The Dragon's Tale: A Jack Lauder Thriller (28 page)

     The gangster was shaking as Jack played his part. The gangster’s elite guard had been blown away by a bunch of fishermen, but he didn’t know that. "I think you have some money of mine," he continued in what he thought the guy could understand. Peter shook his head and began translating so Jack modified his delivery to suit the Russian’s. "You took it from a good friend of mine. Perhaps you remember having him shot? Mr. Montrose, from Hong Kong? I have brought these gentlemen a long, long way to help me get it back.” Jack motioned towards his comrades. The two women, wearing the flimsiest of clothes, so it was obvious what Chernenko had been up to, looked at Jack, terrified as he continued in his calm, modulated tone. "I just want what's mine. These men are all professionals. If I left them to their own devices they would wipe out everyone in this house. They've agreed to play by my rules.  So if you will just open the safe and give me back the dollars, I'll be on my way. Yes?"

     "I don't know what you're talking about," the gangster shouted in Russian swiftly translated by Peter.

     An almighty crack flattened him. Georgi stood over his prostrate body, his other weapon, a sawn-off, shoved halfway down the man’s throat and his trigger-finger twitching. He took no prisoners, this young man. “Cocksucker!” he sneered. Jack thought the gangster's eyes were about to pop out. Peter had in the meantime reacted to the imminent scream of one of the women by strangling it, even as it was born, with his hand over her mouth.

     The gangster got the nephew's message more clearly than Jack’s because, when he got up, ashen-faced, he moved straight over to the wall and moved the television. Below it was a floor safe. He opened it with a set of keys from his waistband and, with a glum expression, handed out wads of American banknotes. Peter threw the money to Jack who counted it. There was more than he needed. He said as much to Peter.

     "Take the lot," Peter snarled in English, "leave this scum nothing. We are entitled to the costs of the expedition."

     Well, yes, he had a point. The costs of litigation did generally follow the event.  "Okay," Jack said and he threw the wad to him.

     Peter stood up, "Let's kill these guys and get out of here."

     "No," Jack replied, "when I hired you guys in Moscow you promised to do this my way. There's been enough killing.”

     "Leave this to us," Peter barked at Jack,  "Go now!”

     A few minutes later, Diana was driving Jack back towards the city. They couldn’t go back to the fishermen’s village because they could blow their cover. They had to head for their hotel. That meant they couldn’t take the money because they would be vulnerable there to the police chief if he got wind of this operation. The vehicles were to be dumped, the fishermen would see they were burnt out.

     Peter met them at the hotel two hours later. They talked in hushed tones in the bathroom with the bath running. Jack knew better this time than to ask him what had happened to the group in the dacha, or to the woman at the apartment block. Diana had told him not to interfere.  “This is Russian poker,” she said, “we dealt ourselves in, remember?” There was no choice other than to sweat it out till the morning and hope news of their escapade didn’t get out. Jack cursed himself for not having had an escape plan prepared. Apart from that, the expedition had been a rousing success. After Peter had gone Diana took a couple of beers from the fridge. "God smiles on the righteous," she said as they clinked glasses, “but at what price?” He knew exactly what she meant. When they settled down for the night, cuddling up to each other, he found it difficult to get off to sleep. The adrenalin was still pumping around his brain and he had a feeling it couldn't just go like clockwork. A wheel had to come off somewhere. He prayed fervently that he was wrong but the prayer didn't relieve the uneasiness. Finally, he fell into a shallow, troubled sleep in which Gerry Montrose walked with zombies and screaming, naked women.

CHAPTER 7

     The next morning Jack got a wake up call from Peter just as the Police Chief banged on their room door, demanding to be let in. He left the telephone dangling, adding, “This could be trouble, old son.” Diana looked anxiously from beneath the quilt as he opened the door. The Chief barged in. Jack tried to hold him back, but he was the law here and that apparently gave him the right to go wherever he wished. He pushed Jack aside and started to walk round the room. "What have you done with the money you took from Chernenko?" He wheeled round and looking Jack straight in the eye.

     "Money?" Jack knew Peter could hear what was going on, and he held up his hands as if he didn't know what the Chief was talking about.

    "You idiot!" the Chief said, "do you think I don't know?" He raised his hand as if to slap Jack and then thought better of it and lowered it again. "Who was that man you were with the other night?"

     "Who?" Jack replied.

     "Don't mess with me English. You've brought in gangsters from Moscow to get your money back. That's what you wanted all the time. You pretended to be searching for your friend…."

     Jack played for time. The Chief obviously knew half the story. “You're welcome to search,” Jack told him, “if you think I have any money."

     The Chief looked at him thunderstruck. He could see Jack wasn't joking. "You fool!" he said, "you're even more stupid than I thought, you've given it to those mobsters. You'll never see it again."

     "Mobsters? What is this?" Jack was grimly satisfied that he had deprived the greedy Police Chief of his ill-gotten gains.

     "I'm going to lock you up," the Police Chief shouted. He took his gun out of his holster. "You'll spend a long time in one of our Russian prisons for this. So will she." He turned and smirked at Diana. "They will like her."

     "She's got nothing to do with this."

     "Tell it to the Magistrate, now get your clothes on and move!"

     This was a tight spot. Jack knew the Chief had him bang to rights but there was still something odd here. He hadn’t come with the cavalry, he’d come alone. This was still a private affair. If it had been official they’d have the Russian equivalent of SOCO’s crawling all over here by now and they’d be frog-marched down the Police Station. Then Diana took a hand. She slipped off the bed holding the quilt over her naked body and moved up close to the Russian whispering something to him. Oh no, Jack was thinking, I hope she's not trying to sweet talk him, but whatever it was she said, the Chief seemed mollified, enough to let them go into the bathroom to change. 

    "What did you tell him?" he asked Diana as soon as they were alone.

    “Oh, I told him you’re a very important person back home. I said the gang you brought has been told by your contact in Moscow that you cannot be cheated. I said they are due to meet up to divide up the money and we can lead him to the meet. He’s only interested in the loot.”

    “Wow!” Once again he was astonished by her speed of thought. It might just give them an edge if Peter turned up now and if, somehow, he could intervene.

     A few moments later there was a loud banging on the door for a second time. "All right, all right," Jack shouted back. He opened the door and the two of them walked out. "Can we do a deal?" he said to the Police Chief, "Fifty fifty?"

     The Chief looked at Jack like something the cat had dragged in and said, "You hold no aces Mr. Lauder. The deal I may do with you, if you’re lucky, is to let you go."

     "Like my friend was let go?"

     "I had no knowledge of that, it was a very clever operation by Chernenko. He thought he'd cheat me of my share by disposing of the evidence. He made out the Australian had left town. Just think of it, I wouldn't have known who the corpse was if you hadn't come along. Lucky for me, eh?"

     Jack grabbed the suitcase and Diana looked at him askance, “What are you doing with that?”

     “It’s got every possession I own in it.”

     She shook her head in disgust. In the reception they insisted on paying their bill, much to his annoyance. He was impatient to get going and they were buying time. "Where are you meeting them?" he asked Jack irritably.

     "No aces?"

     The Chief wagged a finger in his direction and replied, "Don't even think of trying to double-cross me!"

     They paid the intimidated manager with an American Express card and then headed for the door, hoping Peter had arrived but not knowing what he could do out in the open in broad daylight.

     The Police Chief motioned them towards a Police Car occupying one of the taxi ranks outside the hotel foyer. Jack looked round frantically for his pal and, just as he’d begun to despair that he’d deserted them, he saw him parked across the road. He signalled with his eyes towards the Chief but Peter was already alert to the problem. Was he going to try something desperate? It was one thing stinging the local mob, but taking out a Police Officer, even a corrupt one? That was heavy action. Just then he saw Peter’s brother and Georgi nosing down the street the opposite way in yet another vehicle. It was still touch and go, what could they do out here? Suddenly, just when he was desperate for a flash of inspiration, it was Diana again who saved the day. A taxi pulled up in the rank immediately behind the Police Car and she said, "That's the signal!"

     "What?" Both Jack and the Police Chief looked at her uncomprehendingly.

     It was Rudi, his grinning face pointed in their direction. He’d obviously enjoyed being a celebrity. He was leaning out of the cab gesticulating towards them. "English, English!" he shouted.

     "They said they'd send a taxi," Diana said to the police chief.

     The Police Chief looked at her then at the driver trying to attract their attention. It all looked kosher. The Chief mumbled something about it being a possible trap. "I want back up," he said. "Stay here, I'll find out where he's taking you and I'll arrange for my men to meet us there." He sauntered over towards the taxi and Rudi leaned out in his direction. In the meantime Peter pulled in behind in another battered Lada and shoved the back door open. Diana piled in first. The Police Chief, alert now to what was happening, broke off his interrogation of the frightened taxi driver and lunged towards Jack, whose heart was in his mouth but, reacting quickly, he hurled the suitcase at the Chief as he rushed to cut him off. The Chief went headlong into it, tripped over and fell heavily on the floor as Jack slammed the door shut. The car took off with screeching tyres across the street into the opposite flow of traffic.

     "See," he told Diana, "I knew it would come in handy." She threw him a withering look.

     If the Police Chief thought he was going to give immediate chase in the Police Car he was mistaken because Rudi panicked. He bolted and pulled out into the road. The driver of the Police Car, seeing the Chief go down and Rudi trying to run away, swerved out, siren blaring, to chase the taxi and slammed straight into Georgi’s judiciously placed vehicle. The two aggrieved men jumped out and began remonstrating with the Police Officer, who turned back to the Chief and nearly jumped out of his skin as he saw he was all right. The Chief screamed at the wrecked Police car, his last hope of pursuit gone and what looked like a bureaucratic mess to clear up into the bargain. As he and his officer argued, Peter’s relatives disappeared into the crowd of onlookers. The three in the Lada were busy congratulating themselves on a pretty good ruse when Peter brought them back to earth. "They'll be watching every exit for you now," he said, "the airport, the train station, the ferry. Everyone will be looking for you."

     The euphoria evaporated. "Can you get us out of here?" Jack asked, “by the sea route?”

     “Oh no, that isn’t safe. Not from here. The coastguard will have that covered.”

     “Is there no chance then?”

    The fisherman turned and smiled as they sat looking anxious in the back seat. "No problem," he replied, "the tiger's route." Jack and Diana looked at each other and wondered what the fisherman was talking about. “We are going to take you north,” he added, “to Primorsky Krai. It’s a long journey and an arduous one but no one goes up there. In the winter the frost bites deep. In the summer the insects bite deeper.” He smiled cheerfully. They were at the outskirts of the town now and he pulled into a transport park. “This is where we pick up our lift.” Jack was grateful that Peter was coming with them.

     The transport turned out to be a Kung, the Russian Army’s Humvee equivalent. It was four wheel drive with tyres which came up to a tall man’s waist and inside it was fitted out with custom-built bunks for four people. It had a winch, a gun rack and even a wood-burning stove. There was no standing on ceremony. Another of the team was the driver and soon the engine was revving away happily as they moved north, following the main highway which led north to the Ussuri River and took the line of the Trans-Siberian railway towards Khabarovsk, 800 kilometres north of Vladivostok and at the confluence of the Amur and Ussuri rivers. Jack knew what Peter meant by ‘the tiger route’ now as the land they were going to, which was once considered part of Manchuria and was basically a forest sea, was the last stamping ground of the great beast known as the Siberian Tiger. After several hours’ driving they reached the Ussuri where they turned east towards Ariadnoye. Then any semblance of road ran out and they began to take forestry tracks further east until, finally, as dawn began to break, they once again caught sight of the Sea of Japan and the narrow road which ran up the coast towards a village called Kamenka. They hid up in the hills until dark and then made their way down towards the settlement. A flashing light out at sea told them that Peter’s friends had arrived and a motorized dinghy came in-shore to collect them.  The trip wasn’t over. The fishing boat had to act as if it was fishing. It couldn’t spirit them straight out to sea but had to head for the traditional fishing grounds so they could give the coastguard the slip. 

     Three days later, after a bumpy crossing, they were in Hokkaido, the north island of Japan. They went ashore in the dinghy at the Shakotan Peninsula and said goodbye to Peter. “You are on your own now, old friend,” the Russian said, “I would like to thank you again for your kindness.”

     “My kindness? We are very much quits, my friend.”

     “You know, Jack, I didn’t expect anything good to come of that fit up in Newcastle. But it has done me a great deal of good.”

     The two of them shook hands one last time and they took off into dark.  A long walk took he and Diana to Otaru and from there they got a train to Sapporo. They took the midnight flight into Tokyo where, after an overnight stay, they got on the JAL flight for Hong Kong.  “Well, Jack,” Diana said as soon as they settled into their seats, “it wasn’t what we wanted to discover, was it, but it certainly brings the curtain down?”

     “I’m not so sure. I still don’t understand why I was a target, why someone thought Gerry had passed something on to me. It still doesn’t add up.” 

     “Oh leave it out!” she sighed, “can’t we just go off somewhere and get a couple of sun-beds?” But she knew it was in vain. There was an itch and, one thing she had learned, it was in Jack’s nature to scratch it.