White Ghost

by Steven Gore

Gage looked toward the crowded road ahead. His mind felt fogged like the gray haze enveloping the city. In the distance he spotted a northbound Skytrain rocketing along the elevated track, the smiling faces in the advertisements on the side mocking the economic disaster the city had become. His eyes lost focus as he stared at the red, white, and blue paint streaking the sides of the cars.

  And the movement led him to an answer.

  Gage held up his right hand. “The chips are over here in Taiwan.” He held out his other hand, lower and to the left. “The heroin is down here.”

  “And they have to meet,” Kai said.

  Gage lowered his hands and nodded. “That suggests the heroin probably won’t be traveling the usual route south to the Bangkok port and then to the U.S. And even without understanding the financing, that might be what he’s figured out.”

  He pictured a Southeast Asian map, the three-hundred-plus degrees that would exclude Bangkok: Burma, Cambodia, Southern China, Vietnam, even Malaysia.

  “That’s why he needs Kasa up there, starting at the lab. And why we need Cobra right next to him.”

  CHAPTER 43

  Ah Ming sat alone in his office, remembering his escape from Taiwan after he killed the gambler, being passed from one United Bamboo member to another, a chain that led from Taipei, to Hong Kong, to Singapore, to Bangkok. A trunk of a car, a fake passport, a night flight, an unlit tarmac, a dark SUV. And he recognized why these thoughts came to him now. He had broken the links between himself and the robbery, but with the cost that there was a broken link in his organization.

  By limiting those who knew of his own role, he’d ensured that only two men would be in a position to inform against him: Lew and Ah Tien. But because of Lew’s age and reticence to travel, over time Ah Tien had become too central to everything, especially the offshore operation, and now too dead.

  He needed someone to send east and it could only be himself or Lew, and it couldn’t be himself.

  Ah Ming stepped to his door, spotted Lew standing by a near cubicle, and signaled to him to come to his office. As he waited, he noticed a new employee standing at the copy machine, a young Eurasian woman, poised and attractive. Her facial features, her nose and cheeks and skin tone, seemed familiar, but he shook off the thought, deciding that he must’ve seen her before as he skirted the cubicles making his way to and from the warehouse entrance.

  He followed Lew into the office, directed him to a chair, and then shut the door.

  “Without Ah Tien, I need to make other arrangements.” Ah Ming sat down behind his desk and rested his forearms on the blotter. “I need you to manage the exchange.”

  Lew didn’t react and Ah Ming hadn’t expected him to. He knew the old man had suffered too much in his life to react to words alone.

  “But if you do it, all parts of the operation will connect to you. We need to make sure you don’t leave a trail back to me.”

  Ah Ming let the notion linger, then said, “My first thought had been that after the deal was done, you’d simply follow Ah Tien’s practice and stay overseas until it’s time for a new cycle. But then I realized I’d been taking you for granted in recent years and perhaps you’ve already been thinking ahead, toward retirement.”

  Lew still didn’t respond.

  “I’ve relied on you as though you were my own uncle. The decision is yours, but to make your choice easier and to reward you for your service, I’ll give you a percentage of this deal.”

  Lew shook his head. “That’s not necessary. I’ve saved enough and my needs are simple.”

  “In any case, I owe you this.” Ah Ming rose. “The money will be waiting for you on your return. Do with it what you will.”

  Ah Ming walked Lew back to his office, then returned to his own.

  LEW SAT DOWN AT HIS DESK surprised that Ah Ming had divined his desire to retire. He wondered whether Ah Ming had sensed what he had just discovered himself: a longing to return to his home village. He gazed up at a charcoal drawing of steep karsh mountains along the Lijiang River that he’d cut from a calendar he’d bought on his single trip back to China since his escape in the 1970s. He thought of his university colleagues who had tried to convince him during the visit that the Cultural Revolution that had destroyed his career as a history professor now existed in the Chinese imagination only as an embarrassment. But he’d felt a bitterness and a distrust that hadn’t abated during the weeks he spent there. Indeed, standing outside of his ancestral home and looking down at the graves of his parents whose funerals he missed during his exile, he’d felt a hot rage he’d feared would never cool.

  Through his open door, Lew caught the motion of Ah Ming walking from his office and through the back exit of the warehouse. He then imagined himself taking that same route and never coming back.

  AH MING DROVE to a Walmart five miles away where he bought a prepaid phone, then on to Coyote Point along San Francisco Bay and walked to the water’s edge. He punched in a series of digits.

  “Yes?” a man answered.

  “I’m sending Lew to the northern place.”

  “When?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “Observe.”

  “Should I call you if he’s detected?”

  “No.”

  “Then what should I do?”

  “Eliminate him.”

  He then dropped the phone into the dirt, stomped it, and threw it far into the bay.

  CHAPTER 44

  Cobra came to Gage’s Bangkok hotel room after flying in from Taiwan. He took a chair at the dining table, poured him a cup of tea, and also sat down.

  “The container is at Sunny Glory,” Cobra said. “But probably not for long. In the old days, we never let anything stop moving, and they won’t either. They’ll just add whatever goods they want to send on to the next stop and then haul it back to the port.”

  Cobra’s cell phone rang. He listened, snapped orders in Taiwanese, then hung up and looked at Gage.

  “The container just left.”

  “You were right.”

  “Not exactly. It was empty.”

  The flowchart in Gage’s mind of the possible routes the chips could follow and how the deal might be structured went fuzzy.

  “Are they on to us?” Gage said. “Or was this the plan all along?”

  Gage felt his fists clench and then a flash of panic that he’d wasted the last weeks, foolishly gambling with his health and his life. Time now felt like a vise. The past completed, fixed in place, and the time moving at him, closing the gap between the present and the future, squeezing him.

  He pushed past the thought. “Or worse. Maybe the chips weren’t in it in the first place.”

  Gage heard a knock on the door. He opened it for Kai and filled her in. They could do nothing but wait for more information from Taiwan, so he turned to the problem of Eight Iron.

  “Kai and I both think Eight Iron is up to something,” Gage told Cobra. “If he grabs the heroin, all our work was for nothing. Ah Ming will freeze everything in place until he sorts it out.”

  “I’m willing to head up there, but I’ll be outnumbered. The area is crawling with Shans connected to Kasa.”

  “And I’m not sure I want you guarding a heroin shipment, or worse, going to war over it, either against the Wa or against Eight Iron.”

  Cobra smiled. “I don’t think my wife would forgive me if I ended up with new holes in my body.”

  And Gage knew he wouldn’t forgive himself.

  “What’s stopping Eight Iron from just grabbing it on the trail from the lab?” Kai asked.

  “It would make it too obvious that he’s behind the theft,” Gage said. “A guy shows up who’s been out of the business for a long time, then a huge load gets snatched.”

  “So it’s a matter of timing,” Cobra said. “He needs to make his move in a way that will disguise that it’s him doing it.”

  “As soon as the heroin leaves the lab,” Gage said, “
assuming we can catch up to it, we’ll make a decision on how to play it. Which means you’ll have to hook up with Kasa and stick with him until the heroin shows up.”

  “Which means I’m not sleeping at home tonight.”

  “At least you’ll have some company.”

  “What company?”

  “Kai. Kasa won’t make a move against you if she’s around. He knows her husband would use the police and army to crush his whole organization.”

  “And not because of love.” Kai smirked. “He just needs me to manage the harem.”

  “I’m glad you still have your sense of humor,” Gage said, “and of adventure. I’ll have to stay here. A white ghost hanging around this deal would be taken for DEA.”

  Cobra nodded. “Mai pen rai.”

  “I wouldn’t say ‘no problem’ so fast. We still don’t know where they’ll be moving the heroin.”

  Cobra’s cell phone rang. He answered, listened, then disconnected. “A truck backed up to the loading dock. It could be they’re transferring the chips into it.”

  Gage pictured his map again, this time from the perspective of southern Taiwan and the South and East China Seas. “I wonder if their plan is to slip them into another company’s container in Kaohsiung to give them an additional layer of insulation.”

  “But if it’s going by container anyway,” Kai said, “why not make the exchange here in Bangkok. Haul the container to a local warehouse, take out the chips, substitute in the heroin, and send it on to the U.S.”

  Gage thought for a moment. “No. That couldn’t be it. Too risky. The last thing they’d want to do is ship the heroin directly from a source country. That’s like asking for it to be searched by customs.”

  They all fell silent. They knew they were just floating, drifting from speculation to speculation, hypothetical to hypothetical, and there was only one way to find solid ground.

  Kai and Cobra rose and headed for the door.

  CHAPTER 45

  After Kai and Cobra left, Gage took a cab to the Jira Medical Center on the first floor of a high-rise in central Bangkok. It was the office of the doctor Cobra’s wife had chosen. The few steps across the sidewalk felt to him like he was fighting through dirty, gray cotton. Crossing the threshold and into the air-conditioning was like breaking free.

  “My name is Gage,” he told the receptionist. “I have an appointment with Dr. Mana.”

  She smiled. “Yes, of course.”

  She gestured toward the bank of chairs on the opposite wall of the empty waiting room, then reached for her intercom.

  A few minutes later Mana entered through the door next to the reception counter. He brightened when he spotted Gage, then extended his hand, Western fashion.

  “Khun Malee told me to expect you.”

  “I appreciate you taking the time to see me.”

  Mana signaled a nurse to follow, then escorted Gage into an examination room.

  “Just sit up there,” Mana said, directing him to the exam table. “And I’d like you to remove your shirt.”

  “I can just roll up my sleeve. I only need blood drawn.”

  “How about I’ll be the doctor and you be the patient,” Mana said in an I-won’t-take-no-for-an-answer tone and matching Thai smile.

  Gage gave Mana a look of surrender, then removed his shirt and pulled himself up onto the end of the table.

  Mana extracted two vials of blood from Gage’s arm, then handed him an e-mail. It was addressed to Gage.

  Dear Graham:

  I met Dr. Mana at a conference at the Mayo Clinic a few years ago. He attended the best university and medical school in Hong Kong and teaches oncology at the Chulalongkorn Medical Faculty.

  He is also following my instructions.

  Do what he says.

  By the way, Faith and I had lunch. She tried to explain you to me. I’m not sure I got it. She promised to try again.

  Please be careful.

  Louisa Stern

  Gage smiled and laid the e-mail on the table behind him.

  Mana performed the same examination of his neck and arms that Stern had done.

  “Nausea?” Mana asked.

  “A little.”

  “More or less?”

  “Less.”

  “Dizziness?”

  “None since Hong Kong a couple of days ago.”

  “Appetite?”

  “Rad na gai for lunch.” Gage smiled again. “You can tell Dr. Stern I ate the whole thing.”

  Mana smiled back. “I will. She decided to cut out the middleman and she asked me to send your blood results directly to her.” He raised his eyebrows. “Any objection?”

  Gage shook his head.

  Mana passed Gage his shirt. “If you’re here in a week, please come back. Otherwise, good luck to you.”

  As Gage stepped back onto the sidewalk, he decided to walk at least partway back to the hotel. He needed to think outside the confinement of a cab creeping through traffic. He paid off the waiting driver, then started toward his hotel, winding through lottery ticket sellers, fruit vendors, and noodle carts. Workers heading toward buses and Skytrains jostled him, and businesspeople elbowed him aside as they fought for taxis.

  His nausea ratcheted up in the exhaust blasts from tuk-tuks and motorcycles, and as it faded, the chaos of sounds, smells, and movements provoked an inner anarchy of images: Faith, Ling, Kai, Casey, Stern, Sheridan. And that morphed into anger, a molten heat that spread inside his chest, not directed outward toward the world jarring him, but at himself, or at least at that part of himself that was killing him.

  Questions rose like street signs in front of him: Why not earlier? Why not on the day of the diagnosis? Or on the day of the bone marrow biopsy? Those would’ve been good days for rage.

  Walk down to the basement of his house, pound the heavy bag until he was drained.

  Gage answered the question as soon as he asked it. The fury had now emerged because he had become a bystander, his work not yet completed, but out of his hands, and his mind was now loosed to wander uncontrolled. A frightening image came to him of a flashlight rolling down a hillside from a dead man’s hand. Whether or not he’d fulfill his obligation to Linda Sheridan and whether or not Ah Ming would win in the end would be answered solely by Kai and—

  Fingers reached into his back pocket. He grabbed the wrist and twisted the arm it was attached to. He took back his wallet. He found himself gripping a skinny street kid with up-country tribal features, wearing a dirty T-shirt and shorts. He searched the boy’s pockets and found no other stolen wallets or money, only a gold candy wrapper folded like a keepsake. He released his grip, but the boy didn’t run. He just stood there with his shoulders hunched, head down, waiting to be beaten or handed over to the police.

  Gage turned and walked away. He didn’t look back.

  At least it hadn’t been a knife held at my throat or a gun barrel pointed at my chest.

  He continued into Lumpini Park, passing old women engaged in tai chi and aged men playing makrook thai and finally a vendor selling fresh snake blood drained from disemboweled cobras lying in a bucket next to his wooden cart.

  Gage thought about his conversations with Stern and the research he and Faith had done and now admitted to himself a truth that had only been inert words before. There was no secret about the course the disease would follow or how it would end and when: give or take a margin of error, he knew how long he would live.

  He paused in front of a pagoda clock tower housing an old Swiss Heuer and looked up at its rusting face.

  It’s not a knife or a bullet that I have to fear. It’s a ticking clock.

  Gage wondered why death hadn’t been constantly on his mind, why even the nausea and dizziness hadn’t distracted him from what he had set out to do.

  But no answer came.

  He left the park and found himself in front of a small Theravada Buddhist temple, its triangular red roof sweeping down toward gold, birdlike chofas at the corners. A disabled ma
n with twisted arms and legs loped along the sidewalk like a dog. He stopped in front of the temple and offered small garlands of white flowers for sale. Gage bought one, sniffed the scent of malik and dok ruk, and then gave it to a hunched woman shuffling toward the entrance. She draped it over withered hands formed into an arthritic wai, then bowed and hobbled inside.

  An indistinct thought began forming in Gage’s mind, then evaporated. It was something about the work he did and the reasons he did it. He grasped for the wisp as it dissipated, then looked up at the phra chedi, the domed pagoda housing images of the Buddha and photographs of revered teachers. Then came a bitter thought that didn’t escape his grasp: even the devout, those who prayed, lived, and finally died for nirvana, couldn’t accept the oblivion that was its aim and essence. No different from those European Catholics who venerated fragments of saints’ bones, they needed their idols, their photos, and their images to bow to.

  What am I ready to accept? Gage asked himself as he turned away. And how will I know it?

  And when?

  IT WAS AFTER DARK by the time Gage got back to his hotel room. An e-mail from Faith arrived as he lay down on the bed. It was about her teaching day and about the estimates for the new retaining wall below the house, and about her not being able to find the juicer they’d received as a Christmas gift from her mother ten years earlier. He smiled as he read it. Somehow she knew when it was all going to hit him, and why, and how to pull him out of it. He imagined her sitting on the couch in front of the fire place sipping wine—

  His cell phone rang, wrenching his mind back to Bangkok.

  It was Cobra. Gage could hear the rumble of car tires on pavement. They were heading north. He’d learned from his agents in Taiwan that Sunny Glory had loaded unmarked boxes on a junk-style coastal fishing vessel at the port of Taichung. It then broke for the open water of the Formosa Strait and the East China Sea.

  “We got a partial hull number, but there was no way we could install the tracking device.”

  Gage felt his body tense and then a feeling of floating, almost of disassociation, of having broken free of what had anchored him and his plan in place.