Kill the Dragon Read online

  Bolt blacked out, then came back, feeling hands gently pull him from the door. He groaned, stiffening at the pain in his left shoulder. Voices around him said, “Easy, easy.”

  He felt the hard concrete floor under him, and he lay there experiencing the strange high that came only from being close to dying. He was still scared, and knew he would be for a little while to come. He had come close, and the thought of dying wasn’t going away from him anytime soon. He breathed deeply. Being alive was good, damn good.

  His body went rigid with pain as he closed his eyes against the torment he felt head to toe. His left foot was bloody, covered by patches of what was now a shredded, dirty sock. His pants were torn, and he still gripped the .45 tightly, his hand stiff around the butt, his entire right arm tense.

  He relaxed, letting the arm flop at his side. His voice was hoarse when he spoke. “Help me up. I want to see him. Wanna see the bastard. Wanna see …”

  Gently, somebody propped him up to a sitting position, then grabbed his right elbow and lifted him to his feet “Okay, okay,” he mumbled. “Fine, I’m fine.” He felt like hell. He had been dragged for only seconds, but ten seconds of having your skin scraped against the concrete at seventy miles an hour is ten seconds too long.

  He stood on wobbly legs, breathing loudly, his right fist still around the .45 and now gently touching his throbbing left shoulder. It’s worth it, he told himself. Goddamn worth it to get this bastard.

  With an agent close beside him, he limped the few steps back to the limousine, dragging his bloody, hurting left foot behind him. Tonight he and five other agents had waited in the basement of this luxury D.C. apartment building for a quiet, solemn-looking fifty-five-year-old Chinese named Alex Wan Pei to come down to his limousine.

  The tip had come out of New York, and the informant had insisted he was right. The Monk was in America, in Washington, D.C, talking with minor officials at Red China’s embassy there. Unbelievable. Alex Wan Pei. The Monk. The man responsible for sending hundreds of kilos of brown rock heroin from Hong Kong to America.

  The man supplying New York’s Chinatown with most of its “brown sugar.” And a man whose dope-smuggling network did favors for the Red Chinese government. Like smuggling spies into America.

  Leaning over, John Bolt peered into the back seat of the limousine. Sitting there quietly, as though on his way for a drive in the countryside, was Alex Wan Pei, the Monk. His small, round face was calm and unsmiling. He wore a black homburg, black overcoat, dark suit, white shirt, and white tie. His hands were jammed in his overcoat pockets, and he looked straight ahead, saying nothing.

  “My, my,” whispered Bolt. “The Monk. Well, Mr. M, you and me are going to talk. Confession is good for the soul, remember?”

  The Monk ignored Bolt, neither looking at him nor acknowledging what was said to him.

  “Inscrutable fuck,” said Bolt “Keep doing your Oriental number, Charlie Chan, we’ll get through to you yet. You can start by coming out where we can get a good look at your quiet face.” Straightening up, the narc stepped back from the car.

  The scars. Look for the scars, said the informant. Small white ones around the cheekbones, under the jaw, and around the eyes. Thin, almost invisible. Two-inch lines. Plastic surgery. Five years ago the Monk had run into trouble with a Hong Kong mob that played rough.

  They tried sending him to his ancestors with four sticks of dynamite tossed into his two-million-dollar Hong Kong suburban home. When they pulled the Monk out of the smoking wreckage, he needed more than a new home. He needed a new face. He got one. He also got even with the people who had made the operation necessary, by killing them all.

  Bolt took off the Monk’s black homburg, stepping close to the quiet man who always looked as though he was in prayer. He’s right in there, praying for a good dope crop, thought the narc. As the other agents watched silently, Bolt gently stroked the thin white scars at the corner of the Monk’s left eyebrow.

  The quiet, solemn-looking Chinese hardly seemed to breathe. He showed no reaction to what was being done to him, letting the narc touch his facial scars.

  Handing him back his homburg, Bolt said, “Bingo. His holiness himself. Hey, Jim, read the tourist his rights, then take him to headquarters. Del, ’preciate it if you drive me to a doc. I’ll meet you guys soon as I can. I don’t want to miss it when our boy here starts to chant, right, Monk?”

  “You have the right to remain silent …”

  The drone of the agent’s voice, the cold feel of handcuffs closing tightly around his wrists, both now behind his back, were small, momentary intrusions into Alex Wan Pei’s consciousness. He accepted, then dismissed them. Survival was an intricate, involved art, and he had mastered it with cold, precise skill.

  From childhood he had learned never to show emotion or reaction. Revealing yourself is weakness, he had been taught. Restraint is power, and control of your self is the key to control of anything around you. In China and in other Asian countries where he did business, he walked a dangerous tightrope, and living this long meant he walked it well.

  The Chinese government officials who allowed his junks filled with heroin to sail past their gunboats, the Chinese customs officials under orders never to examine his shipments in or out of that country, the suppliers he dealt with in Bangkok, the sailors and others he hired as couriers to smuggle brown rock heroin to America—any and all of these could take his life, were he not careful.

  But he was careful. Always. He was careful in dealing with Gabriel Ling Tsu, his American partner, and above all he was careful in dealing with his contacts at China’s embassies and consulates here in America. By allowing him to export brown rock heroin to America, certain officials not only shared in his profits, but China’s government also had an excellent underground route for smuggling spies into America.

  Diplomat, organizer, killer, dope smuggler, spy courier. Alex Pei, the Monk. Let them call him what they wished. Let them make foolish reMarcs about his calm, serene appearance. He was a rich and powerful man, a man who enjoyed the dangerous chess game he lived daily.

  He stared at this wild-eyed American standing in front of him, clothes dirty and torn, pain on his face and a satisfied gleam in his eye. You’re a fool, thought Alex Pei. I will never go to jail. In hours I will be free, and you will have been dragged across this filthy floor for nothing.

  Relaxing his mind, Alex Pei began to concentrate on high mountains capped with white snow and ice, and in the stuffy half-darkness of the dirty Washington, D.C., garage he leaned his head back as the clean smell of snow and mountain air came into his brain. A small smile began at a corner of his mouth, then quickly ended.

  Two agents moved on either side of him, guiding the small, quiet Chinese toward a car.

  Excitement and satisfaction filled Bolt’s head, pushing out some of the pain and fear of dying still clinging to him. Shaking his head from left to right again and again, he softly said, “The Monk. The Monk. Fanfuckingtastic. Del, I can’t believe it. We got his ass, right here on American soil. Scars and all. Shit, it’s him. It’s really him.”

  Bolt stood watching the Monk step into the back seat of a car and disappear. An agent slid in beside the Chinese.

  “Got him, Del. Nailed his yellow behind. That son-of-a-bitch sneaks in and out of this country on a dozen false passports, sends dope here by the carload, with Red China’s blessing, and God only knows how many spies the bastard’s helped to get into the country. We can lean on him for dealing, smuggling, espionage, whatever. Del, we got him by his Oriental cubes.”

  Del, quiet and sad-faced, said, “John, you better remember something. Your government and mine says Red China’s our friend now, our good buddy. Our good buddy doesn’t deal skag, remember? The White House needs something to be proud of these days, and Red China’s friendship is that something.” He snorted, twisting his mouth in a bitter half-grin.

  Bolt knew it, and he was pissed off about it. The White House and the State Department both were working up a sweat to keep Red China as a friend. To do this, some people in government had to close their eyes to Chinese dope dealing, saying loud and often that it didn’t exist.

  Balls. It existed. Bolt knew it, all the agents knew it, and some of those short-hair, skinny-tie, and white-sock crowd in government knew it.

  So who the hell were those yellow men, shooting at agents and dragging them across concrete floors alongside of speeding cars—short, slant-eyed elves from the forest? But no matter what, some people in this town were clinging hard to the friendship line, at the same time telling narcotics agents to shut the hell up and open your mouth only to say some good things about our eight hundred million close new friends. Good things my ass, thought Bolt.

  Del eased him into a car, slamming the door, then walking around to the driver’s side. “Doesn’t matter,” said Bolt, closing his eyes against the burning agony in his shoulder and chest. “We got the Monk, and we can tie a knot in his dick and make him talk. We get a confession from his holiness, and there isn’t shit the State Department or his embassy can do.”

  Starting the car, then turning his head to the left to see if it was clear behind him, Del said, “John, there are guys in this town who’d fuck anybody in both ears if it would keep them in power. People like Murcer Mannering—you know he’s going to give us trouble. If we caught the Monk sticking a needle in a four-year-old kid’s arm, Mannering would say the kid had it coming and the needle was filled with cream of wheat even if it turned out to be ninety percent skag.”

  Bolt nodded grimly. Murcer Mannering. A white-haired, smiling, soft-spoken son-of-a-bitch on the White House staff. A mealymouthed prick who was always sounding off about his loyalty to “my President.” A pain in the ass. He hated agents, never missing an opportunity to stick it to them, especially when it came to Red China being in the dope business.

  John Bolt wanted to push Mannering’s ass under a steamroller. What better way to straighten him out?

  Suddenly Bolt had a bad feeling. Murcer Morris Mannering. He wasn’t going to like what happened here tonight, not one little bit. And the minute he heard about it, he was going to be wheeling and dealing, and somebody was going to get burned. The man had power, and he could be mean.

  “Del, push this thing, will you? I want to get to the doctor as fast as possible, then over to headquarters.” Bolt frowned, his handsome face staring out into the night, uneasiness trickling into his mind. I got him, he thought. The Monk is mine, unless, unless …

  He touched his throbbing left shoulder and thought of Murcer Morris Mannering.

  3

  MURCER MANNERING HAD WON. Easily. “There’s nothing you can do about it. Not one thing.” He spoke slowly, triumphantly, enjoying his swift, shrewd use of power. It was less than two hours after the Monk’s capture.

  He faced John Bolt and Craven, the man who ran D-3, the Department of Dangerous Drugs. Bolt, speechless with anger, rubbed his left shoulder, now numb with painkilling injections. His green eyes stayed on Mannering’s tanned face, hating every part of it—the long nose, thick black-and-gray eyebrows, the small, precise mouth you could have hidden behind a quarter.

  “Mr. Alex Pei,” said Mannering, “will be on a plane to Montreal”—he paused to look at his thin gold wristwatch—” leaving exactly one hour and fifty-three minutes from now. Yes, one hour, fifty-three minutes.” Looking up from his watch, he gazed directly at the two men standing in front of him.

  The three of them were in Craven’s office, and the White House aide was doing most of the talking. News traveled fast in Washington, D.C., and when Mannering had learned that Alex Pei was being held at D-3, he wasted no time.

  Craven, lean in his black suit, his long face hawklike and watchful, listened quietly, cautiously, waiting for an opening, prepared to back off if he didn’t find one. He was a power player too, and did it well, careful not to make enemies who could hurt the department. If he were working anywhere else, he would have been hated by the agents under him.

  As it was they all respected him because of his intense devotion to them and to the department. To help an agent, Craven would dance naked in a blizzard. Money, weapons, political clout, a favor—if Craven needed it for his agents, most of the time, he found a way to get it. Occasionally, he lost. Like now.

  Mannering had wasted no time in getting Alex Pei deported. Quietly. Not only was he using White House clout to overrule D-3, but he was working with Red China’s embassy, which had set a record filing a complaint. Even at ten-thirty at night, he was having no trouble coming up with the muscle necessary to give the agents a hard time.

  Bolt couldn’t hold back any longer. To hell with being cool. “The man’s a criminal. He’s a major heroin supplier, and he’s bringing spies into this country like it’s going out of style. He—”

  Mannering lifted a hand, palm facing Bolt as if to cut him off. “Mr. Pei, whom you almost killed tonight, is on a diplomatic mission for his country. When you people practically ruptured relations between two major powers, you were setting fire to years of complicated, highly involved work. Did you know that? Did you?” God, he thought. The two of them are no more important in this town than a traffic cop, and they came close to pulling down something the Chief prizes almost as highly as he does his wife.

  Craven kept silent. He was looking for his opening. He hadn’t found it yet. Let Bolt run off at the mouth. There was no way he could be stopped anyway, so let him play his word games. Craven preferred to move in when he saw a clear target. Right now, there wasn’t one. In this town, there was no room for amateurs.

  Play to win, thought the lean man in the black suit. Play to win.

  “I don’t give a shit what you say, the man’s in dope up to his slanted eyes. We’ve been on his tail for months.” Bolt wanted to smash a chair across Mannering’s tanned face, anything to stomp out that prissy, smug expression.

  “And I say he’s working for the Chinese government. A man was killed tonight, a Chinese citizen, and—”

  “Shove it.” Bolt turned his back to Mannering, breathing deeply, trying to bring his rage down to where he could speak lower. Craven. What the hell is he doing just standing there? He thought. Probably playing his fucking mind games.

  Turning back to Mannering, who showed no sign of being annoyed or upset, Bolt said, “The man I killed, yeah, me, works for the Blue Tiger Tong in New York. And he’s got a record for dope, rape, holding up card games, and assault, so just spare me the social-conscience number.”

  Mannering’s smile was small and brief. He’d known that, but he had thought he’d try conveniently forgetting it, anyway. So it hadn’t worked, so what? Alex Wan Pei was still leaving the country, and there wouldn’t be anything further done about keeping him here. Not by these two Keystone Kops.

  “Yes, well”—his tone dismissed Bolt’s outburst—“Mr. Pei is another matter. Just where did you get your information?”

  Wouldn’t you fucking like to know? thought Bolt. “We got it, that’s what counts.”

  “Well, I’d like to know.”

  “Forget it. And you try pressing us for it, and some newspaperman’s going to win a Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting. Nobody gets an informant’s name from me, court order or any other way. Start throwing your weight around too much, and I push back.”

  Mannering nodded. He could afford to back off now. He’d won, and the best way to use your power was not to use it too much. Few people knew when that point was reached, however. Sometimes Mannering felt he himself didn’t know.

  “Mr. Pei’s committed no crime on American soil,” he said, aiming his reMarcs at Craven, who grinned politely and coldly and pretended to be interested. “He was coming from visiting a Chinese official’s apartment. He’s violated no laws here, and—”

  Bolt interrupted, “If he could linger awhile among us common folk, I’m sure we could find something to charge him with.”

  “Out of the question. The Chinese are most anxious for him to report to Montreal on business for them, and we find it suits our purposes to go along with their request, especially since there is no evidence of wrongdoing on his part.” My way, he thought. I’ll have my way on this, and no one will stop me. Chinese dope dealing was a small fact hidden far back in the recesses of his mind, and totally unrelated to anything he considered important.

  It was a thing he wanted neither to deal with nor to acknowledge. His course of action was to do what he thought the President wanted done. And in doing that, he advanced himself.

  Bolt’s bitterness was black and hot inside of him. “I almost got killed tonight, and for what—so you can come in here and turn this bastard loose? You have any idea what he’s got planned for this country? Do you know how many people are going to be killed trying to get their hands on the shit he’s been sending into this country? Do you?”

  He was shouting now, moving closer to Mannering, anger making the veins stand out on his forehead and neck. Craven bit his lip and stepped close to Bolt. Bolt was crazy enough to punch Mannering in the mouth. Also, Bolt was losing control, which meant he might tell Mannering more than he should.

  Like the fact that Pei was getting together a huge shipment of “brown sugar” that would eventually turn up in New York, in Mafia hands, touching off a racial gang war that stood to be the worst in American history. It was happening soon. The rumor was all over the street, with black and Cuban mobs getting ready to fight back. If there was one thing the department knew for use, it was a lot about the Mafia.

  And according to informants, the Mafia was coming back into the dope business in Fun City in a big way. No, if Bolt blabbed to Mannering, there was a good chance that certain information could end up finding its way into the Monk’s ear, via the Chinese embassy.