Message from Hell (A Creasy novel Book 5) Read online

  ‘It happens, Susanna, especially after a few glasses of good red wine.’

  She had not been dreaming. They had got into the huge double bed and gone to sleep separately; but it must have been about four in the morning when she woke up to find her arms around him and her head in the crook of his shoulder. He was fast asleep, breathing deeply. Strangely for a man like him he had explained that he could never sleep in total darkness, so the bathroom light was on and the door ajar. She lifted her head and studied his face and felt both a warm compassion and a growing desire. He was a man who kept his word. He had not tried to seduce her; just offered his close company on a lonely night. Slowly, she began to move her hands over his body and to kiss him gently on his cheek. The kisses moved gradually to his lips, and she could feel his body begin to move with the rhythm of them. They spoke not a word, but for the next half-hour made slow and very gentle love. She was always the leader, which was rare in her limited love life. At the end of it, she drifted back to sleep, again with her arms around him. It was only an hour’s sleep, but it was perfect.

  As they bumped along the road she tried to collect and evaluate her feelings. Had she fallen in love with him, or had it been only a moment of unexpected passion? He was a man poles apart from her late lamented professor. They might have come from different planets. She had never been attracted to hard, tough men. It was always the mind that first sparked her attention.

  She tried to move her mind off the subject, to concentrate on the scenery around her and the peasants in the fields, with their conical hats, the occasional water buffalo and the fruit-selling children by the roadside, some of whom had either one or no legs, thanks to the millions of mines scattered around the country.

  But her mind was obstinate, coming back to the man beside her. She realized what he was doing. On the one hand he was saving her blushes, and on the other hand he was putting up an invisible wall between them; at least, that was what she thought he was doing. She decided just to let time pass and see what developed. Meanwhile, for the first time in days her mind and body were tranquil. It had been a combination of sharing both a problem and some good love-making.

  Briskly she asked: ‘When do we eat?’

  He looked up from the road and glanced at his watch. ‘With luck we should reach the Mekong River at Neak Lung in about an hour. I want to get there first to make sure that the ferry is running. We’ll eat on the other side. There used to be a market there with lots of foodstores. I remember eating some of the best freshwater fish in that market. Then we press on to Phnom Penh. There’s a lot to do.’

  ‘How will you proceed?’

  He avoided another massive pothole, and answered: ‘By now, Jens should have found out who is behind the Lucit Trade Company. And The Owl will have done a full-scale recce of the building. It’s possible he and I will break in there tonight and take a look around.’

  She thought about that for a moment, and then asked: ‘Isn’t it a bit dangerous? Two foreigners in a city like Phnom Penh to go breaking and entering. I would have thought that was a job for experts.’

  He grunted in amusement. ‘I’m no amateur when it comes to breaking into places, and The Owl is a real pro. Before joining Jens, he spent most of his life in the mob in Marseille. He can pick a lock easier than most people blow their noses. With a bit of luck we’ll get into that office and out again without anyone ever knowing. Then, depending on what we find, we’ll go on from there.’

  The ferry at Neak Lung was operating. As they crossed the five kilometres of muddy, slow-moving water, Susanna reflected that it represented a crossing-point in her life. This time, she would not leave Indo-China the same woman as when she had entered it.

  Chapter 33

  At first sight it looked like a Swiss Army knife with a myriad of little blades and gadgets. But as he opened them all out, The Owl explained that they were all tools for different kinds of locks, together with blades for prising open window catches and the like. She was intrigued.

  ‘How did you find such a thing in Phnom Penh?’

  It was the first time she had seen The Owl laugh.

  ‘This is made by the finest craftsman in Marseille,’ he said. ‘An Arab called Gadra. He supplies the top lock-picks all over Europe and North Africa. He’s very professional and buys locks and safes from the biggest manufacturers for his own little trading company. Then he makes the tools to unlock them.’ He held up the instrument. ‘This is made from the hardest steel and cost me more than a hundred thousand French francs. I travel with it in the same way other people travel with a toothbrush or a passport.’

  He was obviously proud of his skills. He went out of the front door of the bungalow and told her to lock it from the inside. It was a modern Mortice lock. Within twenty seconds he was back inside, smiling broadly. Susanna said with mock severity: ‘So it’s no use locking my bedroom door tonight.’

  The Owl’s expression immediately changed. He said sternly: ‘Susanna, you don’t have to worry about your virtue here. For us, you’re not a woman. You’re a person working with us.’

  She digested that back-handed compliment and walked back into the lounge. Creasy and Jens were sitting at a table, poring over several bits of paper. She looked over Creasy’s shoulder. He glanced up and explained: ‘Jens was able to find out the name of the current directors of the Lucit Trade Company. Apparently it specializes in gemstones, in particular the different-coloured sapphires that come from Battambang province near the Thai border. We know that because they have a sign outside.’ He pointed to another piece of paper. ‘This is an external diagram of the building. There’s a front door on to the main road and a back door up an alley. There are no external signs of alarms. The Owl and I will go in the back door some time tonight. The directors are all Cambodians and their names are meaningless at this time.’ He gave the Dane an encouraging punch on the shoulder. ‘But Jens is nothing if not a good detective. With the help of a little bribe, he got the original records from when the company was founded in 1965. Would you believe, we discovered that the major shareholder at that time was a certain William Crum.’

  For a second Susanna was confused. Then she remembered. ‘That’s the man you assassinated in Hong Kong?’

  Creasy stood up, saying: ‘One and the same.’

  Jens also stood and stretched his shoulders. He said: ‘There’s one thing I didn’t tell you. When The Owl followed the man with the fax back to the Lucit Trade Company, he noticed that no evasive action was taken.’

  ‘Why should there be?’ Susanna asked. ‘After all, he’s a Cambodian in his own country. Why should he suspect that he’s being followed?’

  Jens supplied the answer. ‘Because I checked with a new-found Australian friend and discovered that the Lucit Trade Company has its own fax machine. So it’s suspicious that they use a public fax in a hotel for such confidential matters.’

  ‘It’s part of the paper chase,’ Creasy said.

  Susanna thought about that, then felt a twinge of concern. She said: ‘In that case, they could well be waiting for you in that office tonight. It could be very dangerous.’

  Creasy shook his head. ‘I doubt it. Just as I doubt there’ll be any internal alarms in that building and for that matter, any gemstones. Just a filing cabinet or two. Because gemstone dealers in this part of the world don’t keep their stock in their offices. They usually keep gemstones under their mothers’ mattresses.’

  ‘Then what do you expect to find?’ Susanna asked. Creasy glanced at the Dane and answered: ‘Another piece of paper.’

  Chapter 34

  The follower Tran Quock Cong returned to his family and discovered that his wife and two daughters had domesticated two wild creatures.

  At least they were wild in his eyes, living outside of a normal society. The one called René was sitting by his younger daughter’s bed singing a lullaby in French. The one called Maxie was in the kitchen preparing a chicken curry. Tran said to his wife: ‘They don’t exactly look rea
dy to protect us from a bunch of assassins.’ His voice carried a tone of rebuke.

  She quickly pointed out the fishnet screens over the windows and the tape lines over the floor, the small metal box on the table and the two pistols which lay within reach of the two men. She explained to her husband how he must move around the house, and that if there was an attack, he must grab the elder daughter while she grabbed the younger and quickly move into the bathroom and lie on the floor.

  ‘Where do they sleep?’ he asked.

  She pointed to a single mattress on the floor by the front door.

  He asked: ‘They both sleep on that?’

  ‘While one is asleep, the other one is awake . . . They are good men.’

  He gave a short laugh. ‘They are killers, like their boss.’

  She shook her head. ‘Young children have an instinct, and the children became their friends even though they could not talk to them.’

  The children slept while the adults ate Maxie’s curry. Without a common language, it should have been a strained meal. But the atmosphere was relaxed and the sign language plentiful. Maxie was proud of his prowess with curry. He had made a big pot of it, expecting it to be enough for tomorrow’s lunch; but within an hour it had been consumed. After the meal Tran tried to offer them some brandy, but Maxie raised his palm upwards, pointed to his gun and gestured with his hand as if sighting. Tran understood that they would not drink while they were at work. With many gestures of thanks, he and his wife went up to join the children in bed. Maxie pulled out a deck of cards and he and René sat down to play yet another game of gin rummy.

  Seventy metres away from the house, Guido sat in the rented van. He had arrived two hours earlier and he would stay there until dawn. The night was dark and the street was quiet, with only one lamp casting dim shadows. He was not sleepy because on such occasions he took a Dexedrine tablet every four hours. It kept him awake, but it also kept his mind racing, and it had the odd side-effect of arousing him physically. He decided that it was time he found himself a girlfriend. He began to picture her mentally. She would preferably be Italian from his home town of Naples. She would have a face full of character, with a full mouth and slightly slanted eyes. Her body would be full and long and big-chested. And her legs would curve from her waist to her toes. She would have a lot of passion and a mind as quick as his own. She would also make pasta like a god.

  Suddenly, he laughed inwardly. He had just painted a mental picture of Sophia Loren.

  He tried to give himself a stern talking-to, but then realized that the subconscious part of his brain was telling him a practical truth. His life at the Pensione in Naples had become lonely. Of course he sometimes went out on the town and found a woman, but it was always only a fleeting affair. He had never considered taking a woman into his life since his wife had died fifteen years before. It would have seemed like a betrayal. But his subconscious was telling him that he would grow old lonely. It was why he was now sitting in this van in a city in Indo-China craving the company of old friends, especially Creasy. He needed companionship. He wanted to be part of the team. When this job was over and he returned to Naples, he would look around him with different eyes. He would open his mind to new possibilities. He would look at women differently. He would not go hunting for a woman. It was not his way. But if one came into his life he would be receptive, even if she was not exactly Sophia Loren.

  Time must have passed more quickly than he imagined, because when he saw four men moving past the van on the other side of the road and glanced at his watch, it was just after three a.m. He watched them for only a few seconds, then picked up the mobile phone from the seat beside him and punched a number. He let it ring four times, then switched off the phone and reached for his pistol.

  In the house René was asleep on the mattress, snoring gently. Maxie was at the table playing solitaire. The mobile phone was on the table next to the cards and the pistol. As it rang, Maxie reached for the pistol, listening. Then the pistol was in his hand and he was moving. He kicked René’s foot gently and as the Belgian’s eyes opened, he whispered to him. From a deep sleep, René came awake and alive in an instant. He scooped up his pistol and headed for the stairs. Maxie moved back to the table and turned it on its side, crouching behind it. From upstairs he heard the soft movements of the Tran family being shepherded to the bathroom. Two minutes passed, and then the black metal box beside him gave a soft beep. And then another one. The photo-cell beam had been broken. Maxie slipped off the safety catch of his pistol.

  It started and ended in less than thirty seconds.

  The window across the room shattered, but Maxie did not take his eyes from the door. He heard a thump on it and guessed it was a clamp explosive. He ducked his head behind the upturned table. Then his eardrums were compressed by the explosion, and then by another one as the grenade exploded on the ground outside the window. He shuffled to his right, raising his pistol. The door had been blown in. Two black-clad men were crowding through it. ‘Amateurs,’ he thought. ‘They should have tossed a grenade through.’

  They both held pistols, but were getting in each other’s way. He shot them both in the chest and then glided across the room and put his back against the wall alongside the door. A third man ran in, hurdling the two bodies. Maxie shot him in the back while from the foot of the stairs René shot him in the chest.

  ‘There’s one more,’ Maxie shouted.

  They heard the sound of running footsteps outside, then two shots, and then silence.

  ‘Guido got him,’ René said. ‘Let’s go!’

  René scooped up the black box and the mobile phone while Maxie grabbed his precious cards. The pistols went into their shoulder holsters.

  Maxie ran up the stairs to the bathroom and spent half a minute reassuring the Trans the danger was over. He smiled at the children, ruffled their hair, and turned away. Ten seconds later they were out of the door, into the revving van and on their way to the safe house.

  ‘Do you think they may try again?’ René asked.

  Guido chuckled, and answered: ‘Not after they’ve seen what happened to their A-team.’

  Chapter 35

  Creasy held the thin beam of his torch on the lock while The Owl picked it. They both wore black raincoats with deep pockets, and transparent surgical gloves. It was a modern Chubb lock and it took The Owl a full two minutes to open it. Creasy listened patiently to his mutterings and then heard a grunt of satisfaction. The Owl dropped his implement into his raincoat pocket and gently eased open the door, shining his torch through.

  Creasy waited outside, looking down the alley with the gun held loosely in his hand. He waited for three minutes until he heard a low whistle from inside the building. He went in and closed the door quietly behind him. The light from his torch showed The Owl waiting at the top of a short flight of wooden steps. Creasy moved up them and The Owl whispered: ‘There are no alarms that I can see.’ He pointed his torch to a door that was ajar. ‘That’s the secretary’s office. Beyond there is a small meeting room which opens on to what must be the manager’s office.’

  Creasy pushed open the door. His torch revealed a desk and a chair, two metal filing cabinets and a fax machine. On the desk was a modern IBM PC and a printer. Creasy moved to the filing cabinets. They were locked but The Owl had them both opened very quickly.

  Inside were the business files of a gem trader. It took Creasy just ten minutes to learn that the Lucit Trade Company only had three customers. Two were in France, one in Paris and the other in Lyon; the other was a Chinese company in Hong Kong. Creasy quickly leafed through the correspondence in French. The letters to the Hong Kong company were in English and were equally innocuous. He took a small pad and a ballpoint from his pocket, and made a note of the companies’ names.

  They moved through into the meeting room, which was bare except for a table and six chairs. They continued to the manager’s office which was very plush, with Persian carpets on the floor contrasting with Scandinavian-
style furniture, a wide pine desk with a leather chair and a grouping of a coffee table and three chairs. There were abstract paintings on the walls.

  The desk had four drawers, all locked. They found the slim file in the third drawer, inside a metal box. Creasy quickly leafed through it and then stopped at a sheaf of eight-by-ten photographs. He looked at the first one and grunted to himself as if in confirmation. Quickly he laid the photographs and the pages of the file onto the carpet, and then took a small camera and separate flash from his pocket. The Owl aimed the beam of his torch at the photographs and papers for added light.

  Four minutes later, The Owl was relocking the back door and they slipped away into the dark.

  Chapter 36

  It was a new acquisition and Connie Crum was very proud of it. It arrived from Bangkok early in the morning and sat on the table like something out of the next century. Even the placid faces of her two female bodyguards were animated with interest as she explained how it worked to Van Luk Wan.

  ‘It’s what foreign correspondents use, and also international aid agencies, to communicate from remote areas of the world.’ She pointed upwards with one elegant finger. ‘It works through a satellite, and from here or anywhere else I can phone to anyone in the world.’

  Van was impressed. ‘How much does it weigh?’

  She looked in the instruction book. ‘Twelve and a half kilos. It has been around for a few years now, but the early ones were very heavy. They get lighter every year. The agent told me that in five years’ time they’ll be about half the size of a briefcase and weigh only two or three kilos. I bought two. One is being sent to Tuk Luy and will be there tomorrow. It works from rechargeable batteries.’ She pointed to a row of buttons and a crystal display. ‘These buttons are for preset numbers. I had the agent programme in the ones I use most.’ She looked at her watch, it’s nine thirty now. Sok San will have arrived in his office.’ She turned and smiled at Van, like a child about to play with a new toy. ‘Let’s surprise him with a phone call. He knows that I’m supposed to be at Chek and he also knows that we don’t have telephones here.’