Dragon Mountain. Daniel Reid

opium for me!"

      "I had you busted because your little opium business deprived dying men of food and medicine!" I shouted, beginning to lose my cool. "I'm not in this for the money-to me it's just another cargo, like ammo or bananas or people. It's just part of my job."

      "Fool! The problem with your CIA is that they wrongly assume that whatever they do is right. You know as well as I do that they engage in the opium trade to finance illegal political activities in Southeast Asia, activities so distasteful that even your own government refuses to acknowledge them. As usual, you Americans hide behind your flag and plead patriotism whenever someone accuses you of wrongdoing in the world. In fact, however, you are no better than us—and much less honest!" He paused to calm his voice, twisting the tips of his mustache. "Besides," he crooned, "you lie when you deny personal profit as a motive. What about the three hundred eighty thousand dollars you have accumulated over the years in the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank in Hong Kong? Does the CIA really pay such handsome salaries?"

      I was astounded that he knew so much about my private affairs. I felt stark naked. ''All right, all right, so I turned a little profit on the side. Everyone out here does it. It's one of the fringe benefits of putting up with all this shit. A man's got to think about his retirement." But he'd caught me off guard, and my argument sounded weak. At least he did not seem to be aware of the network of fledgling agents I'd been secretly organizing in the Triangle through our contacts in the opium business. His interest in me was purely personal, not professional.

      "Forget it, Ching Wei! I'm not flying dope around for you or any other tinhorn warlord. Thanks for the dinner and drinks, but no thanks!" I rose to leave, but had no place to go.

      "Sit down and have another brandy, Jack. It may be a long time before you taste brandy again. Here at Dragon Mountain, one must prove himself worthy of such luxuries." I sat down, lit another cigarette, and accepted another brandy.

      "That's better. Now listen carefully. It will be at least one more month before my next shipment of opium is collected, prepared, and properly packed for transport. That will give you time to adjust to your new life here." He spoke as if I were a new kid on my first day at summer camp. "You are not my only foreign guest here. Others enjoy my hospitality as well, and you will meet them soon enough.

      "Like everyone else, you shall live as an honored guest in the home of a good family in one of my villages. The family will feed you and care for all your needs, and the head of the household will be held responsible for your welfare as well as your behavior. Believe me, he and his family will watch you night and day. Because if any of my guests tries to escape, his host and his entire family are killed, one by one, in the village square." He paused to let that sink in while he drained his brandy.

      "On the other hand," he added, "guests who voluntarily decide to settle down here enjoy many benefits. Foreign guests remain in the homes of their assigned hosts only until they choose to marry local women and start families of their own. That is the Chinese way. You may select any girl from any village within my domain. When you marry and have children, you may build your own house in or near the village responsible for you. I will provide all materials and furnishings. In addition, permanent settlers receive monthly rations of foreign luxuries from the shop I keep in the main village. Razor blades, soap, whiskey, magazines-everything is available there. If you wish, you will also receive free opium, the very best. Guests who refuse to marry and settle down remain permanent burdens to their hosts."

      Before I could say another word, he clapped his hands impatiently, and the girl who'd shown me in appeared from the shadows. "She will take you out to the gate. Huang is waiting outside to take you back to the village and introduce you to the family I have selected for you. In one month I will summon you again. At that time, I will give you good reason to work for me without the slightest hesitation or thought of escape."

      He pointed at the stairs. "Now go!"

      V

      Ching Wei was right. It was good that I had another brandy while I had the chance. For the next six weeks I ate nothing but rice and barley with fiery curries that burned twice—once going down, and once again coming out. The natives were all devout Buddhists or hopeless opium addicts, or both, so they didn't touch booze. Some of Ching Wei's white hostages distilled their own arack from millet or palm, but that stuff burned even worse than the curries.

      There seemed to be lots of white men around, but I rarely saw more than two or three together in the same place. Each went about his own business as if he were walking down Main Street, USA. Some had gone native, with local wives and children, and lived in their own native huts. Others remained perpetual guests of their hapless hosts and flatly refused to conform to local customs. To the great disgust of the natives, most of the unmarried white men stayed stone drunk much of the time, occasionally abusing their hosts as well as each other in drunken brawls. But the villagers had strict standing orders from Ching Wei to make his "guests" feel at home there, so no one dared protest the behavior of these drunken louts. The first phrase I learned in the local lingo was, "Liquor is as natural to the white man as milk is to babies."

      One of Ching Wei's whims, to which he devoted increasing attention over the years, was to collect a sort of menagerie of white captives to amuse him. This hobby he pursued with great enthusiasm. When I arrived, he had about fifty men in his collection; by now there are at least three hundred fifty. Each captive lives in the household of his assigned host and receives everything he needs without having to do a lick of work for it. Those with special skills—like me—lived in the main village near the mountain, where Ching Wei could beckon us at will. But basically we were free to do anything we pleased—except leave.

      One of our main functions was simply to amuse Ching Wei, like a collection of exotic pets. Whenever the mood struck him, he would invite a bunch of us up to his place for a huge feast and lavish entertainment. The more drunk and disorderly his guests became, the more he seemed to enjoy their company. He himself rarely drank more than a glass or two of champagne or cognac, but it was clear from his glazed eyes and manic grin that he had something a lot stronger than booze coursing through his veins.

      White men were not his only whim. He also collected exotic animals from all over the world—mostly predators—and these he kept in a zoo within the palace walls. The animals were tended by an English veterinarian specifically selected and kidnapped for that purpose. When he felt particularly perverse, he'd sometimes pit one of his pet predators, such as a tiger, against a guest or native who'd broken one of his rules.

      Ching Wei also collected guns and orchids. I saw his gun room several times over the years, and I doubt there's a single type of firearm produced in the last hundred years of which he doesn't own at least one sample. That's where One-Eye got the Uzi he used to nab me.

      Ching Wei's orchid collection contained over five hundred varieties. He kept an elaborate, fully automated greenhouse tended by a French orchid cultivator named Moreau, whom he also kidnapped expressly for the job. Ching Wei once explained to me the source of his endless fascination with orchids. He said the blossoms reminded him of the intricate, delicately convoluted folds of the female genitalia, each breed displaying its own unique shape, size, and colors, each blossom exuding its own individual fragrance. "Everything about the orchid is designed to arouse sexual excitement in the roving butterfly or passing bee," he'd often say while sniffing lovingly at a bloom. When you think about it, he's right.

      Except for the foreign luxuries brought in from Bangkok, Dragon Mountain was entirely self-sufficient. The Shan tribes-men grew food in great abundance, with staples of rice, millet, and barley, and all sorts of fruits and vegetables for variety. For meat, Shan hunters stalked their prey throughout the surrounding mountains and valleys with vintage carbines, bringing back monkey, small deer, wild boar, water rats, civet cats, and snakes. The only domestic animals they ate were dogs and pigs, and those only on special occasions. The natives observed a strict taboo against eating beef, for the cow and buffalo were sacred animals to them, but because their white guests preferred beef above all other food, the locals were forced to butcher cattle for them. I soon learned another native term for the white man, always muttered in a tone of deep disgust: "The Beefeaters."