Upon crossing San’nah Street, though, he found his way blocked by a huge black limousine.
As he approached, the limo’s rear door opened. A large man inside was beckoning to Conley.
“Hello, friend of my friends,” the man called out to him.
He was wearing a thick wool suit and had hands the size of baked hams. His skin was pasty white, his teeth were gold and yellow, and his nose appeared to have been broken so many times, the cartilage didn’t know which way to go next. Judging by the bulge under the man’s suit coat pocket, he was packing a firearm the size of a small cannon.
Conley knew who he was right away.
“Comrade Bebe, I presume?” he asked.
“And you are ex-Big Apple cop?” the man replied. “Good to meet you.”
Bebe was the Russian gangster who’d hired Whiskey to provide security for a cruise ship full of Russian mobsters during a trip through the Aegean Sea not two months before. As unlikely as it seemed, the gangster took a liking to the team and had provided them with crucial information about how to finally track down and kill Zeek the Pirate.
Conley had heard so much about Bebe from the team members that he would have known him anywhere.
But what was he doing here, in Aden? In a limo that barely fit through the narrow streets? And in that suit? It was almost 95 degrees and it wasn’t even noon.
“Ride with me,” he said to Conley. “I’m just needing a few minutes.”
Armed only with his hot dogs and soda, Conley climbed into the limo and it sped off. Bebe took his lunch bag from him, looked inside, and then passed him an envelope full of photos.
“Do you know this man?” Bebe asked him.
Conley studied the photos. They showed a slight, well-dressed Asian man going in and out of various buildings, walking along the street, sitting in a park. All of the photos were candids, as if the man had been under surveillance, and the locations ranged from slums to typical Chinese streets to a building that looked nothing short of Shangri-la.
The photos were blurry in spots, but that didn’t matter. Conley knew who the man was: Sunny Hi.
He was one of the most dangerous criminals in the world, yet virtually unknown outside Asia. Boss of the Shanghai crime syndicate, Sunny Hi commanded an underworld organization so vast, its tentacles had a stranglehold not only on all of China, but on every other country along the Pacific Rim as well. Drugs, money laundering, prostitution, arms sales, murder for hire—Sunny Hi was so powerful, the ruling elite in Beijing reportedly kissed his ring whenever he requested a private meeting with them.
At his core, Sunny Hi was a pirate. His gang started out hijacking ships in the South China Sea, killing their crews, unloading the stolen cargo on the black market and then selling the commandeered ships themselves. Weapons and heroin dealing followed, as did white slavery and contract hits, and finally, a thriving business in child prostitution. His personal fortune was said to be more than $70 billion. His immediate gang numbered in the thousands; his activities affected, directly or indirectly, millions of people around the world.
But he was famously known never to have had his photo taken, or even be seen in public, which was why Conley was surprised to see so many images of him now.
“He is usually like a bug who crawls out only at night and in places where you cannot see him,” Bebe explained. “But more of late, he shows himself in the daytime. He even walks streets with his wife sometimes. He is trying to make it look like he’s leaving the criminal world behind because something grave has happened in his life. But it’s all show when it comes to his business. Inside dope says he’s as evil as ever.”
Bebe singled out a photo that showed Sunny Hi looking down into the cargo hold of a ship that was literally full of young females, several hundred at least, presumably being shipped out for prostitution around the Asian continent. They looked like cattle, and judging from the demeanor of some of the heavily armed guards also caught by the interloping camera, anyone who resisted was most likely beaten or killed, just to make an example.
“Sunny Hi has been scum of Earth,” Bebe concluded. “And when you hear that coming from man like me, you know I’m serious. I mean—criminal or not, we all have to make living,