“Once we have all the information, we’ll set a time and place where you and your niece will meet our extraction team. You’ll be flown out of the region, but not aboard one of our diplomatic aircraft,” Cahill explained matter-of-factly, as though giving friends directions to a soccer game. “You’ll travel by other means. No need for passports. You’ll have a complete set of unique identification documents by the time you touch down in the United States.”
Yoshi seemed relieved. “I want to trust you. There are many in our yakuza family who do not believe in profiting through the sale of drugs. We know what heartbreak it can bring.”
Stevens nodded respectfully. “We’re on the same team, Yoshi. Help us put an end to this madness and we’ll make sure you have a good life in America.”
The CIA officers were demanding yet fair. They made it clear Yoshi needed to obtain a few more bank account numbers, drug-smuggling routes from Thailand to the United States, the identity of ships or planes involved in the operation, and delivery schedules on land and at sea – then they’d be ready to go. Yoshi shared the news with Hiraku upon returning to the small Tokyo apartment they shared ever since a tragic automobile accident had claimed the girl’s parents eleven years earlier.
“Do you really believe Tanaka wants you dead and not just punished? Maybe he wants only a finger. Maybe yubitsume is enough.”
“He’ll stop at nothing until I’m dead. He’s a snake who wants nothing more than to sink his fangs into my flesh and devour me.”
“Then we should leave soon.”
“If anything happens to me, Hiraku, you must still meet with the Americans. They’ve promised to take you to safety and I believe them.”
“Nothing will happen to you, my beloved uncle. We’ll leave together while there’s still time and start a new life. No more yakuza. We’ll live in America – maybe in Philadelphia where I will eat delicious cheesesteak sandwiches for breakfast and Smartfood popcorn for lunch and buy beautiful new clothes at the shopping mall every day while you smoke your pipe.”
Yoshi smiled Buddha-like, peacefully, as though embracing his niece’s dream, but deep inside he felt a dark undercurrent and sensed fate had something completely different in store. The ancestors were reaching out, calling for him to join them.
3
Death Along the Poppy Trail
CIA Headquarters
Langley, Virginia
March 1990
Stuart Ashwood swung his legs off the antique wooden desk in his office, folded his arms and stared directly at the two CIA officers sitting before him in wheeled swivel chairs.
“Looks like you two are headed to the Pacific.”
Eighteen months earlier, Ashwood had replaced Preston Barlow as the CIA’s Deputy Director of Operations. Barlow had bungled a major agency operation in Cuba and the international embarrassment and political fallout it had caused was still rippling through the power corridors of DC.
Hannah Summers and Bill Carrington — the two agency operatives now hyperactively twirling their chairs — were well aware of the details, having done their utmost in Cuba to keep the situation from further unraveling.
Ashwood leaned forward, hands planted firmly on his desk. “For the time being, let me lay this mission out in an abbreviated nutshell and then we’ll get into specifics.”
A picture of health in his mid-50s, with a toned physique and thick, smoky gray hair neatly parted to one side, the affable Ashwood was known behind his back as Smilin’ Stu. But today he wasn’t smiling. The deputy director seemed uneasy as he adjusted his regimental striped tie and tugged at the white cuffs of his powder blue oxford shirt. He brushed a fleck of lint from his tailored navy suit jacket and cleared his throat.
“What I’m about to tell you comes straight from President Bush. Last September, in his first televised national address as Chief Executive, he called drugs the greatest domestic threat facing our nation today. I’d have to agree with him. The tragedy and trauma that drug abuse causes to American families is immeasurable.”
Hannah stopped fidgeting in her chair and rolled it closer to the deputy director’s desk. Carrington did the same.
In Ashwood’s opinion, President George H.W. Bush had sent an incomplete message when he held up a bag of seized crack cocaine during that speech and told his fellow Americans the drugs were being smuggled into the country from Central and South America. The President had pointed a finger at Colombia, where a steady stream of misery was fueled daily by greedy narcos like Pablo Escobar. The President’s televised broadcast had been used to announce the authorization by Congress of funding and military equipment that would be provided to an alphabet soup of law enforcement agencies to fight corrupt and powerful drug cartels south of the U.S. border. President Bush made no mention of Japan’s criminal underworld, about twenty organized crime families otherwise known collectively as the yakuza, which was responsible for smuggling heroin into the United States at an unprecedented rate.
Hannah’s face paled. She gazed off into the distance, lost in thought, replaying the painful memories from thirteen years earlier that refused to die, images and words that forever captured her younger sister Rachel’s near-fatal cocaine overdose.
Hannah had called 9-1-1 and requested an ambulance after the sixteen-year-old complained of chest pains, nausea and feeling overheated. When the girl began to vomit and a series of tremors and spasms overtook her body, Hannah suspected the symptoms were caused by drugs, and not by an allergic reaction to undercooked cheeseburgers from the local fast-food joint, or some errant airborne virus traveling on a stranger’s sneeze.
When Hannah sniffed her sister’s breath, there was no odor of alcohol. Hannah had heard stories of how her younger sister could keep up with the boys when it came to pounding down beers or drinking shots. The girl’s pupils were dilated.
Hannah would never forget the sight of her angel-faced sister in the back of an ambulance, IV fluids flowing into her bloodstream, oxygen mask pushing enriched air into her lungs, ice packs strategically placed to help reduce her body temperature, the two paramedics working furiously to keep her alive, monitoring her vital signs, hoping to ward off a seizure, stroke, or heart attack. There was no magic prescription drug to counteract a cocaine overdose. It was more a matter of trying to keep the patient stable until the drug ran its course.
Hannah wondered whether her sister had snorted a full gram of cocaine, perhaps two, or had been given a speedball – a dangerous mix of cocaine and heroin made further toxic by the substances used to cut it. She’d read horror stories about dealers cutting cocaine with everything from laundry detergent, talcum powder, and laxatives, to painkillers like Lidocaine, and even Strychnine, an ingredient commonly found in rat poison.
While waiting for the ambulance to arrive, Hannah had demanded her sister tell her the truth. The girl swore she hadn’t ever used cocaine and never would. Hannah knew it was bullshit but saw no advantage in getting her sister to admit it. The blood tests at the hospital would do that. She felt grateful that her older sister, Molly, was away at college, because the woman usually became emotionally unstable in a crisis and caused more harm than good.