by Andrew Grant
“Good,” Mendez responded. “Raymond is flying in tomorrow. He is staying at a hotel called The Fullerton and he will contact you when he lands.”
Thomas Lu felt his blood run cold. Raymond Mendez was the youngest of the brothers, and arguably the craziest. In his brief time in Bogota, Lu had learned to fear him. In a warehouse owned by the brothers he had seen the aftermath of a session where Raymond Mendez had tortured and later dismembered a police informant with a chainsaw. Mendez apparently had been laughing the whole time he was wielding the saw.
At the time, Lu knew he had been shown the macabre scene as a warning of what would happen if he had any thoughts about double-crossing the brothers. Now, the fact that the Mendez cartel had sent Raymond to look after their Singapore business interests did not bode well for Thomas Lu.
“Did you hear what I said?”
“Yes, Carlos, Raymond is arriving tomorrow and staying at The Fullerton.” For a moment the absurdity of a psychopathic low-life like Raymond Mendez staying in one of Singapore’s grandest hotels caused Thomas Lu to stifle a laugh of sorts. “I will look forward to seeing him.” That was Lu’s second lie but Carlos Mendez showed no sign of detecting it.
“Good,” Mendez purred. “I hope everything goes smoothly.”
The not-so-subtle threat wasn’t lost on Lu.
“I’m sure it will,” he responded.
“And the arrangements for processing the money?”
“They are all in place.”
These arrangements meant that when the money was delivered to Lu, he would then use an intricate combination of ghost companies and a dozen other financial devices to launder it over time and channel it into the Intella coffers as required.
“It will be good doing business with you,” Carlos Mendez said. “I will come to Singapore and we will celebrate in style when the business is done.”
“I look forward to that,” Thomas Lu lied yet again as the line went dead. He hung up the telephone and sat, his pale face positively ashen. Lu had returned to his luxurious Nassim Hill Road penthouse only an hour previously while the hunt for any remaining gunmen continued on Sentosa. He had been delayed for only a few minutes at the roadblock on the bridge while his car was searched.
Now, sitting upright in his thickly padded leather executive chair, Lu’s eyes didn’t register the trappings of his wealth. They couldn’t see beyond the bloody image of Raymond Mendez’s dismembered victim. Raymond’s unfortunate victim’s hands and feet lay scattered, along with legs severed at the knee and thigh, arms at the wrist and shoulder. The man’s genitals had been taken first and apparently stuffed in his mouth while he was still alive. The torso, bearing deep saw cuts, lay in a pool containing litres of blood. Raymond had used the severed head as a football, reputedly laughing as he kicked it around the warehouse, all the time shouting, “I am Maradona, I am the greatest.”
Thomas Lu shuddered. The whole slaughter house scene had come straight from the archives of hell itself. While Lu himself was a cold-blooded killer, Raymond Mendez was a complete and utter sadistic maniac.
“What am I going to do?” Lu whispered. He now had no access to Stanley Loh’s Intella development share. Every one of the partners had received, by special delivery, a letter from Loh’s solicitors indicating that control of their deceased client’s shareholding in the development had reverted to Stanley’s brother and business partner. The letter didn’t indicate who that person was, saying at the earliest opportunity a meeting of all the parties should be convened and at the meeting, their new partner would be revealed. The letter suggested a meeting on Friday night. That was two nights away. Thomas Lu had two days to find the recorder or track down the unknown business partner.
Lu had absolutely no idea that Stanley Loh had a brother, especially one he had been in partnership with. Who was the brother, and how could he, Thomas Lu, find him and persuade him to sell before the meeting? Did the brother have the digital recorder? Had it been his people in the battle at the fort? Lu had people desperately trying to find the identity of the brother.
Lu stood and went to the bar. He seldom drank, but now he poured himself a large tumbler of Chivas. He gulped at his drink, leaning against the bar for support. At the sound of the telephone he started, slopping the liquid. He slammed his glass down and crossed to his desk, shaking the whisky off his hand as he reached for the receiver of the ornate, old-style telephone.
“Yes?”
Thomas Lu listened to the person at the other end of the line in silence. If his face had been ashen before, now his complexion was a sickly grey. Lu’s eyes, unprotected by the dark glasses he habitually wore, bulged in his head. He blinked several times and hung up the phone without a word.
“Sami Somsak,” Lu whispered. For a moment he swayed like a drunk. He had to grab the edge of the desk for support.
“Of all the people,” he whispered, “of all the people in the fucking world, it had to be him.”
16
It took me twenty long minutes to swim from one side of the harbour to the other. Apart from almost being run down by a tugboat and having to dive to avoid the light from a patrolling chopper, I made it. I was cold and felt sick from exhaustion and the fact I had swallowed half of the foul water in the bloody harbour basin. My limbs were like lead. I was under the wharf, standing up to my waist in water. On the other side I had swum past several ladders as I made my way across the face of the wharf. These were just steel rungs set in the concrete pillars. There had to be similar ones on this side.
I vomited up bile and bilge water. Christ, I was cold and I was shaking. I was very close to hypothermia. I pushed back into the water and made my way along the wharf face; the cliff-like hull of another giant container ship was on my right side. Far above, I could see the blazing lights of the container cranes working.
I came to a ladder and without hesitation, I started climbing. There were only a dozen rungs and as soon as I was high enough to see over the edge of the dock, I stopped.
The place was insane. There were lights everywhere and shadows that flickered and vanished as the huge container mechanisms worked. There were straddle carriers of all sizes and there were trucks of all sorts, some with trailers. This was the world of boxes: giant rectangular boxes in every recognisable colour. The whole world in a box, I thought, as my mind started to go off on a tangent of its own. Fatigue was crushing me. I dragged myself back to the task in hand.
My next problem was how to get from the edge of the wharf, across a wide open concrete apron, and into the cover offered by the alleyways created by the stacks of containers. The answer wasn’t that long in coming, as it turned out. A blue-and-white Toyota utility with a flashing red light in the centre of its roof appeared away to my right. It was travelling slowly along the wharf in my direction. There were two men in it, one driving, the other leaning out the passenger window looking at the ground. My first instinct was that this was some sort of inspection. The utility was moving slowly.
I went down another rung and waited. I could see the reflected red light from the utility bouncing back from the flank of the ship above me.
I waited until I figured it was past me and then I eased back up the ladder. The utility was ten metres away and moving on at that same pace. I glanced back the way it had come and saw no one, just the endless stacks of containers and the giant machines that moved them.
I climbed the last rungs and slipped over the edge of the wharf. I didn’t hesitate now. I ran for the shelter of the nearest containers. No doubt there were CCTV cameras here and guards, armed guards, but I was going to rely on speed and what shadow I could find to remain invisible.
The alley I ran into stretched for a hundred metres, pushing deep into the heart of the container jungle. It was a metre and a half wide. Narrower bisecting alleyways ran off it parallel to the wharf at intervals. I looked up and the containers stacked eight or nine high almost created a reverse vertigo effect.
I crossed two intersections and almost didn’t make i
t across the third. I barely managed to duck back and avoid the wheels of the big straddle carrier that crossed the alleyway in front of me. It was moving from left to right. I waited until the rear wheels passed in front of me, then ran on. From that moment on, I paused at each intersection to check for any more of the huge machines. My fixation on the dangers of cross traffic, however, was almost my undoing. What I hadn’t figured on was the absolutely enormous straddle carrier that used the alleyway I was running down. I heard it before I turned and saw it coming after me. The wheels on this monster virtually filled the gap between the rows of containers. I sprinted to the next corner and ducked around it. I figured with Goliath coming this way, the little guys would keep out of his way.
I was right, sort of. The big guy rolled by and I was congratulating myself on being a clever bastard when another of the smaller carriers came hunting for me. I ducked back to what had become my superhighway and let the green thing roll on past. Goliath was at a standstill fifty metres away stacking containers or whatever was going on up there. I jogged on towards it. When he came back, I would carry on. In the meantime, while I waited for him to move and watched for the side traffic, I tried Sami again. This time the signal was good.
“I’m across the water in the middle of the container farm. I’m aiming for those blocks of flats on the skyline.”
“We’re not far away. Let me find out what they are and I’ll get back to you.”
Goliath was on the move, heading back my way. I checked out the next side alley for little brother and got out of the way. The huge tyres rolled past me and the way forward was clear again. I started off once more. I could see the end of the containers ahead of me. There was a road or roads, and trucks were rolling across the face of the container alleyway.
“Spottiswood Park is what you can see. The railway station is between you and it. There is a road on the park side of the lines. We’ll wait for you there.”
“Affirmative,” I replied and carried on. I no longer felt hypothermic. My suit was almost dry and the activity had warmed me up again. I just felt completely shagged and that tiredness almost caused me to step under the wheels of yet another of the smaller straddle carriers. Small, in this case, was a relative term. The little guys were still enormous, it’s just that when compared to Goliath, they seemed much smaller.
Whatever, I was close to the end of the alleyway when the green machine came zipping out of a side alley. I stumbled and almost fell under its rear wheels as it charged on by.
At the end of the rows of containers at last, I huddled in the shadows and tried to take it all in. There was a wide strip of concrete that ran off in both directions. Vehicles were moving on it. To my left was what appeared to be an office complex. There was an access gate complete with gatehouse to my right. The gatehouse was occupied. I could see just one man inside.
As I watched, a utility, maybe the same one I had seen earlier, rolled up to the gate and stopped. The gate man came out, exchanged words with the men in the truck, then, laughing at something one of the occupants had obviously said to him, went back into his office to open the gate. The utility drove off, turning onto the highway beyond as the electronic gate swung shut. I couldn’t figure out if the road outside was part of the container complex or of the outside world. There didn’t appear to be any other traffic on it but for the departing Toyota. It was almost 05:00. Perhaps, if it were a regular highway, then this morning at least Singapore was a late riser.
So, should I try and climb what I figured was the perimeter fence, which was at least four metres tall and had the standard angled top covered with razor wire? Or should I go out through the gate? There would probably be alarm sensors on the wire. Maybe it was electrified as well. As I pondered, my answer came in the form of a truck and trailer unit.
There was a container on both the truck deck and the trailer. The driver turned in towards the gatehouse. Now I could see there were cameras covering the gate and, yes, they were angled along the fences. I was going to be on video and if there actually was an eagle-eyed soul watching a monitor somewhere, I was going to be seen. Again it was a calculated risk. Watching monitors is a pain and generally those charged with doing so get bored shitless and find other distractions. If the monitor for the cameras I could see was in the gatehouse, then the newly arrived truck was probably distracting the man inside. I hoped that was true in this case.
The truck driver went to the gatehouse carrying a clipboard. It was my time to go. I stood and crouched like a half-folded pocket knife, then sprinted for the trailer unit. I didn’t hesitate, but slid under it. There were enough cross members under there to hang on to. I lay on the concrete panting and waited, praying there were no alarm bells going off somewhere.
There was the sound of a vehicle door being slammed. I grabbed for handholds and hooked my feet up out of the way and waited. The trailer lurched, the truck’s engine revved and I was on my way out of the container farm. At least I hoped so.
The truck rolled through the gate and started to turn to the left. As the trailer started the turn, I dropped off and lay flat while the rig roared off. Now, lying on a road of any sort is not a particularly desirable pastime, so as soon as the trailer was gone, I got to my feet. There was no traffic at all on this stretch of road but for the rapidly vanishing truck. Was I outside the damned container complex or not?
An alarm klaxon was sounding from inside the container farm. Then a siren joined in. Had they seen me or was something else going on in there? I could see the flashing lights of a security vehicle racing along the internal road towards the gatehouse. Had someone in a control centre belatedly reported seeing an intruder? Whatever, I had to get as far away from here as quickly as possible. Hell, that had been my entire life for the last few hours. Get away from the fort, get away from Sentosa, and get away from the fucking container farm. Part of me had had enough of running. I wanted to go to sleep.
I sprinted across the road and there was another fence, but this time there wasn’t any razor wire and it was only a couple of metres high. I climbed over it easily enough and dropped down a low bank.
In front of me was a wide multi-lane road and there were vehicles, not a lot, but it appeared Singapore was indeed waking up and on the move. I was standing on a wide kerb. There was no footpath. A pedestrian here was going to draw unwanted attention, especially one dressed as I was. I waited until the road immediately in front of me was clear and sprinted across.
It was starting to get light. The sirens and alarms were still sounding. A police car came speeding down the highway I had just crossed. Were they after me? I still didn’t know.
There was another fence ahead of me. Man, was I getting sick of fences. Again, this wasn’t a particularly serious one. I climbed it and realised that I was at the railway lines. I crossed them and, yes, damn it, there was yet another fence.
“We see you, Daniel.”
“I need a drink and a smoke and a long fucking sleep,” I replied, scrambling over what I hoped was the final hurdle. But it wasn’t. There was a road of sorts beside the railway line and beyond that I could see Sami’s Mercedes. The lights flicked on and off.
The last fence had either fallen down in part or someone had driven through it; plastic strip filled the gap. I didn’t have to climb. I simply stepped over the tape. Sami’s driver was holding the back door of the Mercedes open. I fell inside and the door closed behind me.
“I’m fucked!”
“Well done, Daniel. That really was something.”
“Tell me about it!” I pulled off my gloves and dropped them onto the floor at my feet. My hands were wrinkled and soft from too much water. I fished the vinyl pouch out of my zip pocket and passed it across to Sami who was sitting in the front passenger seat. Then I spread out across the back seat, closed my eyes and went to sleep as the car moved off.
17
It was mid-morning by the time I woke. The rear windows of the Mercedes were open. Someone had taken my sneakers off and re
moved the headlamp, communications unit and hood and put a cushion under my head. There was a rug covering me, and that was probably what woke me. I was cooking.
I was in an underground car park. The place appeared to be full of vehicles. A man sitting on a chair against the wall by the front of the car stood and came towards me as I pushed the rug aside and sat up. The door opened. It was K. His full name was unpronounceable, so years ago he’d switched to just using the initial K. He was one of Jo’s former squad guys. Like Jo, he had spent more than a year and a half in the UK at Stirling Lines with 22 SAS. He was tough, highly trained and well-educated and spoke English fluently. We’d worked together on several occasions back in the good old days.
“Good day, Dan. Long time, no see.” K gave me a handshake and a grin. “Sami said for you to please come up to his office when you woke up.”
“Sure,” I agreed. K held out a packet of wipes.
“Maybe you’d like to remove your makeup first.”
I glanced at my face in the driver’s mirror. I looked like a refugee from a black-and-white minstrel show. The chemically treated wipes lifted the greasepaint off easily enough. When I’d finished, K passed me a pair of sneakers, new ones. Sami had thought of everything.
I put the shoes on and got out of the car. Now my minder handed me a coat, a classic trenchcoat. I had to chuckle. If Simone were to see me in this, she would crack up. Her guess that I was some sort of spy would have been totally vindicated. I slipped into the coat while K closed the windows and locked the Mercedes. He led the way to the elevator. He obviously had instructions to get me out of public view as quickly as possible. In the lift he produced a key, put it in the panel and sent us skyward.
Simone was at her desk this time round. She gave me a smile.
“Mr Davidson, how nice to see you again. I like the coat!”
For a moment I stared blankly at her and then I remembered my assumed identity. I was obviously still punch-drunk.