Chapter 33
December 26th, 2004. Phuket. Airport
Jack was a nervous wreck. What was Mina doing? He should have driven back to Patong beach to pick her up. His mother was asleep and Jen was stroking her head. Her eyes seemed vacant. They were still traumatised from their recent misadventures and Jack knew he’d have to find them some help when they got back to the States. Normal people don’t get over kidnappings in a matter of moments. He was still amazed at Mina’s resilience after all her ordeals at the hands of Wheatley. Maybe it was hatred for the man that kept her from collapsing. What was she doing? They couldn’t wait that much longer, it was almost 7:30 and they had already missed one flight to Bangkok. He’d called her mobile phone many times and she’d never answered. He hoped she’d forgotten it in their room and that nothing more sinister had happened. After switching off his phone for the the tenth time to avoid being traced, he turned it on again and this time noticed he had a text message. He opened it and immediately wished he hadn’t.
I have Mina. Same deal. Meet me 9am. Patong Beach. Chiang Mai Restaurant.
Don’t forget the photograph.
Jack wanted to hurl his phone against the wall.
‘I knew it,’ Jack said out loud. ‘I should’ve gone back to the bungalow.’
He looked at his mother and sister, and made up his mind in an instant.
‘Mum, Jen, I’m putting you on the first plane to Bangkok. I’ve also organised your connecting flight back home.’
‘But Jack, what are you going to do? Where’s Mina?’ asked Jen tearfully.
‘You have a two hour gap between the arrival in Bangkok and your departure for the US. I have to stay here until Mina arrives.’
‘We’ll wait with you Jack,’ she answered.
‘No Jen. You must go. It’s all arranged. You’ll land in Phili.
Uncle Frankie will pick you up. Mina and I will see you when we get back home. We’ll be fine.’
One look at her stubborn brother left her defeated. Jen took her mother’s arm and they walked briskly, passports in hand, to the departure zone. He stood there for a few more seconds, watching them go and then rushed out of the hall. On his way out he placed a few personal belongings, including his laptop, into a locker, but kept his small rucksack and the fake photograph of the tablet, which he placed in an envelope. He jumped into a cab and offered the driver triple the fare to get to Patong beach as fast as he could. He drove like a madman through the countryside and Jack arrived on Patong beach just before 8:00 a.m.
As he paid the driver the agreed fare, Jack heard his stomach growling. He realised he hadn’t eaten since dinner the day before. He noticed a Starbucks café on the beach and decided to grab coffee and some food, as he still had one hour to go. As Jack pushed the door open, he suddenly felt sick, as if all his insides had been turned upside down. A powerful tremor had shaken the café and the people sitting inside had felt the sharp rocking motion too.
They all looked at each other in surprise. Three American kids huddled around their parents, started screaming. The parents tried reassuring them, but they seemed as apprehensive as their children. They quickly ordered a few mango smoothies to distract their children, which seemed to work momentarily.
Two young Swedish men were having breakfast with an Israeli couple. The group’s diving gear was scattered all over the floor. Markus, one of the Swedes, a tall blond hulk with a bronze tan, turned to the others excitedly:
‘Did you feel that, guys?’
‘Yeah, that was a close one! Maybe we shouldn’t go diving after all?’ the Israeli girl wondered.
‘Don’t tell me you’re scared, Irit?’ her boyfriend asked her.
‘Irit? Scared of anything?’ Markus laughed.
‘What about you Stieg?’ she asked the Swede, ‘are you afraid?’
‘No, dude. I don’t feel anything anymore so it must’ve been pretty far away. Let’s go!’
Jack’s hands were trembling. He sat down, his hands on his thighs as he breathed in deeply. ‘It’s the earthquake!’ he thought. ‘It was true after all.’
But at least it meant that the earthquake was over now, and regardless of what it had caused in another country or island in the Indian Ocean, Thailand was now safe. ‘It’s over. Now I can focus on dealing with that Wheatley bastard.’
He thought about the restaurant, Chiang Mai. It was a swish restaurant on the sea front and not very far from where he was. It was a slightly elevated building, isolated from bungalows and guest houses by a dense row of coconut trees. It had a good view of the beach and the seafront. As Wheatley was obviously a megalomaniac, Jack guessed he’d probably have booked the entire restaurant to avoid any witnesses. He caught sight of a local boy he’d seen hanging around the hotel the other day. He called him over.
‘Hi! You remember me?’ asked Jack.
‘Yes Sir, I carried your luggage.’
‘Ah. Of course you did. What’s your name again?’
‘Noi, sir.’
‘Noi, I’m Jack. Could you do another small errand for me? I’ll pay you well.’
The boy’s eager eyes widened in anticipation, ‘Yes Sir, no problem, Sir!’
‘OK. I have a meeting at the Chiang Mai restaurant at nine, and I want you to wait for me here with this bag,’ Jack said, handing him his rucksack. ‘When I phone you, you come to the restaurant with the bag.’
‘That’s all sir?’
‘Yes. I’ll need your phone number and here’s half the cash,’ he said, giving him $40.
Patong Beach. Chiang Mai Restaurant
Oberon Wheatley and Natasha Mastrani were having tea on the outdoor terrace of the Chiang Mai restaurant. Oberon was reading a newspaper and Natasha was checking emails on her laptop when they felt the earthquake. Within minutes he had received fifteen emails on his blackberry from various researchers and his centre in Mumbai. But none of them satisfied his hunger for explanations.
‘Information,’ he thought, ‘I need accurate information.’
Something was nagging Wheatley, a splinter in the back of his brain; something he should be thinking of right now, but couldn’t recollect. The sky was blue and the sun was shining on his face. He stopped checking his blackberry and tried to remember this elusive fact. He placed his phone neatly on the table, at equal distance between his cup of tea and the bread basket. He had always liked space between objects to be exact; it helped him think properly. Natasha noticed, but did not comment; she liked his penchant for details and his exactitude in preparing his plans and business strategies. ‘Natasha, I’m glad we have the place for ourselves.’
‘I rented the entire restaurant for the day, Sir,’ she replied rather formally.
He smiled, seeming pleased with himself. ‘I presume, my dear, that our friend Jack didn’t sleep much last night?’
‘I guess. Waiting to contact him until the late morning was a nice idea,’ she replied.
He looked at her for a moment and could not decide if he enjoyed her flattery or found it irritating.
‘Is our lovely Miss Osman still asleep?’
‘Yes sir. I’m sorry.’
‘You had the Hillcliff women on board the yacht and you lost them. You had that little Iraqi bitch in your grasp and you drugged her up to her eyeballs!’
‘The important thing is that she didn’t have the photograph with her. She was on her way to meet Hillcliff, so it was obvious that he had it,’ she said to Oberon.
‘Yes,’ he replied, ‘but that’s not the point. I wanted to question her about contacting NOAA. How much of the stuff did you inject her with?’
Natasha was about to answer when he suddenly felt he was on the brink of remembering the idea he was desperately searching for.
‘Sir?’ she said, breaking his chain of thought.
‘What? Damn you! I was about to remember a detail,’
‘My men have just told me that Jack Hillcliff is on his way.’
‘Ah,’ he replied, focusing his a
ttention on the matter in hand and dismissing all other thoughts, ‘good. Go now Natasha. I’ll welcome the Major.’
Jack was in his element, now that the wheels of action had been set in motion. He looked at the boy, who returned his gaze with a reassuring air of confidence as he left the café. He took his time as he walked towards the meeting place, affecting an air of self-confident nonchalance. The beach crowd was a strange sight. 8:30 a.m. and the beach was already full of tourists from every country in the world; Belgians joking with Germans and Americans, the young Swedes checking their diving gear with the Israeli couple. He heard people speaking Spanish and French as he walked past the holiday-makers. Some were walking by the waterfront, others were laying down to get a back massage from a cute Thai girl. Now that he thought about it, he didn’t see many Thai people enjoying the beach. They were too busy taking care of business. He passed a few British men lying on the beach snoring. He couldn’t figure out if they were early risers who had just arrived and fallen asleep again, or if they had dropped dead drunk on the beach the night before after partying heavily.
He arrived at the Chiang Mai restaurant, a select establishment that catered for wealthy holiday-makers who enjoyed being cut off from the riffraff. Wheatley was sitting in the shade under a large parasol, flanked by two bodyguards. He saw Jack from a distance and waved to him to approach. Jack looked around the restaurant but didn’t notice any other goons. He walked straight up to the table.
‘Hello Major,’ said Oberon condescendingly, as he stood up to shake Jack’s hand ‘I’m Oberon Wheatley, but call me Oberon. I feel like we’ve known each other for years.’
‘Hi,’ replied a stone-faced Jack, keeping his hands firmly at his sides.
‘Not to worry,’ Oberon said with a large sweeping gesture of the hand, ‘there’s no-one here but us. Would you like a drink?’
‘Thanks, no. Where is Mina?’ asked Jack.
Oberon nodded to one of his bodyguards, who handed Jack a pair of binoculars.
‘If you look down the beach, right to the end, near the wall, you’ll see a small shack. She’s standing there.’
Jack took the binoculars and found the spot indicated by Oberon. He recognised Natasha standing next to Mina.
‘That’s not good enough. I want her here next to me when we do the deal,’ said Jack.
‘Hmm. Where’s the photograph? No, let me guess. You don’t have it on you but somewhere close by,’ said Oberon.
‘Correct. I’ll call someone to bring the photograph when I’m satisfied that Mina is OK.’
‘Fine,’ said Oberon.
He picked up his mobile phone and rang Natasha.
‘Bring Miss… bring Mina to the restaurant,’ then raised an eyebrow at an irritated Jack, ‘Satisfied?’
‘I’ll make the call when they’re here.’
‘Aren’t you being overly suspicious?’ asked Oberon.
Jack didn’t react to Oberon’s facetious tone. He chose to ignore him and remain businesslike. He watched Natasha and Mina walking down the beach, slowly approaching the restaurant. People on the beach weren’t paying much attention to them as they were too busy staring out to sea, watching flocks of birds seemingly gone mad, flying frantically towards the coast and then inland. Jack shuddered with a sense of foreboding but kept his thoughts to himself, especially as Wheatley and his men hadn’t noticed anything.
Hawai. NOAA, Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre
Dr Jim Carson had received the first seismic data from stations in Australia earlier in the morning. This data had immediately been forwarded to his fellow seismologists in Indonesia, Thailand and Sri Lanka with a warning of a potential tsunami. Each of them in turn had called him to confirm they’d received his tsunami warning. But he didn’t know more right now. There simply wasn’t enough data. There he was trying to coordinate information from various local centres, but it would take much more cooperation between them to be able to issue an actual tsunami warning in all confidence. He rushed down to the main desk and asked the secretary for the telephone number of the South Indian bureau, which hadn’t contacted him since he had first sent off the data. Bob Rear, the secretary, seemed very nervous and almost stuttered as he read him the number.
‘What’s wrong Bob? We’ve had other scares in the past,’ said Carson.
‘It… It… It’s not that Dr Carson.’
‘Well what is it?’
‘Someone called two days ago. I thought it was a crank call.
I’m still not sure what it was.’
‘What are you talking about?’ he asked impatiently.
‘A major in the US army told me he had classified information according to which an earthquake was going to occur today.’
‘Two days ago? That’s impossible.’
‘I know. I tried explaining this to him, but he hung up on me,’ Bob lied.
‘That’s a real shame. Did you get his name or his number?’ asked Carson.
‘No. He didn’t say.’
‘That’s not good enough. Bob, next time someone tells you a tsunami is about to occur, patch him through to me immediately. Maybe there is a classified military research project on earthquake detection that we are not aware of. We can’t afford to dismiss information out of hand, especially when it turns out to be correct.
‘With hindsight, I…’ Bob began.
‘Just do it next time,’ said Carson cutting him off mid-sentence.
‘I’m so sorry sir.’
Jim Carson was furious. Until five minutes ago he thought he was at the head of one the most advanced seismic detection centres in the world. But here was a secret military researcher who had somehow managed to detect an earthquake two days ahead of the event. As a seismologist he couldn’t understand how that was possible, but as a scientist he had to accept the evidence when it stared him in the face. He would make every effort to find out who had called the centre two days before and what he knew exactly.
Thailand. Patong beach. Chiang Mai restaurant.
Natasha stepped onto the terrace, pushing in front of her a dishevelled Mina, who seemed to hesitate with every step. Natasha hardly concealed her gun. Jack walked up to them.
‘Mina. Are you OK?’ he asked her.
She seemed dazed, and tearful as if she’d been drugged.
‘I’m not feeling very well,’ she murmured weakly.
He turned around to meet Oberon’s cold gaze and asked angrily, ‘What’s going on here? Did you drug her?’
Natasha took a step forward and answered for Oberon, ‘Be happy nothing worse happened to her. She’s been so out of it, I haven’t even had the opportunity to have her raped.’
Jack turned around to face Natasha, brimming with barely restrained anger.
‘I should’ve dealt with you on the yacht last night,’ he spat.
‘You should have, big boy,’ she answered, keeping a safe distance between her and Jack.
Oberon was enjoying this banter but he had more pressing things on his mind.
‘Don’t you have a call to make?’ asked Oberon.
Jack dialled Noi’s number.
‘Hi there.’
‘Hello sir. Do you want me to come now?’
‘Yes. Don’t forget the bag.’
‘I’m coming,’ the boy answered and hung up.
‘It’s on its way’ Jack said to Oberon.
‘Good,’ Oberon replied. He turned to Natasha. ‘What’s going on out there? What are all those people looking at?’
‘I’m not quite sure,’ she answered looking through the binoculars, ‘the water’s edge, which is normally right up close to the promenade has receded far out to sea. There was some frothing and bubbling, but most people don’t seem to be particularly bothered. The locals seem to be focused on trying to catch fish trapped in the remaining pockets of water.’
‘How strange,’ said Oberon, feeling a shiver run down his spine.
Jack threw another cursory glance at the people on the shore, and turned pa
le as he realised what Natasha had just said. The frothing of the water and the sea suddenly receding had to be linked to an earthquake. Was it linked to the earlier tremor, or a sign of another one to come? They all looked at each other as the wind suddenly changed, and more birds, this time by the thousand flew inland. A rumbling sound like thunder seemed to roar from a distant place and the volume steadily grew. A number of people on the beach looked up for helicopters or airplanes, but the blue sky was as beautiful as it was empty.
The young boy Jack had called arrived at the restaurant. Oberon stood up to greet him. But Jack was quicker, and pulled him aside next to Mina. He stood in front of them. Before Wheatley had time to pull out his gun, Jack had kicked Natasha’s gun out of her hand, pulled a sharp knife from his pocket and grabbed Natasha by the throat from behind.
‘Leave that gun where it is,’ Jack ordered Wheatley.
Oberon looked at him with disdain. ‘You have what you want. Give me the photograph.’
‘Pass me the rucksack Noi,’ said Jack to the terrified boy.
Noi handed him the small rucksack. Jack threw it over to Wheatley, still holding Natasha at knifepoint. She knew better than to move a muscle, Jack was not a man to be trifled with. One of Wheatley’s men picked up the rucksack, opened it, and took out an envelope, which he handed to him.
Oberon feverishly opened the envelope and pulled out the photograph. He examined it and seemed satisfied. He put it back into the rucksack, which he slung over his shoulder.
‘I had planned a very different ending to this meeting. I don’t think you fully understand who you are dealing with, Major Hillcliff.’ Wheatley levelled his gun at Natasha’s head. ‘I’m sorry my dear,’ he said.
‘Mr W… Oberon, please!’ pleaded Natasha, all her usual composure gone.
Oberon hesitated for just an instant. He lowered his gun a fraction but then he aimed and fired. Natasha was hit straight between the eyes and crumpled to the floor.
The 13th Tablet Page 29