Killer Thriller (Ian Ludlow Thrillers Book 2)

by Lee Goldberg

  Chen didn’t like being memorable. He gestured to the briefcase. “Don’t blow that all at once.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  Batu drove quickly away from the half-completed building, glancing repeatedly into the rearview mirror as if he expected Tarek to come after them.

  “I told you I’d come through for you,” Batu said.

  “You did.”

  “You didn’t trust me.”

  “I don’t trust anyone,” Chen said.

  “When do I get my cut?”

  “Soon.”

  The word was barely out of Chen’s mouth when the building behind them exploded, rocking the roadway and startling Batu, who swerved wildly in surprise. He would have steered them right into the sea if Chen hadn’t grabbed the wheel.

  Batu came to a hard stop and looked over his shoulder just as a massive fireball rose up into the night sky and the building collapsed.

  “What happened?” Batu asked.

  It was a much bigger explosion than it should have been. That’s because when Chen rigged the briefcase with a modest explosive, he hadn’t anticipated that there would be two crates of rotting missiles in Tarek’s van. If he’d known, Chen could have used a firecracker instead and achieved pretty much the same result.

  “Tarek must have opened the briefcase for one more look at the cash before he drove off,” Chen said. “I told him not to blow it all at once.”

  “You put a bomb in the briefcase?” Batu turned and stared at Chen in disbelief. “Why would you burn thirty thousand dollars?”

  “It was toilet paper, counterfeit cash from North Korea,” Chen said. “It’s their most popular global export.”

  Batu narrowed his eyes at Chen. “My cut had better be real.”

  “It is.” Chen stabbed him in the liver, severing his hepatic artery, and twisted the blade, holding it in place. “Feel it?”

  Batu was in too much pain to speak. Chen reached across Batu with his free hand, opened the door, and pushed him out onto the roadway, removing the knife from his body as he fell and leaving him on the crumbling asphalt to bleed out.

  Chen tossed the knife on the street, slid into the driver’s seat, and closed the door. He put the van into gear and leisurely drove up the coast, passing several speeding fire trucks and police cars going in the opposite direction. He passed the waterfront plaza where a statue of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, Turkey’s first president, stood pointing his finger up at the sky, presumably at a future of freedom and liberty, but Chen thought it was more likely at the seagulls who’d been crapping on him for years. A short distance past the plaza, Chen made a left turn toward the man-made harbor, where dozens of fishing boats, a few small sailboats, and a handful of yachts were tied up along the breakwater that served as the dock.

  The breakwater also doubled as a road and parking lot where the boats could load or off-load their cargo. Chen parked his van in front of a sleek eighty-foot designer yacht with a cantilevered flybridge over the aft deck and wraparound windows along the pointed, forward-leaning bow that made it look more like a starship than a boat. He got out and was greeted by a sea-tanned middle-aged Italian couple who sat at a teak table on the rear deck, enjoying cocktails, a white-uniformed crew member standing nearby, ready to attend to their needs. The couple appeared to be wealthy, retired tourists but they were actually Corsican smugglers that Chen had met through his triad contacts.

  “Did you see the fireworks?” Lucio asked, nodding toward the south. He was dressed in a white shirt, a blue blazer with an elaborate nautical insignia of some sort on the breast pocket, and a captain’s hat with an embroidered golden anchor on the front. It was a yachting outfit that bordered on cartoonish.

  “No,” Chen said. “Is tonight a special occasion?”

  “Only if funerals count,” Fina said, tapping one of her glossy-red talonlike nails on the rim of her Stefano Ricci stone bur–engraved crystal champagne flute. Her body was also engraved, her breasts and physique surgically sculpted to resemble someone twenty-five years younger. She was also dressed in a nautical theme in a white turtleneck, navy-blue peacoat, and white capri pants. “It was an explosion. Someone almost always dies when there’s one.”

  “At least in our experience,” Lucio said.

  Chen knew Lucio and Fina had plenty of experience with violence. They’d planted their share of car bombs and had been known to dismember rivals with an antique two-handed blubber-mincing knife used in whaling.

  “I have your crates of raki,” Chen said.

  “We’ll bring them on board.” Lucio snapped his fingers at the nearby crew member, who disappeared into the cabin.

  “And we’ll try not to drink it all before we get to Marseille.” Fina winked so hard she nearly broke an eyelid.

  “I’ll see you there in five days,” Chen said.

  Six crew members got off the yacht, went to the back of Chen’s van, unloaded the crates, and carried them on board. He watched them while they worked.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to come with us?” Lucio asked. “It’s a wonderful trip.”

  “I wish I could, but I have more business to do.” Chen reached into his coat, pulled out an envelope stuffed with euros, and tossed it to Lucio, who caught it and slipped it into his jacket. This time the cash was real. Lucio was a professional who wouldn’t be fooled by North Korean counterfeits, certainly not with five days to examine the bills. “You’ll get the second half on delivery.”

  “Of course,” Lucio said. “I hope the rest of your business goes well.”

  Fina pointed one of her talons to Chen’s right. “Coca-Cola is great for getting blood out of linen.”

  He’d used his right hand to stab Batu. Chen glanced down and saw a tiny fleck of blood on his right sleeve. Fina had owl eyes to go with her talons.

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” Chen said. “Have a safe trip.”

  Chen got into his van and drove off, heading north to a secluded, dark stretch of waterfront roadway. There were no other cars around and no homes or buildings nearby. He lowered his window, floored the gas pedal going into a curve, and headed for the railing. The van burst through the barrier, went airborne, then landed in the ocean. He’d achieved exactly the loft and distance he’d hoped for.

  He calmly unbuckled his seat belt, removed his coat and shirt, and kicked off his shoes, while freezing water poured into the van. The cold, rising water didn’t bother him—he found it invigorating after all the boring business of the evening—but the total darkness unnerved him. The blackness was all-consuming, an icy, physical force. It was as close to death as he could get without actually being dead. He took a deep breath from the tiny air pocket that remained and, once the van was completely submerged, he opened the driver’s side door, then swam up to the surface and onward to the shore.

  Chen emerged from the water in a tiny inlet and strode to a gravel lot, where he’d parked an old car earlier that day. He found the key he’d hidden under a rock and unlocked the car’s trunk, where he’d stowed a carry-on suitcase that contained a towel, clean clothes, a passport, a wallet, and a burner phone. He stripped and dried off, got dressed, and drove to the Hatay Airport to catch his flight to Paris.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Boeing 777-300, somewhere over the Pacific. July 1.

  Ian reclined in his first-class seat, crossed his outstretched legs on the leather ottoman, ate another artisan cracker slathered with Venetian caviar, and washed it down with a sip of Krug Grande Cuvée. This little cubicle, with its teakwood accents, fresh orchids, fifteen-inch TV, and wardrobe closet instead of an overhead bin, was far more elegant than his Oakwood apartment, which he’d been sharing for the last week with Margo French.

  He’d been worried about having her as a houseguest and getting pulled into her troubled life. But that didn’t really happen. Instead, she’d thrown herself into putting together his Hong Kong research itinerary. And, to his surprise, he liked having her around. He didn’t realize how lonely he was until
she showed up on his doorstep.

  So now, comfy in his airline-provided cotton pajamas and slippers, he felt a little guilty about being in first class for the sixteen-hour flight while she was stuck in premium economy. It wasn’t by choice. The movie studio had paid for his ticket long before she showed up on his doorstep. He’d bought Margo’s ticket out of his own pocket and he certainly wasn’t going to spend $10,000 on a first-class seat or half that for business class. The prices were insane. He got her the seat he would have bought for himself if he’d been paying for his flight.

  But he still felt like he owed her something to make up for the glaring difference in their travel experience. So when the ravishingly beautiful Chinese flight attendant came by to transform his seat and ottoman into a seven-foot-long bed, Ian took the remaining caviar, his bread basket, and a glass of champagne back to Margo in the premium economy section.

  He found Margo in the second seat of a four-seat row, a woman breastfeeding a baby to her right and on her left a snoring, overweight man spilled over the confines of his armrests into her space. The seat in front of Margo was reclined so far back that the passenger’s head was practically in her lap. But Margo was oblivious to it all. Her eyes were covered with a sleeping mask, her ears were stuffed with neon-yellow earplugs, and he was pleased to see that she was asleep.

  Ian remembered her first night at his apartment, when she woke up screaming with night terrors. He ran out of his bedroom and held her on the couch until she stopped shaking, her face nuzzled against his neck.

  “If I was writing this,” he said, stroking her hair, “this is where we’d make love to soothe your fears.”

  Margo sniffled. “I’m a lesbian with a nose full of snot.”

  “If I was writing this, that wouldn’t make a difference.”

  “Are you so horny that you’d make a move on a lesbian suffering a severe emotional and psychological meltdown?”

  “Well, when you put it like that, it sounds sleazy,” he said. “If I was writing this, I’d say our incendiary passion burned away the barriers between us until all that was left was a shared need that was primal and true.”

  “Yuck,” she said.

  He’d kept holding her until she fell asleep and then he slipped back to his bedroom. Now it occurred to him that maybe all she’d needed to sleep was a lot of noise and discomfort to distract her from her inner turmoil.

  Ian reached across the overweight man and opened the table on the seatback in front of her. He set the caviar, bread basket, and glass of champagne on the table and then he went back to his first-class cabin. He hoped that the stewardess would be waiting naked in his bed for something primal and true.

  If he were writing this, she would be.

  The Chinese liked to expand their islands, or create entirely new ones, by shearing off the tops of mountains and dumping the soil into the sea. That’s how they joined Chek Lap Kok and Lam Chau, two small islands twenty miles outside of Hong Kong, into one and then built a vast international airport on the new, flat land in between them.

  The Boeing 777-300 banked over the sheared hilltops of the two islands and landed at the airport in the early evening. Ian watched the landing from his window and also on his TV screen, which showed him the views from the forward-facing cameras mounted on the nose and high tail of the aircraft.

  Since Ian was in first class, he was also first off the plane when it landed. He could have sailed through the VIP lane at Chinese customs and been halfway to Hong Kong while Margo was still waiting in line to get her passport stamped.

  Instead, he graciously waited for her in the terminal right outside of the jet bridge. She shuffled out with dark circles under her eyes, messy hair, wrinkled clothes, and sticky skin. Unlike Ian, she hadn’t been given pajamas.

  “You look rested,” Ian said.

  “You mean dead,” she said. “Thank you for bringing me the champagne, caviar, and bread. It was a nice surprise to wake up to.”

  “You’re welcome,” he said and led her down the long hallway to customs. It was always a long hallway, he thought, no matter where in the world he went.

  “Did giving me your table scraps relieve any of the crushing guilt you felt for sticking me in the cattle car with a canvas blanket,” she said, “while you relaxed in a bed with fifteen-hundred-thread-count embroidered Egyptian sheets?”

  “They were only five hundred threads and I told you before, I had no choice. The studio was required to buy me a first-class ticket. It’s Writers Guild of America rules. It was a nonrefundable ticket or I would have cashed it in for two business-class seats. My hands were tied.”

  “With velvet handcuffs,” she said. “You could have bought me a first-class ticket.”

  “You’re lucky I bought you a ticket at all. You’re getting a free trip to Hong Kong,” Ian said. “Besides, what are you complaining about? You slept well for the first time in months.”

  “I have one word for you,” Margo said. “Ambien.”

  “Why didn’t you take that before to stop your night terrors?” Ian said. “You could have slept through them and stopped your life in Seattle from imploding.”

  “Because I didn’t think that becoming addicted to sleeping pills was a practical solution to my problem.”

  “How do you know until you try?”

  “Asshole,” she said.

  Ian smiled to himself. Giving her a hard time was fun. He brought her with him through the VIP line at Chinese customs without a problem and his suitcases, and her backpack, were waiting for them on the luggage carousel when they got past the checkpoint.

  They put their things on a luggage cart and wheeled it out into the terminal, where they were greeted at the door by a young Chinese woman holding up an iPad with Ian’s name on the screen.

  The woman wore a black pantsuit with a white blouse, her incredibly red, glossy lips standing out like candy apples. She was nearly bursting with pent-up enthusiasm as they approached. If she’d been a puppy, her tail would have been wagging furiously and she’d have jumped all over them, covering them with licks. Ian was afraid she still might do it.

  “Welcome to Hong Kong, Mr. Ludlow. I’m Susie Yip,” she said excitedly, holding out her hand and bouncing on her feet. “It is such a pleasure to meet you.”

  Susie spoke with a perfect, proper British accent and Ian was instantly infatuated with her.

  He shook her hand. “Call me Ian and the pleasure is all mine.”

  Margo groaned with annoyance and offered Susie her hand, too. “I’m Margo French, Ian’s researcher and conscience. He apologizes for leering.”

  The remark seemed to fly over Susie’s head or she didn’t hear it as she took their cart and led them to the terminal exit. “I’m a publicist with your UK and Australian publisher. We also publish your book in Hong Kong. I’ll be coordinating your photo shoot and seeing to all of your needs.”

  “I’m very needy,” Ian said.

  Margo swatted Ian’s arm. “Stop it.”

  They stepped outside. It was like walking into a heavy towel soaked in boiling water. Ian broke out in an instant sweat but was distracted from his discomfort when he saw the green Rolls-Royce limousine parked at the curb in front of them and the uniformed, white-gloved driver who stood beside it. He wouldn’t be sweating for long.

  “Impressive,” Ian said, admiring the car as he approached it.

  “The Peninsula Hotel has a fleet of fourteen Rolls-Royce Phantoms,” Susie said. “All of them in their trademark Brewster Green.”

  “They know how to treat their guests.” Ian decided he could get used to being on a studio expense account. He’d never been in a Rolls-Royce before and, after this ride, it would probably make his C-Class Mercedes feel like a Ford Fiesta every time he got inside. But it was a risk he was willing to take. He stepped up to the back door of the Rolls and glanced at the chauffeur to open it for him.

  That’s when Ian saw Susie holding open the back door of a red-and-white Toyota taxi that was
idling at the curb in front of the Rolls. That was their ride.

  Ian flushed with embarrassment, but he was confident it would be mistaken for a reaction to the oppressively humid heat. He peeked in the window of the Rolls and smiled at the chauffeur.

  “A fine automobile,” Ian said. “I always like to take a moment to admire exceptional craftsmanship when I see it.”

  He nodded approvingly once more at the Rolls, then walked over to Margo, who said, “Someone got spoiled on the flight.”

  “I was examining the car for research purposes. I knew we weren’t staying at the Peninsula.”

  “Of course you did,” Margo said.

  They got into the taxi with Susie, who sat up front for the forty-five-minute ride on the freeway and over several bridges into Kowloon, where the movie studio and their hotel were located.

  “Damon Matthews and the director, P. J. Tyler, got here a couple of days ago,” Susie said. “But the second-unit crew has actually been in Kowloon for the last two weeks shooting portions of the big chase sequence with stunt drivers.”

  “So now that the actors are here,” Ian said, “the director will shoot pieces of the chase with the stars to cut into the second-unit footage.”

  “That’s scheduled for later this week,” she said. “Hair and makeup tests, costume fittings, and the table read of the script with the cast are tomorrow. Principal photography begins the following day at the Big Wheel.”

  “The Big Wheel?” Ian asked.

  Margo spoke up. “That’s the Ferris wheel on the Hong Kong waterfront overlooking Victoria Harbor and Kowloon. It’s on my list of sites to see for your research.”

  “It’s a great location for the movie,” Susie said. “That’s also where we’ll be doing your photo shoot with Damon.”

  “Will they give Damon a box to stand on,” Margo asked, “or will Ian have to crouch?”

  Susie looked over her shoulder and smiled at Margo. “You’re a troublemaker. I’m going to have to keep an eye on you.”