Riding the Snake (1998) (2 page)

"This has been an eventful year," the Chinese politician said to the dying Hong Kong mobster, a moment after Willy's eyes opened. Only two years in age but fifty years of contrasting and tumultuous political activity separated them. Chen Boda had risen in the Chinese Communist Party in the same spectacular fashion Wo Lap Ling had risen in the Triad hierarchy. What made them brothers under the skin was that both reveled in the luxury of power in a way few can understand.

"I'm dying," Wo Lap said softly in Mandarin, the chosen language of the Chinese Communist Party. "That will certainly make this year eventful for me."

"How you arrive and how you exit are the only two things in life that count," the old politician said, a smile playing at the corner of his thin lips. Both men knew this particular Confucian philosophy was inaccurate, if not ridiculous, at least for them. They had both been defined by the ruthless acts they'd committed in between those two sacred events.

"You have come here to give me the Master's wisdom?" Willy Wo Lap said, his voice weakening to a whisper in the already quiet hospital room.

"It has been a year of jing-shen-wu-ran," the Chinese politician said, talking of the spiritual pollution of China that the Communist government claimed was the sole fault of American intervention in Beijing's internal policies.

"I am not a politician," Willy Wo Lap said softly.

"This is not so. You are just a politician with different goals. You steal from America, you attack them from the inside. You can become a different kind of warrior in this battle. This is what I want to talk to you about."

The two men looked at one another in the dimly lit room. Each waited for the other to speak. Finally, it was Chen Boda who continued:

"The Americans challenge us at every turn. They attempt to be the sole force in the Pacific theater. This year, they sent their aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk into the Yellow Sea to threaten us over our attempt to repatriate our renegade province, Taiwan. This is a direct threat against our national sovereignty. . . . They attempt to chastise us over our necessary reorganization of Tibet, tying that important internal matter to their Most Favored Nation trade status; complaining about our supposed Human Rights atrocities, while they burn their own citizens at Waco and castrate Black children in Alabama."

Willy Wo Lap closed his eyes, both from fatigue and lack of interest. He had never cared about these things.

"I am boring you, comrade?" Chen Boda asked.

"The lowly swallow cannot possibly understand the lofty ambitions of the eagle," Willy Wo Lap said, using another Confucian wisdom, then watched as the smile reappeared momentarily on the politician's face.

"Let me propose to you a bargain," the five-foot-tall head of the powerful Chinese Communist Military Commission said. "I will give you the kidneys you desperately need, but you in turn will work for me. ... I want your river of pollution to become a flood. We will attack their society from the inside with even more narcotics, Russian AK-47s and illegal Chinese aliens who will steal from their welfare state. I will direct your efforts. You will increase and control the flow. You will continue to buy favor with American politicians. Increase your already sizable Guan-Xi. If you are caught, it will be you--not the People's Republic of China--who will be guilty of this act of aggression. In return, I will give you life."

The two men looked at one another. There seemed to be nothing else to say. It was a great deal for both of them.

They took him by ambulance past the gates of the Forbidden City. The gold tiles on the roofs of this ancient part of Beijing shone up defiantly at a three-quarter moon. They left the city on the Qianmen Dajie highway and finally arrived at a huge lao gai, or "reform through labor" camp. It was located in the Chinese countryside south of the capital. The camp was a mammoth, windowless fortress of gray concrete. Dismal, even from the outside. The lao gai housed prisoners who had been arrested for political crimes. There was a hospital there for medical experiments. The lao gai was full of the very men and women that President Bill Clinton was claiming were victims of Chinese Human Rights violations.

Chen Boda walked to the operating room on the sixth floor, where three of China's best urological transplant surgeons had been rushed and were now awaiting him. It was four-fifteen in the morning.

"Is the donor here?" Chen Boda asked.

The doctor nodded and led the diminutive politician to an adjacent room where they looked through a window at a young student dissident strapped to a table. He looked back at them through the glass in wide-eyed fear.

The student was named Wan Jen Lam. He had been arrested for distributing brochures proclaiming the New Democratic Front in Tiananmen Square during the uprising five years before. He had been held under "strict supervision" for his crime without ever being formally charged, let alone facing trial.

"He's a five-out-of-six tissue type match to Mr. Wo Lap. A good donor," the lead surgeon said.

"Are you ready to begin?" Chen Boda asked the doctors, and they all nodded.

"Then wheel the patient in here so he can witness our generosity on his behalf."

A few minutes later, Wo Lap Ling was on a rolling hospital bed that was parked in front of the observation window where Wan Jen Lam was strapped down. They cranked Willy's bed up. Once the ailing Triad leader was in a position to see, Chen Boda went into the operating theater and nodded to one of the doctors. The surgeon, a narrow-faced man whose eyes were hidden behind the gleaming circles of his thick glasses, stepped forward and picked up a scalpel from a tray of instruments. He approached the frightened student, who wriggled helplessly under his restraints.

"You have a great love for American Democracy. It appears you think the Western moon is rounder than the Chinese moon," Chen Boda said without preamble. "But it is time for you to make a contribution to the Motherland."

"What are you going to do?" the terrified student asked.

"I am going to give you a chance to give valuable aid to your beloved country," Chen Boda said, smiling at the terrified youth. His smile was surprisingly warm and gentle, his voice soothing. Despite the horrifying situation, it seemed to calm Wan Jen Lam.

"How will I contribute?" the young man finally asked.

"You will give to the Motherland something she desperately needs. . .

The student was puzzled by this and furrowed his brow. Chen Boda motioned to the doctor, who advanced to the table, holding the scalpel as if it were a calligraphy brush: two fingers high on the outside of the handle, thumb in powerful opposition, lower two fingers resting on the inside of the handle near the blade. It was a grip that permitted extraordinary strength and precision.

The blade flashed as he swung it down and buried it in the student's heart. The student convulsed once, exhaling a gust of air. Chen Boda watched impassively as the dissident quivered and shook; the scalpel protruding from his chest twitched like a small dark arrow as his nerves and synapses rioted within his skinny, undernourished body. Quickly and painfully, the young man died. Blood from the wound ran off the table and pooled on the floor. Then Chen Boda walked back into the adjoining room and faced Willy.

"I have done this for you, Wo Lap Ling. Do not forget that when you were about to perish, a good friend shielded you from the storm." Then he turned and walked out of the room.

As the sun came up on Tiananmen Square, the three-man surgical team was already deep into it, removing Willy Wo Lap's disease-shriveled kidneys and replacing them with Wan Jen Lam's healthy ones.

Willy Wo Lap was wheeled into recovery at nine-thirty-five A
. M
. His vital signs were stable and he was about to begin a long journey of healing that would lead him back to power.

Wan Jen Lam was wheeled to an elimination chamber and disposed of quickly and efficiently. His body was shredded and washed with harsh acid. Once liquefied, it was drained away without a trace.

If Bill Clinton wanted examples of Human Rights violations, Chen Boda was only too happy to oblige.

Willy Wo Lap slept a peaceful sleep and dreamed of his father. The old fish-factory worker had once sat in their crowded
Kowloon apartment, with the sound of crying babies and electric saws ripping pig carcasses nearby, and told him, "No feast lasts forever." Willy had been ten and listened while his ailing father spouted Confucian wisdom dictated by Chairman Mao. These last painful years had proven Confucius and the old fish factory worker right. Willy had suffered renal failure . . . and with it had come a loss of all his appetites. The feast that was his life had ended. He no longer craved women, food, or luxury. All he wanted was a few moments free of pain. Now he had been given a new chance. Once more, the crafty Chinese mobster had managed to stay on the vicious tiger. Once more, he could savage his enemies from a seat of power behind the beast's shoulder blades. Willy was back.

A new feast was about to begin.

*

Chapter
1.

Wheeler and Prescott

The locker room at the exclusive Westridge Country Club was Wheeler Cassidy's "spot." He arrived every morning around ten and flopped down on the tan leather sofa, then browsed the L
. A
. Times. Of late, he had just been scanning the front page, then going directly to sports, reading the racing results and ball scores. The rest of the paper failed to interest him. He used to read it cover to cover, but now the pointless articles on the Metro page about police brutality or campaign finance abuses didn't concern him anymore. He had been vaguely aware of the fact that his world had been narrowing but had managed to flush those thoughts with Scotch shooters.

The beige couch was also good because it was in front of the picture window that overlooked the tennis courts, which afforded him a prized spear-fishing spot. He could either tag up on a new member's wife coming back from her tennis lesson or pick up a golf game with some middle-aged walk-over. By one P
. M
., he had usually moved from the comfortable On-Deck Circle to Home Plate, which was the last stool at the bar in the grill. From there
,
he would swing lazily at the slow curves that wandered past in sexy tennis skirts.

Wheeler was thirty-seven, tall and good-looking in a careless, bad boy sort of way that women of all ages seemed irresistibly drawn to. His curly black hair hung loosely on his forehead. His square jaw and white teeth were babe-magnets, although his once rock-hard abs were beginning to take on some extra padding and his hands were starting to shake at eleven each morning. Once he got his first Scotch shooter--Blended Vat 69--they calmed down.

Wheeler had not turned out the way he was supposed to. He had not lived up to his father's expectations. His first spectacular failure had been sixteen years ago when they'd thrown him out of the University of Southern California for being drunk and disorderly, and according to one University Regent, "an irredeemable scholastic project." The final incident that propelled his expulsion was a fist fight he'd gotten into at Julie's Bar after the S
. C. S
tanford game. He had endured three Bay Area assholes for almost two hours before slipping his thousand-dollar Cartier watch off his left wrist and putting the misplaced Stanford alumni in the U
. S. C
. Trauma Ward. Wheeler had a solid punch and, even drunk, he could still bang one off you. His left hook was lethal. He preferred talking to hitting, but occasionally had to "step outside" with somebody. Fighting was a necessary skill when you were periscoping other people's women.

Wheeler Cassidy had been famous at U
. S. C
. He was that guy that everybody talked about ... the tuna fisherman's tuna fisherman. The stunts he'd pulled were legendary: like jumping off the roof of the Tri-Delt House on a dare or driving his VW into the L
. A
. Coliseum at half-time during the U
. C. L. A
. game. On the side of his paintbrushed-cardinal-and-gold VW Rabbit, he had written, "Have one on me, Bruins." Then he sprayed the U
. C. L. A
. rooting section with warm beer from a supercharged keg. He'd been arrested six times for various violations and pranks before finally being expelled. His exploits were written up in the Cardinal and Gold, the student paper, at least once a month during his colorful three-year academic career, but that was a long time ago. Now he was what some people would call a country club bum. The Westridge Country Club in Bel Air, California, was his haunt.

The W
. C. C
. had all kinds of strict membership requirements: Your family and ethnic background had to be acceptable; you needed to be well placed in society; and no members of the entertainment community were ever accepted. Wheeler got in on a junior membership when he turned twenty-one because his father, Wheeler Cassidy, Sr., had been a longtime member.

However, Wheeler Jr. was currently up before the W
. C. C
. disciplinary committee. They were trying to decide whether to kick him out for a one-nighter he'd had with the beautiful but restless wife of a senior member who was also, unfortunately, head of the club's rules committee. The affair had resulted in the couple's messy divorce. It was the memory of Wheeler's late father that so far had stayed the axe, but this time it looked like his expulsion from the club was inevitable.