The Dragon's Tale: A Jack Lauder Thriller (20 page)

     Half an hour passed and he was trying to come to terms with his situation. He felt confident he could convince these guys that he wasn’t who they thought he was, but who did they think he was? Knowing that would be a start. His mind swirled with thoughts of Diana, of Conchita and the shark, of the ferry disappearing beneath the waves. He shuddered at the thought. No, he couldn’t just give up; he had to get over to these people what had happened. The ferry company had to be brought to book for the way they had overloaded the ferry. It was then the bolt slid back and in came a fat man dressed in plain clothes: slacks, blue cotton shirt and straw hat; he wore a gun in a side holster. Jack took in the newcomer curiously. He looked like the local mafia boss. Little did he know until the man spoke that he was looking at the local Lowther. "I am Roger Borromeo, Chief of Detectives,” the newcomer introduced himself in decent English. That wasn’t exactly what he’d expected, although when he thought about it who should he expect to see in a cop shop but a copper? It was just he’d got used to the line between the goodies and the baddies being a little blurred. Not only here; back home too; only here it was a bit more in your face. “Who are you?" the newcomer continued.

     My name’s Jack Lauder. I’m from England. I was on the ferry that went down.”

     The other man’s eyes shot upwards. “How can that be? There were no survivors!”

     “There were,” Jack said. “Two boats got away. I was thrown into the water. I believe the boats were intercepted by pirates.”

     “Pirates?” Borromeo looked at Jack suspiciously as if he had never heard the word.

     “The evidence is on an island not far away,” Jack said, “I can take you there. Many dead bodies.”

     “You lie!” the officer barked, “you’re a drug runner!”

     So that‘s what they thought he was. Now he got it. “Do me a favour, look at me, I can’t be a very successful one, can I?”

      Borromeo looked at him through half-closed eyes. The reply wasn‘t exactly what you’d expect from a guilty person. “What you come to the Philippines for?”

     “Looking for a guy called Gerry Montrose.”

     The officer’s eyes narrowed again, "Why were you looking for this Gerry Montrose?"

     “Well, he's an old friend of mine. I've come all the way from England to find him. Look, I'm a lawyer back in England, why would I be trafficking drugs?"

     Borromeo laughed. "Lawyer!" he guffawed, "biggest crook in business!" So it wasn’t just the UK, the profession got a bad press worldwide. Somehow it didn't seem the right moment to rise up indignantly in its defence. His discretion was right because his interrogator then told him something. "A few days ago this man came through here, said he was called Montrose, he was a cop on special assignment from Hong Kong. There were men on his tail. Men like you, mister." He pointed a stubby finger at Jack.  "He said you were drug runners."

     "Howway, looka, check me out! Ring the Hong Kong authorities, ask for a bigwig called Graham Witherspoon, the Assistant-Commissioner for Anti-Corruption," Jack noticed that made Borromeo wince, "and you'll find I'm no drug runner. Whoever Gerry was talking about, it wasn't me."

     Borromeo seemed reluctant to spend any money on the telephone call but he went off morosely and did as he was bid. He was back a short time later,  "The man wants to speak to you.” He was gruff but respectful. Jack walked past him and smiled as if to say, told you so.

     "Goo' day, mate," came Graham's best Brisbane, "you can't stay out of the merde, can you? What have you been doing, knocking policemen’s helmets off? No, don't tell me, I've given that bozo the spiel about who you are, I've told him you're the most important VIP in the southern hemisphere at the moment, so don't go letting me down. He thinks you're the Duke of Edinburgh!"

     His Aussie mate was right. All of a sudden the obstacles to progress disappeared. A set of new clothes, which weren’t at all badly fitting, was brought and a launch was arranged to take him and Police Chief out to the island. Borromeo would not, however, discuss Gerry and Jack reasoned that he was waiting to see if his story was true. After a short time poking round among the gruesome remains the officer seemed satisfied.

     “I came here with a woman,” Jack told him, “a blonde woman, very beautiful.” Borromeo’s eyes hardened again. “She was on one of the boats. The guy who picked me up thinks she was taken by the raiders.”

     “What man?” Borromeo was suddenly interested.

     Jack was in a quandary. He didn’t want to drop Ian in but he needed the Police Chief’s assistance. “Just a yachtsman who picked me up. He dropped me here but he didn’t land himself. He was heading for Singapore.”

     “Why he not radio?” Borromeo asked suspiciously.

     “His radio was knocked out in the storm.”

     “Why he not land and repair it?” Jack shrugged. He couldn’t answer that one. “Hmm!” Borromeo continued non-committally then he added, “we go back to port now! I deal with this.”

     “But what about Diana?”

     “White woman, you say, blond?”

     “That’s right.”

     He rubbed his fingers together, “She worth much. Probably still alive. If so, we find her.”

     “Worth much to whom?” It was the policeman’s turn to shrug. He fell silent as the launch coughed into life and, seemingly lost in thought, didn’t speak to Jack again throughout the whole journey. Two hours later they disembarked at Zamboanga.

CHAPTER 8

     Diana was lying by the pool watching the dragonflies skim the surface. She was scheming an escape, but she was alert to the fact that there was a roaring fire out there beyond the frying pan. It was a day like any other but, out of the corner of her eye, she saw one of the guards running towards her. She looked towards the man and noticed with surprise that his eyes were rolling and his lips were moving frantically, although she couldn’t discern what he was saying. The next moment there was a flash of light and something which later would imprint itself on her retina as a long, silvery, cylindrical object shot over the grass, over the water, seeming to deviate as it moved, into the hall of the house. Even as her brain reacted to what she had seen and forced her to her feet and into a perfect swallow dive into the water, the fireball ballooned from the building and ate everything in its path. She gulped in air as she dived but even under the water she could hear the explosion. Surfacing, she saw the helicopters arrive overhead. Armed soldiers dressed in camouflage gear waited to disembark. One of the Arab guards spun past on a motorbike and, as if in slow motion, she saw a soldier take aim from the sky and blow the guy from his bike. The bike’s wheels spun at the poolside as its rider disappeared into the water almost on top of her. The contents of his pockets scattered over the water.

     Most of it was cash and she grabbed as much as she could, levered herself from the water and ran for the bike. She jumped aboard and, as if born in the saddle, roared across the grass to the big stockade gate. The defenders were on the verge of closing it when she shot up from behind them and slalomed through the narrow gap. They were too preoccupied with survival from whatever was on the outside to do anything about it. She revved off down the road uninterrupted. Her escape had however been noted by another of the helicopters and, under orders to give no quarter, it turned after the fleeing bike and shadowed it down the road, guns blazing and kicking up dust behind its wheels. Diana was saved by the lush greenness of a tropical forest. Even the speeding helicopter lost her in the cathedral-like gloom. More than one road led out of the forest and, as luck would have it, she chose one which the helicopter pilot didn’t expect. By the time he picked her up again she had more than two miles on him and he could see Zamboanga coming up on the horizon, even though it would be many minutes before it became visible to the motorcyclist. Discretion getting the better of valour, the pilot veered off and returned to the main event, allowing the fugitive to escape.

     Expecting the return of the helicopter but unable to look over her shoulder because of the bumpy, rutted road Diana entered the shanty town on the outskirts of the city. As if drawn to the quayside she swept on downtown until the harbour was in sight. She was seeking a police post and she saw the launch with the unmistakable police markings coming upriver. “Thank God!” she muttered and, continuing until she could travel no further without an amphibious vehicle, she skidded to a halt at the steps above the waterfront. She fell off the bike exhausted on to the stone steps just as the police launch pulled up and a man leapt off the prow and tied the boat on to one of the moorings. She felt like a figure in a dream as she shaded her eyes and said, “Jack?”

     He looked up from the quay and nearly fell back into the boat. In no time at all he had mounted the steps two at a time and caught her as she swooned into his arms. Roger Borromeo, wheezing as his vast bulk followed Jack up the steps, remarked nonchalantly as he went past, “Told you we’d find her!”

     Then sirens further up the road alerted the policeman to the larger problem and he climbed into his waiting car which drove off. Jack took a long look at Diana and the finery she was wearing, “What happened to you?”

     “Long story.”

     The first thing they needed to do was to get some cash so they went to the Post Office from which he rang Graham Witherspoon. Diana was prattling in the background as he arranged for some funds to be wired to him. “You’ll get them first thing in the morning,” Graham said. “Jeez, Jack! You are a walking incident room. Who’s the sheila you’ve got with you, by the way?”

     Graham must have heard her but he decided not to disclose her identity. He remembered that she had a connection of some sort with the ICAC. He’d seen her that day get in the lift. “Just someone I bumped into,” he said, “tell you all about it when I get back.” The Australian chuckled as he rang off and Jack wasn’t entirely certain why he hadn’t trusted his friend with that information. Maybe it was some kind of sixth sense. He didn’t press the issue with Diana. It was enough for now that she was alive. He was learning quickly about the politics, which seemed to surround his search for Gerry and he was beginning to wonder if he could trust anyone. Borromeo, for instance? Jack believed privately that the policeman had been well aware that the strike on the guerilla base was due to take place, which explained his sudden interest in visiting the pirate island.

     Diana had enough money to get them a hotel for the night and there was no point in trying to do more this evening. Both of them were dog-tired and when they got to the room it had only a double bed. He stopped and looked at it. “You still feel the same way?” she asked him.

     “Maybe, I’m not sure.

     "Oh, so you’re not packing a weapon there?" The eyebrows rose again above the cool eyes, and this time she unzipped her shorts and let them slip down her body, revealing matching red underwear, just the way he‘d first seen her. She twirled, arms out as if flying, and removed her blouse. This time the red pants were even skimpier, a g-string which divided firm buttocks, showing she still worked out. Sighing audibly, he moved up behind her and unclipped her bra.  Her breasts were larger than he remembered them. He pinged her pants. "You can take mine off this time," she whispered, "call it returning the compliment."

     There are women whom you can only take with love and tenderness, others who make you feel as if you have no other purpose on earth than to propagate the species. They make you feel masculine and powerful. Diana was one of those. Running through his head was what am I doing here, why am I doing this? But he would have to live with his shame. “What are you doing, girl?” he gasped. “You’re going to make me come.”

     “That’s the general idea. Besides, I don’t have the pill. Left it on the boat.” That was a lie; she’d used the last of them in captivity but no way did she want to risk babies right now.

     “Do you want me to withdraw?”

     “I’ve got a better idea,” She turned over on her tummy, “you’ll need some of that cream from the dressing table,” she added. “The face stuff, it’s softer.” They were locked there together, both just moving from the hips, then, like a sudden, electric storm, it was over. It occurred to him that it was like a conquest, a military triumph, only the victim didn’t look defeated.  “Jeez!” she panted, “you haven’t forgotten how to give a girl one!” She moved from under him and strolled through to the bathroom.

     When she returned, still naked and showing no shame, she poured them both water from the bottle in the room. He asked her quietly, “So, come clean, what happened between you and Gerry?”

     “Oh, Jack, don’t even go there!” She said it with a world-weary resignation in her voice which made him feel guilty for the introduction of a wrong note into an otherwise joyful occasion. “I guess it was kismet that we wouldn’t make it. We just weren’t made for each other.” Her beautiful chin was in her hand as she spoke softly about her former lover. “It was good at first, we were very alike, energy to burn! But then it started to fall apart. We were bickering all the time and then it got worse. It got violent.”

     “Gerry? He hit you?”

     “Oh, you don’t know the half of it, Jack!”

     “I suspect you can give as good as you get.”

     “You’re right, but he’s very strong.  He kicked me black and blue.”

     “Never would have thought Gerry would hit a woman!”

     “There was a time, maybe, when he wouldn’t, but he was a heavy drinker, and you know his worst vice, don’t you?”

      “Women?”

     “Ha!” She slapped him gently. “You blokes all think the same way! Well, yes, he liked his share of the comfort, that was no secret, but I could have tamed that. It was the other one I couldn’t compete with.”

     Diana looked at him expectantly and the penny finally dropped. “Gambling?”

     She nodded, “It ate him away, and when he was on a losing streak he was a bastard! He went on such a downer that nothing was any good to him. Course, he was great when he was winning!” She laughed, remembering old times no doubt, “When I started to give him gip about the way he went through cash, he blew his stack! He smacked me once so hard that he broke my cheekbone. Can you tell?”

     Jack looked at it closely as she presented it to him, “No,” he said and leaned over and kissed it. She stroked his chest as he nuzzled her gently. “So it’s pointless asking you where he’s gone?” Jack asked.

     “You thought I knew all this time, when it was me following you?” She laughed. “Frankly, yes, it is pointless, and I have to say I don’t give a damn!” Again she spoke with a certain venom. “K.K. told me you lent him money. I don’t think you’ll see it again, darling. It’s not that Gerry’s turned bad, it’s just that he can’t help himself. Gambling’s a disease. You lose everything through it. It takes your mind, then your self-respect. If you’re not careful it takes your life.” She started to pull him towards her and he resisted slightly. “It made him impotent,” she said coyly, “at least where I was concerned. What’s the matter? That your problem too?”

     “You’re not a nice girl!”

     “Do you want to hold the wool while I knit?”

     Ignoring her with a good-natured smile, the perspiration of their earlier efforts now condensing on them in the breeze from the Indian Ocean, Jack continued to probe. “Not quite. Bear with me. Anyway, what are you doing with K.K. Chow?”

     “Oh!” She lay back on the bed, arms outspread. “I’m thirty-five, Jack.  Two failed relationships behind me. Absolutely no fucking loot from either. No family anywhere in the world, just like you,” she gazed at him, “A girl’s gotta live. K.K. asked me to work for him.  I was useful to him. I know everyone he needs to know in the Gwai Lo establishment.”

     “You mean you’ve slept with most of them?”

     Her eyes sparked with defiance, “No, I mean I’ve fucked most of them!” 

     He shrugged, “I guess you do what you have to.”

     “Oh don’t get all moralistic on me. I speak the local lingo well and the same goes for a lot of other languages. The Russian mafia’s moved into Macao and K.K.’s got big interests over there. He has a Russian partner who brings in girls.”

     “Russian girls?”

     “No, silly, Irish and Welsh only need apply!”

     He couldn’t help but laugh. 

     “I speak Russian well enough to get by. I even speak Arabic. Even if I say so myself, I’m well-equipped for the job. I get top wages.”

     “Everyone says the guy’s a crook.”

     “So, who isn’t in this world? He’s the local Tung Chu. What’s that to me? He doesn’t involve me in any of that shit!”

     “What about his bed?” Jack asked. “Does he involve you in that?”

     “Jack! I do believe you’re jealous!”

     “Well, I’m not sure it’s a level playing field. If you’re going to get competition, you’d rather it wasn’t from one of the richest men in the world!”

     “It’s not like that,” she said, “it never has been, not for me anyway and I think he knows better than to mix business and pleasure.” But you…” her voice was soft and subtle with an emotional depth which Jack hadn’t noticed previously, “…you can compete with anyone!”

     “You’re a bad girl,” he replied, “a bad, bad girl.” She looked at him and it was a mixture between the coquettish and the shy, a quite delicious mix. “No, okay, you’re right. I don’t want to hold the wool.”