White Ghost

by Steven Gore

  Gage filled him in.

  Cobra looked at Kai. “I had to leave your shortwave transmitter in Kunming. The airport security people wouldn’t have let me take it on the plane. It’s illegal to bring that kind of gear into China without a license. And your gun is at the bottom of the Panlong River.”

  “No problem. I’ve got more.”

  “We’ll have to divide up,” Gage said. “Eight Iron might try to catch up with the heroin and make a grab for it, and Zhang might give up on the offshore account and double-cross us.”

  “And Ren could double-cross Zhang,” Kai said.

  They looked up to see Zhang heading toward them. Gage introduced Cobra using his Thai nickname.

  “Jong Arng . . . Jong Arng. Sounds like a nickname. What’s it mean?”

  “Cobra,” Gage answered. “It means Cobra.”

  Zhang’s eyebrows rose a fraction. “Years ago, when I supervised a border trade land crossing in the south, I attended an intelligence briefing at the Chinese embassy in Bangkok. There was discussion of a troublesome Taiwanese MJIB agent known as Cobra.” Zhang smiled. “I was told it was an accurate name. You wouldn’t be him, would you?”

  “No,” Cobra said in even voice. “It must’ve been someone else.”

  Gage didn’t want Zhang to think about it further so he issued assignments.

  “I’ll work with Zhang on Lew. Kai will take Tongming Tiger. And Cobra, Efficiency Trading.”

  As they walked to the vehicles waiting outside, Zhang made a call to share Gage’s plan with Ren and his people.

  Gage got into Zhang’s van.

  “There seems to be a certain toughness about Kai,” Zhang said, as Ferrari drove them toward Lew’s hotel.

  “She knows how to handle herself.”

  “That’s not quite what I meant. On the surface she can be very charming, but underneath she’s like us. I’ll bet she’s really something in bed.” Zhang looked over and grinned. “You wouldn’t happen to have any personal knowledge?”

  “We’ve been friends for a long time. That’s all there is between us.”

  “I sense there’s even less between her and her husband.”

  “He’s a little man in a big job. And he won’t last. Even if his party forms the next government, he’ll be dropped from the cabinet. It’s embarrassing for Thailand to have a cabinet minister who can’t get a visa to the United States because of a history of drug trafficking.”

  Zhang already had plainclothes soldiers surveilling Lew’s hotel, so he directed Ferrari to park around the corner. Ferrari pulled down a black curtain to conceal the rear of the van, then moved over into the passenger seat so it would seem to passersby that he was waiting for the driver to return from one of the shops along the street.

  Ten minutes later, Zhang’s phone rang.

  “A taxi just picked up Lew,” Zhang told Gage. “My people are behind it.”

  Zhang stayed in communication with the surveillance team following Lew as he wound through Nantong.

  Ferrari skirted Lew’s route for ten minutes, then pulled over.

  “We don’t need to show ourselves,” Zhang said. “It looks like Lew is heading for Tongming Tiger.”

  Gage called Kai, already there.

  “You remember the guy from the trade bureau whose name was coded in Ah Tien’s address book?”

  “Mao,” Kai said. “Like Chairman Mao. Who’d have thought that someone with that family name would be responsible for making capitalism flourish.”

  “I’m thinking you should try to pry some information out of him. I’ll ask Zhang to work it out with Ren.”

  Ferrari started up again. He drove around a corner and came to a stop a block away from where Kai was parked with a view of the entrance to Tongming Tiger.

  Zhang called Ren and reported back to Gage. “Ren can meet Kai at the trade bureau and introduce her to Mao. He’ll say she wants to move ginger through the port and needs to register a Thai-Chinese joint venture to handle it.”

  “Are you sure Mao will meet her?”

  “Don’t worry. He’ll meet with her whenever she wants. All these guys are greedy bureaucrats looking for their cut. And he knows that anyone referred by a port commander is for real and is ready to spend money.”

  Gage called Kai. “Zhang will hook you up with Ren. Set the meeting around lunchtime so you can get him drinking.”

  “You mean get his brain fuzzy?” Kai said, laughing.

  “I don’t get it.”

  “Mao-Mao means fuzzy in Mandarin.”

  “I’ve got one for you, too. Tell Mao-Mao you’re with New Life Trading.”

  “I like the sound of that one. Maybe I’ll open a Bangkok branch for real.”

  AFTER AN HOUR OF INACTIVITY, both Zhang’s and Gage’s cell phones rang.

  “Lew just walked out of Tongming Tiger,” Kai told Gage. “He’s alone.”

  “We’ll follow him. Stay there and keep an eye on the company until your meeting with Mao gets set up.”

  Gage tapped Ferrari on the shoulder and pointed toward the driver’s seat. Ferrari slid over and eased the van forward as Lew entered a red taxi. They followed the cab through town to an L-shaped compound located in the far eastern part of the city. Four or five businesses occupied each arm of the building.

  Lew slipped from the cab, spoke briefly with the guard at the gate, then walked inside.

  Ferrari stopped fifteen yards past the entrance, then Zhang walked back, but arrived too late to see which business Lew had entered. He used his phone to take a photo of the company names posted near the entrance, then returned to the van, and read them off: “Eastrade Electronics, Jinqiao Fish Wholesale, Qingdao Trading, Huang Medical, and Golden Export.”

  “Can you find out if Eastrade Electronics or Huang Medical deal in computer processors or just in already manufactured products?”

  Zhang made calls to obtain the information as they waited for Lew to reappear.

  Gage checked in with Kai.

  “We followed Dong in a big circle starting from Tongming Tiger,” Kai said. “He started at an herb trader, then went to a fertilizer factory, and finally to a huge pharmaceutical company. It has a guarded gate, so we couldn’t follow him in and lost sight of him. It looked to me like they were just regular sales calls.”

  As Gage and Zhang waited outside the business compound Lew had entered, Cobra called to say there was regular but slow-paced activity at Old Wu’s Efficiency Trading, but no signs of Wu himself. There were two clerks working in the building and a few laborers resting outside after unloading bags of what appeared to be processed garlic from delivery trucks.

  An hour later, Lew walked back out through the compound gate and caught a cab that took him to the Enterprise Tower at the far south end of the city. Zhang followed him inside and watched him enter an elevator at the same time as a delivery boy. Zhang watched the numbers light up as the elevator rose through the floors. It stopped on the eighth and eleventh. He checked the business directory framed on a wall and photographed them all, then focused in on the names of the companies on those floors. He identified two more that might use computer chips and called his staff to research them.

  AFTER ANOTHER HOUR, they trailed Lew back to the Tian Nan Hotel, and Ferrari followed him into the restaurant. He returned after a few minutes and reported that Lew was eating alone.

  “What do you think?” Zhang asked Gage.

  Gage thought back over Lew’s route.

  “My guess is that he’s confirmed all the links, but I think we’re still about five steps behind him.”

  A young man in a short-sleeved shirt and matching green slacks walked up to Ferrari’s window. He handed over an oversize envelope through the driver’s window, then started to raise his hand in a salute. Ferrari stopped him with a shake of his head.

  Ferrari handed the envelope back to Zhang, who tore it open and paged through what Gage could see were over a hundred bills of lading. His face reddened as he got to the last one a
nd tossed them on the table.

  “These are the shipping documents for all the boats due into Qidong tomorrow. There’s nothing coming from Sunny Glory and nothing going to Tongming Tiger or Efficiency Trading or any of the companies we saw today.”

  Gage felt a return of the same feeling of panic, fearing that he had wasted days of his life and had risked others, chasing a mistake about Ah Ming’s plan, the same desperation he’d fought back when he learned that Sunny Glory had sent away an empty container. An image of the coast of China Sea came into his mind, then it expanded south to include Vietnam and Thailand—a thousand other ports and inlets toward which the chips might be headed.

  Zhang glared at Gage and his voice hardened. “Is this what you Americans call a wild goose chase?”

  CHAPTER 61

  Ms. Chen represents a firm that wants to export ginger to Taiwan,” Commander Ren told Mao, after he and Kai sat down in his trade bureau office. He gestured toward the map of the Nantong Special Economic Zone displayed on the wall behind him. “She’s already looked into renting office space.”

  Kai suppressed a smile as Mao scooted forward and perched himself on the front edge of his oversize desk chair like a vulture on a low limb.

  “My job with the trade bureau is to encourage economic development through the creation of trading relationships between local and foreign companies.”

  Ren raised a palm and smiled. “No need for the welcoming speech. She’s already committed to the project. It’s just a matter of how she goes about it.”

  “How about a joint venture with a local company?” Mao said.

  “What would that cost to set up?” Kai asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “How could that be?”

  “The government has instituted incentives to encourage foreign investment. A joint venture designation, in tax breaks alone, can result in a twenty percent increase in profits.”

  “And a joint venture opens a local company to the world,” Ren said. “If they have a foreign partner, they can obtain import and export licenses.”

  “What kind of investment are you talking about?”

  “The government will expect nothing less than two and a half million yuan, and you’d have to send it in dollars. That’s about three hundred thousand.”

  Kai drew back, feigning surprise. “That’s a little steep for the small operation I have in mind.”

  Mao looked at Ren with a raised eyebrow. Ren nodded.

  “There’s a trick. You make a wire transfer to the joint venture in that amount and we label it as the foreign investment.” He cast a coconspirator’s smile toward both Kai and Ren. “Then we wire it out again and call it a purchase of goods or equipment. It almost zeros out.”

  “Almost?”

  Mao held his smile. “There are certain small fees along the way.”

  By fees, they all understood Mao meant bribes, and Kai had no reason to think they would be small.

  “Why are you telling me all this?” Kai asked. “An outsider.”

  “Commander Ren vouched for you. That’s all I need.”

  “And if you succeed,” Ren said, “so do we.”

  “Businesses in this area, far as they are from the major ports, have a hard time finding foreign partners. And unless you’re part of a state enterprise, you need a foreign partner in order to make contacts overseas, but you can’t get a foreign partner unless you already have the contacts.”

  Kai glanced at Ren, then back at Mao. “How much does the foreign partner need to know about my business? I don’t want them going around me to my sources and cutting me out.”

  “All they need to know are the dates and times the goods will be received or delivered, and their destinations. They don’t ask and don’t want to know what is being shipped or where it comes from. And if you import the ginger through Qidong, there are no customs officials around to ask either.”

  Ren looked at his watch. “Maybe we should finish this conversation over lunch.”

  Mao took Ren’s suggestion as an order and escorted them from the trade bureau building toward a restaurant a few doors away. As they walked, Ren and Kai scanned the cars and trucks parked on the street, the shoppers gazing into store windows, and suited businessmen and-women conversing on the sidewalk, checking for countersurveillance.

  They noticed none.

  A waitress led them through a chaos of greens and pinks multiplied by the mirrored walls and into a small dining room where Mao ordered lunch without looking at the menu.

  Kai declined Mao’s drink offers, saving face by claiming that she was taking a medication that advised against alcohol. He ordered beer and cognac for himself and Ren.

  Toward the end of the meal, when Kai was sure that Mao had become fuzzy enough to feel as though she’d become his confidante, she picked up the trail of the conversation where they had left it.

  “Three hundred thousand dollars is a lot of money to put into the hands of someone we don’t know.”

  Mao’s eyes sharpened through the alcohol-induced haze.

  “But they’ll know Commander Ren. And the deal would be structured so that no one”—Mao spread his hands as if to take in not just the trade bureau, but others beyond—“gets a cut until the money is sent out again. We’ve done it dozens of times.”

  Mao leaned forward, gripping his drink with both hands, resting his forearms on the table. He looked at Ren as though seeking permission, but then pushed on without waiting for it.

  “How about Mr. Zeng? He took over a state enterprise and formed a joint venture with his cousin in Taiwan. In the money came, and out it went.”

  “But they’re relatives,” Kai said. “They trust each other. I have none here.”

  Mao glanced at Ren again.

  “What about the old man?” Ren said to Mao. “I think his name is Wu. He took the same kind of risk.”

  “Of course, Lao Wu. His Efficiency Trading was nothing more than a pushcart with a fruit topping until he got his partner in Sunny Glory. And the same with Guan at North China Produce and Hsu at Garden Trading and Gu at New Dawn.”

  “Would any of these people talk to me?”

  Mao leaned even further onto the table and put his finger to his lips. “Never. It’s one of these things we know but cannot discuss except among partners such as ourselves.”

  Kai reached for the cognac bottle and poured for Ren, Mao, and then herself. She knew that the symbolism of her taking a drink despite the perceived risk would play on him. She rose to her feet. The others stood and raised their glasses.

  “To partners.”

  They echoed the toast, gulped the cognac, then sat again.

  “Have you ever dealt with companies in San Francisco?” Kai asked, knowing that she might be pushing Mao further than he would want to go without her having money in hand. “I’m thinking of opening a branch over there, too.”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Is there anyone you could refer me to? Someone you trust.”

  Mao nodded. “A young man . . . but he’s now . . .”

  “Now . . . ?”

  Mao paused, his face sagging as he looked back and forth between Kai and Ren. “He’s now unavailable.”

  Ren caught her eye and shook his head. They’d gone far enough and there was no reason to risk going too far. They might need Mao later.

  After a few moments of silence, Kai poured Mao another drink and then turned the conversation away from business. Once their conversation was safely bracketed with food on one end and casual chat on the other, Kai brought it to an end.

  “HE CONFIRMED THE LINK between Sunny Glory and Efficiency Trading,” Kai told Gage, calling from the restaurant bathroom. She’d sent Ren and Mao ahead. “I’m pretty sure either the chips or the heroin are going through Efficiency Trading, and the man he referred to in San Francisco was Ah Tien. There was actual sadness on his face when he talked about the man being unavailable.”

  Gage passed on the information to Zhang.
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  “Zhang checked the bills of lading for incoming shipments,” Gage said to Kai. “There’s nothing coming from Sunny Glory and nothing going to Efficiency Trading. That tells me they must be using another one of the fake joint ventures for insulation.”

  Gage paused, then nodded for Zhang’s benefit, suggesting that Kai had filled a gap in their knowledge. He didn’t want to provoke another wild-goose-chase outburst, so he composed a story to match the facts confronting them.

  “Ah Tien himself must’ve set one up to receive the chips. That way ownership of the cargo would stay in his hands until he was sure the exchange for the heroin would happen. If no one except him knew which boat the chips were coming in on, then it would be hard for Old Wu or Dong or even Mao to double-cross him.”

  “The problem is that we may not know which company it is until Zhang does. Which means he’ll be in a position to grab them.”

  “Let’s meet up at the hotel and leave Ren’s people to take care of the surveillance. We’ll put together a list of all the company names we’ve collected and pass them on to my office to see if they can mine anything out of them and maybe . . . Is it worth taking another shot at Mao to see what else you can get?”

  “Probably not. It turned out that Mao wasn’t so Mao-Mao after all. He’s a cagy little snap pea who drank his weight in cognac.”

  CHAPTER 62

  Zhang paced the carpet in Gage’s room. Gage knew what was on his mind. The general was about to allow heroin to pass through a port under his control, a capital offense if discovered. But if he missed the chips, he’d have nothing. No Hong Kong company. No bank account. No money.

  “We won’t be able to seize the chips if they pass through Tongming Tiger,” Zhang said, turning toward Gage, Kai, and Cobra sitting at the table. “There are too many trucks coming and going.”

  “That depends,” Gage said. “Did you find out whether any of the companies in the places Lew visited deal in chips?”

  Zhang shook his head. “My people are still searching the tax and license records. So it takes time. And who knows? Maybe he went to those places to throw us off.”