Singapore Sling Shot
Page 7
Simone wasn’t available to play tourist wife. She was at the funeral, as expected, so I did Ed from Perth as a solo act. I costumed up, including a broad-brimmed Akubra-type hat minus the dangling corks. Having schooled up with a guidebook, I headed for Changi Village. I had been there once in a previous life. I could have caught a bus, but playing the tourist for my character meant I didn’t know the city or the MRT and bus system. I cabbed it to the village and made my way to the jetty and a bumboat.
My ultimate destination, thanks to the guidebook, was the island of Pulau Ubin, also known as Granite Island, a sort of national park just a few minutes off the mainland. The trip only took fifteen minutes. The boat had a dozen or so people on it and it cost peanuts for the ride.
The island turned out to be a pretty laid-back sort of place, if you discount the million or so fish farms moored along the shore. The village information office near the end of the jetty provided me with another schematic map. While not to scale it gave me an idea about what was more or less where.
The village had a few small stores, a seaside restaurant and a fetish for bicycles. For a couple of dollars you can rent a bike from any one of half a dozen outlets. It’s a great way to get around and get yourself a sore arse in the process. I hate bicycles for just that reason.
I bought a couple of bottles of water and stowed them in my day bag. Then with my camera in hand, just like a regulation loopy, I set off to explore the island of Ubin. It was a few minutes to midday and it was both hot and humid. There was no cooling sea breeze to be found. Never mind, I wasn’t there to sightsee, I needed some serious exercise.
A few of my fellow passengers from the bumboat had decided to take the cycle option. With a lot of whooping and hollering, half a dozen youngsters shot by me as I plodded on along the road, heading to what my map told me was Pekan Quarry. The map indicated camping areas and huts all over the place and five former quarry sites, now filled with water. The granite moles had been busy once upon a time.
The contrast between the relatively deserted Pulau Ubin and Singapore, the island and city, was quite remarkable. For at least fifteen minutes I saw no one, and then a van loaded with people and bags went past, no doubt heading for one of the camps or the island’s sole resort.
I tired of the hard road surface and decided to explore the jungle. I feel more at home under the canopy, always have done. The bush scares some people, many people in fact, but to me it is like a homecoming of sorts. After all, I spent several years of my life in the jungle when based in Thailand with The Firm. Back then I frequently had Sami Somsak and Jo Ankar by my side as I spent much time doing what I did in Northern Thailand, Cambodia, Myanmar and Vietnam.
I found a narrow, barely formed track and followed it, moving deeper into the bush. Eventually I came to a house sitting in what had once been a clearing before the jungle started to reclaim it. The building was falling down. The windows were gone and the door had collapsed onto the porch that ran across the face of the structure. Abandoned rubber estates, the guidebook said. This was obviously one of them. Curious, I went inside.
It was as if the former residents had truly abandoned the place, leaving behind much of what they owned in the process. Perhaps this had been an alien invasion? There was furniture, crockery, cooking utensils, a wrecked bicycle, even an old television in a wooden console. Mouldering clothes were strewn everywhere. Beds had collapsed and bedding was rotting on the rusting springs.
What had caused the people to leave so suddenly without even taking their damn clothes? I’d seen similar in other places in other jungles. In many of those instances a rotting, bullet-ridden corpse or a pile of bleached bones indicated what had happened. Gang warfare, bandit raids, bad luck, they all caused chaos and death, particularly in places where the only law was the gun, and drugs were the local currency. But here in peaceful Singapore?
Whatever the reason for the sudden exodus of the people from the house, I moved on. I came across several others in an equally deserted and dilapidated state as I followed the pathway deeper into the jungle. I didn’t bother going inside to examine any of the other former homes. My curiosity is finite and the house I had already gone through reminded me of other times and other ruins. Those memories weren’t any I wanted to dredge back up or dwell on.
I pushed on into the jungle and the track began to climb up what I guessed was a hill in these parts. I was focussing better now as I slowly came back into jungle mode. Bird spiders as big as my hand hung on their webs strung between trees, patiently awaiting their prey. Most of these magnificent spiders are beautifully coloured. I’m not sure if that is to attract the birds or scare off predators. There are birds aplenty, so no doubt the arachnids live well.
I disturbed a wild pig feeding on a fallen coconut. The little porker scurried off into the undergrowth with a scolding squeal. Or perhaps it was a squeal of fright, I’m not sure which, not being an expert on pig talk.
I was sweating heavily. The excesses from several months were trying to find a way out of my body through my pores. I stopped and drank one of my bottles of water without taking it from my lips and then I set off again. I was really hammering my body. Okay, I know one day of exercise does not a fitness regime make, but a decent effort will do me some good. Won’t it?
I arrived back at the village late in the afternoon, and I was completely knackered, a total sweatball. I’d covered a lot of kilometres, mostly in the bush. I’d seen just about all the wildlife the island had to offer, including a whole family group of little porkers. If I’d wanted to, I probably could have engineered a snare or even rugby tackled one. However, I suspected the local rangers would not take kindly to me slaughtering their wildlife. So even if I had vaguely contemplated a feed of wild pork, I now settled on the domesticated variety.
The restaurant on the waterfront served up a good pork curry that I accompanied with some deliciously cold beers before catching a bumboat back to Changi Jetty. There was a cursory bag check on arrival, which surprised me somewhat. I found a cab to take me back to the city. When I dropped into my seat, I promptly closed my eyes and teetered on the edge of an exhausted sleep. Ed the Tourist from Perth was completely buggered. The expedition into the wilds of Pulau Ubin had been a big undertaking. I decided that as soon as I was delivered back to the Carlton, I would submerge myself in a long hot bath with a cold lager close to hand.
Simone was waiting for me in the foyer lounge when I arrived. I revised my plan for the evening. She had arranged a sitter for her boys and tomorrow was Saturday. She didn’t work Saturdays. Tomorrow she wanted me to meet the kids. That set alarm bells ringing way back in my brain. Whatever, I thought, we will have a picnic. In the meantime we have some time to ourselves.
10
You drop me here, thirty metres off shore and I swim to the landing. From there it’s up the ladder. I clamber around the steel plate at the top and into the observation post.”
“Will you use the tunnel or take the ridge line?” The map Sami had spread on the desk was actually a large-scale satellite photograph and it showed Fort Siloso and the body of the island back to the bridge in great detail. Sami’s finger was tracing the topside route. I shook my head.
“I’ll use the tunnel. I want to delay getting caught on camera as long as possible. When I come out of it I’ll be running. I’ll have maybe five minutes tops to get into the surrender rooms, grab the recorder and get back in the water.”
Sami nodded and dropped a key onto the table in front of me.
“For the door into the first surrender room,” he said.
“How the hell did you get that?”
“Singapore’s finest pickpocket managed to get an impression of it,” he replied with a smile. Then he laid a small strip of paper beside the key. “The alarm code for the main alarm. Standard thirty-second delay, and before you ask, we planted our own mini-camera focussed on the keypad. We recorded one of the guides setting the alarm and locking the place down for the night.”
“Too risky,” Sami responded. “Yes, we’ve had people in and out, and so has Lu. My observers have picked a steady stream of loiterers in the surrender rooms. They rotate about fifteen people through there every couple of hours. They go away, change a shirt, put on dark glasses or whatever and come back in singles and pairs. They’re using Lu’s hotel, the Silver Sands, as their base. It’s here.” Sami indicated a building situated about a half kilometre away from the fort entrance down Siloso beach.
I did some calculations. If all of Lu’s people were stationed there at night, I could stroll out of the Japanese surrender room and stop for a cigarette before I hit the water. Hell, I could probably even have a latte. I shook my head. I was dreaming. While most of Lu’s thugs might be down the beach, I would put the big money on the fact that there would be half a dozen close to hand and they would be in radio contact with those monitoring the cameras. These guys were most likely in the hotel.
“We really have only one chance at this, Daniel, and that is why it has to be you. It’s about a lot more than the money. This is about my half-brother and his family and the others. I want to bring Lu down, disgrace him, humiliate him and then crucify him, and that little recorder is the only thing that can do that. We have to do it right.”
“Okay,” I conceded, and he was right. Given any other building in any other location I’d have argued, but the unique location of the fort made getting away with the goods difficult enough, and having Lu’s loiterers in the surrender rooms was the clincher. They were just waiting for someone to turn up and retrieve the recorder. There was no alternative. The pick-up had to be done when the place was deserted.
“So where the hell is the damn recorder?”
“In the right sleeve of this man here.” Sami touched a button on his laptop and the face and upper body of a wax mannequin dressed in the uniform of a Japanese officer appeared. There was a wide, open-neck white shirt and gold braid on the right shoulder and also balancing off two bars of ribbons on the left. The dummy was wearing glasses, had a moustache and showed a lot of forehead. He was staring blankly down at a brown leather attaché case lying on the table in front of him. His waxen hands were resting on the table. I realised that I had taken several photographs of the same guy myself.
“Lieutenant-General T Numata, Chief of Staff, Southern Army,” Sami said. The name appeared as white block letters painted on a wooden plaque sitting on the table beside the attaché case. The image flicked back to Numata’s hands.
“Smart Stanley,” I said. The poor guy had had the presence of mind to choose the arm that lay at a slight angle across the body. The sleeve opening was partially obscured by the hand itself.
“He pushed it as far up into the sleeve as he could reach,” Sami said. The sleeve and hand came in for a close-up shot, filling the screen. There was no sign of the digital recorder. “The recorder is about the size of a cigarette lighter,” Sami added. “Basically it’s an MP3-type device that Stanley used as a personal note taker.”
“So the plan is to hit the surrender room, disable the alarm, get the recorder and get into the water straight out front. What about the proximity alarm?”
“I don’t think it will be an issue. One of my people triggered it. She accidentally dropped her camera over the railing. It appeared to be just a localised buzzer and sounded in the chambers themselves and The QuarterMaster Store below. It probably doesn’t go onto a monitoring switchboard.”
“You’re right,” I replied. “If I hit and run, it’ll only sound for a few seconds while I’m groping our little waxwork and anyway, Lu’s people will have already seen me on camera so they’ll be moving. That being the case, what’s a buzzer between friends?”
“Precisely. You grab the recorder, get out of the building and hit the water. We’ll be waiting. A most simple plan!”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “What could possibly go wrong?” I muttered dryly. Mentally my fingers were crossed. The great god Murphy and I were absolute enemies. The bastard had played his games with me too many times for me to ever think anything was going to go according to plan—ever!
“They must come for it. We know that Stanley made a very long telephone call from his hospital room. He told someone where he had planted that cursed recorder.”
Thomas Lu was pacing the lounge of the Silver Sands’ presidential suite. The room was virtually empty of furniture. The naked walls were stripped to bare plaster. The carpet was gone and only a layer of rubberised underlay muffled the sounds of the agitated man’s movement.
There was a trestle table against one wall, and on the table sat four small television monitors. Two men sat watching the screens. Another man sat on a straight-backed chair to the left of the table. He wore a radio headset connected to the console that was positioned on the rung of a ladder that leaned against the wall beside him.
Thomas Lu was talking mainly to himself. He was a worried man, scared even. Nothing had gone as he had planned it. Stanley Loh had rejected the offer to sell. He had recorded the threats and the pleas that he, Thomas Lu, had made to the dead man. Now that damn recorder was a sword, a very big, sharp sword and it was hanging directly over his head.
Lu knew that whomever Stanley Loh had contacted from his hospital bed would come for the recorder and doubtless the evidence it contained would be used against him, to destroy or blackmail him.
Thomas Lu had been certain that with Loh’s family held captive, he could have made the man talk and tell him where the recorder was hidden. Loh and his family would still have been killed, of course, but he would have played the lie long enough to have retrieved the recorder. As it was, Loh’s final act of getting himself shot had foiled even that alternative. The man who killed Loh was dead a heartbeat after Loh’s body hit the floor, killed by Lu in a fit of frustrated rage.
Now Thomas Lu stopped pacing. He went and stood at the suite’s huge picture window. Below him lay Siloso Beach and beyond the breakwater islands was the grey ocean. As far as the eye could see there were ships of all sorts, all riding at anchor, waiting to enter the harbour and load or unload their cargo.
On board one of those ships Lu knew was a container that held two billion American dollars. One of those billions was for him. It was a combined finder’s fee and the balance of what he needed to secure his full share in Intella. The other billion was for the share he promised he would secure for the Colombians.
The problem now was that Lu hadn’t managed to secure that share from Stanley Loh to fulfil his end of the bargain, and unless he retrieved the recorder there was no guarantee he would have any shareholding whatsoever in the project himself, and certainly nothing for the South Americans. He needed that recorder and it’s damning evidence.
“They must come,” Lu whispered to his reflection in the window as dusk gathered outside. “They must come for it.”
11
Tonight we go!”
“Tonight it is,” I replied. “Have you got the odds and sods I asked for?”
“Yes, no problem. At 19:30 get the MRT to Marina Bay. When you come above ground just walk straight down the pathway. There’ll be a car waiting.”
“Got that,” I replied and we hung up. When the time came I would walk the couple of hundred metres from the hotel to City Hall MRT and grab the red line. Ed the Tourist mightn’t be up with the play on the MRT but his alter ego always used it in the past in preference to a car. The MRT is the quick, painless alternative to Singapore’s above-ground traffic and the system is easy to understand and use. In my wallet I had a travelcard from a previous visit and it still had a few dollars worth of travel on it.
“What should I do until evening? I asked myself. It was only a few minutes after ten in the morning. There was a long day
stretching out ahead of me. I hate the pre-mission waiting around and always have. I guess it’s the same as a professional sports person. You want game on just as soon as you can. Once the ball is kicked off, the nerves go and the training cuts in. I hoped that despite my being out of shape, my training and instincts would get me through what lay ahead. Not for the first time, I promised myself that I would not get so far out of shape ever again.
It wasn’t as if I didn’t still have muscles. There was muscle, not flab. I hadn’t gone that far downhill, however my body felt heavy. My breathing, thanks to a constant diet of cigarettes, still wasn’t what it ought to have been.
Too late to remedy that now!
So what do you do when you have time to kill and you can’t, for the sake of your life, go hang out in a bar? Right, you go to the movies, which I did. I watched Sylvester Stallone save the world and just to rub it in, Bruce Willis did it all over again in Die Hard 49 or something similar.
When I left the movie complex in the late afternoon, I had seen more men die in those four hours or so than had died in two world wars. The explosions were getting bigger and bigger and louder and louder. I wished then that I could have the pair of them, Stallone and Willis, in character and with live ammunition at my side that night. Not really, but sometimes it’s depressing to be a mere mortal, even when you know that what you’ve just witnessed is pure Hollywood farce.
Back at the Carlton I ordered a light meal via room service. Pasta with fish, the perfect athlete’s food. Not that I’m an athlete as such. It’s just that if things didn’t go to plan I could be swimming further or running longer and faster than anticipated, and maybe, just maybe, a little dietary help would make things easier for me. Christ, enough of the soliloquys!
Casting my uncertainties into the darkest corner of my brain, I finished my meal. Then I showered and dressed for the night to come.