Silencer (13 page)

I’d decided to learn Russian; I’d even bought some labels to stick on everyday objects around the house so I could start getting the hang of it. We wanted our boy to be bilingual: English inside the house, Russian everywhere else. That meant the two of
us could learn together – and that meant I had to be there.

That had been my plan, anyway. Now I wasn’t too sure that it was Anna’s.

I also wasn’t sure whether I was hiding from the police or a limo full of heavyweight BG. If the whippet had stuck around, she’d keep her mouth shut: she didn’t look the sort to cave in easily. But she might well have followed me out of the window. The way the BG would see it, the safety latch was across the door, their boss had been shot, and she was holding the smoking gun. Would they believe her story about a mystery intruder? They might do when they found the bits of broken slate on the terrace. I was pretty sure the BG wouldn’t call the police, but who knew what they got up to in this fucked-up country?

I got out the iPhone. It was a while before Anna answered. ‘It’s me.’ I heard the rustle of sheets and bedclothes as she sat up, and the gentle bleep of the life support doing its stuff in the background. ‘Are the lads still there?’

She sighed. ‘One of them is here all the time. It’s the Asian guy at the moment. Don’t they ever sleep?’

‘I hope not. They’ve got a job to do. So do I.’ I explained what I’d found out, and that Diminetz had been shot dead by his girlfriend, and what the next step had to be. ‘Hong Kong.’

Anna was silent for a few seconds. ‘Straight away?’

‘I need your help. Can you book me a flight out of here ASAP – the first plane out in the morning?’

‘I’ll get online.’

‘Wait out …’

A group of six or seven men in leather jackets and long coats walked past the end of the alleyway. Their heels clicked on the wet cobblestones. They weren’t looking for me. By the sound of it, all they were interested in was the odd moan about life and the share of a cigarette. The night brought out all sorts of wildlife in the city.

I gave it another five seconds before getting back on the iPhone. ‘As well as the flight, can you also book a hotel? A five-star. I need to look like I have cash to splash.’

She was totally awake now. ‘Sure.’

‘Can you find out Katya’s blood type?’

I could hear the keys rattle on her laptop. ‘I’ll try.’

‘How’s the boy?’

‘He’s fine. He’s putting on weight.’ More rattling. ‘OK, I’ve got Frankfurt at zero six oh five and …’ The keys went into warp speed.

‘I was told Katya went direct from there.’

‘Correct. Direct to Hong Kong.’

‘Perfect. But don’t send me anything until I call you from the airport.’

‘OK.’

I closed down reluctantly and deleted the log. It was good to have her at the end of the line. Not for all the PA stuff but because, well, for now at least, she was there.

05.37 hrs

I thrust some US dollars at the driver and stepped out of the cab, eyes peeled for police and Diminetz’s BGs. I rubbed my hands together and tried to slap some warmth into my shoulder muscles. I’d binned my bomber in case the woman at Reception had talked to the police about the weirdo who’d hung around the lounge all night.

The airport was busy, but there were no groups of lads off to stag parties or families with far too many suitcases and kids draped over them trying to catch a few zeds. Moldovans didn’t have the cash to burn on vacations. The crowd here was strictly business, and it looked like everyone had been to the same wheelie-case shop. And why not? It was the greatest invention on the planet, right up there with squeezable Marmite.

The locals stood out like a coach party full of sore thumbs in their plastic shoes and shiny, badly fitting suits. If they’d brushed their hair, they needed to buy a new brush. Their shirt collars gave them away, too. The Europeans’ were dry-cleaned and crisply pressed, but theirs were in shit state. I’d been able to spot bad ironing a mile off since my boy-soldier days. Pressing shirts the army way was almost our first lesson. If you started ironing a
collar from the middle and worked your way towards the point, the material would gather and crinkle, and that would mean an ‘extra’ – a show parade at 23.00 hours, with shirt rewashed and re-pressed – for lack of attention to detail. You also had to wear your best uniform, your ‘No. 2s’, for the orderly officer’s parade, and that meant buckles, brasses and boots had to be perfect too – or else.

The check-in queue was hardly moving. The young clerk with bed hair behind the counter seemed to have all the time in the world. Unfazed, two guys in front of me with sharp hair, good-quality suits and real leather shoes held their BlackBerrys and German passports at the ready. I wasn’t sure whether they were about to invade Poland or just looking forward to another day in the Frankfurt office.

I smoothed my own hair down with my hand as we shuffled forward another couple of paces. There wasn’t a woman in sight; no Chanel two-piece on its way back to Western Europe. Maybe female executives chose to leave these ex-Soviet-bloc shit-holes to their male colleagues while they jetted off to the chic places, like New York and LA. Or maybe they’d experienced the Checkpoint Charlie-style check-in arrangements once, and that had been enough.

A couple more businessmen joined the line behind me, heads down, checking their smartphones, followed by a small group of locals: three teenage girls, accompanied by a man in his early sixties who waffled at them non-stop and kept referring to a couple of sheets of A4.

The girls’ jeans and sweaters were pure street market, but as new as their identical bright green nylon suitcases. Wherever they were going, there’d be no problem finding those things on the conveyor-belt at Baggage Reclaim.

All three had short, straight brown hair. They wore no make-up, which was strange for round here, and showed no sign of excitement. In fact, they looked apprehensive. If they were going on holiday, it was to somewhere pretty grim. Judging by the brand-new, bright blue passports the old man was clutching, this was their first flight, maybe even their first time out of the country.

He was a foot shorter than everyone else in the terminal – and obviously taking his shepherding duties seriously. He wore his new denim jacket like a uniform, zipped all the way up to his jowls. His jeans were new too, and freshly creased, and – a nice touch – his trainers were the same green as the suitcases. It wasn’t the too-young look of his clothes that was strange, but the jet-black hair. He carried on talking to the girls, slowly and gently, as if he was comforting them, cajoling them, making them feel that everything was going to be OK.

Bed Hair said something I didn’t understand, so he mimed: No luggage?

I rolled my eyes. ‘Business. Frankfurt, Moldova, one day.’

As I picked up my ticket and passport, I saw him nod at someone behind me. I turned to see a guy in a black-leather jacket legging it past the end of the queue.

I headed for the coffee stall. I spent a lot of time sipping a Nescafé instant and admiring the architecture as I watched a stream of passengers waiting at security, but I didn’t see the guy in the leather jacket again. The three girls were the last to go through, glancing anxiously behind them. I followed them towards the barrier and gave them a smile of encouragement as they hesitated again; Grandpa’s wave became so vigorous I thought he might take off too.

The Frankfurt flight was finally called. I left it ten minutes, then wandered towards the departure gate and studied the queue. The well-groomed Germans and the three girls were ready to board, but I didn’t want to go over there. Not yet.

Another five minutes and it was thinning out. I started to move.

Then I stopped.

Bed Hair had come airside to process embarkation. Behind him there was another guy, the one in the black-leather jacket. It could have been some kind of anti-terrorist check – except that he wasn’t looking at passports and boarding passes. He wasn’t even looking at anyone in the queue. He was just waiting.

The flight was called again, for the last time. I had to go on. I stood behind the three girls and got out my documents.

I knew there was going to be a problem as soon as I reached Bed Hair. The guy in the leather jacket advanced along the far side of the counter, scrutinizing me and the girls, like he was weighing something up.

Bed Hair checked the girls’ documents, then glanced at the guy in the leather jacket and shook his head. He waved them on and it was my turn. He checked the photo against my face. Then he flipped through two or three pages of visa stamps.

‘You travel only you, yes?’

I nodded.

He still held onto the passport. Leatherman leaned over his shoulder and whispered something.

There was nothing I could do. The whispering stopped. Bed Hair gave back the passport.

I took it, and went to walk on. As I did so, Leatherman stepped in front of me and blocked my path.

‘Tax,’ he said.

‘What?’

‘Exit tax.’ He held out his hand.

I got it. They weren’t looking for terrorists. They were looking for passengers with foreign passports and no mates. These people were subject to a special tax. I reached into my pouch and pulled out a twenty-dollar bill. It must have been exactly the right amount because he spun on his heel and headed back to the check-in desk to start all over again.

I didn’t bother waiting for change.

PART FOUR

30 August 2011

15.28 hrs

The German stewardess instructed me in English, then prerecorded Cantonese to ensure my seat was in the upright position and my belt fastened as we were less than thirty minutes from landing.

At the press of a button my bed folded itself back into a very well-upholstered chair. It was a while since I’d flown business class on my own dime, but it was part of my cover story. So was staying in a five-star hotel. I had to behave like I had the kind of money it took to buy my very own cut-to-order kidney, and if Somali pirates could check out a hostage’s financial status on a ten-year-old Dell powered by a diesel generator in the middle of nowhere, I was sure Diminetz’s mates would be well up to speed. I had to pass their preliminary checks with enough A*s to know I wasn’t just pissing them about.

The flight from Frankfurt had taken most of the night, and the cabin staff handed out hot towels to help wipe the sleep out of our eyes. It didn’t work for me: sleep was one luxury I couldn’t afford right now. I was fucked: the thick wad of printouts about chronic kidney disease had taken me for ever to memorize – but I needed to convince ‘Soapy’ I was a serious buyer; I had to learn as much as I could about the organ-donor process, and the illness
that had given me and my Hispanic partner such grief. I couldn’t think of a better route to the people holding Katya; the people who’d suddenly invaded my life.

I pulled up the blind and looked out. The sky wasn’t the electric blue of the tourist posters, it was dark and moody. But at least we were on time, and I could see shafts of sunlight bouncing off the South China Sea thousands of feet below, where they’d managed to pierce the handful of gaps in the cloud. Hundreds of black dots speckled the surface of the water, white wakes streaming behind them like con trails.

My first time in Hong Kong had been as a young rifleman during the illegal-immigrant drama in the 1980s. The Brits were still the controlling power, and whole families of illegal immigrants from mainland China had started jumping over the fence in search of a better life. The Cantonese-speaking locals didn’t like their Mandarin neighbours breathing their oxygen, and the People’s Republic of China’s Communists weren’t impressed that their comrades thought the grass was greener in the decadent West. Over-excited squaddies like me were sent out to stem the tide.

I’ll never forget the night we arrived at Kai Tak. In those days approaching aircraft had to pull an impossibly steep turn, then fly in between the skyscrapers. People’s apartments were so close to the wingtips I could see them sitting down to bowls of chicken and rice; I could almost read the messages in their fortune cookies.

We bunked down at a camp near the airport. It was the first experience I’d had of a senior officer handing me cash. They weren’t going to feed us until we were deployed north so we were given a ration allowance. It was supposed to guarantee our five-a-day but, of course, it paid for nights on the town instead, with just enough left over for a bag of something deep-fried on the way home.

Hong Kong was one of the places I’d heard about from the old and the bold, but never thought I’d see up close. New York might call itself the city that never sleeps, but Hong Kong seized the day – and the night – with a can of Red Bull up each nostril. The place never seemed to slow down, let alone stop. It teemed with neon,
food stalls and mad, dense 24/7 traffic. I’d felt like I was living in the middle of a James Bond movie.

We spent two weeks at a stretch manning OPs along the border and running up and down hills to catch the IIs – illegal immigrants – when we spotted them cutting or climbing the border fence and making a run for it through the dense vegetation. I felt sorry for them: most were in shit state. The women had babies strapped to their backs with tea towels; the men had one small carrier bag containing the whole family’s worldly possessions.

Their only consolation was to have been caught by us and not the Gurkhas. The IIs were shit-scared of them because the Chinese government’s spin doctors had spread the rumour that if they nicked you they’d take your head off with a single swing of a
kukri
.

Of course that never happened; instead of them losing their heads we’d kiss goodbye to our rations. The Brits and the Gurkhas used to hand over their hard-earned boiled sweets and chocolate because most of the poor fuckers hadn’t eaten for days.

But that was where the good news ended. We’d round them up and hand them over to the Royal Hong Kong Police, who’d hand them over to the People’s Republic’s Finest, and who knows what happened to them after that?