“But we have some redeeming features?” Doris had asked coquettishly, placing his hand on the flatness of her tummy.
“Oh, yeah, the womenfolk are grand,” he’d replied sarcastically.
Back in the reality of Bob Chen’s office Jim focused again on the face of his visitor.
Madeleine was saying, “It is not my business what happened with Mr. Chen and if he was doing dishonest things I’m sorry. I don’t think I should get involved but I respect the company so I want to help. If I can.”
“That’s a nice thing to hear.” Jim had taken his feet off the table and he was trying to sound more magisterial than he felt.
The girl paused as if to order her words better in her mind. Jim waited with expectation. Not hoping for too much.
Finally she went on, “One time when I was working late and Mr. Chen was also here I walked past his door and found him on his hands and knees under the table. I asked him if he was feeling uncomfortable and he got angry, as if there was something he didn’t want me to know about. Later I thought about it, maybe he kept some money or papers in a secret compartment under his desk.” She stared at Jim expectantly.
He nodded. “It’d be nice if he did because he doesn’t seem to have kept anything useful anywhere else.”
“He was a careful and smart man.”
“Cunning! I’ve gathered that much. We never had any idea back in London what a slimy old bugger he was all along. I guess we’ve just been stupid gwailos?” he said lightly.
Madeleine didn’t reply, only stared at him with neutral, brown eyes from which he could not tell if she agreed with the sarcasm of his statement or the face value of his words. He supposed it was what Hollywood had dubbed an inscrutable expression.
“Where do you think this safe might have been?” he asked quickly.
For the next five minutes they both knelt under the desk tapping and touching the rosewood and Jim found himself thinking of Doris again as the other girl’s closeness and freshness tingled on his senses.
Finally they found it. It was at the back of the desk, hidden by a plywood panel door that popped out when tapped hard: a standard safe ten inches high and six inches wide. It had been built into the space behind the panel door. Jim tried the opposite side of the desk and found an identical arrangement. So! Two hidden safes, both locked. Whatever secrets they contained were well guarded by a steel plate several inches thick.
“Doesn’t help much finding them. Not unless we get a welder or locksmith.”
“They don’t have any combination. We must find the keys,” the girl said, now standing up again while Jim was still crouching with his head under the desk.
“The keys?” He banged himself hard against the desktop as he came out fast. There were three big key rings that had been returned by the police with Bob Chen’s possessions. Most of the keys had no markings on them but two of them were the right size for a possible fit. He dragged them out of the drawer where he’d dumped them a few days before and then got back down on his hands and knees.
A few seconds of fiddling and the first safe door swung open revealing a treasure trove of documents covered in plastic file covers. Quickly Jim opened the other safe and found stacks of neatly bound US dollar notes in mixed denominations. He reached in and pulled them all out, amazed at the amount. Handing them to the girl he told her to pile them up on the desk top.
She gasped at the cash but Jim was more interested in the documents. They were mostly in Chinese but some were in English and they were shipping schedules or emails that had been printed out and—although couched in cryptic language—referred to the movement of goods that were not part of McPherson Ferguson’s regular products.
He placed them on the edge of the desk and asked Madeleine to translate. Her eyes were still glazed in terror at the piles of cash she had been stacking on one of the guest chairs. She whispered: “There are over half a million dollars here.”
* * * *
“I don’t feel comfortable to say this but if he dies during the interrogation, it would be sad but we could accept it.”
Larry Lim swirled his glass of vodka tonic around and avoided Bill Jedburgh’s eyes as he said this. They were in a bar called Tahitian Queen which played loud rock music that reduced the chance of being overheard.
“Do you want me to kill him? I don’t think I can.”
Larry chuckled. “Don’t play the innocent. You could if you wanted to.”
“I won’t,” Bill said.
“No, you’re right. We don’t want him killed. We want to know what’s going on. We need the facts. This is something very big and very bad. At least that’s what the Brigadier thinks, and he’s rarely wrong. He has a sixth sense, you know.”
Jedburgh nodded. “So you want me to make the interrogation as hard as required and not worry too much about the consequences?”
“I think you understand us,” Larry said, taking a very small sip from his glass. He smacked his lips and threw a glance around the bar. It was mostly wood and very dark. The usual crowd of middle-aged drinkers were hunched around the stage, staring upwards at the firm, fine bodies of dancing girls who wore their smiles and tiny bikinis with studied indifference. The go-go girls looked out over the heads of the customers, watching their own bodies in the mirrors running the length of the room.
“Money?” Jedburgh said.
“It’s a matter of national consequence.”
“I’m not James Bond, Larry. I expect more than a few vodka martinis and a shag with a big-breasted blonde at the end of the job.”
“He’s authorised thirty thousand,” Larry said apologetically watching Bill’s face for the reaction.
The former policeman snorted. “What choice do I have, as usual?”
“Come on, Bill. That’s a lot of money in Thailand.”
“It’ll pay the mortgage for a few months.”
“We’ve known each other for many years. Don’t haggle.”
“Was I haggling? I was just bitching.” Bill cuffed the Singaporean gently over the back of the head. “Tell the old fucker that his wish is my command. And my wish is that he’ll drop dead sooner rather than later.”
“I’ll tell him.”
“No, you won’t”
“Yes, I won’t.”
“Okay, when and where do you want me to grab Henry Chan and give him the third degree?”
“He’ll be in Bangkok later this week. We have him under surveillance. I’ll give you a few hours notice and then he’s all yours.”
Bill sighed. “Do you want to go for a body-massage in Sabailand ?” he said.
“I’m married now.” Larry shook his head and drained his drink.
“Since when was a Chinese man faithful to his wife?” Bill said, smirking.
“Is there something wrong with being faithful? I’m a Catholic,” Larry said.
“As long as you’re happy. I’m going to catch up with the other guys. Are you coming along?”
“I need to get some sleep.”
“Suit yourself. We’ll take care of this matter and save the free world.”
Larry nodded gravely and gave a short farewell wave.
Chapter 19
The documents were laid out across the counterpane of Jim’s ample bed. Doris, in figure-hugging jeans and DKNY top, was kneeling on the floor and studying some of the Chinese text while he paced excitedly up and down the room.
“This one is a letter from someone called Zhu Tsu to a group of Army Generals. It refers to a plan but doesn’t say what it is. They are exhorted to support it for the sake of their loyalty to the Chinese people. They are warned that if they are not for it then he will consider that they are against it.”
“And then?”
“That’s it. It is a short letter.” She turned the document around and waved it at him. The black ideograms stood out on the cream vellum paper.
“What about this one,” Jim said reaching across, resting a hand on her shoulder, and pulling another
document from the pile.
“It’s a list of names. Chinese men in Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam, Philippines and Malaysia. Nothing else to explain who they are.”
“How can you tell they are men?”
“They are men’s names.”
“Conspirators perhaps.” Jim’s imagination double-declutched into a higher gear.
“Maybe.”
“Next,” he commanded.
The girl took a green manila file, and glancing only briefly at its contents, handed it to Jim. He could decipher the contents himself. It was a shipping list in a printed Excel format and gave the names of vessels, their loading dates, arrival dates and ports of destination.
“But what are they shipping?” he demanded in frustration.
Doris sat back on her heels and shook her head. “I can’t find anything that mentions the goods. You think it might be weapons or drugs?”
“Something like that, but for what purpose?”
“For money of course,” the Chinese girl said.
“No, its not as simple as that.”
“This paper says something about baak-faan, white powder.”
“What’s that?”
“Drugs. Heroin or cocaine.”
Jim stood by the window and tried to think it through. He wanted to make head and tail of this information before he passed it on to Foxcroft. This was just as much part of McPherson Ferguson’s business as it was part of the police investigation. These papers should explain why Bob Chen and Dougie Campbell had been murdered and why the office was in disarray and their shipments were a disaster. These documents were a jigsaw puzzle that once slotted together might provide answers explaining the recent violence that had erupted around the company.
“What do you think all this means?” he asked the girl.
Doris furrowed her brow. She said nothing for a while. Jim grew impatient. He had a good idea of what was going on but he could not understand if it was political or purely commercial. He voiced his thoughts and the girl explained to him in her usual manner that with Chinese people these two activities could never be separated. Money was blood and politics was power and from power came the ability to make money.
Jim sighed in exasperation and reached for the phone. He had written Detective Chief Inspector Foxcroft’s mobile number into his filofax and the policeman answered on the third ring.
“You’d better come over to the Shangri-La Hotel, Simon. I’ve got some interesting evidence that might shed light on the cases.”
“What kind of light?”
“Not as bright and penetrating as you’d want, I’m afraid, but worth looking at. I have very suspicious-looking shipping lists and strange Chinese letters exhorting the men of pure Chinese race to stand up and claim their heritage.”
There was silence at the other end of the phone. “Who else knows about this?” Foxcroft finally said.
“My girlfriend and one of the managers from the office who was there when we discovered two hidden safes in Bob Chen’s desk.”
“I’ll send Sergeant Topgun over right away. Stay where you are and order room service or something. There are some recent developments which I don’t want to share with you at this moment but be careful, okay? How did you find the safe?”
When Jim put the phone down he felt distinctly nervous and not for the first time began to wonder where and when all this had started. Was it outside the Chinese take-away off Finchley Road or had these events already taken control of his life the moment Doris Yung walked into his office and announced she’d be helping out as the new temp? He studied her surreptitiously and wondered why Chinese girls were so damned gorgeous and so bloody hard to fathom.
Doris looked up from the paper she was studying. There was concern in her eyes.
“This one talks of exploding devices and that they will kill as many people as necessary to make sure that the Western powers don’t interfere in their plans.”
“Bloody hell,” Jim said quietly. It was all growing out of proportion.
* * * *
It was the upstairs private room of a Chinese restaurant on Soi 21, off Sukhumvit Road. Henry Chan was the guest of honour and he was also the host. He’d invited the other diners and he was paying for a meal that was both sumptuous and varied. They’d talked much business although in the cautious tones of the Asian commercial man. Ideas were expressed, opinions exchanged, suggestions made, yet all suitably vague and lacking the concrete action plans or agreements that a similar gathering of Westerners would have produced.
The other men listened to Henry’s pronouncements with respect and bland faces. It was best not to show too much emotion: although everyone in the room, by attending this dinner, had already expressed their commitment and desire to be part of the plan. Much of this was pragmatism and although Henry understood this instinctively, it was not something on which he wasted much thought. They were part of his circle and although all they had done was talk and eat, they were already actively involved.
“He is looking to men like us to stand up and announce our patriotism,” Henry said.
“That is a difficult word, Brother Chan. We are Chinese and we feel every day that we belong to the mother country but we have made our home here and live peacefully,” one of the older business leaders was saying.
“Have we not discussed this many times before, Ah-Siew. You keep on repeating the same sentence. Are my arguments not strong enough for you?”
The other man looked down at his chopsticks. He had been chastised.
“The food has been excellent,” another man said to diffuse Ah-Siew’s embarrassment and Ah-Liu, the owner of the restaurant, nodded with appreciation.
At that moment there was the sound of scuffling from the landing outside the dining room and the doors were suddenly flung open. One of the Thai bodyguards, a lithe kickboxer, was hurled backwards by a vicious blow from a tall masked man and fell limply against the row of unused chairs.
In the doorway stood three men, their faces obscured by stockings which squashed their noses and disfigured their features to the diners. The intruders were not Asian and in their hands they held automatic pistols. For a moment there was silence in the room until the tall intruder spoke in Mandarin.
“Don’t move or you will die. We only want Henry Chan.” He pointed a gloved hand at his quarry. The diminutive Chinese businessman shrank visibly. The remainder of the group seemed to lean away from their host. Outside in the corridor another Thai bodyguard could be seen spread-eagled on the floor. There was a pool of blood forming around his head.
“Let’s go. Quickly, quickly!” the tall man commanded. His two assistants ran rapidly around the back of the dining table and pulled Henry Chan up from his chair. There was the sound of metal handcuffs ratcheting around his wrists, then they practically carried him out of the room. His feet barely touched the floor. The tall man waited, his gun ready, watching the faces of each of the Chinese businessmen.
When his companions had started down the staircase, the tall man walked deliberately over to the limp bodyguard. The little kickboxer was just coming up from his brief loss of consciousness, struggling to get to his feet. A flicker of fury had emerged in the bodyguard’s eyes at his failure to protect his employer.
The tall man bent over slightly and with a swift turn of his wrist placed the muzzle of his automatic pistol against the kneecap of the bodyguard, shattering the cartilage into a thousand fragments with a jerk of the trigger.
“Don’t come after us,” he barked over the sound of the former kickboxer’s bellowed despair.
* * * *
In the study of the sumptuous villa on Soi 8 which he had owned for many years John McHardy was getting ready to leave for an indeterminate period of time. He collected three passports from the safe. The Swiss one was always good but the Argentinean and Australian travel documents had proved useful in the past. The names differed as did the dates of birth and the image of his face. With minimal props he could adjust his look to m
atch the photos.
Things had started to go wrong. Nothing overt but he felt that his business relationship with Henry Chan and the conspirators who stood behind the Hong Kong entrepreneur was coming apart at the seams. His instincts told him there was a real danger that they’d dispose of him and his services. It was something he’d always taken into account but like any business or criminal activity it was a calculated risk and worth taking as long as he anticipated where and when the deal might turn sour. His wife and children had already left the country for a vacation in Arkansas where her folks had a farm.
He filed a few more documents through the high speed shredder. It was a German model and it would take some very sophisticated technology to paste the thousands of strips back together again. He doubted that the Thai police would even bother.
The television was tuned to CNN although the sound was subdued. His attention was caught by the latest breaking news. Pictures of carnage and burning wreckage were being shown on the screen. He reached over and turned up the volume.
“…it is not clear at this stage if this was a deliberate act of sabotage or possibly a technical problem. Some sources are telling us that the plane, while refuelling at Bangkok airport could have burst into flames as the result of a spark of fire from some nearby welding work that was being carried out. Other sources insist that this was an incendiary device placed on or near the baggage containers,” the female reporter was saying. Another correspondent took over: “Yes, Mary-Lou there is much speculation here at Bangkok airport but nobody seems to be saying very much. What we know is that the Chinese Head of State Premier Jiang Jemin was due to fly out on this China Eastern Boeing 747 within a matter of hours. Now the plane and part of the retractable walkway it was resting against are a tangle of burnt metal. Eight casualties have been reported so far which include two baggage handlers and a number of other airport employees two of whom died instantly in the explosion.”
“Bob, what, in your opinion are the chances that this was a deliberate act of sabotage?”
“Well, Mary Lou,” replied the man on the scene, “It’s very hard to say. If it was a bomb then it must be described as an act of terrorism against the Chinese government. This of course is terribly embarrassing for the Thai government who may prefer to play this down and call it an accident.”
Dragon Breath Page 27