Thai Horse

by William Diehl

  Dao was both surprised and pleased. Two new trucks in the bargain! ‘You are very generous, my friend,’ he said. ‘The Hsong will be most happy to work with Mr Kot.’

  ‘Mai,’ Fong said with a nod and rose. They left the hooch and Soon joined them as they walked back to the truck.

  Fong was pleased with his choice of Billy Kot and he slapped his new Red Pole on the arm.

  ‘You did very well in there,’ he said reassuringly. ‘I do not think you will have any problems.’

  ‘Mm goi,’ Billy Kot said with a wai.

  ‘One hundred and fifty kilos of pure for a hundred forty thousand dollars and two trucks,’ Fong said. ‘What does that come to, White Fan?’

  The Fan had already figured up the profit, based on the morning street price in Manhattan. He flashed his fingers in the code. ‘Three million, seven hundred thousand dollars,’ Fong said, beaming. ‘Fair work for one day.’

  Wherever there were human beings, there were dope traders ready to prey on them. In the Hotel Vitosha in Sofia or L’Hotel Pique in Marseilles or the Garden Hotel in Amsterdam, Syrians, Turks and Lebanese met with Chinese, Sicilian and American gangsters to trade in heroin, cocaine and marijuana. They were the power bosses of the dope trade. They had developed the shipping routes from the Orient to Amsterdam, London and Rome, and from there to major ports in North America, where one thousand kilos — 2,200 pounds — of heroin went for a billion dollars and change before it was even cut for the Street.

  Their partners were the Sicilians, for in the years since the end of the Vietnamese war they had made their agreements with the American mobsters and spread their deadly powder to most of the major cities in the United States.

  The drug lords had turned smuggling into a bizarre art, a deadly game of hide-and-seek between ‘mules,’ the couriers who did the actual heroin smuggling, and drug and customs agents. The lethal powder was smuggled in hollow gemstones, icons and statues. In Tampax and condoms. In dolls, books, diplomatic pouches, and major shipments of coffee, soybeans and bamboo. It was dissolved in water and then suitcases, paintings, rugs and clothing were soaked in it and carried or shipped into the United States. Smugglers buried it in the desert until they made their deals, then sent it across borders by feeding it to their camels, addicting them, and training them to follow specific routes in order to get more.

  For every drug bust there was a new scheme. For every pound that was confiscated, ten pounds got through.

  In Bangkok and Hong Kong, Tollie Fong and his White Palms had developed the most obscene and terrifying smuggling techniques of all. Now it was time to make a major drug move on the United States. They had almost three tons of 99.9 percent pure China White secreted in Bangkok ready for a mass shipment to America.

  The prediction made by Tollie Fong’s father twenty- three years earlier was finally coming true. The years had been good to them. And Fong had the perfect plan. It had been approved by the old san wong.

  Tollie Fong was positioned to make war on the sworn enemy of the Chiu Chaos, La Cosa Nostra — the Mafia.

  A SUGGESTION

  Earp came out of Sweets Wilkie’s office and went up the steps and through the glass beads into the Longhorn Saloon’s ‘Hole in the Wall.’ The Honorable was seated in his stuffed chair, his imposing presence making it seem like a throne. He was reading as usual. The fringed lamp was the only light on in the large alcove. There was no one else in the room, and the lights over both the poker and pool tables had been turned off. Earp pulled up a chair and sat down beside him.

  ‘Little late for you, isn’t it?’ he said.

  ‘I’m engrossed,’ the Honorable said, without looking up.

  ‘My man in Hong Kong just called.’

  ‘Urn-hum,’ the Honorable said, still reading his book.

  ‘A man named Hatcher is coming in on the morning plane. Hatcher is an assassin. He works for Sloan.’

  ‘Perhaps a coincidence?’

  ‘Not a chance. Sloan comes in. Now Hatcher follows him. No, he isn’t coming for the fucking waters.’

  ‘And this Hatcher is dangerous?’

  ‘He’s wasted half of Hong Kong in the last forty-eight hours. The guy’s a walking plague.’

  ‘Would you like a suggestion?’

  ‘Don’t I always?’

  The Honorable dipped his finger in wine, turned the page of his book and licked his finger. ‘Arrange for him to come here,’ he said. ‘Check him out up close and on friendly territory.’

  ‘That’s a little dangerous, isn’t it?’ Earp said. ‘Bringing him right into the living room?’

  ‘If he’s as dangerous as you say and he’s here to assassinate Thai Horse, he’s also very smart. He’ll wind up here sooner or later anyway.’

  The Honorable looked up and what might have passed for a smile crossed his lips.

  ‘As the Thais say, “It is easier to kill a friendly tiger than a mad dog.”

  KRUNG THEP

  Hatcher stirred as the 747 banked sharply and swept over Bangkok on its approach to the city and the flight attendant announced their approach to Don Muang airport. Still half asleep, Hatcher remembered Bangkok as a city of gold and silver temples, of spires and domes, and delicate, beautiful women, as fragile as china, swathed in radiant silk.

  He pulled back the curtain arid it was like looking down on a painting. Even in the gray predawn light with the sun a shimmering promise on the horizon, Bangkok was like a gleaming jewel in the palm of Buddha’s hand, and the Chao Phraya River was an endless life line stretching from little finger to thumb. Hundreds of golden domes and spires reached through the morning mist like flowers seeking the sun. It was these holy places and the canals which coursed through the city that defined Bangkok’s character and personality. Centuries ago there were no roads in Bangkok; its streets were dozens of canals called klongs that wound through it, their banks draped with flowers arid trees. Progress had changed that. A few major water arteries still served the city; the rest had been filled in to become boulevards and lanes. But the flowers remained and the streets were demarcated as much by orchids, bougainvillea and palm trees as they were by gutters and sidewalks. Through the mists of morning, Hatcher occasionally caught a glimpse of the canals jammed with slender, long-tailed hang yao laden with fresh fruit, flowers and wares as the river people made their way to the floating markets on the banks of the main river.

  As the plane began its descent the sun rose over the horizon, and the morning mist, set ablaze by the fires of dawn, turned to steam, vanished, and revealed in stunning glory a sparkling city of gold.

  This was a land so alien to Westerners that it was like flying into another planet. The tourists ‘oohed’ and ‘aahed’ at the sight. Everything below them seemed clean and fertile and seductive. And yet he knew that beneath the beauty there was also the agony of great poverty, that children bathed in their own refuse and were sold on the streets, that heroin was part of the rate of exchange, that there were sixty or seventy homicides a month, that the cold steel and mirrored glass towers of the Westerners were slowly corrupting Bangkok’s ancient and exquisite beauty, and that automobiles were polluting the city’s air. Perhaps, he thought, the Thais would tire of the foreigners and throw them out, as their ancestors had done two hundred years before when the farang had tried to replace the gentle compassion of Buddha with the rigid, intractable arrogance of Christianity.

  To survive as a farang in Bangkok, Westerners had to accept its philosophy even if they did not understand it. Here Buddha was the benevolent saint. Rich Thais bought buttons of gold leaf and pressed them on temples and icons. The poor covered statues with broken teacups. Everyone paid tribute and came to pray, to ask for favors from Buddha, for the Thais thought nothing of asking for a big fish on their line or a winning lottery ticket or a beautiful woman for the night or a handsome man to curl up with when the sun vanished. The subtleties were lost to those from the West whose God, modeled by pompous, arrogant, self-appointed intermediaries,
was an angry God, less compassionate, less forgiving, and devoid of any sense of humor. To the Thais, who believed the smile was born in their country, Buddha was a kind and generous God, capable of impish tricks, laughter and infinite joy, a God who asked nothing, demanded nothing, and smiled on those who laid tribute at his feet.

  Perhaps that is why, to the Thai, arguing was a sin, raising one’s voice was an insult, and anger was intolerable. One had to love a people whose philosophy of life was summed up by their reaction to almost everything: Mai pen rai— ‘Never mind.’ While Hatcher did not begin to understand the intricacies of Hinayana Buddhism, one thing he did understand was that Buddhists believed that our temporary existence on earth was uncertain at best; that concern was folly and anger was futile; that confrontation was an embarrassment, anxiety was a sin, and life was a process of forgiving. It was a philosophy be had tried to embrace, but there were psychological responses so ingrained in Westerners that it was difficult for a farang to ignore them.

  And while Hatcher had understood and tried to practice the Thai philosophy in the past, this time it was not working for him. He was overwhelmed with anxiety, and what he feared most was what he would learn about Cody in Bangkok. The closer the plane got to the airport, the more his anxiety grew. Even identifying his former friend would be a major problem. Would he still recognize Cody? It had been almost twenty years since he had last seen his friend. And he had probably changed his name.

  But Hatcher’s greatest fear concerned Cody himself. What was he doing here, and why had he kept his identity a secret all these years? Was he a collaborator? A junkie? A drug smuggler? If he was smuggling drugs, was he tied in with Tollie Fong and the Chiu Chao triads? Or was there some even darker secret that Hatcher could not imagine?

  Was Cody actually dead? Even if he had escaped the plane crash fifteen years ago, Cody could have died in the prison camp or in any of a dozen other ways. Fifteen years was a long time.

  Hatcher also remembered that there was no such thing as a fact in Thailand. Truth was a crucible for what was real and what was imagined, what was veritable and what was spiritual. At best, a fact in Bangkok was an abstraction of reality, a perception of the individual. Truth was often an illusion and things were never what they appeared to be.

  Yet try as he might, Hatcher could not come up with a single positive reason for Cody to remain in hiding.

  Finally there was the most gnawing question of all: if Cody was involved in some dark scheme, what would he, Hatcher, do about it? Ignore it and go home? Try to set up the meet with his father anyway? Perhaps Cohen’s advice was the best advice of all — turn his back on the whole thing and go home.

  That was not a viable option for Hatcher.

  He had an obligation to Buffalo Bill Cody. He had made a promise and he meant to keep it.

  Anyway, he was hooked, he had to play the hand out, no matter what the outcome.

  He cleared customs without incident and found a taxi. The trip to town was a surreal fantasy, a wondrous journey through a dazzling array of cultures, sounds and sights that might have hypnotized Sinbad. The city’s beauty had always fascinated Hatcher, and now, coming back after five years, he was stunned again by its veiled mysteries and hidden promises.

  The twenty-mile trip to town passed quickly, and the lush green fields of the countryside surrendered abruptly to the city as they passed the spectacular Chitralada Palace, the residence of King Bhumibol, the benevolent and well-loved ruler, whose great-great-grandfather, Rama IV, better known as King Mongkut, brought the English schoolteacher Anna Leonowens to Siam in the 1860s to enlighten his children. Although her autobiography, The King and I, and the play and movie based on it, had brought fame to Thailand, they were banned as inaccurate.

  The taxi passed the Royal Turf Club racetrack, past fields where daily kite fights were a prelude to dusk and over Phadung Klong, the main canal of the city. In two hours the boulevard would be gutter-to-gutter cars, sputtering motorized pedicabs called samlors, and tuk-tuks, the strange three-wheel two-seaters that weave in and out of the traffic and drive everyone mad and whose name describes the sound of their small motors.

  But in the early light of day, the city was as it might have been a century before. They drove down an almost deserted Bamrung Muang Road, where orchids, jasmine and roses cascaded over fences, past estates where young women in embroidered costumes practiced ceremonial dances and flirted with the long shadows of daylight on lawns of emerald velvet. The cool morning breeze sifted through the open windows of the taxi, carrying with it the constant tinkle of temple bells from the wats, the Buddhist temples that were everywhere, their rooftops a delicate mosaic of colored spirals and gold-tiled domes, their eaves adorned with curling yellow finials called chofas.

  A Thai businesswoman in western dress, her Mercedes parked by the curb, placed a wreath of jasmine on a miniature but elaborate spirit house and clasped her hands in a wai, possibly asking the spirits for a successful day. The tiny temples were everywhere, looking like cluttered, gloriously painted dollhouses mounted on posts. They were always decked with offerings: hand-painted vases filled with roses, smoking joss sticks, necklaces of orchids, notes to the spirits, brightly dyed strips of silk, even food. Seeing the little temples, Hatcher remembered a mercenary named sickle Knowles, who always offered a bullet to the spirits before a job.

  A half-dozen monks in saffron robes rushed out of a nearby wat with their brass alms bowls, seeking their first meal of the day. Two blocks away a country woman, her head wrapped in a brightly jeweled turban and her lips permanently stained brown by the betel nuts she chewed, sat in the middle of the sidewalk stringing jasmine blossoms. And a block farther, a greengrocer was busy arranging his stall with a dazzling array of pineapples, bananas, mangoes and durians, the large, spiky fruit most foreigners hated.

  They passed the towering swing of Phatpu, where athletes once swung in giant arcs for the pleasure of the King until the practice was banned as too dangerous, and there the flower-lined streets gave way to the crowded old town. The incongruities continued: a noble but derelict Victorian palace with gingerbread turrets stood behind a cinema; an enormous three-story-high Buddha rested between two glass and concrete office buildings; a group of street urchins dashed along the curb with the grace of ballet dancers, playing soccer with a rattan ball, rousting a flock of migratory swallows that seemed to flutter constantly in search of roosting places among the statues and temples. And there were touches of Thai whimsy: a barbershop called the Darling, a restaurant called the Puberty, a hotel that rented rooms by the hour called Bungalow Home Fun.

  The street ended abruptly at Yawaraj Road, which marked the beginning of Yawaraj, or Chinese Town. As the traffic increased khaki-clad traffic cops in gleaming white pith helmets began to appear, and the driver relied more on his horn than on his driving skills to make his way through the choked alleys. Streets funneled, became narrow and claustrophobic, wound uncertainly past ancient and ramshackle wooden buildings wedged against one another. Occasionally an elegant Chinese pagoda roof topped the otherwise undistinctive rows of shops that offered rare foods, aphrodisiacs, Cantonese vitamins and magic herbs. The streets became more constricted, curving through the Nakorn Kasem, the Chinese market known as Thieves’ Market, a misnomer, since most of the shops sold such unromantic articles as toilets, water pumps and light fixtures. The real lure of Yawaraj was the dusty, dimly lit antique shops. Shopkeepers were already busy hauling their clutter of treasures outside, where they spilled over the sidewalks: porcelains, teak furniture inlaid with mother-of-pearl, rosewood screens, brass and copper lamps.

  The driver turned into New Road and headed down the last few blocks to the river at the far edge of Yawaraj and pulled up in front of the Muang House, a middle- class hotel, which Hatcher preferred over the luxury hotels of Bangkok. It was air-conditioned, so mosquitoes would not be a problem. The taxi then went down past the produce market to the Oriental.

  The restaurant was outside at
the back of the hotel on a flower-filled terrace above the broad, sweeping Chao Phraya River. Below it, long bats puttered through the morning mist on the way to the floating market while on the far side the spires of a dozen wats pierced the low-lying veil. It was not yet 7 A.M. The restaurant was deserted except for Sloan, who stood at the railing sipping coffee and staring down at the river. The early morning breeze flapped the jacket of his white raw-silk suit. With his pale blue shirt, he might easily have been mistaken for a salesman or a business executive. He finally took a table near the railing, and with his Ben Franklin glasses perched halfway down his nose, he opened the Bangkok Post, one of the country’s three English language newspapers, folding it lengthwise the way subway riders do in New York.

  There was another reason for Hatcher’s gnawing anxiety in coming to Bangkok. Harry Sloan. Expediency was Harry’s middle name.

  Before the mission ended, Hatcher feared, he might have to stand between Murphy Cody and Harry Sloan.

  How much should I tell him? Hatcher wondered. Does he need to know anything?

  ‘Sawat-dii,’ the head waiter said with a bow. ‘Breakfast, please?’

  Hatcher pointed toward Sloan and followed the ornately dressed young man to the table. Sloan looked up over his glasses and then down at his watch.

  ‘Right on time,’ he said. ‘Punctuality, the mark of a dependable man.’

  Hatcher ordered fresh orange juice, coffee and an English muffin. When the waiter left the table, he took off his glasses and laid them carefully on a corner of the table.

  There was no smile on Sloan’s face, although his voice was as soft as usual. ‘You’ve been having yourself quite a time over in the colony,’ he said.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Sloan smiled condescendingly. ‘Just so you understand, I’ve got a fire under my ass in Madrango. I don’t need a shoot-out on Victoria Peak, cops getting blown up, a Goddamn tong war between Cohen and Tollie Fong, a shoot-out upriver with half the Ts’e K’am Men Ti getting knocked off. What I’m saying, all of a sudden the priorities have shifted. Madrango is what’s important right now.’