Lew and Wu came into Gage's view at the side door of Efficiency Trading. They squinted up at the rain, then strode to their waiting van and drove east through town with Gage behind them. He could see both Lew and Wu talking on their cell phones and Wu pointing and directing the driver. They moved without urgency, but he could see the driver checking his mirrors: rear-right-left, rear-right-left, rear-right-left.

Wu's driver slowed at a stoplight, then floored it, blowing through the red. Ferrari backed up to shoot around the cars blocking him, but Gage grabbed his shoulder to stop him. In just a few gut-turning moments Wu and Lew shrank into the distance and disappeared into the smoke-gray storm.

Gage called Kai. “I lost Lew. His driver jumped a stoplight and took off.”

“Did he see you?”

Ferrari pulled his cell phone out of his pocket. Gage held a palm up toward him. Ferrari cast him a questioning look, but put it back.

“I don't know. I would've done the same thing at some point whether I spotted someone following me or not. Where's the North China truck?”

“It's parked in an alley next to a huge indoor produce market. The driver just walked back out to the street. He's standing there under an umbrella like he's waiting for a bus. We're at a service station, but I have a little bit of a view down the alley.”

“Where's the car that was following it?”

“It stopped, too. It's not hiding, so it must be with them. I'm not sure how long we can stay here without attracting attention. We can only check the oil so many times.”

“I'll put Ferrari on the line. Give him directions to where you are.”

After handing the phone back to Gage, Ferrari wound through backstreets, emerging on the boulevard west of Kai.

“I'm heading east on . . .” Gage said. “There you are.”

Ferrari stopped a hundred and fifty yards from the alley.

Lew and Wu drove up five minutes later. Gage didn't show the relief he felt, or the fatigue that was creeping through him; he just looked at Ferrari and pointed at his cell phone. Ferrari nodded and called Zhang.

“It's a good thing you were able to stay with the North China truck,” Gage told Kai. “Zhang would've tossed us into the East China Sea.”

“And it's a hell of a lot of backstrokes to Bangkok.”

“Even more to San Francisco. Can you see anything?”

“The truck driver has opened the rear doors. Wu and Lew
are looking inside at some boxes stacked at the back . . . Wu's driver is now moving them into the back of their van.”

“What's the other car doing?”

“Nothing. There's a guy in the driver's seat watching. It must be their security . . . Wu just put in the last box.”

Gage saw Wu emerge from the alley and make a low wave.

“Did you get burned?”

“No, he's signaling to the car that was following him. It's moving up.”

“You stay with the North China Produce truck and we'll stay with Wu and Lew.”

Gage and Ferrari fell in a good distance behind Wu and Lew and the car following them. Gage watched Kai pulling out into traffic to follow the truck. He knew an observant eye would have seen a loose caravan, but because of the crush of traffic the links connecting them were invisible to everyone else.