CHAPTER 40
It was an hour before Peter Lester re-emerged from the Min Hin factory.
Jeffrey and Pascale watched as he was followed out by a Russian. They stood talking by Lester’s rented car and then he drove away. The Russian returned inside. Was it Roman Kolodin?
Jeffrey called Mark in Bangkok. Mark called Colin Asher to track Lester and listen in to calls. They decided to give him twenty minutes and then Colin would block calls and leave an ‘unavailable at this time’ message. Meanwhile, Pascale swapped his own Omega for the spy camera watch and Jeffrey explained how it worked. “Point it this way or all we’ll see is your own feet.”
With both Jeffrey and Colin Asher tracking him, Lester made his way onto the main highway south heading for Johor Bahru.
JB, as it was usually called, was on the Malay side of the short stretch of water that separated Malaysia from Singapore. It was a vast trading area where Asher & Asher suspected raw materials like palm oil, coconut oil and even timber were being imported and probably processed by the Russian-Chinese group. Jeffrey had watched sea containers being delivered and despatched but, again, they’d never yet been able to get inside the warehouse to see what was going on. Neither had Jeffry’s contacts at customs control ever felt suspicious enough to intervene, but they knew at least one container load of counterfeit Red Power had been taken from the Min Hin site in Malacca down to JB and then shipped to China in the last three months. Red Power had been flagged as a possible counterfeit but that had not stopped customs from passing it for export. Bribes were the likely explanation.
Ten minutes after leaving Malacca, Lester made a short call to a mobile number in JB. Colin recorded it. “Andre. I’ll be there in an hour. We got problems.”
The answer was in a Russian accent. “Ya, I know. Olga phoned. Don’t worry. Enzo’s arrived.”
The only Russian they knew called Andre was Andre Arshavin and that name had come from Enzo. Things were heating up. And Enzo was also in JB.
Five minutes later, Colin Asher blocked all calls to Lester’s phone and left a message, “Sorry, I am unable to take your call at present. Please leave your name and number and I’ll get back to you as soon as possible.”
Pascale got out of Jeffrey’s car, made his way around the piles of old tyres, walked towards the Min Hin building and stood outside the front entrance. It was quiet except for a faint sound of machinery inside. Those inside always used the side entrance but Pascale first tried the front door It was locked so he strolled around the side and tried that door. That was also locked but from inside came the classic rattling sound of a bottling plant, of glass against glass on a conveyor belt.
He took out his phone and called the Roman Kolodin number.
“Yah. Who is it?”
“Mr Kolodin?”
“Who is it?”
“It is Aldo Adani from Roma, Italy.”
“Who is that?” The tone was annoyed, impatient.
“Aldo Adani. From Italy. I speak to Mr Lester this morning in his hotel. He say to meet him here.”
There was a thoughtful pause. “He left already.”
“Yes, he just phoned me.to say you would help. I say it’s OK. All I need is a few samples and Mr Lester said you would show me around your factory. It is very important for my business in the Middle East. I have just come from Dubai. It is a big market I think.” Pascale frowned at his deliberately poor English. “You can phone Mr Lester to check if OK. I am outside. It is very hot here.”
“Outside? Here?”
“Yes, outside the door, but it is locked. Mr Lester said to call you if it is locked.”
There was a sound that began with F and the phone went dead. Seconds later the door opened. Standing there was a thin, lightly-built, man with short cut blonde hair wearing shorts and no shirt. A smell of sweat wafted out along with increased machinery noise.
“Ah,” said Pascale. “Mr Kolodin?”
“Yah. Why you come here?”
Pascale tried looking confused. “Why? Because Mr Lester say come.”
“What you want?
It took a minute more on the threshold before Kolodin agreed to phone Lester to check. “Is OK now?” said Pascale when he finished.
“Not OK. He cannot take call. Maybe driving. Maybe busy. OK. You come in.”
Jeffrey watched from behind the tyres.
Twenty minutes later, Pascale re-emerged but Kolodin was still suspicious. He waved his arms round. “How you come here?”
“My car is parked by the road.” Pascale pointed. “No worry. Thank you for seeing me. Very useful. I will call Mr Lester to thank him. Arrivederci.”
Back in Jeffrey’s car Pascale described what he’d seen – around ten Malay staff, a bottling plant for Red Power and a storage area for cans of essential oils – coconut oil, palm oil, krabok oil and ‘sunflower cooking oil’.
They plugged the spy camera watch into the laptop. Sound quality was good, video quality less so, but it was enough.
“That is a member of staff mixing coconut oil with vegetable oil and pouring it into empty cans marked ‘Fractionated Coconut Oil,” Pascale said. “And that’s the address label on a can - Vital Cosmetics, UK. I asked Kolodin about the vegetable oil and he said ‘To make it last longer’.”
“Eddie will understand that,” Jeffrey said.
They uploaded the video and sent it to Mark in Bangkok and Colin Asher in London. Colin was still tracking Lester. He was nearing JB.
“You want me to unblock his phone?” Colin asked Mark.
Mark agreed. “But continue to listen in to calls,” he added.
Jeffrey and Pascale had driven off but they knew that as soon as Lester got wind of the visit by an Italian called Aldo Adani from Rome, nerves would kick in. Anything could happen.
Mark, meanwhile, had been waiting at the airport for Eddie and Isobel off the KL flight. Their Jetstar flight had arrived but there was no Eddie or Isobel. He asked at the Jetstar desk. “Checked in but not boarded,” the data said.
Mark called both Eddie’s and Isobel’s phones but they were switched off.