The Godfather of Kathmandu - By John Burdett Page 0,11

seats; at the other a radiographer in a white jacket worked with some Immigration officers. There were four travelers in front of Rosie, all men in line for the X-ray machine.

The radiographer worked very fast: it seemed there was no need for the suspects to undress. Now they stood Rosie upright against the plate and stepped back. There was a click, and then it was all over.

Suddenly an outbreak of excited jabbering in Thai. The English-speaking officer was bringing the X-ray plate to show her, and the rest of us followed in a group infected with schadenfreude. There it was: a condom nestling inside her vagina exactly like an erect but sluggish penis, clearly packed with white powder, which seemed to shine with horrific brilliance in contrast to the gray contours of her bones and flesh. The contraband in her lower intestine was less brilliant, but quite obvious to an experienced eye: five cosh-shaped objects. According to our source, it was all 100 percent pure heroin. In Amsterdam or Maastricht she would have cut it to five times its present volume and sold it for sixty dollars a gram.

She freaked. Her life about to come to an abrupt end at age twenty-seven, a scream started from the bottom of her lungs and emerged from her mouth without any act of will on her part. The Immigration officer slapped her face very hard, which put a stop to the scream. Now she started feeling in her pockets for her cell phone and fished it out with shaking hands.

“No,” the officer said, and grabbed it.

“Oh please, oh please, look, this is all the money I have, I’ll give it to you if you let me make just one call. Please? I’m begging you.”

The officer stared at her for a moment, then at the open money belt, then at the other officers. “Put your money away. I don’t care if you make one call, but don’t try to delete anything. If you do, you’ll regret it, big time.”

Rosie made the call. Apparently for weapons she had nothing but an extensive stock of Australian expletives.

“You slime bucket, you dag, you fuckwit, you fucked-up piece of dog shit, you motherfucker, d’you know what I’m going to do to you? I’m going to dob you in it so fucking deep you’ll swing for this, you asshole, I’m not going down alone, you lump of green vomit, you string of colon plaque, I’m taking you with me, you said this was safe, this was the A-stream, no one working this one ever got caught in the last twenty years, they had customs under control, you stupid, fucked-up, lying asshole. YOU’RE GOING DOWN, YOU’RE GETTING THE INJECTION, NUMB NUTS.”

Exhausted, she closed the phone and burst into tears. Calming her down the best they could, the officers led her to a female toilet, where she was given the choice of extracting the condom in her vagina herself or leaving the job to one of the officers.

They told me afterward that Rosie claimed she could manage it, but terror and despair had caused her vulva to shrivel like a walnut and her hands to shake violently. When they sat her on a chair with a rubber sheet, she urinated involuntarily. In the end one of the officers donned a pair of plastic gloves and, using K-Y Jelly to ensure the condom didn’t break and spill its contents into her body, pulled it out with the gentleness, kindness, and compassion a Buddhist woman ought to show a fellow female. After that it was simply a matter of accompanying Rosie to a nearby hospital, where nurses experienced in these things would administer a laxative: with that much poison in her gut the officers were not taking any chances. In the meantime, I checked Rosie’s cell phone in order to find the last number she dialed.

Which turned out to be the cell phone number of one Mark Whiteman, an Englishman who I happened to know was a minor player in a large and successful trafficking ring run by none other than General Zinna of the Royal Thai Army. I had the information I had come for. I fished out my own mobile to call Vikorn.

“The source is straight,” I said. “His information is good. Zinna is hurt.”

“Get a ticket to Kathmandu while you’re there.”

“I’m traveling first-class. I’m consigliere.”

“Go business. First-class attracts attention.”

“I’ll get the first flight tomorrow, there aren’t any tonight.”

When I closed the phone I strolled over to one of the airport