Harper barrelled into the room, the pistol tracking his gaze as he dived and rolled and came up ready to fire, but there were no guards, just two Arab-looking teenage boys. Their legs were shackled, their wrists chained to the wall, and the expensive clothes they were wearing were stained, torn and covered in filth. Both looked semi-comatose and a quick body search of them revealed track marks on their arms and legs that Harper was only too familiar with on his own body.
‘It’s all right,’ Harper said. ‘You’re safe now’. One of them was still out of it, head lolling, but the other muttered a reply.
After struggling with the chains pinning them to the wall for a few moments, he drew his pistol and put a couple of rounds though one of the links before he could set them free. He then picked up the comatose boy in a fireman’s lift and carried him up to the roof, before returning for the other one.
‘Are you British?’ the boy said as Harper helped him to his feet. His voice was still drowsy but his English was impeccable.
Harper smiled. ‘I might be, but the important thing from your point of view is that I’m not Thai.’
‘Please help us,’ the boy said.
‘I already have,’ Harper said. ‘I’ve killed the men who were holding you here and undone your chains. You just need to get out of here now. Can you stand? Okay, come on then, I’ll show you the way.’
The boy was so weak and emaciated that Harper had to help him up the ladder and onto the roof. The boy saw Narong lying in a pool of his own blood. He walked over to him, spat in his face and cursed him in Arabic and English. He drew back his foot to kick Narong, but Harper grabbed his arm. ‘Believe me, I sympathise with your feelings,’ he said, ‘but we need to move fast now. Police and maybe some other people we wouldn’t want to meet will be arriving soon.’
The other boy was now able to get to his feet but both were so unsteady that Harper had to help them down through the roof light he’d used to access the roof from the empty building, and then guide them down the stairs. He held up a hand, motioning them to silence while he eased open the outside door and checked up and down the street. There were no signs of trouble. He thumbed the button on his walkie-talkie as they emerged onto the street. ‘BB,’ he said, ‘I need a hand; I’ve got company.’
Barry Big’s rasping voice cut through the static on the walkie-talkie. ‘I can see that,’ he said. ‘I’m watching you. What gives with them?’
‘Another couple of Narong’s victims. I’m just giving them a helping hand.’
‘Gathering waifs and strays, Lex,’ Maggie May chipped in. ‘That’s not your usual style at all. They’re not exactly fast-moving are they?’
‘Nor would you be if you’d been chained to a wall for a few weeks. It’s fine, but they’re too weak to make it on their own, so BB, you’ll need to help me. Maggie May, you watch our backs till we’re out of the immediate area and then RV with us at the safe house, in fifteen.’
‘Roger that,’ she said.
‘Hansfree? Any police or army chatter yet?’
Monitoring communications back at the safe house, Hansfree was close to the limit of the walkie-talkie’s range and his voice came up faintly through a fog of static. ‘Just really getting started,’ he said. ‘A flurry in the last couple minutes, so they’re on their way. If you’re not already, you need to be out of there sharpish.’
‘On the move now,’ Harper said and broke the connection just as Barry Big appeared. He took the weaker of the two Arab boys, draping the boy’s arm over his shoulder and putting his own powerful arm around his waist, while Harper helped the other one along.
They had only gone about fifty yards when they heard the first police sirens in the distance.
‘All right,’ Harper said. ‘We need to move as fast as you can go.’ As the sound of sirens grew louder, they ducked down a side street and then hurried along the parallel road. The boys were close to exhaustion and when they reached the junction with a busy through road, Harper shot another glance at them, then flagged down a cab. ‘Really?’ Barry Big said, giving him a questioning look.
‘It’s a risk, but a lesser one than staying on the streets and moving at this pace,’ Harper said. ‘But in case we’re compromised, we’ll need to be clear of the safe house in double-quick time.’
‘Don’t say anything while we’re in the taxi,’ he said to the boys, before they climbed in. He gave the cab-driver directions to a street corner fifty yards from the safe house and tipped him big as he dropped them off. As Harper had indicated to Barry Big, using a taxi to drop them almost within sight of a safe house was not a risk he would normally have taken, but the boys were all in, and even if the cab-driver did shop them to the cops, they would have abandoned the safe house before a police follow-up could get there.
They RV’d with Hansfree at the safe house, and Maggie May arrived a couple of minutes later. Harper gave them a quick summary of what had happened up on the roof. ‘I got the Thais, so that’s done,’ he said. ‘And if I’d had any reservations about killing them what I saw in the apartment would have answered them. Apart from these boys, there were thousands of dollars in bundles and enough heroin to feed ten thousand drug habits, but there were six naked women too. The dealers were using them as slave labour to cut the drugs and re-pack them for sale.’
‘Naked?’ Maggie May said, shuddering. ‘For sex?’
‘No, although from what I saw of Narong and his men, I wouldn’t rule that out either, but mainly so they couldn’t hide heroin or cash in their clothing. They were worth less than dogs to Narong and his crew. When they tried to escape, thinking the building was on fire, the women were still chained to the steel table where they were packing the drugs. So they left these boys and those women there to die. I can’t get one of them out of my mind. She was so young, little more than a child, and yet the look in her eyes was that of an old woman.’ He shivered at the memory. ‘Okay, let’s pack up, sanitise the place fast and get out of here. If the cab driver who dropped us grasses us and the Thai cops do a sweep, we’ll already be gone but I don’t want them to find anything that could link back to us. When we’re done here, travel separately as usual and take different flights out of the country. The normal payments will be nestling in your bank accounts by the time you get home.’
‘What about your new best friends?’ Maggie May said.
He shrugged. ‘I’ll take them to a hotel while I work out the best way to get them to safety. One thing’s for sure, they can’t stay here and nor can we. Let’s move it.’
Hansfree loaded his specialist comms kit into his hired car and made straight for the airport. Harper also left with the boys at once, leaving Maggie May and Barry Big to finish sanitising the safe house, wiping down any surface that might have been touched with an ungloved hand and bagging all their rubbish, before dumping it a safe distance away on their way to the airport.
Fearing the boys might collapse from hunger, thirst and exhaustion, Harper made them drink some water and bought them some street food from a stall a few hundred yards away from the safe house. The weaker boy barely swallowed a mouthful of chicken and rice before shaking his head and pushing it away, but the other one devoured his in a few bites. Harper then took them to a dingy hotel where the owner pocketed the cash he proffered and did not even raise an eyebrow at the sight of an Englishman disappearing into a room with two young boys who were clearly not his sons.
The room was filthy and the sheets clearly hadn’t been changed since the previous occupant had left, but he wasn’t planning a long stay, so it suited him well enough. ‘Right,’ he said, as soon as he had closed the door. ‘Tell me everything about how you got into this situation and then we’ll work out how to get you safely out of it.’ He focussed on the stronger of the two boys, since the other one had now gone semi-comatose again. ‘My name’s Lex. What’s yours?’
‘I am Faisal bin Muqrin.’
‘Where are you from, Faisal?’
‘Saudi Arabia,’ he said nervo
usly. He reached into his pocket and took out a Saudi Arabian ID card.
Harper took the card and examined it. ‘From the way you speak English, I’d say you’d been educated at an English school?’
Faisal nodded. ‘Yes, in England. Near Leeds. My friend and I had just finished our A-levels,’ Faisal said, ‘and we’d come to Thailand for a holiday as a treat, but we got separated from our bodyguards in the Khlong Toei red light district.’
‘Your parents didn’t come with you?’
‘They stay in Saudi Arabia. They do not like to leave the Kingdom.’
‘I’m guessing you got separated from your bodyguards on purpose,’ Harper said, with a smile. ‘Perhaps you were anxious to sample a little of what Thailand has to offer, without word getting back to your parents - maybe hoping to lose your virginity to a bar girl or try out a Thai lady boy? But then you got more than you bargained for, didn’t you?’
The boy hung his head. ‘The man called Narong stopped us in the street.,’ he said, his voice barely above a whisper. ‘He was wearing military uniform and had two other soldiers with him. He told us that a bar girl had been raped by two young men answering our description.’
‘That’s not something the army would normally get involved in,’ Harper said.
‘We didn’t know that. When he told us to hand over our passports and said we were under arrest, we just thought it was a misunderstanding and we’d be released as soon as they realised their mistake.’
‘They were probably just going to shake you down for whatever money and valuables you had,’ Harper said, ‘but then you and your friend made the mistake of mentioning who your fathers were, right?’
The boy nodded. ‘They took us to the place where you found us and locked us up. Another man came then, also in uniform. The others called him Colonel, and deferred to him. He interrogated us and began trying to blackmail our fathers.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘He made us hold up a copy of that day’s newspaper, and filmed us. He made us say that if a ransom wasn’t paid, we’d be killed.’
‘And was it? Did your families pay?’
‘I don’t know, but it was him who told Narong to inject us with heroin.’
While they were talking, the boy was looking increasingly strung out, scratching furiously at his skin and switching his gaze from side to side as if a supply of heroin might have been stashed under the bed. ‘Try and take it easy,’ Harper said, not unkindly. ‘I’m going to get you to a place where you’ll be safe and where they can start to give you the help you need, and see about getting you home.’
Using his burner phone, he made contact with Hansfree, who was at the airport waiting for his flight to be called. ‘Hansfree, I need the numbers of a private ambulance company and a drug rehabilitation clinic, the more discreet and exclusive the better. Can you do that?’
‘Give me five minutes,’ Hansfree said and broke the connection.
He was quicker than that. Within three minutes at the most the burner phone pinged and Harper found a text with two numbers. However, when he phoned the clinic, they told him they were fully booked, and even though he assured them that money - US dollars - was no object, they proved immovable. ‘Brilliant,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘I’ve managed to find the only business in Thailand that can’t be bribed with a pile of dollars.’
‘What do we do now?’ the Saudi boy said.
Harper thought for a few more moments. ‘We go to Plan B,’ he said. ‘It’s slightly more risky, but it will also get you home quicker. The best thing is to get you to the Saudi embassy but we’ll not ring to give them advance warning because if the phones are being tapped - and in Thailand that’s a strong possibility - and your captors had friends in high places, as I’m sure they did, there might be an attempt to recapture you, or even kill you. Don’t worry,’ he said as he saw the alarm flare in the boy’s eyes. ‘I’m here to make sure that doesn’t happen, but we need to approach it with care, just in case.’
Leaving the boys in the hotel room with a burner phone they could use to contact Harper in an emergency and strict instructions not to open the door to anyone but him, he hurried over to a nearby shopping mall. He returned after half an hour with some truly hideous American-style clothes for the boys: trainers, loud check Bermuda shorts, US college polo shirts with frat house insignia, New York Yankees baseball caps and pairs of wraparound dark glasses. He also had an equally tasteless outfit for himself.
‘Put these on, ‘Harper said. ‘They’re horrible I know and you don’t look American on a close inspection, but to a casual glance, we’ll all pass as Yank tourists.’
‘Why do we have to look like Americans?’
‘Because the USA is Thailand’s most powerful ally and the Thai military and their intelligence agencies will be more reluctant to risk an incident by manhandling American citizens than they would be for most other countries, including Saudi Arabia.’
Harper’s team had now already left the country, but he knew a couple of local heavies that he could use as back-up. They operated on the margins of the Bangkok underworld and had ridden shotgun on some of his shadier activities in the past. They turned up within an hour in answer to his summons, and walked flanking the boys when they set off, while Harper carried out counter-surveillance, making sure they were not being watched or followed. When they got closer to the Saudi embassy in Bangkok’s glitzy Bang Rak district in a bend of the Chao Phraya river, he left the boys and their minders in a coffee shop while he went ahead to scout out the entrance to the embassy.
Harper had already weighed up the pros and cons of approaching the building. All embassies tended to be under surveillance by agents of different intelligence agencies, domestic and foreign, friendly and hostile, and there was no reason to believe the Saudi one would be an exception. For a man who lived his life under the radar as much as Harper, being seen or filmed entering or leaving any embassy could be problematic, but the Thais and the Saudis were both long-term British allies, and there was no reason why a former British soldier and now a freelance security expert - which was as much as the outside world knew about Harper’s unusual line of work - should not be consulted on security matters.
He spent an hour observing the embassy, scrutinising the people loitering around it and those entering or leaving, before deciding it would be safe to approach the guard at the embassy gate. By-passing the long line of Thais waiting patiently to apply for Saudi work permits, he handed Faisal’s ID card to a security guard and said ‘Take this to the HOC - the Head of Chancery - at once.’
The guard was not used to being ordered about by visitors to the embassy, but something about Harper’s tone and bearing persuaded him that it would be wise to comply and he disappeared into the embassy. He returned almost immediately and ushered Harper through the security scanner and took him to an interview room deep inside the embassy.
An immaculately, very expensively-dressed man was waiting there, flanked by two armed guards. The HOC was in his early thirties and very intense-looking, with the corners of his mouth permanently downturned, as if in distaste, Harper thought, at some of the people he had to deal with and the things he had to do in service of his nation. The man wasted no time on pleasantries. ‘I demand to know how and where you obtained that card,’ he said, speaking in flawless, accentless English, ‘and where its owner can be found. I must warn you that if this is an attempt at more blackmail’ - Lex raised an eye at the word ‘more’ but made no comment - ‘then you are in the worst place in Thailand to try it. You are now standing in the Sovereign Territory of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and here the laws and customs of Saudi Arabia are in force. For stealing we can sever the left hand, for murder we can sever your head with a sword and for attempted blackmail the punishment is somewhere in between.’
Lex spent a moment trying to picture which part of the anatomy the Saudis might think was appropriate for a blackmail case, then gave up and handed the HOC the second ID card. ‘The
se two young men are nearby,’ he said, ‘but they need urgent help. I found and rescued them and will hand them over to your safekeeping, and for those efforts I neither expect nor want anything. They happened to have been captured by men with whom I have an ongoing vendetta, some of whom are no longer in a position to do them any further harm. However, there are powerful men who will have been angered by the losses they’ve suffered and who would certainly wish the boys harm if they should fall into their hands. I believe they may be at risk until they are safely inside the embassy. I will be happy to answer any further questions then, as will they - as far as they are able, because as part of their ordeal, both of them have repeatedly been injected with heroin. However, I rely on you to ensure there are no delays when we get here.’
‘I will arrange a team of our people to escort you.’
Harper shook his head. ‘I thank you for that offer, but that will merely draw attention to us and the sort of men we are dealing with won’t be deterred by mere manpower.’
The HOC hesitated for a moment but then gave him the assurances that he was seeking. ‘You and the boys will be admitted to the embassy immediately, but you will then be held in a secure area until their identities have been confirmed and your stories have been verified.’
‘As you wish,’ Harper said, ‘though I must again stress that what these boys need most of is urgent medical attention, so I hope delays will be kept to a minimum.’
He was shown out and, having made the usual series of counter-surveillance manoeuvres to make sure he was not being followed, he went to collect the boys. Both of them now looked very shaky, deep in the grip of heroin withdrawal - a feeling he knew only too well himself - but he eyeballed each of them in turn, telling them ‘If you keep your heads together now, within ten minutes you’ll be safe inside the embassy and whatever you need will be provided. Don’t let me down now.’
Plausible Deniability: The explosive Lex Harper novella Page 6