Thai Horse

‘My name is very complicated,’ he said. ‘You can call me Sy, my American friends call me Sy.’

‘Right,’ Sloan said, settling back in the somewhat uncomfortable seat, and gave him an address in the waterfront district.

The trip across town took only fifteen minutes, but Sloan’s heart was already a thundering drum in his chest by the time they got there.

The place had not changed, would never change. The tart smell of the river gave way to a much sweeter odor. It attacked his brain and intoxicated his spirit as he went down the narrow stairs, which creaked and groaned underfoot. As he descended the odor got stronger, headier.

The master waited as usual at a desk near the door. This one was new, but they all looked alike. Wrinkled, bowed old men with faded eyes and sunken faces, they were the dream masters, the killers of nightmares and assassins of pain, and the guides to the Elysian Fields. As he followed the old man back through a narrow passageway, Sloan began to feel a little light-headed. They entered a long narrow room lined with drab canvas cots. Silk screens stained by age and misuse separated the beds. A gray veil of smoke clung to the ceiling. It was like walking through hell.

Sloan followed the dream master to the third cubicle. He lay on his side on the bed, got comfortable, watched as the old Thai tamped the black cube into the bowl of the long pipe, lit it with a taper, and sucked fire into the cube until it glowed. Then he held the thick stem against Sloan’s lips. The colonel took a deep breath, felt the oily smoke as it surged into his lungs, invaded his bloodstream, streaked up to his brain.

As the opium took effect, Sloan felt electrified. His body hummed, then became numb. Old bruises and wounds were healed. Pain vanished, stress evaporated. The doom diminished. The old Thai shrank before his eyes and slowly vanished in a golden mist.

Sloan groaned and rolled over on his back.

He let the haze envelop him, embraced it, walked through to the other side.

To a place of green fields and flowers -

A deep blue sky was overhead and the sun warmed him.

Somewhere nearby, the sea crashed on rocks.

He lay down in cool grass.

His anxieties were washed away by the caressing breeze that wafted over him.

Here there was no death. No cries of pain, nor enemies nor dirty jobs to be assigned. No nightmares.

There was only tranquility.

It was the only place left where Sloan could find peace.

THE TS’E K’AM MEN TI

Hatcher and company left two hours before dawn, sneaking past the harbor patrols and customs boats in the Bujia Ngkou, the bay at the mouth of the Beijiang River that becomes Hong Kong harbor, and then heading west into south China along one of the many tributaries of the jungle-choked Xijiang River. By the gray wash of dawn they were thirty miles upstream.

They came in two boats. The first was a long, narrow snakeboat, heavily powered, with a thatched cabin near the rear. Behind it was a thirty-foot 600 hp Cigarette boat, capable of skimming the water at sixty miles an hour. Hatcher, Daphne, Cohen and Sing, who doubled as helmsman, and another gunman, Joey, were in the first. There were four Chinese gunmen in the second, on ‘loan’ to Cohen from a friendly Chiu Chao triad known as the Narrow Blade Gang, as backup in the event the Tsu Fi got in trouble. They all felt comfortable, since Daphne’s intelligence had reported that Sam-Sam was farther upriver and was not expected back to the Ts’e K’am Men Ti stronghold until the next day.

Early in the trip, before they got to the river, everyone had been tense and wary, on the lookout for harbor patrols and customs boats. Now they relaxed as the long wooden boat cruised quietly along the river, hugging the bank to avoid being too obtrusive and followed by the impressive Cigarette.

Cohen was a strange sight, dressed in a cheongsam with a pistol belt around his waist, sitting like a crown prince on his canvas lawn chair, staring ahead into the darkness, muttering a continuing monologue questioning his sanity, Hatcher’s, Daphne’s — in fact, the whole damn trip. He had insisted upon arranging for the boats and the gunmen.

Finally Hatcher growled, ‘Listen, China, nobody stuck a gun in your ear and ordered you to come. It was your idea to round up the guns, get your beach chair there and come along for the ride.’

‘Well, I couldn’t talk you out of it,’ Cohen answered.

‘What’s that got to do with it?’

‘You know what I mean,’ Cohen said. ‘What the hell’s so special about this guy Cody anyway?’

‘I told you, we went to school together.’

‘That doesn’t float,’ Cohen said with disgust.

‘Hell,’ Hatcher said, ‘maybe I wanted to do one last job that had . . . some sense of. . . humanity . . . honor maybe.’

“War, he sung, his toil and trouble; honour but an empty bubble,” Cohen intoned.

‘Dryden,’ Hatcher replied. ‘How about “Mine honour is my life; both grow in one; Take honour from me, and my life is done.”

‘Richard the Second,’ Cohen answered, and after a moment’s meditation added, ‘I hope to hell all this poetry’s