Singapore Sling Shot

by Andrew Grant

  There were only ten seats in the aircraft. The bed at the rear was for Carlos. He had slept fitfully off and on throughout the flight. Because of his fear of flying, every change in engine noise or change of direction had caused him to wake up and lie, eyes wide, anticipating disaster. Only the death of his beloved younger brother had made him undertake the flight half way round the world.

  Now Carlos had abandoned the bed and was seated in one of the plush leather recliners that were staggered the length of the aircraft. In addition to the elder Mendez, there were six men seated in the main cabin. Up front was the Express’ crew of two.

  Mendez had never been to Singapore before. He had heard it was tiny and totally buttoned up. If that were so, he wondered how his brother, who had come from one of the most violent countries in the world, could have met his death here at the hands of the man Thomas Lu had identified as Sami Somsak.

  The pilot came over the intercom advising that landing was imminent and advising his passengers to fasten their seatbelts. Carlos did as instructed and prepared himself for the landing, masking his extreme apprehension from his subordinates with a scowl as he gazed out the window.

  The tarmac came up fast. The elder Mendez winced and then the tyres bit with a squeal and the small jet was on the ground. The roar of the engines being put into reverse caused the drug boss to feel a moment of near panic, but then the sound faded and the jet slowed and turned off the runway.

  As they taxied to the nearest terminal building, Carlos Mendez composed himself. He was now in Singapore. There was business to do. There was revenge to be brought and when that was completed, he would fly back to Bogota with his brother’s body.

  The Colombians stood out amongst the mainly Asian arrivals at Terminal One. They stood out not because of their swarthy bulk, but because their clothing was flamboyant. Several wore shiny shirts and suits, and were covered in gold rings, neck chains and watches. Large diamonds sparkled in earlobes. Dark glasses topped off all the bling. Watching them as they came through the doors into the main concourse, I couldn’t help thinking that they looked exactly like the cold-blooded killers and drug thugs they really were.

  Carlos Mendez was easy to identify. He was the man who wasn’t carrying anything. All of the others had one bag each. Some carried two and towed suitcases on wheels. The elder Mendez was in the lead. The others came behind in a loose group. Despite the dark glasses, I could sense their eyes were everywhere at once.

  We were four to their seven: Sami, Jo, K and me. None of us were armed. Carlos Mendez called a halt in the centre of the concourse. He was obviously looking for Thomas Lu. Sami stepped forward while we three fell in at his shoulder. Sami had asked me to look dangerous. For me that meant taking the black route. Yet again, I had on a pair of black Levi’s, black kickass cowboy boots and a black shirt with a light leather jacket over it—black, of course! Like the new arrivals, my costume was completed by the addition of a pair of Ray Bans. As an additional touch, I had put both my wallet and my cellphone in my inside left jacket pocket. The bulge suggested that there was a gun holstered there. That wasn’t accidental, of course. We knew that the Mendez crew would be unarmed. Only a complete idiot would have attempted to enter Singapore carrying a weapon.

  Mendez’s attention was suddenly focussed on Sami, who advanced to within a few feet of the Colombian and stopped. I watched the men behind Mendez stiffen. Bags were lowered to the floor. Jo was standing slightly behind to Sami’s left. His right shoulder was towards the Colombians, hiding his left side from their view. K was standing to my left. He was wearing a loose khaki jacket with several bulges. Were we armed? That was the question that was going through the minds of the Colombians. If so, they were at an extreme disadvantage.

  “Mr Mendez, Mr Lu is indisposed. I am Sami Somsak. I believe we need to talk.”

  Carlos Mendez stood motionless. I could feel his X-ray eyes beaming out at us through the dark glasses. Sami, his plastered wrist in a sling again for pure effect, stood waiting for the Colombian’s response.

  “Is Mr Lu seriously indisposed?” Mendez asked.

  “Not at the moment. However, the level of his indisposition I will leave to your discretion once we have had our talk. I invite you and your companions to come with me. I have transportation and I have arranged accommodation for you.” Sami paused. “I assure you that this is in no way a set-up. I know you think I killed your brother. I didn’t, Lu did, for the money. I will prove it to you, so please follow me.”

  With that, Sami turned. We, his three minders, did the same and walked slowly across the concourse, headed for the exit. I glanced behind. Mendez was following, as were his thugs. So far, so good!

  There were two stretch Mercedes limousines and a van awaiting us when we emerged from the terminal. The van was for the luggage. At Sami’s invitation, Mendez and one of his men got into the first Mercedes with him. Jo got in front with the driver, while I got in the rear of the second landship with the other five Colombian thugs. K got in front with the chauffeur.

  We pulled away and those of us seated in the lounge-sized cabin of the big limousine looked at each other. I made with the small talk.

  “Have any of you been to Singapore before?”

  The six looked at each other. One of them, obviously an English speaker, translated. When he had finished, they all shook their heads in unison.

  “This is a first time for us,” the translator said in thickly accented but clear English. “We have come to take Raymond home,” he added.

  “It was unfortunate that he met a man he could not trust,” I replied. “This man also murdered the family of Mr Somsak.”

  The translator did his thing for the others. I had the feeling that he was not senior amongst the drug Mafiosi. One individual, a man with an aesthetically thin face and narrow lips, seemed to be the boss here. He looked more Italian than Spanish Colombian. He sported a large diamond in his left ear and had a diamond-encrusted Rolex the size of a dinner plate on his left wrist. The translation was directed mostly at him. He said something in Spanish and the translation came back at me.

  “This man Lu, he is still alive?”

  “For the moment,” I replied. “But I think not for long!”

  The words were relayed back to Diamond Ear. He nodded and we sat in silence until we arrived at the Shangri-La Hotel. Sami had figured that the Mendez outfit might as well stay where Carlos’s dearly departed brother had stayed, albeit briefly.

  When the formalities were over, Sami and Carlos Mendez, along with Jo and the man with the diamond earring, went upstairs to the suite Sami had reserved for the Colombian drug boss. The other five hoods had been allocated rooms on the same corridor as the suite. K and I went up in the elevator with them. The bellhop pushing the loaded baggage trolley had more than an inkling that these guys weren’t your average tourists. He nervously showed each man to his room, distributed their luggage and didn’t hang about for any tips.

  K and I waited outside the double doors of the suite as the Colombians went into their individual rooms. No raised voices sounded from inside Carlos’s suite. I opened the door a crack. There was a small foyer inside. Jo and Mr Diamond were both seated in there, waiting. There was no conversation. Jo didn’t speak Spanish and the other guy had no Thai or English. I eased the door closed, but not before Jo made eye contact. If the Colombian had noticed the door open, he didn’t acknowledge it.

  What was happening in the lounge beyond the foyer? Would Mendez believe Sami? Would he accept the offer Sami was going to make him? Sami wanted half a billion dollars for his loss and inconvenience and for the Colombians to return home and forget Intella. In return, Mendez would get Thomas Lu on a plate and the remaining one and a half billion dollars. Time very much would tell which way this particular cookie crumbled.

  Carlos Mendez listened to Sami Somsak’s proposition, his face expressionless.

  “Through his own greed and pressure from you, Thomas Lu killed my brother, his wife, two chi
ldren and all his staff. He killed your brother Raymond when they took delivery of the money, which he then shifted before setting the warehouse on fire. He blamed me, of course. We found where he was keeping the money and did take it from him. In retaliation, Mr Lu firebombed my brother’s offices and kidnapped the women who worked there, holding them to ransom for the return of the money and a chance to kill me. We turned the tables on him and now we are here.” Sami paused and took a sip of mineral water. Mendez followed suit, but his choice of drink was brandy.

  “I was going to kill him myself,” Sami said. “I was going to cause him so much pain that he would beg me to end it.”

  “Why did you not do so?”

  “I decided that he would be a gift to you, along with one and a half billion dollars of the money you shipped to him. I keep the remaining half a billion for inconvenience and damages and, of course, as a delivery fee for Mr Lu into your hands.”

  Carlos Mendez spluttered into his drink. The offer the Thai gangster was making was preposterous at first glance. Then the Colombian started to laugh. It was a deep, rumbling laugh that came from way down in his gut.

  Outside the door, Jo and the thin-lipped Colombian looked at each other. This was not a sound that they expected to hear in this place at this time.

  Sami smiled at Mendez’s mirth. The Colombian put down his glass and removed a handkerchief from his pocket. He dropped his glasses onto the table and wiped his eyes.

  “Oh, Mr Somsak, I believe your account of events and I admire your business sense. You know, as I do, that in our industry, half a billion dollars is neither here nor there. It is the principle of the thing that matters. Yes, I agree to your terms.”

  “There is more,” Sami said, watching the smile on the Colombian’s face freeze. “You do not get a share in Intella.”

  “But why not?”

  “Intella is mine, Singapore is mine and Thailand is mine,” Sami replied simply. Carlos Mendez scowled.

  “We have difficulty investing in legitimate businesses in the Americas because of the cursed United States. I must invest here. There is nowhere else.”

  “Yes there is, and I can help you do it.”

  Mendez sat and stared at Sami Somsak. The man puzzled him terribly. He knew of Sami’s reputation; he had researched him well through his underground connections before boarding the flight and coming to confront him. Now Sami was offering to help him.

  “Where and why will you help?”

  “China,” Sami replied. “I will put you in touch with the people who can help you treble your investment in legitimate business in a matter of months. As to why? Maybe I’m growing sentimental in my old age,” Sami said in a voice that made a lie of the words. “You lost a brother and I lost a brother to Thomas Lu, and in a perverse way that puts us in the same camp. Also, if you refuse to stay away from Singapore and Thailand, I will have to kill you.”

  Carlos Mendez blinked. In his world, he was used to making threats and indeed killing or having people killed. However, the Latin temperament often raised the blood level and words and threats were delivered with hot passion. Having this man sitting opposite him deliver an ultimatum and talk of death as if he were simply discussing food items on a menu was totally alien to the Colombian. He could, however, plainly see in the Thai’s eyes that his words were a truth and not an idle threat.

  Mendez sat and considered the proposition. He knew that in this world, Sami Somsak’s world, that the man in front of him was king, very much as he himself was king in his own world. Mendez well knew the entire planet was divided into kingdoms. Each kingdom had its own monarch. Sometimes those kingdoms went to war against each other, but for the most part, they co-operated on business of mutual interest in the quest for greater profits. Unnecessary wars only served to weaken both sides, and often a third player would gain dominance over the distracted and weakened combatants and defeat both.

  Carlos Mendez was a realist. He would never wage a war that he couldn’t be sure of winning. He made his decision.

  “I agree.” He had accepted that he and Sami Somsak were both kings and now they were to become allies.

  “Good,” Sami said simply. He picked up his glass of Evian. Carlos Mendez raised his brandy and the glasses touched.

  31

  It was the morning of the next day. With Sami and Carlos Mendez now suddenly good buddies, I figured it was time for me to split.

  I knew that despite gloves, protective clothing and everything else, there would be something of me somewhere. That’s the problem with DNA. The Singapore police and government authorities were pulling out all the stops to find the perpetrators of the crime wave that had suddenly hit the island-state. It would just take one little piece of evidence and the game would be over. You can’t continue indefinitely doing what we had been doing in such a confined area without something going seriously wrong. Despite their portrayal in many movies, cops ain’t stupid. They have systems and eventually those systems are going to pick up a thread and turn it into a rope with a noose at the end. So Ed Davidson, sans the beautiful Mavis, was going to move back to Hong Kong.

  I’d heard that Thomas Lu was still alive in a warehouse in Pasir Ris. Whatever plans Sami and Carlos Mendez had for him, I had no idea and I wasn’t particularly concerned. I’d come here and done what Sami had needed me to do. The irony, of course, was that in the end, retrieving the digital recorder from the surrender room had virtually been all for nothing. But hey, that’s life; sometimes things just turn out that way.

  I was packed and ready to go. There was a 13:50 flight out and I was planning on being on it. There was a knock at the door. I hadn’t called to have my luggage, such as it was, picked up. I went to the door and checked through the peephole.

  There was no porter waiting at the door. It was Simone! It seemed I was going to miss my flight.

  Thomas Lu had been sitting in his own urine for forty-eight hours. He had been given nothing to eat, just warm bottled water. His shoulder was on fire. Infection was beginning to set in.

  No one had been to see him, to torture or torment him, or even to re-dress his wound or kill him. His keeper, an unsmiling Chinese man, simply opened the door, shone a torch inside and then shut and locked the door again. Twice the guard had tossed a water bottle at Lu’s huddled form but nothing else.

  Despite being sick and hurting, Thomas Lu was still thinking coherently and clearly. He had gone beyond the initial shock of both his injury and capture. Now it was time to try and survive. Thinking helped him deal with the pain in his shoulder. People slipped out of handcuffs easily on magic shows and television. He had no illusions that it would be that easy, but could he open the handcuff attached to his good arm? Or rather, could he open the cuff that was attached to the water pipe?

  The floor of the room was covered in debris, much of it windblown leaves and grasses pushed through the wide gap under the door. However, there was more. The inner walls of the room had once been lined with wood and many of the planks had rotted and fallen or were hanging. There were nails and nails could be used as lock picks.

  Lu used his foot to drag the nearest fallen plank to him. There were nails, several of them. The wood was old and brittle. Using his leg and hip, he forced the plank to within the reach of his tethered hand. He reached for one of the three nails in the end of the plank. The first didn’t move, however, on the second, the wood had splintered. The nail came free easily. Lu grunted and examined both the nail and the handcuff. It had to be a simple lock. The only problem was managing to work on it with only one hand. The solution was to use his chin to hold the band of the cuff as far up his arm as he could to hold the chain taut, while he held the nail between his thumb and forefinger and worked on the lock on the other cuff.

  Lu started his attempt to open the cuff with wretched determination. He knew that unless he got free, he was dead. It was a simple equation.

  Simone apologised for what she’d said to me. It was shock, she said, and I quite believed
her. Who the hell wouldn’t have been shocked after what she’d been through? We made up. Guilt or whatever produced a passion in her that was far in excess of any of the highly charged lovemaking we had enjoyed together in the past. It was torrid.

  Later, spent in the extreme, we lay sprawled on the wrecked bed. I phoned reception and extended my booking indefinitely. All thoughts of returning to Hong Kong were banished, for the time being at least.

  We ate an early room-service dinner and divided our evening between the bath with its spa jets and the bed. Her children were both staying with school friends—a treat for them, she said. Now that she had a guaranteed income and no need to work, Simone was relishing her new-found freedom. It was a tremendous evening, right up until my cellphone went.

  A voice on the other end told me Thomas Lu had escaped.

  32

  He somehow got the handcuff off the pipe. When his guard came to check on him, he was waiting. He’d found a length of metal bar. The guard’s brains are spread over the walls.”

  “Shit!”

  “Yes, Daniel. Shit indeed! I’ve moved the money again and cleaned up the warehouse. I’m making arrangements to shift Carlos’s balance to Shanghai. We have people looking for Lu, but I don’t know if we’ll find him in Singapore. I suspect he’ll have gone to KL or Bangkok for surgery. I have people checking. However, I doubt he’ll have travelled under his own name or passport.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “I’m not sure there is anything you can do,” Sami replied, sounding almost dejected. “We’ll just have to wait for him to resurface.”

  “Bugger!”

  “Indeed, Daniel. I’ll call if I have anything new.”

  “Okay!” I muttered almost absently as I flipped my phone shut. Should I head home as planned or stay and try and do what I could to help in the search for Thomas Lu? Sami had reasons for keeping Lu alive in the first place, I could understand that, but it ran against the grain with me.