CHAPTER 46
“Kevs?” I asked. “How’s it hanging?”
I heard a noise, a bump, as if he’d sat up and hit his head on the ceiling. Then there was a sound like several fs strung together. “Kurt?” he said.
“Yeh,” I said. “How’s Park Road?”
“OK.”
You see what I mean about Kevin and phone calls? Everything about Park Road was now OK. No problem. Park Road was where all the peace and tranquillity could now be found. It was as if he’d forgotten who he was and where he was. Perhaps thought he associated me asking how Park Road was with an enquiry about his own health.
“Did you just hit your head, Kev?”
“Yeh,” he said. “The ceiling’s very low.”
“How’s Mr. Khan?”
“Fucking bastard.”
That was better. The knock on the head had done some good.
“How’s it going, Kurt?” he asked.
“OK,” I replied, thinking that that was exactly how Kevin had described how he was. Everything was OK. No problem. So why had I called?
“It’s the middle of the night,” I said. “I’m soaked to the skin, but it’s not like English rain. I’m sweating as well.”
Jimmy and I had been forced by a thunderstorm to stop and shelter somewhere south of a place called Surat Thani. It had started as light rain but then turned into a violent storm with thunder, lightning, and torrential rain that had flooded the road. After five hours of that and at 5:30 in the morning, all I wanted was a change of clothes, but Jimmy seemed unperturbed. We’d taken shelter in what I assumed was a sort of bus stop with hard wooden seats and a corrugated roof but for ten minutes earlier on the rain had been horizontal like a typhoon. Now, everything was calm, and dawn was breaking.
“You asleep, Kev?”
What a stupid question! He’d just hit his head, said “fuck,” and spoken to me.
“What’s up, Kurt?” he said. “Have you found Cass?”
“Lacking some detail. Know what I mean? I’m supposed to be on holiday but got caught up with this American tramp, Jimmy. You heard about him?”
“I heard something,” he replied.
It was true. Kevin had heard something from Roger, who had spoken to Colin Asher, who’d delegated a few things to a guy called Ritchie, who, apparently, was a black guy from North London like me. Ritchie, I discovered later, was twenty-six, still had a mum and a dad whom he lived with in a proper house in Hampstead. In fact, his dad was something big in MI5 or MI6 or something of that sort. I digress.
“I heard you met an American guy with connections, Kurt. Seems you were in the right place at the right time,” Kevin said to me.
I paused because I was still in two minds about that. “Yeh,” I said. “Fortunate for Cass, but I’m not so sure about me. His name’s Jimmy. He’s like one of those old hippies. Forever rolling spliffs. Drives me crazy.”
“What a shame,” Kevin said because it was a phrase he’d picked up from Roger. “Lucky you met him, though, Kurt.”
“Lucky? Why?”
“Cass is somewhere around. We need to find him.”
“Yeh, I know,” I said.
I heard Kevin take a deep breath. “Listen to me, man,” he said. “When you phone, you’ve got to say something vital, OK? Like something I don’t know already.”
I felt I was being ticked off—by Kevin of all people.
I now know that Kevin’s confidence had reached an all-time high. Life had suddenly become interesting, and he was about to lead an assault on the enemy and crack open a case that even the police had failed to do. Best of all, it was a chance to show his mum what he could do.
I thought I’d better improve my communications style by saying something important. “Jimmy says we need Cass’s phone location, but it’s switched off. “
“It’s probably out of credit as well, Kurt. But it’s lucky you’re there. What more do you know about this guy Jimmy?”
From where I was, the trucks had started rolling again. One roared past followed by a motorcycle that spluttered blue smoke, and I was walking aimlessly in the vicinity of the bus shelter. Above my head was a street light with a dense cloud of flies and moths flying in circles.
On my right was a tangle of damp orange trousers and wet hair lying on a hard wooden bench with one bare foot on the muddy ground and with its head on its crash helmet. If the air had been cold like London, steam would have been rising from Jimmy, but I could sense he was only pretending to be asleep. His other foot was twitching.
But Kevin had just asked if I knew much about him. My answer was no, not much.
“He does occasional work for Asher & Asher,” Kevin said. “He was once in the US army. Perhaps best not to underestimate him, Kurt.”
“Yeh,” I said after a short think. “He stinks of sweat, but he’s kind of cool in a dirty sort of way.”
But why had I called Kevin? Was it just to test the technology, or was it because I needed to hear a familiar voice?
“What are you doing?” I asked him.
“At midnight, I’m breaking into Khan’s room,” Kevin said.
My respect for him soared.
***
The morning light was increasing when I went to sit astride Jimmy’s bike to wait for him to stir from the wooden bench. At last, he sat up, rolled another for his breakfast, and looked at me. I looked away.
I took a packet of Chiclets from my backpack and managed to blow a small bubble the size of a tennis ball. Then I pretended to rev the bike, as if on the starting grid of a Motocross Grand Prix.
I can’t remember how it cropped up, but Jimmy told me later that I reminded him of another black guy he’d known who they called Pink on account of a patch of unpigmented skin at the top of his inner thigh. Pink had never let the jokes about whether he’d been born with it or if it had been inflicted by a woman setting fire to his equipment bother him.
Jimmy flicked his breakfast dog end away, stamped it into the mud, and was about to stand up when his phone rang somewhere deep inside his pocket. I stopped what I was doing and went over as Jimmy finally extracted the phone, checked the screen, and put it to his ear. He then kindly switched it to loudspeaker so I could listen in.
It was a man’s voice speaking in an English accent. “Jimmy,” he said, “how’s it going?”
“Cool,” Jimmy replied.
“Mark’s away in Taiwan, so you’re stuck with me, OK?”
“Sure, how’re you doing, Colin?”
This, I quickly realised, was Colin Asher speaking from the Asher & Asher office in London. My experience of peace and tranquillity may have gone missing, but I was then to be treated to a course in international telecommunications. The possibilities are, of course, endless. If I wanted to, I could talk to Friggin and get a live view of the backstreets of Edmonton, as if I was driving the truck all at the same time.
Jimmy perched on the saddle of his bike and scratched an armpit. For a while, the phone was somewhere inside his hair, so what I heard was a filtered version that meant I lost some of the early words. But then he withdrew the phone, pressed a few things, and sat with it, facing him. So I went around his back to see if I could get a peek at Colin Asher’s face.
And there he was, an old guy, well, maybe around fifty, sitting back from a computer, not a phone. At the bottom left-hand corner was a tiny picture showing something very hairy. Jimmy obviously saw it and dragged a hand through his greasy locks so that half of his dirty face appeared. Then he turned the phone on its side.
“OK,” Colin Asher said, “listen up. We’ll track you, OK. When you need me, the system here is ready to run. Just hit video call, and I’ll be there. OK?”
“Got it,” Jimmy said. “What’s the latest?”
“Is Kurt with you?”
“Sure,” Jimmy replied. “He’s standing right next to me. If he gives any trouble, I’ll feed him to the crocodiles at the farm up the road. What’s up?”
“The priority is to extract Cass Siddiqui. His phone’s no longer working, but we reckon he’s not too far from you. Last time Kevin spoke to him, he was exhausted. He’s vulnerable. You’re well placed, so stick around. One possibility is he’s holed up in another temple somewhere. Meanwhile—and you’ll love this, Jimmy—other things have emerged.”
“Give me a clue,” Jimmy said.
Colin Asher’s head disappeared for a moment, as if he was looking for something on his desk.
“BRN” came the reply. “Looks like Cass was earmarked for great things, but he gave them the slip. Not surprisingly that upset a few people. He was set up with the bomb plant at the fuel station. The Thai anti-terrorism police are on the lookout, but he’s an even bigger target for the BRN. Meanwhile, he’s already proving useful for intelligence. We’ve got a whole list of photos and names, but if we can pull him out unscathed, you’ll earn yourself a bonus.”
“Does anyone else know?” Jimmy asked.
Colin Asher clearly understood the question.
“No,” he said, shaking his head. “Not yet. Things are ongoing. It’s hypersensitive. Decision is to gather enough evidence and only then bring in law enforcement. I’ve never seen anything like it. We’re being helped by unpaid volunteers—two old guys and a bunch of teenagers, friends of Kurt’s.”
“And where’s Mark Dobson?” Jimmy asked.
“Last I heard, he’d just boarded a flight from Taipei to Bangkok.”
“He’s joining us?”
“Don’t bank on it, Jimmy. Plan accordingly.”
When they’d finished, Jimmy switched off and looked at me.
“Got all that, Kurt?”
“Most of it, but I still don’t understand enough. What’s BRN?”
Jimmy, still half-sitting on the bike, took his time to roll yet another spliff and eyed me through his hair. Despite everything, his attitude was still driving me crazy. He eventually lit the thing, sucked on it, and blew smoke. Then he suddenly sprang to his feet. “OK, Kurt. Let’s go.”
“What about my question? What’s BRN?”
“I’ll tell you over coffee. There’s a gas station a few miles north of here.”
“What if I don’t want any?”
“You can sit and watch me.”
I almost spat. “What is it about you, Jimmy James? You got a genuine personality problem?”
He stopped to stare at me. “It’s nurtured over the years, Kurt. I try not to be liked.”
“Did you know you’re very successful at it? Did someone upset you during your childhood?”
“Oh, it was a lot more recent than that, Kurt. I got upset in Iraq. I got upset in Afghanistan. I got upset in Djibouti. It upsets you watching your mates get blown up and then being told to pick up their body parts. You feel kind o’ lucky but also kind o’ guilty as well, you know? Then you experience a different kind of upset when you get back home and find your wife and kids have gone. So you start to pick up your own body parts and try putting them all back together. Ever tried that, Kurt? Nothing ever seems to fit together like it used to. So you get off your ass and start all over again.”
Jimmy sucked longer and harder this time and blew out a huge cloud of grey smoke. Then he dragged a hand through his hair. “You got any similar tales, Kurt, or are you too young? Tell me. What do you do back home to pay for your holiday?”
I sniffed because the mention of body parts had created a horrible vision. Then I remembered what Kevin had told me about Jimmy. “
I heard he was once in the US army. Perhaps best not to underestimate him, Kurt.”
Here was the proof if I needed it. So what should I say? That I emptied trash bins around North London? Would Jimmy find that interesting? How about describing my job painting walls and removing graffiti or sharing one of Friggin’s jokes about Alzheimer’s or one of Bungee’s Ali G impersonations?
And I could still picture Jimmy sitting cross-legged with his arms outstretched like some sort of sun worshipper and his string of questions: “Did you see the kingfisher? Did you see the butterflies? Did you listen to the wind in the bamboo?”
I wasn’t unaware of what he’d been trying to say. He was discussing the limitations of a phone, that phones had become extensions to people’s brains and that relying on them was like leaning on a twig for support when you really needed something made of hard steel. I wasn’t that dim.
But in remembering what he’d said and listening to this piece of information on his private life, I realised there was more to Jimmy than his long hair and rolling joints. Jimmy was a thinker with a sensitive side.
I suppose I took too long over deciding what to say about what I did for a living for it was Jimmy, tired of waiting, who spoke. At his usual rate of seven seconds between drags, I’d already wasted fourteen seconds of his life.
“I was a garbageman in Richmond, Virginia, before I joined up, Kurt,” he said. “Do you find that a strange coincidence?”
I looked at him. “How did you know?”
“A few checks, Kurt, but garbage collection is an honest job. Not one normally associated with Islamic terrorism. Does it keep you fit?”
“Yeh. But—”
“But what?”
“It’s not a career.”
“That’s what I found. It’s why I joined the US Marines. I saw an advert that said that the first battles you wage on the way to becoming a marine are those with yourself. I applied, passed the physicals and everything else, and never looked back. Best decision I ever made.”
“Despite everything that happened?” I asked.
“Yeh, sure. Despite everything, including picking up the pieces.”
“And now?”
“Freelance. Intelligence gathering. Chance meeting with Mark Dobson from Asher & Asher in a hotel in Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam a couple of years back. He needed help looking into a Russian crime syndicate in Pattaya. What’s more, I got paid for it. I now not only get occasional leads from Asher & Asher but red alerts via the US Embassy. I can’t say much more, Kurt, but that’s the way things work. I’ve never looked back, and yet I still get to watch the sunsets and the kingfishers. I came out this way for some peace and quiet to get over personal stuff, spent a month trekking, took up nature watching, and mixed it with some serious navel gazing. Some jobs are never advertised, Kurt. Never let an opportunity pass you by.”
I pointed to the tattoo on his arm—the human skull with a military cap and a combat knife clutched in its teeth. “What is it?”
Jimmy shrugged and started to roll another. “Never got it finished. Maybe someday.”
“OK,” I said. “Let’s go and get our coffee?”