Authors: Harlan Wolff
“That’s all right, it’s your lucky day. I was just leaving,” Carl told Bart, who sipped on a bottle of beer, relieved that he was not going to be sitting alone for long.
“You leaving already, mate?” Bob asked unhappily, which was understandable as Carl was his best customer so far that day. Bart Barrows could make a bottle of beer last a very long time.
“Got to go back to the office,” Carl lied. He didn’t have an office.
“Remember, work is the curse of the drinking class,” Bob told him as he pointed at another sign behind the bar, this one quoting Oscar Wilde.
“How can I forget?” Carl told him as he left.
The street looked safe but Carl was understandably paranoid. He walked back into Patpong and went through the first open door, a Thai restaurant on the south side of the street. These places all had back doors that came out onto a lane that ran behind Patpong. He made sure he wasn’t followed in and then left by the back door making sure that he wasn’t followed out. There was nobody shadowing him so he relaxed and walked along the alley back toward Suriwongse Road. He was in a high stakes game and like all games it was fun as long as you were winning.
Carl performed a few more counter surveillance tricks and then took a taxi back to Sukhumvit. He got out of the taxi at the entrance to one of the many tall office buildings that line Soi Asoke, the main thoroughfare that runs from Sukhumvit to Phetchburi Road. Carl took the lift to the 24
th
floor where Damien Southerby’s supposedly secret office was located.
On the 24
th
floor there was a security door that the Israeli Embassy would have been proud of and a security camera that watched the whole area between the lift and the reinforced door. Carl looked into the camera and pressed the buzzer. He waited, and waited, and then Carl waited some more. He imagined the hyper paranoid activity that would have been going on the other side of the door. He was fully aware that Damien did not approve of visitors and his unexpected arrival would cause him much distress. Fifteen minutes later the door opened and Damien was standing in front of Carl with a strained and curious expression on his face.
“What’re you doing here and how the fuck did you know where it was?” Damien asked him.
“I just followed the twinkle of diamond cufflinks. Now, let me in and give me some coffee. I have a problem you can help me with Damien.”
Damien waved his hand for Carl to follow him. As Carl entered, the door automatically shut itself behind him. The inside of the office was bigger than he had expected. The main floor was open plan except for partitions, desks and headsets that were linked to electronic boxes. The boxes provided access to the Internet for the crowd of spotty youths to make their long distance phone calls. The noise reminded Carl of a large flock of geese as one hundred bonus-driven men, some sitting and some standing, yelled into their headsets trying to find the next deal.
Carl had imagined that these latter-day snake oil salesmen would spend their days sweet-talking little old ladies into investing in their rigged foreign exchange program. The reality was aggressive salesmen screaming abuse at dentists, doctors, architects and other professional types sitting at their desks in legitimate offices on the other side of the world.
As Carl walked past the badly dressed, overpaid runaways from their small towns in America, Europe and Australia, Carl heard things like ‘Who wears the fucking trousers in your house?’, ‘Call yourself a man?’, ‘You have to grow balls to make money’, and Carl’s all-time favourite, ‘I am going out in my Ferrari tonight to drink Champagne and fuck models two at a time. What are you doing tonight?’
Damien led Carl across the full length of the telemarketing floor to his office. The door closed behind them and there was silence. Damien’s office was soundproofed and separated from the outside world by thick floor to ceiling glass. Damien could play Fagin in peace whilst keeping a close eye on his room full of Dickensian urchins.
“What do you think?” he asked Carl.
“I think I should have learnt to pick a pocket or two.”
“I rarely understand what you are talking about. You are good at your job with a tendency toward simplification, which I appreciate. However, when I talk to you on other matters I never know what the fuck you are talking about.”
“I’ve a problem understanding myself most of the time too. Shall we get down to business?”
“OK. What brings you here scaring the shit out of my staff? Fuck, we thought we were being raided. I swear my star salesman’s pissed his pants.”
“Sorry about that but I don’t have a lot of time. I need an anonymous offshore structure with a virgin bank account attached. I need it now so there is no time for lawyers. I know you will need backup bank accounts in your back pocket at all times to replace the ones shut down by the authorities as they become aware of your activities. I am guessing that bank accounts are getting shut down all the time so you will always be in possession of at least three corporate structures and three virgin bank accounts.”
“You know far too much,” Damien said unhappily.
“That’s why you like me Damien. Anyone else would be here to extort money from you. I’m here to ask for a favour and pay a fair price in cash on the table for it. I need the bank account, preferably in a morally loose jurisdiction, with all passwords and security devices. I will pay you cash now for whatever it originally cost you to set up and, and should I be successful in my endeavour, I will give you a very serious Patek Philippe watch as a gift from me to you, it will be a mark of friendship. I won’t insult you by offering you money I know you don’t need. But Damien, a man can never have too many beautiful watches, plus there are times in everybody’s life when a friend like me can be worth a lot more than money.”
Damien smiled. “What’s this endeavour of yours Carl? That’s a very expensive gift you are offering me.”
“It is for a client and my confidentiality was guaranteed in the package as always. Can you help me with this matter Damien? Time’s of the essence.”
“I should have what you need lying about here somewhere.”
“That is a great weight off my mind. Now, Damien, where’s that fucking coffee you cheapskate? And none of that powdered crap please.”
Damien picked up the phone on his desk and asked for two coffees to be sent in with the file on a company called Mayfair Assets. They both sat waiting for the coffee to arrive with huge grins on their faces like two naughty schoolboys who were in the process of getting away with something big.
Chapter 15
The crocodile was meandering down the fifteenth fairway. Crocodile was the name the Thais gave to the unusually large group of caddies and security men that made a long and twisted shape as it followed the biggest of shots whenever they played golf. As usual this crocodile was made up of caddies carrying golf bags, caddies with umbrellas, caddies holding fold-up chairs, caddies who were only there because they were pretty, and armed men sweating in dark safari suits holding two-way radios. Six men were playing slow gambling golf and holding up all the smaller unimportant groups that had become jammed up on the holes behind them. The golf courses didn’t allow six players in a group but this was Thailand and the generals did whatever they wanted.
Anthony Inman was walking beside General Amnuay and they had separated from the rest of the group. They always spoke Thai to each other even though General Amnuay’s English was fluent American.
“Did you have to kill Victor, he was our friend once if you can remember?” General Amnuay asked. “It made a lot of noise. Now the embassy will want a proper investigation.”
“He had to go. More importantly the private detective has to go as soon as possible.”
“Why? Do you owe him money too?” Amnuay stopped walking and laughed loudly at his own joke.
“Look here.” Inman stopped beside him and spoke strongly. “This Carl Engel idiot is a threat to all of us and he has to die now.”
“You mean he is a threat to you. He can’t hurt me.”
“As you say, I need him dead.”
General Amnuay massaged his own face with his right hand. Then he half closed one eye and said, “I have given you the Cat and the Rat to take orders directly from you. They can kill anybody you need killed, even your old friends, so what’s the problem?”
“They can’t find him. I need access to Special Branch again.”
“Special Branch can’t be used for now. Since the coup everybody is trying to spy on everybody else. Even Special Branch is being watched so they will only act in their official capacity until things get back to normal.”
“How can I find this man then?” Inman asked unhappily.
“The Cat and the Rat have their own contacts. He is only a farang, there is no reason they won’t be able to find him.”
“This farang has been here thirty-five years.”
“They are Thai, he is only farang. Of course they can find him.”
“I have already cancelled a shipment because of him. He is costing us a lot of money,” Inman said in a last ditch effort to get General Amnuay’s full attention.
“Maybe if you stopped playing your games with the young girls our business would run more smoothly,” the
general
said and then walked off to find his ball.
Anthony Inman waited for his caddy to catch up, took a five-iron from her, and hit his ball cleanly the remaining one hundred and ninety yards onto the green. He smiled knowing he was in the perfect position to win another hole.
Carl needed to use his Blackberry with his original phone number and list of contacts. It felt like paranoia as he took a taxi to the Thonburi side of the river. Carl knew his enemies were no phantoms and their brief was to put a bullet in his head, so wasting several hours being elaborately careful didn’t feel like a total waste of time.
The other side of the river is different to the Bangkok side. It is like a foreign country and they do things differently there. Carl had asked the taxi driver, much to his amusement, to drive around Thonburi for ten minutes and then take him back over the bridge.
He switched on his Blackberry and it started coughing out beeps as it downloaded messages. There were several e-mails that were not of interest, as he was not taking on any new cases. There were the usual messages from friends asking where he was and did he want to meet up for a beer. There was a message from Duke’s saying people had been in there asking about him. If they were concerned enough to let him know by SMS then they hadn’t liked the look of the people who were doing the asking. There was also a message from Jack, the head of security at the Sukhumvit Grande. He was in a funk because one of his guests had been murdered. Fear took its grip and made Carl feel physically unwell and uncoordinated.
It was logical to assume that Carl was being treated as a missing persons investigation and would be searched for by the standard methods. The trouble was he didn’t think that they were planning to serve papers on him, arrest him, or tap him on the shoulder and tell him he needed to call home. The people doing the hunting were, he assumed, the same people who had gunned down Victor Boyle. Their brief would be the same, get rid of Carl before he talked to too many people. Inman wanted the toothpaste put back in the tube and didn’t care how messy it got.
Carl needed a cigarette. He asked the taxi to pull over and park by the side of the road for a while. Carl stood on the pavement smoking. A foolish habit but compared to how he lived the rest of his life it seemed sane enough. He called the colonel from the pavement.
“Where have you been?” The colonel sounded annoyed. “I can’t reach you on your phone.”
“The fat man outside the Sheraton was my client and now the same people are looking for me.”
“Okay. What do you need?”
“I need a meeting. Somewhere safe. How about that place we met the informant during the Nigerian case a few years ago?”
“What time?”
“Three o’clock. Don’t think I’m being paranoid but make sure you are not followed.”
“I won’t be,” he told Carl. “I had a strange phone call this morning from a policeman that I don’t know. He said they needed you to do some translation work for them and could I put them in touch. I told them you owed me money and if they found you to let me know.”
“I’ll tell you what is going on at three,” Carl said and disconnected.
After attaching the picture of the men standing behind him at the airport that he had received from George, and messaging it to the colonel, he switched off his Blackberry and got back in the taxi. Carl instructed the driver to take him back to the Bangkok side of the river and deliver him to Sukhumvit Soi 5. The meeting place he had chosen was a large sports pub and restaurant with food, drinks, pool tables, and big-screen televisions so it would be busy enough to feel anonymous in.