Winner Kills All

by RJ Bailey

  When it looked like I had been overcautious, we went to the van in the car park. We had a driver, Chai, a sinewy, sour-faced man in his fifties wearing nylon tracksuit bottoms and a Nike top, who wrestled the bag off me. He didn’t seem thrilled at having been kept waiting so long after the flight had arrived.

  Hom explained that Freddie had hired a villa for me attached to a hotel to the west of Bophut Beach in somewhere called Mae Nam. The borderline-surly Chai would be my driver and there was 24-hour security for the villa.

  Koh Samui turned out to be another shop-soiled paradise. From the drive past joyless strips of hostels, massage parlours, moped rentals and fast-food joints, I had the sense I was at least a quarter-century too late to see the island at its best. Perhaps the hinterland would be better, but the section from the airport seemed like an assault on the senses; a riot of naked, gouging capitalism, the tourist hustle made solid.

  What was Matt doing in a place like this? One clue was the number of backpackers wandering the streets and riding the rental mopeds, clones of the ones I had seen all over Asia. These weren’t the real adventurers or pioneers. Like me, they were way behind the beat.

  They were here for Koh Samui, but also the various parties at Koh Phangan, somewhere else that had lost its innocence to mass commercialism and various moon parties. But I reckoned the key to Matt’s interest was ‘mass’.

  All those kids getting out of their heads needed chemicals to do it, even if it was only the local yaa baa. Matt was just the guy to help out a new friend. And he had, according to Laura, got a niche market.

  ‘Where do you hire a boat to Koh Phangan?’ I asked.

  ‘Ferry?’ asked Hom.

  ‘No, private. Speedboat.’

  ‘Lots of places,’ said Chai, suddenly finding his tongue. ‘But best is Samui Speedwave. Good price. It not far.’

  ‘I don’t want one now,’ I said firmly. ‘I’m just curious. Maybe we’ll have a look later.’

  ‘Yes, boss.’

  ‘There are lots of other speedboats,’ Hom said.

  Chai glared at her. He clearly had some deal going with Speedwave.

  I didn’t mind which one I started with. Laura had said Matt was the go-to drugs guy for one of the operators to Koh Phangan. I only had to show Matt’s picture to the right racket for them to tell me which stone he was living under. But first, I needed to recharge some very flat batteries.

  I felt my head dropping as Chai negotiated the traffic.

  I was no good to Jess like this. I needed a shower and at least an hour’s sleep. Two would be better.

  I closed my eyes and dozed, my rest made choppy by the stink and dust, the thrum of Chinook rotors and the cries of wounded soldiers I could never reach.

  The villa was vast – four bedrooms – built in a modern European style. It could have been in Ibiza rather than Thailand, except for the wall art and the heavy teak furniture. It also had a pool where you could put in some serious lengths, if you were so inclined. It overlooked a small section of beach pounded by a rough section of ocean. There were ‘No Swimming’ signs on the path down to the water’s edge. Hence the generous pool, I guessed.

  In truth, I didn’t care. I wasn’t going to be swimming.

  I was beat. It might seem that it was procrastination to strip, shower and slide between the sheets, but I knew from my army days what exhaustion could do. I’d been paralysed by indecision when trying to choose between saving a boy with his brains leaking out or another with his legs in tatters.

  It’s a tough call.

  I went with legs, lost the brains. You wonder sometimes if that was the right way round.

  Christ, we were losing so many arms and legs at one point that some soldiers went out with tourniquets already in place, one on each limb, so they could tighten them themselves if need be.

  Now that’s pessimism.

  But the IEDs were merciless. You got thirty, forty, fifty wounds per soldier, all filled with dirt and shit from the trenches or culverts where they were laid. It took a long time to sterilise them, let alone try to deal with their massive tissue damage. Give me a nice, clean bullet wound any day.

  As the tiredness took hold, you started to hate the army, the war, the government, the locals, the dust, the blood, that smell . . . And then, after eight hours of being dead to the world in an accommodation pod, you’d go back out and do it all again. Because you knew if you didn’t choose to save the one with the ruined legs – the head injury was too far gone – then maybe nobody would.

  And there is one thing that all those amputations and penetrating wounds masked; one thing the media never quite got over to the British public – the medical support worked incredibly well given the conditions.

  In any other war, right up to and including the Falklands, many, many soldiers would not have survived the terrible traumas they did in Iraq and Afghanistan.

  So, if I was going to work at anything approaching my highest level, I needed to let my brain and body rest. Jess would have to wait. It was logic over emotion. Call me a bad mother.

  Then again, what kind of Personal Protection Officer can’t protect herself? That’s what I felt when I woke up to the smell of cigarettes and the sight of Mr Mossad, dressed in a light-blue tropic-weight suit and striped shirt, sitting at the foot of my bed.

  Nate Segal blew smoke into the air as I shuffled to sit up, pulling the sheet to my throat. I didn’t ask how he got past hotel security. He was a pro. They weren’t.

  ‘That hurt,’ he said, pointing at his face. There was some discolouring around his right eye where my elbow had made contact.

  ‘Sorry. But it turns out you can breathe through your nose.’

  ‘You didn’t know that.’

  ‘Calculated risk.’

  ‘With my life.’

  I shrugged. ‘How come you got here so fast?’

  ‘The leaving a false trail with the concierge; the last-minute plane switch. Pretty good,’ he said. ‘For an amateur. But it wasn’t hard to access CCTV footage showing what you had actually done. I was on a flight forty-five minutes after you.’

  I felt disappointed in myself. I must have been tired. ‘I didn’t see the tail from the airport this end.’

  ‘There wasn’t one.’

  I ran through the alternatives. ‘The girl? Hom?’

  The inclination of his head told me I was right. ‘Her dad is very sick. And very poor. Don’t blame her. We offered her a lot of money.’

  ‘How did you get to her?’ After all, Freddie had booked her.

  ‘You really think we don’t know which transport agencies you people use on this island? Your friend went for one of three recommended by IBA. We have someone in each one. It wasn’t hard to guess which pick-up you were. Single woman. Code word. But you could have saved me all that trouble just by having a little faith.’

  ‘Look, I said I’m sorry. Sorry I don’t – can’t – trust anyone. I had no idea if you were for or against me.’

  ‘And the Colonel?’

  ‘Or him. I know it sounds disloyal—’

  ‘Very, after all he has done for you. He was very disappointed when I told him about the stunt you pulled.’

  I didn’t have the time or inclination to worry about hurt feelings or sore sinuses. ‘Can you get me a robe? I need to get going.’

  He shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, I can’t let you do that.’

  And this time, instead of a business card, he pulled a gun out of his jacket.

  THIRTY-TWO

  I wasn’t bothered about being naked. I had fought naked before. It was part of my training. It had to be, because human beings are conditioned to protect their modesty rather than defend themselves or go on the offensive. The Colonel had insisted we break that inhibition. Hell, I had tackled Bojan in not much more than a bra.

  No, it was the whole mechanism of getting out of the bed that bothered me. Throwing back the sheet, swinging off the bed, taking the five or six long strides I would need to rea
ch him. Or, managing to arch my back and do a forward spring – if the mattress was firm enough to let me – which would be quicker, but not by much.

  But he did something that made either move redundant.

  He threw the gun on the bed so that it landed next to me.

  ‘Sorry,’ Segal said again,’ I can’t let you go out without some back-up.’

  I stared at it. I didn’t recognise it. An automatic pistol that looked a little like a Walther PPK that had been put through the hot wash.

  ‘It’s a Bersa Thunder,’ he said. ‘Argentinian. Chambered for the .380.’

  ‘I’d have preferred a nine mil,’ I said.

  His eyebrows went up in surprise. ‘Is that a beggar I hear choosing?’

  ‘Sorry. Just that it’s pretty small.’

  ‘Designed for concealed carry. Light, with a rounded trigger guard that won’t snag on clothing. There’s a manual safety on the slide and a de-cocker, so you won’t blow a hole in your hip. I have to ask . . . what do you have on the Colonel? I’ve never known him give second chances.’

  Oh, it was a lot more chances than that. ‘A winning personality,’ I said, picking up the weapon.

  It felt too light for me. A .380 cartridge would cause quite the recoil on that frame. Personally, I’d have gone for the Jericho that Mossad use. But that was big and bulky and probably not best suited to carrying around a holiday island.

  I dropped the magazine. Eight rounds. Not a lot by modern standards, but enough for my needs. In fact, I hoped to return it unfired. ‘Thanks for this.’

  ‘His idea, not mine. And it’s not for show. The Colonel says Oktane has been activated.’

  ‘You know there is more than one? Oktane is an assassination franchise.’

  ‘I was aware of that.’ He said it as if I had made derogatory remarks about his mother.

  ‘It means a contract has been taken out on someone. Is that me?’

  ‘He doesn’t know.’

  ‘When was this?’

  ‘Within the last twenty-four hours.’

  ‘That gives us some time. He would have to travel from Europe to here. Assuming there are no Oktane franchises in this part of the world.’

  ‘I’ve never heard of one. There’s a guy who operates out of Tokyo, but we know where he is. And you’ve got your Cambodians, but they tend to be domestic, maybe Laos and Vietnam. Plus, the drug people keep them fully occupied. So you’re ahead of the game.’

  ‘As long as I’m ahead of Bojan.’

  Segal stubbed out his cigarette. ‘Speaking of whom.’

  He reached down to an item at his feet that I couldn’t see because of the bed’s teak footboard. I heard the sound of a zip. He tossed a transparent plastic folder over to me containing an official-looking document. ‘You should read that. Some old friends sent it over.’

  I could well imagine who his old friends were. I wondered how much not being part of Mossad hurt. Being on the outside always did, no matter how ambivalent you felt at the time. Being out in the world, doing security for rich arseholes, was a poor substitute for saving your country. Something I knew only too well.

  I was keen to be on my way, especially now I was tooled up and rested, so I said: ‘Can you give me the edited highlights?’

  He lit a second cigarette without asking. ‘What do you know about him? Bojan?’

  ‘He’s a Serbian thug.’

  ‘He might be now. But he was one of the Šakali, the Jackals, who operated in Kosovo.’

  ‘The Jackals were arrested and charged.’

  ‘And Bojan was jailed under his real name of Saša Stanic. Press reports say that he, his wife and child were killed in a car accident when he was given compassionate leave for his mother’s funeral. They weren’t. At least he wasn’t. You’ve heard of them? The Jackals? They were like the Scorpions. Paramilitary scum.’

  I’d heard of them and about their actions. ‘He once boasted to me about the number of women they had raped.’

  ‘The Jackals were hardly the first to weaponise rape over there, but they were very good at it. It was designed to drive the Albanians out of Kosovo. But Bojan likes to play games.’

  I knew that. When I first met him, I thought he was just another production-line, boneheaded enforcer.

  I was wrong.

  After all, it transpired he had contrived a scheme to murder a colleague he suspected was going to sell him out to the International Court of Human Justice in The Hague. He had also, after I had beaten him in a fair fight, engineered a rematch to kick my ass once and for all. Which didn’t end well for him.

  And now the whole catch-her-if-you-can shtick with Jess.

  Yes, he liked to play games.

  ‘He was the Jackals’ intelligence officer,’ Segal continued. ‘They usually put female agent provocateurs into the rape camps who would promise the inmates an escape. They let them get a kilometre or two down the road before they sprung their trap. It crushed the women’s resistance. And you’ve heard of the Yellow House?’

  I shook my head. Whatever it was, it didn’t sound good.

  ‘The Yellow House was – still is, for all I know – a farmhouse near a place called Burrel in Albania. The story is that ethnic Serbs, captured by Kosovans, were transferred there to have their organs harvested. It was supervised by a Turkish doctor, now believed to be in London. Basically, the fittest young men who had been captured were selected, driven into Albania and had their vital organs sold on the black market. The Yellow House was a farm, all right, but an organ farm.’

  ‘Really?’ It sounded like atrocity propaganda to me.

  ‘Really. Well, really, apparently. In 2010, a report by Swiss prosecutor Dick Marty to the Council of Europe said there were “credible, convergent indications” of an illegal trade in human organs going back over a decade. Which was true. Except, it was the other way around. The Serbs were harvesting the Kosovans and Albanians, but shouting louder than anyone else that their guys were being butchered for spares. A warm body was worth about forty-five thousand dollars, all in. Anyway, it was Bojan who came up with the decoy plan, sending out false reports, phony documentation, bribing witnesses. Nobody found any evidence at the Yellow House because it was never used for organ harvesting. Classic misdirection – they were looking in the wrong place.’

  ‘So the Albanians were innocent?’

  He laughed. ‘They were innocent of using the Yellow House. In fact, the KLA and the Albanian mafias decided that, as they were being accused of harvesting and nobody believed their denials, they might as well get in on the act. By the time the war ended, both sides were doing it to their prisoners. Until there was almost a glut of illegal kidneys available in the early noughties.’

  ‘What about the doctors involved?’

  ‘As I said, one of them is believed to be in London. Probably has a practice in Harley Street. The other, from Azerbaijan, was arrested for trial by the special tribunal in Kosovo, but released for lack of evidence. There were probably more medics we didn’t know about.’

  It occurred to me then that maybe somewhere in there was the answer to how Bojan had survived the nasty knife wound I thought killed him. No NHS hospital for him. He had medical back-up on the ground in London; men who, given their past, wouldn’t be in any position to refuse help or ask too many questions.

  I flicked the folder. ‘Why would Mossad keep notes on a Balkan war?’

  ‘It keeps notes on every war. Any conflict is like throwing acid around – you never know who is going to get splashed and burned. Plus the majority of Kosovan Albanians are Sunni Muslims. We are always interested in Muslim groups, especially when they make their money from drugs and slavery.’

  ‘So you’re telling me this . . .?’

  ‘Just so you know what sort of man you are up against. Not just a thug. A clever thug.’ He nodded towards the file. ‘There’s more in there. It’s not all an easy read.’

  ‘I’ll look at it later. Right now I have to see a man about a pow
erboat.’

  I flipped back the sheets, stood and padded to the bathroom, scooping up some clean underwear as I went.

  ‘The tits could be bigger,’ I heard him shout.

  I guess I could let him have that one for the assault in the last hotel room we shared. ‘Sorry to disappoint. Just trying to bring some beauty into an ugly world.’

  He laughed at that, although I wasn’t sure whether it was sarcastic or not.

  I cleaned my teeth and went back out to finish dressing. Segal was gone. He was making a habit of disappearing from my hotel rooms. But I had a feeling I’d be seeing him again.

  I went out with a shoulder bag containing what was left of my restraints, the depleted roll of gaffer tape and the pistol that Segal had given me. I also had a list of the key speedboat operators to Koh Phangan who service the gatherings of the Moon Children on Rin Beach.

  There were quite a number running tourist boats. More than I expected. But, the concierge told me, most who went over now were not the poor hippy farangs of old, but rich kids who shunned the ferries and could afford the cost of a private transfer.

  Around 10,000 people crossed for each event, more at New Year, and lots were willing to club together to pay the £250 or so each way that the boats charged. There was fierce competition by the runners to relieve the kids of their gap-year funds. So much so that there had been some fatalities on overcrowded boats.

  There was no sign of the slippery Hom – she had no doubt gone back to her parents with Nate’s cash, which spared her a tongue-lashing from me – so, with Chai driving me, I started at a place down the road known as OK Village. Here, a makeshift metal pier that looked like it was built from a child’s construction kit jutted out into the sea. There was no sign of a powerboat, but an illustrated sign showed one skimming over the waves with happy, shiny party people hanging over the sides.

  Not a life jacket between them, I noticed.

  The owner or operator was equally scarce, the hut next to the pier firmly locked. I took one of the cards from the plastic holder and pocketed it.

  The second port of call Chai took me to was in front of a hotel on Chaweng Beach. The boat bobbed offshore, the operator occupying a sala on the beach where he sat behind a table covered in a variety of snacks and a Bintang beer. I shucked my shoes before stepping onto the boards of the pavilion, recalling that Thais have a complex relationship with feet and shoes.