by Steven Gore
“Mai pen rai.”
“No problem? Not so fast. We—you—will have to hide a tracking device on it.”
“Mei kuan hsi.”
“What’s mei kuan hsi?”
Cobra glanced over, smiling. “Taiwanese for mai pen rai.”
“I should’ve guessed.”
“You know when the container will arrive?”
“According to the shipping schedule, three days.”
Cobra nodded. “As long as you have the cash, I’ll find people to do what we need.”
“I’ll see Sheridan this afternoon. His headquarters is in Central. Thirty-ninth floor. Apparently he’s a major shareholder in the company that owns the building.”
“So I guess he has the money.”
“More than enough. But I don’t know whether he’s got the heart.”
Cobra lowered his head a fraction to see the skyline.
“People up in those skyscrapers rarely do.”
“In the meantime, go see Andrew Tang at the Royal Hong Kong Yacht Club. He set aside one of the GPS units the club uses to track members’ sailboats during races of the high seas. Once you’ve placed it on the container, he’ll link it to our cell phones and make sure somebody’s monitoring it twenty-four hours a day.”
“What if I can’t recover the device afterward?”
“I’ll cover the loss. Then let’s meet for dinner at Jimmy’s Kitchen at six o’clock. I want you to meet Sheridan so if something happens to me, he’ll know he can trust you.”
Cobra looked over, eyes intent on Gage. “What do you mean, if something happens to you?”
Gage shrugged. “Nothing. Just a precaution.”
CHAPTER 34
After checking in, Gage caught a taxi from the Renaissance Kowloon Hotel overlooking Victoria Harbour to the China Travel Service to fill out a visa application and to drop off an Irish passport he’d begun using when he became too well known in Asia. He then caught another cab toward Sheridan’s office, located a block above the commercial Queen’s Road in the heart of Central Hong Kong.
Halfway there, he caught a wave of jet lag and decided to take Dr. Stern’s advice to get some exercise. He told the driver to pull over near a restaurant on Ice House Street, then hoofed it the rest of the way. And after a moment of dizziness as he hiked up the final hill, the walk cleared his head and he felt steadier when he met with Sheridan.
From the moment they’d shaken hands in the lobby, Sheridan impressed him as one of a type: a Brit of deceptive outer reticence and inner overconfidence who had gained Britain an empire with a velvet glove, but forced them to keep it with an iron fist. And the London School of Economics diploma hanging on the wall of his office told Gage that Sheridan didn’t want anyone to forget that he was a foreign financial conqueror.
“I think the chips are on their way to China,” Gage said as he sat down across from Sheridan.
“Nothing new there,” Sheridan said, dismissing the hard-fought particular fact with an easily won general statement. “The business section of the South China Morning Post reported yesterday that representatives from Intel and Microsoft are in Beijing right now demanding stronger enforcement.” He glanced at a copy of The Economist lying on his glass-topped desk and offered a diplomatic smile. “When one has a business in Hong Kong, one has to keep up, you know.” He looked back at Gage. “Where exactly are these chips going?”
“It’s better if you don’t know the details. There’s nothing you can do to help, and there’s a risk you’ll do something foolish like running headlong at Ah Ming again.”
Sheridan straightened in his chair and squared his shoulders.
“You seem to have forgotten that I’m the one who discovered Ah Ming was the man my son was allied with and I’m the reason you’re sitting here.”
Gage was stunned, not by the silliness of Sheridan’s claim to heroism, but by the fact that the man had no idea why Gage was in his office or who his own wife really was. And he now understood why Sheridan had made Linda return to the San Francisco area against her will, forcing her into a seclusion that had abandoned her son to the world. But he also understood it wasn’t entirely Sheridan’s fault. It was likely she’d lied at the beginning of their relationship about how she was wounded and about her underground life in San Francisco.
Maybe she’d done it for his good, to protect him by wrapping him in ignorance. But as Sheridan rose in the business world, hers became an unacceptable past. And looking across the desk at Sheridan now, the man wearing an expression of oblivious entitlement, Gage wondered whether she ever trusted him at all.
“That’s not quite true.” Gage modulated his voice, then increased its intensity. “Your son told you about Ah Ming before you went over there. Getting your head cracked open just gave you an additional reason to go after him.”
Gage glanced around at the staged antique Chinese artifacts on the counters and shelves and then pointed at the Lucite-encased integrated circuit sitting on his desk.
“It would be better if you stick with what you are good at.”
“You don’t seem to understand. I’m Peter’s father and I—”
“Never having lost a child I wouldn’t presume to understand. And I don’t need to. All I need to understand is how to do what needs to be done. Anything that interferes or puts me and others at risk isn’t acceptable. If you can live with that, fine. If not, I can still make an evening flight back to San Francisco.”
Sheridan’s face reddened and he tried to stare down Gage, but in his inability to speak, they both understood that he’d have to resign himself to the logic of real life. Ah Ming had let him crawl away for the same reason Gage wouldn’t let him back in: he wasn’t up to whatever would come next.
Sheridan took a deep breath, his cheeks puffing out as he exhaled, displaying the resignation of a businessman forced to cut his losses.
“Okay. You win this one. Jack Burch told me that you’re the best and I trust Jack.” Sheridan leaned forward and rested his forearms on his desk as if in surrender. “What do you need?”
“I’m putting together a team in Taiwan. I’ll need some money to pay them and to buy the equipment they’ll use. I would’ve brought cash from the States, but didn’t want to take a chance of being questioned about it if I got searched going through customs.”
“What are the odds you’ll succeed?”
“Fifty-fifty. No better.”
“Fifty-fifty isn’t that good in business, particularly when it seems to be all or nothing.”
“It is.”
“And this isn’t business. How much do you need?”
“Fifty thousand US. Five thousand of it Hong Kong dollars and the rest in Taiwanese NT.”
Sheridan picked up his phone and directed his secretary to make the arrangements.
“I’ll have it this afternoon.”
“Let’s make it six P.M. at Jimmy’s Kitchen. I’m having dinner with someone I need you to meet.”
Sheridan smiled. “Just about every deal I’ve made in this town has taken place at one of those tables. I think I may start to like you after all.”
As Gage rose to his feet he realized he could both warn Sheridan off and include him at the same time.
“One more thing. Lucy and your wife don’t need to know what we’re doing. There’s no reason to risk them making an offhand comment the wrong person might hear. It’s a much smaller world than you might think.”
GAGE’S CELL PHONE RANG as his taxi emerged from the Victoria Harbour Tunnel from Hong Kong to Kowloon.
It was Sylvia.
“Casey called with more information about the container. The bill of lading says it’s filled with soybeans and it’s still headed to the Sunny Glory branch in Taiwan. He has security people at the shipping lines checking every day to see whether they transfer ownership to another company before the ship docks at Kaohsiung.”
“That would be a shrewd maneuver on Ah Ming’s part, but he may not have a way to do it
now that Ah Tien has been cut out.”
“And I got a call from Lucy. She was grateful you stayed with the case, but sounded frustrated when I couldn’t tell her what you’re up to.”
“I think it’s more than just frustration, it’s anger. Ah Ming is close by—she can feel his presence like he’s radiating heat—and I’m thousands of miles away, seemingly too far away to damp out the fire. And she’s young and naïve enough to believe a straight line is always the shortest distance between two points. Sometimes it’s an arc.”
CHAPTER 35
Jack told me you were at Berkeley the same time I was,” Sheridan said to Gage as the waiter delivered drinks to Gage and Cobra at the table in Jimmy’s Kitchen. The lights bearing down from the steakhouse’s coffered ceiling and reflecting off the white tablecloth and polished silverware felt as though they were attacking Gage’s eyes as he looked across at Sheridan.
“I went to graduate school after I left police work.”
“Criminal justice or sociology or something like that?”
“Philosophy.”
Sheridan’s face assumed an expression of feigned incredulity. “Jack told me that, but I didn’t think he was serious. I can’t imagine there is much opportunity for ‘All men are mortal, Socrates is a man, therefore Socrates is mortal’ in your line of work.” Sheridan offered a snide laugh. “Or maybe it’s Bernie Madoff is mortal.”
Gage watched Sheridan sip his bourbon, smirking like a man who understood bottom lines, but nothing about humanity. His rigidity made Gage wonder whether Peter had been a possession that Ah Ming had taken away, not a troubled son who had needed a father.
“It’s not about syllogisms.” Gage fixed his eyes on Sheridan. “It’s thinking about what we’re doing.”
“There certainly is nothing wrong with that.”
Sheridan signaled to the waiter to bring three more drinks. Gage caught the waiter’s eye, a wave of nausea causing him to shake off the one intended for him.
“And you,” Sheridan said, looking toward Cobra, “where did you study?”
“The National Central Police University in Taipei and then at the Military College.”
“And what is it you do for a living now?”
“I’m like a private investigator.”
“In Taiwan?”
“No, Thailand. Mostly business intelligence.”
“Thailand. Interesting. I’d thought about building a factory south of Bangkok, but the corruption was so far beyond what I found in China, I didn’t have the stomach for it.”
Cobra and Sheridan then began trading tales of Thai and Chinese corruption as they drank. But while finishing his second drink in the collegial atmosphere that developed between them, Cobra slipped and called Gage by his nickname among people he worked with in Thailand, Santisuk.
“Santisuk? What’s Santisuk?”
“It means peaceful,” Cobra answered. “And it’s more the how than the what.”
Sheridan looked at Gage. “What did you do to get a name like that?”
“He didn’t kill a thief he could have,” Cobra said, “or maybe he should—”
Gage glared at Cobra and shook his head.
“Don’t stop there. Tell me.”
“We don’t know you well enough,” Gage said.
Sheridan looked hurt and puzzled, again excluded from something about which he really only wanted to be a voyeur. He picked up his menu and stared at it.
Gage felt a flush of annoyance at Cobra, who never should’ve said the name in front of Sheridan any more than Lew would ever call Cheung by the name “Ah Ming” around strangers. But then a fragment of a question dug at Gage as he stared down into his empty glass. It was one he’d asked himself at various times in his life. But now was the wrong place and the wrong time to try to answer it and he tried to fight it, but it kept digging at him.
Who were these people really? Ah Ming and Ah Tien and Cobra, beyond the parts they played in the world and the names that served as disguises—even Santisuk.
Especially Santisuk.
Or maybe the question wasn’t who they were, but what they were. A separate self? A second self? A fictional self that wasn’t real, but only in the consequences of its actions?
He tried to push it away, but the thoughts drove on, gouging through him.
And did that second self die with the first, or did it live on even more tangibly than the natural one in the chains of causes and effects it had initiated in the world?
He didn’t know the answers to any of those questions. But he did know that they weren’t the kind a manicured deal maker in Hong Kong like Sheridan would ever ask himself.
Gage looked again at Sheridan. “Did you bring the money?”
Sheridan nodded.
“Give it to Cobra.”
Gage watched Sheridan survey the linen-covered tables, the hardwood paneling, the highball glasses, and the platinum-carded, black-suited businesspeople around them who’d never be seen handling cash in public, and then Gage saw the ruffle of his suit jacket as Sheridan passed an envelope under the table.
CHAPTER 36
Cobra remained silent as they drove to Gage’s hotel. Both of them knew it wasn’t necessary for him to lose more face by apologizing. The slip wasn’t a mistake he would’ve made on the job in Bangkok or Taipei, but it was an easy one to make during casual conversation at a steakhouse in Hong Kong.
Gage directed Cobra into his room and continued on into the bathroom to take some of the antinausea medication prescribed by Dr. Stern. He then sat down at the table, activated the encrypted e-mail app on his cell phone and checked for messages.
He decrypted the first one, from Sylvia. “It looks like Casey found intelligence information that there may be a connection between Sunny Glory and United Bamboo.” Gage smiled. “And here’s one from Faith with a p.s. to you. She says she’s relying on you to protect me from the pi pawb.”
“Since when does Faith believe in evil spirits?”
“She doesn’t. It’s just her way of saying that whatever is against me is evil.”
Gage set his phone aside. “What time is your flight to Taipei?”
“Ten. I’ll stop by the yacht club on the way and pick up the GPS. Andrew was excited about having a chance to help you.”
“His older brother owns a restaurant a few blocks from my office. Some junior gangsters tried to lean on him for protection money, but he was afraid to go to the police. I asked a real gangster to tell the kids to lay off. He introduced me to Andrew at his granddaughter’s wedding. He told me to call him if I ever needed anything in Hong Kong.”
“Andrew said they’re sponsoring an ocean race for the next ten days. They’re expecting a storm to pass through so there won’t be anything unusual in him paying extra attention to their monitor in order to keep an eye on the container.”
Gage looked through the window at the lights of the slow-moving oceangoing ships in the distance.
“I’m really counting on you. You lose that container and we’re dead in the water.”
“My men understand if they mess up, they’ll have to swim behind it until it gets wherever it’s going.”
Gage turned back to Cobra, finding him with a half smile on his face.
“Have you talked with Kai about helping you out until I can get to Bangkok?” Cobra asked.
“She’ll meet me at the airport. Her heart really went out to Peter’s mother. She plays the tough guy, but she has a lot more nam jai than she’d like to admit.”
“It’s not just her heart going out to Linda Sheridan.” A glint in Cobra’s eyes joined his smile. “You realize she’s still hoping you and Faith will break up.”
Gage shook his head. “Kai knows that won’t happen.” He shrugged. “Anyway, we have an understanding.”
“Maybe she’s thinking that if she succeeds in helping you figure out Ah Ming’s heroin connections, your heart will grow fonder, especially if things get a little dangerous.”
“Then I’ll try to make sure we don’t end up in the same foxhole.”
Cobra cocked his head and raised his eyebrows. “I’ve never known her not to accomplish what she sets out to do.”
“As I said, we have an understanding.”
“We’ll see how well she honors it.”
Cobra reached into his shirt pocket and withdrew a slip of paper. He unfolded it and held it out toward Gage.
“This is the name of the medical clinic in Bangkok where you’re supposed to go for the blood tests.”
“How . . .”
“Faith called my wife, my wife called the doctor, the doctor called my wife, and my wife called me.”
“Did Faith tell her why?”
Cobra shook his head. “She just said some confusing things about a tail wagging the dog, or the other way around, and me keeping you on a short leash or us both ending up in a doghouse.” He grinned. “I’m really not sure how all these American idioms fit together, but I still caught the meaning.”
“You didn’t tell Kai about any of this, did you?”
“No.” Cobra’s grin faded. “It wasn’t my place.”
CHAPTER 37
Lying in bed after Cobra left, Gage wondered whether it had been a mistake asking for Kai’s help. While few in Thai society moved more easily between the aboveground and the underground, none had the history they had together, one that left him with a doubled view of her: as a woman and as a DEA dossier.
Thai name: Sukanda
Chinese name: Chen Mei-li
B.A. from the University of California, Los Angeles
M.B.A. from Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok
Owner: Siri Construction
Retired: marijuana—ganja—trafficker
Marital status: mia noi, minor wife of the former marijuana exporter and current minister of the interior, in charge of the police and domestic intelligence
Gage hadn’t been sure what Kai had seen in him when he’d come to Thailand on that trip fifteen years earlier: the rescuer of her father’s investments in the United States that were almost lost in a real estate scam, a way out of a failed marriage, or love at first sight.