by Mike Coony
As Nataliya was leaving that Monday morning I gave her a five hundred dollar tip. She looked real happy about the extra dough, but then she seemed kind of pissed too. I realised that I’d sort of broken the spell of the weekend. I had to think fast.
“Send the money to your mother in Moscow. She’s taking care of your kid, right? She could handle a few extra bucks, yeah?” That seemed to take the sting out of her taking the money like some run-of-the-mill hooker.
“Cпасибо…thank you Gerry.”
I wish I’d met Nataliya Yelena under different circumstances, but I didn’t. Falling for a Russian girl controlled by the ex-KGB Russian Mafia could get you killed. And that’s not something I’m quite prepared to get into…not just yet.
———
Me and Earl have been to Taipei four times already. I always imagined Taiwan would be industrial plants and chimney stacks across the skyline – like one giant Pittsburgh with rice paddies. But from what I’ve seen, it’s mostly farming, and mom-and-pop businesses up back alleys.
And let me tell you, they have money! They have truckloads of US dollars, and they don’t deposit it in regular Taiwan banks. Taiwan has real tight-assed currency laws that keep their citizens from taking US dollars out of the country – legit, that is. Earl and I have been helping them move it, but not in large enough amounts…and not often enough to satisfy the demand. So we’re planning to expand operations to meet the demand.
On our last visit we took a hotel car out to the country to meet farmers growing rice, raising ducks and breeding dogs for the cooking pot. They’ve all put money into their own co-operative society, and it’s worth billions of dollars. Earl wants us to get our hands on some of that, and he’s working on a scheme that he doesn’t want to talk about yet.
So far I’ve kept Earl away from Uncle Sui, even though I know Uncle’s influence covers all of Taiwan and he could help us with the duck farmers. But what would it cost? And would he really want a couple of Yanks horsing around in Taiwan? It’s not like he needs us there.
Whenever I meet Uncle Sui he asks about Finn Flynn, but he won’t let anyone know why he’s involved with him. It’s a taboo subject. I tried to get Uncle to tell me one afternoon when we were relaxing in the steam rooms in TST, Kowloon. But before he said a word he just looked at me for a while in that way he does, like he can read your mind.
“Look into Finn Flynn’s eyes the next time you meet him Gerry. There is hard steel behind those eyes. I saw it during lunch in the Man Wah restaurant on the first day we met. Do not be fooled by his Irish charm. Remember, he too has powerful friends, and they think very highly of him. He is in Asia as my guest, and he must be treated with respect….You will include Finn Flynn in your business in Taiwan with the clever Mister Earl? Yes?”
Damn! He’s known about Earl and Taiwan all along. I tried to think fast, but I realised it wasn’t the time to make excuses. If he wants an explanation I’ll have to give him one….
Before I could think what to tell him, Uncle slipped on his monogrammed bathrobe and continued. “Gerry, you may call upon my help in your dealings in Taiwan. They are very tricky people, peasants mostly, but they are sly, cunning, and they do not trust easily. I have some influence there, which may prove useful to you. I do not wish to know the details of what you and Earl are planning. If it does not go well I will deny that I knew what you and your friend were up to. Do you understand, Gerry? When you are ready, just tell me what the Sun Yat Sun may hope to receive from these enterprises. Also, I do not wish to meet your friend Earl. One American at a time is quite enough for an old man like me. But bring Finn Flynn to see me soon. I need to speak with him.”
Jeez, I can’t remember Uncle Sui ever saying so much in one conversation. I got the message loud and clear – don’t fuck Finn Flynn around, watch out for the Taiwanese, cover our asses, and don’t expect any help from him if anything goes wrong. But most important, don’t forget his share.
I got to thinking about what Uncle Sui said about Finn Flynn and his ‘powerful friends’. Who the hell are they? No one’s ever mentioned organised crime and Finn Flynn in the same breath. That only leaves those crazy fucks, the Irish Republican Army. Jesus H. Christ, I hope he’s not tied up with those guys.
I remember one time in Chicago I was in a bar and I met some of their supporters collecting for ‘the cause’. “Forget it, I don’t give to causes, and anyways, I already gave at the office,” I said.
They didn’t seem to like my little joke and got kind of pushy. Chicago’s not my hometown, so I just let it pass and slipped the big lug with the curly red hair a fifty spot. Then I changed my mind and made it a hundred. After they left, the bartender told me that if you work for the city of Chicago they take ten per cent right out of your pay and send it to the Provos. If you don’t want to contribute to the Irish struggle, you find yourself a new job…and a new city.
Naw, no way! I can’t believe it. Uncle Sui wouldn’t attach himself to that band of gun-toting, bomb-throwing lunatics, would he? Thanks all the same, but even if he has, I’m not about to ask.
13
HONG KONG
Whenever I was asked in the past to help a gweilo I always refused. Gweilos are more trouble than they are worth, and given the chance, they will shit on a Chinaman every time.
I first realised this when I was a probationary police constable stationed in Shek Wai Kok, in Hong Kong’s New Territories. I was only getting my share of the tea money from the duck farmers and illegal dog fights. But when our new gweilo inspector – freshly arrived from England – carried out an unscheduled inspection he found the money I had hidden in my locker. He questioned me, marched me back to the village, and ordered me to hand it all back to the head man.
That was a great loss of face, and but for the intervention of the station sergeant – a man from my own city of Xi’an in Shaanxi Province – I would have been dismissed from the Royal Hong Kong Police Force. If that had happened, how then would I have paid the Snakeheads who smuggled my wife’s sister to Sheung Wan aboard a Yaumati Ferry? It would have been more than loss of face…it would probably have meant loss of life for a relation of mine still living in China. Snakeheads do not like not getting paid.
Luckily for me, not wanting to fall foul of the Chinese members of the police, the village headman spoke with Sergeant Sun Lui-Ping. He handed back the tea money – that I had been shamefully ordered to return by that pigheaded gweilo inspector – to the sergeant. The head man swore on his children’s lives to keep quiet about the dishonourable incident…and he kept his word.
Auspiciously – one of my favourite English words – after one year as a police constable in the New Territories, I was sent on an anti-vice training course at Police Headquarters in Wan Chai, on Hong Kong Island. One evening the training instructor took me to the Susie Wong club for drinks, and a short time with a young girl who had just arrived from Heilongjiang in northern China. She had never been with a man before, and I had never done a virgin. Afterwards she cried, and I wanted to slap her for spoiling my short time. Instead, I flung her clothes at her and yelled, ‘You are useless!’
I did not know that the training instructor was watching me through a two-way mirror – usually used for covertly taking pictures of clients with very young girls, or doing things that would sicken their wives and mothers. The instructor said he was impressed by the way I dealt with the prostitute.
He told me that if I joined his Triad, the Sun Yat Sun, he might recommend me for a permanent position with Vice. There was plenty of tea money to be made as a member of Vice, and there would be extra benefits with the girls. I would have been a fool to refuse the instructor’s offer. I swore the Thirty-six Oaths and became a Sun Yat Sun Triad. And true to his word, the instructor got me transferred to the Vice Squad based at Wan Chai Royal Hong Kong Police Station.
I became a sergeant in the Wan Chai Station, while making my way steadily upwards in the Sun Yat Sun. The tea money poured in, I had my pick of
the new girls fresh from China, Thailand and the Philippines, and life was not so complicated.
Any business person who made an official complaint against the Triad was slashed across the face by my code 426 fighters. Then, if they still complained, the fire brigade visited their business premises and found many expensive breaches of regulations. The unfortunates walking the streets of Hong Kong – with their faces disfigured by criss-crossed scars, moaning about the Triad and the fire brigade – were very useful to us. Their mere existence encouraged others to seek the protection of the Sun Yat Sun…lest the same fate befall them.
———
The Sun Yat Sun has not had political ambitions for many years, but the Triads, Yakuza and Mafia all began with political ambitions. They built armies, made intelligence connections, and ruined the reputations of those they chose not to support. With the passing of time, the early political ambitions of the Triads were achieved. The landowners no longer treated the peasants as serfs, and the crooked tax collectors were too afraid of the consequences to demand levies from the tradesmen and shopkeepers.
We still had growing organisations to maintain, however, and we had to find ways to raise funds. So we offered shelter to those who could not seek protection from the police, the judiciary or the public representatives. In return, they invited us to become both their protectors and their partners. And it is only right that the people living under our protection contribute to our expenses.
The Hong Kong and Macau Administrations left the Sun Yat Sun to conduct our business in peace, and we left the Administrations in peace…to rob their own people with levies and taxes. For a very long time we had exclusive control over extortion, prostitution, gambling, money laundering, people-trafficking, smuggling, drug manufacturing and distribution, arms supply, fraud, and all manner of commercial crime.
It was a sad day for the Royal Hong Kong Police, and all Triads, when the Independent Commission Against Corruption got under way. After many years of an easy life, things became complicated. The business owners stopped coming to me in the police station with their complaints; they began to go directly to the offices of the ICAC. I could no longer arrange suitable responses to deal with these selfish people – unhappy with the protection they were enjoying at the hands of my Triad.
Little by little the ICAC dogs whittled away our control over much of the drug trafficking, contract killing, gambling, prostitution, protection rackets, and extortion rings. We had no choice but to move into more complicated crimes – money laundering, banking, financial services, bootleg tobacco and alcohol, and counterfeit electronics, clothing and CDs. Our friends in Taiwan have become experts in counterfeiting parts for aircraft, surgical instruments, medicines, publications, and even cars. And in Japan the Yakuza control the stock exchange and foreign exchange markets…they have not even lost control of the fish markets.
I have found that I prefer banking. It appeals to my sense of justice that we should control the money that the imperialist gweilos make on the sweat and toil of the downtrodden Chinese. But my background as a simple policeman had not equipped me for such activity, so I have been forced to turn to Americans, Canadians, Australians, and now an Irishman. These gweilos can never be my brothers, but together we can increase the wealth and influence of my beloved Sun Yat Sun…and me, of course.
I respect the ambitions of the world’s new players who seek, through the power of religion and terror, to control whole countries. The Koran-thumping Muslims are making great progress, but ETA, the Muslim Brotherhood, and even the Provisional Irish Republican Army have all followed in our footsteps. They too have wet their beaks in the golden pond of corruption, and they are now involved in drugs, fraud, bank robbery and protection rackets. Soon, they will be invited to become partners in the sex industry. And just like us, they will forget their political ambitions and join the criminal world as full-time participants. After all, we are all organisations happy to operate in the dark underbelly of society, where the rich and poor crawl to get their kicks, satisfy their vile appetites, and pay us our due.
———
Mountain Master Fu in Belfast, Northern Ireland is under pressure from the Protestants – the Red Hand of Ulster and the UFF – so he has been building bridges between the Sun Yat Sun and PIRA. He believes PIRA will eventually succeed in their struggle because they have a more disciplined force. He also believes they will either offer him protection at a reasonable price, or join forces with him in the gambling and sex businesses.
The Chief of PIRA told Master Fu that one of his best men needed somewhere to disappear for a while. He asked if Master Fu could arrange for this Irish terrorist to take refuge in Asia. Of course Master Fu said he would do what he could, and that is how he came to ask for my help. Master Fu is related by marriage to the training instructor who initiated me into the Triad, so when he asked me to put a gweilo under my wing I could not refuse his request.
I made my own enquiries about Finn Flynn, of course. He was described to me as a revolutionary, bank robber, killer, womaniser, and chameleon. My source – a Chinese ear, nose and throat specialist from Penang – at the College of Surgeons in Dublin knows Flynn vaguely; he recommended that Finn Flynn would make a good front man in financial circles. He said Flynn’s intelligent facial features mean that he does not actually look like a traditional revolutionary terrorist – apart from his size, long hair and beard. After further digging, my source reported that Flynn had a good education with the De La Salle Brothers, and he was taken on by a company in the City of London before returning to Dublin to attend Trinity College.
I agree that Finn Flynn will make a good lead man in financial circles. Since his arrival in Hong Kong, he has made all the right moves and met the right people – some of them without any help from me. And fortunately for all of us, he has done nothing to embarrass my beloved Triad.
However, I remain a little sceptical about Finn Flynn. He wears the cloak of the revolutionary and he has the cunning of a villain. But I am sorry to say, he also appears to have the heart of a saint – so typically Irish! He beat a Dublin pimp to death just for slapping one of his own girls. That is a little too chivalrous for my tastes, but in his favour, he has killed many British soldiers and tortured a man from MI6. I heard Finn Flynn kills with his bare hands, and if he were Chinese I would initiate him into the Sun Yat Sun. But unlike other Triads, we can not accept a gweilo.
I am told Finn Flynn is not expendable under any circumstances. But we shall just have to see about that. It has always been my conclusion that everyone is expendable…everyone that is, except me.
Finn Flynn’s two hundred thousand US dollars reached the hands of Khin Da in Cambodia, but he has sent nothing in return. I may have to call upon Khin Da to honour his agreement to send two hundred kilos of ninety-eight per cent pure heroin to Europe.
Our old comrade has become a fair-weather friend. He can not be relied upon to assist with the gathering of the opium poppy, or the processing of the opium paste into heroin…so beloved of the American Negro. The Burmese, Thai and Laotian generals wish to remove Khin Da from the Golden Triangle, and to put their people to work processing the opium paste.
At one time Khin Da ran his own army of ten thousand soldiers armed with American weapons. That was when his Shan nationalists supplied China white heroin to the CIA. The CIA flew it to South Vietnam on American Airlines and passed it to people in the South Vietnamese government, and they sold it on to the American GI soldiers. But the Americans do not need Khin Da anymore. They have left Vietnam and now concentrate on South America – the source of the cocaine that is sweeping across the United States…and that makes those pigs in Colombia rich as princes. Those American politicians are either short-sighted or just plain stupid. They made the Mafias strong by prohibiting alcohol. Forty years later they helped the warlords of the Golden Triangle flood their country with heroin. And now, with money from the CIA, the South Americans are doing the same thing with their cocaine.
&nb
sp; Khin Da has guns, soldiers and a vast amount of cash money. Perhaps banking is what he needs now? I shall send my code 438, my Deputy Mountain Master, to Khin Da. He will enquire what services we might provide…now that the Americans have abandoned their old friend.
14
HONG KONG
I’ve been leafing through the tourist literature in my suite to kill time, and I like the look of Stanley Village. They have a market that claims to sell bargains for the ‘cost-conscious follower of fashion’. If ‘cost-conscious’ means cheap, then it’s my kind of place.
I decided against using a hotel limousine to go shopping at the bargain market. I’ll slip out the back of the hotel and flag down a taxi.
On the road to Stanley we passed Aberdeen Fishing Village. Its colossal Jumbo Kingdom floating restaurant attracts thousands of tourists, but very few locals. And there are hundreds of junks, sampans and small fishing boats bobbing in the wakes of high-powered cruisers making their way to and from the posh Aberdeen Marina Club.
I can’t help but notice there are families living in cardboard boxes clinging to the hillside – facing the millionaires’ yachts in the marina club. Seeing these homes makes me weep in my heart, and encourages me to ask the taxi driver how he came to Hong Kong.
“Excuse me sir, you sure you want to hear about me and my family?” he sighed.
“Yes.”
“There’s nothing special about us…we fled to Hong Kong during Chairman Mao’s Cultural Revolution. My family was hungry, ’cuz no money coming any more from our cousin in Beijing. He was a school teacher…he was beaten by his students for translating passages from an American arts magazine and reading them out. He was given no medical treatment and lost his eye and his job.