by Blake Banner
Unnoticed by anyone, that is, except the private eye that the brigadier had had sitting on the site for the past week. He followed the Mercedes at a discreet distance all the way to the airport. There he noted that Mary Jones, aka Rachida Ait, checked in on a flight to London, and he stayed with her until she went through security to make sure she didn’t change her flight at the last minute. The guy was a pro.
He kept the brigadier appraised of developments as they happened, and the brigadier contacted Detective Amin ben Abdullah to have him check the passengers on the plane and find out their final destinations. Amin wasn’t there, so he spoke to his partner, Mustafa ibn Suleimani, who called back half an hour later saying that Rachida had boarded the flight with a United States passport in the name of Carol Santos of New York, destined for London and then Phnom Penh, in Cambodia.
When she arrived, an operative in Phnom Penh was there to see her emerge from arrivals. He saw her pick up a hire car and followed her across the border to Thailand at Krong Paoy Paet, and from there on to Bangkok, where she drove to an apartment on Ton Son Alley. By this time, two and a half days had passed since the bombs had been detonated and she had fled Casablanca, and, on calling Detective Amin again to see if there was any information of interest to us, the brigadier was informed that both Detective Amin ben Abdullah and Mustafa ibn Suleimani had been gunned down in a drive-by shooting. They were both dead. The gunmen in the car had both been pursued and killed by the police. They were both Chinese and nobody had the vaguest idea why they had killed the detectives.
Nobody, that was, in the Prefecture of Police. To us it was, as the brigadier had put it, a case of res ipsa loquitor: The thing spoke for itself. Rachida had fled and was trying up her loose ends.
By that time my new papers had arrived. For my journey there, and at the hotel, I was Clive Anders, a property speculator from Texas. For the journey back I was William Fitzgerald. My leg and chest wounds were on their way to recovery, but I was still far from being anything you could describe as fighting fit.
After extensive and at times intense discussion the brigadier and the colonel had reached an agreement. The overriding imperative was to eliminate Mary Jones, the true Heilong Li. So the plan, such as it was, had been slimmed down and was now simplicity itself: Go to Bangkok, contact a friendly weapons dealer on Burapha Road, in Bangkok, kill Mary Jones, return to New York.
The members of the European Union’s External Action Service, O’Hanlon, Hans Grinder, Ruud van Dreiver and Michelle des Jardins, and the American negotiators, Gutermann, Goldbloom and Browne, were all still under review. They might, or might not, become targets at a later date.
So finally, as the summer approached its end, the brigadier drove me to Malaga International Airport and put me aboard a flight for Bangkok, with the simple instructions: eliminate Heilong Li and come home.
The journey was long and, with my various injuries, exhausting. By the time we finally touched down at Suvarnabhumi Airport, early in the morning on the last Monday in August, my ankle, thigh, chest and head were all in bitter competition to see which one could cause me the most pain.
I hobbled through baggage reclaim, reclaimed my baggage, and did some more hobbling through into arrivals where I hailed the driver who was there to meet me. He smiled a lot and did a lot of bowing, but when I asked him if he spoke English he just smiled more broadly and made ambiguous noises of amusement.
He took my trolley and led the way through the seething crowds toward the exit, where he had his Toyota SUV parked with his hazards flashing. He slung my cases in the trunk and we drove at terrifying speed along the freeway, weaving in and out of traffic from lane to lane until we came to the center of town. Here we slowed, but not much, and moved, hooting and honking, among cars and motorized rickshaws, in a city that looked like it was built in the twenty-fifth century to be inhabited by people from the fifth century.
We dodged and weaved, accelerated and braked, along Ratchaprarop Road and finally turned left into Rama I. There we slid into the drive of the Intercontinental and my smiling, nodding driver carried my bags as far as reception, where I tipped him handsomely and he left, walking backwards, saluting and bowing.
Reception, like the rest of the hotel, was large, cavernous, shiny and amber, and looked very much like a set from Star Trek. There I checked in, was given a key and a bellboy and dropped my stuff in my room.
Once the bellboy had gone, I put on a hat and some heavy sunglasses, and stepped out into the tropical heat for a walk in the late August morning.
I walked east for half a mile along Rama I through the swarming Bangkok crowds as far as Ton Son Alley, where Mary Jones apparently had her apartment. There I pulled out my cell and strolled for a couple of hundred yards staring at the screen and taking in everything else through my peripheral vision.
It was a quiet, leafy street with tasteful apartment blocks set back from the road behind gardens and security gates. The roadside parking was not restricted and I counted six cars parked at various random points along the road.
The alley was long, over half a mile from north to south, but I only followed it as far as Lang Suan Alleys One, Two, Three, Four and Five and then returned. I saw no sign of Mary Jones and made my way back to the Intercontinental.
There I booked a small, green Toyota Sienna with tinted windows, told the receptionist I would collect it later that afternoon, and went to my room to sleep for four hours.
At two thirty I rose, showered and dressed, and came down for a martini and a hamburger in the bar. I then had the valet bring my nauseating small car round, managed somehow to cram myself behind the wheel and headed off on a roundabout route, dodging rickshaws and a swarming population that spilled dangerously from the sidewalks, back to Ton Son Alley. There I found a shaded spot under what looked like a huge, shaggy pine tree, fifty paces from Mary Jones’s apartment block, and parked.
It was a long, slow wait. She didn’t show till gone six PM, when a BMW X5 rolled up and parked just outside her security gate. Nobody got out and a couple of minutes later she emerged from the building at a quick walk. I almost didn’t recognize her. She was not the same woman I had met in Casablanca. She even looked a little shorter. That was probably because instead of three-inch heels she was wearing old-fashioned blue canvas sneakers.
The sneakers were not the only thing that had changed about her appearance. She was dressed in straight-cut jeans, a sweatshirt and a leather bomber jacket. Her abundant hair was pulled back behind her neck, and she had on a baseball cap and a pair of Wayfarer sunglasses. If I had not been waiting for her, expecting her, I would probably not have recognized her.
She climbed in the back of the X5 and the car took off at a brisk pace, not fast enough to be reckless, but definitely at a speed that did not want to hang around.
I let them get a hundred yards ahead and then pulled out to follow. They turned onto Rama I and after winding north and west through a maze of streets, came out onto the A7, headed east out of the city.
At the Sri Nagarindra interchange they began to pick up speed toward Lat Krabang and it was hard for me to keep up with them. They hit a hundred and twenty moving south past Don Huaro and Bang Phra, Laem Chebang and Ban Chang, until we finally came to Rayong. By now dusk was turning to night and all about, warm headlamps and streetlights were coming on.
They turned off onto the 3392 toward the port. I followed, but slowed and kept my distance. Pretty soon we crossed over the railway lines and we were into a heavily industrialized area illuminated by tall, thin steel lamps that rained a dead, orange light onto a concrete wasteland that was occupied by factories, plants and warehouses. They turned left at a small roundabout and followed Pha Deng as far east as it would go, then turned right, down into the port.
They came finally to a factory opposite a strip of wasteland and turned in through large, red gates. The legend over the gates read simply, Consolidated Research and Development Inc.
I kept going, without slowin
g, turned left when I couldn’t go any further and eventually found my way back to the 3392 and, outside Huai Pong, I pulled into a gas station where there was a 7-Eleven and stepped into the café for a beer. I sat at a table in the corner by the window, sipped my drink and called the brigadier.
“Yes.”
“The apartment is occupied as expected. I picked her up and followed her to the port town of Rayong. She was being driven in a BMW X5.” I gave him the license plate and went on. “The factory is on the east side of the port, by the jetties, opposite some wasteland. It has red gates and it’s called Consolidated Research and Development Inc. She’s there now.”
“OK, good. I’ll see what we have and what we can gather from our friends. Have you a plan?”
“First I need to go and see your pal on Burapha Road and collect some hardware. Then, I haven’t made up my mind yet, but I’ll either take her out as she’s picked up or as she enters the factory.”
“Factory…”
He said it absently, like the word was new to him and he thought it was interesting. I picked up the tone and said, “Yeah. If you have any pull with the Regiment, sir, you need to send in four of the guys to clean this up. I don’t know yet what they’re doing, but if it needs a vaccine, it needs to be shut down.”
“I know, but the powers that be are reluctant to act. There is precious little intelligence to go on, and it would be very easy to make a serious mistake.”
“Mistake? Like what?”
“Like destroy the vaccine instead of that which it is intended to protect us from.”
I sighed. “Yeah, OK, I see that. Look, sir, let me see what I can gather. I am not going to hang around. I have a bad feeling. I think we are running out of time fast and we could be looking at a very ugly situation.”
“I agree. Will you go in tomorrow night?”
“I think so.”
“Good. Give Scotty a call now. I’ve told him to expect you. Go and see him tonight. He’s a good man. He’ll have whatever it is you need. Act tomorrow, but keep me in the loop. I’m as uncomfortable about this as you are.”
“Ten-four. I’ll call you tomorrow.”
I hung up, took another pull of beer and called the number the brigadier had given me. It rang twice and a Scottish voice that sounded like it had been marinated in nicotine and whisky for the last ten years growled at me.
“How do yiz have this fuckin’ number?”
“My fairy godmother gave it to me.”
That was the exchange they had agreed on.
“Who’s yer fuckin’ fairy godmother?”
“Mind your own fuckin’ business. Are we done?”
I heard a hoarse chuckle. “What can I do fer yiz, sir?”
“I need some hardware. It’s pretty urgent. I need it tonight.”
“Nay a problem, pal. Where are you?”
“Central Bangkok.”
“Come to the shop, then. You know where it is?”
“Thirty-Four, Burapha Road?”
“Tha’s the one, pal. When can you be here?”
“I’ll be there in a couple of hours. Anything I can bring with me?”
I already knew what he would say—Buddy had told me.
“Aye, a wee bottle of Scotch would no’ go amiss.”
“I have a bottle of The Macallan in my luggage. I’ll bring it along.”
I heard the rasping chuckle again. “Good man, I’ll see yiz in a while, then.”
Burapha Road is one of the main streets in the center of Bangkok. It runs from the south near the river to Siri Phong Alley, Romaneenart Park, the Wat Suthart Thepwararam Buddhist temple and City Hall. It is also the road where most of the gun shops in Bangkok are located. In a country with a gun culture that makes the States look like a nation of pacifists, that is no mean claim.
Scotty Gordon, a veteran of the Regiment and an old friend of the brigadier’s, had apparently felt an affinity with the Thai culture, had managed to get himself a resident’s permit and a license to open a gun shop on Burapha Road, and settled here. There were rumors that there were people in high places that owed him some pretty big favors. That may or may not have been true, but the only comment the brigadier would make on the subject was an abstracted smile.
People who didn’t know drew their own conclusions from the huge trade Scotty carried out selling guns on the black market without ever getting investigated. People who did know observed a judicious silence.
By the time I got there it was almost nine PM, and I rang the bell. He left the lights off, raised the electric, steel roller blind and pulled open the bulletproof, plate-glass door.
I stepped inside, the door closed behind me and I heard the roller blind rattle down. I wasn’t surprised then to feel the hard pressure of a gun barrel in the middle of my back.
“No offence, pal, but you’ll understand I haven’t the first fuckin’ idea who y’are. So, start talkin’. Who are you?”
The brigadier had warned me this would probably happen and advised me to play it straight. I smiled.
“I’m Harry Bauer, and the brigadier warned me you’d do this. Otherwise you’d have your own Sig stuck between your teeth right now and three 9mm rounds keeping company with your haggis dinner.”
There was a grunt that sounded vaguely amused. “The brigadier?”
“Yeah, Alex ‘Buddy’ Byrd. I met him in the Regiment and now I work with him sometimes.”
“You was in the Regiment?”
“You know damn well I was because the brigadier told you. All right, so tell me this then, on which forearm has he got ‘Who Dares Wins’ tattooed?”
“You need a better line in questions, Scotty. The guys in the Regiment don’t wear a regimental tattoo. We’re the invisible men in gray. Now, do you want this Macallan or do I take it home and drink it myself?”
“OK, through the curtain at the end and down the stairs.”
I pushed through a heavy drape and found myself on a small landing with a door in front of me and another on my right. On my left there was a flight of stairs going down to a steel door. I descended and as I approached it I heard it click.
“It’s open,” he said from behind me. “Just push.”
I pushed and went through. The light came on automatically and I found myself in a concrete room about twenty foot square. The walls were lined with cabinets beneath which were heavy wooden benches, and beneath these were stacks of wooden crates. Immediately on my left there was another door, also steel.
Scotty stepped in behind me and I heard the loud click of the lock. He patted me down and said, “OK, turn around and let’s have a look at ye.”
I turned and as well as a P226 in his right hand, he had his cell in his left. It flashed and he kept one eye on me and another on the screen.
“Don’t be offended. It’s not you. I do this t’anyone I don’t know. You just can’t be too careful. I’m running you through facial recognition, pal.” He had a long, thick moustache that went all the way down to his chin, like a giant “M.” After a moment he used it to grin. “Oh, aye, seems yer who you say y’are.” He stabbed at the screen a couple of times. “See, I’m eliminating your pic, look.”
He showed me his cell and deleted the photograph he’d taken. I raised an eyebrow at him. “Thanks.”
He laid his Sig on the bench and put his cell in his pocket, holding out his right hand to shake. “Scotty, I’m glad to meet you, Harry. I had another American pal in the Regiment. Walker. He spoke highly of you.”
“Captain Walker? Our paths crossed a couple of times. He wasn’t exactly subtle. He wasn’t happy unless he was blowing stuff up.”
He laughed as I set the bottle of The Macallan on the bench beside his gun. “We all just put that down to his being an American, pal, know what I mean? You Yanks are always blowin’ stuff up.”
“Yeah, right. Well, I have to tell you, all my skill in blowing things up I learnt from the Brits. You got some glasses?”
He chuckled and pro
duced a couple of shot glasses and two wooden stools.
“So what d’you need?”
I grinned. “Well, besides a Fairbairn and Sykes and a Sig Sauer P226 TacOps, I’m going to need a lot of either C4 or EPX 1.”
He screwed up his face and wheezed a smoky laugh. “See?” he said, “What’d I tell you? Yer always fuckin’ blowing things up!”
Chapter Nineteen
I would not normally share details of an operation with anyone outside the operational group. But Scott was a Regimental vet who understood how we operated, and the brigadier had already told me he had total confidence in him. I didn’t tell him who the target was, or why we were after her, and he didn’t ask; but I did tell him where and when and how many. I told him we’d had zero time to prepare and gather intel and that it was Code Red urgency. It had to be done now and it had to be a success.
“So, if I understand you, your options are four: one, hit her at home; two, hit the car before it goes in through the factory gates; three, hit the car once it’s inside as she is getting out; or four, forget the car and hit her once she is inside the building.”
I nodded and sipped my whisky, leaning with my elbow on the wooden bench.
“Correct. If we had more time to gather intelligence, her home or inside the factory would probably be the best options. But I have zero information about where she lives aside from which apartment block she is in. And as for the factory, the same applies. I know where the target gets picked up and where they get dropped off. She is vulnerable at both locations.”