Death in the Kingdom (20 page)

Okay, at over six feet tall and being pale-faced at that I was going to stand out—or was I? Instead of the typical 125cc bike, I was going to be riding a 750 Suzuki with a low slung seat to reduce my height. It was all a matter of scale. Small Thai, small bike. Big guy, big bike. Unless we sat side by side, the differential wouldn't be obvious at a glance. But there was more. Jeans and T-shirt were okay, but my tan got worked on, as did my moustache. With a helmet on and my dark Ray Bans, plus an orange vest and a passenger on the back, I was going to look the part—at least at a glance.

I was going to head along Ploenchit into Wireless and cruise for the embassy vehicle entrance. Don Don would have the gate open the moment I made the turn into Wireless. Easy, providing the coast was clear. So was it? That was what the midnight call to Don Don had been about. I glanced at my watch. It was 09:00. Time for him to check in and he was on time. Sami's switchboard girl spoke into her headset and a moment later the light on the phone that was sitting on the table in front of me flashed.

Don Don got straight to the point, and he sounded puzzled. ‘We've had vehicles cruising Wireless Road overnight, a couple of black SUVs and at least three sedans. There have been a dozen pedestrians we identified as having been in the area since late afternoon yesterday. I ran tapes from earlier in the day and they moved in about 18:00.' The embassy security chief paused. I figured he was fast-forwarding whatever was on his monitor.

‘They mixed and matched as singles and in pairs, but definitely the same faces,' he continued. ‘Hell, we have footage of one of them speaking into his sleeve, then getting into one of the SUVs. That was at 08:40 this morning. By 08.45 they were all gone.'

‘All of them?' I asked.

‘Street's virtually empty,' Don Don replied. ‘Hardly any pedestrians, not a lot of traffic and no spooks we can see. It's bloody quiet.'

‘Thanks,' I said. ‘Any change, call me on my mobile. I'll be there within the hour. Just make sure they open the damn gates.'

‘Bet on it,' Don Don replied and we hung up.

‘What caused them to pull out?' Sami muttered. ‘There has to be a reason.'

‘We'll figure it out later,' I replied. ‘Let's do it.'

‘I've got someone doing a little recon,' said Sami, holding up his hand as another call came in. He spoke to the caller for only a matter of seconds.

‘I think we're good to go now,' Sami said. ‘I'll explain along the way. Can you still remember how to ride a big bike?' He smiled.

Before selling off parts of its compound, the British Embassy used to front onto Ploenchit, virtually under the line of the sky train. The station entrance nearest to the embassy touched down only a matter of yards from the intersection.

We had to figure that anyone left behind would be stationed there to intercept me coming by train. The reason for the last call was that one of Sami's people had just come off the sky train and taken the logical route to the embassy. She saw no one suspicious at the station, crossed at the intersection and walked up Wireless Road past the embassy entrances. Still she saw no one of concern. Then she crossed and came back down the Swiss Embassy side. Nothing! The reason for our recon wasn't that we didn't trust Don Don's evaluation, but rather that Sami didn't know him. He did, however, know his people and I knew Sami.

My passenger was Mary, one of the girls who had made me up. She was dressed in a smart dark business suit with a crisp white blouse. The skirt was very short and showed a mile of beautiful leg that ended in elegantly high-heeled strappy shoes. She looked stunning. ‘Perfect to draw attention away from the driver,' said Sami as he helped Mary into the Thai-girl-with-skirt-riding-side-saddle pose and arranged her legs to maximum advantage. My beautiful passenger giggled. The leather holdall was wedged firmly between my lower back and Mary's hip and held on with a bungy cord. ‘Go well,' Sami said as he signalled for the roller door to be raised. ‘I'll tell your man to expect you in about fifteen minutes.'

‘I'll call you when we get there!'

‘I'll hear if you don't,' came the reply. ‘Call tomorrow night. I'm heading out of town. No mobile where I'm going,' Sami added, slapping my helmet. ‘Go!'

Riding side-saddle or not, Mary was the perfect pillion passenger. I was a more than competent motorcycle rider but having an expert passenger was a real plus. When I'd been based in Bangkok I'd owned a big Kawasaki and that had been my standard means of getting about. I was enjoying the ride but apprehensive as to what we'd find on Wireless Road, despite the all clear. It was all looking too damn easy!

From Sami's place in Banglamphu I headed across to Bamrung Muang Road which becomes Rama I and then Ploenchit as it crosses the city. It was virtually a straight run of maybe five miles. Despite heavy traffic we were passing the Siam Centre ten minutes after leaving Sami's. The big bike mightn't have been the most nimble machine around, but it rode well. I didn't even come close to dropping it or Mary.

My heart did a bit of a flip as I made the turn at the lights into Wireless Road.

This is it! I thought. But there wasn't any ‘it'! The designated gate was open as promised. Two armed marines were standing just inside, as was Don Don. I rode into the compound and the gates closed. It was something of an anticlimax. Don Don, ever the gentleman, helped Mary down under the hungry eyes of the squaddies. I lifted the bike onto its stand and got off.

In the top of the holdall we'd put a pair of tracksuit trousers. I opened the bag and gave them to Mary. She pulled them on under her skirt in seconds and the leg show was over. I passed her my helmet. She smiled and kissed me on the cheek before putting on the hard hat and straddling the big Suzuki.

‘Good rider, Dan,' she said as the rather startled marines realised what was happening and opened the gate. Mary fired the bike, rolled it off its stand and roared back out onto Wireless Road. I laughed at Don Don's expression.

‘Sami's people are versatile,' I said. ‘Now,' I hefted the leather bag and shouldered it, ‘let's get me and this somewhere safe!'

The room Don Don had set aside for me was the back office immediately behind his. It wasn't a normal office but rather a completely sealed space about thirty feet by twenty with a high ceiling. It had been designed as a safe room before such things were commonplace. ‘Sealed unit,' Don Don said needlessly as he led me inside. The door was a heavy mother with a submarine-type lip around it and thick rubber gaskets. ‘Separate air, scrubbers, the works. Installed way back.' I didn't acknowledge that I knew about the room from my previous life. The furnishings inside were spartan to the extreme. The joint obviously didn't get a lot of use. There was a small desk on one side, a folding cot and a couple of chairs around a card table that sat in the centre of the room. There was a toilet in a screened alcove, a sagging couch and a couple of bookcases stacked with ancient volumes of
Reader's Digest.

The kitchen alcove set a few feet along the wall from the toilet recess showed a little promise. That was until I noted that the door on the small refrigerator was held open by a strategically placed roll of newspaper. ‘Damn, no cold beer,' I thought. There was also a sink with a mirror above it, plus a couple of cupboards and, perhaps a little incongruously, there was a fire-hose reel on the wall beside the door. Whoever had set this place up had thought of everything except comfort. Basically my new home for the moment was the equivalent of an air-raid shelter. I guessed that, apart from when Don Don brought his Miss Friday back for a good old-fashioned bonking, this forgotten, musty bloody hole was sealed up tight to grow dust mites and mould.

‘Papers, food and a few beers coming,' my host said. ‘By the way, the fridge doesn't work,' he added as he headed out the door. ‘Back in a jiffy.' I hadn't heard that expression in years. I deposited the holdall on the floor beside the table and stripped off the orange taxi vest, removing the Walther from the shoulder holster under my T-shirt. I put it on the table as I fished out my mobile phone. There was no signal, which wasn't surprising given I was so deep inside the building.

I returned to the outer office and Don Don directed me to a scrambled land line. He intercepted Janice returning to the office with supplies and took them into the safe room while I made the call.

Bernard sounded almost stunned to hear from me. Whether he was joyed, overjoyed or ecstatic I had no idea. Thing was, I had done my job as I had understood it, apart from sitting on that damned box until the experts got there. ‘They'll be several hours away,' Bernard told me when he'd gained some sort of composure. The conversation was short and there wasn't a single congratulatory word. I went back into my cave, shutting the door behind me. I felt a childish hurt. Teacher hadn't praised me for being a clever bugger.

There was a newspaper, a six-pack of cold Singha and food, such as it was. The embassy sandwiches and sausage rolls tasted as if they had been made a month before in the UK and sent out surface mail. I settled myself at the table. It tilted alarmingly, one leg measurably shorter than the others. I went and got a couple of copies
of Reader's Digest
from the nearest bookcase to balance things up. I proceeded to drink three beers and eat everything in sight. Regulations aside, I lit a cigarette while I scanned the paper. The safe room wasn't fitted with a smoke alarm although there were sprinklers set in the high ceiling.

A huge full-colour photograph of the Ruby Buddha dominated the front page of the
Thai Post.
The article on page two told of a mysterious European who had appeared with the buddha, and how he had vanished immediately afterwards. ‘Spooky,' I muttered to myself. The way the reporter had phrased things, it sounded as if the mysterious me had been some sort of supernatural entity. Whatever, the monks at Pha To had their buddha back. Maybe that would put me in line for some luck of the good kind. Although my thumb still throbbed, the swelling and redness had gone down. It appeared I would live so I took that as a sign of good things to come. I leaned back in my chair and sat staring at the image of the buddha. My thoughts turned to Tuk Tuk and how close he had come to sainthood and immortality. Where would things have ended up if I hadn't saved his life all those years before?

20

I woke up lying across the table surrounded by pages of newspapers and the debris of my meal. I felt like gritty shit. I glanced at my watch. It was almost 16:00. I'd been out of it for most of the day. I used the toilet and caught sight of myself in the mirror as I washed up. The make-up Mary and her friend had applied at Sami's was streaked; I looked like a pantomime disaster, a sort of brown and white minstrel. A shower would have to wait. Instead I made do with scrubbing all my visible bits in the washbasin. At least there was plenty of hot water. I was now seriously hungry. I drank one of my remaining beers. It was warm but it was wet.

I did some housekeeping, tossing the rubbish and tidying the newspaper. I hadn't read a lot of it, so I cracked open the last beer and started a serious read. The sort of read only seriously bored people can do. There was a smallish piece on page four about suspected pirate activity off the coast beyond Ranong. Local fishermen had recovered several bodies and body parts from the sea. One particularly grisly find had been made when a large Tiger shark caught in a net was opened up. Inside had been a partially digested human head. ‘Nice!' I muttered.

About then I hoped Don Don would come bouncing in the door with more beer, more food and the expert crew who were coming to take charge of my lead casket. Then I heard the door open and a voice beyond it. That was when I knew that no matter what good deeds I had performed over the last few days, my karma was going to be all bad.

‘Is that the international man of mystery?'

What the hell was she doing here? Somehow my heart had made it into the back of my throat, jamming my voice box so I couldn't scream. ‘Fuck,' I thought. Dracula had arrived in the crypt. I averted my eyes so I wouldn't go blind and fumbled to make the sign of the cross. It was a childish thing on my part. Sort of self-defence for idiots or something. ‘Bugger off, Sylvia!' I finally managed to croak out.

‘Oh, poor little Danny boy. Haven't you got anyone to play with, all alone in this big cold box?' That was the thing about ex-wives: they could get under your skin without even trying. It was second nature to them. Sylvia Swann, née Dixon, had been my only attempt at matrimonial bliss. Sylvia was a scientist employed by the Ministry of Defence. She was a specialist in things bacterial and chemical which was why, right at that moment, I was extremely grateful that I hadn't succumbed to my childish impulses and opened that damned box. I was also glad that it would shortly be gone from my life, just like Sylvia. She'd entered my life like a thunderbolt and vanished in a tempest.

Sylvia and I met at a mutual friend's wedding and discovered we basically shared the same employer. We dated, and in an indecently short time, discovered we made spectacular sex. We married, had more spectacular sex and then the wheels fell off. It had been an incredibly short-lived attempt at creating eternal wedded bliss for a couple of reasons. Part of the problem was Sylvia's inability to understand the nature of what I did, because she didn't bloody well know and I couldn't tell her. All she knew was that I, like her, ‘worked for the Government' and I seemed to be always away doing ‘it', whatever ‘it' was. We probably could have survived that, but the other major factor was my inability to keep my hands and other body parts off other women. Result: a series of dirty big fights followed by a quick dirty little divorce.

‘Hello, darling former wife,' I said finally. I looked up just as Sylvia's lips brushed my cheek.