by Andrew Grant
The remote-controlled gate of the outer wall gave access to a narrow car bridge that led to a second gate in the inner wall. This wall had a gatehouse built into it and was always manned by a guard armed with a sub-machine-gun. Did I also mention that there were CCTV cameras everywhere? There was another entrance and exit to the palace: a hidden tunnel that ran from the underground garages back into the small mountain the palace was built into. The tunnel emerged in a warehouse in a street half a mile away, and was big enough to take Tuk Tuk’s largest armoured tank. Armed thugs and booby traps guarded the disguised tunnel entrance. Not even the Thai Army could get through that one.
Both gates slid open simultaneously as I approached. I was well and truly expected, it seemed. I drove on into the huge gardened courtyard I remembered so well. There was a heavily armoured Lincoln Pullman parked in the white pebbled parking area. The ageless Lincoln was a real heavyweight beast, akin to a Centurion tank. It was very probably the same limousine Arune had intended vaporising. I parked beside the behemoth and got out. Choy was waiting, standing motionless in front of the Lincoln like one of the many priceless marble and bronze statues that decorated the whole area. The Cabbage really was the only ugly thing there, with the possible exception of the big black limousine and me, but compared to Choy I was Pierce Brosnan.
The Cabbage was motioning me to follow him inside. He started away and I fell into his wake as he led me away along a white marble pathway spanned by fountains and pools of hundred-year-old carp. It was a truly beautiful place, no doubt due to Sakura’s influence. Her class and serenity juxtaposed Tuk Tuk’s violent power. Yin and Yang, the crippled philosopher in my brain muttered. That was the thing: the hard and the soft, the beautiful and the ugly. Without one you could never truly know the other. That was Tuk Tuk and Sakura.
Choy and I passed through tall, black glass doors into the cool of the main building. The massive foyer was almost as large as the courtyard. As with the gardens, the theme was white, with marble the colour of the purest snow dominating. Serene white was Sakura’s colour, just as blood red was Tuk Tuk’s.
They were both waiting, standing side by side at the balustrade on the mezzanine level above. I started up the wide staircase while Choy remained at the foot of the stairs, as watchful and as spiteful as a junkyard dog.
Sakura glided forward, smiling, and I felt my heart immediately do a back flip. If anything, she was more beautiful than the last time I had seen her all those years ago. She was dressed in a pair of simple white trousers and an equally simple white top. There were small gold earrings peeking out from under the gleaming cap of jet-black hair. Her eyes were enormous, separated by a tiny elegant nose. Her lips curved upwards in a genuine welcoming smile. Those lips, they were just about perfect, touched as they were with a slight shade of rose that glowed against her alabaster skin. She was stunning. There was no other word for it.
‘Daniel,’ she said in the clear, singsong voice I had heard in my dreams numerous times since my very first meeting with her. ‘It is so wonderful to see you again.’ She extended her hand and I took it gingerly. It looked so fragile, so cool and smooth. But she squeezed with a sudden pressure that belied the illusion she was delicate and weak. Then she came closer and stood on tiptoes to kiss me on the cheek. ‘So very, very good to see you again.’
‘And you,’ I replied, ‘the most beautiful woman in a land of beautiful women.’ I looked into her eyes and could have fallen in as she laughed away the compliment, but I could see she enjoyed it. It would have been so damned easy to fall in love with this amazing creature, or the ideal she represented. I looked beyond her to see Tuk Tuk standing smiling at me. It wasn’t the gloating smirk of a man showing off his trophy, but rather a genuine smile. Sometimes that man could be so fucking confusing. Sakura swung to my side and took my arm, drawing me forward with her. ‘I will make tea and then I will leave you men alone to discuss what you will.’
The tea ceremony was a traditional Japanese one. It was held in a small lounge of polished wood and glass panels set back off the mezzanine. Thank god we didn’t have to sit on the floor. I hated that. Instead we sat at a modified table with a pit for our feet and thick cushions for our behinds. It was comfortable in every way.
Despite the fact she wasn’t dressed as a geisha, Sakura’s ceremony was every bit as elaborate as those I had partaken of on my visits to the Land of the Rising Sun. It was a pleasant and quite beautiful interlude. Very civilised and civilising. The tea helped get rid of the remnants of my hangover. Almost too soon, the ceremony was over and our smiling hostess departed, leaving Tuk Tuk and I alone. Choy appeared.
‘We have the boats, Daniel. Two of them: a prawn scow, and the other a highly modified deep-sea trawler,’ Tuk Tuk said as he removed a cigarette from the gold case that Choy passed to him. He pushed the case towards me. I smiled, declining, and took the pack of cursed Marlboros from my shirt pocket. The radio transmitter wasn’t in this particular pack. Choy held a flame under Tuk Tuk’s cigarette tip, and then mine.
‘Crew?’ I asked.
‘We have three divers coming up from the south. The boat handlers are all sailors used to the Andaman. The guards will all be my men. They will be well armed and they will use the trawler. It is a smuggler’s boat, very fast, but it looks just like any other boat of its kind.’ Tuk Tuk smiled the self-satisfied smile of the cat that would soon get the cream. ‘So, Daniel, in five days the boats and the crews will be ready and waiting for you at the dock at Ranong. It just remains for you to pass over the details of their destination so they can plan fuel and supplies.’
‘Lord Loughborough Island,’ I replied. Tuk Tuk glanced at Choy who left the room, no doubt to fetch a map. Tuk Tuk and I sat in more or less companionable silence while we awaited his return. I had a hand-held GPS in my kit. It was programmed to get us within half a mile of what we were looking for. The exact co-ordinates of the vessels were committed to memory. Survival was high on my personal agenda and I was not going to be giving away more than I needed to at this point in time. I was wondering if Choy was coming with us. Tuk Tuk had already indicated that he himself would not be sailing on the Andaman.
Choy rejoined us carrying a large framed map of southern Thailand and the Andaman coast. We cleared space for it on the table. Tuk Tuk squinted at the map, perhaps too vain to put on the glasses that I could see in the breast pocket of his jacket. I leaned over and indicated the island. ‘Only fifty or so miles out from Ranong,’ I said. ‘I estimate we might need three days in the area.’
‘It will take more than that to recover all the gold,’ Choy mumbled.
‘If you want all the gold in addition to the buddha, it is yours,’ I replied, directing my words at Tuk Tuk. ‘I want three days and then I’m gone,’ I added. ‘If you want to spend a year getting the rest of the gold that is your affair.’
‘I still find the deal we have struck quite fascinating,’ Tuk Tuk said, leaning back against his cushions. ‘A hundred tons of gold bullion and the most valuable buddha ever created and your people want just a simple metal box.’ He paused. ‘That is a very valuable box, Daniel, or for someone, a very dangerous one.’
Tuk Tuk was echoing the very words Geezer had uttered only a matter of hours before. I had to agree. It was a very fucking dangerous box. I worked hard to keep my voice steady when I replied, ‘This is one deal I think it would be very wise to keep, my old friend.’ Tuk Tuk’s black eyes sparkled dangerously for a moment, then he slowly smiled and nodded. Sending warnings Tuk Tuk’s way was fraught with danger at any time. For all that, killing me, a mere operative, was one thing but even Tuk Tuk Song knew that to cross our mob on a major issue was the equivalent of putting your head in a tiger’s mouth. Many years before, a contemporary of his with business in the far north had tried to cross us and our CIA partners of the day over an arms shipment. His helicopter and a ground-to-air missile collided somewhere near Phou Bia up in Laos. That lesson had not been lost on Tuk Tuk Song, or the others wh
o worked the shady side of life in the region.
‘Yes, Daniel. This mysterious box is for your people,’ he agreed at length.
‘Choy will accompany you to Ranong and introduce you to those on the boats. He will not be going to sea. Like me, he has no stomach for it.’ Tuk Tuk chuckled and Choy looked almost embarrassed.
While Choy wouldn’t be watching over my shoulder on Tuk Tuk’s behalf, I guessed he would have other eyes boring holes in the base of my skull. Despite the fact I was almost back on the dance card of the most dangerous man in the Kingdom, I didn’t trust Choy. If Choy killed me without Tuk Tuk’s approval, he would beg forgiveness of his old master and Tuk Tuk would surely grant it. That being the case I had to be very fucking careful around The Cabbage, ready for anything he might try. The one thing I was sure of was that he wouldn’t attempt a hit on me until Tuk Tuk had his buddha. To do otherwise would be to guarantee his own very painful demise. Tuk Tuk might forgive Choy just about anything, but not for screwing up his chance at a Thai sainthood.
5
I had five days to kill so I headed the Nissan north towards Bangkok. I was on the verge of a nostalgic episode, wondering what had changed in the almost seven years since I had been there. The traffic had got worse, that much was obvious from the moment I got to Samut Sakhon on Highway 35. From there into the city it was controlled chaos.
Hell, the pollution quota, that was something else. The city streets were filled with the grey haze of too many cars. I had the windows up and the air-con churning its little heart out, but still the smell of the city seeped into the car.
First call was to the British Embassy. The embassy compound was huge. It was virtually a walled park with the embassy proper, residence and offices, lawns, ponds and beautiful gardens inside. A third of the compound had been sold off in 2006, but the remaining eight acres or so of prime inner-city real estate still had Bangkok’s developers slavering at their collective mouth waiting for the rest to go on the block.
Embassy business was done off Wireless Road. Here there were a series of entrances, all guarded and each with specific functions. The road itself was a wide, pleasant tree-lined avenue. There were no street parks, stalls or street peddlers, just embassies, offices and Nai Lert Park, one of Bangkok’s true gems.
It took me five minutes to find somewhere to park in a side street down by the canal. I had the necessary ID to drive inside the embassy compound but I wasn’t ready to stand on any soapbox and announce my presence back in town. Maybe I never would be. Tuk Tuk wasn’t the only enemy I had made in Thailand and some of them still resided in the embassy of old.
I walked back down Wireless Road to the embassy and presented myself at the public gate under the eagle eyes of the guards. The insignia on their uniforms told me we had elements of the Royal Marines on duty. That was absolutely fine by me.
Nothing had changed in the main foyer in the years since I’d last been there. There were still familiar faces around. One of them, Roddy Thomas, had been a junior attaché when I had been there in my other life. Unfortunately he intercepted me just as I walked in and was orientating myself. He was all over me like a pissed matron on a hen night. ‘Daniel the Swann.’ Roddy was shaking my hand as if he were trying to jack up a car. ‘What are you doing back here?’ Roddy had never been the brightest of the bright. As he asked the question, his face slowly clouded over as he remembered the rumours of the circumstances relating to my sudden departure from the City of Smiles and Thailand.
The rumours—only half-truths—about my departure had been created and circulated by the masters of misinformation and I knew I hadn’t come out of it in a good light. Word, as I heard it later, was that I had been fraternising with the wife of a wealthy and influential Thai businessman and had barely escaped with my manhood intact. The things we put up with in the line of duty, huh? ‘It’s okay, Roddy,’ I replied, giving him a man-to-boy smile and half a wink. ‘All friends again.’ I then immediately changed the subject by asking what he was up to. I realised that this might have been a big mistake, but I didn’t want to talk about myself, not to him.
Roddy, it appeared, had gravitated up the diplomatic food chain a little to become an under-attaché or big satchel or similar. He would never be anything more than that and he probably knew it himself. He would serve out his time, collect his pension and retire back to the UK to ‘something on something’. There was a Thai wife and three kids now. That was going to make life awkward in freezing, wet, grimy, expensive something on something. Thais, cold and wet do not really go together in my experience. It would be a miserable existence for the delicate flower of the East who had had the misfortune to marry this crushing bore.
After five minutes of Roddy’s excruciating company, I moved my agenda abruptly forward. ‘Who is in charge of security these days, Roddy?’ I asked. I knew damn well who was in charge. That had all been part of my briefing. However by asking the question, I managed to stop Roddy mid-sentence. He looked at me slightly surprised at what could have been considered a rude interruption. ‘Security, Roddy old lad, and I mean security with a capital S,’ I repeated in a conspiratorial tone that caused Roddy to drop his voice and lean closer. Not a pleasant sensation for me.
‘Donald’s your man. Donald Wisehart,’ Roddy said, looking around with an earnest expression on his face. ‘All hush, hush stuff,’ he confided in me in a stage whisper. He probably had no real idea what Wisehart actually did. Roddy was very, very low in the need-to-know department.
‘And where might I find this Mr Wisehart?’ I asked.
Roddy pointed towards the basement stairs. ‘In his den. Trevaine’s old office. You remember it?’
‘Oh yes,’ I replied. Neville Trevaine had been a controller for our group. He’d been transferred out to Lahore a few weeks after I’d flown the coop. I don’t think the two things were related, but the poor bugger was killed on the Afghan border a few weeks before the allied invasion.
‘Drink later?’ suggested Roddy hopefully.
‘We’ll see how this goes,’ I replied, heading for the stairs. The last thing I wanted to do was end up in a dance bar with Roddy at my shoulder.
Donald Wisehart was about thirty-five, but his face was in the process of changing from young and idealistic to cynical. Middle age was on its way early, as often happened to those in this business. It was a fact I had observed casually over a bourbon too many back in London. There happened to have been a bar mirror staring me in the face at the time.
‘Don Wisehart,’ he said, shaking hands with a grip that stopped about one psi short of being a bone cruncher.
‘Dan Swann,’ I replied, thinking that we’d make a great double act: the Dan and Don show, or Don and Dan or just Don Don the Security Man and Dan the Whistling Dog. Whatever, Don Don stuck. He would forever be embedded in my memory bank as Don Don the Security Man. Stupid stuff like that helped me remember names, faces and deeds.
Wisehart hadn’t done much to the décor he had inherited. There was a woman at a desk just inside the door who looked like a secretary. He introduced her as Janice. He asked Janice for coffee for two. She left. The office was your basic pre-war Whitehall two-person issue. A couple of space-age communications units and a pair of PCs were the only concession to fifty years of some sort of progress. It appeared to me to be exactly as it had been when Trevaine had been in charge, even down to the circa-1965 picture of Betty on the wall. There was a large NO SMOKING sign beside the portrait. Damn! Political correctness and all that crap!
Janice returned with the coffee. She was a tidy-looking brunette with a big chest and slightly heavy thighs. She was maybe a couple of years Don Don’s junior. I noticed the engagement ring on her finger and caught a glimpse of something pass between them. She would attract a fair bit of attention on the street or in the pub back home, but here in the City of Smiles, as far as the feminine stakes were concerned at least, she wouldn’t raise an eyebrow. European women, even relatively trim ones, all complained of feeling
like ‘fat cows’ around the petite Thai girls. It was a fact of life.
My instincts told me that Janice and Don were keeping house. I wondered if there was a Mrs Don or a Mr Janice in the mix. That would complicate things here just as it would anywhere else in the world. Neither wore a wedding ring on the telltale finger, however someone had to have put the sparkler on Janice’s finger. My money was on Don Don. Either way, the coffee was drinkable.
I left the embassy two hours later, having successfully dodged Roddy on the way out. Wisehart had filled in a few blanks as to the where, what, how and why of Bangkok 2007. American paranoia had been hiked to levels previously unheard of. The Yanks didn’t have a hell of a lot of friends anymore, especially in the Middle East. On the broader scene even old friends had been relegated to another file. Perhaps old Osama had achieved more than he’d intended with 911. Or had he known the US psyche better than the experts had anticipated he did?
The apartment Wisehart had given me the key for wasn’t a safe house as such. It was a unit used for visitors in what was basically an annex for the lesser lights of the embassy staff, along with the employees of various British trade and government agencies and the like who had bought into it. Don Don told me they had a pool, a club bar that looked like a set from Coronation Street and a restaurant that did passable English food. I didn’t yet have a good enough handle on the guy to know whether or not he was taking the piss about the food.
I anticipated that the nightly pool and bull sessions in the boozer would be like the usual bloody Whitehall piss-ups. The sort of club gatherings where everyone was intent on getting one up on each other and attempting to swing a leg over the latest young wife or single guy or girl in town. In principle I wasn’t against it, but with bloody bureaucrats and diplomatic types and their hangers-on I just found it so fucking boring and predictable, no matter where in the world it occured.