“They’re part of the Golden Triangle, roughly 150,000 square miles of rugged mountain terrain in Burma, Laos, and Thailand. During the sixties and seventies about seventy percent of the world’s illicit opium supply came from there. When the Kuomintang-Nationalist Chinese government collapsed in 1949, groups of Kuomintang soldiers fled China and settled in the Shan States. Starting in 1950, the CIA began regrouping them for an invasion of southern China. That project failed, but the soldiers succeeded in monopolizing the opium trade.
“One of my jobs was to ambush mule trains carrying morphine base down from the Shan Hills. We would kill the guards and steal the product.”
Morelli laughed.
“What’s so funny?”
“I was just remembering. We were such cowboys. The first time we ambushed a mule train we blasted everybody and everything. I mean we killed the guards and the mules.” He shook his head. “It turned out we’d also blown the packages with the morphine base all to hell and didn’t have a thing to show for the raid.”
Ami didn’t think that it was funny in the least to kill people and animals, but she held the thought.
“What did you do with the morphine base?” she asked instead.
Morelli sobered. “We brought it to Laos, where Meo tribesmen on the CIA payroll processed it into heroin. Some of the heroin was flown to Saigon on Air America, an airline financed by the CIA. In Saigon, the regime sold the heroin. Some of the people who bought it were American GIs.”
“Why would we help create GI addicts?”
“The CIA couldn’t ask Congress for money to pay off the Saigon regime, so they provided a commodity.”
“Didn’t that bother you?”
“Of course it did, once I found out what was going on. But I didn’t learn the full story until much later. I wasn’t in on the big policy decisions. I was a grunt, a foot soldier. They told me to ambush the train and bring the product to a certain person. That’s what I did. Then I went home. I didn’t question my orders.”
“You said that some of the heroin was sent to Saigon. What happened to the rest?”
“Some of it was traded to organized crime in the United States for favors.”
“You’re serious?”
Morelli nodded. “The rest was used to create a secret fund that financed the Unit’s operations. The money was kept in secret accounts in offshore banks. Only a few people knew the access numbers to the secret accounts.” Morelli got a faraway look. “I suspect those accounts no longer exist.”
Morelli’s story was growing more implausible with each new revelation, and Ami remembered what George French had said about the ability of people in a paranoid state to create believable stories that weren’t true. Ami was about to ask for some specifics that she could investigate when she remembered a piece of trivia she had read recently.
“Did you know General Morris Wingate?”
Morelli looked startled. “Why are you asking me about him?”
“He was the head of the AIDC during the Vietnam years. I saw that in a profile of Wingate in
Morelli laughed. “He’d help me all right. He’d help me out of this world. I am Morris Wingate’s worst nightmare. He’s the man I’m hiding from.”
“I don’t understand.”
“General Wingate recruited me. He gave me some of my orders. Vanessa is his daughter. If what I did for Wingate became public knowledge, he would go to prison. Do you see why I can’t let my picture be published? Once the general knows I’m alive he’ll have me killed. He has no choice.”
Ami was stunned. She couldn’t believe that Vanessa was Wingate’s daughter or that Morelli had the power to topple the General. Then again she wasn’t sure that she should believe what Morelli was telling her. Everything he’d said sounded crazy. Still…
“I think you’d better tell me everything from the beginning,” Ami said.
“What’s the use?”
“I don’t know. Maybe we won’t be any better off after I know everything. But I might be able to figure out some way to help you if I do. This is all between us anyway. I’m not going to tell anyone about it without your permission.”
“I don’t know.”
“Please, let me help you.”
“All right. I’ll tell you about Wingate and the Unit.”
“Why don’t you start by telling me your real name?”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CALIFORNIA-1969 AND 1970
“Carl, hold up.” Carl Rice was packing up his books at the end of his calculus class, and Vanessa Wingate’s voice froze him like a direct hit from Captain Kirk’s phaser. “You’re pretty good with calc, aren’t you?”
Carl turned to face the attractive blond, fighting to keep his eyes from drifting to the floor. His attempt at a nonchalant shrug looked more like a spastic twitch.
“I do okay.”
“Well, Mr. Goody lost me again. I was wondering if you could give me some help sometime. I’m pretty sure the stuff he went over today is going to be on the final, and I don’t understand any of it.”
“Uh, okay. I have class now, but I’ll be at the library at three.”
“Great,” Vanessa said, flashing her biggest, warmest smile. They made plans to meet at the reference desk, and Vanessa walked off after a cheery, “See ya.”
St. Martin’s Preparatory School was situated on a sprawling pastoral campus a few miles inland from the Pacific Ocean. The school had been established in 1889, and the ivy on the buildings looked as if it had never been pruned. Though they were in the same class there, Carl Rice and Vanessa Wingate might as well have been on different continents. Vanessa was rich, beautiful, and the lead in Carl’s most intense sexual fantasies. She ran with a clique that drove the newest and fastest cars, wore the coolest clothes, and was into the latest fads before anyone else in America even knew that they existed. Carl was a scholarship boy who ran with no crowd and bought his clothes off the rack at JCPenny. Being able to spend two hours with Vanessa-even if they were only studying calculus-was the answer to his teenage prayers.
Carl had trouble concentrating in class and was at the library fifteen minutes early. His heart raced every time the front doors opened. After a few minutes of tortured waiting, Carl accepted the fact that he was a fool. Vanessa wasn’t going to show up. She had so many friends and so many activities that he couldn’t picture her missing out on any of her fun to spend time being tutored by him. He was just starting to gather up his books when he saw her standing near the reference desk, waving.
The school library, a huge stone building, had been built with a donation from a railroad tycoon in the early 1900s. Carl led Vanessa downstairs to a table in the rear of the basement where he worked on his homework nearly every evening. It was dimly lit, but its appeal for Carl was that few other students made their way down to it.
Carl was surprised that Vanessa wanted help with calculus. He’d never pictured her as a serious student. Then again, he didn’t really know much about her. He was pleasantly surprised to discover that she was bright enough to understand what he was telling her after he had corrected some basic misconceptions. They were progressing nicely when a large shadow fell across the table. Carl looked up and saw Sandy Rhodes and Mike Manchester looming over them. Mike and Sandy were on the football team. Both boys weighed over two hundred pounds and were in good shape. Carl had heard that Sandy and Vanessa were dating.
“Hey, Van, what’s up? I thought we were going out?” Sandy sounded aggrieved that Vanessa was doing schoolwork.
“I tried to tell you I had to study, but I couldn’t find you.”
