Prisoner of the Poppy

About the Book

Traveling with a Thai Public Health Medical Team, in Northern Thailand, "Chinese" Gorden Smith, CIA Chief of Station Bangkok, is ambushed and left for dead. In the intelligence community, Gorden is considered a maverick, unconventional in his methods and out of control by Edmont Canyon, Second Secretary to the United States Embassy to Thailand. A political appointee, Edmont realizes his career hangs by a thread leading all the way back to the Oval Office in Washington D.C.

He craves power. His appointment was based on his ability to influence the Royal Family of Thailand to surrender their control of the “drug war” against Asian White heroin, entering the  

United States in epidemic proportions. Gorden wants to fight the drug smugglers on the three borders of Burma, Laos, and Thailand, making up the infamous Golden Triangle. It is here, Chinese War Lord, Huan grows, harvests and transports the poppy where it is processed into - Asian White heroin.

It is also here, Gorden realizes, too many mules laden with the poppy are leaking through, too many operations are coming up short, too many people are becoming rich. Determined to learn as to the why, finds him in Northern Thailand, on the frontier, ambushed and face down in the dirt.

Badly injured, Gorden is returned to the Station to recover in the company of Naomi. A young and beautiful woman, inserted into Burma, to infiltrate the networks of General Huan. Discovered, she was tortured, deliberately disfigured and returned to Gorden with her tongue cut out. They should have just killed her.

After a desperate year long struggle, Naomi still suffers from a near madness raging in her, lurking in the depths of her mind. It is this madness many fear will break loose. Gorden has no such fears and had her assigned as his bodyguard. Naomi will protect him even if it means to sacrifice her own life. Now it is a seriously injured Gorden who must depend on Naomi for recovery.

Secretary Canyon has arrived at the Station to introduce Doctor Seek, the official Head of a United States Aid for Internal Development agricultural operation on the Thai/Burma frontier. Doctor Seek reports during a weed eradication program, a Thai farming village was accidently over sprayed by Agent Orange, a deadly chemical used as a jungle defoliant. Nearly two hundred villagers have been poisoned. The village and the surrounding area is shrouded in secrecy until a special senior envoy from the State Department can arrive to investigate.

Secretary Canyon also reports as this over spray was occurring Doctor Seek's daughter Gail and two of her college classmates; Joi, a Chinese American journalist major and Paul Despair, a photo-journalist exchange student from France, were in the same area, ostentatiously to photograph Buddhist art in the region. To assure his daughter would not encounter any difficulty with the local authorities, Doctor Seek had given Gail, a USAID identification badge to assure freedom to move around the

closed border frontier.

Edmont now reports Gail and her two companions have disappeared. It is further reported the trio had planned to cross from Thailand into Burma for the purposes of obtaining a first person expose on General Huan, the elusive and legendary warlord smuggler of Asian White heroin from the Golden Triangle!

Edmont asks Gorden to use his Station assets to find Gail before the news of the poisoning leaks out. His greatest fear is the prominent and highly influential Buddhist priest, Shau be 'Tok, may get his hands on the trio and hold a public trial exposing the disaster and link them to opium smuggling.

Half Chinese, half Burmese, Shau is considered a terrorist by the Burmese, a renegade by the Thai's and a hero by the farmers of both countries. In a public trial he can accuse the governments of Thailand and the United States of poisoning the farmers and sanctioning the processing and selling of the opium poppy. This in State Department language,

About the Author

Born in 1936, Fred Perry owes all his technical and academic training, education and travel, to the United States Department of Defense. An Air Traffic Controller, Nuclear Safety Engineer, and intelligence officer serving combat tours in Southeast Asia and supporting units in the Middle East, provide him the background for his novels of intrigue, adventure and romance. His first two novels, The Three Headed Elephant (1968) and To Tame The Tiger (1969) have set him firmly as a credible writer of spy and intrigue novels. His third and latest work, Prisoner of The Poppy, returns CIA, Chief of Station, Bangkok, “Chinese” Gorden Smith to the reader as he battles the Burmese opium smugglers of Asian White heroin. Fred is also the author of soon to be released, The New War Lords, Ancient Lord, Rhallamane, The Woman From Rhallamane and Fall of The House Id’Jill.