CHAPTER 18
Eddie had known Buss for fifteen years and knew he’d be the one to meet him off the plane in Bangkok. Buss was Professor of Botany and he and Eddie had spent many happy but sweaty hours tramping through humid and muddy jungles and forests with walking boots and waterproof trousers tucked inside their socks. Leeches and other blood suckers were a distraction to studying trees, fungi and collecting samples.
Eddie arrived very early in the morning and Buss whisked him off to Kip’s guest house off the Petchaburi Road next to the canal, a cheap place that Eddie usually stayed in for the first night or two. Kip’s bed and breakfast suited him fine.
They were sitting in the gale force wind of a big fan inside Kip’s doorway. Eddie had already told Buss by email that this trip would be different. “What’s going on, Eddie?” Buss asked. “You’ve got a look in your eyes I’ve not seen for years.”
“I’m heading to Kuala Lumpur tomorrow,” Eddie told him. “After that I hope to return here and then we can head to the forests.”
Eddie did his best to explain, but the more he talked, the more self-doubts arose. Did he even remotely understand what complicated dealings might be going on behind Vitals’ public façade? Isobel had seemed as uncertain as himself and Mark Dobson had warned that the few small pieces of evidence he’d added into the mix were probably insignificant or irrelevant in the scale of things.
The seven-hour time difference hit Eddie after Buss left and he was fast asleep when Mark Dobson called him to welcome him to Bangkok. “And I’m sorry to hear about the fire,” he said.
“Bored kids, the police said,” Eddie replied. “Half term. But they took it seriously. If I hadn’t been here the whole house could have gone up.”
“So, it was kids?”
“Who knows? But I’m very suspicious,” Eddie said. “Have you checked the copies of documents from my computer?”
“No time. Why?”
“You’ll find a letter from me to the Patent Office objecting to Vital’s patent application on the krabok oil extraction process. I objected on the basis the process isn’t new. I piloted it with Buss at Chulalongkorn University six years ago but we didn’t bother applying for a patent.”
“So, one or more of Vitals’ directors see you as a pain in the ass for interfering in whatever it is, they’re up to. They think you have a vendetta against them, so they’re running one of their own. Is that what you think?”
In truth, Mark was still not convinced by Eddie’s suspicions.
“After my visit to the Malacca plant I’m probably a marked man,” Eddie added as if to enhance his suspicions.
“Why? Did someone see you?”
“Maybe” he admitted. “I don’t drive very often but I rented a car and accidentally reversed it into a white van parked outside. I drove off quickly before anyone came out and then nearly hit a wall.”
Dobson, unseen by Eddie, smacked his forehead with the palm of his hand. Ho Chiang was known to drive a white van. “And have you booked your flight to KL to meet Jeffrey?”
“I’m flying tomorrow,” Eddie confirmed.
After talking to Eddie, Mark Dobson walked the short distance to the Lat Krabang Road to find a taxi for the ride half way to Pattaya to meet Sannan. Unexpectedly, Ritchie was also there, waiting by the roadside, tapping something into his phone. They didn’t speak or even glance at one another but Dobson felt his phone buzz in his pocket.
“Novotel,” Ritchie’s text said.
Dobson glanced at him and noticed the laces of one of his trainers hanging loose. “Again?” he texted.
“Told 2 B there @ 8.”
“Have a nice day,” Dobson replied. “Now delete all calls and all messages.”
Ritchie took the first taxi. Another came along a minute later.
The Bangwua Garden Resort, where Mark Dobson often met Sannan, was an uninspiring concrete box of a place that Sannan often used to catch up on lost sleep. They usually sat in a corner on an uncomfortable but highly polished bench carved from the trunk of a single tree and drank canned coffee or green Fanta.
When he arrived Sannan was already there with his head back and his eyes closed. No-one, Dobson thought, could surely sleep in that position on such a sharp-edged piece of rock-hard mahogany. He tapped him on the shoulder and Sannan opened his eyes. He was asleep and judging by the time it took for his eyes to focus he must have been like that for a while. Nevertheless, he sprang up in his bare feet, pulled down the tee shirt that had risen up across his navel and looked around for his flip flops that were lying some distance away. His jeans looked as if he’d been wearing them for weeks. “Mark, how are you?”
“Good. Sorry to disturb you.”
“Just my eyes closed. Coffee? Fanta?”
“Coffee,” Dobson said and Sannan walked to the dispenser machine, retrieved his shoes on the way, pushed in some coins and came back with two cans of chilled Birdy. Then they wandered outside into the shade of a mango tree and chatted: a general update and a pooling of ideas on how to move things forward mostly on Kenny Tan.
Mark mentioned credit card fraud, one of Sannan’s favourite subjects. He had recently been at the forefront of exposing a credit card scam being run not so far from where they were sitting. When he eventually, and anonymously, tipped off the police they’d arrested two Chinese running a credit card factory from an apartment off Sukhumvit Road. The police search had yielded hundreds of stolen and plain, unprinted cards, thermal printers and holograms as well as cash, gold ingots and jewellery.
But Sannan was still convinced these two were only part of a much wider scam. One of the Chinese, Cheng Chee, had close links with Malaysia and mixed with Russians living in Pattaya. It was another reason why Mark had decided to check on the movements of Ho Chiang who Jeffrey had also been watching for days. The Vital Cosmetics-Red Power connection still looked large in his suspicions.
“Chinese and Russians again,” Sannan said. “I talked to Jeffrey about it recently and told him what to look out for. He’s waiting for a chance to break in to the Min Hin Malacca place but he needs to go careful.”
Mark agreed. “I’ve told him to wait until one of us is with him.”
“And who’s this new guy Ritchie?” Sannan asked.
“Ritchie? You’ll like him. So far so god. I’m impressed.”
“Ex police?” Sannan asked.
“Drama student, “Mark said. “We’ll be using him on infiltration work. He’s the right colour, right attitude, right age. This is his first job but things are looking good so far.”
“How did you find him? Who recommended him?”
“His father,” Mark said. “Ritchie’s father heads up a section of the Secret Intelligence Service, the SIS, MI5, MI6 and the SFO, the Serious Fraud Office. Neither Colin or I know exactly what he does. Neither does Ritchie.”
Sannan grinned. “Does that mean we have more leads into Interpol and the CIA?”
“Definitely,” Mark said.
As Mark Dobson and Sannan talked beneath the mango tree Ritchie was waiting in the lobby at the Novotel.
He had barely noticed the hotel lobby the night before but now he could see it was like a well-tended forest with a glass roof instead of a sky and surrounded by apartments. As instructed, he’d deleted all past texts and calls, so he pushed an ear plug into his phone and relaxed in the plush fabric of a sofa with his baseball hat on, tapping the Converses in time to an old Bob Marley track.
He was so taken by the old reggae song he’d not heard for so long that he didn’t see the big, sandy-haired woman in the pure white, calf length shorts and frilly, scarlet-shirt looking down at him. When he did, he pulled the ear plug out and sprang up. She was almost as tall as he was and certainly heavier.
“You. Micky.” she said. They’d met the previous night so it was no surprise she recognised him. It was just her manner.
“That’s me.”
“I think so. You only African here.”
Ritchie looked around. “I’m sure I saw a few real ones pass by just now.”
“We go.”
“I’m ready. Where’re we going?”
She walked off carrying a small, white bag on her shoulder. Ritchie stuffed his phone away and followed her out into the hot morning sun. The shiny white Toyota Camry he’d ridden in the night before was parked close by. She opened the rear door, beckoned Ritchie to get in and then clambered in beside him. Cool, refrigerated air wafted around but the engine was so quiet he could barely hear it. In the driver’s seat, adjusting the AC control, sat a man with straight black hair and a skin colour that Ritchie decided was too pale for a Thai. Chinese was the most likely alternative. The car moved off but stopped again just out of view of the hotel.
“I check some things.” said the woman. “What’s in the bag?”
“That’s private,” Ritchie said. “Why?”
“You wanna talk business or go home?”
“Persuade me. I don’t even know your name.”
“Olga. Please to empty the bag.”
“Nice to meet you, Olga. You live around here?”
“Please to empty.”
Ritchie thought about trying his Vladimir Putin accent but decided it might not go down well right then. Instead: “OK, OK. Don’t rush me. I’m on holiday, OK? But I’ve come this far, so I suppose…”
He emptied his bag onto the seat. There wasn’t much. His Jaguar sun glasses came first. Then his phone and ear plugs. Then an old and worn wallet with some English money, a few thousand Thai baht and a Visa card in the name M J Parker. Then came the driving licence and British passport in the name Michael John Parker that Colin had prepared in London. His Sabaidee room key fell out last.
“That is all?”
“Well, it should be full of Eau de Toilette by Ritchie of London’ but I left that at the Peacock.”
Olga picked up his phone and seemed to check the contacts and call log. Now he understood why Mark had advised deleting logs. As for his contacts list. “Just add in a few fictitious mates to show you’re not completely devoid of friends in the world” had been the instruction. Again, it was wise advice.
“Who these people?”
Ritchie leaned over her, probably closer than he should but he had the despicable habits of a far less well brought up character to perpetuate. Olga smelled of powerful deodorant and the closer he got the easier it was to estimate the thickness of the layer of face powder. He also glimpsed what he estimated to be a triple D cup black bra down between the frills of her red shirt. Appropriately, he noticed she was scrolling through the D list of his contacts list. Ritchie peered up at her from the frills and grinned. Olga sniffed. “Who?”
“Dabbler and Dazzler? They’re mates,” he said. “So is Dimples.”
Olga now fingered the room key with the dirty length of string attached. “What this?”
Ritchie’s brain worked flat out for a second. ‘Don’t reveal where you are staying unless necessary’ had cropped up in the do’s and don’ts section of training. He decided it was necessary but could be made vague. “My hotel. Cheap place off Lat Krabang.”
“What name?”
“Uh,” he paused and tilted the baseball cap a fraction to scratch his head. “Do you know? I forget. Now ain’t that weird? Only slept there one night. What the hell is it? Umm. I know exactly where it is, I could take you there right now but you know how it is sometimes? It’ll come to me later.”
“This your driving licence?”
“Yup. Fully accredited for driving everything except army tanks. No penalty points. You want me to drive?”
Olga picked everything up with fingers tipped with long nails painted in sparkly sky-blue varnish and handed everything back. Then she delved into her own handbag. “You still want to talk business?”
“Sure, that’s why I’m here.”
“Please wear these,” she said producing a pair of extra-large lensed but cool looking dark glasses with side frames. “Put them on.” Ritchie did as he was told and the sky, the sun, the view and even big Olga disappeared. “Do not take off.”
And with that the Toyota moved off as silently and smoothly as a Bentley. Ritchie tried looking around but could see nothing except his own nose.
They drove in utter silence for maybe half an hour, the car only slowing when outside noise increased in traffic jams. Meanwhile, whilst shrouded in darkness, Ritchie tried to recall another photo Mark had shown him. The big woman in the headscarf: Olga Puchkov Could the Olga sitting next to him in frilly blouse and white shorts be the same Olga whose head had been wrapped in a headscarf like a Moslem?
He still hadn’t fully made up his mind when the car took what felt like several sharp turns and what little light appearing beneath Ritchie’s nose disappeared altogether. He sensed they were driving down a ramp, perhaps into an underground carpark. The car stopped and reversed, the driver got out and shut the door. Olga removed the dark glasses from his face and clambered out. “Come.”
It was a stiflingly hot, dark and dismal underground car park with rectangular shafts of daylight from gaps high up on the surrounding wall. They headed for a faint sign that said Lift, the Chinese driver pressed a button, the lift door opened and they stood inside staring at faintly lit floor numbers. At Floor 2, the lift stopped. The Chinese driver stepped out and Ritchie started to follow but Olga pulled him back by the back of his tee shirt. They got out on Floor 3.
Facing them was the plain wall of a corridor that might once have been white. Now it was grimy with greasy-looking marks and blankets of blackened spider’s webs. “Come.”
At the end of the corridor was a door with a security lock. Olga pressed four buttons that, because of the useful tips section of Mark’s training, Ritchie committed to memory. Behind the door was another short corridor that felt decidedly cooler. “Come.”
And then Ritchie saw exactly why he’d been invited. They had arrived in the corner of a vast airconditioned warehouse, lit by strip lights with rows of metal racks and pallets from floor to ceiling. Every pallet held clear, plastic-wrapped bottles of red liquid or stacks of brown, unmarked cardboard boxes. A fork lift truck driven by a Thai wearing a surgical face mask rolled up and down between the racks, picking up pallets.
“Come,” Olga said again.
To the left was another door and this time Olga knocked, listened, opened it, then stood aside for Ritchie to enter. Through the fog of foul-smelling cigarette smoke Ritchie saw a man behind a metal desk, leaning back in his chair with half a cigarette hanging from his mouth. The man looked at him but continued talking in Russian into a phone clamped to his right ear. Stretched over the dome of his belly was a brown, chequered shirt. On the desk was a dirty looking laptop and in front of the desk a red, moulded-plastic chair.
Ritchie stood inside the entrance smiling, nodding and fighting back a desire to cough as the man beckoned him to sit with a flick of a middle finger. “Da, da… net, net.”
As Ritchie sat, smiled and looked around at the walls, bare except for a Russian calendar with a picture of the Russian White House – the Dom pravitelstva Rossiiskoi Federatsii - another of Mark Dobson’s photos came to him:
“This next one is a Russian known to Interpol for past links to smuggling Africans into Italy. He’s not been seen for a while. His name is Sergei Mutko or Yuri Abisov, whichever you prefer. And that is a woman though it doesn’t look like it on Jeffrey’s photo. It matches one Olga Puchkov, who’s been seen with Sergei in the past. She’s trying to look Moslem or maybe she is Moslem. Nice headscarf, huh?”
Ritchie still needed to cough. He wrinkled his nose, stifled the cough and smiled again as the Russian continued shaking and nodding his head in time with: “Net, net, da, da.”
With a final “da,” he dropped the phone into the top pocket of his XXL shirt, leaned forward, arms on the desk, hands together, the cigarette still burning between his lips and stared at Ritchie.
After several seconds of nothing, Ritchie broke the silence. “Doobrayeh Ootrah,” he said in his best Vladimir Putin. The man grunted an unrecognisable reply.
“Ya ploha gavaru pa Ruski,” Ritchie said “I only know Russian for good morning.”
The Russian shrugged. He didn’t seem to care. He stubbed his cigarette out in the overfull ashtray. “So,” he said in a deep baritone voice, “Mr Micky is it?”
“Micky Parker, sir. Pleased to meet you.”
“From London, is it?”
“Dagenham and Tottenham. Up the Spurs! You follow football?”
“Mmm.” He didn’t seem to like football. “You met my friends last night.”
“Yes, sir. Very entertaining.”
“And you are in the business.”
“Not at the moment, sir. Since last night at around ten-thirty.”
“Shame. What happened?”
“My supplier chickened out, sir. No ambition.”
“Pity. What business?”
“Cosmetics business, sir. Just about to launch my own brand and my supplier gets cold feet.”
“Chickens? Cold feet? What is cold feet? You in business long time?”
“Only since I was twelve. DVDs, jewellery, watches, TVs, perfumes – a few other things to help the cash flow. Know what I mean?”
“Mmm. You got contacts in your community?”
Ritchie didn’t answer immediately. He stared at the Russian then he leaned forward and stared even harder. “Community, sir? Community? Can I know who I’m talking to? Only my community runs to around seventy million right now. Until last night I had big plans.”
The Russian sat back and a different look spread across his face that Ritchie decided was a smile. He had a head as big as a football and a mop of brown hair on top that did not look like real hair. It reminded Ritchie of a woman’s wig they’d found and thrown around the pub after drinks one night after drama school. Ritchie had been the one who finally caught it and fastened it to his belt claiming his family background was not Jamaican but pure Scottish and this was an original Nolan sporran made of red squirrel. On the head of the Russian, Ritchie fought a desperate urge to pull it to check.
“Mmm. Big guy, huh?”
“I never deal with people I don’t know. Company policy. Know what I mean? Gotta name, mate?”
The sudden outburst of assertion did the trick. The Russian nodded and stood up to reveal he was wearing blue jeans that hung from a belt tied lower than where his waist should have been. “Come.”
Was ‘come’ a new, cool word for Russians, Ritchie wondered. Or was it a word he and Olga had grown accustomed to sharing recently? He came around the table, opened the door and beckoned Ritchie with a flap of his hand. He swung a hairy arm around the warehouse. “You want something? Your own label? How many you want?”
Ritchie stared. “All this?” he said as if overawed.
“You want health drink? Sport drink? Energy drink? Anything in bottle? Vodka? Whisky? Medicine? You want cosmetic? Perfume? Something for make happy? For make eyes shine? We got it all. We just need partners we can trust.”