Eventually, news stories began to proliferate in international newspapers about the “Wild Wild East” and its debaucherous nightlife. Troubled by the bad press, the Chinese government decided to crack down. In short order, nearly all the triad leaders either were arrested or fled the country, and the street-level corruption was replaced by multinational conglomerates, many of them American, that built casinos on a scale the world had never seen.

But some of the black societies that had initially fostered the culture of vice in Macau still operated on the city’s fringes, maintaining a foothold in prostitution and smuggling rackets. And Cobus planned to make them an offer they couldn’t refuse.

The ferry glided up to the dock, and Cobus stepped into the bright white glare of the Outer Harbor Ferry Terminal. He made his way to the pillar near the tourist information kiosk, where he had been told to wait for a liaison known simply as “Broken Tooth.” Cobus thumbed through a Lonely Planet guide to blend in as well as he could, hoping to look like just another asshole Westerner as he periodically glanced up to look around. Ten minutes later, his connection came wending his way through the bustling terminal.

The man’s face was a chronicle of street fights far worse than the one that got him his nom de guerre. Cobus noted that the triad foot soldier’s long hair and wispy beard gave him the look of a pirate.

Though Broken Tooth didn’t speak English, Cobus could draw some inferences about the type of man he was dealing with. And he could tell that Broken Tooth wasn’t the type of guy who would have asked any questions even if he spoke Cobus’s language. He was a man who followed orders and whose blind loyalty to his boss had rewarded him with influence and cash. He probably had no idea Cobus was put in touch with his boss through the triads’ contact in Maputo, or that Cobus had strong-armed his boss into a meeting by brazenly threatening to cut off their rhino horn supply if the boss declined.

Cobus watched Broken Tooth silently fidget with his cigarette as the triad escorted him across town in a new Mercedes C-Class. Surveying the city, Cobus was struck by the strange inversion that had taken place in Macau. The colonial section, once the center, was now just a quaint vestigial appendage dangling from a megalopolis of casino complexes and modern commercial districts. And hidden away just behind the glowing palaces were block after block of bleak tenements that had been vomited up to house the labor force required to indulge the vices of the international elite.

Broken Tooth pulled to a stop in the red-light district, which brimmed with Macau’s notorious “saunas”—thinly veiled brothels where skinny teenage girls lingered in their shrink-wrapped cocktail dresses and ice pick heels. Cobus was surprised that the women lounging in the doorways made no effort to engage him, but then again, there was enough new money in China to fill their evening without their having to solicit foreigners whose language and culture they couldn’t understand.