Thai Horse

STORK

The stork’s legs were four feet long from its knees to the soles of its feet. It bobbed through the crowd and every move was perfect. The four-foot stilts lifted the surreal bird a foot above the rest of the bizarre crowd, which it stalked, chin out, butt out, butt in, chin in, a rainbow- hued spray of feathers sprinkled with glitter bursting from its yellow bustle, its face painted white, its lips exaggerated and bright yellow, vertical blue streaks painted from its forehead through its eyes all the way down to its chin, a wig of bright blue feathers sweeping straight back from its forehead, its body encased in a yellow feathered body stocking. There was no way to tell whether the person encased in the costume was male or female.

Surrounding it was an eerie assortment of other surreal creatures, their heads jogging in waves to the Eurythmics’ ‘Would I Lie to You Baby,’ which thundered from a dozen monster speakers. Spinning spears of flashing strobe lights augured down from the ceiling. Below the clear lucite dance floor, a six-foot Mako shark circled in its tank, agitated by the beat.

The Annual Critter Ball had attracted its biggest crowd yet to Split Personality — known as the Split — Atlanta’s environment club, a fancy name for a disco. In the balcony, Spears and Hedritch surveyed the crowd dubiously. In a roomful of bizarre people, they stood out by the very nature of their normalcy, dressed as they were in dark blue suits, even though they had taken off their ties and opened their shirt collars.

‘Christ, this is absolutely insane,’ said Spears, the taller of the two, a six-footer, blond and square-jawed, with the look of a forty-year-old surfer. Hedritch was five foot nine with balding dark hair, a neck the size of a tire and big ears. Very big ears.

‘Let’s call it off,’ Hedrich said, looking around the supercharged dance floor. ‘We don’t need this shit.’

‘You don’t call off Campon and you know it,’ Spears replied. ‘He does whatever the hell he wants.’

‘This goes way beyond a security risk,’ Hedritch snapped nervously.

‘So what’s new? Let’s give him the bad news. Maybe he’ll take our advice for a change.

‘Yeah, sure he will,’ Hedritch answered.

They turned and went back through the crowd to the balcony entrance. The stork’s eyes, glittering, watched them all the way.

Outside, the line waiting for entry through the magic portals of the club snaked halfway around the block. The black stretch limo sat in front of the door. Spears and Hedritch got in the backseat; the sweet smell of marijuana permeated the interior. General Hector Campon was leaning in the corner dressed in full military regalia, three rows of ribbons twinkling from the breast of the dark blue uniform, the joint glowing between his fingertips. His dark glasses swung slowly toward the two men.

‘Well?’ his Spanish-accented voice asked.

‘Bad news,’ said Hedritch. ‘The place is wall-to-wall crazies in costume. You can’t hear a word. The stage and dance floor are back-lit with strobes.’

‘A security nightmare,’ Spears added.

‘Ridiculous,’ Campon answered, sitting up, ‘you caballeros need to grow bigger cojones.’

Spears mimed the words to himself. He had heard the line often enough. Big balls was Campon’s answer to every crisis.

‘General,’ he said, ‘this is the worst yet. You go in there, we can’t guarantee anything.’

‘Your job is to protect me, not bore me with your problems,’ he snapped. ‘Driver! ‘The door.’

Six men had been guarding Campon since he escaped from Madalena three months earlier. Spears and Hedritch headed the third team that had worked the trick. Three weeks in Fort Lauderdale and Campon was bored. Two weeks in St Louis and he was bored. He had lasted a month and a half in Chicago, and now for two weeks he had been living in a houseboat on Lake Lanier, fifty miles north of Atlanta. Actually it was just as well; moving around like that made it harder to .get a fix on him. The security force of ten comprised Campon’s four bodyguards and the Americans. What was needed to guard a reckless bastard like General Campon was a small army.

‘Six men to cover the insanity inside,’ Spears mumbled as they followed Campon out of the car to where he stood like a ramrod, waiting for his entourage to get in position. He was over six feet tall, making him an easy target, and with the medals on his chest there was no way to miss him.

Campon was hotter than boiling water. The president was browbeating everyone in Congress to approve a $50 million appropriation to back Campon’s planned overthrow of the leftist government that had deposed him. Campon was biding his time, lobbying influential friends with phone calls by day, raising hell every night, while his army, or what was left of it, was cooling its heels across the border in a neighboring country. ‘To throw off his enemies, the Feds had leaked lies to the press: that the general was supposed to be in the Bahamas; that he had moved on to Canada; that he was hiding out n a ranch in the Far West.

At times Spears and Hedritch felt like Campon’s pimps, rounding up women, checking their backgrounds, paying for his sex and for secrecy. But this behavior, appearing in public this way, was a violation of all the rules.

So, what else was new? Hedritch ordered two of his men to go in ahead and work the stage at the back of the dance floor. The other two he sent to the balcony. Spears looked around the shopping center, checking the rooftops, while Hedritch checked out the line. Hell, thought Spears, if they want to get him, they’re going to get him. But they were sure they had not been followed, and that reduced the odds a little. They moved to the door.

‘Names?’ asked the king of the portals.

‘Campon,’ the general said.

The doorman’s finger ran down the list and stopped. ‘Yes, sir, General,’ he said, unsnapping the red cord.

Spears looked at Hedritch with panic as the entourage moved into the club.

‘Did he make a reservation?’ Hedritch asked incredulously.

‘Yes, sir, yesterday,’ the doorman answered.

‘Shit!’ he snapped as they rushed after the general. They caught up with him as Campon was about to enter the main room, a sprawling semicircle of tables crowding up to the dance floor.

‘General, at least go upstairs, please,’ pleaded Hedritch. ‘You can see better from up there and we can cruise the room a lot easier.’

‘The action’s down here,’ Campon answered curtly, following his four beefy men into the club. Spears and Hedritch trotted along behind hum, looking frantically, futilely, around the club as the deposed dictator walked to the edge of the dance floor where he stood watching the madness. He was a stationary target.

‘Shit city,’ Spears yelled in Hedritch’s ear, ‘keep your head on a swivel.’

The general’s gaze swept the dance floor, stopping once on a woman dressed like a giraffe with her bosom swelling over the top of her striped costume. Beyond her, on the far side of the floor, the yellow stork jerked weirdly through the crowd, blurred by the flashing lights. It raised its yellow-feathered wings and turned in a slow circle, bobbing to the beat of the music. Campon laughed and applauded the stork, although it was hard to see it because of the lights flashing in his face.

The stork’s alert eyes checked the general’s entourage, the two men in the balcony, the two men behind it on the stage, as it turned slowly, making a 360-degree survey of the club. The stork was so bizarre, so visible, the security men ignored it.

Campon clapped his hands again and chuckled gleefully at the spectacle. It was the last sound he ever uttered.

Well concealed amid the feathered wings attached to its arms, the stork held a silenced mini.-Uzi. Only a foot long and weighing six pounds, the submachine gun held a thirty-two-round clip and was equipped with a plastic cup to catch the casings. The stork was an expert. It squeezed off three three-round bursts, watching in the slow-motion flashes of the strobes as the rounds splattered into their target. Campon’s head jerked forward as the first three rounds exploded in his chest; his arms swung out in front of him and then he arched backward as two more rounds ripped into his head. The third struck a waiter behind him in the spine and took down two of the bodyguards.

Spears and Hedritch were caught totally by surprise as Campon seemed suddenly to have a seizure. The music continued to thunder. One of the bodyguards spun around and fell against Hedritch.

Oh my God, it’s happening! Hedritch thought.

The stork swung its feathered arms in a slow arc and sent another burst into the crowd. A young woman and her date spun around as the bullets ripped them. She screamed. Somebody else joined the scream. Nobody was aware yet of what was happening Then suddenly the woman yelled, ‘I’m shot!’

Pandemonium.

The second attack created more confusion in the room.

The security men had no idea where the shots were coming from. They saw the young couple fifty feet away go down. The girl started screaming. Campon was on the floor on his back staring up into the darkness above. Guns appeared in the security men’s hands. Hedritch dropped over Campon, felt his throat for a pulse. The screams swept the room like a hurricane blowing through. There was a rush for the door. A table went down. Glasses broke. Panic seemed to explode like a bomb in the room.

The men on the stage jumped into the crowd and raced toward the general’s group. In the balcony the other two men stared down at the figure of the general. In the confusion nobody could tell where the shots came from.

The stork sat down on the stage, pulled off the stilts and whirled behind one of the big speakers. It snapped the back open, dropped stilts and gun into the speaker casing and snapped it shut, then dashed through a nearby fire door. It led to a catacomb of tunnels below the dance floor. As the stork bolted down the stairs, it pulled off the wig and stripped off the wings. It ran to a small door that led to a room full of electrical equipment. The stork jumped inside, still undressing. It peeled off the yellow body stocking, grabbed a garbage bag secreted behind an electrical panel and began stuffing the feathers into it. In seconds the stork was transformed into a young man in jeans and a blue T-shirt. He took a towel soaked in cold cream from the garbage bag and wiped his face clean. Then he rushed down the labyrinth of corridors and back up another set of stairs. When he reached the top, he opened the door a crack and looked into the kitchen. The employees were crowded at the end of the large stainless steel room, peering into the main room.

‘My God,’ one of the cooks said, ‘somebody’s been shot!’

The assassin slipped into the kitchen, stuffed the garbage bag into a large can, slipped a dolly under it and wheeled it out the back door. The chaos had not spread outside yet. He shoved the garbage can among a dozen others, took a quick look at his watch, and walked off into the darkness.

Three and a half minutes. Not bad.

THE HIT

The big, stocky black guy turned off Suriwong Road and headed through Patpong toward Tombstone. At nightfall the city of Bangkok was transformed, as if by some perverse genie, from a frantic, crowded, noisy business hub into a blazing neon jungle. Topless tigresses stalked the jungle, performing in nightclubs, whorehouses, massage parlors and storefronts. Promising everything and delivering a great deal of what it promised, the frenetic section known as Patpong exemplified the attitude, catering, in a bizarre distortion of American rowdiness, to European and U.S. tourists. Patpong was for the farang, the foreigners, who flocked to the area every night seeking out the legendary sexy naughtiness of Bangkok as part of their ‘Thailand experience.’

Except for an occasional ‘Hey,’ the big man ignored the pimps, barkers and ladies. Most of them knew him anyway. He passed Jack’s American Star and the San Francisco Bar, where topless go-go dancers performed special ‘shows,’ and turned down a side street, away from the neon glare, the bellowing loudspeakers and the hawkers. It was not a dim street, but it was more Phoenix than New Orleans. Were it not for the signs printed in both English and Thai and the nature of the buildings themselves with their characteristic Thai architecture, this section called Tombstone might have been mistaken for a street in any Western American town. The only thing missing was dirt streets and hitching posts. In fact one establishment did have a hitching post on the edge of the sidewalk.

There was a store that featured traditional Western clothing, including Tony Lama boots and Stetson hats; a restaurant called Yosemite Sam’s, whose menu consisted of barbecue, Brunswick stew and ribs; the Stagecoach Deli, which, although more West Side New York than Western, had swinging doors and an imitation Tiffany window. It might be argued that Langtry’s Music Hall, with its naked Thai and Chinese dancers, was more Patpong than Tombstone, but it too catered to the Western motif that dominated the street. There were old pesters of Lillie Langtry and Eddie Foy beside the color glossies of its star attractions. The entrance was straight out of a John Ford movie.

Across the Street was Pike’s Peak, an ice cream parlor whose decor was perhaps more turn-of-the-century than Western, and the Roundup, a twenty-four-hour corral styled cafeteria specializing in coffee, doughnuts and eggs. The tiny hundred-seat movie house that was next on the block was called the Palace and played old double features, everything from classics to B flicks from the thirties, four shows a day, and changed programs every Tuesday and Friday.

And there was the Longhorn, as Western as a bar could get. It sported the one hitching post on the street. A rowdy Texan had once tied his rental car to the post and, hours later and several drinks drunker, had forgotten and driven off, taking the front of the place with him. Sweets Wilkie, the proprietor, had settled for a thousand dollars and repaired it himself for $346.

On this night Wilkie was in heaven, his gold tooth glittering from the corner of a broad smile. The jukebox was booming ‘Bad Moon Rising,’ by Creedence Clearwater, and the place was jammed to the walls, mostly by some of the five hundred or so expatriate Americans who lived in the city. Few tourists found their way down the Tombstone back street, and if they did, the Longhorn was hardly what they were looking for.

The burly black man, whose inner-tube-size arms strained the sleeves of a blinding Hawaiian shirt, strolled through the noisy Longhorn, nodded to Wilkie, went up the two steps and through the glass-bead curtain into the private sector of the bar known as the Hole in the Wall, a section reserved for regulars. The Honorable was sitting in his personal easy chair, reading the Wall Street Journal. On the table beside him was a bottle of wine and a rack of poker chips.

Two men were shooting eight ball, and beyond them six men were seated around a poker table playing five card stud under the glare of a green shade. The black man didn’t have to check out the players; he knew who they would be. Gallagher, Eddie Riker, Potter, Johnny Prophett, Wonderboy and Wyatt Earp. A strange-looking crew, particularly Wonderboy, who looked like a mime. His face was divided by a thin red line that ran from his hairline down his forehead and the bridge of his nose to his chin. His face was painted black on the left side and white on the right.

The black man pulled up a chair and sat down next to a tall, lean man in a flat-brimmed Stetson. He had white hair and a white handlebar mustache, and wore a black Western shirt, jeans and a tattersall vest, which concealed the .357 Cobra that he called his Buntline Special under his arm.

‘Decided who’s on the roster, Mr. Earp?’ he asked quietly, studying the cards on the table.

‘Early and me for starters, Haven’t decided who the third man’ll be yet,’ Earp answered.

‘You ain’t discriminating, are you?’ the black man asked with half a grin.

‘You went last time, Corkscrew,’ he said.

‘Shit, I’m the best you got and you know it,’ Corkscrew answered with a touch of arrogance.

‘Yeah, I know,’ Earp answered, repeating a line he heard at least once a week from Corkscrew. “I once had every pimp in De-troit right there.” He pressed his thumb down on the table.

“But this ain’t Detroit,” Corkscrew answered with a smile, incanting Earp’s customary reply.

‘Next time I’ll scratch you in,’ Earp promised, turning over his hole card, which, added to the pair on the table, gave him trips and the pot.

Earp looked at his gold Rolex. Nine o’clock. Thirty minutes until show time.

He looked around the table, making his final decision. For the most part, a tough bunch All of them had suffered their share of grief in Vietnam.

‘Take my seat,’ he said and got up.

‘What you got?’ Corkscrew asked.

Earp counted his chips with one hand. ‘Three hundred,’ he said.

‘I owe ya,’ Corkscrew said, slipping into his chair.

Earp had planned this operation carefully, as he always did, and he was feeling comfortable about the whole thing. Keep the team small and run the show fast, that was his motto. It had worked for him for years. He moved away from the orb of light into the shadows, checking out the regulars, also as he always did.

The man who had been sitting next to him was Max Early, who was wearing a light tan safari jacket, which hung open. He had no shirt under it and his trim body, like his hard-angled face, was well tanned — a man who worked in the sun. Unlike the others, who wore their hair trimmed short, Early’s auburn locks tumbled from under a weathered and sagging safari hat down to his shoulders. Early stood quietly when Earp got up. ‘I’m out,’ was all he said, gathering up his chips.

Earp knew all their stories by heart.

Max and the big kid, Noel, and Jimmy, who had a problem with acne, were sitting in the jungle staring down at the hole while the rest of the patrol was shaking out the grass nearby. It looked as if it was abandoned. There were no fresh footprints and Jimmy had been lying on the damp ground with his ear to the hole for ten minutes and didn’t hear a sound.

‘So whose turn is it?’ said Noel, the big hunk of a kid from Oklahoma. Typical Army, picking a man who weighed 270 pounds to be a tunnel rat when he could hardly get his leg down the hole.

‘I went last time,’ said Jimmy, the skinny kid from San Berdoo.

Early was the oldest. He was twenty-six and he felt ninety and he had this feeling that he was responsible for the other two.

‘Shit, I’ll go down,’ he sighed. ‘Ain’t been anybody down this hole for a week or two. Look there, there’s spider webs over the entrance.’

‘You know these gooks,’ said Noel. ‘Lay down in there for weeks, they can.’

‘Uh-huh,’ said Early, slapping afresh clip in his M-16 and charging it and checking the K-Bar in his boot and the clip in his .45. He hated dusting these tunnels, hated it more than anything else about the war, but it had to get done and the sooner the better, so why waste time. He tied his hair back with a bandana and quietly slid over the edge of the tunnel headfirst and slithered down into the black pit. He lay, holding his breath, listening. He didn’t smell them. And he didn’t hear any breathing. It’s okay, he thought, Charlie left this one behind. He started through headfirst with his knife between his teeth and his M-16 probing the darkness. These tunnels could go forever, sometimes twisting and turning for a mile or two. He hated the darkness and the damp, musty feeling, but he didn’t want to use his light yet, not until he was sure the tunnel was abandoned.

Damn, what’s an outdoorsman from Utah doing in this piss-hole, he thought.

Then he heard the first faint sound.

A scratching sound.

Then a squeak.

Then a flapping.

And then suddenly the tunnel was alive with squealing, flapping, biting, hungry bats, dozens of them, surrounding him in the darkness.

Early screamed a scream of pure terror. He started firing. He emptied his rifle, heard the bullets thumping into the earth as the bats kept coming, started to back up, slashing the darkness with his knife, clawing for his pistol. The screeching creatures were all around him, and his scream was endless and ear-piercing as he thrashed in the darkness. Pulling himself up against the side of the tunnel, he emptied his .45 into the blackness around him, firing blindly. He clawed out another clip as he backed through the tight confines of the tomb toward the entrance. He was disoriented in the dark and his hands were shaking. There were bats in his hair, biting his cheeks. He slammed another clip in the .45 and emptied it. Then he pulled out the flashlight and began sweeping it around the tunnel, hoping the light would scare them off. Finally he could feel the cool draft from the opening sweeping past him and he reached back to get a grip on the edge of the shaft; his hand touched something soft and wet and at first he thought it was mud. He twisted around and flashed the light back. The big kid, Noel, was hanging upside down, his arms resting on the floor of the tunnel. His face was mush. Blood bubbled out of the gaping bullet hole under his eye and poured out of his nose and mouth.

‘Oh God, oh Jesus!’ Early screamed as the bats continued to assault him and flew past him and attacked the dead soldier’s bleeding face. And Early, still screaming, clawed frantically past his fallen comrade, gasping for the fresh air that rushed down the shaft, knowing deep down that in his panic he had just killed his own buddy.

Eddie Riker, who would very humbly tell you that he was the best slick pilot in the whole damn Vietnam war, was the next man at the table.

They sent a light colonel in from Saigon to interrogate Riker. The first thing Riker noticed was that the colonel didn’t sweat. A hundred degrees in the shade with the humidity running about 98 and his shirt was still starched. Dry as the Sahara. Riker was wearing khaki shorts and a T-shirt and was soaking wet. The colonel came to the barracks where Riker was under house arrest. An arrogant little man impressed with his own importance, carrying an alligator briefcase and a little stack of files. He spoke in a monotone and never looked Riker in the eye. He stared down at the report the whole time, tapping his pencil slowly on the table while Riker told him the story. Riker knew the type, just another scummy lawyer sitting out the war in Saigon.

‘You are charged with criminal assault on an officer,’ the colonel said.

‘I know it,’ Riker said.

‘I’d like to hear your version of this,’ the colonel said, leafing through the report in front of him. The pencil went tap, tap, tap. Riker knew whatever he said would go right past the colonel. To people like this, combat was running out of toilet paper in the middle of the night.

‘Okay,’ Riker said. ‘First of all, you got to understand I’m the hottest damn slick pilot in the outfit. We been evacuating wounded along the DMZ in Song Ngan for five months now.

It’s about thirty minutes by air from here. A real shit situation. A lot of action and heavy casualties. I been doin’ six, seven runs a day, which puts a lot on the Huey. I tell you this so you understand, with that kind of schedule, maintenance is critical.

‘Anyway we inherit this lousy little fig-leaf major — a real fugazi, man — in charge of maintenance. Short-sticker, y’know, had about two months to go, sat around carving notches in this piece of wood keepin’ track of his time. All he cared about, gettin’ out of here. And we’re losin’ choppers left and right, maintenance was so shit-ass bad. The other mornin’ I’m dropping down to pick up a bunch of wounded kids and all of a sudden I don’t have any power. I’m at maybe ninety, a hundred feet, all of a sudden my slick drops like a fucking body bag. I hit, the Huey rolls over, the blades shower off A dozen kids are chopped liver. Ever seen a human being after a chopper blade works ‘em over?’

The colonel sighed but didn’t look up. He turned away, staring out the window.

‘Just stick to the facts, Lieutenant,’ he said.

‘These are the facts, Colonel. A dozen kids down there waiting for salvation and I fell in and butchered them.’

Riker paused long enough to light a cigarette.

‘Me? I end up with a bruise on my neck and a headache. They fly me back here to base and all the way back I’m thinkin’, That son of a bitch, all he’s gotta do is keep the slicks up to snuff and he can’t do anything but carve notches in his Goddamn stick. That’s his whole fuckin’ job. It really ate me. When I got back, I went straight to that little short-sticker and I took his stick and I rammed it where the sun don’t shine and then I broke it off and I whipped the shit out of him with the rest of it. I whipped that sorry bastard till he looked like a bowl of ravioli. I was gonna shoot his ass off, but I didn’t. I just whacked him. Then I called the provost marshal and they put me under house arrest and that’s the whole story.’

‘That’s all you have to say?’ the colonel asked.

‘What else is there?’ Riker answered_

‘You have no remorse?’ the colonel said with surprise.

‘Remorse?’ Riker said after a moment’s thought. ‘Yeah, I got remorse. I think now I should have killed that worthless shit. God knows how many body bags he filled.’

The colonel looked up at him for the first time. He looked angry. ‘I’m recommending that you be arraigned for criminal assault,’ he said. ‘You’ll be assigned an attorney. You’ll also be returned to Saigon for incarceration.’

‘So what else is new,’ Riker said with a shrug.

The colonel flipped the file folder shut and meticulously arranged things in his case and stood up and brushed some lint off his sharply creased trousers.

‘You have a bad attitude problem,’ the colonel snapped.

‘No, Colonel, what I got is a bad maintenance officer.’

The colonel stalked out of the barracks.

Riker watched him priss across the yard and get in his jeep and drive off. He stood there and he thought, What the hell, this is a waste. The hottest slick pilot in Nam and I’m playing solitaire in a fuckin’ Quonset hut and kids are out there dyin’. So he walked out and grabbed a chopper that was warming up and went back to work.

Gallagher sat next, the man who walked with this funny hitch like limping with both legs, as if his feet hurt all the time. That was because they did. A land mine had driven the floor of his jeep up to his armpits. And beside him was Johnny Prophett, who had been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, but he stayed in Nam too long. Burned out at twenty-five, he had turned to heroin to ease the pain of losing his golden touch.

Prophett was sitting beside the road, scratching out some notes on a legal pad he kept stuffed in his canvas shoulder bag. His back hurt and his throat was choked with dust. It hadn’t rained for days, and the roads were brick-hard and beginning to crack into jagged seams. He had lost the war two days before, twenty or so miles away, awakening in the morning after a night of white-powder hallucinations to find the outfit he had tied up with gone. Nothing left behind but the usual:

empty cans and shell casings; asked remnants of fires; tattered socks and tank tops too worn out to bother with. It was always the same when they moved out, like a gypsy carnival that had packed up in the night and moved to another town.

He had run out of horse and was already beginning to feel the agonies of withdrawal. The stomach pains, the itching, the headache, the dry mouth. His hand was shaking so badly he could hardly write. Besides, it all sounded the same. He hardly heard the jeep until it was almost on top of him, and he jumped, startled, and then scrambled to his feel and stuck out his thumb. It reminded him of the day he had hitchhiked to Woodstock, or tried to. By the time he got there the music was a memory.

The dust-coated jeep whizzed by, then skidded to a stop, throwing out pounds of dirt and dust.

‘You oughta be careful,’ Gallagher said, a Cincinnati-flat accent, ‘I almost creamed ya.’

Prophet limped over to the shotgun seat. ‘How about a ride?’

‘Sure, hop in,’ said Gallagher, grinding the gears into low. ‘Where you headed?’

‘I lost track of the war,’ said Prophett, rubbing his arms.

‘Shit, you’re goin’ in the wrong direction. Action’s back there,’ Gallagher said, jabbing his thumb over his shoulder.

‘Where you headed?’

‘Thought I’d jog cross-country to Camranh,’ Gallagher said.

‘What’s your gig?’ asked Prophett.

‘Run a coupla service clubs down in S—town.’

‘Sounds real tough.’

‘It’s a living. You a reporter?’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘I know a few TV guys down country. Keep them happy, know what I mean?’

‘Right,’ said Prophett, huddling down in the seat, hoping the shakes wouldn’t get too bad. At least he could score there, maybe catch a Huey ride back up to the line. He draped a foot over the side of the jeep. ‘Camranh sounds fine t’me.’

‘I’d watch that,’ said Gallagher. ‘This road’s fulla cracks.

Hate to lose control with you hanging that leg over the side like —,

The words were hardly out of his mouth when they hit the land mine. Gallagher didn’t even hear the explosion; all he felt was the ungodly pain in the bottom of his feet, as if he had been hit with a baseball bat by Hank Aaron, and he was tossing head over heels in the air, trying to grab on to something, anything, only there was nothing to grab on to. He landed in a soggy ditch twenty feet away with a thunk that sounded like someone smacking a pumpkin with a board. The air hissed out of him. He rolled over on his back, out of the gooey mess, and stared up at the sky and thought, Jesus, Mary and Joseph, be kind to me. Don’t let me die here.

On the other side of the road the shattered jeep lay upside down, its wheels still spinning around, its undercarriage blown away. Prophett lay on his side, staring dumbly at his leg, which was trapped under the wreckage. He had forgotten withdrawal, the pain in his leg was so great. He slid up to a sitting position and pushed halfheartedly on the side of the vehicle, as if he thought it might just topple back upright. Then he passed out.

Then there was Wonderboy, rock star turned marine. He had left most of his face in the Mekong Delta.

Harswain was a short, lean stick of a man with a bushy mustache and hair like a porcupine’s and he still carried his swagger stick from the days when he was a DI at Parris Island. He sat on a log and drew little nothing doodles in the dirt with it.

‘You’ll know when it’s coming, pretty boy,’ he said to Wonderboy. ‘That round with your name etched into it. You’ll know it. It’ll come sighin’ ‘cross the field and it’ll spit in yer eye a second afore it eats up yer brain.’

He laughed.

Wonderboy felt a cold chill on the back of his neck. Fear nested in his chest and squeezed his lungs and he was out of breath. It was time for some relief. On the line for seventy-seven days. No break. Out of the first sixty that had gone up, there were fourteen left. He listened to Harswain and he thought about that bullet.

That was when Charlie hit. There was chaos — everybody running around, scrambling to get behind something, grabbing for weapons. Mail coming in. Harswain yelling at them as usual.

‘Get below his horizon,’ he was yelling and Wonderboy was snaking across the ground on his belly, crowding a downed tree and suddenly it was being chewed up a foot away and he cowered down behind it and got his piece ready and then he did a John Wayne, twisting, rising, throwing his rifle across the log, popping half a dozen caps at the jungle.

That was when he saw the bullet, or thought he saw it, that lead slug auguring through the air toward him as if in slow motion, spinning white-hot like an angry wasp, an ugly stub of lead whistling through the air.

He fell on his back with his eyes squeezed tight shut and waited, listening to more lead ripping the tree over his head, and then he dropped his gun and scrambled on his hands and knees away, toward the jungle, sobbing with fear, listening to Harswain’s scream, ‘Come back here, you lily-livered little freak, you. Damn you,’ heard him fire a burst toward his back and saw it chew the ground up around his feet but he didn’t stop. He stood up and kept running until he couldn’t run anymore. He fell on his hands and knees and threw up.

He heard the flamethrower nearby, felt the backlash of heat from it and peered through the jungle grass. The kid was twenty feet away, burning everything in front of him.

Perfect cover, thought Wonderboy, scrambling in behind him. Then somebody yelled, ‘Incoming!’ and he heard the sigh of the mortar falling down from the sky, and he pulled into a tight little curl like a slug in a garden. It was a direct hit on the tank, and the flamethrower and the kid erupted in a giant splash of fire that swept over him and a moment before he passed out he felt the skin on his face begin to melt. .

Finally there was Corkscrew and Potter. Now, there was a pair. Corkscrew and his brother, Hammer, had once run most of the class hookers in MoTown from the backseat of a gold-tinted stretch Lincoln, .while Potter had scratched out a living on an Arkansas farm where the earth was so poor ‘the ants climbed trees to fuck,’ as he delicately put it. They had come out of the war closer than twins.

They had been holding the hill in Dang Pang for two days against a bunch of VC that seemed w be everywhere.

On the morning of the third day Potter crawled around the top of the hill and checked pulses. The rest of his men were dead. Mortars had taken down most of the trees and rain had filled the shell holes with stagnant water. Baby mosquitoes popped from their eggs and skimmed along the surface of the smelly ditches. Now there were three of them. Potter, the poor Arkansas dirt farmer, and Corkscrew and his brother, Hammer, a couple of fast-living Detroit pimps who got caught in the draft. Dogface infantry soldiers all, with about as much in common as a banana and a glass of gin.

Potter crawled back to the small bunker he had fashioned from fallen trees and dirt.

‘We’re outa everything,’ Corkscrew told Potter and Hammer. ‘Outa ammo, outa food, outa water,’ he said.

‘Outa luck,’ Potter groaned, clutching his stomach. ‘I gotta have a drink, Corkscrew.’

Corkscrew said, ‘You got a stomach full of shrapnel, man, if you drink, you’ll die.’

‘I’m dead anyway,’ Potter answered.

‘Bullshit,’ snapped Corkscrew. Hammer had said nothing. Corkscrew reached over and shook his brother to wake him up, and Hammer rolled over and toppled face down in the muck at the bottom of a ditch.

‘Ham!’ Potter yelled. He jumped down and lifted Hammer up and dragged him back to the top of the ditch. But Hammer’s body was cold and his eyes were sightless.

‘Oh God damn, God damn you all,’ Corkscrew screamed angrily. ‘You motherfuckers, come on up here. You want something, you fuckin’ apes, come and get it. .

When the relief column came up the hill, Corkscrew was standing over the wounded Potter and his dead brother holding his empty M-16 by the barrel, waiting for the VC.

Yeah, thought Earp, they’d all do in a pinch, but tonight Riker will do. He nodded to the man in the safari hat.

‘Checking out,’ Riker said. He took off his hat with ‘Home Sweet Home’ embroidered across the crown in gold and swept his chips into it. He was wearing khaki cotton tennis shorts and a red tank top, his chest hair curling over its neckline, and while his thick black hair was turning gray and he sometimes wore gold-rimmed reading glasses, his deeply tanned arms and shoulders had the smooth muscles of a man who kept himself in top physical shape. He walked across the room and cashed in his chips to the portly man they all called the Honorable.

A thin, hollow-eyed Johnny Prophett got up from the poker table and urged Earp into a dark corner of the alcove. ‘Let me go on this one, Wyatt, please?’

‘C’mon, look at you. Your hands are shaking so bad you could mix a martini without moving your arm.’

‘A cup of coffee, a quickie . .

‘Johnny, some other time, okay? I’m being straight up with you. If I take you on this, you could get us all killed. Maybe next time, okay. .

‘I pull my own,’ Prophett mumbled, looking down at his feet.

‘Sure, you do,’ Earp said and slapped him on the shoulder.

Earp, Riker and Early left the alcove, passing behind the bar and entering Wilkie’s private office. He ignored them. The office looked like an indoor junkyard. Old newspapers, bills, file folders, and magazines were piled on the desk, chairs, on the floor, and were stuffed in an old-fashioned file cabinet shoved in one corner.

‘Sweets has every piece of paper he ever got in his life,’ said Early, shaking his head sadly as he surveyed the oppressively cluttered office.

‘That he has,’ Earp answered. He opened a drawer in the desk, put his .357 in it and took out a 9 mm. pistol with a silencer attached. He popped the clip and checked it. Full.

The phone rang, a muffled announcement from under a stack somewhere. Riker found it and handed the receiver to Earp.

‘Earp. Yeah . . . excellent, excellent! Okay, we’re on. Be real careful. Good luck.’

He hung up the phone and rubbed his hands together very slowly.

‘We’re in luck. She got there ahead of him. He checked in ten minutes ago and she managed to get the connecting room.’

‘So it’s a go, then,’ said Early.

‘Yep,’ said Earp.

‘Sounds like a stroll down the lane to me,’ said Riker.

‘Could be,’ Earp said with raised eyebrows. ‘Let’s go, we got ten minutes.’

Prophett, too, left the alcove and walked across the bar to the men’s room. He sat down in a stall and took a small plastic box from his pocket. It contained a hypodermic needle, a candle, a spoon and a packet of heroin. With shaking hands he lit the candle and set it on the toilet-paper holder, then tapped some of the powder in the spoon and cooked it over the flame until it was a clear bubbling fluid, dipped the tip of the spike in the fluid, his fingers squeezing the bulb on the end of it, forcing out the air, sucking in the fluid. He flexed his fist. The needle flirted with a vein, nicked it, then slipped deeply into it. Prophett flinched slightly, took a deep breath and shuddered. A look of contentment crossed his face, he closed his eyes and smiled.

The Dusit Thani was a short walk away, but they took Riker’s pickup truck and parked t the rear. Riker got out but stayed close by. Early and Earp went to room 429. She was waiting.

‘We’ll give you about five minutes so you can find out the size of the load,’ Earp said. ‘Nervous?’

She shook her head.

‘Good girl. Let’s do it, then.’

She left the room, took the stairs to the third floor and took the elevator back up, just in case he was watching or listening for it. She knocked on the door of 427 and it was opened almost immediately by a large Chinese with a livid scar down one side of his face.

‘Mrs Giu?’

She nodded, and he stepped back as she entered the room, then quickly checked the hail before closing the door. He was surprised. The woman was beautiful — tiny, erect, almost regal in her bearing. She was wearing an emerald-green silk evening dress and white gloves. Her pearl earrings looked expensive. She certainly did not fit the profile of a drug courier.

‘I am Mr. Sen,’ he said. ‘Passport?’

She took the small leather-bound booklet from her purse and gave it to him. He checked it closely, looking for signs of a forgery, but couldn’t detect any. If it got past him, it would get past customs.

The passport identified her as Mrs. Victor Giu, a widow, twenty-nine years old, born in. Bangkok. She had done her share of traveling, mostly to Malaya, India, Hong Kong and the Philippines.

‘I see by your passport you are a dancer,’ he said.

‘Yes. The steamer trunk is for my costumes.’

Sen smiled thinly. ‘Very good,’ he said. ‘A clever stroke, the trunk. It holds three times what a normal suitcase carries. You understand ‘what you are to do?’

‘Yes. I check the four cases through to Seattle. After I pass through customs, a limousine will be waiting to pick me up. Once the bags are loaded in the car, I will be paid the rest of my money and be free to go.’

‘Yes. Really quite simple.’

He took an envelope from a dresser drawer and gave it to her.

‘Here is your round-trip ticket and two thousand seven hundred ninety-five dollars. That’s five hundred dollars for expenses and half the fee.’

Mrs. Giu quickly calculated the weight.

‘Not bad for a few hours’ work,’ Sen said.

‘You forget the risk,’ she said, moving toward the door that connected the two rooms.

‘There are no problems,’ Sen said. He was attracted to the elegant widow and began bragging. He picked up one of the suitcases, put it on the bed and opened it, explaining that the walls were lined with cakes of pressed heroin wrapped in thin sheets of aluminium foil soaked in coffee. The coffee shielded the odor from dope-sniffing dogs. The pockets in the suitcases and several of the drawers in the steamer trunk contained small bags of sachet, which concealed the smell of the coffee from inspectors. As he described the carriers, Mrs. Giu leaned back against the connecting door and unlocked it, then moved across the room to the foot of the bed, keeping Sen’s attention away from the door.

‘We have not lost a shipment in six months,’ Sen said. ‘Nothing to worry about.’

His back was to the door connecting the room next door. As he spoke, the door swung open and Earp stepped quickly into the room. Sen heard the sound and then, in the dresser mirror, saw Earp behind him. He reached for the gun in his belt and twisted around at the same time, dropping to his knees.

Earp, ten feet away, was standing with his feet slightly apart and his gun at arm’s length He fired his first shot. The pistol made a flat sound like someone slamming a door. As Sen pulled his own gun Earp’s bullet hit Sen just above the left eye, snapping his head back. He fell against the bed.

A blinding pain seared through Sen’s head. His hands and feet went numb, and the salty taste of blood flooded his mouth. The room swirled crazily. He saw his gun tumble from his hand and, looking up into the end of the silencer and behind it, saw the tall man with the white mustache standing over him. The gun thunked again and he saw the room explode into hundreds of blinding colors and then it turned black.

As Sen’s body seemed to collapse into itself and sagged forward, Riker rushed into the bathroom, grabbed several washcloths and some towels and, dashing back, slammed the washcloths against Sen’s bleeding wounds. It was all over in twenty seconds.

Earp turned the steamer trunk on its back and opened

‘It’s gonna be a tight fit,’ Earp said.

‘This guy’s got to weigh two hundred pounds,’ Riker said as with great effort he and Earp lifted the dead man’s body and forced it into the trunk. Sen lay on his side with his knees jammed against his chest and his head down on his chest. They forced the door shut, locked it and lifted the trunk by one end and set it upright.

‘We’ll send over four messengers for it,’ Earp answered. Mrs. Giu took the elevator to the lobby, walked out of the hotel empty-handed and got in a tuk-tuk that was waiting nearby.

Two minutes later Earp and Riker left the hotel by the rear door after having checked both rooms. They walked down the fire stairs and threw the suitcases in the truck.

‘How much?’ Early asked.

As they drove off into the night, Earp settled down, smiling, and said, ‘Thirty-seven keys.’

HONG KONG

Hatcher loved the Orient. He had spent years there before Sloan sent him to Central America, years on the back rivers, rubbing elbows with the Ts’e K’am Men Ti, the river pirates who operated south from Shanghai and east from Thailand into the Macao Runs of Hong Kong. He knew them all. Joe Cockroach, half Chinese, half Malaysian, who had a flawless British accent and wore tailored raw-silk suits when he did business in the backwaters of the Jungsian River. Harry Tsin who had a degree from UCLA and a peg leg from a Japanese prison camp. Sam-Sam Sam, a psychopath who controlled the river, demanded tribute from all who did business on it, and skinned anyone who double-crossed him and hung the skin on the side of his boat as an example.

And Cohen, the white Tsu Fi.

As the 747 swept over the bay and banked into Kai Tak airport he felt a surge of excitement. Not that Hong Kong was a particular favorite — it was too crowded, too noisy, too full of itself. But this was where everything in the Orient began, where the money changers squatted on the doorstep of China, and riches flowed back and forth like the tides. The first red glow of dawn streaked the horizon as they swept in low from the south. Shaukiwan, the floating city of junks, sampans and snakeboats, slid silently below them, then Hong Kong island and the bay, and finally Kowloon peninsula, facing a harbor fat with cargo ships from all over the world. Junks and sampans surrounded them like pups nuzzling a bitch hound.

Hatcher had old friends here — and old enemies, too, but he never thought about them. Don’t ever look back, Sloan had told him in the beginning. Bad for the old clicks. Clicks, that’s what Sloan called instinct.

It was 5 A.M., only two hours before his nonstop left for Bangkok, hardly time to get into trouble. He would eat at a small restaurant he liked a few miles from the airport and be off again.

As he left the plane his plans were suddenly changed. The first thing he heard when he entered the terminal was the page.

‘Attention, arriving passenger Hatcher, please contact Pan American information as soon as possible. . .

He went to the Pan Am counter near the gate.

‘I’m Hatcher,’ he told a handsome, very erect Asian woman. ‘You paged me.’

‘Take the phone right there,’ she said pleasantly, pointing to a house phone on the end of the counter. The operator was just as pleasant. ‘You have a message to call this number collect in Washington, D.C., and ask for Sergeant Flitcraft,’ she said, and dictated the number. Hatcher repeated the number, then found a pay phone and made the call.

‘OSI, Sergeant Flitcraft,’ a crisp voice on the other end answered. He quickly accepted the call. ‘Mr. Hatcher?’

‘Yes,’ Hatcher whispered.

‘Would you mind giving me your old Navy serial number, sir?’

‘Not at all,’ Hatcher’s voice rasped. ‘N3146021.’

‘Very good, sir. You also cleared the voice print. Colonel Sloan says to wait in Hong Kong for him. He’s a few hours behind you. You have adjoining rooms at the Peninsula Hotel, he’ll meet you there at about ten hundred hours, give or take.’

‘That’s it?’

‘That’s it, sir.’

‘Thanks, Sergeant,’ Hatcher said arid hung up. Damn, he thought, Sloan was really riding tight herd on this one. What the hell could all this be about?

To Hatcher, the Peninsula Hotel defined Hong Kong. It stood like a beacon on the tip of Kowloon, facing the Star Ferry that carried passengers to the Central District on Hong Kong island. Rolls-Royce limos for the guests lined up at the door in front of rickshaws. The desk manager was a short, sleek Oriental in a dark double- breasted suit; the ancient concierge wore a traditional silk brocaded cheongsam. In a corner of the lobby a blond woman who looked Swedish played Chinese melodies on a Swiss harp for those who came in late or rose early. It was truly where East and West came together and was one of the finest hotels in the world. Guests were treated like royalty.

It was raining when he got to his room. The bellhop hung up his suit bag, turned on the ceiling fan and the television, vanished for a minute or two and returned with a bucket of ice.

‘Mm goi,’ Hatcher said, thanking him and tucking a Hong Kong five in his hand.

When the bellman was gone, Hatcher flicked off the TV, opened the sliding door and went out on the balcony. He had slept little for the past three days, and he let the rain-cooled breeze refresh him as he watched the rising sun chase the storm across the bay. It had already passed over the island, leaving behind a glittering jewel of skyscrapers and glass towers below the towering peak of Victoria Mountain.

He ordered breakfast and had the waiter set up the table on his balcony. While he ate he watched the riverboats moving in and out of the harbor, the Star Ferry streaking toward the island, the Peak Train gliding up the side of the mountain.

He began to doze. Jet lag was catching up to him, and for reasons he did not immediately understand, Hatcher’s mind slipped back to a dark night ten years before. To the tram rising up in darkness, through the banyan trees, past the rich houses. The dark figure of Harline waiting at the top, a cigarette glowing between his smiling lips. Hatcher leading him around to the cliffs of the overlook and Harline holding out his hand eagerly, almost salivating, his effete British accent in the darkness — ‘Good to do business with people you can trust, chum’ — and Hatcher dropping the envelope, leaning down to pick it up, grabbing the Britisher around the knees as if he were tackling him, vaulting the slender man backward, down into four hundred feet of emptiness, his terrified scream fading into the darkness.

Hatcher jerked awake and sat staring out at Victoria Peak. Ten years. Where in hell did that come from? Yesterday was history, you never looked back, never thought back, never went back unless the job required it, and when it did, you dealt with it with the old clicks, your subconscious providing whatever background was necessary to stay alive. Now, suddenly, here it was, hunched on the rim of the alpha zone, dogging him. Suddenly he found himself wondering for what purpose he had killed Harline. Sloan had never told him and he had not asked.

‘It’s a sanction. You’re a soldier doing what soldiers do. Soldiers don’t ask.’ Sloan had said that the first time he ever asked why. And now, for the first time since he met Sloan, Hatcher thought, A soldier without uniform, without identification, without credentials or identity. What the hell kind of soldier was that? And now here he was, back again, and the doubts about Sloan gnawed at him.

Out on the island, black-eared kites, who had rushed to the sanctuary of the trees to escape the rain, spread their two-foot wings and soared over the island. For centuries they had shared the lofty aerie with rich taipans, the business rulers whose homes dotted the precipitous face of the mountain like small forts. Below them spread the Central District, the business heart of Hong Kong, where Chinese gangsters cavorted with British bankers and taipans, where dynasties were created and empires won and lost, gold was king, and where the binding ethic was money.

An island founded by smugglers and pirates, thought Hatcher. The only thing that changes here is time.

And thinking of pirates, Hatchers mind slipped again, this time to Cohen, and another memory crowded his brain. This time it was a happy one.

Thinking of Cohen made Hatcher feel good, for Rob Cohen was one of those characters who made the Orient the Orient, a man of mystery, an American expatriate who had become a Hong Kong legend. Hatcher was one of the few people who knew the whole scenario. They were close and trusting friends, though they had neither seen nor talked to each other for several years.

Ten years before, when they first met, Cohen was known as king of the Macao Runs, arid an unlikely king he was, buying contraband merchandise with the skill of a Rothschild and smuggling boatloads past the Hong Kong customs several times a week with the adroitness of a Chinese warlord.

By then Cohen was known as the white Tsu Fi of the river, although it was a while before Hatcher understood what that meant. All Hatcher knew was if you wanted to know the back-room secrets of Hong Kong, this short, wiry Jew with the Boston accent and the scraggly beard, who wore Chinese clothes, spoke three different dialects, had a lock on the river trade, and had become one of Hong Kong’s most mysterious and feared characters, was your man.

Before they met, Hatcher had heard many stories about Cohen — rumors, tall tales, lies — all slanderous, and all, to one extent or another true. But the real truth was far stranger than any fiction Cohen’s detractors and enemies could have invented. Through the years as Cohen and Hatcher progressed from being cautious adversaries to becoming close friends, Hatcher grew to trust the legendary schemer. And in time he had gradually pieced the story together.

Back in 1975, Cohen’s office was a dismal, dusty, two-room closet over an acupuncture parlor on crowded Cat Street, which was just a small anteroom with two uncomfortable chairs. And it was lot. There was no air conditioning and the ceiling fan looked as if it had been out of order since the second dynasty.

‘Mr. Hatcher? Come on in,’ Chen said in an accent that was part Boston, part British and part singsong Chinese.

To see him, Hatcher had to squint through dancing motes of dust spotlighted by the sun that streamed through the windows. Cohen was sitting in a straight- backed chair framed by the sunlight. Then, suddenly, Hatcher remembered him.

‘We’ve met before,’ he said, extending his hand.

‘Right,’ Cohen said, returning a hearty handshake, ‘two years ago, up the Beijiang in Chin Chin land.’

‘Sam-Sam Sam and his crew,’ Hatcher said with a nod.

And Cohen laughed and nodded. ‘Right, a true shit if there ever was one. He’ll steal your eyeballs and screw your French poodle while you’re holding the leash. You’ve got a good memory there, gwai-lo.’

‘Yours ain’t too bad either.’

‘Jesus,’ Cohen said with a grin,, ‘ain’t it great to talk American. It’s the only thing I miss. These guys out here? They don’t know shit about the vernacular.’

Their meeting two years earlier had been a brief one. At the time, Hatcher had written off the brazen man as just another quick-buck river rat not long for this world, an easy mistake to make because on that night Cohen was making his first trip into what he called Chin Chin land — China.

For three years Hatcher had worked the back rivers from Thailand east through the deltas and terraced plains of Cambodia and north through Laos, Vietnam and China to the Macao Runs of Hong Kong. He knew the Irrawaddy, the Mekong, and the Yalu Jiang rivers and their backwaters, knew the towns and was accepted — or ignored — by the villagers, who considered him a soldier of fortune without flag or loyalty. He dodged the Red patrols in Vietnam by hiding in the daytime and traveling at night, and by speaking Russian when he was stopped. He got by on audacity and because his role was mostly benign. He was there to get information, not to cause trouble, and he gathered his information by observing rather than asking questions.

It was to learn their secret ways, their routes, their sources, their pick-up points and, mostly, their tie-in to the Saigon black market that had brought Hatcher to their meeting place in 1973. They called themselves the Ts’e K’am Men Ti, the Secret Gatekeepers. There he occasionally did business with them to bolster his credibility. On the pretense of selling guns, he continued to build his file of informants and river operators and their connection to the Hong Kong underworld. He was known as gli Occhi di Sassi, the Man With Stone Eyes, a nickname given him by one of the most trusted men on his team, a onetime Mafioso enforcer named Tony Bagglio.

Standing in the dusty office, Hatcher remembered quite clearly his first sight of Cohen materializing out of the fog, a strange-looking creature in a silk cheongsam and with a long, straggly beard standing in the bow of a snakeboat — with only one other man, a hard-looking Chinese at the tiller — gliding quietly up one of the jungle-cramped offshoots of the Beijiang River, forty or so miles north of Macao.

I’ll be damned, Hatcher had thought to himself, what the hell’s this Chinese rabbi doing up here?

He soon found out.

COHEN: 1973

Cohen, too, remembered that night.

And he, too, had thought to himself as he cruised through the heavy fog in the long, slender snakeboat: What the hell is a nice Jewish boy from Westchester with a DBA from Harvard Business School doing here?

The barge had appeared so suddenly it startled Cohen. It was a floating department store, stacked high with crates of cameras, television sets, china dishes and forbidden icons, bolts of Thai silk and Indian. madras. Heavy tarps were strapped over the stacks to keep them dry.

Han, Cohen’s bodyguard and helmsman, throttled back and eased the snakeboat toward the barge. Cohen could feel his heart thundering in his throat and wrists. His mouth was dry.

Standing on the foredeck of the barge was the ugliest, meanest-looking human being he had ever seen. He was shorter than Cohen, perhaps five six, an Oriental built like a crate, his bulging arms covered with tattoos. He had no hair on the right side of his head. In its place was a mottled burn scar, which extended from a disfigured lump of ear halfway to the crown of his head. He combed the rest of his long black hair away from the scar so it swept over the top of his head and showered down the left side almost to his shoulder. He wore a gun belt and an ornate hand-made holster, designed to hold an Uzi machine gun, which was tied to his thigh Western style. His three front teeth were gold. One of them, according to rumor, had belonged to an unfortunate English businessman who thought he could bypass the unwritten and unsaid laws of the river and deal directly with the Ts’e K’am Men Ti.

This was Sam-Sam Sam, the Do Wong, the Prince of the Knife, a one-man Teamsters Union. Nothing happened on the river unless Sam-Sam Sam said okay. The booty stacked behind him was all tribute, collected from others who wanted to do business with the taipans.

Cohen’s mouth got drier.

Behind Sam-Sam Sam there were at least twenty other men, all wearing the black shirts, shin-length hauki pants, and red headbands of the Khmer Rouge, all armed with Uzis, AK-47s, M-16s and .357 Pythons. They looked as if they expected an invasion. Behind them were the women, all young, all probably cold-blooded, dressed the same, with knives and pistols stuck in their red sashes.

All of the weapons seemed to be pointed at Cohen’s stomach.

Leaning against a stack of crates was a white man, his uncut black hair covering his ears and sweeping almost to his shoulders. He was tall, handsome in a scruffy, unshaven way, and was wearing khaki cotton pants and shirt. A blue windbreaker was tied around his waist by the sleeves; a 9 mm. H&K automatic dangled under his arm in a shoulder holster; his wide-brimmed safari hat was faded and limp from sun and rain. He had his hands in his pockets and was grinning. No, thought Cohen, not grinning, the son of a bitch is leering.

‘They look like Khmer Rouge,’ Cohen whispered to Han.

‘Disguise,’ whispered his boatman, who was supposed to act as a bodyguard. ‘Nobody bother them this way.’

Cohen quickly appraised the situation. He became temporarily paranoid, afraid they would hear his heart pounding. The odds were about thirty to two and there was no future in any kind of confrontation. Cohen immediately made his move.

‘I’ll go over alone,’ Cohen said.

‘Not good. They don’t know you,’ answered Han.

‘I have this,’ said Cohen, opening his hand. In his palm lay a Queen Victoria twenty-dollar gold piece. ‘Stand up in full view so they don’t get nervous. If there is trouble, the two of us aren’t going to last long anyhow.’

He stood on the point of the bow as the motorboat idled up to the barge and opened his cheongsam wide to show he was unarmed, then stepped cautiously onto the barge.

‘I didn’t come here to fight,’ he said in Chinese to the ugly one. ‘I came here to make us all rich.’

The ugly man glared at him.

‘I’m Cohen,’ Cohen said.

The ugly man still glared at him.

Cohen made his way to the stacks of contraband goods, threading his way through the men and women, and flipped a corner of a bolt of Thai silk, felt it, and nodded.

‘Good stuff,’ he said, then turned to the ugly man. ‘This is what I want.’ He held up his fingers and counted. ‘I want cameras from Japan, good brands. I want stereos, Sony and Panasonic. I want Thai silk — not cheap — good stuff, like this, and madras from India.’ He flipped the corner back on the bolt. ‘I’ll buy green jade, no white — and don’t try to dye it on me, I can see right through that. Statues, idols, stuff like that from China, I’ll give you good price on all that, as much as you can bring down from Chin Chin land or over from Thailand.’

The ugly man stood with his hands on his hips, a cigar clenched in his teeth. Its tip glowed in the dark. Okay, thought Cohen, he’s got to show his balls here, push me around a little.

‘Who the hell you think you are?’ Ugly said.

‘I told you, I’m Cohen.’

The ugly man looked around at his men and they all laughed. There was some jabber between them and then the ugly man turned back to Cohen and said, ‘They think I ought to skin you alive and hang you to the side of my boat.’

Cohen threw his wallet on the table. ‘Kill me, all you get is ten Hong Kong dollars. I don’t think you got to be the do wong by being stupid.’

The white man whistled low through his teeth and shook his head very slowly.

The ugly man’s eyes flamed. He bit down hard on his cigar and his hand dropped over the stock of the Uzi.

‘You say I am stupid, gwai-lo, that what you say?’

‘No no, I say I don’t think you are stupid. If you were stupid you’d skin me for ten dollars. Instead, I’ll make you fat.’

‘I am fat already,’ the ugly man said proudly.

‘One is never too fat.’

‘You have a fast tongue.’

‘A man wouldn’t last long up here with a slow one.’ The ugly man liked that. He threw back his head, laughed heartily, and his men relaxed.

‘So how do you pay?’ the ugly man asked.

‘Hong Kong paper. You want American dollars or gold, you won’t do as well.’

‘And why should I do business with you?’ the pirate asked.

Cohen held up the gold coin between a thumb and forefinger. He twisted it in the beam of one of the lights. The coin twinkled in his hand. Sam-Sam walked very close and inspected the coin.

‘You come from the Tsu Fi?’ the ugly one asked. Cohen nodded. ‘I talk for the Tsu Fi. I got lots of dollars and there’s plenty more. None of that tea-and-crumpets shit like dealing with the British. You deal with me, it’s down and dirty, everybody makes a pound, no bullshit, no waste of time. And the big reason is I’ll take delivery upriver. I’ll make the Macao run myself and worry about customs. All you got to do is get the goods to me.’

The white man shifted slightly and said in English, ‘You got the balls of a Brahma bull.’

‘How did you know I speak the language?’ Cohen asked.

‘Boston accent.’

‘You got a good ear. Cohen’s the name.’

‘Hatcher,’ the man in khaki said in a flat, no-nonsense voice. It was not unfriendly, it was a voice that said, simply, Don’t mess with me. They shook hands. Hatcher had cold eyes that gave away nothing, and his smile came with an effort. Not a man to stand on the wrong side of, thought Cohen. Hatcher — Remember that name.

‘You’re not part of this bunch, surely,’ Cohen said.

‘Naw, just trying to make a buck like yourself.’

‘How do you think I’m doing?’

‘Sam-Sam hasn’t cut your throat yet, that’s a good sign. What’s that you showed him?’

‘Little down payment,’ Cohen said and winked.

‘Where’s the rest of your swag?’ Hatcher asked.

‘Downriver a ways,’ Cohen whispered. ‘Ten men and a chest of paper. I don’t like to show my hole card until the bets are all in.’

The ugly man had a short conference with several of his men, then came over to Cohen.

‘I’m Sam-Sam Sam, do wong of the Ts’e K’am Men Ti. You tell me what you want, you tell we how we make deal, okay, you and me do business, nobody else.’

Cohen smiled and winked at Hatcher.

‘Let’s do some dealing,’ he said to the ugly one.

That had been two years before their meeting in the dismal office on Cat Street. Cohen lad come a long way by then, had become the Tsu Fi, the master conniver of the island. And in the next few years he and Hatcher became allies, each feeding information and assistance to the other, ultimately learning to trust each other as friends.

Hatcher stared across the bay at the sprawling houses almost hidden by trees near the peak of Victoria Mountain.

Cohen’s lair.

My God, Hatcher wondered, is the little guy still alive?

ch’uang tzu-chi

As he sat staring across the bay, his eyes occasionally drooping with exhaustion, Hatcher suddenly began to feel a vague sense of malaise. The old clicks were at work. Perhaps it was coming back to the East, the sudden flood of memories invoked by the past. The Far Easterners had a strong premonitory sense; they believed not only in reincarnation but in visions. Hatcher bad never bought the concepts, and yet at times in the past his clicks, or instincts or memories or whatever they might be called, had warned him of danger.

Now his clicks suddenly began racing overtime.

Sloan was on his way to Hong Kong. There was more to that than just a friendly visit to check in with Hatcher.

He had been too tired for it to register before, but now, relaxing half asleep on the balcony over1ooking the harbor, he had an overwhelming sense that something had gone wrong. What other reason would Sloan have for coming to Hong Kong?

Westerners might call it memory introspection, instinct. The Chinese always seemed to have a more poetic way of expressing such things. The Chinese called it ch’uang tzu-chi, the window to oneself.

Sloan had always said that to indulge in ch’uang tzu-chi was suicidal, that memories were weapons that attacked the mind, dulled the senses. Were distractions, misdirections, a deadly indulgence. Sloan was right, but only within the context of his own reality, for without the window there was nothing to draw on.

In Los Boxes, all Hatcher had was ch’uang tzu-chi. At first Hatcher had found the indulgence almost impossible, like drinking from an empty cup. But with the help of 126 he had reconstructed that part of the past that gave him pleasure. Moments of discovery; taste of new wine, a brush of warm lips, the touch another body, the urgency of orgasm; brief moments when love was a word away and pleasure seemed infinite and he had momentarily escaped the passion of death; moments he could reach out and touch again in the misery of his cell. Eventually they gave him life.

Hatcher now tried to shrug them away, however. He decided to take a quick nap. It would be four hours before Sloan arrived, and in four hours Hatcher could take the edge off his jet lag. He went back into the room, stripped and lay flat on his back on the floor, staring up at the ceiling fan and the whirling shadows above it.

Lying on the floor, waiting for sleep to come rather than trying to induce it, Hatcher was rushed back in time by the slatted shutters that threw striped shadows on the wall, back to Los Boxes, to a time when he had embraced ch’uang tzu-chi and, with it, a facsimile of sanity. He had become addicted, and after Los Boxes had fought to free himself of the habit, a kind of cold-turkey repudiation of past and pleasure.

Now as he lay on the floor that window opened again, and there, beyond its ghostly sill, was the image of the first moment he saw Ginia: a soft red dawn spreading over the flat marsh, setting the shimmering water afire for an instant.

His first reaction was physical. She was standing on the marina dock near a sailboat, wearing a pair of brief shorts and a bikini top, and he was stunned by the perfection of her body, so stunned that he stopped loading his boat and stared without realizing it. Then he looked up and saw she was staring back at him with eyes so brown they were almost black.

‘If you take everything off me, I’ll get arrested for indecent exposure,’ she said with a hint of a smile.

Her companion, a flaccid rich boy recovering from a hangover, his character as shaky as his hands, was unfurling the main sheet. He looked up and said, ‘What’d you say?’

‘Not a thing, my dear,’ she purred, and when he turned back to his chore, she stared back at Hatcher. Hatcher walked directly to her side, looked down at her, and shook his head very slowly. ‘Life is just too damn short,’ Hatcher’s ruined voice whispered.

She was mesmerized by the shattered sound of his voice, and she smiled, then laughed, then nodded. ‘Oh, how true.’

Hatcher pointed to the wobbly youth struggling with his mainsail.

‘Roger,’ she said softly.

Hatcher turned toward him and said as loudly as he could, ‘Roger?’

Roger looked up, steadying himself by grasping the mast.

‘Roger, you’ll be happy to know that you can go home,’ Hatcher said. ‘Go back to bed. The lady’s coming with me.’

‘Who says?’ the shocked Roger demanded weakly. Hatcher looked back at her and she said, ‘I says, Roger.’ What a day that had been. What a dazzling moment when she had loosened the straps and dropped the bra, touched his face with her fingertips, leaned over and kissed his throat, when her breasts had brushed against his bare chest for the first time and he had reached up, running his fingers under her hair at the back of her neck, felt her skin grow erect under his touch and felt the goose flesh rise on his own arms and shoulders, and caressed her as she caressed him until they were both shaking with anticipation. They had postponed it for an eternity, touching, exploring, their lips flirting as they whispered to each other, until his fingers stroked her soul and their trembling became an earthquake and they could no longer push back the moment and she pressed him against her and stroked him into her and their whimpers became cries and time was suspended.

He reached out in the darkness, touched the unsettled air, tried to relive that moment, and he knew he could never, would never, overcome the addiction of ch’uang tzu-chi.

And now, on the edge of sleep, he realized that it was that window, slightly ajar, that had also created his uneasiness. He knew — knew — that something had gone sour, just as he knew that he could not ignore the friends and enemies of the past. The journey would be harder than he had imagined, he sensed that now. And for whatever dangers lay ahead, in Macao, Bangkok or upriver, the best he could hope for was to close that window for the moment.

He set the alarm clock in his head for 11 A.M., folded his hands over his chest, and started counting backward from ten. He was in a deep sleep before he got to four.

COMPLICATIONS

He awoke five minutes before eleven and lay on the floor staring at the shadows whirling on the ceiling above the fan, listening. Since Los Boxes, Hatcher’s hearing was acute; he could hear a cockroach as it scratched its way across the floor, Down the hail, he heard the elevator door open and close, the sound of two people walking along the carpeted hallway, heard the door to the adjoining room open, the rustling of hangers in the closet, the muffled dialogue with the bellhop, and the door closing.

He knew Sloan very well. He would order lunch — cold cuts and booze from room service — then take a shower before announcing his arrival. Sloan liked his booze and showers.

Hatcher waited until he heard the room service waiter come and go and the shower turn on, then got up, dressed and, using a set of hooked lock needles, picked the lock on the door between the rooms. When he entered Sloan’s room, Sloan was in the shower, humming to himself.

Hatcher crossed the room and reached under the pillow, took out Sloan’s .45, dropped the clip and ejected the shell in the chamber. He put the pistol back, went across the room and stood behind the bathroom door. He waited until Sloan was finished. The boxy man came out naked, toweling his hair. He strolled toward the bed, still humming some aimless tune.

Hatcher moved the door slightly so it made a creaking sound.

Sloan moved instantly, jogging slightly to his right, then switching directions before he dived for the bed.

‘Too late, you’re dead,’ Hatcher whispered.

Sloan sighed and slid down to the floor. He turned to Hatcher. The lopsided grin that was his trademark spread across his lips. It was like the old times, an old gambit, a game they had played through the years. But Sloan did not misread it. Hatcher had learned early in the game never to let personal feelings get in the way of the job; it clouded the judgment. This was Hatcher’s way of telling him that the job came first, regardless of how he felt about Sloan. It was not a sign that Hatcher had forgiven Sloan or that he trusted him, Betrayal was too high on Hatcher’s list of unforgivable sins for that.

Hatcher stepped out of the shadows and threw the clip and the round on the bed. ‘You’re not as quick as you used to be. And how many times have I told you, you’ve got to stop putting your piece under the pillow. It’s like putting a diamond necklace under the mattress. It’s the first place anybody looks.’

Sloan reloaded his gun and replaced it under the pillow. ‘Reverse psychology,’ he said.

Sloan stopped drying his hair and wrapped the towel around his waist, went in the bathroom, came back and stood in the doorway, slowly brushing his short-cropped hair. ‘We got a problem, laddie,’ he said casually without sacrificing his smile.

‘What kind of problem?’

‘Somebody stuck a knife in Windy Porter the night before last,’ Sloan said bluntly. ‘He’s dead.’

‘What!’

Sloan kept talking as he walked to a room service table. The room was large, with a king-size bed, rattan furniture and pastel flowered wallpaper. A vase of orchids on the dresser added more color. The balcony, furnished with white wicker, overlooked the river. A ceiling fan stirred the air, which was already getting hot and sticky.

‘According to the police, he was trying to break up a fight, if you put any faith in the Bangkok police.’

‘What really happened?’ Hatcher’s hoarse voice asked.

‘I don’t know. Maybe it happened the way they say it did. I assume I’ll get the full story when I get over there.’

Sloan poured a cup of coffee and filled a water glass half full of scotch. He dropped a single ice cube in the glass and handed the coffee to Hatcher.

‘Where was he struck?’ Hatcher asked.

Sloan hesitated for a moment and, without losing his smile, said, ‘The neck. Base of the skull.’

‘Beautiful,’ Hatcher growled. ‘A classic triad hit. Breaking up a fight, my ass.’

‘I don’t think the White Palms are involved in this. What would their angle be?’ Sloan asked, sipping his drink.

‘How would I know?’ Hatcher answered. ‘I came over here looking for Cody, and now our only contact is dead and it looks like the triads are involved. Listen, Harry, you better not be playing games with me, I warned you back on the island . .

Sloan’s smile broadened. ‘Hey, don’t be so damn paranoid. We don’t know for sure it was even a triad hit. It could be just a crazy fluke.’

‘In this business there’s no such thing as a crazy fluke.’

‘Well, there’s always the exception. . . .‘ Sloan said, his attitude, as always, cavalier. ‘One thing I am sure of, nobody but Porter knew what was going on.’

‘Did they catch the killer?’

‘Killers,’ Sloan corrected and shook his head.

‘Can we assume Porter was tailing Wol Pot when it happened?’ Hatcher asked.

‘Who knows,’ Sloan said with a shrug. ‘Maybe he lost Wol Pot. Maybe Wol Pot ditched him. Maybe he took the night off.’ Sloan looked over his sideways grin. ‘The way I understand it, he got stabbed trying to break up a fight between a couple of slopes and a whore on one of the klongs. But if I were guessing, I’d say, yeah, he was tailing the little bastard when it happened.’

‘And Wol Pot was mixed up with the White Palm Triad.’

‘That’s what immigration thinks.’

‘So the question now is, is the Thai still alive? And still on our side?’ Hatcher said. ‘That is, if he was ever on our side to begin with.’ He stared out at the harbor for a moment and added, ‘And you called this a simple job?’

‘Come on, Hatch, don’t go jumping to conclusions. So we got a glitch in the program.’

‘We’ve got a man dead, that’s what we’ve got, and that’s all we’ve got. I’d call that more than a glitch.’

‘Shit,’ Sloan said, ‘we’ve been in the soup too long to let a thing like Porter’s death stop us,’

‘You’ve been in the soup,’ said Hatcher. ‘I was in Los Boxes.’

Sloan sighed. ‘Let’s keep it pleasant,’ he said, still smiling, still Mr Sincerity, ‘for old times’ sake.’

‘Old times’ sake got all used up.’

‘I was just doing my job.’

‘You were doing what a bunch of weasels in the White House basement told you to do.’

Sloan leaned closer to Hatcher, his fingers wiggling like those of a magician about to perform a trick, his smile so constant it might have been permanently implanted on his face.

‘That is my job,’ he said with oily finality.

Though his smile never faded and his voice was quiet and level, Sloan felt suddenly uneasy. There had been a time in all the years they worked together when he didn’t have to explain anything to Hatcher; when he laid out the parameters and Hatcher instinctively knew the program. Was Hatcher rejecting the whole concept of the brigade? That had not occurred to Sloan. He had assumed that Hatcher only felt betrayed.

Sloan, his eyes narrowing but the smile remaining, said quietly, ‘You getting religion on me, pal? You’re gonna get yourself wasted, you start worrying about the wrong things. I taught you better than that.’

‘Sometimes I get a little confused about just what the hell you did teach me. Besides, it was different then, there was a war on. . .

Sloan threw back his head and laughed heartily.

‘For Christ’ sake, there’s always a war on someplace. You need a war? Shit, we got Lebanon, Israel, Iran, Nicaragua, Afghanistan. We got a whole supermarket full of wars, take your pick.’ He poured himself a stiff drink of scotch and dropped an ice cube in it. ‘Hell, we do what we have to do, Hatch. We got two choices on any given day — do it or don’t do it. If you don’t know the options going in, if you haven’t made the decision, they’ll get you. You don’t have time to figure the odds, that’s the way you get dead. All you got is clicks and reflexes. And if you don’t do it, they’ll do it to you. Have I ever told you any different? Was there ever any question in your mind about that?’

‘My whole bullshit career is questionable,’ said Hatcher. ‘I can’t even tell anybody what I did in the war.’

Still chuckling, Sloan said, ‘Is that it, you want to write about your war experiences?’

‘That’s not the point. There’s sixteen, seventeen years of my life that are blotto, like they never existed.’

‘You think I betrayed you, and that’s clouding your judgment,’ Sloan said softly. His tone had turned compassionate. Sloan had all the buttons. Push one, you got compassion. Push another, you got patriotic fervor. Push another, you got flattery. Hatcher remembered their first meeting, in a private room of the Occidental Restaurant in Washington where Sloan — as always, confident, almost fatherly — first outlined his personal gospel, describing the Shadow Brigade as a ‘golden opportunity, a chance to do something for your country that’s necessary, and which also offers a freedom of thought and action you don’t find in other branches of the service.’ No mention that this ‘branch of service’ had no records or that it was privately funded and did not even exist officially. Hatcher, the wet-eared kid out of the academy, all full of himself, was stroked and sweet-talked and razzle-dazzled and bought the whole package, no questions asked. That lunch had changed Hatcher’s life forever.

‘It was more than betrayal, Harry. Hell, you were my mentor. You got it done. You got the mission done and I looked up to you for that.’ Hatcher stopped for a moment, got himself a cup of coffee. ‘All those years in Los Boxes, all I thought about was you burning inc for some bum in the State Department. It wasn’t just doing the time. I trusted you, Harry, and you turned me up. And you’re still doing it.’

‘You’re getting holy on me,’ Sloan said with a chuckle and a shake of his head. ‘What’s your way of doing it? Take the river pirates to court for running dope to our boys in Saigon? Let our double agents dance on our graves? Compromise with the triads? Shit. Let me tell you something, pal, we learned to fight in dirty wars. And that’s what we’re gonna have from now on, dirty wars. Well, you don’t win dirty wars with Marquis of Queens- berry Rules. You kick ass and go for the body mass.’

‘The way they do it in Brazil and Argentina?’

Sloan sighed. ‘You know your trouble, Hatch? You’re trying to equate morality and warfare. Totally incompatible. If the rest of the Army had fought the war in Nam the way we fought it, we wouldn’t’ve got our ass kicked out of there and you know it. We learned how to beat our enemies from our enemies. A soldier doesn’t need a uniform or a fancy title, all he needs is the will to get it done. I repeat, if you don’t do it, it gets done to you. That’s the law according to Harry Sloan and it’s kept me alive for a bloody long time and it did all right by you, too. You’re just thinking too much, Hatch. How many times’ve I told you, consideration gets a man killed.’

‘Harry, you’re living proof that it’s possible for a man to talk faster than he can think.’

‘Well, laddie, when your ass is in the sling, you better do it before you think about it or you’re history.’

But it was obvious that Hatcher’s reevaluation of the brigade worried Sloan, for he slipped back to the subject. ‘You do a thing and it’s over,’ Sloan said with a shrug. ‘Why agonize over all that. You never made any moral decisions, they were made for you.’

‘Maybe that’s the point. Maybe I should’ve. Maybe this is about drawing the line.’

‘Hah!’ Sloan said. ‘This is old Harry you’re talking to, remember. You giving me ideology? Before lunch! Let me tell you something, we never did a job wasn’t worth the doing. You want to get bug-eyed about methods, procedures, whatever, that’s your problem. But don’t belabor a beautiful morning with ideology, don’t give me slogans and posters. My ideology is reality, and the reality is, it’s us against them. You and me, we don’t lose, pal, it’s not in our vocabulary.’

‘You made moral decisions, so did I. Spur-of-the- moment moves . .

‘Exactly. Exactly!’ Sloan said, interrupting him, his eyes twinkling again and the enthusiasm back in his tone. ‘Spur of the moment. There aren’t any moral decisions in warfare, Hatch, there’s winning and losing. God and country. Beyond that, it’s all superfluous.’

‘We got rules, Harry.’

‘Yeah, right.’

Hatcher said, ‘Anyway, this isn’t about God and country, as you put it. It’s about you and me. Just don’t ever back-stab me again. You do and I’ll . .

‘I know.’ Sloan leaned over closer to him, the smile getting broader, the gray eyes still twinkling. ‘You’ll put me where the fish can’t find me.’

There was no percentage in belaboring that subject any further. Hatcher knew he was blowing smoke at the moon. Sloan was a man impervious to insult or hurt, a man who believed what he did was right and necessary and morally justified.

‘Forget it,’ Hatcher said flatly, ‘I didn’t come here to do you any favors, anyway. I came to find Cody.’

Sloan nodded, his smile reduced to a wry grin. ‘Fair enough. So what have you got so far?’ he asked. ‘You sure been leading my boys a merry chase.’

Before Hatcher could answer, the phone rang. Sloan glared at it.

‘Now what?’ he said. He crossed, the room and picked it up. He talked with his back to Hatcher. His hair was still damp from the shower and beads of water twinkled on his undried back. The phone was plugged into a small black scrambler, its red light aglow.

‘Sloan,’ he said in his soft voice. ‘S12424. Jack be nimble, Jack be . . . Okay, we’re clear, I’m on the scrambler, what’s the problem? What? What! My God, when? Damn it, Spears, he had ten people guarding him! . . . I know what I said . . . No, don’t do that. I assume the media has this . . . I understand that. Uh-huh. . . uh-huh. . . No, you stic1 with the original story. Let the FBI handle it. . . . No, not the CIA, keep them out of it. . . . Hold on, let me think. . .

He turned toward Hatcher and rolled his eyes and shook his head. His face seemed to be getting redder, although he kept his voice under control.

‘No pictures of Cosomil,’ he said into the phone. ‘Keep him under wraps right where he is. I ‘want you to leak a story to the media that he’s hiding cut in . . . uh .

Hawaii . . . No, the Big Island, Kauai’s too small, yeah. . . . Right, let ‘em run around there for a week or two looking for him. . . . That’s fine. Thanks, Spears. If I’m temporarily out of pocket, check in with Flitcraft, he can always find me.’ He slowly cradled the phone.

‘Well, laddie, I got a new problem. Major, major. You want to hear the headline in tomorrow morning’s New York Times? “Mandrango Iron Man Campon Assassinated in Atlanta Disco.”

Hatcher’s mouth dropped open. It had been Campon’s coup in Madrango that had enabled Sloan to spring Hatcher from Los Boxes. Then six months later the Communist guerrillas had retaken the capital. The revolt had been seesawing for several years.

Sloan gave Hatcher a quick account of the murder of the deposed Central American dictator. ‘Our people are speculating that the assassin was disguised as a stork.’

‘A stork!’ said Hatcher.

‘It was a costume ball. Three other people, including an innocent woman bystander, were killed. We got two more, her date and a waiter, in serious condition in the hospital.’

‘Your outfit was guarding him?’

‘Uh-huh. Plus half a dozen of his own men.’

‘Who was in charge over there?’ Hatcher asked incredulously.

Sloan hesitated for a moment, then said, ‘Spears and Hedritch.’

‘Spears and Hedritch!’

Hatcher thought to himself, What the hell was Joe Spears doing body guarding Hector Campon? He remembered Spears as a burned-out California surfer with rice for brains.

‘Spears, for God’s sake!’

‘That was our front, a personal security service.’

‘How the hell did you get involved in this?’

‘Because Campon was too hot for the Secret Service to handle. The taxpayers would have raised hell. So I got the job.’

‘But Spears? He fried his brains twenty years ago lying around Santa Monica beach.’

‘Yeah, well, he and Hedritch’ll be protecting mailbags in Tomahawk, Wisconsin, for the rest of their lives.’

‘If you put both their brains together you end up with a half-wit.’

‘Look,’ Sloan said, his face reddening. ‘First I inherit this deposed presidente with two brigades cooling their heels on the Madrango border, .waiting to go back in and chase the Commies out. He needs weapons, he needs ammo, he needs air, he needs military a.d.v.’s, he needs every fuckin’ thing but the urge, so he comes up to D.C. looking for help and our leader starts calling in favors all over the Hill. He’s looking for fifty million bucks for Campon and I’ve got to baby-sit the bastard while all this is going on. Three weeks in Fort Lauderdale, two weeks in St Louis, a month and a half in Chicago, two weeks in a houseboat fifty miles out of Atlanta. All of a sudden he’s history and we got big troubles.’

‘But Spears and Hedritch?’

Sloan slid open the door to the balcony of the bright, airy room and stood with his back to it, letting the breeze dry him off. He sipped his drink and stared at Hatcher. ‘I had six men on this, pal. This Campon was no Boy Scout. Skipped the country with five, six mill stashed in Switzerland. A monumental hell-raiser with the morals of an alley cat. Burning up my control teams left and right. Spears and Hedritch were all I had left. But’ — he pointed a finger at Hatcher — ‘that’s also what made him valuable. He was General Macho Man and his men idolized him, idolized him. And we need Madrango back, it’s key to everything we’ve got going in Central America.’

‘So how did you lose him?’

‘He wouldn’t stay put. He liked the night life, the ladies.’ Sloan shrugged. ‘It caught up with him.’

‘So what’s plan Baker?’ Hatcher whispered casually.

Sloan looked at Hatcher suspiciously. ‘Who says I’ve got a plan Baker?’

‘You’ve always got a plan Baker, Harry. First thing you taught me: Always locate the back door. And Madrango’s been your baby since the beginning.’

Sloan sighed. ‘The back door is General Cosomil. Not as flamboyant or popular as Campon, or as young, but he’s dedicated. A good tactical officer. What we’ve gotta do is martyrize Campon so his men’ll line up behind Cosomil. Right now he’s under wraps. Ferris and Joyner head that control team and they’re the best I got.’

He took another sip and wiped his lips with the back of a thumb.

‘You going back to Washington?’

Sloan shook his head. ‘I’ve got it under control for now. The State Department’ll step into it now. My job’s to keep Cosomil alive until he can get back in there.’

‘Well,’ Hatcher said, ‘there’s always the bright side. Congress’ll probably give them all the aid they need now.’

Sloan paced the room for several minutes. He stopped and did some deep-breathing exercises.

‘That’s not my problem,’ he said finally. ‘Or yours. Let’s get back to our business.’

‘Hell, I forgot what we were talking about,’ Hatcher said.

‘You were running my boys all over the lot,’ Sloan said dryly.

‘Just some exercises to get back in shape,’ Hatcher answered.

‘Turn up anything?’

‘Not much.’

‘You been awful busy,’ Sloan said with a cock of his head.

‘From the look of Buffalo 1ill, I don’t have a lot of time.’

‘Any idea why Cody might be in hiding?’

Now, that’s a strange question, thought Hatcher.

‘You’re way ahead of me,’ he said. ‘I’m still trying to find out if he’s alive or not.’

‘Well, what do you think?’

‘If you mean have I made any earthshaking conclusions in the last seventy-two hours, the answer is no. I’m not a DA, I don’t have to prove anything. At this point I’m waffling back and forth. Sometimes I think Cody’s alive, sometimes I think this Wol Pot is scamming us all. It depends on the equation.’

‘Well, why do you think he’s alive?’

‘I didn’t say he was. I’m just not as sure he’s dead as I once was.’

‘Why not?’

‘Little things. I’ve got a gunner that now admits one of the men in Cody’s plane probably got out. I got an ex-POW tells me he heard about this transient prison camp and one of the prisoners was a VIP who could have been Cody — could have been. I got two wingmen — one thinks Cody was a crazy glory hunter, the other thinks he was the second coming. And that’s about all I got. Very hazy stuff.’

‘But you think there could be validity to Wol Pot’s story?’

‘I didn’t say that. It’s all part of the equation. When I figure out what X is, I’ll let you know the answer.’

Sloan chuckled. ‘Playing ‘em close to the vest, huh? Why, if I didn’t know better, I’d think you don’t trust me anymore,’ he said sarcastically.

‘Now, why wouldn’t I trust you, Harry? Your stock-in- trade is deceit. Murder and lying are your profession. And you double-crossed me. What’s not to trust?’

Hatcher paused and took a swig of coffee. He had told Sloan only what he had to tell him. I{e had left out some things, like the note left at the Wall in Washington to Polo from Jaimie, whoever Jaimie was. And the reference to Thai Horse, which could mean only one thing to Hatcher

— heroin. Ninety-nine pure China White from the Golden Triangle. But he wasn’t about to throw that out yet. Sloan was far too interested in why Cody ‘was hiding. It was setting off all kinds of danger signals in Hatcher’s head. Hatcher knew exactly what Sloan was thinking at that moment. He was thinking, If Cody is into some really bad shit, it would be easy to eliminate the problem. To Sloan, termination was an easy solution for any problem. But he never said it out loud. He always left the dirty words unsaid.

Sloan threw off the towel and started getting dressed.

‘We’ll go into Bangkok and see what we can turn up,’ he said, slipping on olive drab boxer shorts and an undershirt.

But Porter’s death and the possible disappearance of Wol Pot had put a new wrinkle on the mission. Now Hatcher’s mind was working in other directions, searching for options.

‘I’ll meet you there in a day or two,’ he told Sloan. ‘I’ve got some things I want to check out here.’

‘Such as?’

‘I’ll let you know that when I’m through.’

Sloan started to tie his tie. There was a knock on the door.

‘Christ, now what!’ Sloan said.

TRIADS

A tail man, arrow-straight, with a sculptured handlebar mustache was standing in the doorway. He wore a spotless white linen suit. Hong Kong cop, thought Hatcher. He had the air.

‘Colonel Sloan?’ he asked. His British accent was sharp enough to hone a knife on.

‘Yes?’

‘Sergeant Varney, sir, Hong Kong police.’ He showed his credentials.

‘A pleasure,’ Sloan said in his most diplomatic tone. ‘Come on in, what can I do for you?’

Varney entered the room as if he were reporting to the Queen, almost sniffing the air. He smiled stiffly at Hatcher. ‘And you must be Mr Hatcher,’ he said, offering his hand.

‘Uh-huh,’ Hatcher said. They shook hands. Varney strode to the balcony door, checked the view, and turned around with his arms behind his back.

‘I’m with the Commonwealth Triad Squad,’ he said. When neither Sloan nor Hatcher responded, he went on. ‘Things’ve changed a lot in the last six, seven years. I thought I might offer a hand should you need it. I happened to recognize your names when they appeared on our computer yesterday.’

‘Computer?’ Hatcher asked.

‘We run a computer check against the airport list. Routine, y’know, try to keep tabs on who’s coming and going. I was going to give you a call and then Colonel Sloan showed up, so I decided to touch in with you both.’

Hatcher said. ‘That’s real thoughtful, Sergeant. But our business here has nothing to do with the triads.’

‘Yes, sir, but considering your past experience with the Silk Dragons and the White Palms, we just thought we might extend the courtesy of the force, so to speak.’

‘I don’t think I’ll be needing it,’ Hatcher said, staring at Sloan again. ‘The colonel’s leaving today and I plan to be out of here tomorrow or the next day.’

‘Yes, sir, that’s jolly good,’ Varney said. He paused for a moment as if to pick the right words, stretching his neck and ruffling his shoulders. The sergeant had more ticks than a south Georgia hound. ‘It’s just that — I think I should advise you, sir — while you are here, you could be in considerable danger. We’d like you to know we’ll extend the full courtesy of the department to you. Perhaps’ — he paused another moment, pursing his lips before going on — ‘you might like an escort.’

‘I know the town just fine,’ Hatcher’s whispery voice crackled.

‘Yes, yes, of course, but —‘

Hatcher cut him off. ‘Look, Sergeant, I never had any dealings with the White Palms, and as far as I know, the Silk Dragons are history.’

Sloan jumped in. ‘That’s the point, Hatch, the Silk Dragons may be history, but the White Palms kind of.

uh . . .‘ Sloan stalled for a moment.

‘Permit me,’ Varney said. ‘After White Powder Mama

was assassinated, the White Palms — uh, shall we say — absorbed many of the Silk Dragon members. Rather like a merger, if you will.’

‘Is that a fact,’ Hatcher said, still only vaguely interested. He knew most of the history and had been battling the Silk Dragons when this Varney guy was still diddy-bopping his way around the middle school cricket pitches.

‘You know about Tollie Fong?’ Varney asked airily.

‘Tollie Fong?’ Hatcher said, raising his eyebrows, playing dumb.

‘His father was Lee Fong.’

For an instant, Hatcher’s mind flashed to the Singapore airport. Dusk. 1975. Twelve years ago. Yeah, he knew Lee Fong, all right.

‘We thought you should know Tollie Fong is the new san wong of the White Palms,’ Varney said with a bit of a flourish, leaning back and almost smirking. ‘And,’ he added with obvious satisfaction, ‘Joe Lung is his Number One here in Hong Kong. They still remember. . .

So, thought Hatcher, tuning him out, it’s come full circle

Sweeping down from the hills on their long-haired horses, the Mongolians came. Their flowing black hair in ratty pigtails, their faces bearded and hungry, their eyes afire with opium. Cutting down or burning everything in their path: horses, cows, pigs, children, all but the women

— the women were their prize of prizes. Looting and killing, the barbarians butchered the gentle Chinese in the flatlands by the sea, below the seven peaks where the seven dragons dwelt.

And the dragons, who in life had been the first seven emperors of China, angrily watching from their mountain aeries, summoned forth the leaders of the Chinese, describing to them how to fight b2ck, telling them the tactics to use, giving them the juice.

So the taipans banded together into three-family cells, forming triangles with their farms, erecting walls between them, and hitting back from each side when the Mongols struck, and the dragons were proved right. The Chinese, in what would eventually be Hong Kong, cut the savages to shreds and sent what few were left back to Mongolia to carry the message. The barbarians never returned.

Thus, in the twelfth century, the triads were born, growing stronger for the next eight hundred years; each triad taking on its own rituals, its own passwords and secret handshakes, its own poems legends and history, swearing allegiance to the clan, a blood oath known as the hong mon, growing in power until they were the ruling classes of Hong Kong and the Chinese business world. Businessmen, mostly, honored and respected.

The evil ones followed quickly, the maverick triads who grabbed the power. Calling themselves the Chiu Chao.

Growing in power also: the Silk Dragons, the White Palms, the 14K, the Thin Blade Gang, the House of Seven Hands and others, running it all, everything that was illicit and corrupt — gambling, prostitution, loan sharking, white slavery, drugs, smuggling, the black market—and running it with clear, relentless vision, so focused on cruelty and murder that they defied challenge. The Mafiosi of the Orient.

The triads were eight hundred years old. The Chiu Chao was seven hundred ninety years old. It took only ten years for the corruption to start.

The evil triads divided up the underworld, each taking its own segment, and the most lucrative of them all was the drug empire of the Silk Dragons, always looking to expand, seeing ahead with diabolical vision. In the late sixties a fat new market lay waiting in Vietnam, and they brought pure No. 3 China White heroin from the Golden Triangle of Thailand cross-country to Hong Kong and smuggled it into Saigon or shipped it down the Mekong River directly into Vietnam, where they sold it to American GI’s for two dollars a pop to get them hooked.

White Powder Mama became the GI’s soul mate, their savior, with his precious packages of dreams, their escape from misery. He created by insidious design a new market for China White in the United States, where Mexican or Turkish brown heroin had been. king: using hooked American soldiers as the base, the Silk Dragons stretched across the sea to America. White Powder Mama was in reality Ma Bing Sum, the san wong, the ‘godfather,’ of the Silk Dragons. White Powder Mania and his Red Pole ‘executioner,’ Lee Fong, who was also his brother, were the most feared men in Hong Kong, so powerful they conscripted five members of the Hong Kong narcotics squad, who called themselves the Dragon’s Breath, to control the river passages, what they called the ‘long, white run.’

Spring, 1973. Enter Christian Hatcher.

They were in the back room of the officers’ club in Cam Ranh Bay, which had become the busiest port in the world, the honey pot from which flowed all the men and arms to the undeclared war in Vietnam. Compared with the rest of the country, Cam Ranh was Country Club City, except when the sappers came in the middle of the night and tore things up. For Hatcher, in those days, five minutes away from Indian country- was like a six-month vacation.

‘Got a job for you,’ Sloan said.

‘Uh-huh,’ Hatcher said. He hail heard the line many times before.

‘We’ve got us a big problem over here,’ Sloan said.

‘No kidding,’ Hatcher answered with a laugh.

‘I mean besides the war,’ Sloan s aid. ‘You know about the Silk Dragons?’

Hatcher nodded. ‘You mean White Powder Mama?’

Sloan nodded. ‘Ma Bing Sum and his bunch of dope traders.’

‘They’ve been around forever,’ replied Hatcher with a shrug. ‘They’re a Hong Kong police problem.’

‘Not anymore. They’re walking on our notes, pal,’ Sloan went on. ‘We have a serious narcotics problem in Nam and most of it is coming downriver from the Triangle. This White Powder Mama has become a major pain in the ass. He’s got five do-mommies running the rivers from Thailand. Ex-Hong Kong cops, they call themselves the Dragon’s Breath. Strictly bad-ass, the bunch of them. The Buffalo wants to kick ass, teach ‘em a lesson.’

‘So?’

‘So, you know the river. Put together two or three squads, get yourself a couple of armored riverboats, I can get you anybody you need — CRIPS, Seals, Berets, name it. Any bad-ass in the service is yours. I want you to take ‘em all out. I want this Dragon’s Breath to be history, and fast.’

‘Okay,’ Hatcher said casually, ‘but I’ve got an alternative plan to suggest.’

‘Shoot.’

‘If we do it your way, my cover’s blown.’

‘Okay, how do you see it?’

‘I’ll take three good cutthroats, Molly McGuire, Chet Rodriguez’ — he thought for a minute — ‘and Bear Newton. The rest’ll be Orientals. Make it look like we’re just hijacking their shit. I’ll run the show but keep a low pro. Hell, we’ll wear masks, scare the scrotums off the do-mommies. Any other way we do it, I’m made and we wash ten years.’

‘Where are you gonna get Orientals that are good enough to do that kind of work?’ Sloan asked skeptically.

‘That’s my problem.’

‘I need twenty-four men, the best cutthroats money can buy,’ Hatcher told China Cohen. ‘Able to take orders, no arguments. And quiet — they say a word about any of this, they lose their tongues.’

‘What’s the trick?’ China asked.

‘You don’t want to know.’

Duck hunting, roaming the backwaters at night with their twenty mike-mike cannons and thermite bombs, their Uzis and K-Bar knives, hitting the hooches where the druggers slept at night, waging open warfare on the rivers against the Dragon’s Breath bringing heroin down the Mekong River. In three months Hatcher’s small group ambushed two dozen heroin shipments. In three months four of the five members of the Dragon’s Breath felt the cold steel and hot sting of knives in their throats, died quickly and quietly, while their boats and deadly cargoes were stolen from under them, taken far upstream and burned. Only one member of the Dragon’s Breath escaped Hatcher’s renegades.

Two years later: Singapore airport. White Powder Mama’s Number Two, the Red Pole executioner, Lee Fong, had been unsuccessfully looking for Hatcher for almost two years. Finally he had him in sight, had been tailing him for days, waiting for the right moment to kill him in the classic manner, a stiletto placed carefully at the base of the neck, cutting the nervous system and jugular at the same time — an act to save face and prove to White Powder Mama that he was still worthy to be the Silk Dragon’s Number Two.

Hatcher had been on to him from the start, knew that Fong had to prove himself. A contact killing was called for, so it was easy for Hatcher to lure hint on.

Hatcher went to the observation deck. It was getting dark and the platform was empty. He watched a jet take off, heard the door open behind him and swish shut, heard the footsteps moving closer. He stooped down, as if to tie his shoe. The footsteps quickened. They were directly behind him.

Hatcher twisted and stood in one swift move, burying a seven-inch stiletto under the rib cage and jamming it up into Fong’s heart, staring straight into Fong’s face, so close he felt the rush of the Silk Dragon executioner’s dying breath on his face, and trapping Fong’s hand in a steel grip until he felt the life drop out of the assassin’s body.

‘Joi-gin, Fong,’ he said as he dropped him.

Two weeks later, White Powder Mama was dead on the streets of Wanchai, machine-gunned coming out of a nightclub. The reign of the Silk Dragons was ended. The White Palms took over and, to show their compassion, absorbed many of the Silk Dragons’ members.

One of them was Tollie Fong, Lee Fong’s son. Now, twelve years later, he was the Red Pole of the White Palm Triad, and was about to become its leader. As the White Palm assassin, Tollie Fong was perhaps the most dangerous man in the world. As san wong his power was awesome. And his Number One in Hong Kong was Joe Lung, the last remaining member of the Dragon’s Breath, the only one to escape Hatcher’s guerrillas.

Both had sworn to kill Hatcher on sight.

They operated out of Macao.

And all Hatcher’s clicks told him that if this Varney knew he was in Hong Kong, the White Palms probably did too.

hijacking their goods,’ Varney was saying. ‘Beg your pardon?’ said Hatcher.

‘I said, apparently they still hold it against you, hijacking their goods, I mean.’

The secret had been well kept. As far as Varney or Hong Kong or even Interpol knew, Hatcher had been a bad-ass who was now cooperating with the government. Hatcher knew Varney wasn’t there just to offer the ‘courtesy of the Crown.’ He was there to size up Hatcher, decide whether he was one of the good guys or still potentially a bad guy. That was okay, too.

Sergeant Varney was smart enough to realize that Hatcher did not welcome his help or his interest. This was a dangerous man.

‘I suggest you be extremely careful while you’re in the colony,’ Varney said, walking to the door. ‘You are still high on Tollie Fong’s death list. If either he or Joe Lung finds out you are in Hong Kong, they will stop at nothing to kill you. Needless to say, as a police officer I would prefer to prevent that.’

‘I appreciate your interest,’ Hatcher said. ‘As I told you, we’ll both be out of here in a day or two. I’ll try to keep a low profile.’

Varney handed Hatcher his card. ‘If you should need help, just call. My night number is on the back. I assure you, we will respond as quickly as possible.’

The sergeant marched stiffly to the door and left with a short bow.

Hatcher was suspicious and annoyed by the intrusion.

‘I got things to do here, Harry,’ Hatcher said. ‘I definitely don’t need this Limey ramrod crawling up my back.’

‘Just don’t go snooping around Macao, okay?’ Sloan said.

‘Don’t worry about me—’

‘Keep away from Tollie Fong and the triads.’

‘I don’t want to run into Fong and his buddies.’

‘You’ll end up floating in the bay. I’d hate like hell to have to explain that.’

‘That’s really sentimental of you.’

‘You know what I mean.’

‘I know exactly what you mean. And I’m not going to end up floating anywhere.’

‘Start messing with the White Palms, you’re as good as dead.’

‘That’s not the way it happened last time.’

‘Don’t get cocky either,’ said Sloan softly. ‘Tollie Fong is the man in the White Palm Triad now and Joe Lung is his number one boy in Hong Kong. And they both have sworn to dust you. You’re not in Bangkok by Saturday, I’ll have the dogs out after you.’

‘I’ll meet you at the Imperial,’ Hatcher whispered. ‘The D’Jit Pochana for breakfast Saturday morning, usual time.’

‘Sure.’

‘One other thing. Get that whiz kid you got in the States, Flitcraft, to check his computer. See if there’s anything on a Vietnam POW camp that was a floater. It moved around. I’m guessing it was a temporary holding camp near the Laotian border. It might have been called the Ghost Camp or something like that.’

‘I’ll see what he can turn up. I’ll have him call you direct.’

‘I’ve got his number. I’ll call him.’

‘All right,’ Sloan said after a moment’s thought. ‘Just be careful.’

‘I’ve never stopped being careful,’ Hatcher answered.

Hatcher turned, went back into his room and closed the door behind him. He didn’t bother to shake hands.

He stepped out on his balcony and looked across the bay at Victoria Peak and Cohen’s mountaintop fortress. A lot of things had changed in the last hour. Now he knew he had to see Cohen.

Every man must pay for his sins, 126 had once said.

The question in Hatcher’s mind was, Who was the sinner, who had been sinned against, and who was going to have to pay?

OPTIONS

Hatcher’s clicks were working overtime. Sloan would have the police version of what happened and background on Wol Pot by the time Hatcher got to Bangkok, so there was no need worrying about that now. If they had lost Wol Pot, Hatcher had to take his other options. But they were risky and they were long shots. The question he asked himself was, Should he trash the project and go back to Georgia? Suddenly the Cody job had taken a bad turn. The complexities were growing. One man had been murdered and now the Hong Kong Triad Squad appeared to be involved. Varney’s ‘social’ call had immediately fired more danger signals in Hatcher’s head. This was no longer a simple trace job. It had turned lethal.

He formed his plan quickly, based on logic. If the Vietnam ghost camp described by Schwartz did exist, there were people upriver in Chin Chin land who would know about it. That meant he would need Cohen’s help. Hatcher decided to make contact with his old friend, then wait and see if Flitcraft turned up anything interesting.

He stared up at the top of Victoria Peak, at the house he knew was Cohen’s, wondering whether the years had changed him. Was he still as powerfu1 as he had once been? Hatcher wondered. And what of Daphne?

Could he still trust any of his old friends?

He dialed a number he still remembered after all the years. A high-pitched voice answered in Chinese: ‘Jo sahn.’

‘Cheap bastard,’ Hatcher growled. ‘Still too cheap to spring for a secretary after all these years. And that phony Chin soprano of yours doesn’t fool ne.’

There was a long pause, then an awed voice almost whispered, ‘Christian?’

‘Ah. You haven’t forgotten,’ Hatcher whispered in return.

‘Christian!’ Cohen shouted. ‘Christ, I heard you were dead.’

‘That’s what you get for listening to rumours.’

‘My God, I can’t believe this. Are you here?’

‘Over at the old standby.’

‘What’re you whispering for, you in trouble?’ Cohen asked in a very confidential tone.

‘It’s a long story and, no, I’m not in trouble — at least not yet.’

‘Get your ass over here now! God, wait till I tell Tiana. I can’t believe this, man, I can’t fucking believe it! Hatcher, back from the dead!’

China Cohen’s excitement seemed genuine, and Hatcher felt better after he hung up. In his heart, he believed that Cohen was still a loyal friend. But this was Hong Kong. Allegiances changed a quickly as the wind.

Joe Lung never got up before noon. He spent his evenings in Monitor’s casino or doing his rounds of the various nightclubs. If the pickings were slim, he usually ended the night in one of the various whorehouses in Macao. Lung rarely got to bed before three or four in the morning, and he rarely changed the routine unless there was a job to do.

He lived in one of the new condos that were already beginning to destroy the centuries-old beauty of Macao, the tiny city at the gateway to China.

He stirred and reached over, touching the woman beside him. She was a blonde, a beauty he had picked up the night before in the Fire Duck Club. Lung liked the gwai-lo women, and this one was wilder than usual. She moaned and turned over on her back, still asleep, and he rolled over on his side and pressed against her, sliding his hand across the top of the silk sheet. He began to stroke her awake.

The phone began to ring. Annoyed, he turned away from the woman and gruffly answered it.

‘Hatcher is here. Room 512, the Peninsula,’ the voice on the other end said in Chinese.

Lung sat straight up in bed. ‘No mistake?’ There was urgency in his voice.

‘No mistake. It is Hatcher.’

‘Is he there now?’

‘Hai, but who knows for how long.’

‘Mm goi,’ Lung said and hung up. Lung’s pulse was racing. Lung long ago had given up any hope of avenging the murder of his partners by Hatcher. Then Tollie Fong had sworn to kill him, and since Fong was his boss, the possibility of revenge became more remote. He lay back on the bed and stared at the ceiling, smiling, for Tollie Fong was out of town. What a sweet surprise it would be, thought Lung, to stick the gwai-lo before Fong got back. Otherwise Tollie Fong would perform the execution himself.

The girl responded to his overtures. She was fascinated by the green dagger tattooed on his forearm, aroused by his muscular body, and she found his faulty attempts to speak English attractive. It was a new experience for her, making love to someone whose culture was so totally alien to hers. At first she was frightened by his gruff manner, afraid that perhaps he was into some strange Oriental sex rites and would hurt her. But it was just his manner, and it had turned out to be one of the most satisfying sexual experiences of her life. She leaned over and began to stroke the inside of his thigh. He slapped her on the rump. ‘We will have again later,’ he said in English. ‘I do business now.’

After he had sent her back to the hotel, Lung took an ice-cold shower. He toweled off, opened a chest in the corner of the bedroom, and slid a long, narrow dagger out of its soft calfskin sheath. He tied the sheath to his left forearm, covering the tattoo, then got dressed in traditional Chinese workingman’s clothes, black sateen pants and a shirt with wide sleeves. He studied himself in the mirror, shifted his gaze to the reflection of a dart board behind him on the wall.

Lung folded his arms across his chest, then whirled, lashing out his right arm, pulling the dagger and snapping it across the room. The silver blade flashed in the morning sun, hit the board dead center and stuck there, its handle quivering.

Lung smiled and uttered a tight little grunt of satisfaction. What was it the gwai-lo said? Practice does perfection?

Hatcher had checked his main bags through to Bangkok, so he had only an overnight bag with a change of clothes and the usual overnight necessities in it and his Halliburton case. He took both when he left the room. He went first to the wine store in the lobby of the hotel, a connoisseur’s shop, and bought a bottle of wine, a Lafite Rothschild ‘72, that seemed to fit the occasion. When he left the hotel, he walked around the corner from the hotel and strolled up Nathan Street, window-shopping while he checked behind him in the window reflections. By the time he reached Kowloon Park four blocks away he had spotted the car.

Two men. One in the car, the other on foot. One Oriental, one Occidental. In five blocks they switched off twice. Pretty good.

Hatcher was sure these were Varney’s men, and now he became even more suspicious of the Hong Kong cop. It was possible that a computer had turned up Hatcher’s name. But after all these years, it did not make sense for them to be this interested in him. Cops throughout the world were overworked. It was highly suspect for them to be ‘protecting’ Hatcher without his request.

He walked across the park, doubled back down Kowloon Drive to the Star Ferry slip and boarded the ferry, standing near the stern, staring out over the bay. To Hatcher’s surprise, the two men did not follow him. The man on foot got in the car; they drove off up Salisbury Road as the ferry pulled out.

They were very good, Hatcher thought to himself. By now they’ve alerted their people on the island. The new tail would be waiting for Hatcher when he got there. He would have to play the game again when he got to the island. He did not want Varney and the Triad Squad to know he was going to visit the Tsu Fi.

Joe Lung entered the hotel through the servants’ entrance. Because of his dress, he was easily mistaken for one of the laborers that worked around the hotel. Lung went straight to the fifth floor and quickly, silently, picked the lock on Hatcher’s door. He let the door glide open, standing alert as it did, then jumped inside and closed it just as silently. He entered the room cautiously, checked it thoroughly.

Hatcher was not there, nor was his luggage.

Lung stood in the middle of the room thinking. Had Hatcher left the city? Perhaps he was on the way to the airport at that moment.

Lung went to the lobby and checked the desk from the house phone. Had Mr Hatcher in 512 checked out? No, the desk answered.

The temporary setback had no visible effect on Lung. He was a patient man accustomed to setbacks. They were easily overcome. But he might have to change his plan. Obviously the job was going to require different tactics.

When the ferry docked, Hatcher strolled off and turned right, heading west on Connaught Street toward the downtown section. There was a cool breeze blowing, and he was surrounded by the sounds of Hong Kong, by music and taxi horns, laughter and ship’s bells, by the rustle of banyan trees and the constant undertone of conversation.

He acted like a tourist, strolling past the nightclubs of Wanchai, where Suzie Wong had fallen in love with an American GI and died for her sin. American music blared from loudspeakers outside the doors of the clubs, and the girls wore American jeans and had had their eyes straightened.

As he got closer to the business district the crowds increased, until he had to thread his way along the street, stopping occasionally to check behind him. There were two men assigned to him again, using the same routine. By the time he reached the shabby gate that marked the beginning of notorious Cat Street he was trapped in the steamy crowd of tourists heading up the steep, winding street choked with shops, seeking bargains.

Hatcher turned into the crowded thoroughfare, moving along with the shoulder-to-shoulder crowd. He approached the acupuncture parlor where he had first met Cohen, thought about the dusty office with the uncomfortable chairs, and considered cutting through it to throw off his tail. No, he thought, too obvious.

Instead, Hatcher leaned over and bent his knees slightly, making himself shorter so that his head was below the level of the rest of the crowd. He continued to walk in that fashion for nearly a city block until he came to a tiny clothing store jammed between other shops. The store was so cluttered with goods Hatcher could not see beyond the display window. He dodged quickly inside.

The tail lost Hatcher in the Cat Street crowd. Then he thought he saw Hatcher dodge into a shop. He rushed ahead, elbowing pedestrians out of the way.

The tiny store was crammed with racks of jeans and sport clothes. Shirts and blouses were stacked from floor to ceiling and shoppers stood elbow to elbow looking for bargains. Hatcher had gone straight through the store out the back door, had turned back in the narrow alley to Connaught Street and jumped in the first rickshaw he saw. He leaned back in the seat, out of view.

‘To the tram, and hurry,’ he told the rickshaw boy in Chinese. He didn’t look back.

Back up Cat Street, the man following him stepped out the back door of the clothing shop and looked both ways. There was no sign of Hatcher. He pulled out his walkie-talkie and pressed the button.

‘He ditched me,’ he said with disgust.

The rickshaw boy trotted rhythmically down Connaught Street to Garden and turned up to the entrance to the Victoria Peak Tram. Hatcher paid him and got out, looking back down the street. Just the usual traffic.

So far, so good, he thought and entered the tram.

THE WHITE TSU FH

From the balcony of his home on the side of Victoria Peak, Cohen watched the tram rise up the side of the mountain. He had seen Hatcher arrive in the rickshaw and board the funicular. Cohen also scanned the street and park below to see if anyone might be following his friend. He saw nothing suspicious. But with Hatcher, one could never be sure, and now, to suddenly appear after all the years, Cohen wondered what his old friend was up to.

Cohen’s mind drifted back in time, to a dark night upriver when his friendship with Hatcher had first begun to blossom.

Cohen was coming back down from the Ts’e K’am Men Ti with a load of contraband goods when a boatload of maverick river pirates had loomed up behind him and fired several warning shots in the air. Cohen had only half a dozen men with him. After all, nobody, nobody, attacked the Tsu Fi, a fact that unfortunately had eluded the bunch of river scum. They ordered his two boats to heave to.

Then Cohen heard the deep roar of engines and a coal-black gunboat materialized out of the darkness. It had the profile of an American riverboat but had no markings. Standing on the bow was the white man he had seen upriver a few months earlier. He dredged the name from his memory: Hatcher. A dozen armed brigands were lined up along the rail of Hatcher’s boat. Then Cohen noticed that the gunner manning the M-60 in the gun tower was wearing a shirt with Army stripes on the sleeve. A sergeant? Were these American soldiers? he had wondered. Nobody else was wearing a uniform. Hatcher wore camouflaged pants and an olive drab tank top, but so did everybody else these days. There was some conversation, and although Cohen could not hear Hatcher, whatever he said had been effective. The pirates had turned to and headed back upriver. Hatcher pulled alongside Cohen’s tiny but elegant snake boat.

‘We meet again,’ he said with a grin.

‘So we do, mate, so we do,’ said Cohen. ‘And just where the hell did you come from, not that I’m complaining?’

‘We’ve been a mile or so behind you for the last hour,’ Hatcher answered. ‘Then those bows pulled out of a creek and dropped on your stern, so I figured we better check it out.’

‘I owe you,’ Cohen said with a bow.

‘I’ll remember that,’ Hatcher said. ‘Come aboard, I’ll buy you a drink.’

The gunboat had been customized by Hatcher and his men. It was a sleek, fast-moving craft built for action and little else. It had skimpy quarters for the crew but a large, amply supplied kitchen, more guns and armor plate than a tank, and was painted coal-black. Hatcher’s crew of a dozen bearded GIs was as motley as the gangsters he had just chased away. Hatcher led Cohen to his spartan quarters, a small cabin with a liquor cabinet, a desk covered with homemade river charts, and a hammock strung from the rafters. Cohen knew better than to ask his host any direct questions. Hatcher took a bottle of gin from the cabinet and poured them both a generous slug.

‘Where you headed?’ Cohen asked cautiously.

‘Back into Hong Kong for a little R and R,’ Hatcher answered.

Cohen’s face brightened. ‘Ah, I’m delighted. Now there’s an area in which I am truly an expert,’ he said. ‘You will be my guest while you’re in the colony. I insist.,

Hatcher smiled and hoisted his drink. ‘Who could turn down an offer like that?’ he answered.

For the next two weeks, Cohen had entertained Hatcher like a crown prince. They had raised hell from Macao to Kowloon. A sweet time, a time to develop mutual trust and confidence. They became comrades. For Cohen a first, while for Hatcher, Cohen was his first true friend since Murph Cody. Cohen tutored his friend on the operations of the Hong Kong triads while Hatcher regularly supplied Cohen with information about the whereabouts of the British customs patrols. But what had cemented their friendship was that they genuinely liked each other. The two loners traded personal confidences and their friendship had matured in a way that endured through the years. While Cohen was the Tsu Fi and could travel the rivers with immunity from Sam-Sam Sam’s interference, he always had the feeling Hatcher was somewhere nearby just in case he got into trouble.

Then, as suddenly as he had appeared on the river, Hatcher had vanished without a word. Good-byes were not Hatcher’s style.

Now Cohen’s pulse quickened at the prospect of seeing his friend again.

Hatcher, too, was excited at the thought of seeing the white Tsu Fi. After his first meeting with the little man, he had asked about him on his occasional forays into Hong Kong. There were vague rumors about him, but he heard nothing specific until one night when he was having a drink with a group of reporters in the Godown Bar on Connaught Street. It was a favorite hangout because of the live American Dixieland band and the generous drinks. There, a boozy ex-reporter named Charlie Rawlson perked up when Hatcher mentioned Cohen.

‘I knew him when,’ he said over a glass of Bombay gin and lemon juice. ‘I was at Harvard with him.’

‘Harvard!’ said Sid Barnaby, a Time magazine correspondent.

‘Nieman fellow,’ Rawlson said ‘with a flourish.

‘Back in the late sixties,’ Rawlson began. ‘At the time, Cohen was kinda the campus joke. You’d see the little bugger dashin’ across Harvard Square with his briefcase hugged up against his chest like he was afraid somebody would run off with it, hidin’ behind this fringy little beard of his, with never a word for anyone. Had all the social grace of a friggin’ water buffalo, he did. His old man was a hotshot Westchester lawyer or something. And old Cohen did his parents proud. Summa cum at Princeton, a DBA from Harvard. When he got his doctorate, every big company in the country lined up to interview him. Then they found out he was a brain without an ounce of social grace, a genius who could hardly say hello to a stranger. He was written off as a reclusive looney tune. Actually he was just shy, is what he was. Shy ‘.vas invented to describe old Cohen.’

‘So what happened?’ Hatcher as}ed.

‘His parents decided what he needed was a round-the- world cruise to get him back in the social world. “Time you had a little fun,” his father tells him. “Find yourself a nice lady and see how the other half lives.” Well, the old boy could not have conceived the limits to which Cohen would carry that bit of advice. That was the last I heard of him until about a year ago I see him waltz out of a bank on Connaught wearing a red silk cheongsam. He gets in a Rolls-Royce and tools off. God knows what happened in all those years in between.’

Later, Cohen had filled in the blanks for Hatcher.

On his balcony, Cohen, too, was reminiscing, remembering the first time he had ever seen Hong Kong harbor. He had hidden in his cabin all the way from San Francisco, terrified of facing all the strangers on the enormous ship. The first night in, he sneaked out on deck to take a look around and was awestruck by the towering mountain peak, the blazing lights of the city and the sampans that surrounded the big ship with the children yelling for a handout. That was when Cohen was spotted by a purser named Ringer, a seasoned and perverse hand, who genuinely felt sorry for Cohen.

‘See here, sir, I’m going over to the Central District by myself— care to come along?’

Cohen, nervous but interested: ‘That’s the business district, isn’t it?’

Ringer: ‘Yes, but there are other things to see. I thought you might enjoy going to Fat Lady Lau’s House of Orchids.’

Cohen: ‘Is that a restaurant?’

Ringer, that rogue: ‘Well, uh, I suppose you might call it that.’

Restaurant indeed. Fat Lady Lau’s was perhaps the greatest whorehouse in the world and Ringer led him to it, believing he was going over to the island for egg rolls and chop suey. The moment Cohen entered the double doors of Fat Lady Lau’s his life changed. His sexual imagination was ignited and a new door opened for Cohen.

He smiled to himself as he remembered that night. The living room was lit by pink candles, and Chinese minstrels played somewhere out of sight. The buffet! The buffet was a succulent miracle. Every imaginable delicacy was on that table. Caviar from Black Sea sturgeon, garlicky sparrow’s wings the way they do it in Canton, shark’s fin and mushroom soup spiced with Chinese vinegar, slices of Peking duck served on bao bing and chun juan rolls stuffed with curried pork and squid, vegetables steamed in champagne.

And the women! Cohen was mesmerized. They were all revealed in that soft, flickering candlelight — tantalizing shadows and each one an individual, each dressed in her own manner, under the approving eye of Fat Lady.

One was wearing a naughty French nightgown, another a lacy thing with nothing under it, still another a black garter belt and corset, There was a tall Peruvian beauty wearing a high-necked Victorian blouse and not another stitch, a Nubian princess wearing a teddy as thin as air. There were women from every remote corner of the world. Eurasians and Japanese and Chinese and Thais and Egyptians and Greeks and French. There were Africans and Israelis. There was even an American Indian princess and a pair of Eskimo twins they called the Mucklucks, who always performed together in a mirrored room.

My rite of passage was a truly remarkable experience, thought Cohen with a smile.

Fat Lady Lau, who was anything but — as tall and slender as a French model, all high cheekbones and broad shoulders — was the one untouchable prize in a place where everything else was given away or for sale.

‘Why do they call her Fat Lady?’ Cohen asked.

Ringer replied, ‘Because this, my friend, is what fat city is all about.’

Her trained eyes immediately recognized Cohen as a virgin, and she chose a rare prize for him. She left the room and returned with Tiana. Cohen relished the memory — that tiny thing, shorter than Cohen, a mere child of sixteen, wrapped in a sarong, her hair combed in a tight little bun held in place by orchids and azaleas, with black bangs brushed down over her forehead. She smiled at Cohen, the softest smile he had ever seen, then she reached out and took his hand — and led him to paradise. She led him up to her room and Cohen could remember vividly every candlelit corner, the colors of the down pillows piled in one corner, the large old-fashioned tub with brass legs in the other, remembered her selecting each morsel of the delicacies set on a table and feeding it to him, mixing the tastes with such talent that simply eating was an aphrodisiac.

Then she slowly undressed him, massaging every muscle in his body before she reached up and removed the combs and flowers from her black hair and let it tumble down over her shoulders. Then she sat up, unwound the sarong and dropped it on the floor and stood there letting him admire her body before she led him to the tub, which was filled with mud so hot he could hardly bear it, then tantalizing him and then screwing him until he was close to insanity. Cohen’s blood thundered through his veins as he remembered it.

Cohen never left. Never went back to the boat, or any of the boats after that. His world became Hong Kong and that Victorian mansion in Wanchai, sampling, sampling, sampling, learning to speak of love in every language and making love in every marvelously deviate way imaginable.

And then Cohen discovered something else about himself, a side of his personality that had lain dormant for twenty-seven years. He discovered that at heart he was a born scoundrel to whom a scam was far more interesting than the market or dollar fluctuations or commodities. Cohen discovered smuggling, brokering illegal gold, outwitting the customs boats to bring contraband into the colony. He also learned that in the Crown Colony, information was as valuable as goods. He and Tiana became friends as well as lovers. She taught him Chinese, he taught her English. The Oriental life-style was like a magnet to him.

It was from the Chinese that Cohen first heard about the Tsu Fi, the Old Man Who Bites Like a Dragon. The Tsu Fi dallied with the taipans of the Central District through silken puppet strings, they said. No secrets were denied him. He was feared by the most powerful of the Western robber barons. To cross the Tsu Fi, they said, was to cross the gods. In Cohen’s mind, the Tsu Fi was the gatekeeper to the pantheon. Meeting him and sharing his secrets became Cohen’s obsession. But the Tsu Fi was difficult and did not trust gwai-k foreigners.

One night at Fat Lady Lau’s, Tiana opened the door to the pantheon.

A customer who came occasionally had confided that a rich woman had hired him to kill her husband. She knew few details except that the woman’s name was the same as a flower’s. Cohen checked Toole’s Guide to the Crown, the definitive business reference book for Hong Kong. And there it was:

Hampton-Rhodes Overseas T’ransport, Ltd. President and Chief Executive Officer: Charles Rhodes. Originally Hampton Shipping and Transport, Ltd. Founded 1934, registry: Aberdeen. Founder, Jonathan Hampton, died: 1978. Name changed: 1979. Married: Iris (née Hampton), daughter of founder: 1975.

He checked with friends in the banking towers of Connaught Street and that night he asked Tiana to arrange an audience with the Tsu Fi.

‘But, Robert, he will not do business with gwai-lo.’

‘Tell him this gwai-lo can make him richer,’ said Cohen confidently.

The plan was audacious, which was one of the reasons it had appealed to Cohen. But he knew business, that was one thing he knew very well. What a coup if this gwai-lo could learn the Tsu Fi’s secrets.

The office of the Tsu Fi was on noisy, cluttered Cat Street over the shop of an acupuncturist. The Tsu Fi had operated out of the same two rooms since anyone could remember. The sign on the door, which was in Chinese characters, said simply, ‘Wong,’ and below it, ‘Spices.’

Cohen was nervous, but he knew he couldn’t show it. After climbing the stairs, he stood outside the door, breathing deeply, humming slowly to himself to bring his pulse down before he entered and found himself in a small anteroom no larger than a

clothes closet. Through the door he could see into the Tsu Fi’s office, which was not much larger. Obviously the old man did not go in for show.

The Tsu Fi sat with his back to the window behind a simple mahogany desk, which was empty except for an abacus on one side and an old-fashioned black cradle phone. A single chair sat in front of the table. Sunlight shimmered around his chair and dust hung heavily in its bright beams. There was a teak strongbox in one corner and a small table with a tea set on it in the opposite side of the room. That was it.

The Tsu Fi looked ancient, although he was erect and his eyes glittered. His skin was totally free of wrinkles and almost transparent, like waxed paper holding together his delicate bones. His hair was pure white and close-cropped and he was clean-shaven. He stared at Cohen for several seconds before raising his hand and motioning him into the room with a single stroke of a forefinger. Cohen approached the table and held out his hand.

‘Jam Robert Cohen,’ he said in perfect mandarin.

The Tsu Fi ignored Cohen’s hand and instead held his own out at a very precise angle in the beams of sunlight that sliced through the dust. He studied the shadow on the floor.

‘At least you are punctual,’ he said in a high-pitched voice and motioned Cohen to the empty chair.

The Tsu Fi folded his hands on his desk and said, ‘So?’

Cohen cleared his throat. He had practiced what he wanted to say and he leaned back, trying to be comfortable in a chair that defied comfort, and began, ‘I have information I think can be useful to both of us. It has come to me that a man in business here is going to be murdered. His wife will pay for the killing.’

The old man stared at him without a flicker of a muscle, his eyes boring straight into Cohen’s.

‘The man is inept and lazy. He drinks too much and cheats on his wife. Her father started the business. He is dead now. The company is in deep trouble. But if this man dies, then she inherits his stock and control of the company. With him out of the way, she will be free to hire new people and reorganize.

Their assets are very strong. As I see it, two things can happen. Either the company will get back on its feet, or a consortium will take it over.’

‘Is there not a third possibility?’ the Tsu Fi asked.

‘You mean bankruptcy? Unlikely. This woman has her own resources. I doubt that she would go to this extreme unless she had a plan for getting the company back together.’

‘What does this mean to me?’ the old man asked.

Cohen, smiling, leaned forward. ‘Us?’ he suggested.

‘I have no interest in this paper market of yours, American. It is a Westerner’s game I do not play.’

‘I understand it,’ Cohen said assertively. ‘Tsu Fi, if we wait until this stock dips down — say, eight points — then put, say, half a million in, the stock should rise sharply when the reorganization begins.’

‘And how long would that take?’

‘Six months, maybe seven.’

‘And what do you think it will go to?’

‘I estimate it should go up at least twenty points.’

The Tsu Fi’s fingers raced across his abacus.

‘Two, two and a half million in six months,’ Cohen went on, although he realized the Tsu Fi was already ahead of him.

‘I would stay on top of it every day and sell at the perfect moment,’ Cohen continued.

‘And what do you want?’

Cohen leaned forward, eyes aglow. ‘Half the profit,’ he said confidently.

The Tsu Fi glared at him. There was a minute of silence before he slowly shook his head. ‘No_’

‘All right, a third, then,’ Cohen quickly countered. ‘You make two million, I make six hundred thousand. I’ll round it off. Half a million.’

‘You give up a hundred thousand dollars very easily,’ the Tsu Fi said.

‘It is easy to give up money one does not yet have,’ Cohen answered.

The Tsu Fi smiled for the first time. The gwai-lo was arrogant, but the Tsu Fi also knew about him. He was very smart. He knew this kind of business. What was more important, this Cohen had proved he knew how to use information. He could deal with the arrogance, although it would be necessary to teach him a lesson. Perhaps this Cohen could open up new doors for him, doors he had avoided in the past. The thought of a new venture stirred his blood.

‘And you feel no obligation to try to prevent this execution?’ the Tsu Fi asked.

‘It is a family affair.’ Cohen shrugged matter-of-factly. ‘Besides, if I went to the police it would cause problems for my friends.’

The Tsu Fi stroked his chin, still staring unflinchingly at Cohen.

‘How soon?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know that, but when Rhodes dies, the stock will dip and we must be ready.’

‘And if this paper does not turn around?’

Cohen smiled and raised his shoulders. ‘Then I assume I would be in a great deal of trouble. Jam prepared to take that risk.’

The Tsu Fi nodded very slowly. ‘Tell me when you are ready,’ he said. ‘I will give you my answer then.’

‘It will be too late for me to find another investor then,’ Cohen said.

‘You want an immediate decision?’ the old man said with surprise.

‘If you are not interested, Tsu Fi, I’ll have to find someone else.’

The Tsu Fi stared at him again, appraising the arrogant young man.

‘Then my answer is no,’ the old man said.

It threw Cohen off, but he knew the old Chinese was interested in the proposition. If I walk, will he change his mind or just dismiss the idea? he wondered. Cohen was committed. To back off now would be a sign of weakness, and he was more interested in gaining the Tsu Fi’s confidence than he was in the deal itself

‘Well, I am sorry I wasted your time, sir,’ Cohen said and stood up to leave. The Tsu Fi held his hand out into the sunbeam again and stared at the floor.

‘Good-bye,’ he said.

Cohen turned and went to the door and suddenly the Tsu Fi called out to him: ‘Mr Cohen, your face is beginning to sag. Stop downstairs. The man’s name is Ping. Tell him I said you require the needles.’

Cohen followed his advice, He sat in an old-fashioned barber’s chair while the acupuncturist inserted the long, delicate needles carefully in all the secret places. Cohen felt himself relaxing. He sat for thirty minutes with his eyes closed. When Ping withdrew the needles, Cohen opened his eyes. The Tsu Fi was standing in front of him.

‘Keep me informed,’ he said, ‘The money will be available.’ And he left the room.

Cohen ran after him. ‘Sir?’ he called out as the Tsu Fi was going back upstairs.

The old man turned and glared down at him. Cohen took a folded paper from his pocket and held it out to the old man.

‘I, uh, took the liberty of preparing a contract —just to define our arrangement,’ he said.

The Tsu Fi snorted and snatched the paper out of his hand, He wheeled around. ‘Come,’ he snapped. Cohen followed him up the stairs.

The old man took out a match and burned the contract without reading it. His eyes glittered in the dusty sunlight. ‘Now you know what paper is worth,’ he said curtly. ‘And never sign anything, your mark will follow you to Heaven.’

Nine days after Cohen and the Tsu Fi met, Charles Rhodes was killed in an automobile accident. The stock dropped to five before Cohen decided to buy.

After an announced reorganization, it jumped, climbing to twenty-four-plus before it leveled off The Tsu Fi was delighted, having bitten the dragon for a little over two million. Cohen hurried to the Cat Street office to collect his half million.

The Tsu Fi slid ten thousand dollars across the table.

‘What’s this, a down payment?’ Cohen said with a laugh.

‘It is fair payment for what you did,’ said the Tsu Fi.

Cohen leaped to his feet, enraged. ‘You’re the one who told me paper wasn’t worth a damn. I trusted you!’

‘Another lesson,’ said the old man. ‘Never trust anyone.’ He held his hand out to check the time.

‘Put the hand down,’ Cohen snapped. ‘You owe me half a million dollars.’

The Thu Fi looked up at him. ‘Do you want to earn your money or do you want to yell and scream?’ the old man said.

Cohen calmed down. He sat back down, staring at the old con artist.

‘You have much to learn about our ways, American,’ the Tsu Fi said. ‘But you have talent. When you learn, half a million dollars will seem insignificant.’

Thus Cohen became the protégé of the Tsu Fi. He opened his own office, a single room on the edge of the Wanchai district with three telephones and a computer. He did all his business himself, another of the Tsu Fi’s lessons (‘Never share your secrets with anyone.’) The Tsu Fi’s advice became Cohen’s bible. Then one day his mentor summoned him to the Cat Street office.

‘It is time for you to go up the Macao Runs,’ the Tsu Fi said. Cohen was shaken by the news. It never occurred to him the Tsu Fi would send him upriver into Chin Chin land.

‘Why?’ he asked.

‘If it is necessary to ask, perhaps I am sending the wrong person,’ the Tsu Fi said. ‘You are my new negotiator. You must win these China pirates with bravado, show no fear. This is business. The price of goods. You have a taste for money, American. You are getting rich, but it will require some discomfort.’

The Tsu Fi gave him a Queen Victoria twenty-dollar gold piece.

‘This says you speak for me,’ he said. ‘In the past my men have not done well in their negotiations. They do not trust their own thoughts and they agree too quickly. You are the nobleman of negotiators, gwai-lo, you must make new deals that are better.’

‘Then we need to sweeten the pot,’ Cohen suggested.

Sweeten the pot? What pot?’

‘Offer them something better than the others who are doing business on the river.’

‘And what would that be?’ asked the Tsu Fi.

‘I’m thinking,’ Cohen said.

‘Think quickly,’ said the Tsu Fi. ‘You go tonight.’

And that was the night Cohen first met Hatcher.

Cohen became the white Tsu Fi. He had his own men on the river. He was respected by the Ts’e K’am Men Ti and feared by the Hong Kong taipans. His contacts upriver in Red China were impeccable. But mostly he traded in information. Cohen was a clearinghouse for every personal and business rumor in the colony.

If there was a major problem, the taipans turned to him.

They called him China Cohen.

He loved every minute of it,

When Hatcher got to the top of the mountain, he strolled around the side of the peak to Albany Road, near the Botanical Gardens. Cohen’s house stood near the edge of the peak.

He was deep in thought, but not too deep to miss the car parked far above him at the entrance to the Botanical Gardens, or the driver watching him through binoculars.

OLD TIMES, NEW TIMES

Hatcher stood in front of the large iron gates that led to Cohen’s mountaintop estate. The wall that surrounded it was eight feet high. The iron grille gates had once guarded the entrance to the castle of a Chinese warlord in Shanghai. Electric eyes and an electrified wire added a modern touch to the wall, although they were not visible from the ground.

He pressed the button in the wall beside the gate, and a moment later a guard appeared, staring at him through the grille.

‘Hai?’ the guard said.

‘Ngo hai gli Occhi di Sassi,’ Hatcher answered, using the nickname, ‘the Man With Stone Eyes,’ by which he was known on the river.

‘Deui mju,’ the guard said. He vanished for a few moments, then returned. ‘Ho,’ he said, bowing as the gates swung soundlessly open. ‘Cheng nei.’

The gates closed behind Hatcher, and he followed the guard down the winding road toward the house, which was hidden behind banyan and pine trees.

China Cohen had fashioned his sanctuary with taste and passion, a strange amalgam of Oriental cultures and religions, some from China, others from Thailand, Malaysia and Japan. The single-story white house sprawled at the edge of a precipice with a truly spectacular view of the harbor. The curved yellow Chinese tiles that covered the roof glittered like gold; two ferocious-looking marble temple dogs guarded the white façade of the house. On one side of the front walk was a Japanese stone garden, which had been raked with infinite care. On the other side was a garden ablaze with azaleas, roses and orchids. A six-foot long naga, the Thai serpent of good luck, jutted its green and yellow head from among the blossoms, flashing an evil grin that revealed rows of ivory teeth. Delicate, slender-leaved palm trees shaded the garden.

Wind chimes sang gently on either side of the gold and black lacquered doors, and delicately carved teak horns, called ham yon, the ‘sacred testicles,’ were placed over the doorway to the main room of the house because the virility of the master was believed to be stored there.

A large bronze lion’s head knocker announced his arrival. The door was opened by a small, wizened woman who looked a hundred years old and more Thai than Chinese. She was dressed simply, and she peered intently into Hatcher’s eyes for a moment and then smiled and bowed. ‘Welcome, Occhi di Sassi,’ she said.