Singapore Sling Shot (38 page)

“Welcome, Kaylin. I am so sorry about the little misunderstanding we had.” Thomas Lu was all smiles. Kaylin was also happy. Happy she had the protection of Thomas Lu against her former employer, happy that the promise from Lu would accomplish all that she dreamed of and more as far as serving her particular addiction went.

Lu personally showed her to her quarters. She was not just staying in a room with a bed and a bathroom; this was a mini apartment. There was a bedroom with a huge bed, plus a spacious
en suite.
The apartment was completed by a lounge with a small kitchen attached.

“I think you will be very comfortable here,” Lu said. “I would ask you not to bring guests back here unless by prior arrangement with myself,” he added. “Security, my dear.”

“Of course, Mr Lu.” That did disappoint her, but having Lu's protection meant more.

“We will, however, bring some entertainment in and you will certainly be able to indulge and participate if you want to, of course.”

Kaylin wanted that very much and she told her new master so. Thomas Lu smiled at her eagerness. The next few days are going to be very interesting, Lu thought as he made to leave his new houseguest's suite.

“By the way,” he paused in the doorway, “I believe you left virtually all of your possessions behind at Somsak's apartment.”

“Yes, I left in a great hurry.”

“Tomorrow we will arrange a shopping expedition for you. I'm sure we can obtain most of what you lost. At my expense, of course.”

Lu departed, leaving Kaylin wondering if all her Christmases had come at once. As a Christian, she believed in Christmas. However, something about Thomas Lu sent a shiver down her spine. She knew deep down that he didn't believe in anything but Thomas Lu.

“I had no idea that they were back.”

“Slipped in quietly through some back door perhaps. He didn't mention if Carlos was here with him.”

“No, but Marco has brought a team with him it appears. The chaos of the past weeks has distracted me,” Sami said. Even through my cell, he sounded tired.

“You lost a lot of people,” I countered. “You can't be everywhere.”

“You are right as usual, Daniel. But still, I do not like it when something like this happens. I need the Mendez brothers to stay away from Singapore. If they detonate this bomb that Marco hinted that they have with them, this place will lock down so tight that the Intella Island project will stall. I can't have that, Daniel. It is too important to me.”

“Then we had better make sure that tomorrow night's little soirée doesn't fail. When are you going to explain what the hell is going to happen and who will be involved? Lu has a fucking army in the building; we're going to need our own army.”

“No, Daniel. There will just be the three of us. You, me and K, that's all we'll need. I'll come to the penthouse mid-morning and I'll explain it all then.” The phone went dead. I closed my handset and pondered what to do with the evening that was falling outside. I was twitchy, unsettled. I needed to do something, anything, and I wasn't in the mood for a run.

In the end I showered, dressed and headed down to Orchard. I had a meal in a restaurant in Peranakan Place and then followed that with a couple of beers at a pub before I headed on up the street to Orchard Towers. I'd heard about the infamous “Four Floors of Whores” and figured it was time I paid the place a visit. I wasn't looking for a pick-up, but curiosity has always been a big factor in my makeup.

I know most of the fleshpots of Thailand well. I'd spent a lot of time working in the underbelly of the place over some fifteen years based in Bangkok. The Towers experience was pretty much the same as many of the Thai meat streets and clubs. Wall-to-wall pussy. There was a bit more clothing evident than in many of the Thai bars and clubs, but the faces were the same. There were Thai girls by the score, Chinese, Filipina, Malaysian, even Japanese and more than a few Europeans. I didn't know whether to be elated or depressed by the abundance of willing flesh, albeit available for a price. I guess you pay one way or another anyway. Who is to say that a cash transaction for sex is any less honest than a shitty marriage with its constant bartering, bribes and bullshit?

I left the Towers alone. Despite the hundreds of distractions that had thrown themselves my way, there was only one woman on my mind and she was sealed in a coffin waiting for the time she was finally laid to rest. Yes, I was depressed. I stopped at a pub and had a beer and then another. There was a bottle of Jack Daniels calling me from the shelf. I ignored it and walked home. I was sober and sour. Not a good combination in Daniel Swann!

48

The day of Thomas Lu's impending death dawned with a clear sky. I felt as flat as I had when I'd gone to bed. I'd tried to put thoughts of Simone and what had been and might have been away into a deep place in my brain. It hadn't worked. As a result, I'd had a more or less sleepless night. Nightmare explosions and flying tombstones shattered what sleep I did manage to get.

I showered and dressed. I felt gritty and tired. Breakfast didn't hold any appeal, so I collected a pot of coffee from the kitchen and went through to Sami's study. There, I fired up the computer that had been cunningly built into the desk. The keyboard was on a sliding shelf that came out and then folded back over the edge of the desk. One touch of a key and the wide screen rose up vertically on the far side of the desk. It was a very sophisticated set-up and a very powerful computer.

I'm not a great one for emails; however, I keyed into my account and it was full of messages. I canned most. Annoying how, despite the number of SPAM filters in use, the shit still gets through. Two mails in particular, however, gained my undivided attention. One was from the beautiful Dr Sylvia Dixon, my former wife. She was getting married again. The mail was a week old. I replied that I was glad for her and clicked the send button. Was I pleased for her? I guess in a way I was. Sylvia was beautiful, smart and she deserved all the good things in life. We had been good together, but not good for each other.

The second email was from Sakura. She was asking how I was. What could I say? That I had lost the woman I maybe loved. That half the world wanted to kill me while the other half didn't care if I lived or died.

“Oh crap!” I snarled aloud at myself. “Stop feeling sorry for yourself, you sad fuck!” My cellphone went a moment or two later. It was Sami.

“Yes, Daniel,” he said. “Stop feeling sorry for yourself!”

“You what?”

“I agree with you. Stop feeling sorry for yourself. Sylvia is getting married again. Sakura is calling to see how you are. As you have often said to me, life goes on, my friend.”

“How do you know this?” The answer was obvious, Sami had bugged the office and wherever he was calling from, he had a monitoring system. He laughed.

“Go to my Samurai, Daniel. Lift off his helmet.”

I did as Sami told me. I stepped around the figure to the rear. The fucking thing still gave me the shivers. I didn't want the arm that held that damned sword to suddenly come to life. I lifted off the ornate, full-face mask. There, in place of the mannequin's head, was a camera on a swivel mechanism. As I stood looking up at it, the camera moved without a sound. The lens turned 180 degrees and stared down at me. I moved past the warrior and put the helmet down on the desk. The camera followed me. I picked up the mobile and put it back to my ear.

“You look like shit.”

“Thank you, Doctor,” I replied. “I guess the microphone is in the armour.”

“On his belt, actually. It's amazing what my Samurai sees. Our friend Kaylin indulged herself in here several times with a variety of playmates; including my brother, unfortunately.”

“I didn't know you were into voyeurism,” I said sarcastically.

“Only when my security is threatened,” Sami responded smoothly.

“Sorry, my old friend, I'm a bit shitty-livered today!”

“It's called grief, Daniel. I'm feeling it too, but let us put Lu away, say farewell to the Mendez mob and bury our dead. Then we'll grieve properly.”

“You're right,” I replied. “Absolutely right. When are you coming in?”

“I'll be there in fifteen minutes.”

“Roger that!”

I replaced the Samurai's mask and sat back down at the computer. I wrote to Sakura asking her how she was doing and told her I was fine. I ended by saying that I would come and see her in a few weeks. I sent the mail and then flicked into my bank account.

I had US$52 million plus change sitting warming itself in the Caribbean. There was some comfort in that, I guess. I poured another coffee, lit a cigarette and waited for Sami. Nicotine and caffeine, the diet of kings and killers!

I've always had a problem killing time leading up to an operation, and this day was no different. Sami came. We talked and he outlined his plan. It was simple. It was, dare I say it, brilliant. Now I knew what he meant when he said that just three of us could storm Thomas Lu's fortress in the sky and take it. If all went well, Thomas Lu's death would appear to be a suicide. Failing that, it could be seen to be the final act in the gang war that the media and police still maintained had caused the dozens of deaths and injuries in Singapore in the past few months.

However, if things went totally out of control and we failed to kill Lu, the magnificent condo block in which Thomas Lu lived would be reduced to rubble in seconds. The Mendez brothers always kept their promises, according to their legend anyway. Now was not the time to check the veracity of that legend.

Their cartel had blown up the main prison in Bogota in 2003 in a controlled blast. While it had freed dozens of their own men, who obviously knew it was coming, it had also killed two hundred other inmates, many of whom were members of rival drug gangs. Fifty police and prison guards also died in the blast.

The cartel was also blamed for an explosion that completely destroyed the mansion of a legislator from La Palma, chairman of the anti-drug wing of the government in neighbouring Panama. Thirty people died in the blast, all because the official had aligned himself firmly with the Americans and introduced an anti-smuggling regime that seriously hindered the Mendez cartel's movement of drugs across that border and into vessels bound for the US and Europe.

There had been other bombings attributed to the cartel, many of them, so both Sami and I knew full well that Marco's threats were far from idle.

“It will work, Daniel, and it will appear as a suicide. I can see the headlines: ‘Financial woes lead Singapore businessman to suicide!' It has a nice ring to it, doesn't it?” Those had been Sami's last words on the coming night's activities. He vanished, or should I say the little old man vanished, and I was left waiting. It was thirty-five degrees outside with a humidity rating in the high nineties, so naturally I went for a run.

Thomas Lu had someone watching the entrance to Sami Somsak's building. The watcher wasn't the policewoman. He had phoned her and asked her to do it, but she'd told him she was on shift, so he used another watcher, a former cop with a serious alcohol problem. He worked in return for whisky.

The watcher reported that Crewe had run out of the complex dressed in a tracksuit at a few minutes to noon. Lu wondered briefly at that. Supposedly David Crewe was flying out to Australia this day, in just a few hours. What was he doing out running? Then Lu shrugged. No matter what he did in the meantime. As long as this man, Somsak's hired killer, was gone by day's end, he could forget him.

Lu opened a drawer on his desk and flicked a switch on the panel inside. The flat screen television mounted on the wall opposite his desk flared into life. A basketball game was on. Lu liked watching athletes at play. The sound was off. He pressed another button and the image changed. Now he was in the bedroom of Kaylin's suite. The woman was there. She was trying on clothes, of which there were many, both in bags on the floor and lying across her bed.

Undressing, she pulled a dress over her head. But for a pair of high-heeled shoes, she was naked. Despite his preference for men, Lu could still appreciate the female form, albeit from a purely aesthetic perspective. He could see why men such as Chairman Meng would be attracted to the likes of her.

He watched as Kaylin lifted a bag from the floor and spread its contents onto the bed. There was black leather, silver studs and chains. This was the type of costume that he had seen Kaylin wearing in the photographs he had seen of her at play. She selected a pair of leather shorts and wriggled into them, parading in front of the full-mirrored wall beside the walk-in wardrobe. The shorts had a full-length zip that ran from the waistband at the front to the band at the back. The woman undid the zip and the crotch on the shorts parted. Kaylin's hands went between her legs. Watching her reflection, she stood there with her legs wide apart. She began to pleasure herself.

Fascinated by the pure wanton display on the screen in front of him, Thomas Lu found he was experiencing the beginnings of an erection. This was a first. Never before had a woman had that effect on him. He reached for the zip on his trousers and opened it, groping to free his penis. Perhaps, just perhaps, he would ask this woman to try and work her magic on him? Perhaps even this very evening!

49

It was time to move. Sami had planned everything to happen at midnight. At 11.30pm Sami, myself and K got into the plain white four-door utility that had appeared in the underground car park late in the afternoon. K was driving.

Sami sat up front with him, while I was in the back. All three of us were dressed in dark overalls. We were workers going on a late shift or coming off shift, even though our overalls were perhaps too clean for that scenario.

The guns and our other equipment were in a bag on the seat beside me. We weren't going prepared for a big firefight. There was a Browning each, silenced and with a shoulder holster and spare magazines, and each of us had a handheld stun gun. These were the torch-like devices, not the taser version that fired hooked darts with wires attached. These weapons had two metal prongs protruding from the front. The prongs were held against the unfortunate subject and the button on the body of the device pressed, sending 50,000 volts into the victim.