Exit wound, p.5
Exit Wound, page 5
‘It’s all planned. Two weeks, wheels turn. You need to be with us, mate. It’s what Tenny would have wanted.’
‘Lads, it sounds too good to be true. If anyone else came to me with this I’d think they were pissed.’ I sat back while they waited for an answer. ‘You’re not selling it to me, but I’m in.’
They exchanged a big smile.
‘But the only reason is because you two have shit for brains. I’m coming to look after you.’
PART THREE
14
Wednesday, 29 April 2009
0220 hrs
Dex studied the little plastic cup his G-and-T had been served in like it was something he’d found under his shoe. He finally gave it a squeeze and moved it to his mouth. He took a sip and turned in his seat to face the two of us in the row behind. ‘Cheers, chaps.’
I returned the toast with a red wine that perfectly matched the shit-on-a-tray in front of me.
Kenneth Merryweather, as his cover passport called him, wasn’t so enthusiastic. ‘Yeah, cheers.’ He dunked his bread roll in his wine and had a munch.
We still had half the seven-hour flight from Heathrow ahead of us. I’d been expecting us to be packed in like sardines, the price you pay for taking your golf trip on the cheap, but I was wrong. There were fewer than a hundred people on the aircraft. Nearly everyone, except Red Ken and me, had their own row of seats to spread out on.
‘Empty planes out, full planes back.’ Mr Merryweather was taking a lot of pleasure in how hard the recession had hit Dubai. ‘There are more than three thousand wagons abandoned in the airport car parks at any one time because of expats doing runners.’ He shook his head. ‘Lose your job, and those fuckers hold your bank account until you pay your debts – and lots of people are losing their jobs. It’s better to get straight to the airport and fuck off before they get a grip of you.’
I’d never been to Dubai, and Dexter Khan had only ever transited through before the two recces he’d made with Red Ken. Tenny would have been fresh to it too. Red Ken and Dex had already prepared the ground on those two trips. As soon as we met the guy who’d brought Red Ken the idea in the first place, it was straight into the job.
Red Ken knew Dubai like the back of his hand. He had worked there on the BG (bodyguarding) circuit for the best part of a year. It was supposed to have been for much longer. Chrissie had even gone out and joined him. Whatever it was that had gone wrong in their marriage, I got the sense that Dubai had tipped the scales. I wasn’t going to ask specifics. If he’d wanted me to know he would have told me.
Of much greater concern for me was the lack of information. Not just the little I had been told, but the little they seemed to know. It was unlike these two to go into something so serious without being in control. Something was wrong with this job, and something was wrong with these two to make them take such a risk. They’d thought it was a joke when I’d said I was coming along to look after them. It wasn’t.
Dex turned to face us again. ‘Tuck in, chaps – you’ll need plenty of energy for eighteen holes.’ He was a member of a posh club in Surrey and had brought his own clubs with him. He was even wearing a blue Pringle sweater and Burberry patterned slacks. Red Ken was dressed much the same, and unfortunately so was I. We looked like P. Diddy’s entourage.
Three days ago, Red Ken had let me rant on about how much I hated golf. I couldn’t see the reason for it except as an excuse for dickheads like Dex to wear clown outfits. To me it was a waste of land, sand, time, water and metal. Only once I’d finished condemning every golf player on the planet did Red Ken admit he also played – and that Dex had put him up for membership.
The worst news was that he had an old set of clubs he was going to lend me. Everything had to look normal. I couldn’t be walking round with brand-new gear. We were three car-showroom salesmen, off to ‘swing a few’, as Dex put it, and maybe have some other fun. Dubai was awash with Russian whores, Red Ken said. One of the things Chrissie had hated about the place was prostitutes looking her up and down if she had a drink with her husband in a hotel bar. They’d thought she was invading their turf.
I’d looked around at our fellow passengers in Departures. One or two groups looked much the same as us. Our cover was good. Nothing could be discovered about us because nothing was hidden.
The four PMC (private military company) guys on their way to Kabul had also been easy to place, with their chunky Luminoxes hanging off their wrists with mini compasses on the straps, and high-sleeved T-shirts to show off their new biceps. The only air bridges into Kabul were via Delhi and Dubai, and I knew from past experience which airport I’d rather transit through. Apart from work, the only two things to do out there were watch porn and take part in Operation Massive: hitting the weights. The NAAFI in Kandahar sold more tubs of body-building supplements than Mars bars. But what really gave these guys away were the desert-coloured Bug Out day-sacks that everyone bought from the American PX. Every bit as much a badge, I supposed, as our stupid golf bags. They’d certainly looked back at Merryweather, Khan and Simmons the same way Dex had looked at his plastic cup.
The other two knew what they were doing when it came to drivers and putters, but I was on the five-day trip as a golf atheist. They were going to enlighten and convert me. There would be no talk of the job during the flight or at any time unless we were out of a building and on our own. Dubai might be Disneyland on Gas Mark Ten, as Red Ken called it, but the place was swarming with police informers. The government had an image to protect. They were even thinking about a law to prosecute locally based journalists if they hinted Dubai was being hit by the world downturn.
Besides that, first-class seats in aircraft had been bugged on European and American airlines as early as the 1980s. Industrial espionage was rife. It still was. We worked on the assumption that every seat was bugged on every airline.
Red Ken’s plan had few moving parts. Keep it simple, stupid, was a principle all three of us knew worked, and as we were all stupid to be on this job it was a good one. We were going to play a round straight off the plane at six thirty. That was when we’d meet the man who’d organized it – organized it far too much, in fact, even down to the passports.
Red Ken wouldn’t give any more details about who he was. ‘He doesn’t want you to know until you meet, son. He’s a funny fucker like that. But he’s going to make us all a lot of cash – so just wait.’
I’d been bombarding him with questions for days. For starters, why had Red Ken, Dex and Tenny been picked as a crew?
‘Because we’re good.’ Red Ken was serious. ‘There can’t be any room for fuck-ups. That’s what Special Forces are about – in and out before anyone knows. This isn’t about running into a bank with sawn-offs and grabbing the till. This is about lifting gold that no one knows exists – it needs to be done covertly. That’s your reason, Nick.’
I explored the chicken-something while Dex put on his headphones and laughed too loud at a movie.
Red Ken leant across the spare seat between us and gave me a nudge. ‘He was like that when we came over last time. I even think it’s the same film.’
The final of the two recces had been a week before the funeral. Tenny would have been on his post-tour leave, before returning to the battalion to go through the process of getting out – having massively boosted his pension.
Dex caught us laughing at him and pulled off one earphone. ‘What?’
Red Ken pushed himself forward so his head was nearly between the rests. ‘I was saying Nick should apply to your club.’
‘You’d love it.’ One earphone was still on his cheek. ‘I’ll introduce you to the pro and maybe we can get your game up. Then I’ll—’
I reached between the seats, pulled back the earphone and let go.
‘Very funny.’ He broke into a laugh and then his eyes were back on the screen.
I bit the cellophane off my rectangle of cheese. ‘I wish I was like knob-head Laughing Boy, not a worry in the world, just getting on with life and a dodgy G-and-T.’
Red Ken sat back in his seat and stared at the blank screen in front of him. ‘That’s not the way, mate. You got no one meeting you when you get back from the trip?’
‘Like I said at the funeral, no one.’
‘That’s harsh. I’ll have my girls waiting for me. The youngest, Charlotte, has just brought my first grandchild home for a second christening. It’s a girl.’ He ripped the end off a citrus handwipe. ‘The Brits got pissed off over the fact she was going to get christened in Sydney. It’ll be a great day. Looking forward to it big-time.’
15
We dumped our bags at the hotel and had a quick shower and shave. We had to look the part: no stubble on the car-showroom salesmen. The choice of hotel was perfect – near the airport and the golf club, and just short of the city proper. It had seen better days, but fitted our apparent budget.
Half an hour later we met up again in the foyer, golf bags beside us and spiky shoes hanging from the straps.
Red Ken turned down the concierge’s offer of a hotel car. We could have been going to any of the eight or nine courses, so why give away a precise destination when we didn’t have to? Hailing a cab from the main drag didn’t turn out to be easy. It got to the point where Dex was thumbing hopefully at every 4x4 that passed. As if.
Red Ken had been smoking in the shade along with the rest of the social lepers. He took me to one side. The sun bounced off his gigs as he moved his head and grinned. ‘You might not like who we’re meeting up with this morning any more than we do, but it’s too late to say no. Just think of what this gives us, Nick. Think about Janice and the kids. That’s why we’re here. Besides, you have to look after us two, right?’
Dex wandered back, dejected.
I laughed. ‘Didn’t they teach you cab skills in the RAF?’
Red Ken looked up and down the road. ‘I’ll show you how it’s done in Para Reg.’ He stubbed out his cigarette and stepped off the kerb. Of course a cab was approaching – that was why he’d done it. He waved it down.
We loaded the clubs into the boot and Dex jumped in next to the driver. He was an Indian in a white shirt and tie. Dex was going to blend in perfectly. ‘Dubai Creek Golf and Yacht Club.’
There wasn’t much else to say. We weren’t going to talk in front of our new mate, even though the big thing for me was that we were on our way to meet the middleman for this ‘little wheeze’, as Dex kept calling it. He had his head buried in Golf Clubs of the World and was getting very hyper.
He turned and nodded with excitement. ‘Par seventy-one, 6,857 yards.’
I nodded back as if I gave a shit. Red Ken smiled, but it faded as he looked out of the window at the throngs of Filipinos and Indian cleaners washing store-fronts. Cranes cut into the sky in all directions above half-finished buildings. The ones that had been completed towered above us. I’d never seen so much marble, glass and steel. Dubai looked like Hong Kong on steroids, designed by architects on LSD.
We peeled off the highway and hit the approach road to the clubhouse. It had been designed to look like an enormous white Bedouin tent, pitched in a sprawling oasis of green.
The cab drew up outside the main door and Dex jumped out. He busied himself with loading the bags onto a trolley while Red Ken left to look for the elusive fourth man of this crew. I was left to pay the taxi. That was one bit of cab skills they both knew.
A Land Cruiser drew up behind Dex while he was still unloading. The driver and passenger were two sun-dried women in their sixties. They looked like they’d been getting drunk in the city since Margaret Thatcher’s era. They had all the golf gear on, down to the peaked plastic hats without the crown. Their jewellery jangled, but not as much as their accents. The driver left the engine running. One clambered down in a pink polo shirt, checked shorts and golfing shoes and shouted back into the wagon, at her blue-shirted friend, ‘I’ll get a boy.’ She was Romford, born and bred.
She walked between the bonnet of her 4x4 and the rear of our taxi as Dex straightened up from the boot. She pointed at her wagon. ‘When you’ve finished with those, our bags are in the back.’
I opened my mouth to object but Dex was too quick. He put on the worst Indian-waiter voice ever. ‘Yes, memsahib.’ He gave an exaggerated bow that was totally wasted on them as they disappeared into the clubhouse.
‘What the fuck you doing, Dex? We got a job to do here, mate.’
He smiled and did the Indian shaking of the head to indicate yes. ‘Getting in character.’
Red Ken came back in time to see Dex at the back of the Land Cruiser and me with the trolley holding our bags. Another Indian guy was waiting to drive it away. ‘What’s he doing now?’
I explained as we picked up the bags and headed inside. Red Ken steered me to a leather sofa while we waited for Dex. We watched as he deposited the bags with the women in the foyer. ‘You know, this place is filled with so many obnoxious, incompetent fuckers, especially in senior positions. Back in the UK they wouldn’t last ten minutes behind the counter at McDonald’s, let alone in management.’
Dex waited for a tip. The sun-drieds ignored him.
Red Ken was living up to his name – come the revolution and all that. ‘I bet those two have maids like everyone else here, running round doing everything but wipe their arses. They used to be Filipinos, but now it’s Somalian girls. These people get a maid and they have total power over her. They keep her passport, even though it’s illegal. They decide what to pay her, and even when she can have a break or a day off.
‘Chrissie hated the way they were treated. Some of the Brit girls used to get on to her. They said she was too soft with the two girls who ran the house, setting a bad example by not treating them like shit.’
Dex walked away empty-handed but smiling. I realized he was singing. ‘“Jolly boating weather . . .”’ His Indian-waiter accent was outrageous. ‘“And a hay harvest breeze . . .”’
The Romford Two were sure he was taking the piss but they didn’t know how.
Red Ken picked up his set and handed Dex his. ‘You finished? Can we go and get on?’
Dex grinned and carried on singing. ‘“Swing, swing together . . .”’
I followed them outside. We sat in the shade to put on our spiky shoes. As soon as we headed back out into the sun, I could see four buggies waiting for us. In one of them sat an egg-shaped guy, his little white legs dangling just above the buggy floor. His short-sleeved white shirt bulged above his smartly pressed red chino shorts and knee-length white socks.
‘Spag.’ Dex beamed. ‘How are you, old chap?’
16
I tried not to look surprised.
Spag stayed under the canopy but a fat and hairy hand stretched out for mine as Dex and Red Ken loaded the clubs into the other three buggies. I clasped his stumpy sausage fingers.
‘You look well, Nick.’
The same couldn’t be said for him. The face under the peak of the cap had had too many visits to the food hall, and its owner had spent far too long sat on his arse. I couldn’t see the eyes behind the dark lenses but I liked to think they were bloodshot. He still wore his seventies porn-star moustache, but like the hair growing out of his ears, it was greyer.
He let go of my hand and put his foot on the pedal. We followed and drew up at the first tee. Spag climbed out, pressed a blue tee into the grass and a ball on top. By the time he stood up again his face was red and sweating.
The other two were out of their wagons, staying out of range of his swing.
Red Ken nodded at me. ‘We knew you’d be pleased.’
Dex watched with a hand over his eyes, waiting to see where this ball was going to end up.
Spag took a practice swing. ‘We’ve got a good tee-off time here. Nobody up our asses, listening in.’ His club went back and whacked the ball. I lost sight of it in the low sun.
‘Me next.’ Dex selected a club and approached the tee. His whiter-than-white teeth gleamed as he grinned at me. ‘It’s a small world, isn’t it?’
The whack as his club hit the ball sounded more solid than Spag’s had.
As Red Ken took his practice swing, Spag came and stood next to me. ‘Damn shame about Tennyson. Goddam Taliban, we should nuke ’em back to the Stone Age.’
I nodded to keep him talking.
‘These guys wanted you on the job all along, you know – like getting the old band together. But nobody knew where to find you. Maybe Tenny getting killed was kind of a blessing.’
I looked down at him. I couldn’t see his face past the peak of his cap. ‘I doubt he’d see it that way. How did you find them?’
‘Right here, on this course. Red was working here at the time. Then I tracked him down in the UK. I need guys I know, who won’t sink under pressure. You still one of those guys, Nick?’ He kept his eyes on Red Ken as he twisted his body, following the imaginary line his ball was going to take. He was waiting for an answer but I wasn’t going to play his game.
‘I need people who I know trust each other and know what they’re doing – and more than that, who are mission-oriented. Nothing will get in the way of the mission.’ Spag shooed away an invisible fly. He still wasn’t getting an answer. Fuck him.
‘Why aren’t you on the ground with us?’
His laugh rang out a split second before Red Ken’s club connected. The ball flew off at an angle.
‘Bollocks!’ Red Ken glared at him, but Spag was oblivious.
‘Once out with you guys was enough.’ The roar of an aircraft taking off just a K away drowned even the hum of traffic on the freeway. He had to raise his voice. ‘That’s for people like you. Like Red’s burger theory – I’m a facilitator, I make things happen. You’re the burgers and I’m, like, a tender sirloin.’
‘How did you find out about the gold?’
‘Kinda when Saddam got captured and interrogated.’ He slapped my back with a smile. ‘But that’s history now. Today we start making the future the way we want it to be.’
