Singapore Sling Shot (25 page)

Outside the door, Jo and the thin-lipped Colombian looked at each other. This was not a sound that they expected to hear in this place at this time.

Sami smiled at Mendez's mirth. The Colombian put down his glass and removed a handkerchief from his pocket. He dropped his glasses onto the table and wiped his eyes.

“Oh, Mr Somsak, I believe your account of events and I admire your business sense. You know, as I do, that in our industry, half a billion dollars is neither here nor there. It is the principle of the thing that matters. Yes, I agree to your terms.”

“There is more,” Sami said, watching the smile on the Colombian's face freeze. “You do not get a share in Intella.”

“But why not?”

“Intella is mine, Singapore is mine and Thailand is mine,” Sami replied simply. Carlos Mendez scowled.

“We have difficulty investing in legitimate businesses in the Americas because of the cursed United States. I must invest here. There is nowhere else.”

“Yes there is, and I can help you do it.”

Mendez sat and stared at Sami Somsak. The man puzzled him terribly. He knew of Sami's reputation; he had researched him well through his underground connections before boarding the flight and coming to confront him. Now Sami was offering to help him.

“Where and why will you help?”

“China,” Sami replied. “I will put you in touch with the people who can help you treble your investment in legitimate business in a matter of months. As to why? Maybe I'm growing sentimental in my old age,” Sami said in a voice that made a lie of the words. “You lost a brother and I lost a brother to Thomas Lu, and in a perverse way that puts us in the same camp. Also, if you refuse to stay away from Singapore and Thailand, I will have to kill you.”

Carlos Mendez blinked. In his world, he was used to making threats and indeed killing or having people killed. However, the Latin temperament often raised the blood level and words and threats were delivered with hot passion. Having this man sitting opposite him deliver an ultimatum and talk of death as if he were simply discussing food items on a menu was totally alien to the Colombian. He could, however, plainly see in the Thai's eyes that his words were a truth and not an idle threat.

Mendez sat and considered the proposition. He knew that in this world, Sami Somsak's world, that the man in front of him was king, very much as he himself was king in his own world. Mendez well knew the entire planet was divided into kingdoms. Each kingdom had its own monarch. Sometimes those kingdoms went to war against each other, but for the most part, they co-operated on business of mutual interest in the quest for greater profits. Unnecessary wars only served to weaken both sides, and often a third player would gain dominance over the distracted and weakened combatants and defeat both.

Carlos Mendez was a realist. He would never wage a war that he couldn't be sure of winning. He made his decision.

“I agree.” He had accepted that he and Sami Somsak were both kings and now they were to become allies.

“Good,” Sami said simply. He picked up his glass of Evian. Carlos Mendez raised his brandy and the glasses touched.

31

It was the morning of the next day. With Sami and Carlos Mendez now suddenly good buddies, I figured it was time for me to split.

I knew that despite gloves, protective clothing and everything else, there would be something of me somewhere. That's the problem with DNA. The Singapore police and government authorities were pulling out all the stops to find the perpetrators of the crime wave that had suddenly hit the island-state. It would just take one little piece of evidence and the game would be over. You can't continue indefinitely doing what we had been doing in such a confined area without something going seriously wrong. Despite their portrayal in many movies, cops ain't stupid. They have systems and eventually those systems are going to pick up a thread and turn it into a rope with a noose at the end. So Ed Davidson, sans the beautiful Mavis, was going to move back to Hong Kong.

I'd heard that Thomas Lu was still alive in a warehouse in Pasir Ris. Whatever plans Sami and Carlos Mendez had for him, I had no idea and I wasn't particularly concerned. I'd come here and done what Sami had needed me to do. The irony, of course, was that in the end, retrieving the digital recorder from the surrender room had virtually been all for nothing. But hey, that's life; sometimes things just turn out that way.

I was packed and ready to go. There was a 13:50 flight out and I was planning on being on it. There was a knock at the door. I hadn't called to have my luggage, such as it was, picked up. I went to the door and checked through the peephole.

There was no porter waiting at the door. It was Simone! It seemed I was going to miss my flight.

Thomas Lu had been sitting in his own urine for forty-eight hours. He had been given nothing to eat, just warm bottled water. His shoulder was on fire. Infection was beginning to set in.

No one had been to see him, to torture or torment him, or even to re-dress his wound or kill him. His keeper, an unsmiling Chinese man, simply opened the door, shone a torch inside and then shut and locked the door again. Twice the guard had tossed a water bottle at Lu's huddled form but nothing else.

Despite being sick and hurting, Thomas Lu was still thinking coherently and clearly. He had gone beyond the initial shock of both his injury and capture. Now it was time to try and survive. Thinking helped him deal with the pain in his shoulder. People slipped out of handcuffs easily on magic shows and television. He had no illusions that it would be that easy, but could he open the handcuff attached to his good arm? Or rather, could he open the cuff that was attached to the water pipe?

The floor of the room was covered in debris, much of it windblown leaves and grasses pushed through the wide gap under the door. However, there was more. The inner walls of the room had once been lined with wood and many of the planks had rotted and fallen or were hanging. There were nails and nails could be used as lock picks.

Lu used his foot to drag the nearest fallen plank to him. There were nails, several of them. The wood was old and brittle. Using his leg and hip, he forced the plank to within the reach of his tethered hand. He reached for one of the three nails in the end of the plank. The first didn't move, however, on the second, the wood had splintered. The nail came free easily. Lu grunted and examined both the nail and the handcuff. It had to be a simple lock. The only problem was managing to work on it with only one hand. The solution was to use his chin to hold the band of the cuff as far up his arm as he could to hold the chain taut, while he held the nail between his thumb and forefinger and worked on the lock on the other cuff.

Lu started his attempt to open the cuff with wretched determination. He knew that unless he got free, he was dead. It was a simple equation.

Simone apologised for what she'd said to me. It was shock, she said, and I quite believed her. Who the hell wouldn't have been shocked after what she'd been through? We made up. Guilt or whatever produced a passion in her that was far in excess of any of the highly charged lovemaking we had enjoyed together in the past. It was torrid.

Later, spent in the extreme, we lay sprawled on the wrecked bed. I phoned reception and extended my booking indefinitely. All thoughts of returning to Hong Kong were banished, for the time being at least.

We ate an early room-service dinner and divided our evening between the bath with its spa jets and the bed. Her children were both staying with school friends—a treat for them, she said. Now that she had a guaranteed income and no need to work, Simone was relishing her new-found freedom. It was a tremendous evening, right up until my cellphone went.

A voice on the other end told me Thomas Lu had escaped.

32

He somehow got the handcuff off the pipe. When his guard came to check on him, he was waiting. He'd found a length of metal bar. The guard's brains are spread over the walls.”

“Shit!”

“Yes, Daniel. Shit indeed! I've moved the money again and cleaned up the warehouse. I'm making arrangements to shift Carlos's balance to Shanghai. We have people looking for Lu, but I don't know if we'll find him in Singapore. I suspect he'll have gone to KL or Bangkok for surgery. I have people checking. However, I doubt he'll have travelled under his own name or passport.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“I'm not sure there is anything you can do,” Sami replied, sounding almost dejected. “We'll just have to wait for him to resurface.”

“Bugger!”

“Indeed, Daniel. I'll call if I have anything new.”

“Okay!” I muttered almost absently as I flipped my phone shut. Should I head home as planned or stay and try and do what I could to help in the search for Thomas Lu? Sami had reasons for keeping Lu alive in the first place, I could understand that, but it ran against the grain with me.

It always had.

As a former sandbagger for Betty Windsor's mob, I always made it a point of doing the business at the first opportunity, no shagging about. To delay could, as it had done in this instant, backfire big time.

“Everything okay?” Simone was asking. I shook my head, then I remembered that she wasn't in the loop—she had no idea Thomas Lu had been held prisoner.

“Thomas Lu has apparently vanished,” I replied.

“Oh!” was all she said as she reached for me. Hong Kong could wait a day at least.

Thomas Lu was indeed in KL. The damage to his shoulder was severe. The surgeon needed to first treat him for infection and then do major reconstruction work. He told his patient that once the stitches were removed there would be the need for extensive physiotherapy. Lu was prepared for that. He was also prepared to wait in KL as long as it took for Carlos Mendez to depart for South America. Once Mendez was gone, Lu would then plan his return to Singapore and his revenge on Sami Somsak. In the meantime, wallowing in his post-operative drug high, he wanted company. He wanted his beautiful boy to come and sit by his bedside and comfort him. Thomas Lu made the call.

“He is in a private hospital in KL,” Sami said. It was morning. Simone and I were breakfasting in bed. My omelette was getting cold because Sami had my full attention.

“How the hell did you find that out so fast?”

“My insider,” Sami replied. I could feel the smile in his voice. “Several months ago I paid a young gay man, a male escort, a fortune to get close to Lu. He has done so. He is Lu's lover.”

“Holy shit!” I muttered. My devious friend had done it again.

Sami laughed. “You know how I work, Daniel. Virtually every member of the Intella Island consortium has a mistress, or a male lover, or a confidant who is on my payroll. I've been planning Intella Island for more than three years and I selected my partners, even though they think otherwise. Lu is the only one I hadn't invited to join. Unfortunately, the others did invite him. However, fortunately for us his sexual predilection, not to mention his excessive appetite, has made him the easiest to get someone close to.”

“Fortunately,” I replied dryly. I didn't mention that lover boy hadn't picked up a hint on what was about to happen to Stanley and his family.

“Daniel, it's insurance. I want to know what those I deal with are thinking and I want to have a little something over them if I need to exert any additional influence.”

I didn't reply. There was nothing more to say. I wondered idly what Sami had on me. Then I dismissed the thought. He had everything and nothing on me. That was the way it had always been between us. Total trust. I've spoken of it before, but that is what we have. One word from me and his billion-dollar drug-processing barge out in the Gulf of Thailand would be gone. That sort of information you don't pass on to people who wouldn't die for you. Would I die for Sami Somsak? I probably would. I would rather die for him than die a meaningless death. I have a real fear that one day I'll be taken out in a car accident by some idiot driver. What a stupid way to die.

“I am going to watch him, and when he returns, I'll arrange to have him taken care of,” Sami was saying, snapping me back to the moment.

“Why not just set Carlos onto him?” I suggested. “Have it happen up there, not here.”

“South American drug thugs running rampant in KL has a certain ring to it, I agree. But no, I'll keep that information to myself for the moment.” Sami paused. “We've been lucky so far, Daniel, and that luck can't continue indefinitely. Singapore has too many eyes and we can't stay invisible forever. You go home and I'll call if I need you.”

“Okay,” I replied. “This time it is ciao.”

“And thanks, old friend.”

So, there it was. I was going home. Now I just had to figure out how I was going to break the news to Simone. I didn't really have to. She knew and she was reluctantly okay with it. We would spend some time apart. She to regain her equilibrium and give “us”—or the potential of us—some serious thought. As for me, I was going to get back to Hong Kong, sign up to a gym, take up karate and get working on this body of mine. This little excursion had shown me just how totally out of shape I really was. I didn't finish my omelette. Simone and I said a long goodbye.

Hong Kong, one month later

I have spent the past month working out like a fanatic. I have once again become a non-smoker. Perhaps I should say I am a smoker who hasn't touched a cigarette for twenty-nine days and counting. I limit myself to two beers a day and one JD in the evening. Fish, lean steak and salads are on the menu. I joined an Aberdeen karate club, taking up the beginner's white belt for the first week while I learned their protocol. They then jumped me a whole bunch of belts up to brown, explaining that they'll grade me to black in their next grading ceremony. In contact sparring, I have to hold myself back. It's difficult to play-fight when you are trained to kill and maim. Self-control, I guess. When I'm not doing karate, I'm at the gym, the pool, or pounding the pavement.