The Dragon's Tale: A Jack Lauder Thriller (25 page)

     "She knows them. The girl is called Natalia Samosalova, she was thrown out of Macao because she found a sugar-daddy, a wealthy westerner and she stopped working for the Triad bosses. They revoked her work permit so she had to return home. Apparently the Westerner was going to follow her, he was going to buy her out of her bondage. It's something all the girls dream of happening to them. Anyway, no one believed her, they thought it was just a pipe dream. They all say they told her not to be silly, but it turned out it was true. The guy was as good as his word. He did come over. She's not heard what's happened though because she's been away in Macao herself and only got back yesterday."

     "So what's she writing down?"

     "Natalia's, address. Which hopefully is where Gerry is."

     Jack went to the bar and when he returned Diana and Ludmilla were still chatting together while Peter chipped in from time to time. Jack had asked Rudi to join them and he'd dragged himself away from an audience replete with his tall stories. Jack took the piece of paper from Diana and showed it to him. "Can you take us there?"

     Rudi shrugged, "Sure, but you'll need a bodyguard."

     Peter nodded his head, "It's a rough place, Jack. It's no problem because me and a couple of the boys will go with you, but it's not the kind of place to go unarmed."

     "You'd better stay back at the hotel," Jack said to Diana.

     "You must be joking! I've come this far and I'm not butting out now. Besides you'll need an interpreter."

     "I've got Peter."

     "Oh, I see, male conspiracy, is it? You've made good use of me and you think you'll just cast me aside, now it's all coming to a nice neat conclusion, eh?"

     Jack shook his head with a world-weary air, "No one is casting you aside, there isn't anyone in Russia brave enough. All I'm suggesting is, for your own safety, it would be better if you went back to the hotel. This is...." He paused.

     "Men's work! That's what you mean isn't it?"

     "No, dangerous work is what I meant."

     "Well, if that's the case, I'd better go." Peter looked puzzled as if he didn't understand the logic.  "He's not safe on his own," she continued, "he needs me there to make sure he doesn't get into trouble." 

     Peter burst into laughter. Jack glared at him. It was a conspiracy between them now. The girl, Ludmilla, caught the mood as well, and Rudi, even though they didn't understand a word of what she’d said. They were all looking at Jack and laughing.

CHAPTER 4

      They drove through the dreary, rain-swept streets of Vladivostok towards the multi-storey housing blocks. Peter had prepared them for what to expect but this was a country in irreversible economic decline. There was no money to take care of even the most essential services. Raw sewage and the carcasses of dead animals floated in the river; the streets were awash with rubbish and swarming with rats. Even occupied blocks were crumbling around their occupants; windows and doors were smashed in. The flat they were to visit was on the 10th floor of a block. There was no lift and they walked up stairs reeking of urine. "You have a friend who lives in this pigsty?" Peter asked wonderingly. Only Diana wasn't phased by the surroundings. She strode jauntily up the stairs, not the slightest bit out of breath, turning cheerfully at twists in the staircase.

     They reached the flat and Peter knocked. No reply. A sound, as if from a radio, came from the adjacent flat. Peter tried that door. At length it opened and a sullen looking woman flanked by two dark and scruffy children faced them. "Pardon me, madam," Peter said, "do you know if anyone is in next door?"

     "Niet!" came the sullen and sharp reply.

     "We are looking for a man, an Australian. Is there such a man living there?"

    The woman leaned forward and spat. "You are looking for a whore," she said. "that's all there was there."

     "Was?"

     "She is gone. Good riddance!"

     Peter translated and Jack’s heart sank.

     "Gone where?" Peter asked.

     Another door opened further down the corridor and a lean, muscular man stepped into the corridor. He was wearing a dirty vest over grey trousers and boots. "Who is asking?" He looked menacing and, as he lifted up his vest, Jack saw a gun tucked into his trouser band. He stiffened and so did Peter but Diana kept her cool. She moved forward as the man fingered the butt of the gun. She spoke to him in Russian. He was obviously captivated by her charm. His manner became less aggressive. "We are looking for Natalia Samosalova," she said, "and a man we believe to be living with her, a westerner?"

     The man leered at her, "You want information for nothing?" He had a glint in his eyes.

"Money, you want money?"

     "I don't want money,” he detached his frame from the wall and moved towards her, "but I may accept something else." Jack got the gist of this conversation but Peter was quicker and he moved forward menacingly as the Russian came close to Diana. "Stay there!" the Russian commanded and Peter froze in his tracks as the man whipped the gun out of his trouser band. "What do you want with this man?"

"He is a friend of these people," Peter replied quietly, "they have come a long way to find him. Any help you can give would be appreciated."

    "Huh!" the man said, and he seemed to think better of his plans for Diana. He stepped back towards his own doorway. "He will not be hard to find," he went on, "go on, try the door, it's not locked." With that he slammed his own door. His neighbour, the sullen woman, had also retreated into her apartment.

     "He is one of the Dolgoruki," Peter said, naming one of the notorious gangs that ran the city. "They have a man in every building, maintaining law and order." He spat with disgust as he spoke, “I think we should go in. Something’s wrong with this." He pushed at the door and it yielded. They followed him into the passageway and walked slowly down the corridor to the room at the end. Peter opened the door and, through the window, they had a night view of Vladivostok jutting out on its spit of land into the Gulf of the Golden Horn. Peter switched the light on. It worked and an insect trap began to whirr as it heated up simultaneously.

     "Hola!" he yelled but there was no reply. Diana opened another door and went inside. It was the bedroom.

    "Jack come here," she called. He followed her in and she pointed at the bed. The sheet was covered in blood.

     "My God!" he exclaimed and his heart sank.

     Peter shouted. Jack went into the corridor. Peter pointed at the floor. Dried blood stained the carpet, the patch big enough to suggest serious injury. He had his earphones plugged into his ear and he adjusted one of them now, speaking softly. “Jack, I have to go,” he said, “the cops are here.” He slipped out through the back kitchen before Jack could say anything.

     A commotion outside heralded someone’s arrival and then the door burst open. The neighbour from hell was back, this time with friends. He leered at Diana again. "It seems we may get acquainted after all," he said menacingly. There was no escape. Jack cursed himself for falling into a trap.

     Diana kept her cool. "Can you explain this blood on the ground?" she asked the man and it was his friends' turn to be surprised at her adroitness with their language.

     The neighbour turned to his friends and repeated the question with an ironic laugh at the end of it. The other men laughed too. "So what if we can?"

     "Perhaps you'd like to explain it to the police?"

     Again he turned and repeated it to his friends as if it were a joke. They all had a good, long laugh. The local version of the thin blue line wasn’t held in the greatest of respect in these parts. "Hey, little girl," the man said cheekily, "this is Vladivostok, we are the law here. And you just happen to be under our arrest."

     "Don't be stupid," Diana said, "the Australian Consul will have something to say about that."

      "The Australian Consul!" They were giving it the shakes, as if afraid of being hauled up before the Oz Consul. Then the hilarity ended and the man fired a couple of shots at the ceiling, resulting in a shower of yellowing plaster. "Do you hear what I say little girl!" he said thrusting his unshaven chin into her face, "we are the law here! Your consul can do nothing, nothing." Things looked bleak. Jack’s brain was working like a computer, thinking of ways to talk them out of this predicament. Then a loud shout outside made the gunmen spin round, weapons pointed at the door.

     There was a shout and then the door opened. Peter had been right, it was the Police Chief who entered, two uniformed policemen, toting Kalashnikovs, flanking him.

     "Vladivostok's finest!" Jack said. “How convenient!”

     “Oh, you think it was mere coincidence?” Diana asked. “I reckoned we’d need an insurance policy.”

     “Not just a pretty face then,” he looked unperturbed.

     Voices were raised between the intruders and the police. They were negotiating over hostages apparently worth a ransom. The gunmen were unwilling to surrender them into police custody but the greater firepower of the police faction was a convincing argument. Reluctantly their leader stormed out, followed by his cronies. The Police Chief strutted round, acting out his hour upon the stage, "So, Mr. Lauder, you were not content then with my promise, and here you are now breaking into other peoples' property?"

     "We didn't break in at all," Jack said, "the door was open."

     The Police Chief put his arm round his shoulder and breathed on him sufficient of the garlicky contents of his last meal to make him wince. He smiled, revealing canines like a tiger. "Anyway, I think you should accompany me down town," he replied, "you foreigners are always getting into trouble in this city."

     The drive downtown was tense. Two trigger happy cops with Kalashnikovs sitting alongside as the car bumped and jolted over the uneven ground did nothing for the constitution and Jack was growing more and more concerned about the cryptic attitude of the Police Chief. From time to time he would look at them and chuckle. "What's the matter with you?" he questioned the Policeman after he'd had a bellyful of it.

    "Niet, niet, Englishman," he said. "You tell me though about your friend, Gerry. He a big dealer, yeah?"

     "What do you mean, a big dealer?"

    "Big in cocaine, eh? Hashish, heroin maybe? He do big deals, yes?" He rubbed his fingers together.

     "What are you talking about? Gerry wouldn't have anything to do with that sort of thing?"

     "Oh yeah?" he said and he looked at Jack and smiled secretively. He turned to Diana and said something which Jack could not decipher and there was a conversation between the two of them. She was very animated, he very cool.

     "What's he saying?" Jack asked.

     "He says Gerry must be a gangster," she replied.

     "Rubbish! He doesn't know what he's talking about."

     "I told him that, but he says, why else would the local Mafia be interested in him?”

     "Listen," Jack said to the Police Chief, "I told you the truth before. Gerry came over here to rescue one of those girls."

     “People do things like this?” The Policeman sat drumming on the dashboard for a moment and then he added, “Yes, I suppose sometimes they do.” He barked a command at the driver, who turned to the left and headed off down a dingy, unlit street.

     "Where are we going?" Jack asked.

     In response, the Police Chief launched into a speech in Russian during which Diana stopped him from time to time and brought Jack up to speed. He wanted them to see something. He didn't like foreigners coming to his town and making him look stupid. He liked a quiet life. It is not easy to be a Police Chief in Russia these days. Once all you had to do was let the KGB get on with its job while you took care of the drunks and cracked down very heavily on anyone who committed social crime and you got a quiet life. Now it was much more difficult. Your orders didn't come from the KGB anymore, they came from every two-bit gangster who'd paid off a politician. Now even he had to keep his nose clean. Did they get that?

     They got it.

     “What happened your friend?”

     “What friend?”

     “The man with you.”

     “What man?”

     With that the Police Chief nodded, sat back in his chair and pulled his cap over his face in a way, which indicated the interview was over. They drove in silence until the vehicle pulled into the grounds of a large concrete building where they were ushered out of the car.

     “Jesus, is this a prison?” Jack asked nervously, wondering if the Russian Federation’s justice system had just dispensed with the trial. They tramped along endless corridors until they came to two large steel doors, which were opened by men clad in white overalls. They stepped into a cold room. "Oh my God!" Jack got it now. The Police Chief spoke to an attendant who consulted a list, then, leading the way across the room, he pulled open a cabinet and one of the guards prodded Jack forward, using his rifle as the goad. The Englishman walked slowly, dread in his heart. He knew what he was about to see. He’d attended enough autopsies in his time.

     “Do you know him?” the Police Chief asked nonchalantly.

     Jack bent over the corpse. The veil was pulled back. Jack’s lips cleaved together and a dryness in his throat made his breath come in gasps. The corpse was Gerry, shot through the left eye. Diana stared wide-eyed, the realisation just setting in. He turned towards her and took her arm, steering her away.

     “Do you know him?” the Police Chief barked a second time. Jack nodded. He couldn't speak. Satisfied, the Chief turned to the attendant and gave another order. The man again consulted his list and this time opened another cabinet.

     “Is this the girl?”

     Jack looked at her and nodded, "I think so but I have only seen her in photographs.”

     "Never mind, we know who she is. It was the mystery guest we had difficulty with. He had no passport, nothing on him. He was found stripped naked and shot, just like that. He had been tortured." He sounded harsh and unsympathetic, as if it was all in day's work. "So had the whore," dismissively he indicated the dead girl. “Hey, young lady," he added for Diana’s benefit, "take a look at this!" He drew back the shroud to reveal several awful scars on the dead girl’s body.