Kai Tak Airport,

International Departures,

Hong Kong,
Feb 1983

 

    It was a routine departure for Seoul on flight CX410 from Hong Kong. One he had made often in the past six months. This time the walk-through metal detector went off triggering an unexpected alarm.

 

     The young Western traveller dressed in a spiffy business suit carrying a brown leather attache case was caught completely off guard.

 

“What the fuck?”  he thought to himself.

 

     This was a first and it wasn’t supposed to happen, ever. It certainly had never happened before. So why now? The walk-through metal detector was only supposed to detect ferris metals.

Without speaking a word the stern uniformed Hong Kong airport official gestured his palm upward for me to stop. Next, out came a set of wooden steps and a handheld metal detector wand.

 

The kind used to identify precious metals!

 

     In mere moments my situation had spiraled out of control and was quickly becoming grave. After walking up the three steps to the top tread of the staircase my heart was knocking against the inside of my rib cage. My mouth had gone bone dry leaving my lips stuck together. The scanning wand was inserted directly under my feet, below the top tread, setting off a squeal of damning electronic noise. It was a terrifying sound that left me reeling and feeling utterly violated in the bustling morning terminal. After stepping down the Hong Kong official then instructed me to remove my shoes for further inspection.

 

“No” was my instinctive, reflexive answer. It seemed like the right thing to say.

“You can remove your shoes here or do it in a private office but you will be taking them

off” insisted the official.

 

     In the quiet privacy of a small inspection office my feet slipped out of a pair of over sized black leather Brogue shoes revealing a 3 and 3⁄4 kilo load of four-9 (.9999) fine gold in 20 five-tael biscuits. 99.99% pure. Next the expressionless official requested my boarding pass and passport and silently recorded its information on a form.

 

This felt bad, really fucking bad.

 

Four Years Earlier

Kingston, Ontario, Canada

1979

 

     An improbable career in international Far Eastern gold smuggling had its beginnings in a 1979 radio show and concluded with a pair of phone calls in 1983. What happened in-between was a matter of chance, choice and twists of real life fate. This is my story...

 

     In late 1979 a longhaired, twenty-two year old, 4th year undergrad works his way toward an Honors B.A. in History and Film Studies at Queens University. He types a history paper in the upstairs bedroom of a red brick, two-story house in a student neighborhood just off campus. Settled in for a long night of work he looks forward to his new favorite radio program while preparing to burn the midnight oil. With the stereo tuner already dialed to WCFL-1000AM in Chicago, the live coast-to- coast broadcast of the national nightly Larry King radio show is about to begin at midnight sharp.

 

     Originally from the womb of Chapleau, my home was a tiny, remote insular C.P.R. company town in a far-flung backwater of Northern Ontario. In this middle of nowhere whistle-stop of a town my adolescent coming of age years were spent in the energetic late 1960’s and decadent mid Seventies. My initial embrace of hippie culture and its radical ideals soon gave way to the simple pleasures of hedonism and indulgence.

 

     In Chapleau there were a grand total of two choices facing each and every high school graduate. Work on the Canadian Pacific Railroad like your father and his father and most other townspeople, or leave home for some sort of post secondary education. It was either or. No one from Chapleau could avoid this fork in the road for very long. Having witnessed more than my share of teen aged pregnancies and “bun-in-oven” marriages there was never an iota of doubt about my own personal choice. I was getting the hell out of my one-horse, bush-league hometown and it would be through the education route.

 

    

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