Thai Horse

was assassinated, the White Palms — uh, shall we say — absorbed many of the Silk Dragon members. Rather like a merger, if you will.’

‘Is that a fact,’ Hatcher said, still only vaguely interested. He knew most of the history and had been battling the Silk Dragons when this Varney guy was still diddy-bopping his way around the middle school cricket pitches.

‘You know about Tollie Fong?’ Varney asked airily.

‘Tollie Fong?’ Hatcher said, raising his eyebrows, playing dumb.

‘His father was Lee Fong.’

For an instant, Hatcher’s mind flashed to the Singapore airport. Dusk. 1975. Twelve years ago. Yeah, he knew Lee Fong, all right.

‘We thought you should know Tollie Fong is the new san wong of the White Palms,’ Varney said with a bit of a flourish, leaning back and almost smirking. ‘And,’ he added with obvious satisfaction, ‘Joe Lung is his Number One here in Hong Kong. They still remember. . .

So, thought Hatcher, tuning him out, it’s come full circle

Sweeping down from the hills on their long-haired horses, the Mongolians came. Their flowing black hair in ratty pigtails, their faces bearded and hungry, their eyes afire with opium. Cutting down or burning everything in their path: horses, cows, pigs, children, all but the women

— the women were their prize of prizes. Looting and killing, the barbarians butchered the gentle Chinese in the flatlands by the sea, below the seven peaks where the seven dragons dwelt.

And the dragons, who in life had been the first seven emperors of China, angrily watching from their mountain aeries, summoned forth the leaders of the Chinese, describing to them how to fight b2ck, telling them the tactics to use, giving them the juice.

So the taipans banded together into three-family cells, forming triangles with their farms, erecting walls between them, and hitting back from each side when the Mongols struck, and the dragons were proved right. The Chinese, in what would eventually be Hong Kong, cut the savages to shreds and sent what few were left back to Mongolia to carry the message. The barbarians never returned.

Thus, in the twelfth century, the triads were born, growing stronger for the next eight hundred years; each triad taking on its own rituals, its own passwords and secret handshakes, its own poems legends and history, swearing allegiance to the clan, a blood oath known as the hong mon, growing in power until they were the ruling classes of Hong Kong and the Chinese business world. Businessmen, mostly, honored and respected.

The evil ones followed quickly, the maverick triads who grabbed the power. Calling themselves the Chiu Chao.

Growing in power also: the Silk Dragons, the White Palms, the 14K, the Thin Blade Gang, the House of Seven Hands and others, running it all, everything that was illicit and corrupt — gambling, prostitution, loan sharking, white slavery, drugs, smuggling, the black market—and running it with clear, relentless vision, so focused on cruelty and murder that they defied challenge. The Mafiosi of the Orient.

The triads were eight hundred years old. The Chiu Chao was seven hundred ninety years old. It took only ten years for the corruption to start.

The evil triads divided up the underworld, each taking its own segment, and the most lucrative of them all was the drug empire of the Silk Dragons, always looking to expand, seeing ahead with diabolical vision. In the late sixties a fat new market lay waiting in Vietnam, and they brought pure No. 3 China White heroin from the Golden Triangle of Thailand cross-country to Hong Kong and smuggled it into Saigon or shipped it down the Mekong River directly into Vietnam, where they sold it to American GI’s for two dollars a pop to get them hooked.

White Powder Mama became the GI’s soul mate, their savior, with his precious packages of dreams, their escape from misery. He created by insidious design a new market for China White in the United States, where Mexican or Turkish brown heroin had been. king: using hooked American soldiers as the base, the Silk Dragons stretched across the sea to America. White Powder Mama was in reality Ma Bing Sum, the san wong, the ‘godfather,’ of the Silk Dragons. White Powder Mania and his Red Pole ‘executioner,’ Lee Fong, who was also his brother, were the most feared men in Hong Kong, so powerful they conscripted five members of the Hong Kong narcotics squad, who called themselves the Dragon’s Breath, to control the river passages, what they called the ‘long, white run.’

Spring, 1973. Enter Christian Hatcher.

They were in the back room of the officers’ club in Cam Ranh Bay, which had become the busiest port in the world, the honey pot from which flowed all the men and arms to the undeclared war in Vietnam. Compared with the rest of the country, Cam Ranh was Country Club City, except when the sappers came in the middle of the night and tore things up. For Hatcher, in those days, five minutes away from Indian country- was like a six-month vacation.

‘Got a job for you,’ Sloan said.

‘Uh-huh,’ Hatcher said. He hail heard the line many times before.

‘We’ve got us a big problem over here,’ Sloan said.

‘No kidding,’ Hatcher answered with a laugh.

‘I mean besides the war,’ Sloan s aid. ‘You know about the Silk Dragons?’

Hatcher nodded. ‘You mean White Powder Mama?’

Sloan nodded. ‘Ma Bing Sum and his bunch of dope traders.’

‘They’ve been around forever,’ replied Hatcher with a shrug. ‘They’re a Hong Kong police problem.’

‘Not anymore. They’re walking on our notes, pal,’ Sloan went on. ‘We have a serious narcotics problem in Nam and most of it is coming downriver from the Triangle. This White Powder Mama has become a major pain in the ass. He’s got five do-mommies running the rivers from Thailand. Ex-Hong Kong cops, they call themselves the Dragon’s Breath. Strictly bad-ass, the bunch of them. The Buffalo wants to kick ass, teach ‘em a lesson.’