by H. L. Valdez
Danger Beyond Intrigue
H. L. Valdez
Instant Insights Publishing
Access Point Technologies
Tokyo, Japan
© 2012 by Instant Insights
http://www.hilaryvaldez.com
ISBN: 978-0-692-01755-5
The Writer’s Guild of America, West, Inc.
Los Angeles, California
Registration #: 1599347
Published 2012. First edition
Cover Design – Chrismond Raga, Tokyo, Japan
mailto:[email protected]
Layout - Ed Morgan www.navybluedesign.com
Bang Printing Greensboro, North Carolina
Copyright
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.
Preface
The American and Japanese governments are developing a strategy to fight international underworld narcotic smuggling cartels. The President of the United States has signed an Executive Order allowing the anti-drug Crisis Response Team to conduct “Salvaging Operations” or summary executions to fight transnational criminal groups. A global realignment is occurring in the heroin market and criminal leaders are fighting over the spoils of a drug trade worth billions of dollars. Two female leaders have been chosen from the Japanese Yakuza and Chinese Triads to join forces and create the largest smuggling cartel in Asia. Two females and four males comprise a team selected from law enforcement, military and intelligence agencies to stop the cunning, deadly, and effective Asia drug lords.
Table of Contents
Forward
Conflict of Ideals
Prologue: From The Ashes
Saint Patrick’s Cathedral
Golden Triangle
The Hotel
The Split
The Ambush
Transitions
Japan
Meeting the Chairman
South China Sea
The Tunnel
Admiral’s Call
Night Jump
Rita’s Move
Broken Link
The Encounter
The Hacienda
Reflection
Sasha's Ride
The Escape
Night Flight
The Game
P. I. Style
The Final Payment
Changes
End of a Romance
The Compromise
The Search
War Room
Payback
About the Author
Main Characters
Supporting Characters
Other Publications by H.L. Valdez
Book Review
Forward
During 1964 in Southeast Asia, political turmoil and excellent weather provided favorable conditions for increased narcotics production and trafficking. Opium, morphine and heroin were being smuggled across international frontiers with over 800 tons of raw opium being harvested in the Golden Triangle. Narcotics moved unhindered from growing refineries and exit points along Burma’s borders and beyond. Vietnam, Hong Kong, and Japan were being used as major transshipment points for Golden Triangle opium, heroin, and morphine heading for Europe and America. Government enforcement operations and anti-narcotics agreements were being seriously impeded. The termination of the exchange of intelligence and enforcement information among the United States and key opium growing regions created a serious setback. Major Mafioso and minor soldiers were being eliminated. The American mafia’s twenty-four regional groups were under reorganization. International law enforcement efforts resulted in 800 Mafioso being arrested. This loss of leadership culminated in a major global crime feud. Chinese syndicates in Hong Kong, Corsican groups in Marseille, and Indochina are playing a key role in the importation of America’s heroin supply.
Tony Endo, the Yakuza boss and Chairman of the Supreme Council, inherited his family’s drug business, which began in China before the Opium Wars in 1839 Mr. Endo is reorganizing and uniting his crime group with Hong Kong’s powerful Triad Governing Leaders. The daughters of each crime family have been chosen to jointly run day-to-day business operations. Sasha Nakamura, Director of Field Operations for the Yakuza crime group in Tokyo, is using members of South Vietnam’s government in a “top-zone” four-tiered heroin-pushing pyramid. Sasha is laundering money through Tokyo banks with international cash transactions going into the billions of dollars. Her counterpart, Gina Leung, based in Hong Kong, holds the rank of Sing Fung, Chief of Recruiting, with the Chinese Triads. Gina travels throughout Asia recruiting hit men and women to protect her business operations. Both crime leaders travel to the Philippines, Vietnam, Japan, the Golden Triangle, and Los Angeles, ensuring an uninterrupted drug flow while managing security leaks. Together, the two female leaders maintain and expand heroin activities throughout Asia, Europe, and America. Some of their drug profits are being used to develop a new super powerful synthetic heroin, re-cooked, transformed and packaged into a deadly drug: Fentanyl - a derivative from the pharmaceutical analog.
Conflict of Ideals
What’s right today is wrong tomorrow.
It all depends on where you are;
It all depends on when you are;
It all depends on what you feel;
It all depends on how you feel.
It all depends on how you’re praised;
It all depends on point of view.
If tastes just happen to agree;
Then you have morality.
But when there are conflicting trends;
It all depends; it all depends...
Prologue: From The Ashes
In 1815, Ukai Endo was born in Edo, Japan, present day Tokyo. In 1825, he and his uncle fled to China to escape the totalitarian rule of the Tokugawa shoguns’ outdated feudal structure, heavy taxes, and severe poverty. Samurai warriors were losing their privileged status and were in need of money. With their swords taken away, and in debt, they became masterless samurai, a lower class: the Ronin class. Ukai however was young, cunning, and handsome. Unlike the elderly Samurai, he had a renewed chance at life. Possessing a cool cynicism and generous tolerance, he worked his way into the hearts and minds of Chinese opium smugglers. Both men established close ties with Chinese merchants in Hong Kong and Singapore. These early contacts and friendships led them into a history of crime, violence, and wealth. Ukai’s organizational skills and genuine concern for a customer’s welfare were the keys to his success.
Initially, Ukai worked on Chinese smuggling boats known as "fast crabs." Under the cover of darkness, the long, sleek row boats, with crews of sixty to seventy men would move alongside teak-built receiving ships then quickly collect cash from buyers who paid for each marked opium bag. After fifteen years, Ukai had survived working the opium trade routes from the coast of China and nearby Vietnam; his rite of passage was complete; he had made the transition from adolescence into manhood. Fighting in China's Opium War, he believed in the dedicated struggle for Chinese control of the opium monopoly and its lucrative economic windfall. During this time, Ukai solved the problematic organizational task of transporting opium to the coast for shipments and sales abroad.
For many centuries opium was taken orally as a folk medicine for pain and injuries. China attempted to protect its prohibition of importing opium, even though the practice of opium smoking was introduced from Java to China in the 17th century. Selling opium was a valuable source for large sums of money for foreign countries and corrupt Chinese middlemen and traders.
During the 1
800s, Chinese addiction to opium provided a great trade opportunity as opium smoking spread throughout China. But Chinese grown opium was not strong, so the British blended it with stronger opium grown and imported from India. The British encouraged opium use and were pleased that the opium tax was helping their government’s gross revenue and balance of payments. During this time, but under French rule, the populations of China, Cambodia, and Vietnam lived on the borderline of famine and misery. Underfed peasants and farmers lived in one-room huts they shared with their chickens and pigs. The French colonizers built more prisons than schools. Taxation and rent collection cut into peasant subsistence and caused great suffering. The French also claimed the highlands of central Vietnam, inhabited by ethnic minorities, an autonomous region to be administered by the French. Political discontent in Asia, especially in Vietnam, rose, due to high taxes on opium, salt, and alcohol monopolies. Previously, alcohol had been tax-free and farmers made their own alcohol from rice.
By the time Ukai reached his mid-twenties, the first Opium War with Britain had begun in 1839, ending in 1842. The war saw China ceding Hong Kong to Britain. Then, from 1843 through 1844, a conflict with China gave Britain, France, and the United States most-favored nation status. The Anglo-French War, or second Opium War, from 1856 through 1860 forced China to legalize the opium trade. Suddenly, poppy growing spread rapidly in China. Warlords and landlords eager for profits coerced peasants and farmers to grow the poppy.
In 1853, strife was everywhere when two Frenchmen were convicted of opium sales fraud. French government officials executed them and auctioned their opium rights in a vast desolate region of prime growing area of North Vietnam in the mountainous provinces bordering China. During this time, Ukai was forming alliances with the Cantonese and Chinese while negotiating for the exclusive opium rights with European agents in charge of relations with French authorities. Subsequently, French forces fought and defeated Vietnamese armies, and Saigon became a French colony. In the aftermath of chaos and with enthusiastic bravado, Ukai Endo and his girlfriend had a son, and named him Hiro.
Throughout 1865, Chinese were fleeing to Vietnam to escape British Colonial rule in China, only to be met by inhumane French forces in Vietnam. But in Vietnam, Chinese were joining a private army known as the "Black Flags" who fought against the French from 1873 through 1882. These Chinese became pirates and supported the Vietnamese in their fight against the French. Independent pirates and members of the Black Flag joined forces and terrorized villages, sold illegal opium, and traded in slaves. Local farmers feared them and temporarily fled their lands, hoping someday to return. Seizing the opportunity, Ukai stole their abandoned land, hired peasant farmers, and continued growing the lucrative poppy.
Until his death in 1885, Ukai Endo and his son Hiro toiled in Asia under the broiling sun, growing and tending hundreds of acres of the unripe seedpods of the Oriental poppy. The task was tedious. The opium started out as a milky resin seeping from gashed surfaces of the seedpods. Upon exposure to air, the resin turned into gummy-brown, mass-gum opium. Father and son then dried and pulverized the resin into powered opium. In time, Hiro learned to isolate and synthesize the natural alkaloids of opium with strong acetic acid and began producing morphine and heroin that was three times more potent by weight.
Ukai Endo had been a wise, faithful, and patient teacher to his son, Hiro, and taught him the devious day-to-day opium business operations. Hiro had both the experience and strength of character required to assume his father's affairs. He had grown up to be a terrifying man with a provocative arrogance. He spoke with a sticky voice, a strained low pitch sound that was the trademark of opium smokers. Hiro had anti-social and pathological traits earning him the nickname “Squeeze” due to his brutal business tactics. If he was betrayed, he would fill a man’s mouth with gunpowder, squeeze and tie his jaw shut, then blow his head off. Another trick was to tie a man up then sew him up in a sack filled with venomous snakes. But, it was the skulls and bones that lay scattered along trails in the bush that seemed to unnerve competing drug traders the most.
Price fixing, cheating, assaults, and banditry created turmoil in the region. This turmoil helped keep opium prices high and violence on going. Yet, by virtue of cold-blooded pillage, Hiro eliminated key competitors, consolidated opium growing and the distribution process. He bought out or murdered partners and associates, then regulated the price of opium sales. Hiro helped organize and establish customs and services that undertook the direct purchase and manufacture of crude opium from the British in India, the French and Chinese in China, and the Vietnamese in Saigon. Once the custom was in place, sales were handled either by contract, or in partnership with trading companies or by direct sales. The opium dens, including his, received special concessions. Unrestricted profit margins of 400-500 percent remained the primary motivation.
In Vietnam, insurrectional movements against the French had begun. Hiro had formed small bands of armed guerrillas to protect himself and fight the French. Organizing river pirates into Para-military political units, he took substantial control of Asian opium operations. Regional conflicts and fierce, unpredictable fighting continued. From 1894 through 1895, Chinese and Japanese fought for control of Korea. With key mountain strongholds and calculated malice, he became the father of the warlords in an expanding illegal narcotics organization.
In 1900, Hiro's wife had a son, Jiro who was nick named Tony. During that year, Hiro negotiated long-term opium deals with Vietnamese leaders, Chinese merchants, French intelligence officers, British and American officials, soldiers-of-fortune, gamblers, farmers, pirates, and prostitutes. Opium den owners wanted his service. In their private incense-filled den rooms, customers were assured opium as they relaxed on thick rugs, small pillows or slim wooden cots. Young women in colorful silk dresses lit the long wooden opium pipes from brass smoking lamps, re-filled opium bowls, and obliged the sexual desires of addicts in the flickering shadows of candlelight.
Hiro taught his son how to manage the transport of opium cargo, which was extremely hazardous and time consuming. After spring harvest in the isolated and rugged mountain poppy fields, a grass roots allegiance of disciplined farmers carried raw opium on their backs and on mules along narrow jungle trails to nearby morphine refineries. The Vietnam Highland tribes also eagerly helped him by establishing reliable controls in the northern border jungles and by charting bases, hideouts and escape routes. To expedite deliveries, Hiro invented easy steering Pack bicycles with sturdy bamboo crossbars that could balance 200 kilos of opium and handily navigate the inaccessible terrain well trodden by years of movement back and forth from China. Hiro also introduced the use of compact morphine bricks as a method for shipment, rather than transporting bundles of pungent, jelly-like opium, making smuggling easier. The rugged mountains offered him a tactical geographic edge in building underground jungle factories and tunnels for opium processing, staging, distribution and storing, while constantly shifting bases between China, Hong Kong, and Thailand. An affable Hiro conversed with the hill tribes in their own language and allowed peasant farmers a regular outlet for personal opium production, subsequently ensuring their loyalty and cooperation, while expanding his vast espionage net in Vietnam and China. He established a massive intelligence network and had the support of Chinese merchants and Vietnamese peasants in the Mekong Delta. The ethnic minority tribes in the highlands of central Vietnam, and the farmers in the coastal provinces of northeast Saigon, all cooperated. In his business dealings, Hiro murdered brutal and corrupt officials who blackmailed and terrorized the population. He had the support and respect of the people. He had hundreds of officials killed. Throughout Asia, he organized people who believed in his vision while maintaining control over custom tariffs. His organization, now over ten thousand armed men, was divided into local fighting groups. His police force protected his business and distributed food, medical supplies, guns, and ammunition to loyal supporters. Steadily, public opinion against the French increased. Tax coll
ectors were murdered. Hiro expanded and created state controlled monopolies for the production and sale of opium. He licensed the sale of morphine and opium through his dealers. Aware of the changing mood of the British, Chinese, French, Vietnamese, and Americans, Hiro obtained secret information on individuals and government departments. Nothing was beyond his reach. Nobody dared disobey him; he had become a father figure: a mystical authority. A dishonest peace prevailed among the main producers of opium and heroin in Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, China, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam and the hill regions of Burma. In turn, Tony would one day control the manufacture and distribution of narcotics with cold-blooded scientific tactics and a dark viciousness that neither grandfather nor father could ever dream of or imagine. One day Tony Endo would become the International Chairman of the Supreme Council.
Saint Patrick’s Cathedral
December 1949. New York City. Billy Eckstine, named Downbeat Magazine’s most popular singer, is making a Christmas appearance at Radio City Music Hall. The Woodie Herman Band is playing Carnegie Hall. Oscar Peterson is playing Birdland. Cab Calloway is playing the Cotton Club. Sara Vaughn, Charlie Parker, and the George Shearing jazz group are playing the Apollo Theatre. Butch Moriguchi and Marco Madrid are attending funeral services for Marco's father. The next day, Butch and Marco will leave for Tokyo, Japan and attend the Buddhist memorial service and cremation of Butch’s father. A light snow is falling on scores of police officers standing and shivering on icy cathedral steps, stamping their feet, shaking off the numbing cold. The biting wind is numbing fleshy cheeks red as mourner’s blow warm breath into their white-gloved freezing hands. Gray snow clouds blanket the sky creating a dark and gloomy overcast day. Butch stood silent and numb, he didn't know what to feel, vividly remembering his mother’s endless mourning. As the eldest son, he was culturally bound to assume his father's role and support his mother. Born in Tokyo, Japan, Butch spent a few years in Hong Kong where his father worked. Stunned by his father's death, he was ashamed of his teenage mistakes of working for one of the vice dens in Kowloon. Butch had struck a deal with a young vice lord to deliver small packages of heroin throughout Kowloon, the remote New Territories, and the Central Business district on Hong Kong Island. After three years, he had saved thousands of dollars in a secret bank account, but the experience went against his values and morals, now he wanted to make amends to his father and prove himself an honorable son.