Singapore Sling Shot (16 page)

Because she had a sleep-in sitter minding her children, Simone spent the night. She had brought a change of clothes for work. We had a room-service breakfast and then I kissed her farewell as she left. Standing at the door watching her go, I couldn't help think this was almost a classic scene of domesticity. I stood at my door and watched her until she entered the lift.

“Damn,” I muttered. Was I in danger of taking this thing to another level?

It was only 08:35 and I was already at a loose end. Killing time comes hard for me. I don't play golf or tennis. I don't do bus tours or shopping. Recreational sex is, of course, a great way to pass time, but I'd had my share of that for the moment. A pub-crawl was out because I had my date with Sami that evening and sobriety was most probably a prerequisite. I thought about another session on Ubin. I'd enjoyed getting back into the bush, and walking was one thing I did do well.

Whatever I was planning never got beyond that because my cellphone rang.

“Dan, Sami's in hospital.” The voice at the other end was speaking Thai.

“Jo?”

“Yeah, Dan.” Jo reverted to English. “I got in last night. Sami was coming out to meet me. He's okay, shaken and stirred and a broken arm. They're running tests.”

“How?”

“Truck hit his car on the East Coast Parkway. Edward, his driver, was killed. The truck driver ran. The truck was stolen.”

“Lu?”

“Sami thinks so. He told me to tell you that tonight is off. He's rescheduling the meeting for Monday.”

“Okay. I'll come and see him.”

“Negative. He wants you to stay off the radar. Lu's people will be watching the hospital, the offices and, no doubt, the apartment.”

“How did Lu find out Sami was the new partner?” I voiced the thought aloud. Jo picked it up.

“I don't know exactly, but Sami used Stanley's offices and his car and the apartment.”

“I thought Sami owned the apartment?”

“He does, but he's never even stayed there until now. He used to stay at Stanley's home. Stanley used the apartment as a getaway, a sometime love nest. He wasn't an angel, Dan.”

“Naughty Stanley,” I muttered.

“Whatever, Dan, either Lu had the Intel or he had people watching and put two and three together. No matter now, but Sami had a close shave.”

“Mr Lu had better watch his arse.”

“Oh yes.” Jo's voice was flat with promise. “I'll be in touch if anything changes, my friend.” With that, he was gone. I dropped the phone onto the bed. With Jo at his side, Sami was safe. I had total faith in Jo Ankar. He was probably the best Special Ops guy I had ever worked with. To get through him, Lu was going to have to use a very big tank.

Thomas Lu was in a foul mood. The attempt on Sami Somsak's life had failed. He knew that the Thai must be in possession of the cursed voice recorder, and that he would no doubt be planning to produce it at the scheduled meeting of the consortium. By killing Somsak, he could have prevented that happening. Now he had to stall the meeting and attempt once again to have the man removed. This time however, Sami Somsak would be well and truly alerted. He had no illusions that Somsak didn't know who was behind the attempt on his life.

Lu used his cellphone. It was answered in seconds.

“Your information was correct, but as you know, the attempt on his life failed. Please keep me informed as to his movements. Call me any time. Thank you.” Thomas Lu closed the phone. Somsak wasn't his only concern at the moment.

Raymond Mendez had badly hurt one of the pair of escorts he had selected for his entertainment. The girl had lost several teeth and suffered other injuries. The second girl had fled Mendez's suite intact but naked and terrified, and she had raised the alarm. The cost of dental surgery aside, the settlement to keep the police out of the picture amounted to fifty thousand dollars.

Mendez had been evicted from his hotel suite and had moved to the Shangri La. Now Lu was on his way from his Nassim Hill penthouse to pick the man up. They were going to the warehouse in Jurong to await the container from Buenaventura.

Lu knew that the failed attempt on Somsak had put his own life in a danger as great, if not greater, than that threatened by the Mendez brothers.

“What can I do?” Lu whispered. The partition between the driver's compartment and the rear of the limousine was closed. The words were directed at his faint reflection in the bullet-proof glass.

The question went unanswered for the five minutes it took to drive to Orange Grove Road. Raymond Mendez was waiting as the Bentley pulled up at the grand entrance. The Sikh doorman came forward to open the limousine's rear door but Mendez brushed past the man, opened the door himself and threw himself into the car. He was scowling.

“Let's go,” he ordered brusquely.

As scared of Mendez as he was, Lu bristled. This was his car. This was his town. He was about to reprimand his unwelcome guest when he had an idea. It was a moment of epiphany. The answer to all his problems. He smiled. Raymond Mendez turned to stare at him, his scowl turning into an expression of confusion.

“What's so fucking funny?”

“I have just had an idea,” Lu replied.

“About what?”

“Just the solution to a personal problem. Drive on!” Lu said into the intercom and the Bentley purred away from the front of the hotel.

“I am going to sue The Fullerton. The pigs! I was a guest and they treated me like shit!”

“You did hurt the girl badly.”

“She was a whore. Whores are there to be hurt. I was a guest. I'm going to make them pay.”

“As you wish. In the meantime, let us go and collect this most valuable cargo,” Lu said. Now that the idea had fully germinated, he was desperately trying not to giggle. The solution was so simple and it would be so very, very effective.

19

I had Friday and the whole weekend in front of me, and I had an idea. I rang Simone and explained what I'd planned, asking if she could join me. She agreed. She also eventually agreed, when I pressed her, to let me pay for her children's sitter to spend the entire weekend with the children. I would add enough to the fee to ensure that the sitter could take the kids wherever they wanted to go on the island and do whatever they wanted.

Simone left the office early and cabbed home to organise her kids, clothes and the sitter. One thing about being a tourist is that you can get away with acting like a total jerk. You're in a strange country, no one knows you, you can be totally obnoxious, and as long as no one gets pissed off enough to shoot you, you'll live to travel on.

As a result of my ten minutes on the telephone, at precisely 17:35 the Bell Jet Ranger hauled us off the ground heading towards Bintan. Simone was as excited as a kid. She had never flown in a helicopter before and in fact had only ever flown a couple of times in her life. To me, helicopters are like motorbikes: great for getting you places and that's about it. I've just done too many hours in them, generally in marginal conditions and often with people shooting at me. Whatever, it was the perfect way to get from Singapore to Bintan in a hurry.

We landed on the golf course at the Banyan Tree Resort. There was a golf cart and a driver waiting. The formalities consisted of registering and filling out an Indonesian visa form. They were over in a matter of minutes and we were shown to our villa.

“This is absolutely perfect!” Simone said as she stood gazing down to the ocean below, and it was perfect. There was a spa set in the deck outside the bedroom and as the sun went down we climbed in. Simone put aside her wowser persona and joined me in demolishing a bottle of Tattinger. It was beautiful, sitting there in the flickering candlelight sipping champagne with a stunning woman beside me.

The wait for the container was agonising from Thomas Lu's viewpoint. His attempts to placate or even converse with Raymond Mendez were futile. The psychopath's brain was operating in a way that Lu could not comprehend. Mendez was going to find the whore and kill her for complaining. He was going to sue The Fullerton. He was going to do this! He was going to do that! Mendez was raving. He stalked the floor of the deserted warehouse like a caged cat while Lu sat on a packing case and watched.

Thomas Lu had ordered his chauffeur to return to the city. The driver was on a mission. Lu lit a cigarette and waited. Mendez had his cellphone out and was shouting into it. It appeared he was speaking to his elder brother, Carlos. Lu smiled through the cigarette smoke. The solution to all his problems was almost to hand.

An air horn sounded outside. Mendez, who was nearest the pedestrian door, hurried to open it and step outside. Thomas Lu followed. The Isuzu side loader idling in front of the vehicle entrance held a single shipping container on its flatbed trailer.

Five minutes later the container had been deposited in the centre of the warehouse. As the truck left, Lu's Bentley slid silently into the warehouse followed by a plain black Lexus. Thomas Lu pressed a button on the door-control console to start the huge roller door closing. He turned back to the interior of the warehouse. Raymond Mendez was opening the container.

The Bentley parked and the chauffeur stayed inside. However the front doors of the Lexus opened and two men got out. These men were Chinese. They were dressed in casual clothes, but there was nothing casual about the silenced automatic one of them carried in his right hand.

Without a word, the pair advanced on the shipping container.

Raymond Mendez sensed their approach. He turned. The look of anticipation on his face turned to one of shock as he realised what was about to happen.

“No!” he yelled. He looked beyond the gunman to where Thomas Lu was standing. “Thomas, what are you doing?”

“Ridding the world of a piece of shit!”

“My brothers will …”

What Raymond Mendez's brothers would or would not do stayed with the younger Mendez. The single shot that killed him hit him precisely between his eyes. The low-calibre round didn't exit his skull, and the entry wound was little more than a small dark dot on the falling man's forehead.

Five minutes after Raymond Mendez died, Thomas Lu was standing in the shipping container. Opened in front of him was a large bale of hemp and plastic that was almost exactly two metres square. The wires that had held it closed had been cut. The thick hemp and multiple layers of plastic and paper at the top of the bale had been sliced open and pulled back to reveal tightly packed bound bundles of bank notes: US dollars, millions upon millions of them. Behind the first bale sat another, and another and another. Four bales, each filled with large-denomination American dollar notes.

“Two billion dollars,” Thomas Lu breathed, “and now it is all mine.”

Lu took a bundle of bank notes and stepped out of the container.

The body of Raymond Mendez was now gone, as was the Lexus and the men who had arrived in it.

“Now we will have our share and more besides,” Lu said as he broke the binding tape and fanned the bundle of notes in his hands.

“And we will see the last of you, Sami Somsak.”

20

They say all good things must come to an end. I guess that's so. All I know is that on the flight back from Bintan, I didn't want my weekend to end. How many years had it been since I actually had a weekend that wasn't dominated by pure lust but by something else? Whatever was happening between Simone and me was something that was new to me.

I mean, I'm not naïve, far from it. I married my former wife, the beautiful and brilliant Sylvia Dixon, when we were both caught up in an absolutely out-of-control whirlwind of sexual lightning. Sylvia and I were total sexual dynamite together, and unfortunately, on my part at least, that was our relationship, our marriage. In due course, my inability to keep my hands off other women spelt the end of our marriage.

With Simone there was wonderful sex, but there was more. She too was smart and beautiful and more, much more besides. Maybe because I'd aged a few years since I'd been married to Sylvia, I was becoming a normal human being for the first time. The futility of just screwing about in Hong Kong for the past few months had finally sunk in. It had been selfish and futile and puerile. I'd been like a randy hound chasing bitches in heat. It was nothing but empty sex.

“A penny or two for them?” Simone had turned away from the spectacular view as we approached Singapore, flying over the hundreds of ships at anchor below us. Ahead was Sentosa. She was smiling at me.

“Just thinking,” I replied, giving her a grin. I wasn't ready to confide certain thoughts to her. Not yet!

As we came across Sentosa, I peered down towards the concourse where the fort road, aquarium and resort entrances collided with Siloso Beach. No police vehicles this time round. We buzzed over the twin spans of the monorail bridge and now, when I saw just how far I had dropped into the water that night, I winced. I'd been damn lucky to survive that in reality. Jumping out of a Sea King hovering at ten metres in a training situation is one thing. Jumping off a bridge into unknown waters is entirely another. When I'd thought I'd felt the bottom under my feet, I probably had.

We wound down on the helipad at Changi and did the customs and immigration thing and were in a cab back to the city within half an hour. Simone suggested I go up to her apartment. I begged off for the moment. I said farewell to her with an almost chaste kiss and as the cab pulled away, she waved me out of sight. Damn! Things were moving too fast and I was powerless to stop this roller-coaster ride. Did I want to stop it?

Back at the hotel, I phoned Sami. He was okay. A broken bone in his left wrist and a few bruises were the sum total of the physical damage. However, he was very, very intensely dedicated to Thomas Lu's impending demise, both as a partner in Intella and in a physical sense. The bad news was that tomorrow night was out. Lu had asked that the meeting be convened to the Friday night and the other players had agreed.