Rising Tiger (10 page)

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.”

Malaysia
On the train from Singapore to Kuala Lumpur

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.

“Shit,” Jake said, shaking his head. “Duped by a damn banker.”

“GPS tracker?” she asked. “That sounds like something you would do.”

“Something I have done. But this is the smallest tracker I’ve ever seen. This is Agency tech. Or perhaps from the Chinese. But I’m guessing Bill Remington gave this to Ravi Singh and had him give it to me. It’s beautiful. You plug it into the USB port and it acts as advertised, but it also draws power to recharge the tiny battery.”

She took it from his hand and checked it out. “You don’t think it also has a mic.”

“No. As you know, most targets, even the cartels and other criminals, have sweeping devices to catch those. I think this is a single purpose GPS tracker.”

Alexandra handed him the drive and said, “Great. Then they know we’re on this train. They might even have someone on here with us.”

“I doubt it. We went straight to the train station and lucked out, barely having enough time to get on this train ourselves. There was no way they could have tracked us that fast and still get on the train.”

“Doesn’t mean they can’t catch up to us in Kuala Lumpur.”

She had a great point. Damn, it was much easier in the spy game before all of these high-tech gadgets.

“What do we do?” she asked.

“I had a similar situation recently in Montana,” he said. “I sent some folks all the way to Portland on a wild goose chase.”

“That’s when you were shacking up with that congresswoman.”

“You sound jealous.”

“I’m not jealous. I was just mentioning a fact.”

Silence.

“Was she good in bed?” Alexandra asked with an edge.

There was no great answer to that question. He ignored her and instead said, “I say we hang onto this for a while.”

“You don’t like the question so you change the subject.”

“I haven’t asked you about the men you’ve slept with,” he said.

“Or the women?” She smiled and raised her brows.

“Now you’re just teasing me,” he declared. He checked his watch. “We get into Kuala Lumpur in a few hours. Chances are pretty good they’ll come on the train and try to take us out.”

“It’s a big train. But maybe we should get off and drive the rest of the way.”

“That’s one way to go,” he admitted. “But I think we have a better option.”

“Either way, we’ll have to go through customs when we get to Thailand. We can’t afford to get caught with guns. They’re about as bad as Singapore in punishing gun violations.”

“You’re still officially with the Federal Intelligence Service of Germany,” he reminded her.

“That’s true. But according to the BND, I might be dead. And this is an unsanctioned op. I don’t trust my boss to have my back.”

“Good point. We have some time to worry about the guns, but for now we might just need them on this trip. I’ll contact Kurt Jenkins and let him know where we’re going. He might still have some loyal fans in Thailand to help us acquire more guns.” Jake checked his phone and found only spotty service. “We’ll have to wait until we get closer to KL.”

“In the meantime,” she said, “we should get some sleep. Or at least go to bed.”

She turned off the light in the cabin and the room was lit only by the nearly full moon. Flashes of light streaked across the cabin wall when they passed street lights at road crossings.

Standing in the center of the room, she slowly undressed until she was completely naked, her body a seductive periodic vision of potential pleasure. She moved toward the window and placed her hands against the edges, exposing herself to anyone outside who might see her beauty. Then she spread her legs as if waiting to be frisked.

Jake could take no more. He swiftly undressed to match her nakedness. Then he came up behind her and nibbled on her neck, while he reached around to her breasts. His stiffness found its way inside her and she moaned as he took her with great enthusiasm.

Bangkok, Thailand

Bill Remington looked out the window of his current hotel, a relative high-rise in the region of government power in the city. It might have been a mistake coming here, though, since the anti-government protests were gaining more strength and eventually the government would use increasing force to squelch the dissent. Foreigners often got caught up in these events as collateral damage. What the hell did these people expect, he thought. They raised a weak king to a pedestal and continued to vote in the shiny new object to their parliamentary leadership. So they got the government they wanted until they no longer wanted it.

He took another drink of Scotch from his highball glass and looked for answers to his problems in the little bit of liquid gold left in the bottom of his glass. The single malt wasn’t talking to him, though.

When one of his security detail informed him that his guest had arrived, Remington hoped it would be his operative back from Singapore. But he then realized that her flight was just landing about now, and it would take her some time to weave through that damn crowd below.

Remington nodded and followed his security man into the outer area of his hotel room. He saw that the general had two of his own security men along with him. That meant two security men each. But they both agreed to send the men to the corridor while they talked.

General Wu Gang was an interesting character. He started his career at Texas A&M, where he not only learned about electrical engineering, but was allowed to study military tactics as a member of the Corps of Cadets. When he returned to the People’s Republic of China, he was given a commission in the red army, where he eventually rose to full general. If that wasn’t enough power for the man, the communist leaders there decided he should use his American degree to run the hottest cell phone company in China, where he turned the fledgling industry into a worldwide powerhouse. Soon enough the general had made himself one of the most powerful and wealthy men in China. Of course he had done so by siphoning money, with Remington’s help, into multiple bank accounts worldwide. Physically, the man had gone from a nearly malnourished frame when Remington first met the guy as a young major, into a pudgy caricature of third-world indulgence that had only gotten that way through the subjugation of his working class minions. Well, that and his penchant for super-sized fast food burgers and fries.

But Texas had indelibly changed the man. He wore Levis and snake-skin cowboy boots. His western button up shirt was accented by a turquoise bolo tie.

“Nice place,” General Wu Gang observed, and then took a seat on the leather sofa against one wall. “I think I stayed in this very room a few years ago.”

Remington was a little concerned by the man’s appearance in Bangkok. He knew the general had allies here, and his allies might have been more powerful than his own. He sat on the matching leather chair across from the Chinese general. “Just here for the night,” Remington said.

“Hopefully the protestors won’t keep you awake.”

“Your country would have brought in the tanks by now,” Remington surmised. “Would you like something to drink?” He got up and went to his bottle of Scotch on the credenza, lifting it for the general.

The general waved his hand. “No. Listen, I’m here just for a few minutes. What can you tell me about the American reaction to the situation in the Straits of Taiwan?”

This was out of the blue. Remington poured himself enough Scotch to last a while. Then he sat down again. “As you know, I’m not with the CIA anymore. I’m a man without a country.”

“You know what they say in Texas about that?” When Remington shrugged, the general continued, “That’s bullshit. I think you know how the U.S. government will respond to the crisis.”

Remington shook his head. “I know how they would normally act. But with this current government, your guess would be as good as mine. Tell me this: What is the intent of the Chinese government? They sure as hell don’t want war.”

General Wu Gang leaned back into the plush leather, his face revealing a slight smirk. “Not likely. But they do want respect. And as Mao said, ‘Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.’”

Remington smiled and took a drink of Scotch. “He also said that ‘Communism is a hammer that we use to crush the enemy.’”

The general laughed. “China is about as communist as America is capitalist.”

“Good point. Now, what concerns you?”

“That’s why I like you, Bill. You get right to the point.” General Wu Gang hesitated. “As you know, my military days are in the past. Although a war would be good for business, I don’t want one in my back yard.”

Remington knew that the man was using his considerable wealth to buy up companies around the world, and most of those dealt with the business of war. He also suspected that the general set up the entire conflict with Taiwan for economic reasons. “I understand. But I have no power to do anything about it. I’m considered a traitor there now.”