Thanking his boss for direction, Shangwei clicked off his cell phone just seconds after his boss cut the connection. His eyes continued to scan the lobby area, hoping to pick up his target. He had heard the man now had a beautiful western woman with him, and Shangwei had a special place in his heart for white women with big round eyes. Well, maybe not his heart, but perhaps an organ a bit lower. He smiled with that thought, and then got up and wandered across the lobby and out the main entrance.
12
Bill Remington was a giant in Thailand. At six four, he rarely looked anyone in the eye. And that’s the way he liked it. His first wife had been Thai, a petite and beautiful woman with skin like caramel. When she died, he wasn’t sure how to live any more. Maybe that was when he decided to take whatever he could from this world. Since his first wife had been from a political family, he had acquired more power in Thailand than any other living American. The problem with staying in Thailand, of course, was the strong extradition treaty this country had with America. He could only pay for protection for so long. Eventually, some government official he paid off would want more money and then the trust would end and turn to extortion.
He stood now in front of a mirror as the tailor measured him for a new suit. Remington observed his strong features, but hated the fact that he was getting old. Where his stomach used to be rippled with muscles in his youth, he now had a layer of fat damn near everywhere. Hence the reason for the re-measure. He had been using this tailor for almost two decades. He was a second cousin of his late wife. But the Agency had no idea this is where he got his suits. He always had them delivered to a post office box in Virginia, and he paid the man with cash sent by a courier. The same courier who he trusted with his money in Singapore. Although the freezing of assets came faster than he expected, he still had a huge amount in other accounts that had not been found yet. Thankfully he had transferred much of that into cash, gold and silver in safe deposit boxes.
Just as the tailor started to measure his inseam, his cell phone buzzed.
The tailor looked up at him.
Remington looked at his phone and said to the tailor. “Take a break. And please get me another beer.”
The tailor nodded and went away.
Remington, seeing who was calling, answered the phone in English, “Yeah. What do you have?”
“He got away from us at the hotel,” the woman said.
“I told you the man was good,” Remington said. Even though he was using a burner phone, it was best not to use names. He knew how the NSA worked. “Where is he now?”
Hesitation on the other end of the line, which was never a good sign. “He left Singapore.”
“Is he coming here?”
“We think so,” she said. “The banker made sure to give him the information, but only after great persuasion.”
“So, where is he?”
“He got on a train from Singapore to Kuala Lumpur. Why not just fly to Bangkok?”
Remington smiled at himself in the mirror. He knew how Jake thought, how he was trained to think. “Let me guess. He shot back at you.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, he must have gotten a gun in Singapore and he wants to bring that into Thailand. He can’t bring the gun on a flight.”
“He could just buy a new gun in Bangkok,” she reasoned.
“Maybe. But he might also have guessed we would be watching the airport for him.”
“We were.”
Remington laughed. “I told you, this guy is not to be taken lightly. He was one of our best.”
“Then why did he quit?”
Good question. “Let’s just say he has a problem following orders or rules.”
“I like that. If he wasn’t with the woman, I would try to seduce him.”
“What woman?”
The caller explained her encounters with the tall woman. She failed to say how the woman had been able to put her in a sleeper.
“I don’t know who that could be,” Remington said, his mind trying to discern all possible women from Jake’s past. Toni was dead, so it wasn’t her. He sure as hell hoped it wasn’t Sirena. That woman had done too much damage in Central and South America recently.
“What should we do?” she asked.
The tailor appeared with a bottle of beer in his hand. Remington took the beer from the man and then waved him away, telling him to come back in five minutes.
“All right. You’re burned. They know your face. So, why don’t you meet me here and prepare for them to arrive. Send two men to Kuala Lumpur by plane to intercept them. Do not let them engage the man, though. Only follow them here. I don’t want our target to know we know he’s coming here. Do you understand?”
“Yes, sir. Should I come to you?”
Quite the eager beaver, Remington thought. He guessed her sexual prowess was only eclipsed by her brutality. “Yes. Call me when you get to Bangkok and I’ll tell you where I’m staying at that time.” He had not stayed in the same place two nights in a row since arriving in Thailand.
She agreed and hung up.
Remington took a long draw on his cold beer. Then he called his tailor back into the room. “Sorry, my friend. I had to take that call.”
Jake had been able to purchase a first-class sleeper car for he and Alexandra. Early on the trip they had gotten something to eat in the dining car, along with a couple of beers each. They were finally able to relax somewhat as they sat in their private room and darkness set on the Malay Peninsula. The train was one of the slower commuter type trains. Bullet trains had not yet reached this part of the world. But the train was similar to most in Europe, with the first class cabins especially nice.
“What are you thinking?” Alexandra asked him.
He had his laptop on his legs and had been sifting through everything he had gotten over the past few days, from those items Alexandra had gotten from the company in Munich to the most recent data from the Singapore banker. Jake was having a hard time trying to decipher the meaning of everything, including those trying to kill him.
Jake closed the laptop and set it across the small room on the lower bunk bed. “I’m thinking the Singapore banker, Ravi Singh, gave up this information too easily.”
“You can be very persuasive, Jake.”
He shrugged. “Maybe. But then how in the hell did that woman and her friends find me in the casino?”
She put her hand on his leg. “You said it yourself. The casino had you scan your Canadian passport. Remington could have had his people watching databases like that. It’s a small island. How many places take your passport? Customs, the hotel, the casino and maybe a few other places. It wouldn’t take much for them to track those places.”
She was right, of course. But there was one problem with that logic. “True. But if Remington even knew about my Canadian passport, it would have been my old one. I just developed this persona recently. There’s no way he knows about it. Kurt Jenkins doesn’t even know about this passport.”
Alexandra was in deep thought now.
Jake leaned back in his chair and ran the last couple of days through his mind. Then he slid his left hand down to his outer cargo pocket, finally feeling a small lump. He reached inside and retrieved the jump drive he had gotten from the banker in Singapore. Turning it over in his fingers, the small metal device seemed to be a newer version.
“What?” she asked.
Finding a strip of metal along the chair, Jake set the jump drive against it. He immediately felt the attraction. Although it didn’t stick to the metal, he could definitely feel a pull.