by Jake Needham
They hadn’t given her any photographs of the target, only a sketch that could have been almost anyone, but she did have pictures of the woman the target was meeting and they were a lot more useful. She had been counting on someone calling and narrowing down the time frame a little to limit the chance of misidentification, but now she realized there weren’t enough people going and coming from the hotel for that to be an issue.
If it hadn’t been for one bald, middle-aged guy, the hotel wouldn’t have had any business at all the whole time she had been sitting there. She spotted him the first time about three hours ago when he entered the lobby towing a Chinese-looking girl in a very short skirt who couldn’t have been a day over twenty. An hour or so later, they left. A couple of hours passed and then, to her complete disgust, the same man returned with another girl. She thought this one looked Thai and was even younger, but she wasn’t certain about that.
For some reason, she started thinking of the guy as the German. It wasn’t that he looked German; she didn’t even really know what that meant. Maybe this guy was American or South African or maybe he was from Iceland, but she still kept thinking of him as the German. She supposed whether the guy was a German or not didn’t really matter. Either way, watching an overweight, sweaty foreigner going and coming from a hot sheet hotel with a succession of hookers who looked like children got on her nerves.
The second time the German left with his hooker, she picked up the Remington and followed him through the scope. She kept the crosshairs on his head until he flagged a taxi on Serangoon Road and got into the back seat. She told herself she was only checking the sight lines and the lighting and gauging the downward angle of the shot she might eventually be called on to make, but she knew that was only part of the reason she followed the German through the Remington’s scope.
She had half decided. If nothing else happened and the fat bastard came back again with another of his kiddie hookers, she might shoot him just for the fun of it.
One of the burner phones suddenly erupted with the sound of a rooster crowing. She wished someone would check the default ringtone on these things before they put them into service. She really did. A simple trill or even, well, a ring would have been fine. The sound of a crowing rooster, on the other hand, was completely obnoxious.
Reflexively, she noted the time when she answered: 6:17pm.
“We have nothing for you yet,” said a male voice she didn’t recognize. “We have no additional information on either the fox or the rabbit.”
The target had been designated as the fox and the target’s sister, who was supposed to be coming to meet him at the Fortuna Hotel, had been designated as the rabbit. She thought these childish code names were downright silly, but she guessed it was all part of being one of the fellows so she let them play their little-boy spy games without arguing about it.
“Have you seen any indication that the fox is in the area?” the man asked.
“Negative. Not unless he’s disguised as a fat German who likes young hookers.”
There was a pause, as she expected.
“Say again?” the man asked.
“Never mind. Forget it. What was your question? Oh wait, I remember. Uh…negative. No sighting of the fox.”
“Is it possible you missed him?”
“You do know I’m here by myself, don’t you? I eat a little. I even pee occasionally, and I did take one dump. So, sure, I guess I could have missed him. If you wanted to be absolutely certain I didn’t miss him, maybe you shouldn’t have tried to run this deal on the cheap and come up with the budget for a full team.”
“This is a closely held operation, hunter.”
That was how they had designated her: hunter.
Fox. Rabbit. Hunter. These were sharp guys. Tough, hard-nosed professionals. The best she had ever known at what they did. But their creativity was for shit.
“We have eyes on the rabbit,” the man continued, “and she has made no move toward your location.”
That wasn’t a problem for her. She was used to this kind of thing. She could sit for days on a surveillance, almost unmoving, waiting for a target to appear. She had trained herself to sleep in ten and fifteen minute bursts. She had once gone for four days waiting for a target, lying on wet leaves under a Ghillie blanket and peeing on the ground. In comparison to that, this apartment was heaven. She was dry and comfortable; she had an actual bathroom; she was sitting in a real chair; the air-conditioner worked. She could wait indefinitely.
“I understand,” she said.
“What is your plan, hunter?”
“To sit very still and not pee any more than I have to.”
Sometimes the target appeared; sometimes the target didn’t appear. It didn’t really matter to her. Her job was to take the target if he did appear, not worry about whether or not he would.
“Maybe the rabbit will flush him,” the man added.
These ridiculous codes always somehow ended up weaving themselves into narrative absurdities, but for some reason nobody ever laughed. Maybe the rabbit will flush the fox. What a stupid thing to say. Perhaps she ought to laugh this time just for the hell of it. No, this humorless prick wouldn’t understand and then she would have to explain why she was laughing. She couldn’t be bothered.
“So what do you want me to do?” she asked instead. “If she doesn’t flush him, I mean.”
“It’s your call, hunter. I have no instructions for you on that.”
“I could always shoot the sister. I mean, why not? Otherwise all this was just a waste of time.”
Another pause. She listened to the man breathing and said nothing.
“Are you trying to be funny, hunter?” he eventually asked when the silence had stretched almost to the breaking point.
“If I am, I gather it’s not working.”
She listened to the man clear his throat. It was not a pleasant sound.
“Stay alert, hunter. We don’t think the fox will appear until the rabbit moves, but you can never be certain.”
She said nothing.
“Did you hear me, hunter?”
“Of course I heard you. I just thought your comment was too dumb to be worth a reply.”
“You’ll be notified if the rabbit moves or if I have further instructions for you. And one more thing…”
“Yeah?”
“Don’t fucking shoot the sister.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
TAY THOUGHT OF the Senior Assistant Commissioner in charge of the Criminal Investigation Department as a politician and a paper shuffler rather than a real policeman. The SAC certainly didn’t make a habit of getting out in the field. In fact, Tay was fairly sure he had never seen the SAC anywhere other than inside the Cantonment Complex.
Tan Kim Leng wasn’t even Tay’s direct boss. Tay worked for the Deputy Assistant Commissioner who ran the Special Investigations Section of CID. The SAC was his boss’s boss. The Singapore Police had a lot of ranks. A lot of ranks gave the bureaucrats more opportunities to keep people happy.
All of which was why, when Tay opened his front door, he was surprised to see the SAC ringing the bell at his gate. And why he went out to open the gate enveloped by an overwhelming sense of foreboding.
The body in the Singapore River wasn’t just another floater or the SAC himself wouldn’t be ringing his doorbell a few hours after he got home from the scene. It had to be somebody awfully important to bring the SAC out in person rather than simply delivering whatever message he had to deliver over the telephone. But how could the SAC even know whose body they had when no one else seemed to have any idea?
This couldn’t be good, Tay thought to himself. It really couldn’t.
“Good evening, sir. This is quite a surprise.”
“Yes, Inspector, I suppose it must be.”
To Tay the SAC looked more like a professor at a not very prosperous college than he did a policeman. He was small and slim and altogether unremarkable in appearance. This evening he wore the only thi
ng Tay had ever seen him wear: a white, short-sleeved, wash-and-wear shirt open at the neck that was tucked into dark wash-and-wear slacks. His glasses were rimless and inexpensive looking and they sat high on his long, thin face.
Tay led the SAC up the walk and into his house. Neither of them spoke until they were inside.
“Can I get you something?” Tay asked when he closed the door. “Coffee?”
“Do you have any whiskey?”
In spite of his best efforts, Tay was fairly certain he gaped in surprise. Could this be merely a social call? Surely not. He and the SAC were always professional, even cordial, but he would never describe their relationship as friendly. Tay had certainly never socialized with the SAC. Of course Tay never socialized with anyone at all, not really, but the point was he had never had any relationship with the SAC other than a strictly professional one entirely confined to the interior of the Cantonment Complex.
“Certainly, sir. Is Irish whiskey all right?”
“That’s fine, Sam. Neat, please, if you don’t mind.”
Tay pointed to the French doors. “I was just having a drink in the garden myself. Why don’t you go on out and make yourself comfortable and I’ll get that whiskey for you.”
The SAC glanced around Tay’s living room and through the paned windows of the French doors into the garden.
“You have a nice house, Sam.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“A very nice house.”
Tay gathered he was being nudged into explaining how a policeman could afford such an expensive house in a neighborhood like Emerald Hill. Everyone wondered, but most people were too polite to ask straight out.
“Did I hear somewhere that you inherited money?” the SAC asked while Tay was still making up his mind exactly what he ought to tell him.
“Yes, sir. From my father.”
“He was American, wasn’t he?”
“Ah…yes, sir. He was.”
Tay couldn’t see where this was going, and that made him a little edgy. What was the SAC going to ask him next? But the SAC didn’t ask him anything next. He just nodded once, walked to the French doors, and let himself out into the garden.
In the kitchen, Tay poured a couple of fingers of John Powers into another heavy tumbler, hesitated, then added a little more whiskey to the glass. He made himself another drink, too. Something told him he was going to need it.
Tay served the drinks and sat down opposite the SAC. “I only left the scene a couple of hours ago, sir. I’m afraid there’s not much I can tell you yet about—”
“I’m not here about your floater, Sam.”
For moment Tay felt a great sense of relief, and then suddenly he didn’t. The SAC had shown up at his house unannounced and now he was sitting here drinking Tay’s whiskey and looking grave. Whatever he had to say, it was serious, probably more serious than anything to do with the body they fished out of the river would have been.
The SAC hesitated and looked off into the distance over Tay’s garden wall to the lights in the hotels and shopping malls that lined Orchard Road. He sipped at his whiskey, then he took a deep breath and let it out.
“I received a telephone call this morning from a friend who is a high-ranking officer in the Indonesian National Police,” the SAC said. “He runs their intelligence division.”
Tay nodded.
“I trust him, Sam.”
Tay nodded again.
“He told me they have information Abu Suparman is either already in Singapore or soon will be.”
Tay stopped nodding.
Singapore is a good house in a bad neighborhood. Three hundred million Muslims lived in Indonesia and Malaysia completely surrounding the barely five million residents in the tiny secular city-state. Islamic terrorism in Asia may not get much attention in America or Europe, but it gets plenty in Singapore.
Abu Suparman called himself a Muslim cleric, but nearly everyone else thought of him as a violent, remorseless murderer. Suparman was Indonesian and he had been linked with nearly every outbreak of sectarian violence in Southeast Asia for over a decade. He was the messianic leader of a radical band of misfits who styled themselves as jihadists and took credit for every outrage perpetrated against non-Muslims in Indonesia or Malaysia or anywhere else in Southeast Asia.
Sometimes Jemaah Islamiah claimed the credit. Sometimes it was Abu Sayyaf or Mujahidin Indonesia or even occasionally Lashkar Jundullah or the Moro Islamic Liberation Front or the Legion of the Fighters of God. But regardless of the name they used, you could bet Abu Suparman was somewhere in the mix. He had vowed years before to bring about the destruction of all the governments in Southeast Asia and the establishment of a regional Islamic caliphate governed by Sharia law. And exactly how did he intend to do that? Simple. By killing as many non-Muslims as he could as well as any Muslims unlucky enough to get in his way.
Singapore had avoided the worst of it for a long while. In the rest of Southeast Asia, the outrages were as regular as clockwork. Suicide bombings in Bali; attacks on the Marriott and the Ritz Carlton in Jakarta; the kidnapping of foreigners in the Philippines; and a succession of beheadings in Southern Thailand. But in Singapore, all people knew of those things was what they read in the Straits Times. Asia’s gleaming city-state was untouched by the terrible brutality and violence that plagued its neighbors.
Until it wasn’t.
Tay had been in his garden when terrorists launched simultaneous bomb attacks on three American hotels on Singapore’s most famous and most expensive thoroughfare. He heard the explosions at the Hilton, the Hyatt, and the Marriott. He felt the concussions as they rolled through the earth.
When Tay ran out of his house to do whatever he could to help, he was caught in the secondary explosion the terrorists had set to kill as many of the rescuers as they could. If he hadn’t stopped next to an abandoned bus to stare at the thirty-story tower of the Singapore Marriott, cleaved exactly in half as if it had been sliced straight through by a giant ax; if he had not taken a couple of steps backward in an involuntary retreat from the horror in front of him and stumbled over a tattered mattress blown down into the road; if he had not fallen across the mattress and up against a disabled bus, Tay would have died there and then.
He would never forget the powerful pressure wave that blew a rolling wall of flames across what was left of Orchard Road. The very oxygen in the air ignited. The sudden release of gas, heat, and light made Tay feel as if the world were ending.
For many, it did.
This fourth bomb collected the thousands of shards of broken glass the first three explosions had created and hurled them back through the air like a cloud of razor-edged knives. Rescue workers caught out in the open were shredded. Most of them had to be identified through DNA tests since nothing was left of their bodies large enough for anyone to recognize. The heavy rubber tire behind which Tay had fallen had protected him. It was all that had saved his life.
Tay had wondered about that a lot since then. He had been spared by his own clumsiness while those less bumbling were sliced into pieces by flying glass and bled to death on the debris-littered pavement of Orchard Road. Each time he thought about it, he became angry all over again at the whimsy and fickleness of the uncaring, unjust universe in which such injustices were permitted.
The ruins were still smoking when Abu Suparman issued a statement through Jemaah Islamiah taking credit for the attack. There was, of course, no way to tell for certain if Suparman was involved or not. Tay had heard whispers the explosions were strictly a domestic matter, an attack on the rigid establishment that had governed Singapore from its very beginnings as an independent country, but no one wanted to say that right out loud so putting the blame on Suparman at least made conversation easier. When the security establishment laid the bombings at Abu Suparman’s extremely convenient doorstep, everyone nodded and that was that.
Terrorist attacks in Singapore? Had to be foreigners, didn’t it? No Singaporean could possibly be responsible.
Singaporeans all loved their country and their government, didn’t they?
Ever since the day the savagery had finally come to Singapore, regardless of who was really responsible for bringing it, the police and the Internal Security Department had been on high alert. Lunatics tried to blow up Singapore once and everyone knew they would try again, and then again, until they were hunted down and killed. Abu Suparman was number one on everyone’s list of most wanted men, but as far as Tay knew no one even had any idea where he was.
Not until now.
“Most of these Asian whack jobs used to claim an affiliation with al Qaida, but al Qaida has gone out of style.” The SAC looked at Tay as if he wanted to make sure Tay was paying attention, and Tay went back to nodding. “These days Abu Suparman says he’s connected to the Islamic State, ISIS. Maybe he thinks ISIS sounds more sinister, more threatening, more violent. Maybe it really is. We’re not sure, but we do know ISIS has rekindled terrorism in Southeast Asia after years of decline. There have been at least two thousand Southeast Asians in Iraq and Syria fighting for ISIS and some of these people are back now. They are well trained, battle hardened, and ready to fight.”
“But, sir, what does this—”
“The threat of ISIS in Southeast Asia is real, and the threat to Singapore is real,” the SAC said. “We’ve got to cut the head off this snake before it bites us again, and Abu Suparman is the head of the snake.”
The SAC tossed back the rest of the whiskey and put the glass down.
“I’d just tell you to get out there, find the bastard, and arrest him, but it’s not going to be as easy as that. The Internal Security Department got the same intelligence I did, but they got it a week or two ago. That’s why my friend called me. He knew ISD wasn’t going to tell us a damn thing about all this and he thought I should know.”
Tay doubted that was the real story, but he nodded anyway. Perhaps the SAC’s source in Indonesian intelligence really was a friend doing him a favor. In Tay’s experience, however, few things about relationships between international law enforcement agencies were that simple. Could Indonesia have another motive for leaking information that would push Singapore’s police force into a tug of war against its Internal Security Department? Of course it could.