Assuming Our Missionary Position
Chapter 5
Our mission position was a pretty straightforward one: to locate, arrest and extradite Kris Amar. Oh sure, easy-peasy. However, before we could leave for Nong Khai, we needed to get our act together, literally and figuratively speaking. Otherwise, we wouldn’t end up on top when it came to confronting Amar, a very clever, ruthless adversary. Much needed to be done to prepare and our little team got busy.
A crusade was about to begin and Dick Avery was leading the charge, a fierce Christian soldier marching as to war to battle a fearsome, Islamofascist foe. Well, that bit of pumped bravado and sketchy alliteration rumbling through my mind didn’t relieve my anxiety or fears about our upcoming investigation. I greatly worried about our safety. Damn it! I still had a few good years of debauchery left in me before moving through death’s opaque veil. And I didn’t want to miss out on a single one of them!
Chi arranged to hire a car and driver for our little journey. The car was a Jeep Grand Cherokee with right-hand drive. The driver was left-handed and his name was Jimmy Boonchai, a trusted friend and recently retired cop from the Chiang Mai force. Chi claimed both were reliable and untraceable entities. Like many Thais, Jimmy had anglicized his given name. He said his first name was unpronounceable by westerners so he chose Jimmy. I thought it to be a pretty good one, although Jim or James might have been a better, masculine choice for someone in his profession. My first name gave me nothing but torment from my classmates growing up, so who was I to judge? Of course, it would have been much worse if it were Avery Dick. That moniker would’ve been unbearable!
All of us had cell phones and we synced them in advance for ease of use. Chi also packed several small walkie-talkies with ear buds just in case cell reception might be iffy in the region. Weapons included two 12 gauge, Winchester 870 pump shotguns loaded with #4 buck, plus our own handguns. We were ready for bear or Kris Amar. However, we’d have to settle for Amar since there were no bear native to Thailand. Denny loaned me a five-shot Smith & Wesson Model 60 revolver, a .38 caliber weapon and not a DSS agent’s gun, but my favorite for ease of concealment.
My two cop colleagues each carried Glock nine millimeter pistols, a superior weapon to mine in terms of firepower and accuracy. None of us were concerned about the police discovering our guns. I had diplomatic immunity and the guys had important friends in high places, so no worries all around.
***
“Forget about winning the war on drugs. It’s not going to happen in my lifetime or yours despite what the Washington pundits claim! The same thing is true for Islamic terrorism, but for other reasons, in my less than humble opinion. As to the drug problem, we can fight it, we can contain it to some extent, but we’ll never make more than a dent in opium production despite our best efforts, and why?” Ron Johnston rhetorically asked his audience of one.
“There are several factors and they all conspire to make the situation impossible to solve. It’s what we call the whack-a-mole effect. We take down a lab or a poppy field one day and another one pops up the next. We arrest a drug kingpin and another immediately steps forward to take his place. However, the problem is not quite that simple.”
Ron was the Supervisory Special Agent of the Drug Enforcement Administration satellite office seconded to the consulate in Chiang Mai. His office, along with his Thai counterparts, was responsible for drug enforcement operations for the northern third of the country and coordinating those operations with his colleagues attached to the U.S. embassies in Myanmar and Laos. The large DEA office in Bangkok was the big dog in the pack overseeing everything in the region.
Ron was on a tear with his diatribe. Perhaps he’d already exceeded his daily limit of coffee, but more likely his vitriolic language resulted from years of frustration on the job. I was going to offer him a tranquilizer, but thought better of it. In any case, he continued to harangue me on the finer points of the drug trade in his patch, the Golden Triangle.
“It’s all a matter of supply and demand, sort of a chicken or egg scenario. It’s also a simple economic equation. Start with the farmers in Myanmar for example. A typical, small farmer there earns about $1,800 a year from growing traditional crops. His neighbor makes roughly $2,500 for growing poppies and doing less work. The $700 difference is huge given the local economy and enough to pay for private schooling and tutoring for the farmer’s three kids. Even with government crop subsidies, the opium farmer comes out well ahead since the subsidies are a mere pittance and ineffective in dissuading farmers from growing poppies.”
Ron took another sip of coffee and wiped his lips with the back of his hand. He was on a roll and I sat back and politely listened.
“The poppies are then harvested by the farmer using local laborers who are paid minimal wages for the seasonal chore. I said minimal and not minimum as there is no minimum wage in Myanmar. It’s whatever the farmer, market or laborer, in this instance, can bear. Unemployment is sky high and there’s no government safety net one can turn to. If you don’t have money, you don’t eat. It’s a tough, hardscrabble way of life for many.”
“Then add the cash couriers, mules, smugglers, distributors and refiners to the mix and you get a sense of the employment dynamics. The number of people employed in the drug trade is enormous and it provides jobs to the otherwise unemployable. Moreover, it doesn’t have the social stigma attached to it as it does in the west. It’s been a way of life for many for at least a thousand years and culturally acceptable.”
“Anyway, who the hell cares what goes into the arms, thighs and buttocks of the addicts of this world?” Ron cynically commented.
He stopped his spiel and pulled out a Marlboro red from a crushproof pack on his desk. He didn’t bother to ask if I minded. I didn’t and did the same. We shared the single ashtray on his desk and enjoyed each other’s secondhand smoke. We were kindred spirits at that point. He also didn’t mind that we were breaking the government-wide smoking ban that had been in effect for the past twenty-five years. I guessed he condoned some addictions, but didn’t care about a few measly carcinogens given the risks he’d taken for God and country over the years.
“So, I’ve mentioned a few things, but I’ll add a few more that come into play. That is if you have the time.”
I did. I was interested in what he had to say since it would give me better perspective. I needed as much of that commodity as I could get at this point.
“The Golden Triangle was surpassed by Afghanistan about ten years ago as the number one producer of opium in the world. However, that fact didn’t impact the production of the drug in this region one iota. For some reason, the Chinese prefer this stuff rather than the crap coming out of Southwest Asia. I don’t know why, but it’s hugely popular there. In fact, it’s so popular that the number of new addicts is growing exponentially. With the humongous size of the Chinese population, there’s a never-ending market for the drug, no shortage of demand whatsoever.”
“But back to the Triangle, our mission today is to stop the flow of drugs by interdicting the shipments going down the Mekong to Vietnam and overland to Bangkok and Yangon via any and every means possible. Product heading to China is more problematic given the touchy politics between our countries. We also jointly target the refining labs, but frankly most of the refining is now done in Turkey, Vietnam and Hong Kong. We leave the crop eradication part to the three host governments in the Triangle to deal with. In any case, it’s a political hot potato to say the least.”
“The last point I want to make is with regard to corruption. It’s endemic in this part of the world and the Golden Triangle is no exception. We don’t know who we can fully trust among the government authorities and that makes the job exceedingly difficult. If bribes don’t work, the bad guys turn to threats of violence or violence itself. How would you like to be told that your wife would be killed if you didn’t cooperate?”
I pondered the question for a minute since my ex and I had a nasty divorce and I resented paying her alimony. Hmm, what to do? I quickly dismissed the obvious answer from my mind. It was simply a rhetorical question anyway.
“I hope I didn’t bore you with my little monologue. I’m called a classic burnout case by my coworkers, among the walking wounded as they say. I’m simply much too damn cynical for my own good and have trouble keeping the faith these days. There are too many holes in the dyke and not enough fingers to go around in this so-called war.”
“I’m pulling the plug at the end of the year. With almost thirty years of doing this job, mostly in Latin America, I’ve had it and can’t wait to go home. However, you haven’t told me why the briefing on the drug trade and what you’re doing in Thailand. It’s now your turn to show me yours, agent Avery.”
I disclosed, but not the details of my plan since they were still lacking. That meant I didn’t as yet have a game plan or clue and told Ron so.
I then related the story of Kris Amar and the kidnapping in India. I’d told it so many times over the past couple of years I had it down pat and it bored me to death.
“Yeah, I sort of remember hearing about the case. Some guy from your outfit, a Bigs or Briggs, or something or another, solved it and won a lot of kudos, even from the FBI, if you can believe that.”
I did believe it, but didn’t bother to correct him as it wasn’t important. Anyhow, kudos didn’t pay the bills.
“Hey, let me check our database and see if we get a hit. What’s his name again?”
“It’s Kris Amar, but forget the Kris part. I tagged him with that handle since we never learned his given name, just his surname and maybe his only name as far as I know. In India, he often wore an ornate kris around his waist, a ceremonial knife more common to Indonesia and Malaysia, hence his nickname. However, he’s likely using an assumed name and keeping a low profile.”
“Okay, let me do a quick search. It shouldn’t take more than a couple minutes.”
True to his word, Ron shortly reported there was no record in his computer of an Amar or variation of same that jived with my fugitive.
“Sorry, he’s not on our radar,” Ron commented with a shrug.
“You said you’re heading to Nong Khai, right? That can be a rough area if you’re poking around the drug trade, so be careful. Trust no one. It’s a major transit point for product coming across the border from Laos. Coincidentally, I’ll be visiting the city in the next week or so and maybe we’ll run into each other. Who knows? Karma and kismet are considered big deals in this part of the world.”
I didn’t understand Ron’s confounding, Confucian-like statement until it was almost too late. Maybe he suffered from post traumatic stress disorder from fighting too long in the drug wars.
I thanked Ron for his time, excellent briefing, the records check, advice and the opportunity to smoke. I didn’t think I’d left anything out. I also wished him well in retirement.