Death in the Kingdom (6 page)

After five minutes of Roddy's excruciating company, I moved my agenda abruptly forward. ‘Who is in charge of security these days, Roddy?' I asked. I knew damn well who was in charge. That had all been part of my briefing. However by asking the question, I managed to stop Roddy mid-sentence. He looked at me slightly surprised at what could have been considered a rude interruption. ‘Security, Roddy old lad, and I mean security with a capital S,' I repeated in a conspiratorial tone that caused Roddy to drop his voice and lean closer. Not a pleasant sensation for me.

‘Donald's your man. Donald Wisehart,' Roddy said, looking around with an earnest expression on his face. ‘All hush, hush stuff,' he confided in me in a stage whisper. He probably had no real idea what Wisehart actually did. Roddy was very, very low in the need-to-know department.

‘And where might I find this Mr Wisehart?' I asked.

Roddy pointed towards the basement stairs. ‘In his den. Trevaine's old office. You remember it?'

‘Oh yes,' I replied. Neville Trevaine had been a controller for our group. He'd been transferred out to Lahore a few weeks after I'd flown the coop. I don't think the two things were related, but the poor bugger was killed on the Afghan border a few weeks before the allied invasion.

‘Drink later?' suggested Roddy hopefully.

‘We'll see how this goes,' I replied, heading for the stairs. The last thing I wanted to do was end up in a dance bar with Roddy at my shoulder.

Donald Wisehart was about thirty-five, but his face was in the process of changing from young and idealistic to cynical. Middle age was on its way early, as often happened to those in this business. It was a fact I had observed casually over a bourbon too many back in London. There happened to have been a bar mirror staring me in the face at the time.

‘Don Wisehart,' he said, shaking hands with a grip that stopped about one psi short of being a bone cruncher.

‘Dan Swann,' I replied, thinking that we'd make a great double act: the Dan and Don show, or Don and Dan or just Don Don the Security Man and Dan the Whistling Dog. Whatever, Don Don stuck. He would forever be embedded in my memory bank as Don Don the Security Man. Stupid stuff like that helped me remember names, faces and deeds.

Wisehart hadn't done much to the décor he had inherited. There was a woman at a desk just inside the door who looked like a secretary. He introduced her as Janice. He asked Janice for coffee for two. She left. The office was your basic pre-war Whitehall two-person issue. A couple of space-age communications units and a pair of PCs were the only concession to fifty years of some sort of progress. It appeared to me to be exactly as it had been when Trevaine had been in charge, even down to the circa-1965 picture of Betty on the wall. There was a large NO SMOKING sign beside the portrait. Damn! Political correctness and all that crap!

Janice returned with the coffee. She was a tidy-looking brunette with a big chest and slightly heavy thighs. She was maybe a couple of years Don Don's junior. I noticed the engagement ring on her finger and caught a glimpse of something pass between them. She would attract a fair bit of attention on the street or in the pub back home, but here in the City of Smiles, as far as the feminine stakes were concerned at least, she wouldn't raise an eyebrow. European women, even relatively trim ones, all complained of feeling like ‘fat cows' around the petite Thai girls. It was a fact of life.

My instincts told me that Janice and Don were keeping house. I wondered if there was a Mrs Don or a Mr Janice in the mix. That would complicate things here just as it would anywhere else in the world. Neither wore a wedding ring on the telltale finger, however someone had to have put the sparkler on Janice's finger. My money was on Don Don. Either way, the coffee was drinkable.

I left the embassy two hours later, having successfully dodged Roddy on the way out. Wisehart had filled in a few blanks as to the where, what, how and why of Bangkok 2007. American paranoia had been hiked to levels previously unheard of. The Yanks didn't have a hell of a lot of friends anymore, especially in the Middle East. On the broader scene even old friends had been relegated to another file. Perhaps old Osama had achieved more than he'd intended with 911. Or had he known the US psyche better than the experts had anticipated he did?

The apartment Wisehart had given me the key for wasn't a safe house as such. It was a unit used for visitors in what was basically an annex for the lesser lights of the embassy staff, along with the employees of various British trade and government agencies and the like who had bought into it. Don Don told me they had a pool, a club bar that looked like a set from
Coronation Street
and a restaurant that did passable English food. I didn't yet have a good enough handle on the guy to know whether or not he was taking the piss about the food.

I anticipated that the nightly pool and bull sessions in the boozer would be like the usual bloody Whitehall piss-ups. The sort of club gatherings where everyone was intent on getting one up on each other and attempting to swing a leg over the latest young wife or single guy or girl in town. In principle I wasn't against it, but with bloody bureaucrats and diplomatic types and their hangers-on I just found it so fucking boring and predictable, no matter where in the world it occured.

This little oasis of British heaven was only 300 yards away from the embassy, up around the corner on Soi Chitlom, right behind the Central Department Store, or CDS as everyone in Bangkok refered to it. I found the annex first try. There was a gate man on the vehicle entrance. He was asleep in his cubbyhole.

There were two basement car parks dedicated to Flat Eleven. One contained a Honda step-through. I pulled into the vacant space at about the same time as two bright young Thai girls emerged from the lift twenty feet away. I cast an appreciative eye on the pair as they came towards me. The girls both showed a lot of skin wearing tiny tank tops and tight jeans. They were giggling and talking in Thai.

I got out of the Nissan and collected my bag from the trunk. I couldn't help but tune in to the girls' animated conversation. That they were working girls, to use old-speak, came as no surprise. They were discussing the couple who had hired them for a foursome. ‘She was like a cow, so fat,' one girl was saying. ‘I was scared she was going to squash me.'

‘And he was so skinny and so white. He never got hard, it was like a soft noodle.' One of the girls caught sight of me and nudged the other with her elbow. The smiles broadened, the eyes widened and the hips, ensconced in their stretch denim, began to sway with every stride. It was some sort of carnal poetry in motion; a Thai mating dance without the headgear and six-inch fingernails.

‘I think this one would get very hard for you.' The girl who said this looked at me with the big-eyed innocent smile of a pretty twelve year old. All she needed was the school uniform. It was a wonderful piece of acting. ‘So sorry we are in your car park,' she said in English.

‘No problem,' I replied in English. ‘I only have one car,' I added in Thai.

Both girls looked startled, but only for a second. Then the laughter started. Fingers were pointed accusingly at me and heads nodded, sending waves of dark hair shimmering.

I had always appreciated the fact that most of the Thai women I had met had a very robust and quite crude sense of humour. Being caught out by assuming I was a visiting Englishman not able to speak their language was, to them, a good joke in itself. Knowing I had understood the remarks they had made was another. I joined them in sharing the joke.

‘Maybe you do want me to see if you can be hard,' the second girl said, giving me the full works in the eyes and teeth department as she pushed her hair back off her face. The same movement projected a pair of pert nipples my way through the thin fabric of her top.

I smiled back and gave her a mock pout. ‘Not tonight,' I replied in Thai. ‘I have a date with a cow.' That set them laughing again. It was my cue to head for the lift and navigate my way to the fourth level.

The flat was off a corridor with seven doors. One had an exit sign above it, the others bore fake brass numbers running from seven to twelve. I keyed the lock and went into number eleven.

The place was basically designed to a conventional motel format. There were two bedrooms, each with double beds. One had a view and a balcony, the other stared at a blank wall across a narrow alley. The living room-cum-lounge had a dining nook off it connected to a small kitchen. A door off the kitchen ran into a bathroom with a shower, bath, toilet, washing machine and dryer. A second door gave access to the larger bedroom.

Having done the complete circuit, I took the bedroom with the view. From the tiny balcony with its two plastic chairs and side table, I could look down at the deserted pool with its fringe of potted palms and plastic sun loungers. It was obviously too early for the horde of expats to be out and about. Either that or they had chosen not to swim under the grey–blue haze that filtered the sun down to the sparkling blue waters of this little ersatz nirvana.

I didn't hang about admiring the view. My hunger was growing hot in the pit of my gut and I didn't do starvation well, not unless absolutely necessary. I stowed my few clothes and went to check out the kitchen in detail. There was a microwave, gas hob and a small oven. The fridge was empty. Don Don had warned me of that. The food court in CDS would take care of my inner man.

Before I left the apartment I put my passport collection, emergency funds and my Walther P99 in the under-floor safe in the bathroom. Don Don had given me one of the only two keys that existed for it. He assured me the other was in the embassy main safe. I had to trust him. I kept the knife. It was sheathed on the inside of my left boot. The key to the safe went into the pocket in the lining of the right. Okay, so I was a Brit who liked cowboy boots. Not the fancy Rudy-of-Hollywood type, but plain black and solid ones. Apart from being useful for hiding weaponry, keys and cash, they were comfortable. They were also very handy when things got a bit untidy. The square toes had steel under them and the heels were solid. Footwear like that had saved my life in the past, so why spoil a good thing?

I went out on my supply run and shared the apartment lift with a couple riding down. She was a big richly dyed redhead. He was a balding stick insect. They both had the look of being long-time residents. They didn't speak—not to each other and not to me. I resisted the temptation to mention cows or noodles. They got off at the first level.

I was showered, shaved and the washing machine was on. I'd devoured two sandwiches and was on my third Singha. It was time to call Sami. Sami Somsak was an old friend and associate. We had worked and played together over many years. The last time I had seen him was when he had visited London maybe eighteen months before. Once upon a time we had been joined at the hip as we did all sorts of tricky stuff out in the bush. Since his semi-retirement from Black Ops, where he worked as a freelancer for our side, Sami had been doing things with illicit substances. The Golden Triangle was still very golden for him. I didn't begrudge him the wealth he'd accumulated from drugs. Personally I hated drugs, but The Firm, the CIA and damned near everyone else I knew had used them for profit over the years. Sami was just getting his share, and if the sick fucks around the world wanted to stew their brains, hell, that was their perogative.

Sami wasn't home. He had departed the City of Smiles for the City of Angels. We talked for ten minutes. He would be back in Bangkok in a week or so. I'd go do what I had to and we'd catch up. I flicked on my laptop and checked for messages. Nothing of any significance, not even any SPAM! The souped-up agency-supplied Toshiba was equipped with all the filters known to man. I shut down the magic box and sat debating whether to go out on the town or visit the pub-cum-club downstairs and maybe risk an ‘English' meal in the restaurant. In all my years in Asia, the only time I had ever caught a dreaded stomach bug was in a European-style hotel with European food. I'd never been sick on so-called street, bush or peasant food.

First I had to call Bernard. I fired up the mobile and called home. If the Right Honourable Sir Bernard Sinclair was overjoyed to hear my dulcet tones he didn't let on. I informed him where I was and of the timetable as I saw it. I didn't go into detail. I just told him I had a boat set up for Ranong. ‘The weather will be the thing, Bernard,' I reminded him. We had discussed this before I had left. I wasn't prepared to risk my life and get taken out by one of the violent storms that the tail end of the monsoon creates. He grudgingly acknowledged the point and I hung up with the promise that I'd update him the next day.

‘Like a fucking maiden aunt,' I thought as I off-loaded the phone onto one of the pair of bedside tables in the room. Even Bernard had never been this bad before. Once upon a life I wouldn't have spoken to him twice in a month. Whatever was in that damned box on the bottom of the Andaman was really rattling his cage.

The Coro Street Club was jumping when I strolled in. There were perhaps twenty-five people in it, obvious couples and singles; the assembly spanned all ages. Eyes swept over me then came back for more. Shit, this was like a meat market back home. Being reasonably honest, I wasn't the worst-looking banana in the bunch. I had a nose that had been broken long ago but still had all my own teeth. A suntan was rapidly re-establishing itself, and I had a moustache and full head of blond–white hair. Added to those dubious attributes were a pair of blue eyes, a flat gut and enough muscle to make me a nuisance in a scrap. That sort of painted a picture of yours truly. Closer inspection revealed a lot of scars on my body, plus the calluses on the balls of my feet and the knuckles of my thick fingers. A professional, at least, would recognise that I hadn't led a soft life and I was trained in some of the not-so-fine arts.