“Shaka!”
Simon grabbed the man from behind and spun him around. He held a can of Mace in his hand, a silent gift from one of the police officers in Mapletree Anson plaza, and he sprayed it in Shaka’s eyes, a prolonged blast from a distance of inches. Shaka grunted, his head jerking to one side, cap falling to the ground. His right arm lashed out, and Simon saw something shiny and silver in his palm. Not a knife, but a weapon all the same. He was sure of it. He caught Shaka by the wrist, but even incapacitated he was too strong to control. Bending at the waist, Simon twisted the man’s wrist, forcing Shaka’s arm to his side. At the same time, he swept the assassin’s feet out from under him, causing him to topple onto his back. As he went down, Shaka struck out with his left hand, balled into a fist, the blow landing on Simon’s cheek, stunning him. For a moment, he relaxed his grip. Shaka shook his right hand free, rolled, was on his feet.
Steps away, London Li looked on in horror.
“Go!” shouted Simon. “Get out of here.”
But instead of running, she came closer, as if drawn to the spectacle, oblivious to the fact that her life was in peril.
“Go!”
The crowd parted. There were no cries; there was just an orderly retreat from the altercation, whatever its cause. Singaporeans were restrained in all things. All except an elderly hawker who, having decided that Shaka was the troublemaker, advanced on him, loosing a torrent of Chinese invective. Simon lunged at the old man, driving him away. Too late. Shaka staggered forward blindly, his right hand swinging in a wide arc, landing on the old man’s neck. The hawker fell back, a welt on his skin. He cried out in pain, but the protest died in his throat. His mouth opened wider. He collapsed to his knees.
An arm’s length away, Simon sprayed the Mace once more into Shaka’s face, a five-second blast, the South African recoiling, hands flailing, calling out, “Riske. You’re dead.”
Simon hit him in the jaw, an uppercut with everything he had, momentum carrying him off the balls of his feet. Shaka fell to the ground. Simon landed on his chest, knee to the sternum, driving the wind from him. He had liberated a further item from the Singaporean cop—handcuffs—and he threw one on Shaka’s wrist, clamping it as tightly as he could—payback for the brutal knots that had bound his hands and feet two nights earlier. The other cuff he attached to the leg of a dining table planted in the pavement.
The hawker fell against Simon, then slid to the ground. Foam issued from his mouth. His body spasmed. He lay still, eyes wide. There was no mistaking the scent of bitter almonds.
Simon took a handful of Shaka’s hair. “Guess I can hold my breath longer than you thought,” he said. He slammed his skull against the pavement, once, twice. Shaka fell unconscious.
Simon got to his feet, face flushed, dizzy with rage. He took London Li by the arm and started toward the south entrance to the market. “Don’t you check your messages?”
She fought to free herself. “What just happened? The old man…he’s dead.” A confused look, turning to consternation, then anger. “Who are you, anyway?”
“I’m the one who told your boss that you were in danger.”
Finally, she yanked her arm free. “Mandy?”
Simon nodded. “That man back there…it was you he was after.”
“My God. It’s true. What you said.”
“Yes,” said Simon. “It is.” They reached the main road. “Which way?”
“Where are we going?”
“Somewhere far from here. We need to talk.”
London Li started to the left, then stopped abruptly. “You didn’t tell me your name.”
“Simon Riske. With an e.”
Chapter 45
Herzliya, Israel
Are you seeing this?”
Danni Pine stared, transfixed, at the screen high on the wall of the Café Bohème in Herzliya where a cable news channel broadcast images of the Spanish embassy in Bangkok. A procession of gurneys leaving a side entrance. A line of ambulances. Horrified onlookers. A cordon of police officers. Then photographs of the victims. The sound was off, but it made no difference.
Her father, retired General Zev Franck, founder of the SON Group, looked over his shoulder and stared at the screen for a few seconds, long enough to digest what was going on and decide he didn’t need to see any more. He was a trim man, seventy years old, with a crust of white hair, his lined face tanned a nut brown, sparkling brown eyes ready for a fight. “Terrible,” he said. “Didn’t know that kind of thing went on in Bangkok.”
“One of the people killed was Rafael de Bourbon.”
Eyes fixed on his daughter, Franck evinced no emotion. He required no explanation as to who Rafael de Bourbon was or why he might be of interest to the both of them. Though he no longer took an active role in the company, he spoke with his daughter at the close of every business day to review all open dossiers. He’d followed her work on behalf of Luca Borgia every step of the way.
“It was Borgia,” said Danni.
“We don’t know that.”
Danni set her napkin on the table. “Did you know?”
“Know what?”
“That he was a gangster.”
“Please, Danni. This business…this has nothing to do with him.”
Danni pointed at the screen. “He did that.”
“Do you think I would have taken his money if I thought he was a gangster?”
Danni regarded her father, sitting there in his linen blazer, his fancy sunglasses and Gucci loafers. In that instant, she saw that he’d changed. Maybe he’d seen too much, done too much, hurt too much. Before joining Unit 8200, he’d been a founder of Israel’s targeted assassination program. When she’d first joined the Mossad, he’d spoken to her of his victories and his mistakes, happy to be freed from the bonds that forbade discussion of such matters. These days, he talked about his new Mercedes or his newer Swiss watch or his culinary excursions to London and Paris.
“I think you’ve lost your bearing, Papa,” she said, taking his hand.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You forgot where True North lies.”
“My daughter, the poet.” Franck freed his hand.
“Look at you. Your jacket costs as much as a major’s monthly salary. Brioni, right? You have your gold Rolex and your Italian loafers. You look like you belong with Fredo Corleone in Havana.”
“It’s a Breguet, by the way. And I’d prefer it if you said I belong with Michael in Lake Tahoe.”
“God knows, it happened to me. It’s like rot. You get used to doing whatever you think is necessary, breaking every rule, breaking the law, ignoring your conscience. It’s easy to believe that the means—no matter how twisted, how depraved, how ugly—are acceptable when the end is Israel. After a while you forget everything you know about right and wrong. There’s just the mission.”
“Danni, please, this isn’t the place.”
“You used to talk about them. The families of the targets. Wives, sisters, mothers, children. The ‘collateral damage.’ God, I always hated that term.”
“It had to be done,” said Franck. “I won’t apologize.”
“I don’t want you to. There was no alternative, at least not at the time. But after a while it stopped bothering you.”
“It never stopped,” said Zev Franck solemnly. “Never. I just chose to forget.”
“And now? We’re not protecting Israel anymore. We’re businesspeople. We make a product and we sell it. Daddy, the information we provided to a client led to a man’s death. Luca Borgia ordered Rafael de Bourbon’s killing.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I read some of the take.”
“Danni, the first rule is—”
“Never get involved in a client’s business. I know. But Borgia is a thief. De Bourbon threatened to expose him. Now he’s dead.”
“It is not our concern.”
“We are accomplices.”
“Why are you telling me this
?”
“Because I need your permission.”
“For?”
Danni leveled her gaze at her father. After a moment, he looked away. She saw something in his features she’d never before seen. Shame. It came to her then that it was him, that it was her father who’d given the Saudis the software that had led to the journalist’s death.
Zev Franck stood and buttoned his jacket. “You’ll do it no matter what I say.” He turned to leave. “But it’s a mistake.”
“And Daddy…not a word.”
Chapter 46
Singapore
Simon waved down a taxi at the corner of Gopeng Street. He held the door as London climbed in. She slid across the seat, pale, shaken. “What just happened?”
“Take a breath. It’s going to be okay.”
London threw her shoulders back, lifted her head. “Okay,” she said. “I’m okay.”
The driver asked her where she would like to go.
“Mapletree Anson tower,” she said, then to Simon: “We can talk in my office. I have to tell Mandy.”
“No,” said Simon. “Not there.”
“What do you mean?”
“Not safe. People saw you back there. At the outdoor market. We have to think some were taking pictures, video even. You’re a prominent journalist. Someone may have recognized you.”
“So?”
“They’ll tell the police. The police will come to your office.”
“And I’ll tell them what happened.”
Simon turned in his seat, facing her. “Okay, then. Tell me what happened.”
“I went to Tanjong market to meet Hadrian Lester—at his instruction. You showed up and stopped a man from trying to kill me.”
“Is that what happened?”
“You told me it did.”
“And it’s true. Every word. But I’m not sure the police will be so quick to believe you or me.”
“But the old man…the hawker…he’s dead.”
“And the poison that killed him was meant for you.”
“That can’t be…How?”
“Hadrian Lester set you up.”
“He’s the vice chairman of Harrington-Weiss.”
“And who are you investigating?”
The taxi arrived at the office tower. Police vehicles lined the curb, officers everywhere. The evacuated employees still milled about the plaza, not yet allowed to return to their offices.
“What’s going on?” asked London. “Why is everyone from the office outside? Look, there’s Mandy.” She opened the door, only for Simon to lean across her body and slam it closed.
“Bad idea,” he said. “We don’t know that the guy back there is the only one who wants to hurt you.”
London sank back in her seat. “This is a little much for me to take in. Who did you say you were?”
“My friend, Rafael de Bourbon is R,” said Simon. “He was killed in Bangkok two days ago by the same people who want you dead. Among them, Hadrian Lester. I was there. I witnessed his death. Go back to your offices and inside of ten minutes you’ll be speaking with the police, half an hour at the outside. Tell me something. Do you think a man like Hadrian Lester—rich, powerful, connected—has friends in the Singapore police department?” He waited until she said yes, however reluctantly. “Bet on it,” he went on. “I came here as quickly as I could to tell you face-to-face that you are in danger. I think I’ve been proven right on that count. It’s up to you. Trust me or trust Hadrian Lester.”
London considered this, then nodded. “All right, then. I think I understand.”
“Right now we need somewhere safe to stay for a while. Just a few hours while we figure things out.”
“My apartment.”
“Out of the question. We have to assume they have it under surveillance.”
“They?”
“Lester. The people he’s working with. The ones who sent a man to kill you.”
“We can go to my mother’s. She has a small home ten minutes from here.”
Simon shook his head. “We can’t bring her into this. Don’t you have a friend? Someone who’s not a relation.”
London considered this, then barked orders to the taxi driver. The car made a U-turn and headed south, toward the water. “I know just the place.”
“Where are we headed?” asked Simon.
“Sentosa Island. A friend’s apartment. It’s a security building. We’ll be safe there.”
Simon looked at the reporter. She stared back, arms crossed, eyes beseeching the world. Why is this happening to me?
And he hadn’t even told her about the cat yet.
The apartment of Mr. and Mrs. Michael Blume took up one half of the forty-second floor of the Drake Court Luxury Condominiums on Sentosa Island. Three bedrooms, four baths, in three thousand square feet. A mogul’s palace by Asian living standards. And decorated like one. Ming vases, lacquered screens, marble floors, jade carvings.
Simon and London sat with Mandy Blume in the living room. A picture window offered a view of the Singapore Straits. Vessels of every size plied the water from shore to horizon. Tugs, freighters, motor yachts, cutting white swaths through the dark blue seas. But mostly there were the big boys. The Panamax-class container ships—nine hundred fifty feet long, piled to tipping with thousands of rectangular containers—and the supertankers, low and sleek, longer still, some reaching fifteen hundred feet, moored to offshore gas lines or heading to all points bearing cargos of Indonesian and Malaysian oil. It was a view into the bloodstream of international commerce.
The time was just past six in the evening. Mandy had arrived ten minutes after them, heeding London’s plea for a safe place to rest up. She gave them a second cup of tea and a third dram of Irish whiskey as Simon explained in a level of detail appreciated by the two journalists (both taking notes as he spoke) the events that had brought him from England to Thailand, and now to Singapore. He concentrated on what he considered the salient moments: the meeting at the Bangkok Remand Prison and Colonel’s Tan’s evident allegiance to a higher master, his retrieval of the flash drive secreted in a bottle at the Little Havana, the feeling even then that he was being followed, and then the shooting at the Spanish embassy. He saw no need to describe the horror of it, instead drawing attention to the moment Tan received the call from an Italian named Luca, how everything spun out of control after that. He touched only lightly on the rest: his flight from Bangkok, the call to Arjit Singh (no names given, of course), his subsequent capture by Shaka and loss of the flash drive, and finally his escape out of Thailand.
London, in turn, briefed Simon on the fruits of her investigation thus far, though most of it he already knew from his conversations with Rafa and his more recent perusal of the files stolen from PetroSaud’s servers. She was as smart as she was pretty but cold and machine-like in her summation. Impressive and a little intimidating. A force.
“This story promises to be the biggest instance of financial fraud in the past fifty years,” she said in closing. “We’re looking at over thirty billion dollars of stolen money.”
London gauged him and Mandy for their response. Mandy expelled a breath, though she hardly looked pleased. If HW went down, and there was a good chance it would given the scope of Hadrian Lester’s malfeasance, her husband would be out of a job, and all this—the vases and teak and jade—might vanish in the blink of an eye. Or rather, the bang of a judge’s gavel.
“He can’t be doing it alone,” said London. “He’s got to have help, in compliance for one.” Compliance, the much-hated division of any financial institution charged with making sure its employees follow the letter of the law. “No way all of those funds’ investments with PetroSaud pass muster without someone looking the other way. This has been going on for too long to keep hidden. Lester has to have men at every level of the operation.”
“Agreed,” said Simon. “But there’s more to the picture. This isn’t just about money. There’s something else tying all these countries, th
ese fund managers, together. PetroSaud is only one side of it.”
“It’s Lester,” said Mandy Blume. “He’s behind it all. Scoundrel.”
“He’s part of it,” said. Simon. “Maybe a big part, but not all.”
“How do you know it’s about more than money?” asked London.
“A couple of things,” said Simon. “Hear me out.”
London and Mandy nodded, pens at the ready.
“The involvement of Colonel Albert Tan, for one. His behavior made clear he wasn’t acting only as a representative of the Thai police. He wasn’t there to oversee Rafa’s arrest. He had skin in the game. Why else would he fly to Ko Phi Phi to personally take Rafa into custody? Why would he leave a board meeting to make sure he was present when I met with Rafa in jail? Why all the goons following me? I don’t know if I can explain. He had orders to make sure Rafa didn’t get out of the country. My guess is that they came from Luca. Oh, and I checked…Thailand isn’t one of Hadrian Lester’s, HW’s, or PetroSaud’s clients. It’s something else entirely. Then there’s Juan Llado, the Spanish naval attaché killed at the embassy. Llado knew what was going down. In fact, I’d bet he was the one who disabled the cameras. He had a clean shot at Shaka…or whatever his real name is…He didn’t take it. He hesitated.”
“But Shaka killed him,” said London, checking her notes.
“He also killed Tan and Rafa and George Adamson. Like he tried to kill you and me. ‘No more questions.’ His words.”
“What will happen to him?” asked London.
“Jail, I hope,” said Mandy. “For a bloody long time.”
“I called a contact in Thailand,” said Simon. “The man who helped me get out.”
“Major Rudi,” London volunteered.
“Yes, I told him the Singapore police had the embassy shooter in custody. I’m sure he alerted his colleagues.”
“You don’t appear especially relieved,” said Mandy.
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