Death in the Kingdom (23 page)

‘Shit, that high?'

‘That high,' she repeated. ‘Air burst, aerosol sprays, crop dusters, those types of delivery systems are the most logical and easiest for both terrorist strikes and the military for that matter.' I had visions of Ranch Hand, the Agent Orange spray campaign carried out in Vietnam, but instead of those chemicals, these aircraft were spraying anthrax. It wasn't a settling image.

‘The thing about this particular variation is that it can lie dormant in a vacuum, apparently for some time. Normal anthrax can live in the soil for years but, seemingly, this one is a sleeper. It simply shuts itself down and wakes only when exposed to oxygen,' Sylvia continued. ‘There are four phials of the spore in the box. We must assume that the head of the spear gun broke one. Whether or not the salt water cleaned it out completely we can't know, but it seems likely that the hot lead might have fractured at least one more of them.'

‘I hope it did in the whole lot,' I exclaimed. ‘We don't need this crap.'

‘I agree but we have it, Daniel, and I have to help deal with it.' The quality of the phone connection and thickness of her mask couldn't hide the resolve in her voice. ‘What makes this hybrid so much more dangerous is its size. The spores are much smaller than the normal strain, which means that they disperse in the air that much more easily and over a wider area. Plus, they devour oxygen molecules as nutrition and multiply faster than rabbits.'

‘Very nasty!' I replied. I really did need to know as much as I could about this bloody bacteria before I met up with Bernard back in London. I had the feeling that the old queen was jammed up and when he decided to take a shit, it was going to be in my direction. Knowledge was power and I needed that in spades. But more than anything else, I needed to know what Sylvia had on the history of this bug, what was behind it and why, at the end of the day, it was so special that a whole bunch of people had died to get it. I decided to fish a bit further.

‘How much do you know about what I'm involved in?'

‘Darling, if you remember that's one of the things that screwed us. I don't know what you're doing or why or where. I was just told that you would be waiting for us with a sealed package containing the hybrid anthrax, which you didn't even know you had.'

‘Okay.' I lapsed into silence for a moment. ‘I'm one of the good guys, Sylvia,' I said, detecting a snort of disbelief at the other end of the line. I chose to ignore it. ‘My job was to fetch and carry that damn stuff and make sure no one stopped me.'

‘Did they try?'

‘Oh yes, they tried,' I replied.

‘Did people die?'

‘A lot.'

‘I knew that I wouldn't like what you did, Dan. That's one of the reasons I couldn't stay the course.'

‘The thought of me killing people?'

‘No idiot. The thought of you being killed! It wasn't the screwing around, Dan. Believe me, I would have cured you of that if we'd had a normal relationship.'

‘Yeah,' I muttered. ‘Change the subject. What do you know about the history of this bloody stuff? The who, why, where and how the hell it ended up here.'

Before Sylvia could answer, Don Don appeared in the doorway and with him was a whole set of new faces—tired faces belonging to people who had just flown a very long way.

‘Chem Response have arrived,' I told Sylvia. ‘I imagine things will get a little hectic. Can we continue this later?'

‘I don't see why not, Dan. If you've got 007 to kill, you've obviously got security clearance to the moon and back.' She wasn't laughing and she wasn't joking. There was more than an edge of bitterness in her voice, along with fatigue.

‘Later,' I said, handing the telephone handpiece to the newcomer standing at Don Don's shoulder. He nodded his thanks and got straight down to business. It was time for me to exit stage left. My presence most certainly was no longer required at Ground Zero. Don Don fell in step with me.

‘You staying around for a while?' he asked.

‘Thought I'd stay a couple of days and then head back to Phuket for a while. I've got some leave coming up,' I replied, trying to focus on something, anything other than my ex-wife.

‘The apartment's yours as long as you need it. Maybe we can catch a drink or a meal later?' Don Don gave me a sheepish grin. ‘Janice would probably come with us if we do the meal thing. We're sort of involved,' he admitted.

I feigned surprise and wondered if Babs was as on for dinner as she was for sex. I also wondered if Don Don and Janice knew Babs's old man. It was a sure thing they did, given the small expat community centred around the embassy. Maybe asking her would be too much of a risk. I decided I would do it solo. Anyway, I told Don Don okay to a meal, and we arranged to meet at the apartments at seven.

I watched the activity in the security office for a moment or two as the new team got ready to enter the inner sanctum. Carter and his men had been relegated back to the role of hired gunslingers. I waved him farewell and got a casual salute in return. I would head back to the apartment, have a shower and catch up on a few winks. I wondered if Babs had woken up and made it to work. If not, I could rule out sleep.

23

I called Sami as I walked back to Soi Chitlom but only got his voice mail. He was still out of range. I'd try again later. I doubled back a few times but no one was following me. I entered the foyer of the apartment block without stopping. The same bored security guard as before was at the podium. I still wanted to kick the bastard's arse. I strangled that impulse and took the lift up to my floor.

The door to number eleven was ajar and the lights were on. Babs was either still in the place, or she had gone and left it open or, third alternative, someone else was in there. I slipped the Walther into my right hand and eased the door open with my left. I went in fast and low, moving left as I did so in case someone was waiting behind the door. They weren't, and Babs was still there.

My beautiful playmate was lying naked in the middle of the floor. The tiles under and around her had caught her body's supply of blood and created a huge dark puddle. ‘Oh, Christ!' I physically stumbled. ‘Oh, God!' I was calling on all the deities from my Catholic upbringing, but none could help Babs and I doubted they could help me anymore either.

Babs's head sat upright on its severed stump on the glass-topped coffee table. The beautiful green eyes were wide and blank and there was blood on her lips and trickling down her chin. Someone had repositioned the table so it sat right where the ceiling light could best illuminate the macabre centrepiece.

I can't remember how long I was locked there off balance but I forced myself to do what I had to. There was the taste of sour bile in my throat and sinuses, but the charge of pure adrenaline followed closely behind. I hit each room in the apartment in sequence, fast and eager to stitch whoever I found full of holes, knowing in my gut that the killer was long gone. But I had to check, had to hope, because I knew the implications of the ghastly tableaux in the lounge were going to spin me right out when I stopped moving and shock set in.

When my circuit of the apartment brought me back to the lounge I closed the door, locked it and went back to squat in front of the coffee table.

Babs's face was the colour of blue-tinged chalk. Her eyes were impossibly wide open. Her lips were pulled back to show her teeth in a ghastly death grin. Whoever had killed her had positioned a Bangkok telephone book behind the head to keep it from falling over. I stood and turned to look at the body.

The wound that severed the head had been clean. A razor-sharp blade, heavy enough and used with practised skill, had sliced through muscle and vertebrae with equal ease. Bone gleamed white amidst the deep red of the severed neck muscles. The blood pooled like black oil on the white tiles. There was so much blood.

I looked beyond the body. There was a blood spray up the wall beside the door leading into the main bedroom. The door was open. The killer had perhaps been pressed against that wall when Babs had walked into the lounge. He had grabbed her from behind and done the business, pivoting her as he grabbed her and slashed her throat, one hand tangled in her hair, the other pulling his blade right to left through her neck, front to back. He must have been left-handed. Killing stroke made, he had then simply pushed the body away from him and left it to bleed on the floor while he arranged the head in its macabre display.

I got to my feet and went to the bathroom, this time to check on other things. The tiled floor panel which hid the safe seemed undisturbed. In the main bedroom nothing that I could see had been touched. My bag sat in the bottom of the wardrobe where I had left it. The computer was still in its padded side pocket. This most certainly hadn't been a robbery. I looked around the room. Babs's clothes were draped over the back of the chair by the bed, just as she had left them.

‘Who and why?' I muttered. ‘Why?' I slid the wardrobe door closed and went back into the lounge. I sank into one of the two-seaters and just sat. I didn't look at the head on the table—I would see that forever. I'd turned my mind inwards and was trying to find the invisible and decipher the unknown. Why Babs? It wasn't the CIA way to extract cheap revenge using an innocent. They could play the roughest game in town, but not like this.

I retrieved my phone and tried Sami again. I left an urgent message on his answering machine. I was going to need his help to clean up this mess. Then I was going to have to find whoever did it and exact total and absolute revenge, not only for Babs's sake but also for my own.

Revenge was a noble concept, or in this case, a noble emotion. I remembered people telling me it was a negative emotion, a waste of energy, bad karma, blah, blah. It might have been so in the world they lived in, but in my world of shadows and demons there was nothing sweeter.

Avoiding looking at Babs I got up off the couch and went into the kitchen. If ever I needed a drink it was now. I opened the fridge door and reached for a ‘beer, wishing I had something stronger.

Geezer's head sat on the top shelf of the refrigerator, propped up by a container of margarine and a small block of cheese. Strange how little details like that etched themselves into my mind when my brain hit overload. The eyes, thankfully, were closed and his mouth was shut. There was a smear of dried blood at the corner of his lips. Apart from that, the old bugger could have been asleep but for the fact his tanned face was now purple and green. The late Raymond ‘Geezer' Terrant had been dead for some time. He had been subjected to hell before the moment of his release to the next world. I let the refrigerator door swing shut and staggered into the bathroom. I puked up everything that was in my tortured gut. I sluiced water over my face. It didn't help. My brain spun between denial and rage and my heart was thumping hard enough to burst out of my chest. ‘Fuck,' I whispered. ‘Why? Who?'

The sound of distant police sirens snapped me out of my funk. Were these guys coming for me? Given time I could get Sami to provide a clean-up crew and make it all go away. I didn't have time if those sirens were for me. I could find myself caught up in Thai sticky paper for the next ten years. I went into the bathroom and opened the safe, grabbing my passports and cash. I retrieved the holdall from the wardrobe and dumped everything I owned into it. Then I headed for the door.

‘Sorry.' I whispered a collective apology to Babs and Geezer as I went out into the corridor. If she and I hadn't got it together she'd still be alive, beautiful and vibrant, screwing her beautiful arse all the way to a comfortable old age. If I hadn't been to Geezer's, he might still be alive. The fucking world was one big ‘if' at that moment in time.

The sirens were louder. Had the motherfucker who had done this been watching for my return to the apartment and anonymously called the cops the moment I had appeared? I guessed he had. Tuk Tuk? That thought crossed my mind as I hit the emergency stairs and went straight to the basement. I didn't think so. A shudder ran down my spin as I crossed the car park. What if he or they had got to Sami as well?

I stepped out into the street through the car park as the first police car pulled up at the main entrance forty feet further down the street. Another car followed close behind. I turned left and headed for the nearest entrance of CDS at a steady walk. Once inside I went through the department store and emerged out on Ploenchit. There were more sirens cutting through the city din. They were going to try and head me off at the pass. Fortunately I had a head start, pun not at all intended. I was on home soil at the embassy before the first car came into view on Wireless Road. I was safe for the moment. I needed Don Don and fast.

Don Don was in an office on the first floor of the main administration block. He would be there for the duration while the party continued downstairs in his own corner of the world. He was completely stunned when I told him about Babs and Geezer.

He didn't need any convincing that I was clean. As far as Babs was concerned, anyway, he and I could prove where I had been virtually every second of the last few hours since I had left her in my bed. Even the fucking keystone cops would figure out that I had a big bad enemy out there who was fucking my friends as he tried to fuck my mind.

As it turned out, Don Don had police contacts high up in the scheme of things.

He made a call and five minutes later the guy at the other end came back to him. Yes, there had been a tip-off that a girl had been killed at the apartment. Yes, it had been anonymous. Yes, they had already found the other head in the refrigerator. Yes, they were about to put out a warrant for Daniel Swann. Yes, they would hold that for the moment, and yes, they would send the detective in charge to the embassy.

When Don Don hung up he opened a desk drawer and produced a bottle of reasonable whisky, not that it would have mattered. I'd have drunk anything at that moment. He poured two glasses and mine contained a quarter of the contents of the bottle. The detective would come and take a statement. If he were convinced I was innocent, I walked. If not, I stayed where I was. I sure as hell wasn't hitting the street until I had absolution. Sitting in a Thai prison on indefinite remand was not an option in my book. Diplomatic immunity was a last resort, but I would use it as a trump card only if I had to. I tried Sami again, and again there was no response. I was getting scared for him and I knew I needed to speak to him more than anything else in the fucking world right then. What the hell had happened to him?