THE GIRL IN THE WINDOW (The Inspector Samuel Tay Novels Book 4) (8 page)

“Our information is that she will be alone,” Goh said.

Tay raised an eyebrow. That didn’t feel right. Who traveled by himself to another country for medical treatment when you had only a fifty-fifty chance of survival? Surely the woman must have family who could give her help and support at such a time. Why would she be in Singapore alone unless…well, unless
what
? Tay couldn’t come up with anything at all.

“How solid is this intelligence?”

The question came from a tall man with a Chinese face sitting in the second row. Tay assumed he was probably ISD. The man looked to Tay to be no more than twenty-five or thirty years old. People around him seemed to get younger and younger every year.

“This intelligence is as solid as intelligence gets,” Goh answered.

Tay snorted, but he did it quietly. If that was the best Goh could do, he figured they were in trouble.

Tay worked on the basis of facts; things he either knew to be true or had good reason to believe were likely to be true. When people told him they worked on the basis of intelligence, it usually meant they didn’t have very many facts. They had collected what some people told them or what other people told them other people had told
them
and were trying hard to make it all sound like facts. In Tay’s view, relying on so-called intelligence to make decisions was nearly always a sure way to get your ass handed to you.

“What can you tell us about the source of your intelligence?” Tay asked.

He noticed everyone else in the room turned to look at him, and he didn’t detect a lot of warmth in their looks.

“Nothing,” Goh said.

“So you want us to take all this on faith.”

“ISD has vetted the intelligence and views it as actionable. That’s all you need to know.”

“It seems to me—”

“Look, Tay, I don’t really care how anything seems to you. ISD is taking down Suparman on the basis of this intelligence and holding him under the Internal Security Act. If anyone interferes with us, or if we discover citizens of Singapore involved in sheltering or protecting Suparman, CID might be needed since that wouldn’t fall under the Internal Security Act. Otherwise, the details of this operation are of no concern to you.”

“Then you’re saying—”

“Can I go on with my briefing now, Tay? If you have any questions, I’ll try to answer them when I’m done.”

The screen behind Goh began to flash as it displayed a succession of images of the woman Goh had identified as Abu Suparman’s sister. In most of them she was wearing the same jeans, shirt, and dark red hijab she had been wearing in the first picture, which suggested most of them were made at the same time.

The screen stopped flashing and held on a picture of a row of shophouses that looked vaguely familiar to Tay.

“This is the Temple Street Inn. As most of you probably know already, it’s on Temple Street just east of New Bridge Road in Chinatown. The hotel consists of four shophouses, each three stories high, joined together into a single structure.”

Tay always thought it was a little strange that Singapore, which was as a practical matter a Chinese city, had a neighborhood called Chinatown. The narrow streets lined with small shophouses and filled with restaurants and souvenir shops were a big draw for tourists, particularly western ones, but the area bore more resemblance to an amusement park than it did to any real Chinese city Tay had ever seen.

“If Suparman does try to see his sister as we expect, we are certain it will be at this hotel, not at a public place like the hospital. That’s why we’re going to put a net over the Temple Street Inn from the moment Atin Hasan arrives until she leaves for the hospital. We have every confidence we will snare Suparman in that net.”

“Let me lay out the operational plan for you,” Goh went on. “Three teams of six men will work eight-hour shifts to keep the Temple Street Inn under constant surveillance. We have taken over two apartments on Temple Street, one about fifty yards to the east of the hotel and one about thirty yards to the west, and we have access to the back of a restaurant on Pagoda Street which overlooks the loading dock at the rear of the hotel. One team will man each of those positions twenty-four hours a day. Nobody will be able to get in or out of the hotel without us knowing it.”

“What about putting somebody inside, sir?” a man two rows up asked. Tay assumed he had to be ISD since he addressed Goh as
sir
. Tay couldn’t imagine anyone else would be willing to do that.

“We can’t put surveillance inside the hotel since it’s small and there’s no way we can do it covertly. We considered approaching management and getting their cooperation, but we decided not to. We are simply not certain we can trust either the management or the staff and we don’t want to take a chance of tipping off Suparman if has sympathizers there. If we scare him off, we might not get another chance at him.”

“How about cameras?” the same man asked.

“Again, we can’t access the hotel’s own CCTV system with somebody there knowing about it. We looked at putting our own cameras inside the hotel, but we don’t think we could do that either without at least some of the staff finding out. We simply don’t want to take a chance on this operation being blown by gossip or even by an informer.”

“Anything else?” Goh asked, looking around the room. When nobody said anything, he went on.

“Now, as most of you are already aware, the biggest problem we’re going to have is that Suparman has never been photographed. There are no authenticated pictures of him we can use for identification.”

Well, yes, I see how that might be a problem,
Tay thought.
When you’re peering down out of a window into the street looking for somebody, it’s reasonably important to know what he looks like.

Tay settled back to see how the geniuses at ISD were going to deal with that one.

A black and white pencil drawing flashed onto the screen behind Goh. It was of a man who appeared to be about fifty years old with a generically Asian face. He could have been Indonesian or Malaysian or, for that matter, Singaporean. The man had a prominent nose, widely set eyes, bushy eyebrows, and long, dark, slightly stringy hair that hung straight down almost to his shoulders.

“This is a composite sketch based on the description of Suparman given to us by two of the men involved in the Bali bombings,” Goh said. “They had contact with him on several occasions while the bombings were being planned, so their descriptions should be reasonably accurate.”

“Wait,” Tay interrupted. “That was…what? Ten or twelve years ago?”

Goh turned his head slowly and looked at Tay. “We’re not completely stupid, regardless of what you might believe. This drawing has been aged to compensate for the timeframe. Now, do you have any other helpful observations?”

Tay wiggled one hand in what he thought was a suitably ambitious gesture and folded his arms.

“We also know,” Goh said, shifting his eyes back to the room, “that Suparman is tall for an Indonesian, perhaps six feet. But he walks with a stoop and may appear shorter.”

That’s just wonderful,
Tay thought.
They’re going to try to pick out a guy in the street who’s tall but appears shorter, has a face that looks like any one of about ten million other men, and had long hair ten years ago.
Piece of bloody cake.

Goh started talking again before Tay could say any of that out loud, which even Tay understood was probably for the best.

“Each surveillance post will have a copy of this sketch plus copies of the photographs of Suparman’s sister I showed you earlier. You will also have field glasses equipped for night vision and an encrypted radio tuned to the operations channel.”

A few heads around the room bobbed, but nobody said anything.

“When we pick up Suparman entering the hotel, an army Special Operations Force will be standing by to seal off Temple Street from both ends. After that, ISD will move in on Suparman. We don’t expect him to be armed and we think the possibility of him resisting is remote, but you should all be armed and fully prepared if he tries to leave the hotel before the army seals off the street or if he does resist. Now…any questions about all that?”

Sergeant Kang raised his hand in the back of the room. “What is CID supposed to be doing while these three ISD teams watch the hotel?”

“We’ve organized a room for CID at the Santa Grande Hotel across the street from the Temple Street Inn.”

The screen behind Goh flashed through several more pictures of the Temple Street Inn and stopped on one Tay saw had been taken looking toward South Bridge Road. Along one side of the hotel there was a tiny alleyway too narrow for cars that ran all the way from Temple Street through to Pagoda Street and which was lined end to end with vendors’ carts selling tourist junk. Opposite the alleyway on the other side of Temple Street, Tay saw the entrance to the small hotel called the Santa Grande.

“Whichever CID officer is on duty,” Goh continued, “will remain at the Santa Grande until we need you. If something arises which requires the exercise of civil police authority, I’ll call for you on the operations channel and give you instructions. If I don’t call for you, you’ll wait in the room and stay out of the way.”

“Wait a minute,” Tay cut in. “You want CID to sit in a hotel room twenty-four hours a day waiting for you to call us?”

Goh tossed out another of his obnoxious grins. “I thought I’d find something for CID to do that you could handle, Tay.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Tay snapped.

“I’m sorry you think so, but I’m running this operation and that’s what you’ll be doing.” Goh turned back to the room. “There will be no one on the operations channel except for the three surveillance posts, the CID post at the Santa Grande, and my supervisory post. I want you to stay off the radio until you have located and identified Suparman. Is that clear?”

A few people nodded.

“Okay,” Goh concluded, “any final questions?”

For his part, Tay had
lots
of questions, but he knew it would be prudent to save them for a private conversation with Goh. Starting an argument in front of everyone else would do nothing but piss Goh off and create even more ill will between CID and ISD, if such a thing were even possible.

Nobody else spoke up either.

Welcome to Singapore
, Tay thought.
Where we obey orders and don’t ask any questions
.

“I want everybody in place before the sister arrives so the first shift will begin immediately and run until six tonight,” Goh said. “The second shift will run from six until two in the morning, and the third shift from two until ten tomorrow morning. We will maintain that schedule until we have Suparman or until his sister leaves the hotel and checks into the hospital.”

“ISD personnel already have their assignments and will be covering the two surveillance posts on Temple Street plus the post in the restaurant overlooking the loading dock. Tay, you can assign your people however you see fit as long as one person from CID is always on standby at the Santa Grande Hotel. Everybody got all that?”

There were a few more nods, but nobody spoke up.

“Okay,” Goh said as the screen behind him went dark and the lights in the room came up. “Get out there and nail this bastard for me.”

PEOPLE GOT TO their feet and began shuffling up the steps toward the exit. The other two men sitting at the table stood up and, without even a nod to Tay and Goh, began climbing the steps, too. Tay stayed where he was and watched them go.

So who the hell
were
those guys?

After the room was largely cleared, Tay pushed his chair back up and stood there waiting for Goh to acknowledge him.

Goh looked the other way and said nothing. It was a childish power play and Tay knew it so he just stood there and waited Goh out. Eventually Goh gave up, as Tay knew he would.

“You have a question, Tay?”

“Yeah. Who were those two guys sitting up here with us?”

Goh’s eyes flicked automatically toward the last backs at the top of the stairs. Tay thought he saw a frisson of anxiety, but perhaps he was mistaken. Goh wasn’t a guy to be anxious about much of anything.

“We have several observers attached to the operation,” Goh muttered as the last of the men left the room.

“Observers?”

“You want me to define the word for you, Tay? Observers are people who observe.”

Tay just looked at Goh as if he knew there was more and waited.

“Besides,” Goh shrugged after a few moments, “I’m glad to have the support if we need it.”

“Support from who?”

“The UK, Australia.” Goh paused. “The US.”

“In other words, you telling me there were people from MI6, ASIS, and the CIA in this room today?”

Goh gave a very small nod, but he didn’t say anything else.

“Didn’t you tell me this was your operation?”

“It is my operation, Tay. And don’t you forget it.”

“Either you’re dumber than I think, Goh, or you’re lying both to me and yourself. You can’t possibly believe MI6, the Australian Intelligence Service, and the CIA are here to hang around watching ISD. They’re here because they want something.”

“They want us to grab Suparman. He’s not just our problem. He’s everybody’s problem.”

“And if you do grab him—"

“Not if, Tay, when.”

“And if you do grab him, what do you figure happens then? All those guys congratulate you on a job well done, have a little chili crab, and head home? Rubbish. They’re going to want a piece of Suparman, too.”

“I’m calling the shots here, Tay. Simple as that.”

“Look, Goh, you can’t really—”

“And another thing. Be careful who you talk to. You can’t be certain where their loyalties lie.”

That pulled Tay up short.

“What are you talking about?” he asked.

“We have reason to believe that ISIS has supporters in Singapore, possibly even on the police force.”

“But not in ISD.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Tay. I know our people.”

“And I know ours.”

Tay and Goh focused their most macho glares on each other, but after a few seconds Tay shook his head and looked away. He was wasting his time. Without another word, he turned around and started up the steps to the little auditorium’s exit where Kang was waiting for him with Sergeant Lee.