The Dark Art

by Edward Follis

  • • •

  Three hours later, we landed in Don Mueang, the bustling international airport of Bangkok. We were met at the gate by Don Sturn. Sturn was the assistant country attaché for Thailand, a GS-15, the number two DEA guy in-country. Tough, diminutive guy—stood about five-foot-five but well over two hundred pounds, barrel-chested, was known as a bench-press champion.

  He shook hands. Don’s grip was crushing.

  He was laughing his ass off.

  “What’s it like to be an international fugitive, Ed?”

  I stood there, staring like a baby fawn.

  First time I’d ever been in Asia. First time traveling across the international date line. Rudy Barang was laughing at me, too. In more than twenty years on the job with the DEA, Rudy’d seen it all. Nothing fazed him: Wandering around in the dark passages beneath the Hong Kong airport and humping enormous bags of cash, all while being wanted by the Hong Kong police department—I guess those seemed like everyday occurrences.

  “You got the money?” Sturn asked, glancing at my two bags.

  “Sir, I haven’t let go of this money since we left LA.”

  We jumped into a car filled with cops from the national Narcotics Suppression Bureau (NSB) of Thailand. Unlike the Hong Kong police, these guys were fully in our camp, fully aware of the mission. To me, they all seemed to have the same look: small, sinewy men with cold black eyes.

  The top-ranking police brass among them, General Pornpot—as Don Sturn later explained to me—owned half the real estate in Patpong, the “entertainment” center of Bangkok.

  These weren’t like any cops I’d ever seen; there was no formality or regalia. They surrounded us in a motley convoy, both uniformed and plainclothes, riding on motorcycles, mopeds, and little three-wheel golf carts they called tuk-tuks. In Thailand, I noticed, the steering wheels are all on the right; they drive opposite to Americans, just like the Brits.

  With my jet lag, fatigue, and disorientation, it was like stepping through the looking glass.

  Our escort of Thai police constantly honking and shouting, we mowed our way through the traffic, not stopping for lights, and made it to the US Embassy. Upstairs in Don Sturn’s office, we spilled out the contents of the duffel bags and meticulously counted.

  Took us hours. I counted it once; Rudy checked my numbers. Turns out we were over by a few thousand. When you’re short in a money-transporting deal, you’re in major trouble. Nobody gives a rat’s ass if you’re a few grand over.

  I restuffed the duffel bags. We went straight to Rudy’s house, circling around in the side streets to lose any tails. We didn’t know who the hell might be following us. I slept at Rudy’s, sweating through my top sheet, swatting away mosquitoes. The whole night the duffel bags were within arm’s reach.

  • • •

  The next morning the traffic in Bangkok was so manic that I now saw why the cops don’t use conventional police cars. To move through the throngs and the snarled streets, they’re better off on motorcycles, mopeds, and tuk-tuks.

  Rudy and I hopped in a regular taxi. I had the money right in front of me—still hadn’t taken my eyes off it since LAX.

  The guy in the front seat was an indigenous assistant—a Thai national working with us in the embassy—who went by the nickname Bank.

  Most of the Thai cops weren’t uniformed. I didn’t have a clue who was who. There was no briefing or operational plan. I just had to improvise, follow Rudy’s lead.

  The investigative assistant, Bank, handed me a .25-caliber automatic. Tiny, cheap little bullshit piece. You could conceal it in the palm of your hand. I took the .25 and pulled out the magazine. What the fuck? One of the cartridges was loaded in backward. The thing never would have fired. I reversed the cartridge, got the feel of the gun.

  We pulled up to meet the primary informant, the guy responsible for making the introduction to Ling Ching Pan’s people. My eyes glazed over. Suddenly, I saw Peter Chin, the same Chinese-American heroin dealer who’d made the introduction to Dr. Dragan back in LA—he seemed to have appeared out of nowhere. I hadn’t seen Peter Chin since that day in the warehouse for the armaments flash. Now here he was again, had just materialized somehow.

  I started to get an eerie feeling. Almost vertigo. I was processing everything very rapidly. I’d been in Cairo just two weeks before, this was my first full day in Thailand, and the whole scene was dark and ominous. Everybody looked exactly the same. I didn’t know who was a cop and who was a crook.

  One of the cops barked at me in Thai:

  “Tham-khaw, tham-khaw . . .”

  I stared at Rudy, and he translated:

  “He says to follow Peter and do exactly as he says.”

  I moved along in the dream state, grabbing one of the loops on Peter Chin’s jeans so we couldn’t be separated by more than an arm’s length in the crushing, confusing, crazy mob.

  I held on to that Levi’s belt loop so hard, I’m surprised I didn’t tear it off his pants.

  I had the gun tucked into the front of my own pants. I didn’t even know how to shoot the damn thing. I never liked carrying a gun I hadn’t trained with, cleaned, and fired. If something bad went down, I’d just have to pull the trigger and hope for the best.

  With my finger still crooked to his jeans loop, Peter Chin led me into this storefront apothecary—one of those traditional Chinese pharmacies filled with bottles and jars of the most bizarre medicines: elephant tusks, rhinoceros horns, tiger testicles.

  I glanced at the vials of holistic herbs and roots like ginger and ginseng. Peter Chin smiled. He was missing one of his lower front teeth. I kept my mouth shut, slinging my two duffel bags, wobbling under their weight like a drunk. They led me downstairs. The room was filthy: smelled like mold and urine and spilled beer. There were inch-long cockroaches scuttling up the walls.

  Suddenly a wiry little Thai guy—evidently a foot soldier from the Khun Sa organization—stepped up with a scowl and slammed his hand hard on my chest. My hands were both occupied holding the bags of money, so I instantly stuck my foot up, karate style, and shoved him back with the sole of my shoe. There were glares and shouts in English and Thai.

  But it was just a short-lived scuffle, no guns were drawn, and we quickly got down to exchanging the money.

  We unzipped the duffel bags, spilled out the half million in US cash. They counted it out to their satisfaction; then they brought out their own huge mounds of local currency, known as Thai baht, various denominations with the bespectacled face of one of their beloved monarchs, either King Rama III or IV—I wasn’t sure. My duffel bags were reloaded with Thai baht, packed down, zipped shut.

  Years later, after I’d gone through intensive language training and was fluent in Thai, I would have a better understanding of what we’d been going through, but at that time, I was utterly confused.

  I trusted they’d done an honest and fair conversion of US dollars into Thai baht, but who the hell could tell? In the back of yet another taxi with Rudy, I stared at the duffel bags. I didn’t know if they contained a billion dollars or a hundred.

  Rudy ordered the taxi to follow a circuitous route, doing all kinds of sudden turns, until we were back at the US Embassy. Back upstairs, in Don Sturn’s office, we didn’t even count the Thai baht. We drove straight over to Ling Ching Pan’s compound.

  I followed Peter Chin to the main gate. The place was ominous. It looked like a citadel. Towering poured-concrete walls. There were two grim-faced armed guards at the gate. I was hoping to get inside, but without a direct invitation, there was just no fucking way.

  • • •

  In Los Angeles our boys in Group Four and the US Attorney’s Office went to work, trying to obtain a provisional arrest warrant (PAW) for Ling Ching Pan.

  Now I got a reality check in the complexities of international criminal law. Many countries with which the United
States has friendly diplomatic relations—Mexico, Spain, Thailand—will not honor an extradition request on a PAW if they don’t have a corresponding set of laws. And forget about trying to extradite a criminal for a capital crime; even with our staunchest allies like Canada or Great Britain, where there is no statutory death penalty, we won’t be able to touch the guy.

  The laws in Thailand are vastly different from ours—before a US grand jury, we could have indicted Ling Ching Pan on conspiracy, but under Thai law you need an eyewitness to testify. I would have been the eyewitness. But even though I’d delivered the Thai baht equivalent of half a million dollars directly to Ling Ching Pan’s compound, I didn’t gain entrance to personally see him take the money.

  That meant we couldn’t indict. We had plenty of wiretap tapes of the bad guys in LA saying this half a mil we were laundering belonged to Ling’s boss, Khun Sa, but without eyewitness testimony, it was no-go.

  Still, with that wiretap evidence, we started pursuing Ling Ching Pan’s people hard. Over the wires we determined that Ling Ching Pan had a shipment of heroin coming in from Hong Kong to LA. We allowed the dope ashore and let his people store it in a warehouse in LA. Then we got the warrants, made the seizure, and nabbed a good haul: fourteen kilos of the Shan United Army’s finest heroin, all wrapped up neatly and cleverly in bamboo.

  • • •

  The money-courier job, however brief, would prove important to my future work in Thailand; we’d developed some key relationships, with the Thai police and especially with General Pornpot.

  At the time, I little realized the money-courier job would be the beginning of an intense future focus on the Golden Triangle heroin trade. It would take me years to get back there, but when I did—working under the tutelage of DEA Agent Michael Bansmer—I would make the takedown of Khun Sa, the Opium Warlord, a singular obsession.

  • • •

  By far the strangest moment during that brief trip to Bangkok came right after I’d made the delivery to Ling’s compound. I’d broken my cherry as an undercover in Thailand. The Thai cops and Rudy Barang wanted to take me out.

  We went downtown for a proper celebration. We were sitting at a big table in the bar when somebody started shouting about a cobra. Thailand is crawling with venomous cobras. These cops would routinely and skillfully catch the deadly snakes by the neck and keep them alive.

  I now learned why.

  We were in some dive outside Patpong. I really had no clue what was happening. In short order, we were hanging out with a whole bunch of pretty Thai girls. There was a lot of laughing. It was shaping up to be a good night.

  But then one of the Thai cops disappeared into a little booth and came out with a live cobra. I was not happy. The cobra was not happy.

  Hissing, flaring, and wriggling in the cop’s grip.

  The cop didn’t flinch. He whipped out a big sharp knife and scored the snake right down the middle. He pulled out the intestinal tract and the innards, the liver and kidneys, then drained the blood from the cobra directly into a cup and added the liver, heart, and the intestinal tract.

  He added a dose of this strong Thai alcohol to the cup. They handed me the putrid-smelling witch’s brew.

  They were all chanting in Thai. Rudy quickly translated:

  “Drink! Drink! Drink!”

  What choice did I have? I had to drink the shit. The whole cup, gulping down the snake’s innards along with the liquid like some lumpy, unstirred protein shake. It was the most disgusting thing I’ve ever tasted.

  I started gagging, wanted to puke, but I couldn’t do it.

  I would have lost face with the cops.

  I slammed the empty tin cup back on the table. Now they were all screaming like crazy, slapping me on the back when they saw I’d chugged back that entire mess.

  I’m still not sure if it was a traditional Thai ceremony or just cops’ fraternal hazing. I was not only nauseated, but the whole scene felt pagan.

  As soon as we left the bar, trying to clear my conscience, I went out with Rudy Barang. We quickly found a jewelry shop where I bought a twenty-two-carat gold crucifix. It was a nice piece. Only cost about $300.

  As we walked out of the shop—obvious targets: a white guy and a Filipino shopping for jewelry—we were immediately approached by two stickup men.

  They braced us with knives, snarling, yelling in Thai—which thankfully Rudy understood—wanting us to give them all our money.

  We were both armed, probably could have pulled out our pistols and shot them—with few repercussions from the Thai authorities—but why bother? It was easier to let the stickup men jack us. We gave them a hundred bucks and watched them run away in the crowded streets of Patpong.

  The next day, when we told the Thai cops about it, they were absolutely infuriated.

  They wasted no time. They went down to some criminal hangouts, asked a few questions, and in short order they’d found these two stickup guys.

  There was no interview; there was no interrogation. Due process? Hell no. Those Thai cops were no joke. They beat the two guys to a pulp.

  They even brought us back our hundred bucks.

  PART TWO

  Money only appeals to selfishness and always tempts its owners irresistibly to abuse it. Can anyone imagine Moses, Jesus, or Gandhi armed with the money-bags of Carnegie?

  ALBERT EINSTEIN

  CHAPTER 4

  THIS SIDE OF PARADISE

  My days with Group Four in the Los Angeles Division came to an abrupt end in the spring of 1990 after I’d gone undercover for months inside a violent Nigerian organized crime ring. In the wake of the investigation, after the arrests, our wiretap people learned that I was being targeted for a hit. We weren’t certain if I’d been officially green-lit—the contract killing was still in the planning stages—but the DEA never takes any chances with death threats against special agents. Not after the murders of Paul Seema and George Montoya in Pasadena.

  The case had begun with a Nigerian drug trafficker named Sam Essell and spiraled into a large, complex investigation with numerous threats of gun violence. An Ibo chief, Essell was a respected businessman in Lagos, owned an array of legitimate companies whose real purpose was to enable him to launder the tens of millions of dollars coming in through his other entrepreneurial enterprise: smuggling heroin and marijuana into the United States.

  With a long ponytail, riding a Harley-Davidson Panhead, I took on the undercover role of Eddie McKenzie, a twenty-seven-year-old money-transporter and drug wholesaler for the Mafia, moving significant sums of money out of Las Vegas to Los Angeles.

  My introduction into the Sam Essell organization came through one of his LA-based lieutenants, a Nigerian immigrant named Christian Uzomo. Christian was a licensed realtor, but also connected to a wide menagerie of LA gangsters. When we met, Christian looked more like a banker than a drug trafficker. You’d never have guessed he’d just finished up a stint in the Federal Correctional Institution in Lompoc. Sanguine face, round chipmunk cheeks, polite, Christian always spoke perfect—heavily accented—English.

  After a few weeks of wooing, I told him I was looking to get my hands on some potent heroin. “My people are tired of that black-tar bullshit,” I said. “I’m looking for some serious H.” Christian implied—never saying directly—that his connections could bring in the purest of heroin: China white.

  “I may have the man for you.”

  “Yeah, who’s that?”

  “My dear friend Sam back home,” Christian said softly.

  “You’re gonna let me taste it?”

  Tasting—conducting an alkaloid spot test—is always necessary before making a major heroin purchase. We met in a simple second-story office in a complex filled with opticians and mortgage companies. I strolled in, casually carrying my Halliburton aluminum case, an hour late. We worked out the terms: one hundred grams of Southeast Asian hero
in, for which I’d pay him $15,000—a fair price for a first purchase.

  I put my Halliburton case on the desktop, popped the latch, took out and assembled my triple-beam scale, then began a Marquis reagent test. There are different formulas out there, but the DEA Marquis reagent kit typically uses a mixture of one hundred milliliters of concentrated sulfuric acid to five milliliters of 40 percent formaldehyde. Different drugs—from opiates to methamphetamine—will react with the reagent mixture by turning a wide variety of hues.

  Christian watched intently as I scraped off a small amount of his product and used an eyedropper to add the clear, colorless reagent. After a few seconds the mixture turned reddish brown: the telltale reaction for heroin. “This looks like the good shit,” I said. “I think my people in Vegas will be happy.” Christian smiled broadly as I handed him the $15,000 for that first taste.

  • • •

  After four more deals at the same terms—$15,000 a pop—it was time for me to press the issue, move up the ladder. Sitting down to a lunch, I told Christian:

  “Look, man, I’m not moving forward until I can meet with your boss.”

  He was hesitant, cagey, but finally agreed.

  “Yes, of course. We can make that happen.”

  We started working on setting up the ultimate score, bringing a container ship laden with bales of African-grown marijuana and, hidden within one of those bales, our real prize—what Christian and Sam always referred to as “brown shrimp” from China. “Brown shrimp” was code for ten kilos of heroin produced in Burma by the Shan United Army, smuggled out of the Golden Triangle into Hong Kong, then via container ship over to Lagos.

  • • •

  When I finally met Sam Essell in person, I was impressed: He carried himself like a true Ibo prince: dignified, impeccably dressed in a tailored tan suit and gleamingly shined oxblood shoes. In the days before he touched down on American soil, I had received authorization to pick up $1 million in cash from the US Treasury for a “surprise flash.” Given my youth, serious cash was the only way to prove to Sam Essell that I was the real deal. Very few federal agents have ever taken a million dollars from the US Treasury; no one wants to, actually, because of the liability.