Twenty kilos per transfer case?” Colonel Webster exclaims incredulously.
“That’s what I said. I still don’t believe it.”
Tickner responds with one of his Cheshire smiles. “I guess I’ll just have to beat you gentlemen into submission,” he says, mysteriously. He opens a desk drawer and removes a hammer.
The colonel and I exchange baffled looks, neither able to imagine what the natty little DEA agent with the crew cut has in mind. If nothing else, Tickner strikes me as the kind of guy who couldn’t drive a nail if his life depended on it.
He swivels his chair, stands, and pushes a button on his communications console. The blind panel in the wall behind him slides open. He leads us through it, hammer at the ready.
“By the way, I thought Mrs. Ackerman might’ve been here,” Webster prompts as we follow.
“She sends her regards. She’s on a little mission of her own at the moment.”
Important mission, would be more accurate. Last night, despite changing hotels, I slept fitfully, jumping at every sound. The shooting and Surigao’s mysterious list of names were part of it, but being unarmed was my primary concern. It still is. We haven’t had any word from Vann Nath in almost two days. This morning, Kate and I decided she’d drop me at the embassy, then head across town to his office and remind him of our need to acquire firepower.
Tickner has led the way down a long corridor to a steel door. He pushes it open and ushers the colonel and me into a large space where Nash and one of the agents who picked me up at the hotel yesterday are waiting. It reminds me of a police evidence room. A collection of guns, knives, plastic bags bursting with drugs, and other items confiscated in raids, are stored on metal shelving that line the walls. In the center, on stands that raise them to desktop height, are two aluminum transfer cases.
While we gather around them, Tickner contemplates his hammer, playing on our curiosity before bringing it down sharply atop one of the transfer cases. The blow leaves a pronounced ding in the brush-finished aluminum. He steps back expectantly as the two agents grip the handles at opposite ends of the T-case, lift off the top, and turn it upside down.
“Now, what’s wrong with this picture?” Tickner asks like a prodding schoolmaster.
The colonel and I lean forward to examine the transfer case. A few seconds pass before it dawns on me. “There’s no ding on the inside.”
“That’s quite good, Mr. Morgan.”
“Hold it,” the colonel protests, chafing at the implications. It’s clear he’s been clinging to the hope that the CIL hadn’t been used and would be spared the stigma. Tickner appears to have destroyed it with one swing of his hammer. But the colonel isn’t letting go yet. “If you’re saying the cases are double-walled, we checked that.”
“With all due respect, Colonel,” Tickner responds, “the cases aren’t double-walled. Only the top surface is. Did you check the top or the sides?”
“The sides,” I reply grudgingly.
“Of course. That’s what everyone does. The depth of the side-walls means you can’t really check the top very well, can you?”
“Not without a hammer.”
Tickner smiles and steps to the adjacent transfer case. This one has been cut in two. Nash and the other agent separate the halves, revealing the double-wall construction of the top. There’s about a half inch of air space between the two sheets of aluminum, which curve at the corners blending into a single thickness of sidewall.
“They knockoff watches and blue jeans. Why not transfer cases?” Tickner intones. “They’ve made several interesting improvements.”
“Yes, more than forty pounds of them,” Webster counters facetiously, making the conversion from kilos.
“You recall, I told you we checked the weight,” I chime in, clarifying the colonel’s remark.
“It’s not what they added, gentlemen. It’s what they removed.”
“What do you mean?”
“To compensate for the contraband, these are made from aluminum sheet that provides the same strength and rigidity at two thirds the weight. Same thickness. Different alloy. Much more expensive, of course.”
“You’re saying these weigh forty pounds less than the standard transfer case?” the colonel asks, baffled.
“When empty. The standard one hundred twenty-one when filled with heroin.”
“A lot of people handle our cases,” the colonel presses. “You expect me to believe no one noticed they were forty pounds lighter?”
“Of course I don’t. Nor did Chen Dai. As soon as the heroin is removed it’s replaced with silica sand. These cases always weigh the standard one hundred twenty-one pounds.”
Webster bristles with frustration. “How the hell do they get the stuff in and out of there?”
“Equally ingenious,” Tickner replies with a look to Nash.
In response, the big man fetches a device that resembles an industrial vacuum cleaner made of black plastic. A hose is affixed to one end, and a clear plastic container to the other. Nash stands it on the floor and plugs it into an electrical outlet. Then he turns to the dinged transfer case and unscrews the cap from the document tube. The free end of the vacuum hose has a special fitting, which he slips inside the tube, and a locking ring, which he threads onto the collar to secure it.
Tickner nods.
Nash thumbs a red button on the vacuum.
It emits a precise whine, and, with surprising speed, fills the plastic container with white granules the consistency of fine sugar.
“One kilo of pure heroin,” Tickner announces when Nash shuts it off.
“See, they modified the doc-tube,” Nash explains, indicating the proximity of the document tube to the curved edge of the transfer case. “Right inside here, where you can’t see it, is a little semicircular valve that makes it all happen.”
I’m impressed. More than impressed. But I still find it hard to believe that little space holds twenty kilos. “How big is that case? Three by six, something like that?”
“Precisely eighty-four inches long by thirty wide,” Tickner replies with an indulgent smile.
“Well, multiplying that out,” I say, making the calculation in my head, “gives us two thousand five hundred and twenty square inches. Times the half inch between the double walls, gives us a volume of twelve hundred and sixty cubic inches.”
“Correct. And as you can see, a kilo fits quite neatly in that one quart container. Now, if you know how many cubic inches there are in a quart container—”
“Sixty-three,” I reply, retrieving this bit of trivia from a long-forgotten mathematical table.
“Well?” Tickner says in a tone that suggests any third-grader could do the next calculation.
“Sixty-three per kilo into twelve hundred sixty—twenty kilos.”
“I rest my case,” Tickner gloats.
“There’s another problem,” the colonel challenges, still unwilling to accept it. “We’re always hearing about drug busts where tons of cocaine or heroin are confiscated. This is only forty pounds.”
“What’s your point, Colonel?”
“Well, with all the people and logistics involved, not to mention the cost of manufacturing these cases, it doesn’t seem it’d be very cost-effective.”
“You tell me. How many remains were repatriated over the last fifteen years?”
“A little over three hundred.”
“That’s an average of twenty T-cases per year or four hundred kilos,” Tickner replies with a look to Nash.
“This is where the super purity comes in,” Nash says, taking over. “See, Chen Dai’s brought in a bunch of chiu chau chemists from the Hong Kong syndicates to work for him. These guys are top-notch. Came up with a system of producing this highly refined six-nines base. I mean, you have to keep in mind, ten percent base goes for sixty thousand a key.”
“And this is ninety percent?”
“Ninety plus six-nines percent. In the current market, it’s going in the neighborhood of a half a million or more a key. That’s a two-hundred-million annual gross.”
I nod knowingly. I have clients, large companies, who don’t do that well.
“Of course, it didn’t all go to Chen Dai,” Tickner explains. “He was netting thirty percent after Ajacier and the distributors took their cut.”
“That’s sixty million bucks,” Webster exclaims.
“Check,” Nash concludes. “We figure it costs him about a million or so a month to run his army. He pockets the rest. Pretty good pay for the leader of a bunch of ragtag guerrillas.”
“I know I’m not going to like the answer,” Webster says apprehensively, “but I have to know. The heroin . . . they were putting it into the cases at Clark, weren’t they?”
“Yeah, and they moved their operation to Andersen when you moved yours. The local authorities are totally corrupt. Our operations have been compromised, agents assassinated. DEA is all but out of business in the Pacific.”
“They bring the stuff in from Laos by plane, boat—” Nash adds, disgusted. “Hell, they could be shipping it Federal Express for all we know.”
The colonel seethes, trying to hold it in. “That means the people, the military people who handle those cases are in cahoots with these guys.”
Tickner nods solemnly. “Some.”
“So, every time I draw a T-case from stock and put a man’s remains inside it, a man who died for his country, who has every right to be treated with dignity and respect, it already contains heroin.”
Tickner nods again.
The colonel reddens. His outrage can no longer be contained. “Those bastards! I’ve been escorting that stuff into the country for fifteen years?!”
“I’m afraid so, sir,” Tickner replies, a little taken aback by the outburst. “For lack of a better word, it’s ‘parked’ at the CIL while you carry out your procedures, then goes on to the port mortuary in San Francisco, where civilian personnel remove and funnel it into the mainland pipeline.”
Webster sighs and turns away, devastated.
“I’m sorry, Colonel. Tough questions have a way of producing tough answers.”
“And they’re going to get tougher,” I say sharply.
“Pardon me?” Tickner intones.
“The Colonel and I figured out early on that there were a couple aspects to this. You’ve covered one. We know what’s going on now. But what about the other? What about the past, where it all began?”
“Much tougher ... if, as I suspect, you’re referring to the use of GI cadavers during the war.”
“I don’t know. Am I? I mean, I’d heard that theory. I also heard it was impossible.”
“From whom?”
“From a guy who ought to know. He was the ranking officer at the Ton Son Nhut mortuary.”
“Jason Ingersoll.”
I nod.
“I know Jason quite well. Lovely man. Smart, too. He was right. It was impossible. But I didn’t say anything about the mortuary at Ton Son Nhut. You did. Chen Dai bypassed it completely.”
“I’m lost, Mr. Tickner.”
“So am I,” the colonel chimes in. “How the hell else could they get their hands on cadavers?”
“They bought them.”
The colonel’s brows go up. He’s stunned.
I’m not. I’m putting pieces together: the story the photographer told us about Kate’s husband and the list I bought from Surigao.
“A number of years ago while conducting refugee interviews,” Tickner goes on, “we learned that Chen Dai routinely purchased the bodies of American servicemen from Pathet Lao forces.”
“You ever come across a list of MIAs in those interviews?” I ask, baiting him. Will he blink? Is he threatened by it? Will it blow him sky-high?
“A list of MIAs?” he wonders, unphased. “Not as I recall. What does it have to do with this?”
“That’s my question. There are indications it might have been threatening to Chen Dai for some reason.”
Tickner shrugs. “I’m still drawing a blank. As far as I know, the bodies were shipped to a heroin refinery in Vientiane, where the contraband was inserted in the chest cavities. While there, they were embalmed, packaged, and put in stolen transfer cases. When the war ended and the supply of cadavers stopped, Chen Dai came up with this method.”
“You say Vientiane?” Webster prompts.
Tickner nods.
The colonel and I exchange knowing looks. Now we know why Pettibone headed for Vientiane when he went AWOL.
“Anyway,” Tickner resumes, “the cases were flown to Ton Son Nhut Airbase and added to a pallet of bona fide cases being shipped to the states from the mortuary.”
“And the mortuary out-processing NCO took over from there,” the colonel declares.
Tickner nods.
“A member of the Ajacier family,” I prompt.
Tickner nods again and smiles thinly in tribute. “He prepared shipping manifests and made sure the DD thirteen-hundreds— which triggered next of kin notifications, insurance benefits, etc.— were inserted into the flow. One form, eight carbons, a relatively simple matter.”
“The name Pettibone mean anything to you?” I ask.
“Not until I spoke with the Colonel the other day, which prompted me to go back into our files.” He turns on a heel and heads for the door. “It’s well over twenty years,” he goes on as we follow him down the corridor to his office. “But we’ve managed to piece together a scenario.” He pauses long enough to find a file on his desk. “According to this, our people were hot on Pettibone’s trail when he went AWOL. Lost track of him completely. They checked every flight, every passenger manifest. They concluded he was using someone else’s identification.”
“Yes, mine. He stole it. That’s what got me into this mess in the first place. He died with it.”
“Really? That’s something we didn’t know.”
“That’s because they yanked his body from the mortuary to keep you from poking around.”
Tickner’s brows go up. “That’s two for you, Morgan.”
“Let’ s try for three. Did you know he and Surigao flew together?”
“That’s not news. They’re the ones who ferried the T-cases containing the contraband from Vientiane to Ton Son Nhut.”
“Very good. As I understand it, they used to call those flights Pepsi-Cola runs, didn’t they?”
Tickner’s chin lifts curiously. “How much do you know, Mr. Morgan?”
“Not enough yet.”
“That’s a matter of opinion.”
“Fine. Whatever you say. Now, answer the question. Why were they called Pepsi-Cola runs?”
Uncomfortable looks dart between him and Nash.
“Come on, dammit,” the colonel chimes in. “I didn’t fly fourteen hours to have you holding back information.”
“Well,” Tickner says, still clearly uncomfortable, “Chen Dai splits his time between his compound up north in Pak Seng and a Pepsi-Cola plant in Vientiane.”
“A Pepsi-Cola plant?!” the colonel exclaims.
“Yes, that’s the facility I mentioned earlier.”
“The heroin refinery?”
“Uh-huh. It’s the perfect cover for buying ether and acetic anhydride,” Nash explains. “You can’t turn opium into heroin without ‘em. Of course, the place never capped a bottle of Pepsi. Been a state-of-the-art junk factory from day one. When the crack craze hit, they started making what we call ‘ice.’ That’s crystalline methamphetamine. It’s as addictive as crack, but when you mix it with heroin, you get a much better high without the crash. And you smoke it. No needles. No threat of AIDS. Real big market.”
“The catch is,” Tickner concludes, “this Pepsi-Cola plant was built in the mid-sixties—with funds provided by the United States Agency for International Development. Needless to say, neither PepsiCo nor the USG knew anything about a heroin refinery. Unfortunately, in light of the current program, it’s still a highly sensitive issue.” He pauses and locks his eyes onto mine. “I’m going to have to ask you to leave this whole thing be.”
“Ask Ajacier to leave me be.”
“As I hinted the other day, we’re not so sure it is Ajacier.”
“Then who? You guys?”
“That’s not funny, Mr. Morgan. We suspect Chen Dai may have decided to wipe the slate clean to make sure there aren’t any black eyes.”
“That means Ajacier’s a target too.”
“It’s possible.”
“And you’re going to let Chen Dai do it?”
“That’s his business.”
“Jesus.”
“To be brutally frank, Mr. Morgan, it certainly makes our job a whole lot easier.”
I’m stunned. Am I supposed to be reading in between the lines here? Is he sending me a deadly message? I take a moment to settle. “One more question, Mr. Tickner, if you don’t mind?”
“Would it make any difference?”
“No.”
“Please.”
“This crop substitution program. It’s all worked out, right?”
“Yes. All but the formalities. It’s a matter of scheduling and logistics now.”
“And the drug smuggling is going to stop.”
“Like a bug hitting a windshield.” He makes a sharp, chopping motion with his hand. “Your question?”
“Why have they been trying to kill me?”
“That’s not such a mystery. Your pursuit of Surigao provoked them.”
“No, he came at me first. Months ago. Right after I made an inquiry to the CIL.”
“What’s your point, Mr. Morgan?” Tickner asks impatiently.
“What did I endanger? I mean, I must’ve threatened something for Chen Dai to sign my death warrant.”
Tickner muses thoughtfully.
“It sure wasn’t his drug smuggling operation.”
Tickner nods.
“Then what? There must be more, Mr. Tickner. There has to be.”
“I think you’re overreacting.”
“I always overreact. I’m a number cruncher. My friends are always teasing me about things having to add up.” I pause and burn him with a look. “And I’m not letting go of this until they do.”