White Ghost

by Steven Gore

  “How old is old?”

  “Early seventies. And the foreign shareholder is a Taiwanese company on Ah Tien’s list. Sunny Glory, in Taichung.”

  “And in San Francisco.”

  Kai looked at Gage. “And that closes the circle.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. It could be one that closed around a prior deal, not this one. The killing of the kid during the chip robbery may have reverberated through their operation, forcing them out of their routine.”

  But they all knew it was all they had to go on.

  “Have Sunny Glory and Efficiency Trading done much business during the last few years?”

  Zhang reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out his notes. “The port’s paperwork shows mushrooms, ginger, and cashews coming in and processed garlic going out.”

  “What about the other company Ah Tien had coded, Tongming Tiger. Any shipments between it and Sunny Glory, in either direction?”

  “None. Tongming Tiger is a domestic dealer in pharmaceuticals, medicinal herbs, and grains. As far as we can tell, it has no connection either with Sunny Glory or Efficiency Trading.”

  Gage had been hoping to find a pattern or something he could imagine on a flowchart, but he hadn’t found it. And he didn’t want to assume that since all three weren’t connected aboveground they must be connected underground.

  He looped back through the conversation, arriving at Commander Ren’s mention of the trade bureau. “Who at the trade bureau was involved in setting up the Efficiency Trading joint venture?”

  “A man whose name was also in Ah Tien’s little book. Mao Zhou-li.”

  Gage walked to the window overlooking the street. He needed time to think about how to approach the trade bureau, knowing the wrong move might reverberate all the way back to Ah Ming. Day laborers were crowded around a pushcart below him on the sidewalk, flame and steam rising from a wok on top. Next to it a woman was selling dumplings and fish.

  “What did you put down for us on the hotel registration form?” Gage asked Zhang, turning back.

  “That you’re an American businessman and Kai is your translator. I told the clerk you’re here to look into setting up a joint venture with a Chinese state enterprise to process ginger for export.”

  “And you?”

  “I represent the state enterprise.”

  “And what do we know about ginger?” Gage asked.

  “There can’t be that much to it,” Zhang said, answering like a person who knew nothing about farming, who thought money was complicated and nature was simple.

  Gage saw Kai clench her jaws at Zhang’s arrogance and ignorance. She knew otherwise, for her father had been an agricultural trader in northeastern Thailand.

  “My father worked with ginger farmers and processors before he started his own business. I know enough to bluff anyone who might ask.”

  WHEN THEY LEFT THE HOTEL to walk to the restaurant down the block to meet the port commander, Ren, for lunch, they stopped to watch a group of farmers arguing with a city official. One was waving a heavy cotton bag as if it could speak for him.

  “He’s saying that he and his family were moved here by the government from an area flooded by the Three Gorges Dam,” Kai told Gage. “Just downstream of Chongqing. He has orange seeds in his bag. The government promised him land to replace the orchard he was forced to abandon.”

  “I take it he didn’t get any.”

  “No,” Zhang said. “And it’s the same all along the lower Yangtze. All these farmers want to live near the river, but there’s not enough land. And there hasn’t been for a thousand years. It’s time they accepted that fact.”

  The restaurant owner was also watching the scene. He broke away to invite them inside the heavy, wood-framed building.

  Gage had seen many like them in China, nineteenth-century teahouses wrested away at the beginning of the twentieth century from country folk and converted into Shanghai-style social clubs, with bourbon replacing tea, and jazz replacing Chinese zheng. They were seized by the Communist Party for communal use in the 1950s and finally privatized in the 1990s after it became glorious for the few to be rich.

  The owner led them past chickens and ducks pacing in cages, turtles and frogs resting in plastic tubs of shallow water, and snakes sleeping in glass tanks. Crabs, shrimp, lobsters, and salt and fresh water fish inspected them from aerated commercial aquariums as they walked by.

  Gage observed a thief’s pride of ownership on the man’s face, an expression revealing that the restaurant was his, but that he hadn’t earned it. Gage suspected he’d been the manager during communist times and grabbed it for himself during the first, chaotic capitalist years.

  Commander Ren was waiting in a private dining room. At first sight, he seemed to Gage to possess the manner of a young Zhang, except that he was taller and darker. As he rose, he displayed more military bearing than Zhang had ever shown, but his eyes, darting from Gage to Kai and back, seemed at least as calculating

  Ren’s attire, particularly his cheap watch and mass-produced shoes, suggested to Gage that he hadn’t gotten to the big money yet, maybe because he was unwilling to take the kinds of risks Zhang had always been willing to take, ones that now might lead to a bullet in the back of the head instead of a Hong Kong bank account.

  As Gage walked across the room to shake Ren’s hand, he noticed that in business banquet fashion, bottles of beer and cognac were lined up on a side table next to the window. And he knew then what Zhang hoped to accomplish with the meal and how it would end.

  By the time they’d moved past the shark fin soup and the sautéed prawns in garlic, Ren and Zhang had gone from beer to cognac. By the time they consumed the steamed freshwater fish, the goose tongues, and the chicken feet, the two were red-faced. By the time they’d finished the roasted snake, the fried scorpion, and the tungpo pork fat, the two soldiers had toasted Kai, Gage, each other, the weather, the cook, the Yangtze, and each day of the week.

  Neither Zhang nor Ren seemed to have noticed that Kai and Gage had nursed the same beers throughout the meal. She and he understood the dance in which Ren and Zhang were engaged and their participation wasn’t required.

  Afterward, Gage guided Zhang and Ren to the hotel where he rented them a double room to sleep off their lunch.

  Gage and Kai then walked in silence along the river while they waited for Cobra to check in, both understanding that his day wasn’t being spent as harmlessly as theirs.

  CHAPTER 54

  After the tire had been changed, Cobra and Luck had ridden their motorcycles behind the Thai heroin trucks into the commercial center of Kunming. They’d left Moby and their own truck near the shop where the tire had been repaired. He’d remain there until Luck called him. The two traded the lead position, switching when the traffic was thick or when they were stopped at an intersection. The mass of trucks, scooters, bicycles, pedestrians, fruit sellers, and food stalls crowded with customers spilling into the street made for a slow-going pursuit.

  They trailed the heroin into an industrial district bordering a residential area of three-story commercial town houses with small groceries, pharmacies, hardware stores, or video rental shops on the first floor and living units above. The two trucks then made a final turn into a large alleyway and swung in behind the loading dock of a warehouse.

  As the drivers reviewed the bills of lading with a clerk, Cobra and Luck parked their motorbikes sixty yards away, near a food cart. They bought noodles and took their bowls and sat down in metal chairs at a folding table in the midst of a dozen others crowded with workers eating, talking, and laughing. From there, Cobra surveyed the dozen laborers seated on the ground at the back of the warehouse. Most wore the traditional Shan, Hakka, or Meo longyi, ankle-length shirts knotted at the waist, while others had adapted to the Chinese laborer’s uniform of shorts and T-shirts. Cobra guessed they were tribesmen who’d made an after-harvest trek down from their plots in the hills to earn cash in the city.

  Ten minutes lat
er, two Chinese trucks drove in from the opposite direction, then backed to the rear of the Thai trucks. Cobra couldn’t make out the license plates or the company names, but he could see logos of lions painted in red against the gray background of the doors.

  “I’ll walk around the block,” Cobra told Luck as he got up from the table, “and come up from the other side so I can get the license plate numbers. You watch from here.”

  Cobra slipped around the near corner and headed along a row of first-floor shops. He next walked the length of the block turning left and left again. By the time he’d gotten into a position twenty yards away, laborers had begun transferring the sacks of cassava powder with the heroin concealed inside from the Thai to the Chinese trucks. He stood facing an empty storefront that was advertised for rent and tried to make it appear that he was inspecting it and noting down rental information as he wrote down the license numbers and the company names that were printed on sides of the trucks. As he snapped a photo with his phone, he spotted Luck walking back to the table from the direction of the warehouse.

  Cobra retraced his steps, this time stopping at a small grocery store to buy two Cokes, opening them as he walked back. He found Luck sitting again at the table, sweating in the midday sun, acting as though he’d never left. The previously empty tables around theirs were now filled with workers, talking and laughing and slurping their noodles.

  Cobra handed Luck one of the sodas as he sat down. Luck sipped his Coke, never taking his eyes from the trucks in the distance. Finally, Luck caught Cobra’s eye, then nodded toward an alley running between the buildings behind them, indicating that they needed to get away from those around them in order to talk. He rose and Cobra led him between the tables and past the cart, then down ten yards to the opening.

  “It looks like they’re about ten minutes from transferring everything into the Chinese ones,” Luck said. “I think we—”

  Luck looked past Cobra and his eyes widened as he drew back.

  Cobra crouched and started a turn as if to defend himself, then spun back and drove his fist into Luck’s stomach. Luck bucked forward and Cobra dropped him with punch to the fleshy part of his cheek.

  When he looked down, Cobra spotted a knife lying on the dirt next Luck’s body.

  Only then did Cobra glance back at the alley behind him. He’d guessed right. It was empty. The only person who could have set a trap in that spot was Luck, but instead he had trapped himself.

  Cobra confirmed that Luck still had a pulse, then dragged him in among the garbage cans and propped him against the wall. He walked back to Luck’s motorcycle and searched his knapsack. Inside he found three meters of rope, a syringe, heroin, and a strip of cloth for a blindfold.

  Cobra cooked up the heroin in the alley and injected Luck, then ripped out the electrical wires of Luck’s motorcycle and broke off the top of the spark plug with a rock. He then sat down at the table and drank his Coke and watched the last of the bags loaded into the Chinese trucks.

  He followed the Chinese trucks the rest of the way through Kunming and fifty kilometers up the highway until he was satisfied both that they were continuing north and that he was the only one trailing them. There was no reason to continue following them since there was no way he could stay awake much longer. He turned back south, hoping Gage would find a way to track the heroin from the other end.

  Cobra tossed Kai’s gun and Luck’s cell phone into the Panlong River, rode to the railway station, and abandoned the motorcycle among a collection of others in the employee parking area. He broke off the spark plug in this one also, then caught a taxi to the airport, all the time wishing the flight to Shanghai was six hours, rather than three. He needed the sleep.

  CHAPTER 55

  Lew Fung-hao’s back felt like a rusted hinge as he pried himself out of the economy seat he’d occupied on the flight from San Francisco. Even though he stood to earn hundreds of thousands of dollars in the next few days, he couldn’t find it in himself to spend any of it for business or first class. And he found it confusing, wondering, as always, how much of himself was composed of character and how much of mere habit.

  As he approached Passport Control, Lew was thankful he’d obtained American citizenship and traveled on a U.S. passport, for the immigration officer scanned it and stamped it without glancing at either his name or his face and waved him through.

  Memories began to press in on him as he looked at the uniformed soldiers and at the place names on the arrival and departure boards. He knew the grip of the past would’ve hurt worse if he’d landed in the south, in Guangdong or Shantou, where the Red Guards humiliated him and drove him from his professorship. Nonetheless, he had to fight off those and other images and remind himself that he had survived, and that he would survive, for the stiffness that plagued his joints hadn’t yet impaired his mind.

  Lew approached a money exchange booth and traded a thousand dollars for yuan. It offended him that he should have to carry pictures of Mao and the other gangsters, even if only on currency, so he stuffed the bills into his wallet without counting them.

  Morning sunlight reflecting off the pavement and wing-shaped steel of the Shanghai Pudong Airport greeted him as he stepped from the terminal and merged with the mass of travelers. He shielded his eyes as he walked along the sidewalk to the taxi queue.

  A few minutes later, he leaned down toward the passenger window of the taxi that came to a stop in from of him and asked the driver, “How much to Nantong?”

  “Just you?”

  “Only me.”

  “Twelve hundred.”

  “Eight hundred.”

  “A thousand.”

  Lew counted out the yuan from his wallet, showed it to the driver, then slid it into his shirt pocket. The driver got out of the cab and looked for Lew’s luggage to put in the trunk. Lew held up a zippered canvas bag to indicate that was all he had, then climbed into the backseat. And as soon as the taxi left the airport grounds, Lew pushed the duffel against a rear passenger door, rested his head on it, and curled up on the seat.

  Lew didn’t sleep as much as descend into a jet-lagged, gray daze of jumbled images and road vibrations. Later, he drew in a breath of the sea air and guessed that he was near the mouth of the Yangtze or, perhaps, was only dreaming he was.

  In the early afternoon, Lew heard the taxi driver’s voice calling to him.

  “We’re near Nantong. Where do you want to go?”

  Lew pushed himself up, withdrew a notebook from his bag, and read out “36 Yang Lao Lane.”

  The driver continued on for another ten minutes, until he was at the edge of the city. He pulled over next to an old man sitting on a mat on the sidewalk, repairing shoes.

  “Shifu. Do you know Yang Lao Lane?”

  The old man smiled. He seemed pleased that he’d been called master in the old, respectful way. He pointed east, toward a commercial district.

  “How far?”

  “About a kilometer. If you come to the bridge over the Haohe River, you’ve missed it.”

  The taxi driver continued, slowing to read street signs until he finally turned right. He crept along while he and Lew peered at house numbers until the driver stopped at number 36. Lew handed the cash to the driver, then picked up his bag and stepped onto a narrow sidewalk. He found himself standing in front of a high wall behind which he could see the upper floor of a modern, stucco two-story house.

  He pressed the buzzer and waited until an elderly housekeeper opened the gate.

  “Amah,” he said. “I’m Lew Fung-hao.”

  The amah nodded. “Please come in. Mr. Wu is at the Efficiency Trading office.”

  From inside the gate, Lew could see a generic house that he knew he could’ve found anywhere the Chinese diaspora had settled: in Taiwan, in Thailand, in Vancouver, or in Monterey Park, California. Oversize, salmon colored, with a front courtyard, large double-paned windows, and a garage for two cars. Although he had no particular interest in the meaning of architecture, it s
eemed to him for a moment as though the Pacific Rim had become a single country with a unified culture and it gave him an apprehensive feeling that he didn’t understand.

  As he entered the anonymous house, he saw the interior was true Chinese in the late-nineteenth-century Shanghai style. Dark solid wood furniture, simple in form and elegant in style. He glanced toward the dining room and was stunned by a thirty-foot-long fine-grained wood table made from a single slice of what must have been an ancient hardwood tree. Each chair was nothing but a two-foot stump cut from a thick branch and stood on end.

  Lew couldn’t imagine its cost, but he could guess its route: cut down by poachers in Laos or Cambodia, forestry officials paid off, sold to Thai traffickers, trucked through Thailand to a shop where it was smoothed and polished, then smuggled into China by truck or boat.

  How much? Lew wondered. Fifty thousand dollars? A hundred thousand? Maybe more. From that piece of furniture alone Lew concluded that Old Wu wasn’t a modest man.

  Just after the amah escorted Lew into a sitting room and had served him tea, Wu charged in. Lew looked up to see a man a few years older than himself wearing a white shirt, dark tie, and black, creaseless slacks. He wasn’t sure he liked Wu’s looks. Chubby faced, broad nosed, with a full head of hair in disarray. Gripped between his index and middle fingers were the remains of a still-smoldering American cigarette and under his arm, a worn leather briefcase. To Lew, he seemed rushed and undisciplined and, therefore, unpredictable.

  Lew rose and reached out his hand.

  Wu accepted it saying, “Good to meet you. I’d been expecting Ah Tien again. I hope he’s well.”

  “He’s fine.” Lew let his face fall. “There was a death in his family so he couldn’t travel.”

  Wu gestured for Lew to sit and took a chair across from him.

  “I know you’re anxious to know where we stand.”

  Lew nodded.