The Snakeheads

by Mary Moylum

  The Hong Kong police had arrested two of Keiler’s colleagues. From his hospital bed, Nick ordered them sent back to Canada, and made Rocco the immigration manager at the embassy.

  Two months later, Nick found himself reporting to a new immigration minister. He handed Keiler’s diskette over to his minister, along with a hard copy of the evidence. The disk contained the names of Canadian and local staff at the Canadian embassies, in Hong Kong and China, who had accepted bribes from many underworld characters to delete their criminal backgrounds from government computers. That way, applicants with links to triads did not show up on the system.

  Despite their best efforts, the following summer, the largest human smuggling operation from China arrived in Canada. Three cargo ships carrying close to a thousand illegal aliens landed off the British Columbia coastline.

  Then one day, out of the blue, on a perfectly good fall day with the leaves turning colours, a phone call from Kelly Marcovich ruined Nick’s entire week. His immigration counterpart in Washington called to inform him that Sun Sui had received asylum in the United States in exchange for ratting on the competition. He had handed over names and the inside dope of other triad gangs. And he was working with the U.S. Attorney-General by giving evidence against his Panamanian associates and their roles in issuing visas to a hundred or so Chinese intelligence agents to enter the U.S. To add insult to injury, Sun got immunity from prosecution for his role in Walter Martin’s death in exchange for his testimony before the Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Organized Crime in Washington. Once more he grassed on former friends and associates by naming names of Communist officials and Chinese gangsters who had made donations to American political parties.

  One late fall day, a couple of hikers came across the remains of a body in the woods. It carried a driver’s licence in the name of Lee Man. The cause of death was unknown due to the advanced decomposition and disturbance of the remains by wild animals.

  Nick asked Dubois to fill him in on all the details. Li Mann Vu’s false identification on a badly decomposed body seemed too convenient to him. However, the DNA taken from the remnants of a body found in the woods was a perfect match from samples taken in Li Mann’s house. Officially, the search for Walter Martin’s killer was over. Unofficially, both men viewed the human remains as nothing more than a skin Walter Martin’s killer had left behind.

  Jon Keiler’s murder was never solved. The Hong Kong police wrote it off as another gangland killing in the Colony. Like Wa Sing’s murder, there was not enough evidence to pin it on Sun Sui or the Flying Dragons.

  There is only the now.

  This was a lesson in life that Grace had learned the hard way. Nick, too, realized that he had been unconsciously living for the future. What good would that have done him if he hadn’t pulled through in Hong Kong? Since his brush with death, his dreams became more colourful. At times he would awake in the morning and retain fragments of memory of being in another place, travelling through a tunnel of bright light and rainbow colours.

  Grace and Nick booked a flight to Malta, and returned to the place of their first tryst. In a seaside village, they found a quiet church, and tied the knot. Later, neither could remember what the church’s denomination was. It could have been Martian Orthodox for all they cared.

  It was the best month-long, honeymoon-vacation they’d ever had.

  acknowlegements

  There are a number of people to whom I owe a great deal. Those who believed in the book from the onset were my friend Jim Dahl and his sister, Stevie Cameron. I want to say thank you to Stevie for introducing me to her lawyer Marion Hebb and her associate Sally Cohen. Sally has been a terrific cheerleader, boosting my confidence through the slow and daunting process of getting a manuscript published.

  Among those who contributed enormously to the editing process was Doris Cowan. She worked on the book, page by page, scene by scene. There is no finer editor than Doris, a gifted critic of language, characterization, and dialogue. I cannot thank her enough. Taking over from her at the next stage was Julian Walker. This book would not have happened the way it did without his discerning editorial suggestions.