Bangkok Burn

by Simon Royle

  16 May 2010 Bangkok 3:45 pm

  I’d dosed off, the chair, whiskey, and lack of sleep, combining to put me out. I woke up with a stiff neck and a mouth made of sandpaper.

  The light on Lilly’s phone was blinking. A missed call, ‘Unknown Number’. It must have just rung. Something had woken me up and Chai was nowhere to be seen. It rang again. I took a swig of the whiskey now heavily diluted by the melted ice. It tasted terrible but did the job of removing the sandpaper.

  I answered the phone.

  “Don’t fuck around with me. Don’t forget I hold your Uncle’s life in my handsth.”

  “Is he there?”

  “Firsth we talk exchange.” His lisp was really annoying me. I forced myself not to pay attention to it.

  “All right. Talk.”

  “Wednesday morning in Phuket. You have money with you in two wooden boxes. Each box must have a hook and lifting straps attached. On Wednesday morning, before eight, I will call you with further instructions. You understand this?”

  “Yes.”

  “Now your Uncle Mike will say hello to you.”

  “Chance?” His voice sounded weak and scared. I had never heard him like this. Guilt crashed over me. If only I had answered his call and gone to see him.

  “Uncle Mike, are you all right?”

  “Yes, Chance a bit seasick, but otherwise fine.” His voice normal, bouncy, with a grin in it, cheeky. I immediately heard sounds of a scuffle and Uncle Mike crying out in pain.

  “Stop it,” I yelled down the phone.

  “Your Uncle is all right. Don’t worry.” He sounded out of breath. I was going to kill him. He continued talking.

  “Wednesday. You will see. He will be alive. You follow my instructions exactly. You bring the money.”

  “Wednesday morning, I’ll be there.”

  He hung up. So they were on a boat. Most likely the Hatteras, and most likely they had stayed at sea, avoiding marinas, knowing I’d search them. If they stay at sea, they’re almost impossible to find.

  I walked out of the office. Chai was sitting cross-legged on a mat just inside the loading bay, a stripped Uzi beside him. I cleaned up in the washroom and went out to him.

  “Wednesday morning, Phuket. Uncle Mike sounded okay. They’re on a boat.”

  “Boat is tricky.” He didn’t look up from cleaning the gun.

  “Yes it is. We’ll think of something. Let’s make a move. I want to get to Big Tiger’s place early.” He nodded, picking up the barrel and sliding it into the stock. Efficiency born of familiarity, his movements.

  ***

  We were dressed for the occasion. I had a pair of Tomcat Berettas in my boots, and I’m pretty sure I saw Chai sneak a few grenades into the backpack on the floor at his feet. After the last few days, we’d settled on a fortress mentality. Trust no one, check everything, and be prepared, always. We were in a taxi, Chai driving, me, the foreigner, in the back seat. ‘Tamada’ - normal. We took the back streets.

  The little war in Bangkok was still going strong. The fight had left the stage, the conference rooms, the boardrooms, the parlors of the powerful, and hit the streets with a vengeance. The CRES had just announced that Monday and Tuesday would be public holidays, to give them a chance to deal with the situation. I read that as, the army would be hitting the red shirt encampment at midnight on the eighteenth. It’s the way it works. I was glad I’d be out of town.

  By the time we reached the pier, it was dusk. We parked a few hundred meters away. Chai went first to scout it out. I looked out at the Gulf. The sea here is a muddy brown, where the effluent of the Chao Phraya pours out. Seagulls swirled above the calm sea, squawking, their work would soon be over. A few couples, some with children walked the promenade, if you could call a pavement lined with convenience stores and restaurants, such a thing.

  My cell phone rang. Chai.

  “Clear.”

  I walked to the pier. As I reached it, a white Toyota Urvan pulled up at the entrance, about ten meters away. I made direct eye contact with the driver and saw that he recognized me. I looked up the pier to see Chai already moving. Still walking, I quickened my pace up the pier, looking back at the van. The door of the van slid open. Daeng climbed out, saw me, a look of surprise, and startled, as he looked at something behind me. I spun around, five meters from me, a man with a double barreled shotgun coming up, pointed at me. I won’t be fast enough flashed through my mind.

  I dived watching the twin barreled mouths swing with me. A chunk of the man’s head flew off and he fell sideways. Chai fired more shots, the Uzi clacking, spitting out shells. A couple walking arm in arm on the pier not comprehending what was happening, looking puzzled as, his back to them, Chai crouched and stalked forward. They couldn’t see the weapon in his hands but then the woman saw the guy with a big chunk of his head missing and she screamed. Chai did a complete 360 turn his eyes sweeping over me, as I now crouched looking around to see if there were any other threats. Chai flicked the muzzle of the Uzi at the woman and held a finger to his lips. The woman stopped screaming.

  Chai dropped the muzzle on the silenced Uzi and showed the woman his fake police badge. He told her and her boyfriend to get out of there. They nodded and took off. He called to Daeng to get his guys to throw the body in their van and take it to the farm. Daeng told his boys to do as Chai ordered, and called up to the restaurant. I lit a cigarette, my hand shaking. I looked around but everyone was busy, no one noticed. Then I saw Chai watching me. He’d noticed. As Daeng’s boys picked the body up, Chai walked over and quickly rummaged through the pockets finding nothing. The killer could have been Thai, Cambodian, or Laotian, but I would have put money on Cambodian and I’m not a gambling man. Chai picked up the shotgun, broke it, and took out the shells. He gave the shotgun to Daeng’s boys, telling them to file any numbers off it.

  Chai handed me the shells. Triple-aught. At fifteen feet, one shot would have blown a hole in me you could put your fist through. Two would have cut me in half. I let out a long slow breath. That was close. Adrenalin cooling, I felt like I wanted to puke. I sucked hard on the smoke. Daeng was on the phone, Chai standing near me. A boy and a woman arrived on a motorbike, the woman sitting side saddle on the back, holding a bucket and a mop. Daeng showed her where to clean up.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Chai said.

  “No. Let’s go have dinner,” I said, putting the shells in my pocket.

  Big Tiger was waiting for us at the entrance.

  “Fuck my mother, but believe me I had no idea that was going to happen, Chance. Fuck you have to believe me.”

  “I believe you, Tiger. Has the Aussie showed up yet?”

  “No sign of the fuck yet, but he’s due very fucking soon. Let’s get off this fucking pier. The heat is enough to kill a fucking camel.”

  Big Tiger took us to the elevator. The door held open by one of his ‘dek-serve’, a waiter. I wondered if Big Tiger and ‘Heaven’ shared the same designer.

  Tiger had cleared the top floor. The girl from the other night was sitting waiting at the table. Obviously we wouldn’t be talking business. Tonight she was wearing a t-shirt and a pair of shorts. Very short, shorts. Chai took a seat at a different table with Daeng and I sat down with Big Tiger and the girl.

  Tiger had ‘Hotel California’ by the Eagles playing on the room’s speakers. Apart from that it was like eating in the middle of an auditorium.

  “Tiger. Can I make a suggestion?”

  “What?”

  “Let’s move outside, where we were the other night. This is too formal. Keep it light.”

  The girl smiled. Tiger scowled at her and gave me a pissed off look.

  “What’s wrong with here? Outside is too fucking hot.” His hand waved around the scarlet red papered walls interspersed with tall white columns. Folded up tables ringed the empty space around us. You could hold an Olympic ice skating competition in the space we were in the middle of.

  “Just trying to help. I am the Fara
ng here, right?”

  He thought about that. I watched the thought move behind his eyes. He reminded me of one of our crocs. An old, fat one.

  “Well fuck me. What’s the fucking difference, right? Let’s go eat the fuck outside. Why the fuck not?”

  He got up. The girl rolled her eyes in my direction. I kept my face expressionless. Sorry babe, not playing your game. She adjusted focus and scuttled after a muttering, cursing Big Tiger. I could tell this was going to a barrel of laughs.

  While Big Tiger went off to berate a dek-serv, I chose a table at the corner of the balcony, with my back to the sea, facing the door to the restaurant. Chai sat down at a table between me and the door. Only two other tables on the deck were occupied.

  Big Tiger came back with the Aussie couple. The guy had arrived with a woman in tow. In their late thirties, early forties, at a guess, they looked like Ken and Barbie, only worn and a bit wrinkled. Big Tiger shouted out to me from the door.

  “Tell him to sit next to you so he can have a view of the sea. Then I can sit next to this beauty. Look at the fucking tits on her.” Big Tiger’s uni girl got a serious pout on. Her lips came out about an inch.

  Dinner and deal done, Ken and Barbie, actually Bret and Sheena, were now in the white Urvan on their way to Samui, courtesy of Big Tiger. Smiles all around. He was salivating at the thought of seeing Sheena in a bikini. Already planning a trip to that ‘fucking resort of mine, on that goat fucking miserable monkey infested swamp of an island’, his name for the island of Samui.

  Big Tiger hadn’t noticed his uni girl had taken off with Bret and Sheena. Flirting in English throughout the meal, Uni girl had talked them into a threesome for ten thousand baht. She gave me a smile from the back of the Urvan.

  I turned to him.

  “So the favor with Por.”

  He turned to me still smiling. “Yes?” Looking confused.

  “This was it. We’re even now.”

  “Sure, sure. Don’t even think about it. And thanks for your help, Chance. I’d have been fucked without you. Didn’t understand a fucking word when you guys were talking in English. Might as well have been fucking kangaroos for all the sense I could make out of it.” He looked around. “Where the fuck did that girl of mine go?”

  Holy Road Trips

  17 May 2010 Bangkok 5 am

  I had forty-six hours left to find Uncle Mike. Or to figure out how to get him back and not lose the money. Worst case scenario. We lose the money.

  Ken surprised me. He hadn’t attacked at Chumphon. He waited until the money was in the warehouse in Phuket and stole it from there. One of our guys got a nasty bump on the head. They trucked it out of Phuket that night and took it to Nakhon Si Thammarat. Ken's car had a GPS transmitter on it from when he had been in the warehouse at Lat Krabang. We had tags on them all the way. We got everything on tape. Ken looked especially cool – a nice profile shot of him, Mild seven packet in hand, shaking out a cigarette, the forklift carrying the money into the warehouse behind him. He had a smile on his lips. Chai won our bet – he’d said they’d steal it in Phuket.

  The trick had been making it look real. Cheep had chosen a warehouse in Phuket that had a wall at its back. We’d protected the front heavily. The clever Japanese had broken in through the back. Even the guy with the bump on the head wasn’t supposed to be there. He’d sneaked off for a piss. Ken had pulled the lend and steal move before – SOP for him. Ken had seriously screwed up. But he didn’t know that yet.

  Big Tiger had also made his first mistake. No one other than him, his crew, and Chai knew that I was having dinner there. The shotgun guy on the pier could only have learned it from him. We weren’t followed – not possible. So it was Big Tiger.

  I lay in bed, hands crossed behind my head, thinking about how I was going to take him down. I still couldn’t figure out how Big Tiger knew my safe houses. If he’d been planning this for a while, it was possible he’d had me, or Pim, followed. Big Tiger tells Por he needs me, knowing Por will ask to see me in person. He tries to take us both out with a bomb. Fails. He then hires some Cambodians, cheap ones, because he’s a tight bastard, and because they’re cheap, they fail. Thinking about Por, losing his leg. Pit 51. The young, hungry, horny croc pit. Starve them a little. Dip Big Tiger’s feet in cow's blood and drop him in the pond. Alive. One problem solved.

  So the uncle Mike kidnapping is a coincidence? It seemed unlikely but I couldn’t see Big Tiger pulling it off, simply because there were foreigners involved. He’d hire Cambodians - he can curse at them - but he had an abiding shyness of dealing with foreigners. On the other hand he had made a deal with Bret and Sheena. So why not Lisp and Natasha?

  I got up and ran Big Tiger’s cell phone number against numbers we had from the phones we’d tracked in Phuket. No matches. Didn’t really mean anything. I used different phone numbers all the time. So it was possible that Big Tiger had hired Lisp and Natasha or at least was working with them. But somehow it didn’t gel. If Big Tiger knew of the plan to kidnap Uncle Mike and knew Lisp, he would have known I was alive. And he hadn’t known. The look on his face when I showed up at his restaurant was real.

  So Big Tiger and Uncle Mike’s kidnapping were separate events but possibly connected. It was looking increasingly unlikely that we could find Lisp and Natasha before Wednesday morning. That meant we had to plan for passing over the cash. At least we had it. The real cash that Ken delivered went on the air-conditioned coach to Phuket, after spending the day at the Crocodile Farm. Mother had done the switch at the warehouse, unpacking, scanning, repacking with counterfeit and Ken’s transmitters.

  Showered, having breakfast, the cell phone rang. It was Mother. She was up early.

  “Chance, how are you?”

  “I’m good, Mother. Just having breakfast.”

  “Good you need to eat. Keep your strength up. Now some good news. Aunt Su came through with her contact in Malaysia. None of the passports have entered Malaysian territory, and a preliminary scan of the foreigners entering the country hasn’t drawn a match.”

  “That is good news. Can we get anyone in the coastguard to check the area north of Langkawi? But we only want them to look not approach.”

  “Already asked and explained. They’ll get back to us sometime later today.”

  “Great. How is Por?”

  “Good. Still in a coma but his vital signs are improving. He’s over the worst. Thomas is sure he’s going to make it.”

  “The attacks are coming from Big Tiger.”

  “Are you sure? I didn’t think he had the courage.”

  “Sure. He’s the only one it could be. Yesterday someone tried to cut me down on his pier. Luckily, Chai took him out before he got the shot off and Big Tiger’s boys aborted their hit. Seeing Chai with an Uzi in his hands is a strong deterrent. The only people who knew I’d be there were him and his crew.”

  “He’s got to go.”

  “We’ll talk more in person later.”

  “Chance?”

  “Yes, Mother?”

  “Remember your promise.”

  “Yes, Mother.”

  We’d stayed the night at the Peninsula. Even from there you could hear the explosions downtown. Chai checked us out and was waiting for me in the forecourt, sitting in a green Range Rover, engine running. We had to get the money to Phuket safely. Mother had organized to send a large Buddha statue south to Phuket. Monks from the temple where it was created sat with it in the back of a canvas covered truck. Underneath the floor they were sitting on, a hundred million, real, United States dollars. We would follow at a safe distance and the taxi we had used last night, now with a new set of plates, in front.

  We passed the truck just south of Samut Sakon. Another eight hours and we’d be in Phuket. We pulled over, filled up with gas, and waited for the truck to pass. Traffic going south was steady and heavier than in other parts of Bangkok. People getting out of the city. No army to be seen. Normal life, if life can ever be called normal.

>   In view of the press interest, Mother had decided to cut my funeral short and I was to be cremated, along with Por at 4 pm that afternoon. We’d worked out a plan. It was sad, complicated, and final, but Samuel C. Harper had to go. Where it gets complicated is that in Thailand I have two ‘birth’ certificates: one for Ohgaat and one for Sam Harper. Mother had handled the paperwork. Dr. Tom had put Ohgaat on the death certificate attached to the body. Mother had the paperwork switched and Dr. Tom signed the new papers. Ohgaat lives. Sam Harper dies. Mother had a plan how to handle the “case of mistaken identity” is how she described it.

  Pim called at ten.

  “I’ve got a hit. SS Marine, a Singapore boat charter company, has a Hatteras 53. They chartered it with a crew of two to a party in Langkawi last Tuesday for a two week charter. The customer paid cash. Was a Russian but didn’t have a lisp. Everything was normal until last Friday. Since then they haven’t heard from the crew and the crew is supposed to check in every day.”