Chasing the Dragon: a story of love, redemption and the Chinese triads (Opium Book 2) Read online

  Table of Contents

  Chasing the Dragon

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  Chapter 78

  Chapter 79

  Chapter 80

  Chapter 81

  Chapter 82

  Chapter 83

  Chapter 84

  Chapter 85

  Chapter 86

  Chapter 87

  Chapter 88

  Chapter 89

  Chapter 90

  Also by Colin Falconer

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Chasing the Dragon

  Colin Falconer

  Acknowledgments

  This is a work of fiction but I sought the help of a number of people to help me with some of the background of the triads and the international drugs trade, and many people gave generously of their time.

  I would like to thank David Wilson who put me on the right track from the beginning; and Greg Walsh for taking the time to show me how to dispose of a body in a meat grinder.

  My thanks also to Ian Kaye-Eddie in Perth, Dr George Choi OBE, Ms Josephine Wong and DR CY Lam at the St John Council in Chai Wan for their assistance in explaining protocols of the St John ambulance service in Hong Kong.

  Thanks to Tom Devoy for a wonderful afternoon on the Atoll and insight into the workings of the magistrate's courts. Thanks also to Detective Superintendent Clive Tricker for providing me with background information on narcotics investigations inside Hong Kong.

  I would also like to thank Richard Wong and Ricky Ng of the Royal Hong Kong Police for the trouble they took to help me. Lastly my everlasting thanks and appreciation to the late Chief Inspector John Chetwynd-Chatwin and Detective Superintendent Trevor Collins for the enormous assistance given to me in the researching of this novel.

  Finally ... my thanks to Co-suk. For all the Trouble.

  This book was originally published by Hodder Headline as TRIAD.

  O pardon me thou bleeding piece of earth that I am meek and gentle with these butchers

  William Shakespeare

  Chapter 1

  Berkeley, San Francisco: 1992

  John Keelan's life was shattered beyond all healing at three minutes past six on a spring evening in Berkeley.

  He was in the kitchen feeding his baby daughter a bowl of mashed pumpkin that his wife had puréed in the food processor. Keelan knew she wouldn't eat it, but he went along with the charade anyway. Anna was determined for her daughter to eat only healthy natural foods, another of her fads, like tai chi and aromatherapy.

  But Caroline wasn't about to be fooled. Even at eleven months she had developed a strong preference for Heinz chocolate pudding. As Keelan offered the first spoonful she twisted her cherubic face into a grimace and sprayed it back over his hand.

  “Now that is not being a good girl for Daddy,” he said, as the gunman stepped onto the path.

  It was dusk, and the ghostly blue flicker of television sets could be seen in windows up and down the street. The wind was picking up, and branches rustled against the panes, masking the sound of footfall in the shrubbery.

  “Look, I know it's disgusting. I wouldn't eat it either. But your mother made it, she loves you. Let's just do it, okay?”

  Caroline let Keelan touch the spoon to her lips, then her jaw stayed clamped tight. At the last moment she took a deep breath and blew a raspberry. Mashed pumpkin sprayed over the high chair, the floor, and his shirt.

  “Bad girl,” he said, half-heartedly.

  While he wiped the pumpkin off his shirt at the sink Caroline smeared the rest of the mashed pumpkin around the tray of her high chair and then greased it through her hair. He thought he heard someone coming up the path but at that moment Caroline gave a high-pitched shriek. She had poked herself in the eye with the spoon.

  Keelan took her out of the high chair to comfort her. When she quietened down, he put her back again. He looked down at the bright orange stains on his shirt. This wasn't getting either of them anywhere.

  “Honey, she really doesn't want this pumpkin,” he shouted through the open door.

  “Sorry but that’s her dinner.”

  “She wants to call her lawyer.”

  “Tell her it's not in her best interests. Or yours. What she doesn't want, you get for tea.”

  Keelan looked at his daughter. “You hear that? Now are you going to be sensible or do I have to get rough with you?”

  Caroline's face turned bright red and a farting noise came from her diaper. Keelan put down the pumpkin. “Hey, why don't I just tip this stuff straight in your pants and then we'll both be happy?”

  ***

  The weapon was a .38 Smith and Wesson Magnum, fitted with a silencer and loaded with six Super-Vel hollow points designed to expand and distort inside the human body. It was not the assassin's own weapon. It had been obtained for him two weeks before, stolen in a gun shop heist in San Diego. Its serial number had been removed and it was completely untraceable.

  Keelan put a spoonful of pumpkin in his mouth, to show his daughter how delicious it was. “Look, it's great, see. I know it looks poisonous, but it's not. Trust me.”

  He held out the spoon.

  The assassin stopped at the side of the house. He took a pair of black leather gloves from the pocket of his zippered jacket and put them on. Then he unzipped the jacket and took the revolver from the waistband of his jeans, and screwed the silencer on the end of the barrel.

  He walked to the kitchen wind
ow.

  ***

  Another spoonful of pumpkin circled the airfield that was Caroline’s dinner tray and made its final approach. Just as it was about to land Caroline turned her head away and the stewed pumpkin went down her neck. “Oh for God's sake. Anna, she really doesn't want this pumpkin!”

  “Try her with some mashed banana.”

  Keelan stood up. He saw a shadow at the kitchen window.

  There was a loud bang, the sound of glass splintering, and the bowl crashed to the floor. Keelan tried to throw his body over his daughter. But his legs would not respond and he lurched sideways across the other side of the kitchen. He heard a second shot, a sound like a champagne cork being pulled out of a bottle.

  He collided with the wall. There was blood smeared under the palm of his hand. He saw Anna's face in the doorway. Her eyes were wide, her mouth frozen in a little 'o' of surprise, perhaps she was trying to shout something. He tried to tell to get out of the kitchen, just grab Caroline and get out, but it was as if someone had jammed a pitchfork into his body, just under the ribs. He lurched backwards, out of control and fell onto the hallway carpet. He heard Anna scream, a cry that seemed to echo around the world.

  Everything turned to white. He could not hear or see the black borders of the world racing away from him.

  ***

  None of John Keelan's neighbors remembered hearing the shots, nor did they see anyone running from his house. When they heard Anna's screams they immediately called the police. A radio car patrolling nearby skidded onto the lawn just two minutes later. When the two uniformed policeman could not get an answer at the front door, they ran around the side of the house. A few moments later one of them ran back to the radio car to request back-up and an emergency medical team.

  ***

  Keelan retained only the ghostly outlines of memory. He seemed to hear the siren from a very long way off. The movement of the vehicle sent great currents of agony through his body. There was a strong smell of plastic from the oxygen mask and the cool trace of gas under his nose.

  He tried to speak but no words would come. Each time he blinked his eyes the world disappeared for a long time. The next thing he remembered was lying on a gurney, fluorescent lights shining into his face. A doctor was cutting off his clothes and shouting instructions. Shadowy figures wearing green gowns swam in and out his vision, their faces distorted by the blinding lights. Someone was asking him about the pain.

  He didn't care about pain. All he wanted to know was that Anna and Caroline were all right.

  ***

  Bullets do not travel in a straight line inside the human body. The soft cone at the tip is designed to pancake on impact, dicing the soft tissues and organs it comes into contact with, and it then ricochets around body cavities like a pinball. The bullet that struck John Keelan entered just above his navel, destroyed part of his liver, then followed the contours of his rib cage and lodged near his spine. The massive hemorrhaging caused by this injury required the urgent infusion of twelve liters of plasma. He stopped breathing twice in the trauma unit and had to be resuscitated. A priest was summoned to administer the Last Rites.

  Surgeons removed three inches of his small bowel and he lost the function of fifteen per cent of his liver. He lay in a coma for five days. He finally regained consciousness the day of Anna and Caroline's funeral.

  He spent the next ninety seven days in hospital and lost twenty kilos in weight.

  But he was in court nine and a half months later when the son of the man who had ordered his execution stood trial on RICO charges pursuant to the Title III investigations he had been responsible for. He listened as the trial judge ruled that the investigation had violated the defendant's rights under the Fourth Amendment and that there was therefore no case to answer.

  The man was led from the court, surrounded by his expensive lawyers and his minders, as flashbulbs popped. Keelan watched, numb. After a while he realized someone else had stayed behind the courtroom too, and was watching him.

  The man wore a pearl grey Italian suit, and a diamond tie pin glinted in the fold of his Sulka tie. His face was creased into a frown of regret.

  “I'm sorry, John,” he said, and held out his hand. “No hard feelings?”

  Chapter 2

  Hong Kong, 1994

  The trawler was lit by just two pale lamps, green on the port and red to starboard. Another, larger vessel, drifted away from her, also showing just her riding lights. Less than a mile distant the heaving swells of the South China Sea thundered against unseen cliffs.

  The Wan Fu had motored to her rendezvous point, just outside Chinese and Hong Kong waters, in the lee of an uninhabited spine of rock known as Fat Chui island. Now, with the transfer completed, Li kam-chuen ordered his crew to take up anchor and charted a course north for the Soko islands and the Hong Kong square boundary.

  The old man hawked deep in his throat and deposited a glob of mucus on the deck. He prayed that tonight Chi Kung, god of gamblers, was sitting on his shoulders. In the hold beneath his feet was two hundred kilos of white powder from Burma. Safely delivered to Hong Kong, it would be worth a million Hong Kong dollars, enough for this old fisherman to send both his sons to university in America.

  The wind gusted over a churning sea and the night was as black as the insides of a bear. Not even a sliver of moon. A few miles to port lay the vast Pearl River estuary, to starboard the major sea lanes, the navigation lights of great ships blinking in the darkness. May all gods concentrate on his passage tonight! One more trip was all he needed, then he would sell his trawler and spend the rest of his life playing checkers in the temple with enough money and respect for ten lifetimes!

  He turned away from the wheel for a moment to pinch both nostrils and clear his nose. He checked his watch in the flicker of the pressure lamp. With joss they would reach Aberdeen harbor just before dawn, with the rest of the fishing fleet and ...

  He heard something on the port side.

  Dew neh loh moh!

  He strained to listen over the throb of the motors. Nothing, just the distant beat of the waves against the island, the chatter of his crew.

  Just his imagination.

  He lit a cigarette.

  A long swell lifted the junk. Like the curved spine of a great dragon passing underneath them. He shuddered.

  They rounded the tip of the island now, its inky outlines silhouetted against the grey of the overcast, and the phosphor moustache of breaking surf. Li felt a sudden coldness in the pit of his belly. His ancestors whispered to him that something was wrong.

  There it was again; it sounded like the whine of a motor, it was there for a moment then gone, lost to the wind. He searched the horizon for lights.

  Nothing.

  You are an old woman, he thought. You would imagine dragons in a bowl of noodles!

  No, wait, there it was again.

  This time his crew heard it as well. His brother and brother-in-law joined him on the bridge.

  “What is it?” Younger Brother asked him.

  Li shook his head. Not a police launch, not outside the southern boundary. Chinese navy perhaps? Those turds of lepers were nothing more than pirates.

  “Shall we lose the white powder?” Younger Brother asked him.

  Li hesitated. The number four had been packed in watertight drums, and encased in plaster of Paris. If he thought his cargo was in danger Ly could have his crew ditch the drums over the side; the plaster would make them sink to the bottom, but after a few days it would dissolve in the sea water and float back to the surface again. Using this new gwailo invention, the GPS, they could return in a few days to recover it.

  But it would take up a lot of time and trouble. He hesitated.

  “Wait,” Li said. Judging by the noise of the motor, whoever was out there was at least a mile away.

  ***

  The lighter's aluminum skin had been painted black, making it virtually invisible in the darkness. It skimmed across the surface of the waves, power
ed by five 275 horsepower Mercury outboards.

  In the forward compartment of the lighter were four men, all dressed identically in black wetsuits and balaclavas. One sat behind the wheel, two others readied a heavy fifty caliber Browning mounted on the bow, the last aimed a searchlight at the looming shadow of the trawler.

  Ly realized too late that he did not have as much time to make up his mind as he had thought. He knew that sound now; that was no Chinese patrol boat, it was a speedboat! May all gods great and small piss on his joss!

  “Get the white powder!” he shouted at his brother. “Hurry!”

  Too late. Suddenly they were blinded. The superstructure of the Wan Fu was bathed in white light and firecrackers exploded over their heads. But they weren't firecrackers, they were bullets. Li threw himself onto the deck. His brother-in-law shrieked in terror.

  Machine gun fire raked the upper works. He felt the warm flow of his own water down his left leg. Too late to save the white powder now.

  May all gods defecate on the head of the man who made outboard motors!

  ***

  The Browning had done its work. The noise of the weapon, a few rounds smacking into the superstructure, it was all it would take to scare the crew and make sure they did what they were told when they boarded her.

  The pilot cut the engines, and maneuvered alongside the junk. One of the black-clad men reached for a three point grapnel and hoisted it over the stern where it caught fast. He put his AK-47 over his shoulder and climbed up the rope, hand over hand.

  The second gunman took a Black Star pistol from the zippered jacket of his wetsuit, cocked it, and followed him up the rope.

  Now to do business.

  The man with the assault rifle flicked on a waterproof halogen torch. He swung the beam around the deck, found the companionway up the poop and took the steps two at a time. He found the skipper lying on the deck. Li raised his hands in the air, shouting for mercy in English and Cantonese.

  Li's brother-in-law had crawled towards the gangway. He reached for the compartment where Li stored a clear plastic bag containing some ancient flares and a fire axe. The gunman shouted a warning, rushed over, and clubbed him twice with the butt of the AK-47.