by Greg Dinallo
I walk the length of the pier, past the freighter that is sailing without Surigao, and head north along the waterfront through a vast slum. I finally come upon a cruising tuk-tuk, one of those three-wheeled tin cans with open sides that dart about the city at breakneck speed in search of fares. I’m still soaking wet. The driver takes one look and waves me off. I climb in anyway, offering to pay him double. He doesn’t seem to understand. I hold up two fingers. He holds up three, smiles, and heads for the hotel.
I slump in the seat exhausted and check my pocket for the envelope. It’s still there. I’m itching to open it, but it’s wet, and I’m concerned I’ll damage the contents. Besides, I have more pressing concerns: If Ajacier’s people followed me, they probably know where we’re staying. I’m worried about Kate.
A harrowing forty-five minutes later, the tuk-tuk arrives at the Soi 12. I hurry through the lobby and up the stairs to find her waiting for me.
“You swim back?” she cracks, having gotten used to my disheveled entrances.
“Damn near,” I reply with urgency. “Come on. We’re getting out of here.”
“Why? What happened?”
“Well, you were pretty close. It was Ajacier who finished what he started.”
“Surigao’s dead.”
“Yes, they must’ve followed me.”
“How’d they know you were meeting him?”
“If they can booby-trap a hotel room, they shouldn’t have any trouble getting their hands on telephone messages. Once they knew he was trying to make contact, they let me lead them to him.”
“You mean they know we’re staying here?”
“It wouldn’t be real smart to assume they don’t. The DEA found us. Why couldn’t they?”
“Maybe they had help?”
“Hard to say. Of course, they are in business together. We have everything?”
We take a last look around, leave the room, and clamber down a set of fire stairs to an alley behind the hotel. Minutes later we’re weaving through Bangkok’s narrow alleys on the scooter. We head across town to a different district, pick another small hotel at random, and check in. The room is slightly larger and has its own bathroom.
I take the envelope and canister of Mace from my pocket, returning the latter to Kate.
“Better get out of those clothes,” she cautions.
“Not until I see what I got for my ten thousand bucks.”
The envelope is still damp, which makes the surfaces adhere to one another. My heart is pounding as I reach inside and ease out a sheet of paper that is folded in thirds like a business letter. I put it on the dresser, opening it carefully. It’s a piece of standard 8½ × 11 inch bond. Neatly typed and alphabetized in three columns is a list of names and serial numbers.
“Look, there’s John,” Kate exclaims, spotting her husband’s name near the top of the first column.
It takes me a moment longer to find mine midway down the second. Then I start counting. The first column has thirty-five names. I don’t have to count the rest to determine the total because the second column is of equal length, the third seven names shorter.
“Ninety-eight,” I announce with a shrug. Not 547, not 411, not 136; neither a multiple, dividend, nor square root of any of them, nor a match to any of the statistical profiles I’ve drawn. It’s a number without meaning. My least favorite kind. I’ve been disarmed. “You recognize the rest of these names?”
“Some of them.”
“Any lost in Houa Phan Province?”
“It’s possible.”
“Possible? I thought you were the expert.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t have all five hundred forty-seven loss scenarios committed to memory. I do recall the guy who stole your tags wasn’t lost in Houa Phan Province.”
“He wasn’t. He wasn’t lost at all. His body was recovered and disappeared from the mortuary.”
“Then what’s your name doing on this list?”
“I wish I knew. Can you think of anything else they might have in common?”
She shakes her head no. “All the information you’re after was blown to bits with your computer.”
“You remember the names of the men who were just repatriated?”
“Yes, I do,” she replies evenly.
“They on the list?”
She takes a moment to scan it. “No. They’re not here.”
“None. You’re sure?”
“Positive.”
“What about your friend who died in the accident? Her husband’s name on it?”
She runs a finger down the page and stops. “Yes, right there.”
“He was lost in Houa Phan, wasn’t he?”
Kate nods. Her expression darkens at my reaction. “You really think they killed her, don’t you?”
“Carla said mine wasn’t the only name she was looking for.”
“Which means there could even be others.”
I nod grimly. “The question is, why? Surigao said this list would explain it, but it doesn’t.” I pull the wet shirt over my head and toss it across the room in disgust. “I still don’t have the slightest idea why Nancy died.”
Kate nods solemnly and hands me a towel.
“The only thing that makes any sense is that all these names threaten their operation.”
“Well, didn’t Surigao say the list would blow this whole thing sky-high?”
I nod thoughtfully. “I guess it’s up to me to find a way to light the fuse.”
“Up to us,” she corrects resolutely. “John’s name is on that list too.”
30
Twenty kilos per transfer case?” Colonel Webster exclaims incredulously.
“That’s what I said. I still don’t believe it.”
Tickner responds with one of his Cheshire smiles. “I guess I’ll just have to beat you gentlemen into submission,” he says, mysteriously. He opens a desk drawer and removes a hammer.
The colonel and I exchange baffled looks, neither able to imagine what the natty little DEA agent with the crew cut has in mind. If nothing else, Tickner strikes me as the kind of guy who couldn’t drive a nail if his life depended on it.
He swivels his chair, stands, and pushes a button on his communications console. The blind panel in the wall behind him slides open. He leads us through it, hammer at the ready.
“By the way, I thought Mrs. Ackerman might’ve been here,” Webster prompts as we follow.
“She sends her regards. She’s on a little mission of her own at the moment.”
Important mission, would be more accurate. Last night, despite changing hotels, I slept fitfully, jumping at every sound. The shooting and Surigao’s mysterious list of names were part of it, but being unarmed was my primary concern. It still is. We haven’t had any word from Vann Nath in almost two days. This morning, Kate and I decided she’d drop me at the embassy, then head across town to his office and remind him of our need to acquire firepower.
Tickner has led the way down a long corridor to a steel door. He pushes it open and ushers the colonel and me into a large space where Nash and one of the agents who picked me up at the hotel yesterday are waiting. It reminds me of a police evidence room. A collection of guns, knives, plastic bags bursting with drugs, and other items confiscated in raids, are stored on metal shelving that line the walls. In the center, on stands that raise them to desktop height, are two aluminum transfer cases.
While we gather around them, Tickner contemplates his hammer, playing on our curiosity before bringing it down sharply atop one of the transfer cases. The blow leaves a pronounced ding in the brush-finished aluminum. He steps back expectantly as the two agents grip the handles at opposite ends of the T-case, lift off the top, and turn it upside down.
“Now, what’s wrong with this picture?” Tickner asks like a prodding schoolmaster.
The colonel and I lean forward to examine the transfer case. A few seconds pass before it dawns on me. “There’s no ding on the inside.”
“That’s q
uite good, Mr. Morgan.”
“Hold it,” the colonel protests, chafing at the implications. It’s clear he’s been clinging to the hope that the CIL hadn’t been used and would be spared the stigma. Tickner appears to have destroyed it with one swing of his hammer. But the colonel isn’t letting go yet. “If you’re saying the cases are double-walled, we checked that.”
“With all due respect, Colonel,” Tickner responds, “the cases aren’t double-walled. Only the top surface is. Did you check the top or the sides?”
“The sides,” I reply grudgingly.
“Of course. That’s what everyone does. The depth of the side-walls means you can’t really check the top very well, can you?”
“Not without a hammer.”
Tickner smiles and steps to the adjacent transfer case. This one has been cut in two. Nash and the other agent separate the halves, revealing the double-wall construction of the top. There’s about a half inch of air space between the two sheets of aluminum, which curve at the corners blending into a single thickness of sidewall.
“They knockoff watches and blue jeans. Why not transfer cases?” Tickner intones. “They’ve made several interesting improvements.”
“Yes, more than forty pounds of them,” Webster counters facetiously, making the conversion from kilos.
“You recall, I told you we checked the weight,” I chime in, clarifying the colonel’s remark.
“It’s not what they added, gentlemen. It’s what they removed.”
“What do you mean?”
“To compensate for the contraband, these are made from aluminum sheet that provides the same strength and rigidity at two thirds the weight. Same thickness. Different alloy. Much more expensive, of course.”
“You’re saying these weigh forty pounds less than the standard transfer case?” the colonel asks, baffled.
“When empty. The standard one hundred twenty-one when filled with heroin.”
“A lot of people handle our cases,” the colonel presses. “You expect me to believe no one noticed they were forty pounds lighter?”
“Of course I don’t. Nor did Chen Dai. As soon as the heroin is removed it’s replaced with silica sand. These cases always weigh the standard one hundred twenty-one pounds.”
Webster bristles with frustration. “How the hell do they get the stuff in and out of there?”
“Equally ingenious,” Tickner replies with a look to Nash.
In response, the big man fetches a device that resembles an industrial vacuum cleaner made of black plastic. A hose is affixed to one end, and a clear plastic container to the other. Nash stands it on the floor and plugs it into an electrical outlet. Then he turns to the dinged transfer case and unscrews the cap from the document tube. The free end of the vacuum hose has a special fitting, which he slips inside the tube, and a locking ring, which he threads onto the collar to secure it.
Tickner nods.
Nash thumbs a red button on the vacuum.
It emits a precise whine, and, with surprising speed, fills the plastic container with white granules the consistency of fine sugar.
“One kilo of pure heroin,” Tickner announces when Nash shuts it off.
“See, they modified the doc-tube,” Nash explains, indicating the proximity of the document tube to the curved edge of the transfer case. “Right inside here, where you can’t see it, is a little semicircular valve that makes it all happen.”
I’m impressed. More than impressed. But I still find it hard to believe that little space holds twenty kilos. “How big is that case? Three by six, something like that?”
“Precisely eighty-four inches long by thirty wide,” Tickner replies with an indulgent smile.
“Well, multiplying that out,” I say, making the calculation in my head, “gives us two thousand five hundred and twenty square inches. Times the half inch between the double walls, gives us a volume of twelve hundred and sixty cubic inches.”
“Correct. And as you can see, a kilo fits quite neatly in that one quart container. Now, if you know how many cubic inches there are in a quart container—”
“Sixty-three,” I reply, retrieving this bit of trivia from a long-forgotten mathematical table.
“Well?” Tickner says in a tone that suggests any third-grader could do the next calculation.
“Sixty-three per kilo into twelve hundred sixty—twenty kilos.”
“I rest my case,” Tickner gloats.
“There’s another problem,” the colonel challenges, still unwilling to accept it. “We’re always hearing about drug busts where tons of cocaine or heroin are confiscated. This is only forty pounds.”
“What’s your point, Colonel?”
“Well, with all the people and logistics involved, not to mention the cost of manufacturing these cases, it doesn’t seem it’d be very cost-effective.”
“You tell me. How many remains were repatriated over the last fifteen years?”
“A little over three hundred.”
“That’s an average of twenty T-cases per year or four hundred kilos,” Tickner replies with a look to Nash.
“This is where the super purity comes in,” Nash says, taking over. “See, Chen Dai’s brought in a bunch of chiu chau chemists from the Hong Kong syndicates to work for him. These guys are top-notch. Came up with a system of producing this highly refined six-nines base. I mean, you have to keep in mind, ten percent base goes for sixty thousand a key.”
“And this is ninety percent?”
“Ninety plus six-nines percent. In the current market, it’s going in the neighborhood of a half a million or more a key. That’s a two-hundred-million annual gross.”
I nod knowingly. I have clients, large companies, who don’t do that well.
“Of course, it didn’t all go to Chen Dai,” Tickner explains. “He was netting thirty percent after Ajacier and the distributors took their cut.”
“That’s sixty million bucks,” Webster exclaims.
“Check,” Nash concludes. “We figure it costs him about a million or so a month to run his army. He pockets the rest. Pretty good pay for the leader of a bunch of ragtag guerrillas.”
“I know I’m not going to like the answer,” Webster says apprehensively, “but I have to know. The heroin . . . they were putting it into the cases at Clark, weren’t they?”
“Yeah, and they moved their operation to Andersen when you moved yours. The local authorities are totally corrupt. Our operations have been compromised, agents assassinated. DEA is all but out of business in the Pacific.”
“They bring the stuff in from Laos by plane, boat—” Nash adds, disgusted. “Hell, they could be shipping it Federal Express for all we know.”
The colonel seethes, trying to hold it in. “That means the people, the military people who handle those cases are in cahoots with these guys.”
Tickner nods solemnly. “Some.”
“So, every time I draw a T-case from stock and put a man’s remains inside it, a man who died for his country, who has every right to be treated with dignity and respect, it already contains heroin.”
Tickner nods again.
The colonel reddens. His outrage can no longer be contained. “Those bastards! I’ve been escorting that stuff into the country for fifteen years?!”
“I’m afraid so, sir,” Tickner replies, a little taken aback by the outburst. “For lack of a better word, it’s ‘parked’ at the CIL while you carry out your procedures, then goes on to the port mortuary in San Francisco, where civilian personnel remove and funnel it into the mainland pipeline.”
Webster sighs and turns away, devastated.
“I’m sorry, Colonel. Tough questions have a way of producing tough answers.”
“And they’re going to get tougher,” I say sharply.
“Pardon me?” Tickner intones.
“The Colonel and I figured out early on that there were a couple aspects to this. You’ve covered one. We know what’s going on now. But what about the other? What about the p
ast, where it all began?”
“Much tougher ... if, as I suspect, you’re referring to the use of GI cadavers during the war.”
“I don’t know. Am I? I mean, I’d heard that theory. I also heard it was impossible.”
“From whom?”
“From a guy who ought to know. He was the ranking officer at the Ton Son Nhut mortuary.”
“Jason Ingersoll.”
I nod.
“I know Jason quite well. Lovely man. Smart, too. He was right. It was impossible. But I didn’t say anything about the mortuary at Ton Son Nhut. You did. Chen Dai bypassed it completely.”
“I’m lost, Mr. Tickner.”
“So am I,” the colonel chimes in. “How the hell else could they get their hands on cadavers?”
“They bought them.”
The colonel’s brows go up. He’s stunned.
I’m not. I’m putting pieces together: the story the photographer told us about Kate’s husband and the list I bought from Surigao.
“A number of years ago while conducting refugee interviews,” Tickner goes on, “we learned that Chen Dai routinely purchased the bodies of American servicemen from Pathet Lao forces.”
“You ever come across a list of MIAs in those interviews?” I ask, baiting him. Will he blink? Is he threatened by it? Will it blow him sky-high?
“A list of MIAs?” he wonders, unphased. “Not as I recall. What does it have to do with this?”
“That’s my question. There are indications it might have been threatening to Chen Dai for some reason.”
Tickner shrugs. “I’m still drawing a blank. As far as I know, the bodies were shipped to a heroin refinery in Vientiane, where the contraband was inserted in the chest cavities. While there, they were embalmed, packaged, and put in stolen transfer cases. When the war ended and the supply of cadavers stopped, Chen Dai came up with this method.”
“You say Vientiane?” Webster prompts.
Tickner nods.
The colonel and I exchange knowing looks. Now we know why Pettibone headed for Vientiane when he went AWOL.
“Anyway,” Tickner resumes, “the cases were flown to Ton Son Nhut Airbase and added to a pallet of bona fide cases being shipped to the states from the mortuary.”
