Thai Horse

takes two thousand poppies to make a kilo of opium gum. A kilo of gum sold in the hills for seventy dollars, a kilo of China White sold for nine hundred dollars. To Dao the difference was worth the effort. It meant more rifles for the men, more pigs and buffalo, and perhaps even a new truck for the village, bolts of Thai silk for the women, and for himself, a new radio with shortwave. He had no idea that the same pound of heroin was worth half a million dollars in New York, or that it would be stepped up six or seven times after that, making the street value close to four million dollars.

That night the Hsong cranked up the little furnace. They mixed ten kilos of gum with water and cooked it in an enormous brass wok until it was a dark, thick mass that looked like heavy molasses. Then they poured it into an ancient wooden press and squeezed the water out. What was left was a kilo of morphine base granules. Mixed with water and acetic anhydride in a small still and dried under grow lamps and pressed again, it produced a brick of pure white powder, which they branded with a stamp: 999. The mark of Hsong and a guarantee that the one-kilo brick of China White was 99.9 percent pure heroin.

Just after sunrise, the chopper took off from Chang Mai and headed for the village of the Hsong, seventy miles away. The day before, Tollie Fong had sent his Straw Sandal to General Dao to arrange the meeting. The ritual of dealing was a formality, but one they had performed at villages like this all over northern Thailand during the past few months. The emerald-green mountains slipped below them and grew more rugged and less penetrable. Mountain roads twisted up the sides of the lush peaks and ended suddenly at landslides or were simply devoured by the foliage. From the air it was easy to see why the army was frustrated in its attempts to discourage or destroy the poppy crop here.

Fong sat in the copilot’s seat of the chopper with his three aides in the seats behind him — the White Fan, who was in charge of rituals and for this trip would also serve as Fong’s secretary and financial adviser, and two gunmen, Billy Kot and Soon. The messenger had completed his duties and returned to Bangkok.

The White Fan, an ancient seer pushing eighty with wispy white hair and the remnants of a white goatee, wore the traditional silk cheongsam of the Chinese and had devoted his life to tradition and ritual. He hated to fly, particularly in this mixing bowl of an airplane, but his inscrutable face gave no hint of his discomfort. He sat with his eyes closed and his small black bag of tricks between his feet. Soon, a reliable executioner, dozed beside him, unconcerned by the flying.

Economics, as well as killing, was Tollie Fong’s business. Getting the smack from the hills to the marketplace, whether it was Singapore or Marseilles, New York or Grand Rapids, was also his business. Fong had first been introduced to the trade while he was still in his early teens by his father, who had gone to college in the United States and understood Americans. Fong remembered that night well.

1962. The eve of the Chinese New Year, the Year of the Tiger.

Outside their window, there were dancers and dragons in the street. Firecrackers rattled in the gutters and the stars over Hong Kong were concealed behind a glittering wall of skyrockets.

Young Fong, not yet fourteen, wanted to be out there with the rest of his friends, but his father was insistent. He had called his bing yahn, his soldiers, to a meeting and the White Palm executioner leaned toward his five officers and placed his hand on his son’s knee. ‘I have spent several hours with the san wong and it is important that you understand our new plans.

‘First, you must understand about Americans. They are very self-indulgent. They are eager to try new things. They are very sociable and they go to great lengths to impress their friends. They tend to do things in great masses. They live on borrowed money and their goals in life are security — and pleasure.

‘Now they are becoming involved in a great turmoil over the fighting in Vietnam. There is revolutionary protest by the young people. And’ — his eyes lit up — ‘they have discovered drugs. Marijuana, peyote, the chemical called acid. It is just beginning. The san wong believes these young people are ripe for other drugs.

‘Until now, the customers for powder have been mostly beggars, people of the streets, thieves and thugs. There is some trade with the very wealthy, but very few users in between. The Sicilians control the trade.

‘So we have three plans. First, it is time to move on the Sicilians. This will not be done easily, but we may be able to supply them and use their people for our own distribution.’

‘Can we trust them?’ one of the bing yahn asked.

‘Never! Always be wary of them. When it is convenient, we will make our war and destroy them, but that is a long time away. For now, we must help create the demand and make the deals, so we need the Sicilians. Second, the American soldiers in Vietnam and Thailand are at our very door and the war is growing. There will be many more soldiers coming. This war will last a long time, as it did with the French. We will sell them powder at cost plus ten percent.’

‘At cost?’ one of the bing yahn said with surprise.

‘Plus ten percent, to create the need,’ Fong corrected. ‘And they will take this need back to the States with them and pass the need on to their friends and they will all grow old with the demon. These will be our customers. They will be accustomed to pure China White and will not be satisfied with the Turkish and Mexican brown shit the Sicilian sell. Finally, we must encourage the hill people to grow more poppies, for the demand will be greater than any of us realize. All other business in which the White Palms are involved must come second to this.’

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