White Ghost (19 page)

“I suspect the insurance carrier would pay around a quarter of what the chips are worth.” Gage then estimated a low total so Zhang wouldn't feel betrayed later if the value fell short of what the victim company claimed. “That would make it twenty-five percent of about one point five million dollars.”

Zhang's eyebrows rose even higher than Gage expected, then he asked, “When could the general find out whether the insurance company will agree, at least in principle?”

“Maybe late tonight.”

Gage rose from his chair. He reached into his pocket and handed Zhang a list of thirty boat names and hull numbers.

“The microchips are on one of these. How about find out where along the coast they're expected.” Like other ports, border trade ports required shippers to identify ships and cargos before arrival, in the official ports to assess duties, in the PLA ports to assess fees and bribes. “Once we have a deal, I tell you which one is carrying them.”

“Careful as ever, aren't you?”

Gage knew Zhang wasn't expecting an answer, so he didn't give one. Instead, he said, “Why don't I leave you two to enjoy the rest of the evening while I go make some calls?”

The look of the shark once again crossed Zhang's face.

Gage winked at Kai as he passed by her and headed out the door.

T
here's a chance we can recover the chips without jeopardizing what I'm trying to do,” Gage told Jack Burch in a call from his room. “But it'll cost something.”

“I'll work that part out, just tell me who gets the money.”

“A company in Hong Kong.”

“Which one?”

“Whatever one you set up.”

Burch laughed. “So it's that way.”

“It's always that way over here. Talk to you later.”

“Hold up a second. Isn't there something you're supposed to tell me?”

“I'm fine. Following doctor's orders.”

“Thanks. I needed to hear that.”

Gage disconnected, then called Sylvia.

“Get a hold of Joe Casey and find out the name of the company that insured the chips. Just say the parties want to deal directly with the carrier and to leave the FBI out of it. I talked to someone who might be able to recover them. He's the biggest fish in these waters and needs to be fed.”

Gage's cell rang a few minutes later.

“It's called Industrial Insurance,” Sylvia said. “Out of the Bahamas. Casey gave me the name of the adjuster in the States and threw in a little tidbit he said might interest you. Get this. He got a message from the Ministry of Justice Intelligence Bureau in Taiwan that they intercepted a call from an unknown person in the San Francisco area to a known United Bamboo enforcer containing a threat against someone named Lew who was supposed to be on his way north. The order was to kill Lew if anything goes wrong. Casey doesn't know if he's the same Lew as the one at East Wind, but he wanted you to know.”

“What did MJIB want from the FBI?”

“Help in stopping a homicide. They think north means Taipei since it's on the north end of the island.”

“Maybe Ah Ming is sending Lew over here to do the deal. If ICE confirms that Lew is heading this way, then Casey has a legitimate basis to tell the Taiwanese that north is outside of Taiwan altogether and that he'll track the matter himself.”

“Don't you want to talk to Casey yourself? I know he wants to talk to you. He said something about his losing sleep.”

“There's no reason to leave a cell-phone trail from me to him. Tell him I'm sleeping like a baby and he should, too.”

Gage called Burch and gave him the name of the insurer.

“They'll need to make a quick decision,” Gage said.

“I'll give them until midnight Pacific Time. Eight
A.M.
tomorrow where you are.”

Gage heard a knock just after hanging up. He figured Zhang was too anxious to wait until morning for an update. He opened the door to find Kai displaying the Thai
yim cheua-cheuan,
the you-can't-outfox-me smile.

“Nice try,” she said.

“I thought you were interested.” Gage grinned at her. “The poetry, the food from home.”

“The guy's just a . . . how do you say . . . just a fucking car thief.
Sorry, a general fucking car thief. I'll bet he didn't even pay for that suit he was wearing.”

“I hope you didn't hurt his feelings.”

“I just slipped in that my husband is the minister of the interior, you know, head of the police and intelligence.”

“How'd he react?”

“His moment of profound disappointment was quickly surpassed by the pull of
guanxi
and right away he said he'd like to meet Somchai to do a little networking.”

Gage reached for the doorknob. “And now you're going to your room?”

Kai shrugged and then gave him an up-from-under look.

“I don't know. The poetry and all kind of put me in the mood for . . .”

Gage shook his head as he started to ease the door closed. “There's nothing that doesn't put you in the mood. I'll see you in the morning.”

A
T 6 A.M.
Kai returned to Gage's room to await both Burch's call and an update from Cobra. It had been a hard night; Gage had woken up three times in a heavy sweat.

Kai sat down on the edge of the bed and leaned back against the headboard, resting her hands on the sheet, then jumped up.

“Did you spill something?” she asked, wiping her hands on a dry sheet corner.

Gage glanced back from where he sat at the desk and lied. “No, I dropped a wet towel there after I took a shower. Just toss the bedspread over it.”

Gage answered his cell phone on the first ring. It was Burch.

“Industrial Insurance has accepted our terms and e-mailed a draft agreement. I added a confidentiality clause with respect to the award, the amount, and the name of the recipient company, and they agreed to it.”

Gage nodded at Kai.

“How do they want to handle the condition of the chips and the quantity?”

“That is a little complicated. Off the record they told me they suspect the victim of the robbery is inflating his losses, maybe by thirty percent. The insurance company has the serial numbers of all the chips Intel sold to him in the last six months, but they don't know how many he had left in stock.”

“Which means we won't know the total number and type until we recover them . . . if we recover them.”

It struck Gage that he needed a hostage of a different kind to make this work.

“Suggest they put money in your trust account based on the claim as it stands, even if they believe it's inflated. When the time comes, they can send over a technician to examine and inventory the chips. But don't tell them yet where we think the chips will be. Make them think they're in the States. Things are going to get messy enough and I don't want them trying to go around us thinking they can save a few bucks. The last thing we want is to have the guy helping us here feel betrayed. It might get people killed.”

“You mean you.”

“Among others.”

S
unrise found Cobra staring at the tarp covering the back of the second of the two heroin trucks heading north on the Old Burma Road in Southern China. He let his eyes take in the passing bamboo, palm, and pine trees of the surrounding hillsides just emerging from the darkness, but still ghosted by the low clouds of the high forest. He felt Luck stir as he slept in the cab between him and Moby in the driver's seat.

Moby downshifted as he approached a tight turn. The gears ground and the truck bucked. He looked over at Cobra and shrugged, his eyes glinting red in the taillights shining back at them.

Cobra had found Moby and Luck to be no different than other Shan tribesmen he'd met over the years, men who were instrumental in the drug trade, but who never saw any of the real money, never even seemed willing to let themselves think about it. They were soldiers in a war of all against all, members of tribes that had fought each other and foreign invaders for two thousand years. For them, heroin was merely a commodity, no different than the rice or soybeans the Thais and Burmese sold
on the world market to purchase arms from China to use against them.

And they knew how to handle themselves.

Cobra looked at his watch and then his cell phone, but there was no service in the canyon through which they were passing. He switched on the shortwave knowing Gage and Kai would be standing by.

“Isaan one, Isaan one. Over.”

“Isaan one here. Over,” Kai answered.

“We are still with our friends, over.”

“Where are you? Over.”

“North of Pu'er, south of Kunming.”

“And the weather? Over.”

“Still good. Over.”

“Isaan one, out.”

“Isaan one, out.”

“W
HY DON'T YOU GO DOWN
and collect your friend Zhang,” Gage told Kai, as they once again packed up the radio. “We can have breakfast up here.”

Gage ordered room service and it had been laid out on the dining table in the living room, overlooking the hotel gardens by the time Kai and Zhang arrived.

Zhang reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out Gage's list of boat names and numbers. He held it up long enough for them to see that names of ports had been written next to each, then put it away.

“Do you trust this man Burch?” Zhang asked.

Gage nodded.

“What about the people in Hong Kong who'll handle the company and the bank account?”

“Jack didn't tell me who he's using, but it'll be a firm he's done a lot of business with.”

“And that puzzles me. I checked on Burch. He's big. Huge. He's Global 500 not Formosa Strait smuggling. Why would he risk involving himself in something like this?”

Gage found the question irrelevant. Zhang was using his temporary leverage from Gage, needing his help to mine for information about Burch in order to exploit it, and maybe Burch, later. But Gage wasn't going to give him the opportunity.

“He doesn't know what this is all about.”

Zhang smiled. “Deniability.”

Gage shook his head, not returning the smile. “Not even that.”

Zhang seemed to realize that his move had been blocked and resigned himself to now having to make a decision. Holding his teacup in his hand, he gazed out of the window and down toward the gardens below like a high diver on a windy day.

And then jumped: “We've got a deal.”

Gage called Burch from the bedroom while Kai and Zhang ate breakfast.

“The insurance carrier agreed to the escrow idea,” Burch said. “They figure they can recover part of their loss by discounting and reselling the chips. And I bought a company from a friend in Hong Kong. He was with Arthur Andersen before it evaporated. He set up a number of shelf companies about two years ago and has been selling them off over time. An older one is more expensive, but I figured it would draw less attention than a new one. I don't know if the person you're dealing with understands any of this, but if he does, he'll find it reassuring.”

“He won't, but I do. This is his first time he's dealt offshore at this level. And don't use the phrases shelf company or shell company when you talk to him, he'll just get confused. Just say ready-made.”

Gage wrote down the name of the company and the loca
tion of the bank and the account number, then disconnected and walked back into the living room.

“The company is called Calico Limited.”

Zhang smiled. “I was hoping for K-A-I.”

Gage shrugged. “Not everything is possible.”

“It does seem that way, doesn't it,” Zhang said, then reached again for the list of boats and handed it to Kai.

From her pocket, Kai pulled out a slip of paper showing the partial hull number of the smuggling boat, then scanned down numbers and looked up at Gage.

“It's on its way to Qidong.”

Gage turned toward Zhang. “Which is where?”

“North along the Yangtze. Jiangsu Province. Just a few hours' drive from here.”

After Zhang left to make arrangements for the trip, Gage brought up a map of the Qidong area on his cell phone and displayed it for Kai.

Gage then texted Alex Z asking him to search Ah Tien's address book for names and companies in that area.

When he looked up from his phone, Kai said, “I'm worried that with Zhang we could have another Eight Iron on our hands. This is his world, not ours, and he could cut us out and steal the chips. He's a snake. Two PLA officers got executed for being involved in the car smuggling case from when you first met him. He was up to his neck in it, and all he got was promoted.”

“I don't think he'll be that shortsighted about this. He's getting at least half a million dollars and an offshore company and a bank account. He's spent his whole career landlocked and we're giving him the tools to go international. It's something he'd never be able to do on his own, or at least without having to share with others in the PLA. And the only reason he's getting any of this is
because Burch told his people in Hong Kong that this is a legitimately acquired insurance reward.”

Kai pulled back and looked at Gage. “Legitimately?” Her voice whined with sarcasm. “Did you say legitimately?”

“Apparently you didn't study cultural relativity in college in the States.”

“I didn't need to. I practiced it.”

W
hen Gage and Kai walked out the hotel exit, they spotted Ferrari dressed in civilian clothes standing at the curb next to a five-year-old Toyota van with tinted windows. He pulled open the sliding door as they approached and took their bags around to the back. They found Zhang sitting on one of two rear bench seats facing a table on which lay maps, note paper, cell phones, and thermoses of tea.

Soon after leaving the hotel grounds, they passed hundreds of taxis in a line extending from the airport, each driver leaning against his car, waiting his turn to grab a fare for the long ride into the commercial center of Shanghai or to the Nanjing Road shopping district. Gage felt anger rumble inside him when he noticed that most of them were smoking, killing themselves, embracing the cancer that he was fighting, wasting their bodies and their lives.

He forced himself to look away as Ferrari cut north.

Ferrari took them along the far western edge of the city of twenty-three million, skirting the center gasping for the ocean air sweeping the gray-brown haze of diesel fumes and coal ash inland. The pollution didn't bother Gage as much as the cab
drivers' cigarette smoke, for when hundreds of millions live in poverty, pollution can be seen as a sign of progress, even of hope.

Gage studied Zhang talking on his cell phone, a man he knew to be content in that unpredictable nexus where power and greed conjoined in state-authorized corruption. He then realized that Zhang was so focused on the money he never asked who Gage was working for and what he stood to gain. At the same time, he doubted Zhang would ask what was being exchanged for the chips. He'd likely figure it out on his own and surely keep it to himself.

As they drove farther north and west, Ferrari slowed next to Anting Automobile City. Zhang looked out of the window and pointed at a billboard displaying a Formula One race car, blurred by its two-hundred-mile-an-hour velocity.

“The Shanghai Grand Prix,” Zhang said, glancing over his shoulder at Ferrari. “Maybe someday . . .”

In the rearview mirror Gage could see a smile emerge on Ferrari's face.

“But not now.”

Ferrari hit the accelerator and they merged back into traffic.

Gage glanced down at Zhang's cell phone lying on the desk. “You have any leads about when the chips will come to shore?”

“Not yet, but it won't make any difference. My people will be watching for it.”

“Maybe this will help them.”

Gage handed Zhang a list of the names and decoded numbers they recovered from Ah Tien.

“My staff located two companies that might be involved. They were listed in an address book belonging to a man named Ah Tien in San Francisco. Tongming Tiger and Efficiency Trading. Both are in a city called Nantong.”

Zhang nodded. “I know the place. Commercial and agricul
tural. About a million people. It's west of the port and next to a Special Economic Zone.”

“And someone at the local trade bureau may be helping them.”

Zhang looked from the sheet to Gage. “What did this Ah Tien have to say about them?”

“He's not talking anymore.”

Zhang drew back, then said, “Oh, I see.” He then scanned the company names and read one aloud: “Chao Yang. That's Chaozhou for Sunny Glory.” He looked up. “Are all these people Chaozhou?”

“I think the ones in Thailand and Taiwan are.”

“Dangerous people,” Zhang said, then smiled at Kai. “Except you, of course.”

“Thank you, that's very generous.” Kai pinched Gage's thigh under the table as punishment for Zhang's crime.

Gage knew once Zhang made the Chaozhou connection, he'd assume that the contraband was heroin, for they controlled the major trafficking syndicates and had managed the trade routes for more than three generations. There was no reason now not to specify the origin of the heroin.

“The contraband I mentioned is being trucked north from Thailand. And there may be a man named Lew Fung-hao on his way from the States to meet it.”

Gage decided not to tell Zhang about the enforcer traveling from Taiwan that Casey had learned about. He didn't want Zhang to think U.S. law enforcement was paying attention.

Zhang punched a number into his cell phone, then passed on Lew's name and the names and telephone numbers from the list.

“I need to have what you would call a hypothetical discussion with the commander of the Qidong port,” Zhang said. “We'll have to come to an agreement about the contraband. We have
capital punishment in China, a great deal of it and enforced rather capriciously, so this could be a little tricky.”

They drove on through the rice, wheat, and cotton fields of Jiangsu Province toward the dock where the ferry crossed the Yangtze River, then waited in a long line of cars and trucks. They were among the last to make it on.

Gage and Kai left the car and took the stairs to the upper deck. As he looked out over the Yangtze, it seemed more like the East China Sea into which it fed. The opposite bank was not only lost in fog, but was too far away to be seen even on a fogless day, and the river was populated mostly by oceangoing ships. Only the barges reminded Gage that they were on a river.

After they left the ferry behind on the northern bank, they drove to the crossroads between the Qidong port in the east and Nantong City in the west.

A car was waiting to take Zhang to meet the commander.

As Gage and Kai rode with Ferrari toward Nantong, Gage felt just as he often had at homicide scenes so many years ago in San Francisco. He'd walk into a house or an apartment or a basement and see a corpse splayed out. Then he'd smell food cooking next door and overhear the sounds of laughter, of everyday conversation, of people oblivious to a violent death that had been inflicted on the other side of their wall. He'd think of the victim's relatives a thousand miles away, equally oblivious, laughing at a crude joke at the moment of death—

Then a call, a knock, a chill, a new world.

Everyone is oblivious to almost everything,
Gage thought to himself as he looked out at the countryside, imagining the tough little farmers far inland carrying their oranges a thousand feet down to the Yangtze, workers hunched over in wheat fields and rice paddies, all of them knowing nothing of microprocessors, or of offshore corporations, or of stolen SUVs. But they didn't need
to know, at least about these microprocessors or this offshore corporation or Zhang's SUV.

On the other hand, Gage knew that if he kept his strength and had his way, in the next few days men in Nantong, and even Lew himself, would hear the knock and feel the chill and face a new world because of the death of a confused teenage boy a couple of weeks earlier on a warehouse floor an ocean away.