That was the night he had assigned his five captains, who called themselves the Dragon’s Breath, to open the markets in Saigon and keep them supplied.
‘We must plan this move most carefully and then wait,’ he said, ‘for it will be two or three years before we make our move, but it is a good plan and it will work.’
When his captains had left, the older Fong turned to his son. ‘You must understand the economics of this business,’ he said softly but firmly. ‘There are millions, perhaps billions, of dollars at stake, Right now your destiny is to follow me as Red Pole of the White Palm Chiu Chao. But this business will open things up for you. The more you know, the more important you will become. Who knows how far you can go. . .
The Red Pole had prepared his son well. Tollie Fong’s mentor was Joe Lung, who would later be the only member of the Dragon’ Breath to survive Hatcher’s brutal massacre on the Mekong. Lung guided a vigorous training program. A year with the Ninja in Tokyo, six months with the SAVAK in Iran, another six months with thuggee Sikhs in Bombay. And another year spent with a master of tai chi and karate on Okinawa.
But always there was the business of the trade to learn, and Fong learned it from the experts by interning in the business offices of the Chiu Chaos in Hong Kong, Bangkok, Singapore and Seattle. Before he was twenty he was in New York learning the business of the street and had already killed three times , for his main role in the hierarchy of the White Palm was still to take his father’s place as the Red Pole executioner.
As the new san wong of the White Palms, Fong would have made his father proud, for he had become an expert at the economics of the trade. Now the profits were so enormous that police could be bought and whole nations could be corrupted. Dope smuggling had become the most profitable business in the world, and a fifth of all the heroin sold in the United States came from the Golden Triangle in northern Thailand. And despite his ch’u-tiao, his blood oath to kill Hatcher — the man who had executed his father and now Joe Lung — the business of powder had to come first, for he had stretched his authority by setting up deals with the most productive hill tribes in the Golden Triangle.
Each year he had spread his empire farther, moving more deeply into the Triangle, taking dangerous risks with the suspicious and volatile mountain bandits. Every time the government burned out a field or coerced a hill tribe into planting coffee or mushrooms, Fong went deeper and found new tribes willing to cultivate the lucrative poppy.
His gamble had paid off handsomely. Fong now controlled the flow of Thai heroin for all the Chiu Chao families, and that was almost 5 percent of all the heroin that came out of Thailand. And in secret conclave, the Chiu Chaos were at that very moment, confirming him as san wong, master of all the families.
Fong needed someone to take his place as enforcer, someone he could trust. He decided that someone would be Billy Kot.
Handpicked from among the many assassins who served the White Palms, Kot was bright, clever, awesomely ruthless and, in Fong’s eyes, the most efficient killer in the world, next to Tollie Fong himself. Kot was only twenty-six, but he was a college graduate, and now it was time to move him up.
Leaning over the back of the seat, Fong began a dialogue with Billy Kot, who leaned forward with his ear close to Fong’s mouth.
‘You must learn this part of the business because you are going to be the next Red Pole.’
Kot reared back in surprise, for the news was totally unexpected.
‘It is more than just the business of the Red Pole,’ said Fong. ‘You must not only enforce the rules of the Society, you must also control negotiations up here as well.’
‘I understand,’ Billy Kot said, trying to control his excitement at the news. ‘I promise to be worthy of your trust.’
‘You must learn the ways of each of the hill leaders. To us they are like arteries to the heart. They must learn to trust you. And they are all different.’
‘What of General Dao?’
‘General Dao has been head of the Hsong tribe for fourteen years, since he was twenty-two,’ Fong began. ‘For three hundred miles in every direction, the tribes fear the Hsong.’
‘Is he a warlord?’
‘He does not start things, but be does not bow down either. They have not waged war on anyone for at least ten years.’
‘So he is a tough guy,’ Billy Kot said.
‘Very. The army is afraid of him. Two years ago he threw out the nai amphoe, and Bangkok never even replaced the man. He is not like some of the others, always crying about the federals burning their fields, trying to gouge a few extra dollars for every joi.’
‘Is he friendly?’ Kot asked.
‘He smiles,’ Fong answered with a shrug, ‘but he is cautious. The secret is to treat him with respect, never threaten him. An insult or threat, even an unwitting one, could be mistaken as an act of war. His bing yahn would drop us all on the spot. At the very least he would end our arrangement. So be careful.’
‘I will just listen this time.’
‘No, do what your spirit says. If you make a slip, the White Fan will warn you. He will stand or sit between us and Dao and to the side, partly facing us. If he shakes his head, stop talking, and he will handle the problem.’
‘How much gum does the Hsong produce?’
‘He is not a big producer, but the powder is as pure as it gets and he does it all, including the refining. Each year he has increased his production. I don’t know what the yield will be this year.’
Below them they saw a village, not large, perhaps a hundred hooches, forming neat patterns on a high, lush mesa. Beyond it was Powder Mountain, its poppy fields denuded by the harvest. The pilot jockeyed the chopper around and put it down beside a dirt road at the foot of the mountain.
‘This is the main village,’ Fong said as they crawled out of the plane. ‘There are three or four smaller ones around. And the Hsong bing yahn live in the jungle. They are everywhere, do not underestimate them.’
‘How many soldiers?’ asked Billy Kot.
‘I have no idea,’ Fong answered. ‘Three hundred maybe.’
‘Weapons?’
‘Everything. Subguns, M—14s, grenade launchers, a lot of small stuff. Very well armed.’
A battered antique of an army truck was waiting for them. They crawled in the back and sat facing each other as it rattled and rocked up the barely passable road to the village, thirty-five hundred feet above the valley floor.
‘He can use a new truck or two,’ said Fong, nodding to the White Fan. The old man made a mental note of it. He never wrote anything down.
Kot watched as the truck climbed the dusty road. He spotted a momentary flash of sun on steel in a tree, saw movement in another.
‘His bing yahn are everywhere,’ he said.
‘Hai. Real monkeys,’ Fong answered with a nod.
When they reached the crest of the hill, the truck stopped in front of a small hooch, a box of a house with one door and one window, which sat apart from the rest of the village. An armed guard stood at the side of the door.
‘Just watch how it is done,’ Fong said.
The formalities dated back to the time of the Opium Wars in China, almost a hundred and fifty years ago. Fong posted Soon on the opposite side of the door and entered the hooch with the Fan and Billy Kot.
It was a small room with four mats on the floor in the center, two facing each other, two stretched between them, forming a square in the middle of the room. Dao stood in front of one of the mats with two of his troopers posted in each corner of the room behind him. Beside Dao stood the fai thaan, a man whose face was etched with the crevices of time and whose teeth were stained dark brown from chewing betel nuts. The fai thaan was the cook and chief refiner of the Hsong tribe. At his feet was a small package wrapped in flat green leaves.