Death in the Kingdom (8 page)

I'd called Bernard from Ranong and told him he'd have to do without his daily telephone date for as long as I was out chasing his damned lead box, satellite phone or not. I knew once we pushed out beyond the harbour it would be difficult to pick up a bird, even if I had the urge. I also figured I was going to have my hands full. Tough! Strangely enough the old bastard hadn't seemed unduly perturbed at the prospect of not hearing from his favourite agent. Sometimes that arsehole was impossible to figure. What did I mean sometimes? I meant all the time.

Was I scared? Of course I bloody well was. All the fucking secret agents and undercover types in movies come across as having balls of steel. But in the real world, we all sweat bullets and our guts churn. Sometimes I wanted my mummy, but I figured the Walther in the holster in the small of my back was more use in the real world. Sorry mum!

I crossed in front of the cabin to the dry side of the tub. Here, out of the spray and the wind, the smell of dead fish wafted back from the open deck well, set between the raised rear superstructure and the bow. The derricks that controlled the big prawn nets were positioned on each side slightly forward of the three-foot-deep recess in the deck. I'd seen these things working before, swinging their big fine-mesh nets in over the side of the boat and dumping kicking prawns and shrimp by the hundredweight into the well. The take was then quickly sorted for debris and the prawns sent down a chute into ice in the hold below. All very interesting but I didn't think they'd bothered to clean that damn tub since it had first floated. That was why the smell of rotting sea life was so fucking overpowering.

The trawler escort—an unnamed, rusted long-liner about the same size as our tub—was a hundred yards behind and out to one side. Watching it split the waves with its sharp bow as it rose and twisted through the swells before falling and twisting down again didn't do a lot for me, or more precisely, for my gut. I lit a cigarette and shifted my gaze to somewhere over the grey horizon. I was hoping the smoke would hide the rotten fish smell. It worked somewhat, but the smoke and the motion of the boat started to churn my entrails into soup. I tossed the half-finished cigarette butt over the side and then went to the railing. There, I followed the butt with my last meal or two. Fuck, I hated boats!

Eventually we found the lee of an island to hide behind for the night. There were so many reefs, rocks and small islands in the area that to go charging around in the dark was a sure recipe for disaster. The sea behind the island was calm and I finally stopped chucking. I wiped my face with unsalted water from a tap on the bulkhead beside me and risked another cigarette. I had coughed up a storm but I didn't lose it as we cruised closer to our shelter.

Like all good consorts our escort was still following, both behind and a little to our right (starboard as the nautical types call it). The trawler had a crew of eight: three to run the thing and five to run the assortment of weaponry that Tuk Tuk had put on board. I had been impressed by the inventory. There were half a dozen LAW 80 shoulder-fired tank busters guaranteed to take just about anything short of a cruiser to the bottom of the ocean. There were also two Browning .50 calibre heavy machine guns, plus a couple of M79 grenade launchers and the usual assortment of M16s and AK47s. Short of an all out war, we were tooled up to account for ourselves in a damned good skirmish.

The pirate thing in the Andaman and down through the whole region to just about Australia was a reality. However unlike the cut-throats in the Malaccan Straits, there was not a hell of a lot of publicity about the Andaman pirates. The Burmese broadcasted bugger all of anything to the outside world so the pirates existed and prospered, and they were a bloody pack of real villains. Most of their victims were fishermen, but if a nice fat tourist yacht or cruiser happened by, they would have a go at it too. Generally, there were no survivors. The sharks saw to that.

The rattle of the anchor chain broke my musing. There was activity up the pointed end of our tub and shouts from the bridge, followed by the grumble and vibration of an old diesel engine as the boat reversed to set the hook. Two minutes later we were swinging on the cable in near silence. I stood and watched our escort go through the same manoeuvre fifty yards away to starboard.

I noted the other vessels in the big bay. A luxury two-master yacht was anchored to our left and beyond that a string of Moken boats were rafted up closer to the shore. These long, low barge-type boats were home to the sea nomads who were the main occupants of the area. Whole families lived on board the big mother craft, and often they could be seen travelling between the islands with a caravan of dugout canoes strung behind. Once the group arrived in an area they wanted to fish or scavenge in, the larger boat anchors and the owners of the dugouts would go about their business.

The bay in which we had taken shelter had an island mass on three sides of us, and in the gathering gloom I could see sparks of light on the shore—fishing villages or just camps, I guessed. I knew from a briefing long ago, at a time when I had been doing things in these waters, that there were bugger all shore dwellers out there. Almost a thousand islands made up the Mergui Archipelago, the true name of the area. To me back then it was just bloody sea with lumps in it. I hadn't so far seen anything this time round to change my opinion.

I risked going inside the boat. I'd decided, thanks to my rather perverted sense of humour, to name the tub the SS
Odorama
: it was smelly, uncomfortable and sloshed along like a damn bathtub.

The main cabin—a sort of mess and sleeping quarters for the crew—was directly through the door leading to the deck. Mess was probably a good description for it. Hammocks were slung from the ceiling beams. There was a table of sorts that doubled as the engine-room hatch cover, plus there were a few chairs and stools and a built-in bench that was the captain's bed. A crude galley was behind the mess, with an even cruder toilet behind the galley—if a bucket with a couple of rattan screens around it could be considered a toilet.

About two feet behind the toilet, right in the stern, was a second sleeping area. This, I suspected, started life as a storage locker and had subsequently been very roughly converted into a cabin into which four short, hard bunks had been crammed. That was where I was sleeping, along with the three divers Tuk Tuk had brought in. The divers were in the main cabin playing cards when I entered. They glanced at me and grinned. I guessed my face was still glowingly pale. I grinned back to show I had a sense of humour. ‘Rotting fish and diesel. I hate the smell,' I said in Thai. The guys immediately laid down their cards and started talking to me ninety to the dozen in their own language. Somewhere along the line I'd decided that speaking Thai and getting alongside these fellows might be a wise move.

It was amazing in any situation what a few words in the native tongue could achieve. Anywhere but Paris that was! Hell, in my opinion fucking Parisians didn't even like each other, let alone their cousins from the provinces. So speaking French in Paris was a joke, especially given that most of the natives could speak English when they chose. No such problem where I was! If you could speak Thai, no matter how badly, you were welcomed with open arms. However, because these guys all worked for Tuk Tuk Song I had no illusions about what to expect from them. They would do as I said only because Choy, on Tuk Tuk's behalf, had told them to. They were terrified of Tuk Tuk and of The Cabbage. They weren't scared of me. Even so, the illusion of camaraderie could be as important as the real thing. That was how most of the intelligence outfits got on together. Mirrors, smoke and big smiley faces up front, sharp knives ready behind the back. I was good at playing Mr Smiley Face.

‘Who wants a beer?' I asked and they all chorused very much to the affirmative. I had insisted that we have a good supply of Singha on board. Tuk Tuk had agreed to that readily enough. A big refrigerator the size of a supermarket chest had been squeezed up one end of the mess. As I was boss, if I said drink, they drank. I opened the chest and passed out a string of cans, keeping one for myself.

I let the dive team get back to their game and joined in the banter at appropriate intervals while I stood sipping my beer, looking over the map that had been taped to the bulkhead wall above the refrigerator. I guessed, from the relatively short time we'd been on the move, that we were anchored in Hastings Harbour, right up in the lee of St Luke's Island, or Zadetkale Kyun to give it its Burmese name. A lot of the islands and bays on the map had English names. They were all named after bloody dukes, generals, governors and such. However I guessed the Burmese still called the islands whatever they had been calling them for centuries, and to hell with what a bunch of jumped-up colonial types wrote on their maps. I doubted many Burmese on the mainland even knew this mass of islands existed.

From where I estimated we were I figured that we had maybe half a day's steaming to get to Loughborough Island. We could probably be in position before nightfall the following day. That was if I wanted us to be there. I hadn't yet figured out if we would be better to anchor at the dive site and stay there, or commute. The co-ordinates for the wrecks placed us on the eastern side of the island, with no cover from the westerly winds. At this time of the year it could be calm, it could be shitty and there was no way of knowing which until we got there.

‘We are here.' A brown finger tapped the map. I'd been dead right about our anchorage. The speaker was Niran, the captain of this most illustrious vessel. According to Tuk Tuk the boat had once been Niran's but he had lost it gambling to one of Tuk Tuk's syndicates. Now Niran had his chance to earn it back.

Niran was the colour of teak, a small wisp of a man with a straggly beard and long unkempt jet-black hair flecked with silver. He wore what had once been a white singlet, but was now various shades of yellow. He also had on a pair of baggy blue shorts that accentuated his skinny but muscular legs. The legs ended in bare feet that looked as tough as army-issue boots. The toes were hooked, broken and set at odd angles, speaking of years of accidents and abuse mostly on board his boat, I guessed. A European going barefoot on this tub would find it like walking through a fucking minefield of toe-busting, shin-cracking booby traps.

‘Beer?' I asked.

‘Please,' he replied, taking the can I handed to him. We stood smoking and sipping our beers while we discussed timing and the anchorage for the following night. Without giving too much away, I circled a spot on the large-scale map close to where we would be diving. Niran considered the place I had indicated and pointed out where he thought we should set up our night anchorage. ‘Monsoons are finished but there is still too much bad weather to stay out there. We will only be an hour from the dive site. No problem,' he concluded, taking a big swallow of his beer to indicate the can was empty. I opened the refrigerator and distributed another round. For good Buddhists, these boys had a robust thirst for beer. In my book, some rules were just made to be broken.

Food was produced a few minutes later. Curried fish, vegetables and rice was the meal of the moment. I didn't risk any food beyond a bowl of plain steamed rice. After we had eaten, Niran produced a bottle of Mekong and he and I drank a few toasts before I decided to turn in. I left behind the makings of a party. I'd instructed Niran to issue one more round of beer, but I noted that there were a few bottles of the local rocket fuel in a crate in the corner of the mess. I didn't care what the hell they did, short of sinking us.

Back in the shack I checked my emails. Nothing. Then I pulled up the electronic map of the area around Loughborough Island. It told me nothing new. I closed the laptop and pushed it back into its padded pocket inside my holdall and adjusted the bag behind my head. Pillows were in short supply on board the good ship
Odorama.

I awoke when the others eventually fell noisily into their beds, then again an hour or two later. The makeshift cabin was cramped, hot and bloody smelly with three farting, beer-drinking curry eaters in residence. Despite the fact the door was wide open, the heat and the smell rose up to my top bunk. Maybe having the top bunk was a status thing but, hell, I'd have swapped it for one of the lower ones in an instant. Eventually, however, I found sleep again, or it found me. To many, the famous Thai whisky tastes like shit after bourbon, but it does a job and a half of anaesthetising the brain.

8

We made our second anchorage at a few minutes past 15:00 the next day. This time we were sheltered from the westerlies by a small island tagged onto the northern tip of Lord Loughborough Island. I estimated that our dive site was about another five miles beyond us to the west. I had the GPS in my kit and the co-ordinates all but locked in. I held back on the last couple of important digits—they were my insurance.

I didn't know who Tuk Tuk or Choy had designated as my shadow. On a tub this size, everyone was in everyone's face most of the time. I thought I had Niran on side. The divers, they were okay guys. They were young, none of them over thirty. Apparently they worked for a dive-school chain, a chain owned by, you guessed it, Tuk Tuk Song. Two of them were former Thai navy underwater specialists trained in demolition and salvage. The third was a senior PADI instructor with twelve years under his belt. I had to assume they were all pretty good in the water.

I'd not mentioned the submarine to Tuk Tuk or anyone else up until then. The divers knew we were going after a freighter and treasure, but that was all they knew. I would tell them the rest at our pre-dive briefing the next day. I needed to balance security with practicality. Keeping myself safe was much more of a priority to me than the security of the damned box. I'd probably need help to find the wreck of
Victor
, so I would buddy up with one of the other three divers for the exploratory dive. Once we'd located the sub I'd do the rest myself, leaving the others to mess with the buddha and gather whatever gold Tuk Tuk had instructed them to lift.