Death in the Kingdom (27 page)

Drink in one hand, I got the mobile phone out of my pocket with the other, powered it up and tapped in Sami's number. At the other end the phone rang half a dozen times then cut to Sami's voice mail. I left a message, making it up as I went along, then I pocketed the phone again, leaving it powered up. I finished my beer, my eyes on Mr Beige who was still standing under the streetlight thirty or so yards from where I was. Even with the bustling throng going past him, he stood out like a beacon.

I found more coins and got another beer. The old man smiled at me as I retreated to my former position. The second beer certainly tasted better than the first.

I was only a sip or two into it when my phone vibrated. I fished it out, wondering who it was: Bernard, Sami, Don Don or maybe Karl? With the latter I was right on the money.

‘I now know why Chekhov is really pissed at you!'

‘Because I shot him up and turned him into fucking pizza!' I replied and it wasn't a question.

‘No,' the CIA man came back. ‘When you hit him his pregnant wife was in the wagon.'

‘What?' I replied, totally stunned at this piece news. ‘We never knew he was married.'

‘He was,' Karl said. ‘Russian girl fifteen years his junior. She'd been a ballet dancer and apparently a good one. She was having some difficulties with her pregnancy. Chekhov was taking her out to a doctor at Anlong Veng when you hit them. He tried to get her out of the wagon but she didn't make it. The water must have saved him.'

‘Shit!'

‘It happens, Dan, but at least you know that this is personal and that means kill him or he'll kill you. There's no middle ground. Take care. I'll be in touch if anything else comes to hand.' Karl cut the connection, leaving me staring blankly at my mobile.

‘Christ,' I muttered, pocketing the phone. That explained a lot. Bad enough I'd toasted Chekhov but killing his wife and unborn child, albeit accidentally, was guaranteed to provoke retribution of the bloodiest kind. Thing was, it was only when Bernard had pointed the finger at me that Chekhov would have even had a clue as to who had tried to tap him. Sir Bernard Sinclair and I were going to have an interesting meeting.

Where was Sami? I asked myself as I focused back on our men in the street.

My two Ruskies were gone. Mr Beige was no longer standing under his light and Muscles had vanished from the doorway he'd commandeered. My heart did a double take. The news from Karl had broken my concentration. ‘Fuck!' I muttered, desperately trying to pick Beige and Muscles out from the crowd. Undoubtedly there were others there as well. Guys I hadn't picked up on.

I stepped forward to peer around the canvas screen formed by the awning of the drinks cart, checking out the near distance. I pulled back immediately. The two goons were forty feet away and coming towards me fast, splitting the crowd like a pair of icebreakers working thin pack ice. Muscles had his hand down the front of his trousers, fumbling with his crotch, while Beige was reaching under his shirt. I dropped my beer can and drew the Walther as I stepped back into the angle of the wall behind me. ‘Where the fuck are you, Sami?' I whispered. The old guy from the stall was kneeling beside his trolley. He'd seen what was going down. ‘Watch your arse, old man,' I said in Thai.

27

You want another Singha, Daniel?' the old fellow was asking me as he removed an Uzi from the bottom compartment of his stall.

‘Sami?' I gasped, glancing down. Sami Somsak was staring up at me. He was an old man, his face drawn and haggard under his make-up. He looked like shit.

‘I want one of these guys real bad, Daniel. The black guy preferably.'

‘Okay,' I said as I thumbed off the safety on my automatic. The old team was back in business but this was not the time or place for a reunion celebration. The Sami Somsak who crouched at my feet was not in a partying mood. He'd lost a bunch of his people and his town base. As he said, he was hurting but then so was I. Chekhov had hit us both where it hurt. I wondered if the crazy Russian really knew just who he had coming after him. Me, he knew about, but Sami, I didn't know. I'd seen Sami in action before many times and was thankful he and I were on the same side. Dimitri Chekhov had started something, but I was hoping and praying he wouldn't be able to finish it. The Russian's two goons weren't real smart. They stayed bunched shoulder to shoulder as they approached, plowing through the crowd. Sami was below their collective line of sight, hidden by the bulk of his trolley, so all they were focused on was me. My white shirt must have been glowing like a neon sign in the gloom. I moved to my left and back into the cover of the alley.

Clear of the nearest pedestrians, Muscles fumbled a small automatic out from between his legs. Mr Beige was now waving a big chromed something in the breeze.

‘Show yourself again,' Sami whispered and I did just that, stepping forward into the light to present my attackers with a nice glowing target. I tucked back fast as Beige tried to line me up. Whether they wanted me dead or as a present for Chekhov I would never know because the game was about to change drastically.

Kneeling, Sami leaned around the end of his cart, the Uzi clamped against his shoulder. He took a moment to acquire his targets, then fired single, aimed shots in rapid succession, shifting the muzzle of the gun from one to the other in the blink of an eye. To have used full auto with a street full of people behind the target would have meant certain death for the innocent, but at a range of ten feet and closing, it was no contest. Three rounds hit Mr Beige in the thighs, then three more copper jackets met in a three inch triangle in the centre of Mr Muscles's beautifully formed chest. Both guys hit the street hard. Muscles didn't move, but Beige was curled up into a ball, screaming in agony.

‘Grab him,' Sami called. ‘Into the alley.' I jammed the Walther into my belt and leapt past Sami's cart. People were screaming in the street, and everyone was running for cover. I was on the injured man in two strides. I kicked the chromed automatic away from Beige, grabbed him under the armpits and started dragging him backwards towards the alleyway. Sami tossed something down the street towards the police vehicles. After a quick glance in that direction, I realised that the cops were in no hurry to get near us. Other figures were heading our way, however. I had to assume they were more of Chekhov's playmates.

‘Tear gas,' Sami said as he came running towards me, the Uzi in one hand.

He bent down, grabbed a handful of trouser cuff with his free hand and helped me move the black guy who was screaming like a proverbial stuck pig. The alley was dank, dark and fucking dirty. I stopped, hit the guy hard on the side of the head with a closed anvil fist and quickly frisked him. I found a small automatic ankle gun. I stuffed it into my trouser pocket.

Beige wasn't moving at all and I was faced with hauling a dead weight. I knew the best way to carry someone who was right out of it was the old-fashioned way, just like I had carried Tuk Tuk to safety all those years before. I squatted to arrange limbs and then slung the injured guy head first over my shoulders, legs hanging in front.

‘Go,' I yelled to Sami who was watching the mouth of the alley. He threw another gas grenade then came running back. He pushed past me and set off in the lead.

‘Not far,' he called. ‘Boat,' he added. ‘You okay?'

‘Yeah,' I muttered. ‘Me carry, you lead.' Sami almost laughed. He increased his pace. Not far seemed to me to be a hundred gruelling yards of wet, slippery, slime-covered crap that sloped down towards the canal. I stumbled and skidded, cannoning off the alley walls at every two or three paces. I was tempted to drop my passenger and use him as a toboggan. I could hear our pursuers behind us. There was a whistle and angry shouts further back. It seemed the police were putting on a performance for the crowd but Chekhov's goons were between them and us. Sami raised the Uzi and fired a short burst into the sky. The sound was deafening, amplified by the man-made canyon we were in. He lobbed another grenade over my head as I ran after him.

The alley finally gave way to a narrow wooden jetty just fifty yards up the canal from the charred timbers of Sami's warehouse. His own jetty had been burned down to the tide mark. As we neared the jetty there was enough light for me to identify the boat tied there as a low open cruiser with a fat pair of big black outboards tacked on the rear end. Sami jumped down into the cockpit and perched himself at the wheel. He started flicking switches. The sound of our pursuers was growing louder. I didn't have time to stand on ceremony. It was five or so feet from dock to deck. Mr Beige made it in half a second flat as I pulled my Gerber and went for the ropes holding us to the dock fore and aft.

The razor blade of my folding knife made short work of the nylon and I landed in the boat just as Sami ground the Mercurys into life. It wasn't a coincidence that the cruiser had been parked pointing back towards the river, her engines primed and ready to go. We were moving in ten seconds. Our pursuers didn't even make the dock before we were out of range. In our wake we left several very upset river folk who were fighting to keep their little craft afloat in our wash.

Due to the failing light, Sami turned on the navigation lights and a spotlight positioned on the bow to show the way ahead. He throttled back and the big motors settled into a muted grumble. We could talk without yelling and there was a lot I wanted to know.

‘How the hell did you survive?'

‘I was on my way to the Gulf,' Sami replied harshly. ‘They missed me when they hit the place. They staged an accident in the street—backed a furniture van loaded with their men into the garage door and got in. People on the street only saw it as a bit of shitty driving. They came in fast with silenced weapons and machetes. No one had a chance. They combed the place from top to bottom, looking for you and the box, and me as a bonus,' he added grimly. ‘That's the thing about surveillance, Daniel. Got a feed of the whole thing in living colour on DVD at my other place.'

‘Was Chekhov there?'

‘Oh yes. Pizza Face was there all right. He personally killed half of my people with his damned machete.'

‘I'm so sorry I led him to you,' I said lamely. Sami was shaking his head.

‘He was after me anyway. It was just a matter of time before it happened. The person we have to settle with after Chekhov is your Sir Bernard. Switch the phone off before we go much further.' I did as he asked and left it on the boat's dashboard while I went to deal with our guest who was beginning to stir. As I move to the rear of the boat, Sami took his own mobile from his pocket and started to make a call.

I grabbed the very hurt Mr Beige and propped him into a seat in the stern. Both his legs were bent at odd angles. The 9mm slugs rather than the fall from the dock had probably done the damage. I pulled his arms behind his back and used a length of mooring cord to tie them to a handy cleat. I looked at the amount of blood soaking his thighs and pondered whether or not to apply tourniquets. I decided to do just that. Sami wanted him alive, and so did I. Grabbing another piece of rope, I sliced off three or four feet. I tied a quick figure of eight around the top of both his thighs and pulled it as tight as I could before tying it off. When I had done my Florence Nightingale trick I went forward and climbed onto a seat across from Sami.

Sami was an expert with the boat. He swung the wheel effortlessly to dodge past a lumbering barge loaded with coffins coming from upstream. I couldn't help thinking that, although coffins were a common enough cargo as any canal watcher would know, it was strangely appropriate to see them at that time. ‘I came back this afternoon to wait for them to show again. I knew they'd come looking to see if I was dead, or if you showed up. Fucking predictable.'

‘Russians,' I said, ‘predictable and violent. You knew Chekhov was still alive and active.' It wasn't a question.

‘I knew,' Sami replied as he worked the wheel. ‘The ugly son of a whore. I thought we had an arrangement.' He had the power wound up again and we were racing up river, slicing past everything else on the water as if it were standing still. I didn't ask him why he hadn't bothered to tell me about Chekhov rising from the dead. I knew Sami always had a reason for what he did or didn't do.

Sami picked up my mobile phone from the ledge under the windscreen. ‘He's got a tracer of some sort in here, an ELB and probably a relay bug,' said Sami. ‘Power on and it's live. Every conversation goes back to Bernard and he has your location thanks to a GPS bird up above.' He transferred the phone to his right hand and from out of nowhere another boat virtually the same as ours came alongside us at speed. Sami reached across and the passenger in the front of the other cruiser took the phone. I recognised the passenger as Jo, Sami's invisible warrior. Jo grinned and waved at me as the big black craft peeled away and headed down river. I wasn't in the least bit surprised at what had just happened.

‘We'll use it against Sir Bernard,' Sami said as he started to throttle back. ‘Jo's taking it to a lab. We'll know its secrets in an hour or two and Sir Bernard will have no idea it's been compromised.'

‘Yeah,' I muttered. Sami took a Marlboro from the pack I was holding out. He seldom smoked. I lit for both of us.

‘Don't blame yourself, Daniel. I meant it when I said Chekhov didn't hit me because of you,' Sami said. ‘He's making a move on me—the timing was probably coincidental. You are another issue altogether. You're personal,' he said, drawing deeply on his cigarette. ‘He got my sister's son and my cousin back there, and a lot of others,' he said, sending the words into the slipstream in a curl of smoke.

‘Mary?' I asked. Sami just nodded.

‘Chekhov wants you real bad but I want him worse.' Sami's voice was flat as he half-turned to look at me. In the reflected light, the pupils of his eyes looked like holes drilled through solid white marble. The holes went deeper into his soul. ‘Oh yes,' he whispered. ‘I want him and I'm going to get him!' The promise in his voice was absolute.