You’re going mad, woman. What if that Obsidian guy was on the level?
What if he wasn’t?
I think you could have given him the chance.
And wait until it was too late?
He was from the Colonel.
Who knows the Colonel’s motivation? Maybe he blames me for his son’s death.
Unlikely.
And anyway, all that lot, your Obsidians and the Colonel, they work for whoever pays the most. Guys for hire. What if he got a better offer? From Bojan?
You overreacted.
I’m trying to find my fuckin’ daughter. I suppose I had promised myself I’d be professional, calm, detached.
I lied.
My inner voice wasn’t entirely wrong. I shouldn’t have taken Segal down quite so viciously. Moderation had been called for, but I seemed to have lost that setting. I could go from zero to extreme in less than a second. And now I had another guy I’d pissed off out on the streets.
The announcement snapped me back into the world, which was yet another airport.
‘Passengers flying to Hong Kong on Cathay Pacific flight 636 . . .’
My flight. I was already at the gate, ready to clock my fellow passengers as they arrived. I had checked in a bag – unusual for me, as I like to move quickly on the other side – and had a small carry-on. I was dressed in light colours for a change: cream cotton trousers, flat shoes and a sleeveless blouse with a blue linen jacket over the top. I had make-up on; had taken some time with my eye concealer. I still looked drawn and tired in the mirror, but I was halfway to being scrubbed-up nice.
And mentally? How’s that looking, girl?
Fuck you.
The holding pen quickly filled up with a mix of business people catching the last flight home, backpackers and regular holidaymakers. I scanned faces, looked at luggage and watched body language. Nobody so much as glanced my way. But then, the good ones wouldn’t be so obvious.
You’re losing it, you know that? Paranoid.
Now that one, that guy with the grown-out military buzz cut and white shirt and chinos – maybe him. He looked like a younger version of Mr Mossad. Probably still had all his own teeth, though.
He didn’t catch my eye, but sat where he had a good view of me if need be. I stood, went over to the vending machine, got myself a bottle of water and sat back down. Either he was very good or he genuinely wasn’t interested in me. It was annoying that I couldn’t tell.
An announcement I didn’t understand was followed by some of the more smartly dressed passengers striding forward to have their passports checked.
‘Ladies and gentlemen, we invite those travelling in our First and Business cabins . . .’
Not me, then. Back of the bus. As the line shortened, they invited Premium Economy passengers to board. Finally, Economy. I watched Mr Buzz Cut. He knew it was pointless rushing through, that you just have to stand in line in the jetway as the passengers bottlenecked.
At least, I hoped that was why he was holding back.
It was down to just three of us now and I was beginning to think that maybe the bearded bloke in the checked shirt was the one. In the end, they both got up and approached the boarding counter. At which point, I stood and briskly walked four gates down and strolled through to my flight to Bangkok, the one I had booked online after talking to Freddie.
It was due to leave ten minutes after the Cathay, so I was cutting it fine. Not that the Hong Kong flight would be on time, not when it was discovered it had a passenger no-show and a suitcase somewhere in the hold belonging to her. Not particularly nice, I know, but checking in luggage is one way of demonstrating to any observer that you are serious about getting on that flight.
And, no, the booking system isn’t sophisticated enough – yet – to pick up when someone has made two separate bookings on different airlines using the same passport.
Coming soon, apparently.
They should get a move on. You really can’t trust people.
I breezed through onto the Thai Airways flight as the next-to-last passenger, in front of a large American woman who was bellowing down the phone, giving instructions to her son who, I gathered, would be waiting for her at the other end. Nobody else followed me through.
Bingo indeed.
It was early morning by the time I made it to Koh Samui, via Bangkok. The island had one of the cutest airports I had ever seen, like a Disney version of a Thai village. But I was too exhausted to take it in. It didn’t help that a sack of eels had burst in my stomach. I knew, could feel, that I was getting nearer to Jess. I hadn’t felt it in Bali or in Singapore, but now, on this holiday island, my skin had a life of its own, stretching and itching and squirming.
While I had been on the plane, Freddie had been busy. As I cleared customs, there was a driver waiting for me; a young woman, holding up a card with ‘Dust Buster Ltd’ written on it. Better than holding up a sign with my name across it.
I went over and said I was from the company, and she replied: ‘My name is Hom. Excuse me, but I need to know what a Hesco is.’
‘Blast wall,’ I said without thinking, as Freddie knew I would. Hesco barriers were used around Forward Operating Bases in Iraq and Afghanistan. The very name made me shudder. I could smell the vile dust – a mix of sand and shit – that blew through the camps, as fine as ash, insinuating its way into every crevice. It would never leave me.
When I answered correctly, she bowed and tried to take my case. I kept hold of it. She was half my size and as willowy as a twig; there was no way I was going to follow behind while she carried my luggage.
‘I need a coffee,’ I said. Which was true enough, but I had other reasons for delaying our exit. Never rush out of airports or train stations. They are expecting that. Take your time, look around. Nine times out of ten any tag team will slip up and show themselves if you do something to confound them. Like dawdle.
So, we sat at one of the few tables at a stall selling drinks and snacks, and watched the concourse slowly empty.
I asked Hom about herself. She was not from the island, but the mainland at Surat Thani, where her family still lived in a traditional village with her younger siblings. Her father had cancer and she was working as a guide to pay for his treatment. She made it sound as if she had prostituted herself and admitted she was disillusioned with tourists.
When it looked like I had been overcautious, we went to the van in the car park. We had a driver, Chai, a sinewy, sour-faced man in his fifties wearing nylon tracksuit bottoms and a Nike top, who wrestled the bag off me. He didn’t seem thrilled at having been kept waiting so long after the flight had arrived.
Hom explained that Freddie had hired a villa for me attached to a hotel to the west of Bophut Beach in somewhere called Mae Nam. The borderline-surly Chai would be my driver and there was 24-hour security for the villa.
Koh Samui turned out to be another shop-soiled paradise. From the drive past joyless strips of hostels, massage parlours, moped rentals and fast-food joints, I had the sense I was at least a quarter-century too late to see the island at its best. Perhaps the hinterland would be better, but the section from the airport seemed like an assault on the senses; a riot of naked, gouging capitalism, the tourist hustle made solid.
What was Matt doing in a place like this? One clue was the number of backpackers wandering the streets and riding the rental mopeds, clones of the ones I had seen all over Asia. These weren’t the real adventurers or pioneers. Like me, they were way behind the beat.
They were here for Koh Samui, but also the various parties at Koh Phangan, somewhere else that had lost its innocence to mass commercialism and various moon parties. But I reckoned the key to Matt’s interest was ‘mass’.
All those kids getting out of their heads needed chemicals to do it, even if it was only the local yaa baa. Matt was just the guy to help out a new friend. And he had, according to Laura, got a niche market.
‘Where do you hire a boat to Koh Phangan?’ I asked.
‘Ferry?’ asked Hom.
‘No, private. Speedboat.’
‘Lots of places,’ said Chai, suddenly finding his tongue. ‘But best is Samui Speedwave. Good price. It not far.’
‘I don’t want one now,’ I said firmly. ‘I’m just curious. Maybe we’ll have a look later.’
‘Yes, boss.’
‘There are lots of other speedboats,’ Hom said.
Chai glared at her. He clearly had some deal going with Speedwave.
I didn’t mind which one I started with. Laura had said Matt was the go-to drugs guy for one of the operators to Koh Phangan. I only had to show Matt’s picture to the right racket for them to tell me which stone he was living under. But first, I needed to recharge some very flat batteries.
I felt my head dropping as Chai negotiated the traffic.
I was no good to Jess like this. I needed a shower and at least an hour’s sleep. Two would be better.
I closed my eyes and dozed, my rest made choppy by the stink and dust, the thrum of Chinook rotors and the cries of wounded soldiers I could never reach.
The villa was vast – four bedrooms – built in a modern European style. It could have been in Ibiza rather than Thailand, except for the wall art and the heavy teak furniture. It also had a pool where you could put in some serious lengths, if you were so inclined. It overlooked a small section of beach pounded by a rough section of ocean. There were ‘No Swimming’ signs on the path down to the water’s edge. Hence the generous pool, I guessed.
In truth, I didn’t care. I wasn’t going to be swimming.
I was beat. It might seem that it was procrastination to strip, shower and slide between the sheets, but I knew from my army days what exhaustion could do. I’d been paralysed by indecision when trying to choose between saving a boy with his brains leaking out or another with his legs in tatters.
It’s a tough call.
I went with legs, lost the brains. You wonder sometimes if that was the right way round.
Christ, we were losing so many arms and legs at one point that some soldiers went out with tourniquets already in place, one on each limb, so they could tighten them themselves if need be.
Now that’s pessimism.
But the IEDs were merciless. You got thirty, forty, fifty wounds per soldier, all filled with dirt and shit from the trenches or culverts where they were laid. It took a long time to sterilise them, let alone try to deal with their massive tissue damage. Give me a nice, clean bullet wound any day.
As the tiredness took hold, you started to hate the army, the war, the government, the locals, the dust, the blood, that smell . . . And then, after eight hours of being dead to the world in an accommodation pod, you’d go back out and do it all again. Because you knew if you didn’t choose to save the one with the ruined legs – the head injury was too far gone – then maybe nobody would.
And there is one thing that all those amputations and penetrating wounds masked; one thing the media never quite got over to the British public – the medical support worked incredibly well given the conditions.
In any other war, right up to and including the Falklands, many, many soldiers would not have survived the terrible traumas they did in Iraq and Afghanistan.
So, if I was going to work at anything approaching my highest level, I needed to let my brain and body rest. Jess would have to wait. It was logic over emotion. Call me a bad mother.
Then again, what kind of Personal Protection Officer can’t protect herself? That’s what I felt when I woke up to the smell of cigarettes and the sight of Mr Mossad, dressed in a light-blue tropic-weight suit and striped shirt, sitting at the foot of my bed.
Nate Segal blew smoke into the air as I shuffled to sit up, pulling the sheet to my throat. I didn’t ask how he got past hotel security. He was a pro. They weren’t.
‘That hurt,’ he said, pointing at his face. There was some discolouring around his right eye where my elbow had made contact.
‘Sorry. But it turns out you can breathe through your nose.’
‘You didn’t know that.’
‘Calculated risk.’
‘With my life.’
I shrugged. ‘How come you got here so fast?’
‘The leaving a false trail with the concierge; the last-minute plane switch. Pretty good,’ he said. ‘For an amateur. But it wasn’t hard to access CCTV footage showing what you had actually done. I was on a flight forty-five minutes after you.’
I felt disappointed in myself. I must have been tired. ‘I didn’t see the tail from the airport this end.’
‘There wasn’t one.’
I ran through the alternatives. ‘The girl? Hom?’
The inclination of his head told me I was right. ‘Her dad is very sick. And very poor. Don’t blame her. We offered her a lot of money.’
‘How did you get to her?’ After all, Freddie had booked her.
‘You really think we don’t know which transport agencies you people use on this island? Your friend went for one of three recommended by IBA. We have someone in each one. It wasn’t hard to guess which pick-up you were. Single woman. Code word. But you could have saved me all that trouble just by having a little faith.’
‘Look, I said I’m sorry. Sorry I don’t – can’t – trust anyone. I had no idea if you were for or against me.’
‘And the Colonel?’
‘Or him. I know it sounds disloyal—’
‘Very, after all he has done for you. He was very disappointed when I told him about the stunt you pulled.’
I didn’t have the time or inclination to worry about hurt feelings or sore sinuses. ‘Can you get me a robe? I need to get going.’
He shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, I can’t let you do that.’
And this time, instead of a business card, he pulled a gun out of his jacket.