Counterfeit (The Jim Slater series Book 2)

by Stanley Salmons

  She took a deep breath. “Well, I suppose it’s a good thing you lost him, then.”

  “Yes.”

  I didn’t like to tell her we weren’t out of the wood yet.

  Quilter also knew perfectly well where we were staying.

  22

  I checked the Bentley in at the rental agency and got one of the staff to run us to the hotel. They were happy enough to do that; it had been a damned good rental for them.

  Guests usually arrived at the grand entrance. Instead I directed our driver to the semicircular port at the side where the taxis came in and waited. I was pretty sure we hadn’t seen the last of our unwanted company. Still, it was useful to have lost the tail. He would have told his friends when and where to wait for us; now they’d have to guess.

  So where will they be? If it was me I’d stake out the reception desk and the elevator area on the ground floor. That’s okay, we don’t need to go via Reception – I have the room keycards in my wallet. We can avoid the elevators, too – we’ll just take the stairs at the other end. Anywhere else? Yeah. They could have got into our rooms.

  I led the way up the stairs to the first floor and went off down the corridor. Halfway down there was a house phone. I dialled Reception.

  “Could you have someone send up two plates of sandwiches and two coffees to room 346? As soon as possible, please.”

  “Certainly, sir. What would you like in them?”

  “Anything. You choose.”

  I put the phone down and turned to see Abby standing right behind me.

  “What on earth are you doing?”

  “Aren’t you hungry?”

  “Well, I could eat something, but there’s a perfectly good buffet downstairs. Why are you—?”

  I winked. “Trust me.”

  We returned to the stairs and climbed the remaining flights to emerge on the third floor. I had a quick peek along the corridor but it was empty. Our rooms were down there, not adjacent. I took Abby by the arm and led her straight past both of them to the other end, where the service elevator came up, then guided her around the corner. She shook my hand off and looked at me as if I’d gone mad.

  “This is ridiculous. What are we doing here?”

  I held my finger to my lips. “I’ll explain later. Just settle down.”

  We waited for ten minutes, by which time Abby was fairly steaming. Then we heard the elevator motors hum and stop. The doors breathed open and a young man in a red waistcoat emerged with a tray of covered dishes and walked towards our rooms. Abby started forward but I whispered:

  “No, stay here. I’ll come back for you in a moment.”

  I shadowed him, saw him glancing at the numbers on the doors. When he reached 346 and knocked I stepped forward quickly.

  “Here,” I said. “Let me open it for you.”

  I waved the cardkey over the sensor and the door opened. I gestured for him to go in.

  “After you, sir.”

  “No,” I said firmly. “After you.”

  I walked in behind him, watching his reactions, then looking into the room over his shoulder. It was empty. I pointed to a table.

  “You can put one plate and coffee over there. The other one goes to my friend’s room.”

  As he set down the tray I pushed the door to the bathroom gently with my foot and glanced inside. It, too, was empty.

  “This way,” I said. The door clicked shut behind us as I led him to Abby’s room, where I went through the same routine. Hers was clear, too. I took my wallet out and extracted a note. He was too polite to look at it, but he was going to be pleased when he did.

  When he reached the end of the corridor I re-entered Abby’s room, picked up the plate of sandwiches and the coffee things and took them back to 346. It was time to fetch her. She sighed with exasperation and followed me to my room. I noted a slight hesitation, then she came in. Her face was flushed.

  “For God’s sake, what’s got into you?”

  “Sorry, just trying to keep us alive. Have a sandwich. The coffee should still be hot.”

  She glared at me, then poured some coffee from the jug.

  “I see. So who’s trying to kill us? The man who was tailing us? You told me you lost him.”

  I bit into a sandwich. It was curried chicken and salad – nice. I talked through it.

  “I did, but they knew where to find us anyway. Quilter would have told them.”

  “Well why did you order room service?”

  “I wanted to check the rooms were empty.”

  She slammed the coffee cup down. “You used that man as a human shield?”

  “Sort of. But he was safe enough. If there was someone sitting on that window sill with a silenced pistol he wouldn’t be popping off everyone who came through the door. If he did, the floor would be littered with bodies: the maid, the guy who checks the mini bar, and who-knows-who-else.”

  “Well it isn’t, and after all your melodramatic nonsense there’s no one here.”

  “Oh, they’re here all right. They just didn’t get into our rooms.”

  She raised one eyebrow, then shook her head and picked up the cup and saucer. After a few sips she took a sandwich.

  “Mmm,” she said. “Not bad.”

  I pushed a chair her way and sat down on the bed.

  “So, how did the visit to Nissim Laboratories go?” I asked.

  She paused, looking at me as if deciding whether she was prepared to go along with this shift of topic, or perhaps wondering if I was really interested. I waited expectantly and she shrugged.

  “We met Mr. Chowdhury, and we saw the raw materials and the production line, and Quilter took samples and noted down the batch numbers.”

  “Did Chowdhury show you the warehouse?”

  “Yes. Not very big, because they never accumulate much before it’s shipped. Cardboard boxes stacked up together. I couldn’t see any sort of separation between the piles. That’s not surprising if you remember what Dayo Ojukwe told us.”

  “And you got photos?”

  “I think so.”

  “We can download them when we’ve changed hotels.”

  She put her sandwich down. The look she gave me came straight out of the deep freeze.

  “It’s okay,” I said. “You can finish your sandwiches first.”

  I picked up a tiny twitch at the corner of her mouth. She was trying to smother a smile.

  The little monkey! She’s enjoying giving me a hard time! It’s her way of getting her own back!

  I burst out laughing and after a moment’s hesitation she joined in, shaking her head.

  *

  After we’d packed I called the Concierge’s desk.

  “Certainly, sir. Someone will be right up.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I’d like to know the name of the man you are sending up.”

  There was a pause. “It will be Soubir, sir.”

  “Thank you.”

  When the knock came I opened the door to a young man in a red uniform, bearing a name badge. I asked him anyway. He looked surprised but answered “Soubir, sir”, and he didn’t have to consult the badge first. Having reassured myself that I wasn’t placing Abby in hostile hands I asked him to get a taxi and put our bags in.

  “This lady will come with you.”

  As he took the bags into the corridor I turned to Abby. “Go with him. He’ll take the service elevator. The taxi will be where we just came in. Ask the driver to wait for me there. I shouldn’t be long.”

  Her eyes told me what she must have known all along: that I was doing my level best to protect her.

  Soubir was waiting. She started towards him, then turned.

  “What about you? Where are you going?”

  “Reception. I have to check us out.”

  *

  I watched the two of them go, then took the stairs down to the lobby and crossed to the reception desk. The girl looked at her screen and commented that
I was checking out early. I told her everything was fine; we’d just completed our business sooner than expected. I settled the bill and turned to go to the exit.

  There were two men standing in front of me, blocking my way. Both were wearing suits and open-necked shirts. One was thick-set and very dark. The other, standing slightly to the side with his right hand in his jacket pocket, was spare and had a lighter skin. I didn’t like the way he was smiling and I guessed the reason lay in what he had in that pocket.

  “Mr. Slater?” the thick-set one said. His voice was like gravel. “Mr. Dutta wants to see you. We’ll take you to him now.”

  I gave him a brittle smile. “Oh yes? And suppose I don’t want to see Mr. Dutta?”

  He rotated his shoulders a little to emphasise his muscularity, jutted his chin, and stepped in a little closer.

  “I hope you’re not going to make this difficult,” he said.

  The other one smiled even more.

  “Difficult?” I said.

  I’d already choreographed the moves in my mind. I stamp-kicked downwards on his knee, heard the crunch and the roar of pain. Without a pause I pivoted on the forward leg to spin and deliver a back fist to the side of the other one’s head. People don’t usually stay standing after a strike like that and he was no exception. He dropped untidily, like a rag doll. The receptionists stared open-mouthed over the desk and people in the lounge leaped to their feet, craning to see what all the noise was about. I bent over the bigger man, who was writhing on the floor, nursing his leg and howling, and murmured:

  “Not difficult, no. Fucking impossible.”

  Then I stepped to the side, picked up the nice little taser still lying in the other one’s hand, dropped it into my pocket, and walked briskly to the exit.

  Abby waved from the window of a taxi and I went over and got in.

  “Okay, let’s go,” I said to the driver, in an American drawl that brought a swift sideways glance from Abby.

  He moved off. As we entered the street he half turned to me. “Where are you wishing to go, sir?”

  “We have to be at th’ airport in a coupla hours. Couldja take us to a good market? We need to buy some stuff for the folks back home.”

  “Certainly, sir.”

  I leaned back and passed a hand unconsciously over my reddened knuckles. The gesture wasn’t lost on Abby. She picked up my hand and looked at it, frowning.

  “Did you have some trouble?”

  “A little. Nothing I couldn’t handle.”

  This time. But they won’t have given up. Next time they’ll be better prepared.

  I’ll just have to make sure there isn’t a next time.

  *

  At the market we waited until the taxi had gone, then hailed another. After some discussion with the driver he took us to Hotel Samrat, which was only fifteen ks from the airport and a suitable distance from our previous hotel.

  We checked in and unpacked. Then I went and knocked on Abby’s door. I held up the reading device my CIA friend Jack had given me.

  “Let’s take a look at your holiday snaps.”

  She stood aside. I went in and glanced around. Everything had been put away and the room was as neat as a pin.

  I put the reader on the dressing table and turned the louvred blinds to darken the room a little. Abby handed me the brooch and I placed it on the device. In seconds the camera’s memory store had mounted on the small screen and I started to play back the images.

  The first few seemed to be random shots of Abby’s feet and the ceiling. There was one of me with a beer, presumably in the hotel the previous evening. Then they got more interesting.

  “These are good,” I commented, putting up a series of shots of an Indian gentleman. “I take it this is Chowdhury.”

  “Yes,” she said. “Those were taken in his office.”

  “Did you see Quilter give him anything?”

  “No, and I was watching him the whole time.”

  There followed various scenes in the plant: machines, stuff moving on conveyors, presses, shots of Quilter taking samples from the production line. Finally there were some pictures taken in the warehouse. They were a little dark but you could make out stacks of cardboard boxes.

  “It wasn’t well lit in there,” Abby explained, looking over my shoulder.

  “We should be able to bring up a bit more detail later. Well done.”

  “For what it’s worth. Quilter didn’t see anything wrong and I certainly didn’t. Not a huge surprise – they knew we were coming, didn’t they?” She sighed. “That’s it, then. Complete waste of time and effort. We drew a blank.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t say that. We now know that Chowdhury will be going to Delhi airport this Wednesday, around three pm, to meet someone. Then he’ll be coming back. Sounds like the sort of meeting Dayo was talking about.”

  She looked at me in blank astonishment. “How did you find that out?”

  “Well, while you were touring the plant with Quilter, I was chatting up Chowdhury’s chauffeur. A little intimidation combined with a tempting offer did the trick.”

  She shook her head slowly. “So what you had me doing was totally pointless.”

  “Not at all. I needed to know what Chowdhury looks like and now I do, thanks to your excellent photography.”

  I put up the best portrait of Chowdhury, standing behind his desk. It showed a tall, rather aristocratic-looking man, in a well cut navy suit. Black crinkly hair was greying at the temples, and his skin was the colour of nutmeg.

  “You see,” I said. “Just what I needed.”

  “So happy to oblige.”

  I handed the brooch back to her. “Here, you may need this again.”

  She made a face but took it from me. Then she frowned.

  “Just a minute. If Chowdhury’s having the real meeting this Wednesday there’s no reason to suspect Quilter, is there?”

  “Remember what Stefan said? Quilter’s company has a vested interest in these counterfeit drugs reaching the market. They had no intention of letting us learn enough to put a stop to it.”

  “That’s why Quilter tipped off Chowdhury, of course.”

  “Yes, but that could be the extent of his involvement. The activity has to be deniable by his company. They’ll keep the whole thing at arm’s length.”

  “Then who’s Chowdhury meeting with on Wednesday?”

  I held up a finger. “That, Lieutenant, is the billion-dollar question.”

  23

  On Wednesday we again took a taxi out to the rental company on the edge of town. The driving in Delhi evidently held fewer terrors for Abby now, because she was opening her eyes from time to time.

  To judge by his hand-washing gestures the rental company manager was hoping I’d rent the Bentley again. His face fell when I told him what we were looking for. We had to be inconspicuous today and I selected just about the cheapest car in his fleet, a high-mileage diesel-burning Fiat on which the red bodywork was worn to a matt finish. I let Abby drive it to the airport.

  I hadn’t wanted her to come with me this time and I’d told her as much. Chowdhury would recognise her, I said. He’d know exactly what she was doing there and that would be it: game over. She protested vigorously, accusing me of trying to cut her out again just when things were getting interesting. The argument went back and forth. Finally we compromised, although I’ll admit I gave more ground than she did. The deal was, she would go out and buy a very ordinary dress, and a kerchief to wear around her hair, as a lot of the Delhi women seemed to do. She’d also buy some dark make-up, some bronzer for her arms and neck, and large sunglasses. She’d be quite unrecognisable, or so she assured me. I caved in at that point, but warned her to keep a sensible distance.

  I went shopping, too, and came back with a locally made sports shirt, a pair of blue polyjeans, sandals, and a navy-blue baseball cap emblazoned “Odyssey”. It was a well-known American holovision reality show, as I’d found out when I’d surfed channels in the hotel room. Ev
idently it was popular over here, although quite why I couldn’t imagine.

  We’d been out to Indira Gandhi International by taxi the previous day to do a thorough reccy, but of course we didn’t know which terminal Chowdhury would be headed for. We decided to wait on a branch of the highway outside the airport complex. There was a line of cars along one verge, no doubt belonging to people who preferred a fair walk with luggage to paying the parking charges. Abby pulled in behind them and switched off the engine. I checked my watch. Two o’clock.

  It was a lot quieter inside the car now that the irregular rattle of that old diesel motor had stopped, but the air-conditioning wasn’t running either and the temperature quickly climbed. Abby rolled down the windows. There wasn’t a breath of wind so it didn’t help a whole lot. My eyelids began to flicker.

  I woke with a start and looked around.

  Abby smiled. “It’s okay. You nodded off. Nothing’s happened yet.”

  I rubbed my hand over the back of my neck. It came away shining with sweat.

  “Sorry,” I sighed. “Force of habit. Soldiers learn to take a quick nap whenever there’s an opportunity.”

  “I’ve heard of that. I never got the hang of it myself.”

  I checked my watch. Ten to three. “Should be here soon. Where’s the water?”

  “In the cubby.”

  I took a mouthful of tepid water and washed it around my mouth before swallowing. Cars swished past on the highway. One or two of the parked vehicles moved away in front of us; others took their place. Then Abby said:

  “There’s a large burgundy saloon coming up in my mirror.”

  I looked round. It was a Daimler-General. Reflections of the sky glided across its windscreen and I moved my head from side to side, straining to see. Then I glimpsed Deepak at the wheel.

  “That’s him.”

  Abby pressed the starter button and the engine coughed – and died. The Daimler disappeared up the approach road to the airport, followed by a succession of other cars. I bit my lip. Abby tried again. And again. This time the engine jerked uncertainly into life and she quickly revved it, engaged gear, and moved off. She was leaning forward, as if that would coax a little more out of the Fiat, but it looked like we’d lost them. Then three cars in front of us forked left towards the international terminal and the Daimler came into view again, cruising slowly. It had taken the right fork. Abby followed.