2016 - Takedown

by Stephen Leather

  ‘Be careful, Lex,’ said Ricky.

  Harper grinned. ‘Careful is my middle name.’

  ‘Yeah? I heard you were christened Alex Mad Fucking Bastard Harper, in which case Fucking would be your middle name. At least if you can’t be careful, be lucky.’

  ‘I always am, mate,’ said Harper. He patted Ricky’s shoulder and headed out into the night.

  CHAPTER 8

  Harper waited until midnight before visiting Red Oktober. Two busty blondes in evening dresses were standing at the entrance and flashed him beaming smiles as he walked between them. The entrance led to a flight of red-carpeted stairs, a large Russian bouncer, with a shaved head and an earpiece in his left ear, at the top. Harper flashed him a smile and the Russian pulled open a glass door. Techno music blared and the temperature dropped a good ten degrees as Harper walked in. A dozen sofas were spread around the room and there was a bar with a dozen stools to the right. Stunning girls in evening dresses sat at tables with customers while others wearing thongs did some impressive pole work at three podiums. Unlike the Thai dancers, who rarely did more than shuffle around the poles, the Russians girls put their hearts and souls into it with gymnastic performances worthy of an Olympic medal.

  Harper spotted Valentin immediately. Ricky had been right: the diamond in his left ear was huge and the scar on his cheek had obviously been done with a broken bottle. It made sense to use a bottle because Valentin was a big bastard, and hard with it: broad-shouldered and with a chin that looked as if it could shrug off a punch from anyone less than a world heavyweight champion. The Russian was pouring whisky from a bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue into a large glass with his right hand while he massaged the backside of a teenage blonde in a tight blue dress with his left. He was sitting next to a smaller man, and laughing at something he’d said.

  A Thai waiter motioned for Harper to sit at an empty table but he went to the bar and took the stool one away from the man who was sitting next to Valentin. He ordered a Heineken, then swivelled around to get a better look at the bar. Most of the customers appeared to be Indian or Thai in contrast to the regular go-go bars, which tended to attract Westerners. They seemed to be big spenders too – the Russian dancers were drinking colourful cocktails and there were opened bottles of champagne on several tables.

  ‘Hello,’ said a voice to his side. Harper turned to find himself looking into the eyes of a stunning brunette. Almost immediately his eyes dropped to a gravity-defying cleavage threatening to burst out of a skin-tight white dress. ‘What’s your name?’ she asked. His eyes clawed back to her face and he saw that she was smiling in a way that suggested she was used to her breasts getting most of the attention.

  ‘Gerry,’ said Harper. ‘From Wales.’

  ‘Wales?’

  ‘Near England.’

  ‘You are here on holiday?’

  ‘Been here a week. Having a great time. Lovely place, innit?’

  The girl nodded. ‘But very hot.’

  ‘You’re on holiday?’

  She laughed. ‘No, I work here. Do you want to buy me a drink?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘A cocktail is six hundred baht.’

  ‘Money no object, I’m on holiday.’

  The girl ordered a drink from a waitress, then turned back to him. ‘I’m Alena,’ she said. She offered him her hand.

  Harper kissed it. They chatted for the best part of half an hour, with Harper playing the part of the naïve tourist and Alena apparently hanging on his every word while she sipped her cocktail. He bought her another, and another, then asked her about Red Oktober. ‘I’ve been thinking I could run a bar in Pattaya,’ he said.

  ‘It’s not easy,’ she said.

  ‘Who runs this place?’

  ‘Valentine,’ she said, indicating the man with the diamond earring. ‘He’s the boss.’

  ‘Let me buy him a drink,’ said Harper, slurring his words.

  ‘He only drinks Johnnie Walker Blue.’

  ‘Then I’ll buy him a Johnnie Walker Blue.’ He slid off the stool, making it look as if he was a lot drunker than he actually was. He walked unsteadily to Valentin and tapped him on the shoulder. ‘Hi, mate, my name’s Gerry. From Cardiff. Have you heard of Cardiff?’ He held out his hand.

  Valentin shook it. ‘Of course. Wales.’

  ‘And where are you from, Valentin?’

  ‘Moscow,’ said the Russian.

  ‘That Putin’s a laugh, isn’t he?’ said Harper, slurring his words again. He let go of Valentin’s hand and clapped the other man on the shoulder. ‘What’s your name, mate?’

  ‘Grigory.’

  ‘You from Moscow, too, mate?’

  Grigory’s eyes hardened. ‘My friend and I are in the middle of a private conversation, if you don’t mind.’

  Harper stepped back and raised his hands. ‘Sorry, right, sure, yes, no problem. Just wanted to say hello, that’s all.’ He flashed an exaggerated double thumbs-up. ‘Great bar!’ He backed away unsteadily, and knocked over his Heineken. He grinned lopsidedly at Alena. ‘Better be getting back to the hotel. My wife will be wondering where I am.’ He paid his bill and headed out. As he went through the door, Alena was already moving in on another customer.

  CHAPTER 9

  Valentin and Grigory left the bar when it closed, at about four o’clock in the morning. Harper had waited for them in one of the beer bars on the opposite side of the street, drinking water but buying drinks for the girls and playing them at Connect 4, the children’s game where the aim was to get four coloured discs in a row. The girls had played for years and were experts and Harper was lucky to win one game in ten.

  The two Russians were clearly drunk and walked unsteadily down one of the side alleys that led to a car park. Harper paid his bill and followed them. The car park was mainly full of pick-up trucks but in the far corner there was a white Lamborghini and the Russians headed for that.

  Harper jogged over to a line of waiting motorcycle taxis and gave the rider at the front of the queue five hundred baht. ‘Follow that car,’ he said, in Thai. Valentin and Grigory had climbed into the car and Valentin had started the engine. A uniformed security guard blew a whistle and waved instructions for Valentin to avoid scraping any of the other vehicles.

  ‘The Lamborghini ?’

  ‘Sure.’ Harper climbed onto the back of the bike. ‘Just don’t let him see you. Find out where he lives and there’s another five hundred for you.’ The Lamborghini edged carefully out of the car park.

  ‘Yes, boss,’ said the driver, gunning the engine. He was wearing a purple vest with the number 56 in Thai on the back. Motorcycle taxis were a quick and cheap means of getting around the city, especially at rush-hour. They were also an efficient way of following other vehicles: no one ever paid attention to the motorcycle taxis or their customers.

  The Lamborghini headed south, parallel to the sea. Valentin drove erratically. The fact he had senior cops on his payroll meant he wasn’t worried about being stopped for drunk-driving. Twice he went through a red light and he didn’t indicate before turns. Harper patted his driver on the shoulder. ‘Don’t get too close,’ he said.

  ‘No problem, boss.’

  The car reached Jontiem and headed east, up a hill overlooking the bay. It stopped in front of a pair of large metal gates covered by a CCTV camera. The gates opened, the car drove through, and the gates closed again. There was security wire on top of the wall but the only camera he saw was the one at the gates.

  Harper asked the driver to take him back to his apartment, in a high-rise block close to Beach Road. He had just walked into his sitting room overlooking the sea when he felt a vibration inside his hip-pack. He took out his phone and read the three-word text message from a UK number: YOU HAVE MAIL.

  Harper cursed under his breath. The message was from Charlotte Button and nine times out of ten a message from her meant him being on a plane within hours. If he were going to deal with the Russians it would have to be now. Either that or
he’d have to walk away. He thought of Pear, battered and bruised in her hospital bed, and put his phone away. He walked through to the kitchen and took a pair of wire-cutters from the toolbox under the sink. He put them into a nylon kitbag along with three old towels from the bathroom.

  The wall had been about ten feet high, and he had noticed several ladders belonging to the apartment building’s maintenance staff in the underground car park. Harper figured they wouldn’t miss one for a few hours. There was a false back to his underwear drawer in the wardrobe and he slid it back to reveal a Glock pistol with three filled magazines. He put the gun and clips into the holdall and went downstairs to his truck. He put one of the smaller ladders into the back, his holdall on the front passenger seat, then drove down to Beach Road. He parked outside an internet café owned by a middle-aged former go-go dancer called Rose. She was open pretty much twenty-four/seven though when Harper walked in her brother was minding the shop. There were two customers, a drunken Scandinavian tourist on Skype and a bargirl browsing through online photographs of Louis Vuitton handbags, presumably preparing to hit up a sponsor for a gift.

  ‘Hi, Kung – okay if I use a terminal?’ asked Harper.

  Kung was engrossed in a Thai soap opera and waved a languid hand at the line of computers without looking up. ‘Help yourself to a beer if you want one,’ he said.

  ‘I’m good,’ said Harper. He sat down at a screen at the far end of the room. He went first to Google Earth and called up a satellite view of the house in Jontiem, then spent several minutes studying the layout. There was a main villa built in an L-shape around a large pool, plus two smaller houses that he reckoned were for the staff and possibly bodyguards. The rear wall faced the back of the house and was clearly the best way in.

  He Googled Valentin Rostov but all that came up were a couple of Facebook pages, neither of which belonged to the man he’d followed back to the villa.

  He logged on to the Yahoo Mail account he used to contact Charlotte Button. She was the only person other than himself who knew the password and could access the email account they used to communicate with each other. They never actually emailed: they communicated by leaving messages in the draft folder. Deceptively simple, it was an almost foolproof system, far more secure than any phone or email link.

  Using a chain of listening stations, like Yorkshire’s Menwith Hill and GCHQ, both in the UK, and the National Security Agency in the US, the British and American intelligence agencies could intercept every single landline and mobile phone call, made anywhere in the world, and any email. Button and Harper’s messages for each other in the drafts folder could not be monitored or recorded by anyone trying to eavesdrop on their communications. To increase security still more, their standard operating procedure was to delete each one as soon as it had been read. The technique had been developed by al-Qaeda terrorists to evade high-tech surveillance of their communications by Western intelligence agencies, but Button and Harper had adapted it for their own use.

  When Harper logged in, he discovered that a single, two-word message had been added to the drafts folder: PARIS. ASAP.

  Harper deleted the message and wrote another: EN ROUTE, MADAME. He went online looking for flights to Paris and booked himself a business class seat on the 9.50 a.m. Air France flight that would get him into Charles de Gaulle airport at just before six o’clock in the evening.

  He dropped a hundred-baht note in front of Kung, who waved his thanks without looking up, then went back outside to his pick-up truck. He drove out to Jontiem and parked off-road a hundred metres from the villa, switched off the engine and sat, gazing out over the sea, as he waited for his night vision to kick in.

  It was just after six o’clock in the morning when he placed the lightweight ladder against the wall and used it to reach up to the security wire. He clipped away a section and let it fall to the ground. Broken glass was embedded in the concrete running along the top of the wall and he put the folded towels over it before climbing up and hauling the ladder after him. He slipped over and placed the ladder carefully on the ground, then shrugged off the backpack and took out the Glock. He crouched low, getting his bearings, then crept on the balls of his feet over the grass to the main building. The lights were on in the large room that overlooked the pool. Music was playing. Pitbull. Harper glanced at the two smaller buildings in the compound. Both were in darkness.

  He worked his way along the villa to a back entrance. There was a roofed area with a Thai kitchen, a barbecue and a door that led inside. The rear of the house was in darkness and Harper padded over the marble floor, the Glock in his hand. He crept down a hallway that was wreathed in dim shadows. There were two closed doors on the left and the hall turned right, opening into the main living area, a double-height room with a huge chandelier hanging from a wooden arch. Two massive sofas were placed at a right angle to each other. Valentin was sitting with his back to Harper, who could see the diamond in the other man’s ear. Valentin was talking loudly in Russian and waving a glass above his head. Grigory was sitting on the other sofa, his feet on a large marble coffee-table, side on to Harper.

  He stayed put for a couple of minutes until he was sure that there was no one else in the villa, before walking quickly to Valentin. Grigory saw him at the last minute but was slow to react. He hadn’t even got to his feet by the time Harper had slammed the butt of his gun against the side of Valentin’s head. There was a satisfying crunch and the Russian toppled sideways without a sound. Now Grigory jumped up but Harper already had the gun trained on him.

  ‘What the fuck do you want?’ the Russian snarled.

  ‘To give you a taste of your own medicine.’

  Grigory frowned. ‘What the fuck do you mean?’

  ‘I mean I’m going to hurt you so bad you’ll wish you’d never been born.’

  ‘Do you know who I am?’

  ‘I know you’re a Russian prick who enjoys beating up little girls and fucking them up the arse. Now get down on your knees.’

  ‘Fuck you. You think I’m scared of your gun?’

  Harper kept the gun trained on Grigory’s face as he slowly walked around the sofa. ‘Scared or not, it can still blow your fucking brains out.’

  ‘If you were going to shoot me, you’d have done it already.’

  ‘Good point,’ said Harper. His foot lashed out and caught the Russian in the groin. He yelped and bent double just in time for Harper to smash the gun into the side of the man’s face, cracking his jaw and sending two teeth clattering across the polished wooden floor. Grigory straightened up, blood trickling from between his lips. He opened his mouth to speak but Harper transferred the gun to his left hand and punched him in the solar plexus with his right fist, putting all his weight behind the blow. Grigory fell back, arms flailing, his bloodied lips opening and closing, like those of a stranded fish. He hit the floor hard and lay still. Harper went over to him and kicked him in the side. ‘Come on, you nasty Russian fuck. Wake up. You’ll miss all the fun.’

  CHAPTER 10

  Harper arrived at Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi airport at just before eight o’clock in the morning. He was travelling light, just a small backpack, and the hip-pack. He’d hired a taxi, a driver he regularly used, who could at least be relied on not to take drugs, drink whisky, or use his mobile phone behind the wheel, which was more than could be said for the majority of the city’s taxi drivers. He walked up to the Air France desk and handed over his passport. The woman sitting there was less than five feet tall with glossy black hair and a mischievous smile, but the second she took his passport Harper realised something was wrong. She looked at it, then at a list on her desk, then back to the passport and back to him. She frowned and looked at the list a second time, then beckoned to a man in a grey suit. He came over and took the passport from her. He read the details inside and his eyes flicked to the list. He gave Harper a beaming smile. ‘I’m so sorry, Mr Harper, we have a problem with our computer at the moment. I’ll have to run this through the computer
in our office. Please wait a moment.’ He walked away with the passport while the checkin girl flashed Harper a comforting smile that suggested she was sorry for the delay and that she hoped everything would soon be sorted.

  Harper smiled back. He had two choices. He could turn and walk away, but they already had his passport and he doubted he would get far. Or he could stand there, smile and see how it panned out.

  ‘Khun Harper?’

  He turned. A Thai policeman was standing behind him. Like all Thai cops he had a big gun on his hip and cold eyes that said he’d used it more than once in his career and would happily use it again. ‘Yes?’ Harper said.

  There was another cop to his right, younger and taller, and three more not too far away.

  ‘Please come with us.’ The officer motioned with his hand for Harper to move away from the desk.

  ‘Sure, no problem,’ said Harper, shouldering his backpack.

  ‘Please give me your bag,’ said the officer.

  Harper’s jaw tightened but he knew there was no point in resisting so he forced a smile and handed it over. The officer gave it to the younger policeman, who went over to the checkin desk and retrieved Harper’s passport. As the three of them left the checkin desks, the other three officers fell into step a few yards behind.

  They took him to an escalator and up one floor, then along to a door with a keypad. The officer tapped in a four-digit code and pushed open the door. It led to a long corridor. He opened the third door along and motioned for Harper to go inside. A uniformed police colonel was sitting behind a table, smoking a cigarette in clear defiance of the NO SMOKING sign behind him. He wore a tight-fitting brown uniform, gleaming boots, and a scattering of colourful medals on his chest. Police Colonel Somchai Wattanakolwit. He grinned up at Harper and waved his cigarette at the empty chair opposite him. ‘I gather you’ve been a naughty boy, Lek.’