by Rob Wood
“What’s the drug connection?”
“Almost everything is seen as a drug connection these days.”
“Yes, but . . .”
“So, where do you think Cao Kai recruited his team?”
“I supposed they were PLA or ex-PLA from his mainland China contacts.”
“No. And this is interesting. They were part of the recent wave of mainland Chinese immigration to the Caribbean—Venezuela, in particular. A lot of people moving there. It’s huge. That’s something we armchair PhD’s are interested in.”
“I didn’t know that, Miss PhD. But it’s certainly true that Cao was using the Venezuelan ship as a staging area.”
“There has been an active Chinese community in Venezuela since the first immigrants in the mid-19th century,” Cody told him. “Recently, some 50,000 Chinese have been landed there. The immigration policy is lax. Reportedly, some land in Caracas and are processed completely outside normal customs and immigration. Why? Because these people are connected to drug dons. Drug dons have gangs. Gangs need foot soldiers.”
“And Cao Kai knew the dons?”
“Right. Probably supplied them with weapons. We know he had good connections there.”
“Has there been no confrontation with Beijing over this?”
“Unofficially, yes. Especially over the biofuels scam. State has pressed hard. Beijing is steamed. There are a bunch of internal investigations over there. That means probably tougher rules for business, maybe a rift between the PLA and progressive factions in the government. They’re steamed about potential Korean involvement, too. All to the good, if you ask me. But publicly, China is saying: ‘Of course American capitalism corrupts! However, if Washington really has a case, they should produce Cao Kai.’”
“And did we get Cao Kai? Izquidero said he was presumed dead.”
“Yes and no. His copter was found upside down in the Louisiana wetlands. There was blood dripping into the water. There were gators in the water. There was no Cao Kai.”
“You’re saying the gators got him? That would be a fitting end.”
“Some are saying the gators got him.”
“And some aren’t?”
“Well, our friend Thibeault, for instance. He’s the closest thing I know to a gator expert. I talked to him, and he’s not buying it.”
“Why not? Does he think gators don’t like Chinese?”
“He thinks it’s too convenient. The enviros and PETA people would stand in the way of a large-scale gator kill to open up gullets to look for body parts. And he emphasizes large scale—gators move around this time of year, and there are a lot of places they can move to in Louisiana.”
“He thinks Cao Kai planned that?”
“No. But he is suspicious of the blood-in-the-water set up. He sees that as, well, too convenient.”
“Cao Kai was bleeding. Hasn’t Thibeault ever seen ‘Jacques Cousteau” or “Shark Week?”
“Well, that’s it. He says it’s a classic shark set up. Propaganda. We’re talking about alligators, here.”
“Same thing, different ecosystem. Right?”
“Not according to Thibeault. He says gators can’t smell blood in the water. In fact, when they’re under water they don’t smell at all. They’re not fish. Their nostrils are closed under water.”
“So, where does that leave us?
“MIA for Cao Kai. As far as us? Well, let’s get to work on that. “
Cochrane punched the CD button.
“What’s this?”
“Massenet, Liszt, and Architecture in Helsinki. My own mix. Romantic, techno, and a hint of experimentation. Reminds me of you.”
Purdy looked a trifle dumbfounded.
“Just settle back, sailor. Let Dr. Cochrane take you to paradise.”
55
DRUGS: TACTICAL
AND TARGETED
Swaddled in a parka, Lily Zhang looked down from a high escarpment to the rail line below. There was a train coming.
Few vantage points in the Khunjerab were better than this one. Because of this view of the pass through the mountains, people had built here for hundreds of years, cautious and watchful. People were still here, hanging on fiercely to this rocky ledge and the old way of life.
Out of a clear sky, gun-metal blue, a breeze swept down from the north, ruffling the fur trim on Lily’s parka and carrying with it the sweet musk of the old ways: the scent of the village walls, built of boluses of yak dung. The walls afforded privacy, stored ready fuel, and advertised the size of the yak herd, speaking to the needs, even the egos, of the people.
“The needs of the people,” she mused. “Sounds like another slogan from Beijing.” The truth was that no one had adequately looked after these people. Certainly not the imperialists of the West. One hundred years ago, Russia had sought to extend its influence south into Asia. Britain, worried that the Russian move threatened the Raj in India, sent an invading army south of here into Tibet. King Edward even had bronze medals struck to commemorate the war. While the titans of Europe maneuvered, the farmers and herders of this poor land died.
Now the government in Beijing was offering again to “serve the people.” What they really wanted was a window on their economic rival India. And the service Beijing provided was suppression. They trucked in party loyalists, all members of the Han ethnic majority, to colonize the area, tap the resources, take the best jobs, and sneer at the locals.
Fortunately, these Han made no bones about the fact that they were here for the money, and that made them easy to bribe.
She watched as the train slowed to a stop. Chinese customs officials were here, ostensibly to seize contraband before it entered the country. What she had paid them for was to certify, with appropriate customs stamps, that the shipment of depilatory cream and skin whitener bound for Zhang Cosmetics was among the more than one hundred items the government of China had said could enter duty free from Afghanistan. Once the goods were certified, her own people would remove them on paletts, stack the paletts, and haul them to Zhang labs.
Beijing had initiatives all over the developing world. They especially enjoyed thwarting the efforts of the U.S. She could still see President Hu posing with the Afghani Hamid Karzai as they announced this initiative. Good for the Afghans, good for the Chinese. And good for her. The cosmetics were not on the official list, of course, but then they weren’t really cosmetics.
She lingered for a long time, then headed back for the long trip to Urumqi and what passed for civilization here on the Western frontier. She was proud of Urumqi. Even from the plane she could see the island of tall buildings leaping up from the main streets, Minzhu and Zhongsan Lu, in the center of the city. She saw pinnacles of gleaming steel and glass, as if the Chrysler building had been imported, refurbished and pumped full of steroids. “Like America, only better,” she thought.
An electric hum and the brighter-than-sunlight glow of fluorescent lights greeted every visitor to Zhang Labs’ Urumqi office. Not that there were many visitors. As they said in the West, entry was limited to those with a “need to know” what went on here in the white and gray, dust-free, germ-free warren of cosmetics science.
Here in Urumqi, Lily had about 30,000 square feet of space dedicated to the design, development, and manufacture of custom personal care chemicals. There were only a very few technicians in lab coats. What made the lab impressive was the hardware: a bank of looming planetary mixers, sending their stout stainless-steel fingers down into 750- and 1,000-gallon drums. When they wanted extremely fine milling, they used ultrasound. The ultrasound created small vacuum bubbles in a liquid. When these bubbles collapsed under pressure, they generated micro-turbulences of up to 1000 kilometers an hour.
Raj looked up from his Lenovo work station where he was manipulating samples in a stainless-steel chamber fitted with pressure-tested quartz windows and ports that accommodated mesh tubes, now snaking across the room. Two monitors played out the wavelength patterns of his sample material, glowing sl
ightly in the beam from the spectrometer.
“Does it feel better to be back in a controlled laboratory setting?” Lily asked.
“Are you laughing at me?” Raj looked at her in amiable puzzlement. “Why wouldn’t I prefer dropping robot clones out of a helicopter? Or, heaven forbid, stealing fingers from cadavers?”
“No reason. And I was laughing at you. You obviously like your new toys.” Lily Zhang gestured toward the steel spectroscope and reaction chamber, along with its satellite scopes, and monitors.
“Testing drugs by preparing samples and dripping reagents on them took too much time, was random and inexact, and destroyed the material you were testing!” Raj shook his head with disgust. “Plus, the mountebank suppliers have always doctored the stash so as to fool the reagents.”
Lily wanted to share his chagrin for the sake of camaraderie. She searched for something to say and settled on: “I especially disliked the fact that the tests ate up my capital stock, and I had nothing left after the test but the surmise that it could be generalized to other samples.”
“You are a thrifty Uighur,” Raj responded. “Well, now that we’re shooting infrared light into samples, we can do more, do it quickly and more accurately. The chemical composition plays out according to the wavelength of light emitted. I love the test, it’s the results I don’t like.”
“Tell me.”
“Our supplier, the new guy, is cutting the stock with chalk, occasionally introducing fentanyl to give a fake opiate kick. Basically, we’ve just taken a huge shipment that’s not up to par. We went to a lot of trouble to get ripped off by an organization that promised more than they can deliver. And I assume that’s what I’m checking for.”
“Yes and no,” she said. “When people buy from us, they should know what they’re getting. The brand’s got to stand for something, you know? Even if it’s drugs.” Then she amended the statement: “Especially if it’s drugs. When there’s no standard, people die. They die from a sample that’s too potent; they die because they take too much substandard junk. There were three problems with Menodarwar’s operation: 1) They were leaking the stuff into Xinjiang and corrupting our people; 2) There was no quality control; 3) It was not our operation; we need to do to the suppliers of the Golden Crescent what we’ve done to Gilead, Lily, Bayer and the Western pharmaceutical companies—own them or clone them.”
“Since when did you care about the lives of elitist junkies in Shanghai?” Raj practically spit out the words. “What’s this about quality control?”
“I don’t want to kill off my market.”
“You can grow the market elsewhere. The stuff is addictive, for heaven’s sake!”
“No,” Lily said firmly. “This is a tactical weapon. It is an analogue to what the British did here with the Opium Wars. But our whole effort is to keep it marginalized on China’s eastern rim—Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong—where the money is. Of course, the stuff leaks out elsewhere—like here in Xinjiang. But if we spend enough to corner the market, and move it east, we do a lot to protect Xinjiang. We can afford to protect Xinjiang. You know how I feel about that.”
“Funny how, at the same time, we make a lot of money,” Raj said sarcastically.
“Good works are costly. Our legitimate businesses do well, but this is the one with the greatest revenue potential.”
“So what do we do now… with this junk, I mean? Given our contacts, we can track the particular supplier down, I’m sure. All we’ve got to do is start down the chain of supply asking questions.”
“I don’t think so,” Lily said thoughtfully. “That would take too long. That would tip our hand.” She pursed her lips. After turning it over in her mind, she said, “I want you to pay off, but make the payment a fraction short of the agreed amount. It’ll be a take-it-or-leave-it deal. It’s only a few thousand yuan we’re talking about here. Then immediately contract for a much larger shipment with a huge payoff. And then, if you want to, you can set your spies to work.”
“Frankly, I’m not following the logic,” said Raj.
“Most important: I believe the supplier who took the last deal—a big volume deal—is new. Our old guys were small operators right from the farm. This new guy delivered quantity. He’s a big aggregator. Let’s play to his strength. Triple the order volume!”
“You’re right,” agreed Raj. “This guy is new.”
“Is it also true” asked Lily, “that you make the payment—not to him, but his representative?”
“Correct.”
“So,” said Lily, “the kingpin here will wonder why suddenly he’s short a paltry few thousand yuan. He’ll either believe we stopped a whisper short of the agreed price, in a fit of pique. Or, he’ll believe that the money disappeared into someone’s pocket. The Americans have a wonderful idiom for that—‘bouncing to conclusions.’”
“Well, I know what I’d think in this circumstance,” said Raj, shaking his head.
“Exactly,” said Lily. “So the next time, the boss man will pay more attention to the payoff mechanics . . . especially when the new deal is much bigger and richer.” Lily smiled coyly. “He might even be persuaded to come himself. He’ll figure we’re not very bright, anyway. After all, we just bought a batch of adulterated product.”
“What do I do with the bogus stuff we’ve got in all these depilatory bottles?” asked Raj.
“Can you remove some of the cutting agent?”
“Sure. Acid-based extraction. But that’s slow.”
“Do it,” Lily ordered. “I want to know what we’re selling. And I DO want to sell it. We’ll need to recoup some of our investment, even if the extraction is costly.”
“But the main thing is to draw in our rogue supplier?
“Yes,“ Lily nodded. “No one has screwed with us before. No one before has supplied this much dope. I want to meet this bold ‘entrepreneur.’”
“When do you want delivery?”
“Three weeks. Monday the 17th. That’ll provide some pressure for our supplier. I’ll be back here in a day or so. Let’s see what we have then. I’m betting only the very bold—and the very greedy— will rise to the bait.”
56
PERFECTION
Cochrane pulled up at a lovely old brownstone, the kind with pediments and cornices that made the older neighborhoods of the mid-Atlantic seaboard so appealing. It had a faded charm, like a good quality consignment store or estate sale. Purdy noted the multiple mailboxes at the front door and deduced the old grand dame had been subdivided into apartments.
Cochrane’s digs were on the third floor. Cody was beaming and blushing and skittered up the stairs so quickly, he had to run to keep up. It became a race, although one encumbered by giggles and laughter. He tried to catch her arm, but she slipped away. He burst onto the landing so abruptly he surged into her in the doorway. She turned, and he was pressed against her, aware of the brush of her hair, the scent of her perfume, the long lashes and downcast eyes.
“What’s this?” she teased.
“Inertial momentum?” he offered, blushing.
“Right,” she said, drawing the word out so that the sound rose and fell. She reached behind her to turn the doorknob. At the same time, she looked up and tapped his chest lightly with her forefinger. “Now, you stay right here. I’ll be back in a minute.” She turned and closed the door behind her.
In a moment she was back, throwing open the door, and drawing him in with a hand that swept down and up as she gave him a mock curtsy. “Welcome to Villa Cochrane, kind sir.”
Purdy walked in and was immediately struck by how light the apartment seemed, with the setting sun slanting in through a combination of French doors and skylights. Little dust motes eddied in the fading sunlight. Sun rays struck the brass web that supported the coffee table and even sought out the gold leaf on an old picture over the fireplace mantle. The result was that a warm glow suffused the entire room.
Cody had decorated with a combination of one or two fine pieces set in
an ensemble of comfortable old Salvation Army castoffs. She had a hunt table set against the window that looked every bit of 250 years old. On the other hand, her couch was camouflaged under a homemade throw. “Mix and match,” Purdy thought, “and books everywhere!” They lined the built-in bookshelves. They piled up on the floor, where they supported a laptop.
“Casing the joint?” she asked.
“Décor is the window to the soul,” he replied.
“I think it’s the eyes that are the window to the soul, sailor.”
“Well, I like what I see,” he said, smiling at her.
“Me, too,” she said. “I’m so glad you’re here…and alive. I thought for a time that I was going to lose you. It’s selfish of me, I suppose, but those moments made me feel so alone, so vulnerable. And,” she said, shaking her head and blinking back the damp in her eyes, “that’s not typical of me at all.”
Purdy reached over and took her hands in his. “So,” he chuckled, “this is a welcome back dinner?”
“You could say that.”
“You always tease me about being a . . .what do you call it? A gastronome?”
Not letting go of his hands, Cochrane was walking backwards pulling him into a corridor. She laughed and Purdy thought he had never heard anything so musical, so affecting.
“Well, this time,” she said, “I thought we’d start with dessert.” She reached behind her, opened a door, and drew him into the bedroom. It was like stepping into twilight. A little cascade of candles twinkled by the far side of the bed. Although they were all alone, Cochrane closed the door before she slipped her arms around Purdy’s neck and drew his face down to hers.
He kissed her gently, lightly. He cupped her cheek in his hand and kissed the corner of her mouth, then kissed her full on the lips. She was murmuring and kissing back, moving against him. Her eyelashes brushed his cheek. He buried his face in the nape of her neck, thinking how perfect a place it was, on an altogether perfect woman.
