Chasing the Dragon: a story of love, redemption and the Chinese triads (Opium Book 2)

by Colin Falconer

  The night-time traffic passed a few feet from the tables, the tinny motors of the Honda motorcycles over-revving. The air was heavy with the stink of petrol.

  There was just a handful of customers, most of them off-duty taxi drivers or young men looking for work as tour guides. They stared hard at Ruby as she sat down. She knew how she must look, in her torn patung and blouse, scratches all over her forearms and shins and face.

  The waiter, a boy barely out of his teens, picked up a notepad and a dirty laminated menu, and slouched over. His shirt, stained with dried sweat, was open to the third button. He threw the menu on the table and waited.

  Ruby ordered a pot of tea and some satay, knowing she had no money to pay. When he returned with the tea, Ruby had her left hand resting on the table, the forefinger and little finger bent, and the thumb extended. The boy saw it, and his eyes widened a fraction in surprise. It was a triad sign, and identified her as a veteran 432 Grass Sandal.

  She poured herself tea, and placed the cup facing the spout. Without a word he turned and went into the kitchen. A moment later he re-appeared with another, older Chinese. The boy nodded in her direction. The man walked over and stood beside her table.

  “Your face is pale,” he said in Cantonese.

  “My heart is red.”

  “Do you not owe me some money?”

  “I paid you, I recall.”

  “Where?”

  “In the market.”

  He nodded, apparently satisfied. He sat down, picked up the tea she had poured into her cup and drank it. It was a signal that the help she had obliquely requested would be forthcoming. “Who are you?” he said.

  “Never mind my name. Give me your pen.”

  The man took a biro from his shirt pocket and gave it to her. She took a paper napkin from the table and scribbled a Hong Kong phone number and underneath she wrote: LITTLE FLOWER.

  “Number is for Hong Kong. You ask for fifty thousand Hong Kong dollar, urgent. This is the password.”

  He looked at his watch. “Too late now. You come back tomorrow, nine o'clock, okay?” He looked at the scratches on her arms and face, and the dirt on her blouse. “You are in danger?”

  Ruby thought carefully before answering. “Have run from danger. Now I have no money.”

  The man considered, then reached into his shirt pocket and produced a small bundle of notes. He counted off five hundred Malaysian dollars and handed them to her. She stuffed them into the pocket of her blouse.

  “How long you been in Malaysia, okay?”

  “Cross the border last night.”

  “There is a hotel very close to here, the Ipoh off Jalan Petaling. Very clean, very cheap.” He gave her his business card. “Tell them you are a friend. They will look after you.”

  The food arrived. Ruby had not eaten for two days and the steam rising from the plate, made her stomach juices growl. She picked up the tin spoon. It was all she could do not to claw the food into her gaping mouth with her fingers.

  The man went back into the kitchen. Ruby finished eating and left. No one asked her for money. The short term loan and the bill for the food would be deducted from the money transfer, together with commission.

  ***

  The Ipoh Hotel was run by the owner and his family, who all lived downstairs in a single room on the other side of the stairs. There were six rooms, with a fan, a bed, and rickety wooden cupboard. The door to the balcony was locked to keep out thieves.

  Ruby washed her clothes in the stained hand basin in the corner of the room, and then stood on the cold white tiles of the washroom down the corridor and scooped ladles of cool water over her body. She tried to calculate her next move. Where could she go from here? She could not go back to Hong Kong. Perhaps England, then. She could stay with elder sister.

  Got to be careful, Ruby-ah. Cannot trust nobody now. Not even your own sworn brothers.

  Afterwards she lay naked on the bed in the dark, felt the sweat crawl over her body, listened to the sing song chatter of a Cantonese soap opera from a television in the apartment across the street. She scratched at the angry red mosquito bites on her ankles then felt the first cramping in her lower belly and rushed to the squat toilet. Two months in a Bangkok prison and now the food in a lousy Malaysian restaurant had made her sick.

  When had done in the toilet she staggered back to the bed and flopped down exhausted on her belly. After Maha Chai, the hotel's modest facilities seemed like five star luxury.

  The last forty-eight hours was a blur of nightmare images. She had spent most of her money on a bus ticket to Hatyai; spent the rest on squeeze to a local policeman to lead her through the jungle to an unguarded section of the border so she could scramble through the wire. She had hitched rides the rest of the way, fighting off two truck drivers who had tried to rape her.

  She had no passport, no identity papers. She had money in the Siam Commercial Bank but she guessed the accounts would have been frozen after her arrest. She could not access her accounts in the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank without ID.

  She wondered if Louis Huu was still looking for her.

  Hate this life, Ruby thought. Cannot live this way no more. Need just one more big score, enough so I do not have to be poor. Then I will get out.

  This is no business for a good girl like Ruby Wen.

  Chapter 61

  WHEN she went back to the restaurant at nine o'clock the next day the old Chinese who had spoken to her the previous evening was not there. A young boy sat behind the desk of Green Crescent Tours staring into the street. When she told him she was there to collect a transfer he shrugged his shoulders and pointed towards the kitchen. The surly young waiter told her to wait and brought her tea.

  So she waited.

  She needed that money today.

  Twenty minutes.

  What could have gone wrong?

  Just before nine thirty, a black Mercedes Benz pulled up outside. The driver wore a silk shirt, open at the neck, revealing a hairless chest and loops of thick gold chains. His hair was slicked down with oil. He had an enormous belly; if he was a woman he could have been seven or eight months pregnant.

  Dew neh loh moh! It was Henry Pi, Three Finger.

  The pall of lethargy afflicting the staff lifted immediately and they all rushed to the door, trying to anticipate his wishes. He ignored them and flopped down in the chair opposite Ruby. A waiter brought him a chilled bottle of Singha beer and poured it into a glass.

  “Ruby,” he said. He sipped his beer, and used his clawed left hand to wipe the froth from his wispy moustache. He pointed to the cup in front of her. “Would you like something else besides tea?”

  “You got any Hennessey VSOP?”

  He smiled. “Sorry, in here they only got French champagne. Snobby place.”

  “Stick with tea, okay.”

  Three Finger swallowed the rest of his beer and the young waiter was immediately at his side to refill the glass.

  “Very much nice surprise to see you here.”

  Nice surprise for you maybe, she thought. No for me. Last time she saw Three Finger was in San Francisco when he stole an entire shipment of number four off her. What was he doing here?

  “You look very shocked to see me here?”

  “You own this place?”

  He smiled. "No, I own the manager. He rang one of his people last night, and they rang me, in Bangkok. Said he had a girl here, Hong Kong girl, and she is in trouble. What should he do? Have to tell you, Ruby, I do not recognize you from his description. What are you doing in Kuala Lumpur?”

  “Got a little trouble, okay?”

  “In Malaysia?”

  Ruby shook her head.

  “In Thailand then. How long you been in KL, Ruby?

  “Cross the border yesterday.”

  “Through the wire, by the look of it.” He traced the long deep scratch on her forearm, his pudgy finger lingering. “Should see doctor about this.”

  “Hong Kong got good doctors. Many.�
��

  He drank his beer and considered. “Is this where you want to go, Ruby? Hong Kong?” He leaned back in his chair and regarded her. “Look very different from last time we met. Wearing black dress, very short, very expensive.”

  “Today I just dress casual,” Ruby said.

  “I am casual too,” Henry Pi said. He showed her his watch. “Just Girard Perigaux. I have three Rolexes for dress big occasion.” He leaned back and waved a hand expansively around him. “What do you think?”

  “I think you buy ten thousand watches with the money you stole from Ruby Wen!”

  “Did not steal it, Ruby. Just did not pay you. You would do the same if you are me.” He leaned in. “You look scared.”

  “Temporary set-back, okay.”

  “Here you are, in peasant clothes, no money. Why you don’t contact your friends? Thai police cannot arrest them all? So I am thinking this: perhaps it is not the police Ruby-ah is running from, but her own friends.” He smiled, delighted with his own sagacity. “We ring this number you give us. Someone in Hong Kong on their way right now, give you what you need personally.”

  Ruby stood up. Henry caught her wrist.

  “Sit down, Ruby. Where is there to run?”

  He was right. She sat down. Maybe better to bluff this out. Henry leaned forward. She could see little beads of sweat on his forehead. “What did you do so bad that you had to run away, Ruby?”

  “Join the DEA in Bangkok,” she said.

  Three Finger finished his beer and the waiter scurried off to get another bottle. “A pity we could not be friends, Ruby-ah. Do like a girl with a sense of humor.”

  Chapter 62

  THE Cathay Tri-Star lifted clear of the tarmac and began its steep ascent into a lowering and sky. Ruby closed her eyes, and the nightmare of the last four months slipped away beneath her.

  Richard Clayderman on the cabin's sound system to calm the nerves through the jarring bumps of the turbulence. Eddie sat beside her, his face a mask.

  He had said little since he had collected her the previous evening from Three Finger's palatial bungalow on the outskirts of KL, where she had been entertained as his house guest and prisoner. He had given her no clue to what he was thinking, what he intended to do with her. But he had brought her new clothes, and a new passport, A-0197758, issued in Kuala Lumpur, with visas for Hong Kong and Singapore on the first two pages. She would enter Hong Kong as Kam Li-feng.

  Would he go to so much trouble if he knew she had talked to the DEA?

  The Tri-Star reached its cruising altitude and a hostess brought them champagne. Strange life I have, Ruby thought. Two nights ago I am sharing a hard cot with family of bed lice; now I am drinking sparkling pinot noir in the first class compartment of a jetliner. She turned to Eddie and touched his glass with her own. “Freedom,” she said.

  “Ruby-ah, you make lot of trouble for me this time. Even for you.”

  “Why you never come and see me? Four month I am in that shit hole. You never come once.”

  “Know how much it cost me to get you out?” When she did not answer, he said: “What happen in Bangkok? Why do you run away?”

  “Do not trust that Louis Huu. He is the maggot-eaten penis of a dead dog.”

  “Louis Huu thinks maybe you have been talking to the yellow air. You talking to the police, Ruby-ah?”

  If I deny everything he will know I am lying, she thought. The best lies are hidden in the truth. “Sure I talk to the king chat. Girl has to look out for herself, okay. Don't want to wait till I am old and wrinkled for Eddie-ah to get me out of that stinking place.”

  “What did you tell them?” he hissed.

  “Tell them everything I know about Louis Huu. That is why I ran away.”

  “And what did you tell them about me?”

  She looked up at him. His eyes were black. It was like staring into the ocean at night. “Sure, I tell them everything about you, Eddie. Betray the only man I ever love in the whole world.”

  He looked away first.

  “Can never hurt you, Eddie-ah,” she whispered. “I ever hurt you, I stick a knife here through my own heart.”

  A muscle twitched in his jaw. “Louis Huu will kill you when he finds out.”

  “What choice I have? Think I am going to rot in that stinking place forever?”

  “Should have trusted me.”

  “Do trust you, okay. But you are long way away in China.”

  “You know how much I have to pay for you, Ruby-ah? Thirty one million baht. That is a lot of tea money.”

  Despite herself, Ruby was impressed. Must be crazy, heya! Thirty one million!

  “Have to pay Louis Huu for his number four that I never get, that someone steal from me! Another three million for squeeze. All for you, Ruby-ah.”

  She leaned across, and circled his ear with her tongue. A scarlet fingernail traced the contour of his inner thigh to his crotch. A businessman across the aisle was watching her. She licked her lips and smiled at him. “Love you too much, Eddie-ah. Love you so much, think I will die.”

  “From now on, got to trust me,” he whispered.

  He believes me, she thought. Stupid to be so afraid. Just have to keep your nerve, Ruby-ah! Never can lose. Can make this man do anything. Thinks he is so hard, so clever, but he is stupid like everyone. You are really so clever, Ruby.

  No shit.

  Chapter 63

  San Francisco

  RUBY Wen met John Bertolli in the coffee shop of the Hyatt on Union Square. Their meeting lasted for a quarter of an hour and at its conclusion Bertolli handed her a set of keys.

  Ruby crossed the lobby to the elevators and rode down to the basement car park. She opened the boot of a black Mercedes saloon and took out a Samsonite briefcase. She opened it, examined the contents briefly and walked back to the elevators.

  She took a cab from outside the Hyatt to a nondescript six-story building on Kearny Street, near the Embarcadero, not far from the tourist chaos of Fisherman's Wharf. There was a sign outside the building in English: White Dragon Savings and Loan. Another sign, in Chinese characters, ran vertically up the walls. Current interest rates were posted in the window.

  The small public banking area on the ground floor was filled with Chinese. Ruby pushed past them to a stairway with a sign saying PRIVATE. She went up the stairs, unchallenged.

  There was another set of offices on the second floor. A young Chinese clerk in a white shirt and black tie was working behind a plain wooden desk. Ruby walked in, sat down, and opened the suitcase. She took out bundles of twenty dollar notes, wrapped in elastic bands, and put them on the desk. The clerk began to count them.

  When he was finished, Ruby gave him a card, which read: AMERICAN SISTER PAY CHINESE BROTHER USD 400,000. TEL 20388.

  The clerk gave her a chit, which Ruby put in her shoulder bag, and then she got up and left. Nothing had been written down or recorded anywhere to show that the transaction had taken place.

  The clerk translated the transaction into Chinese Commercial Code, which was then transmitted that night on a scrambled telephone line to the All Asia Friendship Company on Jiabin Lu in Shenzhen. A clerk in the office phoned the number on the transmission and an hour later Vincent Tse appeared at the offices, on the top floor of a rather dilapidated department store in the center of the city. He was given a large suitcase containing over three million dollars in Hong Kong currency.

  That simple.

  Arsenal Street Headquarters,

  Wanchai, Hong Kong

  Keelan used the telephone outside the elevator bank to call to the tenth floor. On emerging from the lift, he was ushered through a security door and into McReadie's office. It was a mess, two telephones on the desk, a computer terminal on the return, files and manuals teetering on a narrow bookshelf, just one tiny window with a glimpse of the harbor front. An entire wall was taken up with dozens of passport-sized photographs of undercover operatives pasted onto a whiteboard in the form of a link analysis.


  McReadie was talking on the phone when Keelan walked in and he waved him to a chair. There was another bundle of manila folders on it; Keelan put them on the floor and sat down.

  McReadie hung up the phone and grinned at Keelan. On the desk in front of him was a false passport and thirty thousand dollars flash money for one of his operations. “Look at all this cash. Good job I'm an honest man.”

  That's not what Ruby Wen says, Keelan thought. But then, she could have been lying about that, same as she lied about so many other things. Cops were too easy a target, and she might have a lot of reasons to throw Mac under a bus.

  “How they hanging, Mac?”

  “Want a coffee?”

  Keelan shook his head. “Had enough caffeine for one day. Heartbeat's already up to one forty. You wanted to see me?”

  “I've got something for you. Remember Ruby Wen?”

  “How could I forget her? She played me off the break in Thailand?”

  “She's back in town.”

  Keelan felt the hairs prickle on the back of his neck. That bitch. She had caused a flurry of real excitement in the Bangkok office for a couple of days. He had told everyone she was in play, and as soon as a judge released her on bail she had disappeared. Played him like a fish on a line, just as Mac said she would.

  “We've had her apartment under surveillance ever since she skipped bail in Bangkok,” McReadie said. “We hit pay dirt early this morning. She was seen getting out of a taxi in Conduit Road. Looks like she's back in the game.”

  McReadie passed a grainy black and white enlargement across the desk; a woman wearing dark glasses, her face half turned away from the camera as she crossed the street. But there was no doubt about it; it was Ruby Wen.

  “Nearly a month. I wonder where she's been.”

  “Moving around on a false passport, I imagine. But this morning she came through Immigration on her own papers. She was on the Watch List.”

  “Will the Thais want to extradite?”

  “The Thai prosecutor has dropped the case.”