Ransom Drop

by Mike Sullivan

  Hong opened the door, and they entered the bank. The minute they saw him, bank officials rolled out the red carpet for Robert Hong. It took forty-five minutes to count out and load one million dollars from the bank’s vault into a blue duffle bag. It took another ten minutes to sign paperwork and complete computer transactions before Hong and Seabury were out the door.

  Twenty minutes later, they were at the helipad on the east side of Hong’s mansion. Seabury turned back to Hong and said, “Did you take care of Immigration?”

  “In Laos?” he asked. “Yes, of course. They have the money.”

  Seabury ducked under the chopper’s whirling blades. He opened the door at the side of the chopper and banged it shut behind him. The chopper lifted off the ground, and the pilot flew northeast out over the Gulf of Thailand.

  Hong’s Bell 230 private helicopter, with a range 700 miles, completed the 200kilometer trip back to Bangkok in a less than an hour. At 2:00 p.m., Seabury caught a Thai Airlines flight to Vientiane, Laos and landed there one hour later. He cleared customs without incident. On his way out the front door to the taxi area, a Pathet Lao MP stopped him.

  Chapter Nine

  Seabury walked to a room down off the front door. It was small and cramped with a gunmetal gray desk, two chairs, and a light bulb hanging down from the ceiling. The MP was tall, skinny and dark-skinned. His face was shaped like a wing-bone and he had a nose like a pointed arrow. Grim-faced and self-important, speaking English, he started asking Seabury questions.

  “How long you stay in Laos?”

  “One week, maybe two.”

  “What business?”

  “No business. Eco-tourism.”

  It got a little dicey after that. Seabury had a large blue duffle bag with one million dollars in one hand and his overnight bag in the other. He was booked at the Mekong Plaza Hotel for one night only. The MP wanted to know why he was staying only one night in Vientiane if he planned to stay in Laos for one or two weeks. It was a legitimate question.

  Seabury knew the customs people were tipped off early. Robert Hong had greased their palms with plenty of money. It traveled via the Thai-Laotian underground and entered the country illegally, without incident. Seabury guessed that the MP wasn’t informed of the situation and hadn’t received his share of the money. Two hundred U.S. American dollars would allow Seabury to leave the room, unimpeded.

  “One hundred,” Seabury said. “That’s all I can spare.”

  “Two hundred,” the MP said. His lean, brown face crinkled. A web of wrinkles cut deep into the skin at the corners of his eyes.

  Seabury got out his cell and dialed a number.

  “What? What you do?”

  The MP shot up from behind the desk. He grabbed at the phone. Seabury pulled it back. The MP lost his balance and lunged over the top of the desk. Angry, he straightened his scarecrow body up and sneered at Seabury. His thin mouth cracked open. It exposed a row of crooked teeth, one gold, one chipped and cracked.

  Seabury found himself speaking in broken English. He said, “I call two numbers. MP big boss. Then customs official.”

  The guy’s eyes grew wide with astonishment. Gradually, the anger drained from his face.

  “One hundred dollars,” Seabury said, opening his wallet. “Here, take it.” He put the money down on the top of the desk. “I call MP big boss,” he said. “You get nothing. Take one hundred dollars, you come out ahead. Up to you, what you do now.”

  The guy reacted like he didn’t hear what Seabury had said.

  Slowly, Seabury dialed the number, bluffing. He had nothing, no numbers, no MP big boss; no customs official to call. If the guy had pushed it a little, he would have realized that Seabury was playing in a high stakes poker game with a hand full of deuces, instead of aces high. The time was right for seizing the advantage.

  Five seconds flew by, then three, then none. Time over. The advantage was gone.

  The MP said, “You pay arrival tax, twenty-five dollar?”

  “There is none. Only departure tax. Nice try.”

  Seabury took the cell and punched in a few numbers, turned to the side, brought the phone close to his ear.

  “Okay, okay,” the guy said finally, pulling the hundred dollar note into the front pocket of his dark green military uniform.

  Outside Seabury tossed his bags into the back seat of the taxi and climbed in. He was booked into the Mekong Plaza Hotel on Semsenthai Road. His contact was Tory Kwan, a young San Francisco freelancer working in Vientiane, whom Robert Hong had employed to act as his guide and interpreter.

  * * * *

  The taxi left the terminal and swung onto Semsenthai Road, a main artery running through the city. Vientiane, the Laotian capitol, had a population of 750,000. Old French colonial homes hid behind wrought-iron gates on paved, tree-lined streets constructed by Japanese investment money.

  Propelled into the twenty-first Century on the strength of modern commercialism, Vientiane prospered on the backs of farm labor, emerging technology, and people in the service sector willing to work six days a week at menial jobs for low salaries.

  Shops, bars, cramped mini-malls, trendy boutiques and global fast food outlets were the engine that drove this small, land-locked, under-developed country forward—and Vientiane was its flagship. In 1975, the communists formed the Lao Peoples Republic (LPR) and took over the government.

  Seabury arrived at the Mekong Plaza twenty minutes later. People entered and exited through the front door. The lobby dazzled with high-gloss tile floors. Seabury saw polished marble and teakwood furniture. The air he breathed smelled of sandalwood and flowers.

  Seabury identified himself and the desk clerk—a stunning Laotian beauty—began working the keys of the computer. He could barely keep his eyes off her. He thought she noticed too, judging by her grin and fleeting over-the-shoulder glances. She returned to the computer and stared hard into the screen in front of her.

  A few minutes later she turned around and spoke to him in English.

  “Welcome to Mekong Plaza, Mister Seabury,” she said. “You’re booked for one night, room 201, use the elevator or stairs. The payment has been pre-paid.” She smiled and asked for his passport.

  “It’s a formality,” she said almost apologetically, “but I’ll need to hold it.”

  He’d played the game before so he knew how to respond. “The passport is not mine,” he told her, politely. “It’s the American Government’s and I’m not at liberty to part with it…even for one day. If it were lost, I’d have a difficult time replacing it.” He smiled, maybe overdoing it a bit and added. “I hope you understand. I can leave a copy if you’ll be kind enough to make one for me.”

  A dark cloud passed over her eyes. The pretty face turned to stone. She made a copy of his passport and handed it back to him with a dirty look.

  “Thank you,” he said in a cheery tone.

  She didn’t reply.

  He crossed the lobby to a bank of elevators with a reedy room attendant who looked like he hadn’t eaten in five days. At the elevator, he glanced back over his shoulder. The desk clerk was on the phone talking to someone, probably the Lao Military Police, Seabury guessed. They wouldn’t be pleased over the news that he refused to give up his passport.

  Upstairs, the room attendant adjusted the air-conditioner. He pointed to the television on a bracket up on the wall. “HBO,” he said. “Good, movie. Good movie.” He showed Seabury another booklet. On the cover was a nude couple caught in the act of love-making. “Sexy movie too,” he said.

  Seabury gave him a disinterested look and the guy put the booklet down on the glossy surface of a walnut desk next to a walk-in closet. He showed Seabury the sidebar, then pointed to a tiny chocolate heart. It was trapped in the jacket of a white satin pillow propped up on a king-sized bed with a forest green bedspread. This completed his demonstration.

  Seabury handed him a two dollar tip for hauling up his travel bag. The blue duffle bag he’d stashed in a locker at the m
ain bus terminal before arriving at the hotel. The attendant bowed like a toy bobble-head and thanked him more times than was necessary. The guy was still bowing when Seabury closed the door behind him.

  Instantly, Seabury searched the room. He looked inside the desk, under the desk lamp, under the bed and mattress, inside the closet, top shelf and bottom, and along the baseboard. He checked every space inside the portable side bar. Then he went into the bathroom. He checked the shower, under the sink, inside the toilet where the bottom of the floatation bulb joined the water line. No electronic bugs.

  When he’d swept the room clean, he went to the side bar and opened himself a beer. Lao, dark malt, delicious. Moments later he sank down, in a cushioned chair next to the desk, relaxing. The suite was spacious, furnished elegantly in a French colonial style. He raised his glass and tipped it slightly in a toast to Robert Hong as he thought about the older man now—who was undoubtedly feeling tired, helpless and miserable, counting on him to bring his daughter back alive. Seabury’s stomach churned at the thought of what might be happening right now to Victoria Hong.

  Sam Seabury was a tough, savvy, street-wise merchant seaman. He’d traveled all over the world on freighters engaged in maritime shipping. But what set him apart from most people was his uncanny ability to read body language to the point where the twitch of an eye or a smile pasted to thin shriveled lips told him something.

  The same was true with kind eyes. They reached down, grabbed the soul and reflected it back to him. The eyes let him know when a person could be trusted. He had the same feeling about Robert Hong the night they met.

  They were being entertained at the Top Hat, a gentleman’s club which catered to people who were financially well off. It featured entertainers in long, sequined gowns with slits up the sides, dove white gloves and quick, flirtatious smiles designed to relieve a man of all or most of his money.

  He and Hong hit it off immediately and became friends. Hong was well connected politically in Thailand, so Seabury got to know Bangkok’s power elite by knowing Robert Hong. Reaching into the pocket of his suit coat, Seabury brought out his cell phone and quickly punched some numbers into it.

  Chapter Ten

  Seabury dialed the blocking code before the call was picked up in Bangkok after ringing twice. Mae Mongkol had ordered pre-line blocking from her service provider to prevent calls from being traced while Seabury was in Laos. Mae was tiding up her desk and getting ready to go home when the call reached her.

  “Any luck finding the information I called in earlier?”

  “The list of disgruntled employees…the ones fired recently by Robert Hong?”

  “Yes.”

  “I found two. One was fired at a Bangkok pharmacy on Rama 4 Road. The other man worked at one of Hong’s pharmaceutical factories in Hong Kong.

  “Names.”

  “The first guy’s name is Naris Kit Chai. Fired a month ago. The same old story.

  Thais operating from their own agenda, not the boss’s.”

  “What about the Hong Kong guy?”

  “Tony Sun Foo. Changed his name to Tony Sun once the family moved from Shanghai to Hong Kong years ago. There’s something more—” She let the statement hang in space.

  It was a game she’d play whenever she had something important to tell him. She liked to hold the information back until she figured it was the right time to divulge it. She did this to impress her boss, but also to keep him guessing. Seabury didn’t like to be kept waiting or guessing. But he had tolerated the annoying habit because of Mae’s dedication and efficiency.

  “Yeah-ees.” His long drawn out response caused Mae Mongkul to snicker on the other end.

  Composing herself, she said finally, “Tony Sun beat his landlord out of a month’s rent before leaving Hong Kong over two months ago. Naris Kit Chai packed his bags and left Bangkok a few days after he was fired.”

  “Did any of these guys know Victoria Hong?”

  “Kit Chai and Victoria were good friends. They went to Mahidol University in Bangkok. It’s a public university. She could afford a private one on Robert Hong’s money. But chose instead to go to Mahidol where she partied with her friends. Victoria isn’t as prim and proper as she wants everyone to believe. She’s a party girl and likes the nightlife and can afford most of what she wants on the monthly allowance that Robert Hong gives her.”

  “How about Tony Sun?”

  “He could have known her, but it’s highly unlikely. Let me explain.”

  “Victoria was sent to Hong Kong to learn how to manage Hong’s pharmaceutical factory. Tony Sun worked there at the time. Turns out Victoria failed miserably as a business manager. She had no head for figures and lacked the kind of leadership skills and business acumen it takes to run a successful business. That’s why Robert Hong’s eldest son Raymond manages the plant in Hong Kong now. On one hand, it’s hard not to feel sorry for Victoria. But on the other, she causes most of her own problems. She’s like a square peg in a round hole. On the inside she’s this terribly insecure rich girl trying to break free and establish her own identity. But she won’t do it that way…not by using drugs and alcohol.”

  Seabury allowed her time to finish, thanked her, and then rang off.

  He wrote the names of the two men down in a small notebook that he removed from his shirt pocket. Sipping his beer, he jotted down the word motive after each name and then scribbled down a few words.

  After Kit Chai’s name he wrote lazy. And after Tony Sun’s name he wrote beat landlord out of a month’s rent. He kept thinking about the two men until he heard a knock on the door.

  He rose quickly, thinking it was Tory Kwan. He was half-way across the room when the tempo of the knocking increased. He stopped, cocked his head to the side, and listened. Beyond the door, he heard the sound of rough, impatient footsteps scraping across the tile floor outside, then the sound of fists pounding down the door. Who was out there? It wasn’t Tory Kwan.

  Chapter Eleven

  Seabury crossed the room and checked through the eye piece in the door. He saw two men standing outside. The guy on the left was Arrow Nose, the MP he’d paid off at the airport. The other guy was Colonel Maran Tint.

  Seabury unlocked the door, cracked it open and looked outside. Tint stood there in a cloud of smoke, a cigarette dangling from his thin mouth, and stared at Seabury with the start of a sneer working across his face. Seabury stood without moving a muscle, waiting him out.

  “Hello, Sam. It’s been a long time,” said Tint. The voice was cool, layered by levels of contempt and scorn hidden below a disingenuous smile.

  “Not long enough,” Seabury said.

  “By the look on your face, you act like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  “Only the memory of one.”

  “Oh, yes,” Tint said, grinning. “I see where you’re going with this. Our little game, is that it? If I had it to do over, believe me, I would’ve scripted a better ending.”

  Three years before, Seabury had gambled in a hotel casino in the Cambodian border city of Poipet. On his way across the border, drunk and swaying slightly, the border guards had seized him and demanded a payoff. He could pay 20, 000 Thai baht—five hundred US dollars at the time—and they’d let him go. One guard pointed to a nearby ATM.

  “Get over there,” he said in broken English.

  Since he wasn’t breaking the law by being slightly tipsy and recognized the shakedown, he threw a fit and refused to hand over the money. He ended up in the infamous Black Swallow Detention Center near the border. There he was abused and beaten on orders given by the then Deputy Warden, Maran Tint.

  One day, Tint informed Seabury he could win his freedom by participating in a simple, yet deadly game. The object was to run a hundred yards across a hot, dry, root-infested field in his bare feet. Two sniper rifles would be leveled at his back. Another prisoner joined him.

  Seabury and the other prisoner powered across, arms and legs churning, pumping like pistons. The other guy went do
wn. Seabury stayed upright, zigzagging through a hail of bullets and eventually reached the safety of the Mekong River on the other side, scrambling for safety down among the trees.

  The odds for survival were zero percent but miraculously, Seabury had survived the death run. Ironically, the mad dash to freedom was caught on film by a passerby who sat parked in his truck at the side of the road. The clip was uploaded on social media. Television stations picked up the story and ran it on their networks.

  “Well, are you going to let me in?” Tint said, bringing Seabury back to the present.

  Seabury stepped aside. Tint entered the room and posted his goon at the door before he crossed the room. He pulled out a chair and sat down at the desk where Seabury had been writing. Behind him, the notebook lay open on the desk. Seabury shuddered at the thought of Tint turning around, picking up the notebook and reading it.

  “You know you caused me a lot of trouble,” Tint said in perfect English as he glanced around and located an ashtray on the desk. He crushed out his cigarette and turned back around. Tint sat under a pool of lamplight near the desk, his slim, wiry body in a stiff military pose. Burmese, his small angular face had high cheekbones. Sharp pieces of bone jutted out under a cover of smooth brown skin. His small dark eyes were filled with pride and arrogance, and a remorseless center hid somewhere far off in the darker regions of a troubled soul. Tint reminded Seabury of a poster boy for the dreaded Kempeitai, the vengeful Japanese Secret Police that ravaged Southeast Asia during the Second World War.

  “I took the blame for your escape,” Tint said to Seabury. “Oh, at first my superiors seemed to understand, but all that quickly changed. When the media picked up the story and turned you into a hero…”

  “I’m no hero,” Seabury said, cutting him off.

  “The point is the media turned you into one at my expense.” He looked perturbed, a hint of anger still in his voice. “It wasn’t long before I began to lose face. You know what that means to an Asian. I don’t have to tell you. After that I was relieved of my position as Deputy Warden. That’s how it turned out.”