Thili Dreams

Bangkok to Chiang Mai, Monday, 17 April 1995

Somboon’s Cessna Citation VII jet banked lazily to the left and set course for Chiang Mai. The scream of the jet’s engines died down a little and Somboon relaxed slightly. He still dreaded flying despite the fact that he, or at least his family, owned the plane. The problem was not helped by the fact that he was still nursing a stinking hangover that refused to go away despite being bombarded with painkillers plus a little hair of the dog.

James, who was still wearing the sunglasses he had needed to put on at the beginning of the day, leant over towards Somboon and began talking in Teochew lest the South African crew of the plane understood what he was saying to the hung-over Somboon.

‘I had an interesting conversation in Kiev the other day.’

Somboon groaned, shifted his position and spoke without moving his head.

‘Guan Chang, I wish you’d stop talking in bloody riddles. Firstly you ask me to take a joyride with you in this infernal contraption, which you know I hate at the best of times, let alone when I’ve a shitty hangover. Then you start rambling on about conversations in places I’ve never heard of. What, upon the soul of our beloved mutual grandfather, are you cooking up in that devious mind of yours?’

‘Joo Chiang,’ replied James, using Somboon’s Chinese name, which, between them, they considered his real name, ‘it’s hardly my fault if you drank more than was good for you last night and are lousy at geography. What I’m trying to propose is something that will solve our joint mutual problems.’

‘The only mutual problem I can think about at the moment is a bloody hangover,’ said Somboon grumpily. ‘Anyway, go on, but please don’t talk in riddles. My brain can’t cope with it.’

‘Okay, okay,’ continued James, ‘the main mutual problem, which will last longer than our hangovers, is the fact that we’re not first sons. Although we make tons of money for our families we still have to put up with being ordered around by our fathers and elder brothers. True or not?’

Somboon sighed deeply. ‘Most true, my dear cousin.’

‘I’m sorry to mention it, cousin, but you also have another problem, which thankfully I’ve managed to avoid.’

Somboon shot a sharp look at James. ‘Wha’d’ya mean?’

‘Somboon, heroin addiction is something that is difficult to keep quiet from a concerned cousin.’

‘How the fucking hell…’

‘Calm down, calm down. It doesn’t matter a bugger to me. It’s just that it does mean that you have certain expenses that are difficult to reconcile with an interfering father.’

‘So what the hell are you driving at?’ demanded Somboon, sitting up, his hangover now forgotten.

‘As I said,’ continued James, confident that he had Somboon where he wanted him, ‘I had an interesting conversation the other day with a nice man in Kiev, which for your education is the capital of Ukraine.’

‘Thanks for the geography lesson, what did he say that warrants dragging me up here?’

‘Papaver Somniferum.’

‘Eh?’

‘A poppy. But not just any poppy. In fact, the only one of the dear little plants that is worth bothering about.’

‘Ah,’ said Somboon, relaxing slightly as he began to understand what James was saying, ‘you mean the type of gardening that our cousin is engaged in up north.’

‘Precisely.’

‘Which is presumably why we’re sitting in this horrid contraption on our way to his home town.’

‘Got it in one. I can see that your hangover is clearing up.’

‘So what’s all this got to do with your friend in… in… Kia… Kee…’

‘Kiev. I know you are the country member of the family, content with sitting in Thailand growing sugar. However, it can’t have escaped your notice that the Soviet Union is no more.’

‘Shut up and get on with it.’

‘Well, as the old Soviet Empire broke up, new trade routes developed for all sorts of things. Armaments, oil, commodities and…’

‘Poppies?’ added Somboon.

‘And in particular the refined product of Papaver Somniferum, heroin.’

‘Apart from my own personal interest, which I would ask you to keep quiet about…’

James nodded assent, with a far from pleasant smile.

Somboon continued, ‘Apart from that, I still can’t understand where I’m supposed to fit into this conversation.’

‘Okay, let me make it clear,’ said James. ‘My friend Kroll in the Ukraine controls the major distribution network for heroin in Europe – both West and what was Eastern. This makes him one of the biggest drugs barons in the world, South American cartels included. A major part of his supply comes from the Laos, Burma, Thailand golden triangle, produced in part by Khun Sa in Burma in conjunction with our gardening uncle. Between them they do a grand job of collecting the opium from the poppy-seed pods and pressing it into morphine base. Our uncle does the hi-tech bit of treating the morphine with chemicals and producing heroin. The trouble is that, since Khun Sa hung up his insurgent boots and stopped fighting the Burmese government, the source of supply is becoming disrupted. My friend is prepared to pay good money to re-establish that supply. And he has asked me to help him.’

‘All that makes good sense, but where do I come in?’ asked Somboon.

‘You, my dear cousin, are to be the shipper.’

‘Eh, what do you mean? I don’t know the first thing about shipping drugs. And what’s more, I don’t think I want to bloody well learn!’

‘Isn’t that rather selfish? Being prepared to use the stuff without being prepared to move it?’

‘I thought we had agreed to let that drop. Anyway, it’s rubbish. I use the telephone without having to shin up telegraph poles. I really don’t think I want to get involved with drug running whether or not I use the stuff’

‘Why don’t you listen to what is involved before you decide? Let me continue.’

‘All right, but I don’t like the sound of it.’

‘For the record, I’m not too keen on drug running either. Not for any moral reason, simply the danger. So rather than set up a regular supply line with all the risks of discovery, my plan is to arrange one big shipment and then quit.’

‘So how big is big?’

‘One tonne.’

There was a long pause during which Somboon gulped.

‘You have to be out of your devious little mind. I’ve just been reading in the Bangkok Post about some Singaporeans caught in Osaka smuggling the largest amount of opium ever discovered in passenger luggage. Do you know how much it weighed?’ asked Somboon.

‘Er… no.’

‘Six point oh four kilos of opium. Which as you have pointed out is the crudest form of the stuff. And you are talking about one tonne of heroin!’

‘Yes.’

‘You are out of your mind.’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘Madmen never do!’

‘No, Somboon, listen. Firstly, we’re not part of a chain as such, we’re the originators; or at least the origination is all in the family. We don’t have to rely on a lot of middlemen, any one of whom would shop us for an extra dollar. Secondly, we’re not carting the stuff around in passenger luggage.’

‘So how are we going to move one tonne of it?’

‘Simple. Disguised as sugar.’

‘You’re joking.’

‘Never been more serious. Look, we’ve already worked out that this Chinese contract will involve about one million tonnes of sugar. Assuming an average vessel size of, say, 15,000 tonnes that means about seventy ships. If the sugar is packed in the normal fifty-kilo bags used for sugar, then each vessel will carry 300,000 bags of sugar. If our special cargo is also packed in the same type of fifty-kilo bags, then all it will take is twenty bags to package the whole drug shipment. Twenty bags could very easily get lost among 300,000. If we take the whole sugar contract we’re only talking about twenty fifty-kilo bags of heroin hidden among twenty million identical bags of sugar. Now do you see the difference between what I’m talking about and the poxy six kilos in your stupid newspaper article?’

There was a long pause as Somboon thought about the figures. Finally he mumbled a reluctant ‘Yes’.

The Citation banked and James looked out of the window.

‘That’s interesting. Right over the top of it.’

‘What?’ asked Somboon, his knuckles white.

‘The golden triangle. You see down there – that little sand bank in the Mekong River. That’s where the borders of Thailand, Laos and Burma join.’

‘I’ll take your word for it,’ said Somboon, staring straight ahead.

‘How much did you say we were talking about?’ he asked, preferring to stick to the business rather than geography.

‘I didn’t, but I can give you an idea. One tonne of heroin has a wholesale value of just over $11 million. The retail mark-up is 900 times that, giving it a street value of about a billion US dollars. My friend will pass back a quarter of this value to us. That makes about $250 million. To be split fifty-fifty between us.’

Somboon groaned.

‘So are you interested or not?’

Somboon groaned again. ‘Interested,’ he mumbled.

‘Good,’ said James with a self-satisfied little sigh. ‘Now all we need is for our horticultural uncle to show up at the airport as I asked him to and everything will be roses.’

‘You mean poppies,’ grumbled Somboon.

‘I can see you’re getting better!’ said James. ‘By the way, do you know where morphine gets its name from?’

Somboon groaned again as the plane made a final turn before landing, and shook his head slowly.

James looked at his cousin, and then smiled slowly. ‘From Morpheus, the Greek god of dreams.’