‘Magnificent’, he said and bowed to the tattooist, who returned the honor. He put on a ceremonial robe of scarlet and yellow brocade and went into the adjoining room, which was stunningly decorated with Chinese antiques, objets d’art, and Oriental rugs. Beyond the room, through large windows, the city of Macao lay at the feet of the house.
An elderly man in his seventies was standing by a large tank of marine fish, crushing flakes and dropping them into the tank. He stopped as the young man entered the room, brushed his hands, and studied the tattoo for several moments before nodding his approval. ‘Another work of art,’ he said.
He bowed his thanks to the old tattooist, who responded in kind and left. The old man was head of a powerful Chinese clan known as the White Palms, which controlled the Chiu Chao triads, the fourteen most powerful underworld gangs in the world. But a stroke had left him lame and shaken his memory a bit, so he had decided to step down. The young man, whose name was Tollie Fong, would on that night become the new san wong, the hill chief, as the leader of the triad was known.
‘It is quite a day,’ the old man said, tending his fish. ‘Your father would be very proud of you, as I am. I can think of no one who deserves to become san wong of the White Palm Triad more than you.’
They were standing beside a saltwater aquarium, a big one, a hundred gallons. The old man crumbled brine shrimp in his fingers, and sprinkled it in the tank. ‘Now I can spend my time playing with my fish.’
Beautiful rainbow-colored fish drifted in and out of the coral on the bottom. The most dominant was a cobalt-blue angel, about the size of a dollar pancake, with a long snout.
‘For fifty years we have been the most feared of the triads. Now it is more important than ever to be undisputed,’ the old man went on.
As the shrimp pieces sank, the other fish swarmed around them. The blue angel attacked them, ramming and dispersing them and then swooping and darting about the tank, gobbling up the small bits as they sank toward the tank floor. The angel cleared the area and circled lazily, snapping up the bits of shrimp floating down through the tank,
‘Never show weakness to anyone —, The old man sprinkled some fish food in his hand and held it down into the tank. The angel circled cautiously for a moment and then darted in, grabbed a bit of food and backed off. Through the water, Tollie Fong could see the tattoo on the old san wong’s forearm. It was identical with his own, put there, in fact, by the same artist when they both were much younger men.
‘— not to your family, your wife, your brother, not to me
— but most of all, never to your enemies. Well, enough of that. While the old man was performing his magic on your arm, your man in Bangkok called. I took the liberty of accepting the message, since you could not be disturbed.’
‘Ah, good. What did he say?’ Fong said eagerly.
‘He said the garden is planted. The harvest will be tonight.’
Twenty miles east of Kangar near Padang Besar, the railroad crossing from Thailand into Malaysia, Father Kilhanney drove the pickup truck cautiously along the crumbling back road. He was only a mile or so from the border station and the rain had cone suddenly, as it always did in southern Thailand. Lightning streaked the sky, and palm fronds, urged by the wind, snatched at the windshield. Kilhanney felt sorry for the women in the back. There was no tarp covering the bed, and the eighteen laborers were huddled together against the storm. Kilhanney wasn’t sure exactly what was going on and he didn’t want to know. His job was to meet a private plane at Songkhla and drive eighteen laborers to the Thai-Malaysia border.
The road wound down past the guard station, coursed back through the jungle for thirty miles to the main road, then north up the Thai peninsula to Bangkok. The border station was little more than a customs house with two guards.
Before dawn, eighteen women, twelve carrying their babies in slings on their back, would walk across the invisible line that divided Thailand and Malaysia. With their work permits they would earn ten dollars a day as laborers on the rubber plantations or as domestic help for the moneyed aristocracy. Across the isolated border another truck waited to transport them to their jobs. It was a daily occurrence, nothing out of the ordinary.
Except that these were not ordinary babies. They were all barely six months old. All had been bought on the streets of Bangkok a few hours earlier. All had been murdered just before the plane took off for Hao Yai airport.
Kilhanney did not know about the dead cargo he was carrying. The women had seemed uncommonly quiet when he picked them up, but he thought it was probably the weather.
He pulled the truck up at the border crossing and jumped out. The rain had slacked off for a few moments and was falling only in a light, steady drizzle, but lightning still ripped the sky and snapped at the thick jungle surrounding them.
Kilhanney got out, went to the back of the truck and lowered the tailgate. He helped the women out, particularly the ones with their babies on their backs. The women scurried along a muddy path toward the guard station with their work permits ready.
Two guards huddled in the small outpost to keep out of the rain. Kilhanney got back in the truck and watched as the women approached the border guards. The rest was routine. The Malaysian guards were friendly and flirted with the women.
As one of the women started past the guard her child’s arm dropped out of the sling and dangled loosely. She hurried on, unaware that the child was slipping and its head had come out of the sling. As she passed the guard he stopped her and, smiling, reached out to put the baby back. But as he touched it he froze. The baby was ice-cold.
The woman panicked and ran, and the child toppled out of the sling into the guard’s arms.
The guard holding the baby in the rain screamed to the other guard, ‘This baby is dead! Stop her,’ as the woman ran back toward the pickup.
Then all the women with babies began to run. The second guard checked the child on another woman’s back. He stood in the rain holding another dead child. ‘This one is dead, also!’ he yelled back.
The women scrambled. They started to run back toward the pickup, and the guards fired several shots in the air to stop them. Kilhanney freaked out. He slammed the pickup in gear, and with tires digging into the mushy road, he drove off.
Kilhanney drove like a madman, the heavy pickup skittering along the slippery back road. The truck roared through the savage storm with Kilhanney frantically peering through the rain-swept windshield. Fear had turned his mouth to ashes.
‘Oh God,’ he kept repeating over and over again. Then suddenly the road in front of him exploded in white light, a bolt of lightning seared the sky in front of him and shattered one of the towering trees. The blaze of light temporarily blinded Kilhanney. He wiped his eyes and then the road seemed to vanish and there was only the jungle in front of him. He spun the wheel. The truck’s tires slithered in loose gravel and crumbling pavement and water. The truck plunged sideways into the jungle and snapped to a crunching stop against an embankment.
Kilhanney was dazed. The windshield was shattered. He groped for the door handle, pulled it up, and as the door swung open he toppled into a soggy ditch. The cold rain brought him around. He sat up for a moment, then scrambled up the slippery side of the gully and plunged headlong into the jungle.
He ran frantically through the jungle as tree branches and bamboo snapped at him, tore at his clothes, stung his face. Lightning turned the jungle into a strobed nightmare.
Vines the size of boa constrictors curled out of the ground and strangled the big mangrove trees. Another jagged bolt of lightning streaked overhead. In its eerie blue-white light, Kilhanney saw a giant stone Buddha, eroded by time and weather, glowering through the ferns at him, its face and body shrouded by the relentless growth. Kilhanney fell back against a tree with a scream. Then with his heart smashing at his ribs, he raced on through the storm.