by Todd Merer
In 2006, an interfamilial war broke out in a prominent Chinese American clan whose allegiance was bifurcated between mainland Red China and Taiwan’s Nationalist China. By then, Richard had moved on to CIA and become a singleton, a lone-wolf operator who had the keys to the henhouse.
It was what he’d always yearned for. Not just for the power and the glory but for the money. There was money to be made in the war of 2006, whose combatants were willing to spend unlimited funds to win. The stakes were enormous: to the winner went the resources and control of the vast South China Sea.
In the aftermath of the family feud, Richard met another Chinese woman combatant he fell in like with. He knew Missy Soo was a Red spy, but—pun intended—preferred keeping his enemies close.
He traded secrets and money with Missy. Missy begged him to find the whereabouts of the man who harbored the estranged family members she’d sworn to destroy.
Richard had contacts, but witness protection secrets were not easy to come by. He was still trying when again he was transferred, becoming the CIA top dog on the old Spanish Main, the Caribbean Rim that arced from Cartagena around the Antilles back to southern Mexico. In these tropical climes were old cities—Cartagena, San Juan, Santo Domingo, Havana, Panama City—where the drug war was heating up. Richard loved the action and the sense of history . . . here, in the name of Christ, native populations had been exterminated, African slaves freighted and traded, and local populations raped and pillaged by pirates. Once again, the rim was nonstop action: the money spigot was turned full on, and tons of cocaine were pouring through it. Richard had a blast; he missed Missy, but there were plenty of loose women waiting to be picked up. He lived la vida loca: nights of salsa on Avenida Sexta in Cali, thousand-yard sniped assassinations by day, HALO drops into narrow valleys. Bullfights and cockfights.
And, most of all, secrets: drugs, money, people.
Analysis and counteranalysis. Coca production estimates. Refining sites. Routes. Different aspects having different analysts. Richard was the funnel that law enforcement’s collective knowledge passed through. Only he saw the big picture. The patterns. His targets were careful but paid no attention to patterns. Richard’s methodology was simple: he made use of PACER—Public Access to Court Electronic Records.
He created his own algorithm. For example:
A big dealer on the north coast in Barranquilla, or some such town, loses several lancha loads of coke. A day or two following the busts, a certain lawyer puts in a notice of appearance as the big dealer’s attorney. The lawyer’s a top guy in the White Powder Bar. Richard waylays the lawyer and whispers sweet nothings into his ear:
“Help us get the big guy behind your client, and you’re cool with us. Hell, we don’t care if you represent the boss after he’s down. Of course, you don’t have to do anything, but before you decide . . .”
And then Richard would proceed to remind the lawyer of other drug attorneys who had gone down in recent years, most of them still doing hard time in US penitentiaries. Invariably, the lawyer would agree, the result being that Richard had gained another BFF who told him secrets.
One day, Richard, pondering a string of recent takedowns so massive, they had to have come from the same DTO, applied his algorithm.
It came up with Bennjamin T. Bluestone, Esq.
Richard set up a meet with a double CI: a deep-cover confidential informant who specialized in informing on cheating informants. Which most all were. The double CI came up with a former Colombian cop who now was a bagman for an ex-CTI—elite Colombian cop—who sold information to extradited guys cooperating their time down. A thriving enterprise. Richard found the ex-CTI, a guy named Helmer Quezada, in a whorehouse in Cúcuta, a shithole border town between Colombia and Venezuela. Quezada flipped before putting his pants back on. Still another source for Richard and, far more importantly, a name for the big guy paying Bluestone:
Sombra. Shadow.
Richard followed Sombra from afar through interconnected cases—all defended by Benn Bluestone—until the final denouement, when Sombra’s true identity emerged from the—no joke—shadows.
Which was how Richard met Sombra.
Now calling herself Dolores.
Which in turn led to Richard—in exchange for Dolores’s Colombian cooperation—inadvertently allowing her a window into his Chinese investigation, which was now ripening to a full-blown crisis.
In one fell swoop, Richard would destroy the Colombian drug trade, kick the Red Chinese in the nuts, steal an untraceable huge fortune, earn the grateful thanks of his Washington bosses, lock up an irritating mouthpiece named Bluestone, and own himself a piece of ass named Dolores.
Hail, Richardus!
CHAPTER 14
I caught the red-eye back to New York. Beneath dimmed cabin lights, I looked out the window. In moonlight seven miles below lay a pale patchwork of fields and occasional lights of a farmstead. Normal people leading normal lives far from their cares and woes. Sometimes I wished I could be among them. But then I’d tell myself, Forget about it. It’d be like going cold turkey every day. You need your daily fix of action.
I looked from the window and thought about Aung. We walked different paths. She accepted death as another phase of life. Me, I thought it was all over once my time was up, and I wanted to go out fast, before my brain registered the fact. Considering my predilections, I’d most likely get my wish.
Ahead, dawn was a sliver of gray between dark land and sky.
I’d flown first class: seat 1-A, my own private corner office, offering first-on, first-off access. Ten minutes after touchdown in New York, I climbed into the back of Val’s Rover. A tray was lowered; on it, a cloth napkin laden with bakery-warm bagels, three kinds of smoked herring, and an electric coffee setup. I told Val to take me directly to Duke’s seaside mansion.
We arrived at Duke’s place late that morning. It was quiet except for a pair of terns screeching at one another. The house stood tall and dark against the mist layering the Sound. Two goons were at the front gate. One made a call, nodded, and the other opened the gate.
Despite our agreement regarding payment, I half expected Duke to have a delay in store. That was the way he was wired: As long as the money is in my pocket, it’s still mine. I was wired the same way: That’s my money in your pocket. I’d renounced accepting drug money, but Stella’s fee was clean, and I wanted it.
I found Duke in his study with Dr. Keegan—in tails resembling a penguin—doling out his pills. Today Duke was a country gentleman in a vested tweed suit.
He swallowed the pills. “Get out,” he said to Keegan, then hooked his long thumbs in the vest pockets and leaned back in his chair. “Speak.”
“Stella’s safe in the Sierra, so it looks like my job’s over.”
“Actually, your job’s just beginning. You do want to get paid?”
I got in his face. “I will get paid, and you’ll drop the attitude, old man. Bet I can throw you through the window before you get your gun.”
He raised a leathery palm between us. “I strongly advise you never to threaten me again. The unfortunate fact is that it’s difficult for me to accumulate bank funds. I considered payment in cash—”
“On second thought, cash is fine. I’ll just need your information to fill out the IRS 8300 form.” I figured that advice would cut the knees from his manipulations.
“Some advice, Counselor. Two things you never screw with a man about. His money and his woman.” He gave me a horsey smile. “Actually, I don’t have cash on hand, anyway. What I do have is this . . .”
He opened a desk drawer and took out a gold ingot he placed on the desktop in front of me. “One kilo. Worth fifty thousand, give or take.”
“One million dollars,” I said. “Bank-certified check.”
“I’m on the gold standard. The kilo and Stella’s check together total three hundred thousand dollars. I’d say that’s a fair down payment, demonstrating our good faith.”
“Pay me my money.”
“I’ll guarantee you an ingot every month until you’re paid in full. Take the deal. If not for my sake, then for Stella’s.”
Duke’s using my duty to protect Stella as leverage was detestable because it worked.
Sensing me acquiesce, he said, “Shoulder your cross, brother.”
“Who pays me after you’re history?”
“Richard and Dolores,” he said. “Because of Richard, you’re under the US government’s aegis. Meaning no forfeitures. And kilos of gleaming aurum, all yours.”
I shook my head. How do I extradite myself from this?
“Take the kilo.”
Kilo was a potentially bad word. I imagined Richard and some government tech geek manipulating my recorded words. My paranoia meter needle was in its red zone.
A small framed photograph stood on a ledge behind him. A beautiful teenage girl who had a strawberry birthmark on her forehead just beneath her hair.
Duke followed my gaze. “My other granddaughter, Katrina.”
“Two granddaughters. You’re a fortunate man.”
“Katrina’s dead,” he said, bitterly. “Auto accident. 2006.”
My hand had found its way atop the ingot. Its surface was uneven. There was a faint imprint, a maker’s mark on it. I’m not a braille reader, but the marks didn’t feel as if they were in English language; yet they seemed familiar. Made me curious. Yet I hesitated. I guessed the gold had been converted from dirty money, but a guess was a far cry from knowledge. And not taking it seemed a meaningless act. Besides, it was payment for legitimate legal services . . . well, quasi-legal, considering.
“No,” I said, refusing the gold for recorded posterity, but I took the ingot and left.
I directed Val to West Forty-Seventh Street between Sixth and Seventh avenues, told him to wait until I returned. The street, hub of the Diamond District, was crowded. Orthodox Jews, variously shaded Asians, rappers, and drugsters bling shopping. I threaded through them to a drab building with a heavy steel door above which half a dozen cameras blinked. I turned my face to them and pressed a buzzer. The door clicked open, and I entered.
Over the years I’d done business with H. Farberman & Company. Buying gold coins as a hedge against the deluge, selling them back at a loss when I was broke, selling gold watches I’d gotten in lieu of fees. Now my purpose was assaying the ingots. One of the Farberman sons filled an eyedropper with some chemical, dripped some atop the ingot, grunted.
“Pure gold,” he said.
I pointed at the imprint. “That?”
He screwed a loupe into his eye and bent closer. He grunted some more, said, “Never saw that mark. Don’t even know what alphabet it’s in. Have a look.”
I did. Magnified, the mark was a series of squiggles. I made a pencil rubbing of the mark. Palmed the assayer a couple of Franklins and left. I wanted to catch some shut-eye but instead had Val take me to my bank. There, I descended to its lower-level vault, where safe deposit boxes lined the walls. One of them was mine. At various times it’d been stuffed with Franklins, but now it was empty, or at least it had been, for I now stashed the ingot in it.
When I got home, I turned on my device. It took a little searching, but I found what I was looking for.
The maker’s mark alphabet was one used by the Shan peoples who inhabited the area where Laos, Thailand, and Myanmar (formerly Burma) converged, an area infamously known as the Golden Triangle, where poppies were transformed into China White heroin.
Where, decades ago, Duke, née Archie, had made his fortune.
The Triangle was the source of opium refined to heroin. Despite my best intentions, I’d blundered back into the drug game. I considered this and gave myself a pass. Ignorance of my self-imposed law is a valid excuse.
I researched the Shan a bit more. After the Chinese Communist People’s Liberation Army won the civil war in 1948, most Kuomintang troops had fled to Taiwan and set up a rump state, but sizeable Nationalist units moved south and established alliances with the Shan: providing protection for their poppy business by killing thousands of wannabe rivals.
In my mind’s eye, I saw blood. Blood pooling on jungle floors. Blood filling hypodermics that were emptying liquid dope. Blood dripping from gold ingots . . .
Now I understood how Smitty’s past had ravaged his family.
And remembered how the drug business had savaged me.
Just when I thought I was out, they were pulling me back in.
Six hours later I awoke, slumped in front of my computer screen. I took a shower and shaved and unpacked my overnighter—
And saw Aung One’s box.
I’d forgotten all about it. For no reason, I looked inside again, took out the pincushion, and plucked its golden needles, admiring their glow beneath the desk lamp. Clearly, I’d been bitten by the gold bug. These beautiful slivers deserved a proper nest. The newsprint lining the bottom of the box was tawdry but adhered to the bottom as if glued. Little wonder, it was ancient. I looked closer and saw it was the front page of the Bombay Times, dated October 20, 1942, its boldface headlines: “Germans Engage Soviets at Stalingrad” and “US and Japanese Forces Battle for Guadalcanal.”
Beneath the headlines were the news stories, most of them bad: the Japanese were still advancing into south China; Rommel, the German general known as the Desert Fox, was battering Allied forces in north Africa; an American convoy carrying aid to the USSR had lost six of eight vessels on the Murmansk run; another DC-3 supply plane hadn’t made it over the Hump—ah!
Aung Three said everything happens for a reason. I’d dismissed the thought, but now I knew she’d been right.
Gently, I unpeeled the newsprint and read the account of the surviving DC-3 copilot. When the pilot realized his craft was too heavy to clear the Himalayas, knowing he lacked fuel enough to turn back, he’d ordered the copilot to bail. No point in both of them buying it, and hopefully the lost weight would lighten the plane enough to clear the Hump. Didn’t happen. From his floating chute, the copilot saw the plane explode just a few feet below the crest of a twenty-thousand-foot peak.
Same story as I’d heard from Milton Peabody, plus an additional fact:
The copilot was Smith, William E., Corporal, USAAF.
CHAPTER 15
As always, the Geek produced. He had nothing on Duke himself. Archibald Petrie and his alter ego remained blank slates. But he did come up with copies of newspaper articles, police, and Emergency Services Unit reports, birth and death certificates, and even photographs of graves of the six people who, in November 2006, had perished in an auto accident within a mile of Duke’s Long Island mansion. The casualties were a licensed-to-carry Aussie driver named Ian McKay; a Mr. and Mrs. William E. Smith; Duke’s granddaughter Katrina; and Gilbert and Emma Maris, née Mason, the parents of Stella Maris, the sole survivor. All of which I already knew.
But something seemed hinky. I said, “How were the IDs made? Dental records or visually?”
“The bodies were cremated the day after the accident. Kinda unusual, right? Wonder why?”
“There’s a reason for everything,” I said, palming the Geek more green for another job. Ten minutes later, he’d accomplished it. I stood behind him, looking at the results on his computer screen.
Then I beelined back to Duke’s seaside palace.
The guards waved me through. I found Duke on the back lawn. He looked quite the country gentleman today: wearing corduroy, leaning on a heavy blackthorn walking stick, walking a pair of short-legged corgis.
“Damned rude of you, just walking in on me,” said Duke.
“Wanted to see two sausages and a beanstalk. Nice.”
“Careful. My stick can take your face.”
“I’m tired of it, anyway. Let’s talk.”
Duke’s eyes swiveled around the lawn. Beyond it was second-growth forest where a man with binoculars and a penchant for lipreading could do a good day’s work. That was what Duke was thinking, as was I. Can’t be too careful.
Duke picked up on my concern and gestured us toward the pool building.
On previous occasions when I’d felt the need for extreme secrecy, I would meet with cartel and Tong emissaries in otherwise empty steam baths. But Duke and I skinny-dipped in a gorgeously tiled pool. I pride myself on staying in reasonable shape, but despite Duke’s age and illness, his long body was as toned as mine.
“Nice pool, Mr. Petrie. Or may I call you Archie?”
“Nice catch, Counselor. How’d you make it?”
“You were sloppy from the get-go,” I said.
He blinked in surprise, frowned.
Gotcha, you old fuck. I said, “Your sentimental tribute to Marmaduke Eddington and Mason Peckham was the first giveaway. The clincher was the identity of the eyewitness to the DC-Three that supposedly crashed on the Hump. Not a copilot but a mechanic? Your buddy who just happened to be along for the ride? You had Smitty verify your death? Give me a break.”
He smiled. “Good old Smitty.”
I needled him again, adding some torque. “Your granddaughter Katrina died in an accident in 2006.”
His face hardened. “So I said. You finished?”
“Far from finished, Archie.”
“Duke. There is no Archie.”
“Whatever you say. I was wondering where you waited out the war after playing MIA. My guess is your DC-Three never went north toward the Hump. It went somewhere else. Let’s go to your study.”
We dressed and walked there in silence.
Using Duke’s old globe, I pointed out the possibilities. “North of Burma was Japanese-held territory. South of Burma, the Andaman Sea was patrolled by the Japanese. West was British India, where a draft-age civilian Yank would stick out like a sore thumb. That left east as your only destination, although not too far east, which was Japanese-ruled Indochina. Just slightly east. Say . . . in the Shan hills. I hear the Shan women are pretty. You and Smitty must’ve had a helluva war.”