Rising Tiger (7 page)

“Before we do anything in Singapore, I have to see a man about a horse.”

She laughed. “Do you remember the last time you told me that?”

“France, I think. But we actually found some horses in Montana.”

“Good memory. But what are we really going to get?”

“Two Glocks and some extra magazines.”

“From who?”

“I know a guy.” Well, he knew a guy who knew a guy.

The two of them spent the next two hours traveling around the city, picking up various taxis, city buses, the MRT metro system, and simply walking along the river paths, until Jake was damn sure they were not being followed.

Now they stood against a railing in relative darkness, away from the restaurants and bars in Singapore’s Clarke Quay region, where tourists rode slowly in boats below on the river.

“Why all the caution?” Alexandra asked.

Jake wasn’t entirely sure about that. “You know me. I like to be thorough. I picked up a tail at the Hong Kong airport.”

“How is that possible? I thought you flew there on a business charter.”

“I did. But someone must have caught me getting on that flight in Taipei.”

She moved closer to him, like a lover snuggling for warmth, despite the hot, muggy evening. She whispered, “Who do you think it was?”

Jake shrugged. “Probably one of Remington’s Agency assets.”

“You think he knows you’re after him?”

“That’s what I’m hoping,” Jake said. “There’s no other way to find the man.”

Alexandra gazed into his eyes with concern. “And you still trust this contact providing guns?”

Wrapping his hand at the small of her back, Jake said, “I think so. There are a number of factions within the Agency. Some are obviously still loyal to Bill Remington, and others are associates of Kurt Jenkins.”

“And this is one of Kurt’s guys?”

“Yeah. A young officer with no ties to Remington.” Jake checked his watch. It was ten minutes after midnight. They guy was late.

“Based on the photo you showed me on your phone, young is the correct term,” she said with a slight laugh.

The way the two of them stood, the river to one side, she could look over his shoulder in one direction and Jake could observe anyone coming from the other way. Finally, Jake saw the young officer approach. He wore dark clothing and carried a man-satchel across his shoulders. But he was limping like a wounded animal, a grimace of pain on his face.

“Here we go,” Jake said, pulling away somewhat from Alexandra.

Then Jake saw the man’s left leg had a wound, with blood leaving a trail behind him.

Jake closed the distance on the guy, his eyes instinctively scanning for danger. “What happened?” Jake asked the man.

The Agency man stopped and glanced behind him. “Sorry I’m late. It’s nice to meet you, Jake. I’ve heard so many good things.” He was definitely in extreme pain. But something had compelled him to complete his mission.

“What happened?” Jake repeated.

“I followed protocol,” he said. “Doubled back numerous times. Took all precautions. But someone caught up with me coming through Chinatown.”

Alexandra closed in, but she kept her distance to protect Jake’s backside. “Gunshot or knife?” she asked.

“Gunshot. Small caliber. I’ll be all right. It was an Asian man. He used a silencer.” His words were clipped and painful. He took off the satchel and handed it to Jake.

“We need to get you to a hospital,” Jake said.

“No. You need to get going,” the Agency man said vehemently.

“We’re not going to leave you here alone,” Alexandra said.

“Who is she?”

Jake didn’t answer. “Who knew you were coming here?”

“Nobody. I got the call directly from Mister Jenkins.”

“And you told no one?” Jake asked.

He shook his head.

“Well someone found out.” Jake looked back at the trail of blood and knew that was trouble. Then he saw the Asian man appear from the side of a restaurant. “He followed your blood trail.”

The man instinctively turned to see who Jake was looking at.

Jake reached into the satchel and felt two guns, along with a number of extra magazines. Just as he pulled one gun from the satchel, the Asian man raised his gun and started shooting.

By the time Jake got his new Glock up to a firing position, two bullets had already struck his Agency contact, dropping him to the pavement.

Jake fired twice and the man vectored to his left behind a tree.

“Go,” the Agency man yelled.

Alexandra had found the other gun and then strapped the satchel over her shoulders. “We’ve gotta go, Jake. We’ve got more company.”

Jake hated to leave the Agency man bleeding on the sidewalk, but he had no choice. He now saw another man coming from behind Alexandra. Then a woman lurked in the darkness from the third angle, a gun at the side of her leg. They were not only outnumbered, but they were outflanked.

Just as the pursuers raised their guns, Jake grabbed Alexandra and rushed toward the railing. Knowing they had no other choice, the two of them grasped the railing and flung themselves over and into the river.

When Jake hit the water, he was sure to hold onto the gun with all his strength. Before rising to the surface, he could hear muffled gunshots. As he kicked and rose to the surface, Jake aimed toward the sidewalk, firing twice at the man at the rail. One of his bullets hit the guy, dropping him like a sack of rice.

The flow of the river pulled him downstream in a hurry. He swiveled around searching for Alexandra but couldn’t see her anywhere in the darkness. Within a minute he was downstream and out of range of those who had shot at him. But still there was no sign of Alexandra.

Jake tried his best to stay out near the middle of the river, not wanting to get caught up in anything along the edge of the high walls on each side.

He kept swiveling around, trying desperately to find Alexandra. But she was nowhere in sight.

Now he started to second-guess his partnership with her. He had put her life in danger. And now she might be lost.

As Jake simply floated down the Singapore River toward the Bay Marina, his mind drifted as boats cruised past him. At this time of night most of the boats were filled with commercial passengers drinking and partying late into the evening.

When the smaller motor boat slowly crept closer to him, his first thought was to go under water again and hide, like he had with the larger party boats. But something made him stay up in the water, his head bobbing about in the wake bouncing against the wall. A small light from a hand-held flashlight swept across the water and caught him in the eyes. He raised his right hand from the water and was about to shoot at the light.

“Jake,” echoed a woman’s voice. “It’s me, Jake.”

Alexandra.

The boat turned toward him and Alexandra reached out with a long stick, which Jake grasped with his free hand. In just seconds he climbed aboard the small motor boat and found a seat in the stern near the motor.

Once he was aboard, the man behind the wheel quickly picked up speed, heading toward the Bay Marina that eventually flowed into the ocean.

“Who’s our friend?” Jake asked Alexandra.

She took a seat next to Jake. “When we hit the water I swam under water downstream for quite a while. I heard shooting and thought you might have been hit. This guy was cruising upstream and almost ran me over. I said I’d give him a hundred bucks if he could find you. We turned around up by that brewery and slowly drifted down the river. It took us a while to catch up with you. Are you all right?”

“Yeah. And you?”

“Just wet. I even saved the gun and magazines. What about the guy who gave them to us?”

“I don’t know. He took a couple of rounds to his upper body. But they were twenty-two rounds. I’m hoping our shooting got the cops there quickly, along with an ambulance. He could make it. Where’s this guy bringing us?”

“Gardens by the Bay.”

“That’s just down from our hotel.”

“I know. We should be able to dry off a little before heading back to our room.”

That was a good plan. They didn’t want this guy telling the police or anyone else where he had dropped them off.

In just fifteen minutes, the boat pulled up to a secluded area of the large Gardens by the Bay park, where giant super trees that resembled mushrooms on steroids rose up anywhere from 80 to 160 feet, and were lit by various colored lights.

Jake gave the boat pilot a wet hundred dollar bill. The guy tried not to look at Jake with too much scrutiny. He simply nodded and turned the boat around before maxing out the motor and powering back toward the river.

The night air was still hot and muggy, like Miami on its hottest summer night.

“What’s going on, Jake?” Alexandra asked.

“More than we know,” he said. “Remington obviously has more friends than we first thought. He had the banker killed in Taipei. Had the man follow me in Hong Kong. And now has infiltrated the local Agency, killing or at least badly injuring our contact.”

“I don’t even know why we’re here in Singapore,” she said, obviously exasperated.

“The Agency froze one of Remington’s bank accounts here. Since the man had an account here, I thought he could be hanging out here also.”

The two of them wandered down the dimly-lit walkway in the direction of their hotel in the distance.

“And now?” she asked.

“I don’t know. For some reason he’s concerned about me on his trail.”

She stopped him by grasping his arm. “No kidding. You have a reputation of being a relentless bastard. But more than that, Remington knows he can’t just buy you off. He has to kill you.”

Jake smiled. “Well, I guess I have him right where I want him. I’m going to use his knowledge of me to get him to come to me.”

“How do you do that without getting yourself killed?” she wanted to know. “Or me killed.”

“Listen, I’m willing to work with you as a partner,” he said, “but maybe not on this case. I think you need to just hang out at the hotel for a few days, maybe go down to the casino, and then fly back to Germany.”

She punched him in the shoulder. “If you think you can get rid of me that easy.” Alexandra then went into a long rant in German, which sounded like she was either scolding a child or declaring her intention to conquer the world.

Luckily Jake understood every word. When she finally calmed down somewhat, Jake broke in. “Hey, it was just a suggestion. Don’t go all commissar on my ass.”

She punched him again, and this time he really deserved it.

They started wandering toward their hotel again.

“So,” Jake started, “let me get this straight. You want to help me find this rogue bastard.”

The two of them stopped again. This time she looked more serious. “Jake. Something more is going on here. It’s not just about Bill Remington. After you read the information I got from that Munich company, you know that China is making a major move. They just attacked a Taiwanese navy ship. If that ship had not defended itself properly, over a hundred crew would have died.”

Jake had already thought about this as well. “I know, Alexandra. I think the Chinese wanted to start a war with Taiwan. But they also need the oil and gas from the South China Sea. So this could just be about economics.”

“What’s the word for that in English? Hegem. . .”

“Hegemony?” Jake provided.

“Yes. They’re already a huge economic power. But they want to dominate the world. They want superpower status.”

“I agree,” Jake said. “But all I can do is find Bill Remington. That’s my current job. Do you still want to help me?”

She laughed. “I’ve been shot at before. And it’s usually when I’m in your general vicinity.”

“What can I say. I’m a lead magnet.”

“More like a Scheiße magnet.” Then she moved closer to him and kissed him on the lips. She sniffed Jake and added, “And I think you need to throw out those clothes and take a shower.”

They wandered back to their hotel.

●

Early the next morning Jake and Alexandra both woke refreshed. They had taken a late-night shower and stuffed their dirty clothes in a plastic bag. On their way down to breakfast, they dropped their clothes into a garbage can. Jake was starting to run out of garments.

Done with breakfast now, they sat in their room for a moment. Jake had both Glocks apart, making sure they were clean from the dunk in the river. He also removed all of the bullets from the magazines and dried them out with the bathroom hair dryer. Then, when everything gun related looked up to his standards, he put them both back together. Of course he used latex gloves to reload the bullets into the magazines. In the end, he slapped the mags into the handles of each gun and cycled rounds into the chambers.

While he did all of this, Alexandra was on Jake’s laptop checking on news from Munich.

“This is really strange,” she said. “There’s no mention of three dead Chinese men in my apartment.”

Jake set the Glock onto the table and went over to the bed next to her. “You know how that works. Your service probably scrubbed it.”

She shrugged and kept on typing. “I guess.”

“I’d like to know how they found your apartment,” Jake said.

“I know. I don’t think I can go back there anytime soon. Did you sell your apartment in Innsbruck?”

“Why? Do you want to move in?” He rubbed her bare leg.

“Only if you’re there.”

“Well, I still own the place. But it’s winter there now and my knee gives me too many problems in the cold. I’m think about getting a place in southern Italy for the winter.”

She continued to type but turned her head to check his eyes. “Are you serious?”

“Yes, why?”

“A few years ago I traveled to Calabria for a mission. I really loved the place. The food, the people, the scenic beauty. I fell in love with it.”

“We could run our business from there,” Jake said, “and work out of my Innsbruck apartment in the summer. Or, if we want to play in the snow, we can take the train there in the winter. I’ll take one for the team.”

“Sounds wonderful.” She opened a page on the internet and stopped typing to read. “My God.”