He was closely admiring some sapphire rings when a slightly accented voice spoke behind him. "Ah, my friend, you like the sapphires, oui?"
Burke turned to see a slender man with dark hair slicked straight back, his upper lip adorned with a more classic mustache than the young Thai's. He had a wordly look about him, a penetrating gaze at once intimate and dispassionate, almost clinical. It made Burke feel he had just been dissected, categorized, pigeonholed and left to dry out like an insect in an entomological collection.
"You must be Yves Caron," Burke said.
He smiled. "And you are the unknown farang my young colleague said had asked about me."
"Farang?'
"It is what the Thais call us round-eyed, fair-skinned Westerners. Europeans and Americans. Are you interested in gemstones, Mr…?"
"Hill. Burke Hill." He reached out to shake the Frenchman's hand. "I'm interested in gems, but not stones."
Caron raised an eyebrow. "And what kind of gem would you be looking for?"
"A friend of mine named Jerry Chan said you might be able to put me in touch with Ahn Pom-yun."
"Ah, Mr. Chan. It has been a few years. But I disappoint myself. I did not take you for one interested in the poppy business."
Burke grinned. "You were right the first time. I'm not the least interested in the drug trade."
"As Jerry Chan well knows, Monsieur Ahn is a central figure in the narcotics traffic through this area."
"How did a Korean manage to achieve such prominence here?" Burke asked.
"The most powerful drug lord, as you Americans like to put it, the top man in the Golden Triangle is the head of a Shan army just across the border in Burma. He controls the movement of opium and operation of the jungle refineries. He wholesales the heroin out of Thailand. His sister is married to Ahn Pom-yun.
"Who are the Shans?"
"They are a Burmese tribe from the Shan Mountains. The army leader is actually half-Shan, half-Chinese. Various Chinese factions have been competing in Northern Thailand for years. If you're not interested in drugs, Monsieur Hill, why did you want to meet Ahn Pom-yun?"
"I was hoping Mr. Ahn might lead me to an older man with a similar name, Ahn Wi-jong."
Caron crossed his arms and reconsidered Burke with a wary expression. "You know, of course, that Ahn Wi-jong is Monsieur Ahn's father."
"I suspected as much. I understand he's here in Chiangmai. I'd like to talk with him."
"Very few people are aware of Ahn Wi-jong's presence. He has been here only a short time, and it has been kept quite confidential. Would it be an imposition to ask how you knew?"
Burke considered it for a moment. If it would help pave the way to an audience with Ahn, why not? "I received the information in a roundabout way from a man in Pyongyang."
"Pyongyang," Caron repeated thoughtfully. "Yes. I have heard there might be efforts to send heroin to North Korea with the changed climate there. But you are not interested in the drug trade."
"Correct. And while we're about it, how did you happen to know about Ahn Wi-jong, if it's so confidential?"
"I deal in gems other than stones, Monsieur Hill. Information is a gem, n'est-ce pas?"
Burke nodded. "Indeed, it can be. Right now, the information I need is can you set up the contact with Ahn?" He was tired from the long flight and getting a bit weary of playing games.
Caron gave Burke his price and told him to go to a bar located a couple of blocks away, buy a drink and wait. Someone should contact him shortly.
"If you wait an hour and no one comes for you, I will return half of your money," said the Frenchman in a businesslike voice.
"Damned decent of you," Burke said. "Why not return all of it?"
"I do the same amount of work whether you are contacted or not. Unfortunately, I cannot guarantee the results."
Burke paid him and headed off toward the bar, a place called The Watering Hole. He found it dark and smoky with colored lights flashing overhead. The juke box played country music, of all things. He thought he was back in Tennessee. In fact, the place was awash with farang. There were several Americans seated at the bar, a bevy of bar girls stuck to them like Garfield dolls suction-cupped to a car window.
Burke took a table and ordered a glass of wine, drawing a strange look from the waitress. Evidently it wasn't a big seller here. A couple of bar girls came over but he waived them off. "I'm waiting for someone," he said. He wasn't sure they understood, but they went looking for greener pastures.
He had been there almost an hour and was beginning to despair of anything happening when a large, stocky Chinese came through the door, swept the room with a cold stare and walked toward his table. He looked like he should have been the bar's bouncer. He pulled the chair out opposite Burke, planted a large foot in it and leaned forward.
"Why do you want to see my boss?" he said coldly, his face expressionless.
"I want to ask him about another man," Burke said.
Bigfoot shoved the chair back in place and said, "Come with me."
Burke followed him out to the parking lot and over to a black Mercedes Benz, where a younger, more trim Chinese stood. Bigfoot ordered him to spread eagle against the car and patted him down. As Burke straightened up, he was hit with a sudden shock. His wrists were seized behind his back and handcuffed together.
"What the hell?" Burke blurted.
He was caught by a backhanded slap across the face that stung as if he had encountered a wasp. "Shut up! You were sent here by the Narcotics Suppression Center. Why?"
"You're crazy," Burke said in angry voice. "I only wanted to talk to Mr. Ahn about his father."
He was suddenly confronted with the business end of a 9mm Walther semiautomatic.
"Farang liar," said the big man. "If you do not come from the police, you must be a Kuomintang spy or a communist agent."
Burke had the unhappy feeling of a soldier caught in the crossfire between four competing forces. There was the Shan network, represented by these thugs; the Thailand National Police Department, which had been making headway against the drug trade, though too many influential officials still stood in the way; the remnants of Chiang Kai-Shek's defeated forces chased out of mainland China by Mao and ousted from the opium trade by the Shan; and the Burmese communists, who had turned to narcotics for funds when Beijing became an unreliable source. He had to convince them that he wasn't a combatant.
"Look," he said earnestly, "I don't give a damn about your opium or your heroin. My business with Ahn is something entirely different. Would I have come here alone, unarmed, if I was involved with one of these other groups? I'd have had my own army standing by."
The younger man said something in what Burke presumed to be Thai. Then Bigfoot jerked open the rear door and said, "Get in."
Burke obeyed and found himself sharing the back seat with the burly Chinese. Where were they taking him, he wondered? And what did they plan to do? He hadn't counted on this kind of reception. He knew there was a possibility the drug kingpin would doubt his motives, but he was prepared to reveal enough to justify his request. Now he wondered if he would even get to see Ahn Pom-yun. These two were obviously not out to do their good deeds for the day.
They drove across town and out the road toward Doi Suthep. Before reaching the foot of the mountain, the car swerved off the road and through a gate in a white wooden fence. Moving quickly back between lines of palm trees, the car glided to a stop beside a large, two-story white house with a gently sloping roof. Above about waist high, the walls appeared almost solid windows, a succession of tall, narrow panes. Burke was led into a parlor furnished with dark, lustrous teak wood furniture.