Killer Thriller (Ian Ludlow Thrillers Book 2)

by Lee Goldberg

  “I got news for you, honey,” Margo said. “This is the United States you’re talking about, not China or Russia. Our intelligence agencies don’t undermine our elected officials or our democracy.”

  “Really?” Ian said. “Have you forgotten how you became a spy?”

  Margo looked at Ian for a long moment as she thought about that. “It’s a good thing the assassination is only a plot for your novel and not reality.”

  “And what if you’re wrong?”

  “We’re screwed,” she said. “Because for all you know, he’s dead already.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  Tour Montparnasse, Paris, France. July 4. 9:40 p.m. Central European Summer Time.

  After Tour Montparnasse was built in 1973, with a façade like the front grille of a Ford Torino, the French were so repulsed by it that they banned buildings in the city center from being higher than fourteen stories. The only thing that Tour Montparnasse had going for it was a fantastic view, particularly on the northwestern side, where every office above the tenth floor could see the Eiffel Tower without any obstructions.

  That was why Death rented an empty office on the forty-fifth floor and why he’d furnished it with the laser-guided antitank missile launcher that he’d brought back as a souvenir from Turkey.

  Kwok and Tan walked the two and a half miles back to their office at Montparnasse after dinner. Kwok wanted to check whether they’d accomplished their task at the restaurant. Tan thought it was unnecessary, but she indulged him because she enjoyed walking through Paris and holding hands like they were two people in love. And she wanted to burn off the rich, decadent meal.

  The vacant office was lit by a few fluorescent light bars that dangled on wires from the exposed ceiling rafters. The floor was plywood and the walls were exposed to the studs. It had been stripped like this for years, ever since a botched asbestos removal project in the building spread the highly toxic carcinogen everywhere instead. Most of the tenants who fled during the cleanup eventually came back, but not the guy in this office. He died on the operating table while having a malignant tumor the size of a plum removed from his sinuses.

  The modified 9K135 Kornet missile launcher was mounted on a tripod facing the window and centered on the Eiffel Tower. The tripod was bolted to a wooden platform to clear the windowsill and so the operator could sit in a chair to fire the high-explosive warhead. A wide opening would be cut in the glass shortly before the two presidents arrived at the restaurant.

  Tan had retrofitted the weapon with an Android tablet with a timer app that would fire the missile if necessary. The tablet was purely a backup measure, insisted upon by Yat Fu, in the unlikely event that they were arrested, killed in a car accident, abducted by aliens, or binge-watching Game of Thrones and couldn’t be there to pull the trigger.

  Kwok sat down behind the launcher, turned on the laser-targeting system, and peered into the viewfinder. Tan stood behind him, feeling her pulse quicken and her mouth go dry. There was something unbelievably erotic about watching a predator prepare for the kill.

  “Tagging the target with RFID flakes wasn’t necessary,” she said. “The laser-guidance will do the job. You just wanted to leave your mark on the kill zone.”

  “I like the insurance. The tags will help the missile find the mark if my aim is off.” Kwok made some adjustments with the dials. He might as well have been twisting Tan’s nipples. She almost gasped.

  “You’re right,” she said, her voice husky. “We should definitely check the targeting.”

  Tan slipped off her dress and removed her panties. She didn’t know whether it was the desire in her voice that Kwok heard or the sound of the fabric sliding down her naked body. But he leaned back from the weapon and unbuckled his pants as if responding to a spoken demand.

  She straddled his lap and pulled his face to her chest. He squeezed her breasts, pinched an erect nipple with his teeth, and sucked hard. It brought tears of pleasure to her eyes. She opened his pants, grabbed his throbbing erection, and squeezed him as tight as she could, making him wince.

  “The weapon is ready, the aim is true.” She took him deep inside her. “Target acquired.”

  She began thrusting and gyrating against him as forcefully and as fast as she could. He rose to his feet, lifting her up with him. But she didn’t stop moving. She clutched his neck and wrapped her legs around his waist and slammed herself against him with a savage intensity.

  “We’re going to change the world,” she said between heavy breaths. “Right here. Can you feel it?”

  Kwok’s secret was that he felt nothing except physical sensation, and even that somehow felt distant this time. He carried her to the floor and laid her on some plastic sheeting.

  Tan spread her legs and eased her hold on his erection, allowing him to choose his own rhythm, to penetrate her as deeply, and as hard, as he could. He pounded into her, supporting himself with one hand while his other hand slid up her sweat-slicked stomach, over her taut nipples, and settled on her throat.

  Locking eyes with her, he slowly squeezed her throat, giving her just enough oxygen to stay barely conscious while creating a buildup of carbon dioxide in her brain that would heighten the intensity of her climax. He’d done this to her many times before, not so much to give pleasure but to get her used to submitting to him, to completely lowering her guard.

  They came together, but her orgasm was much stronger than his. She was so deep into her intense climax when she died that she probably never realized that he was strangling her. At least he hoped so, for her sake.

  He stood, pulled up his pants, and got to work. While she was still warm and pliable, he broke her neck, arms, and legs, arranged her in a compact fetal position, wrapped her in the plastic, taped her up, and stuffed her into a large rolling Samsonite suitcase.

  Kwok liked Tan and admired her abilities, professional and otherwise. He didn’t want to kill her, or Lucio and Fina, but he had no choice. His orders were to completely wipe his trail. He knew what that meant for his future. After the mission was completed, there would be an assassin waiting somewhere to kill him. It would be a freelancer, most likely a native European, simply fulfilling a contract to murder some nameless Chinese man and dispose of the body.

  But as patriotic as Kwok was, he had no intention of sacrificing himself for his country. He’d evade or kill the assassin and spend the rest of his days in luxury, anonymity, and constant travel, watching and appreciating the profound impact he’d made on the world.

  But for now, Kwok powered down the missile launcher, took the suitcase, and left the office with a sense of accomplishment, a full stomach, and a nice ache in his groin.

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  Somewhere in the South China Sea. July 5.

  Ian had a sense of motion but, since they were in perpetual darkness, didn’t have any sense of time. They didn’t have smartphones or clocks to tell them what time it was. They could have been traveling for hours or days, it was hard to know, especially since they were all taking a lot of short, unsatisfying naps. The darkness and boredom made them tired, but the hot, suffocating air made it difficult to sleep.

  He was also tormented by frustration, the thought that the president might already be dead, or could be in the crosshairs right now, and he was helpless to do anything about it.

  At one point, the three of them were sitting around the banquette, water bottles in front of them, flipping through a stack of old gossip magazines that Damon had kept for the articles about himself.

  “You must hate me,” Mei said after studying for some time a photo of Damon emerging from the surf in Hawaii, sucking in his gut all the way back to his spine, pretending he didn’t know he was being photographed.

  Ian lifted his head from a photo collage of actors who’d fathered children out of wedlock. Damon wasn’t among them. “Why do you say that?”

  “I’ve killed your movie and probably the American studio, too. All the Chinese money will be pulled out after what I’
ve done.”

  “The movie’s chances for success are better now than ever. The studio wouldn’t dare shut it down with all the publicity you’ll be getting,” Ian said. “You’re the beautiful daughter of a billionaire fleeing from Chinese oppression.”

  “What oppression?” Margo asked without raising her eyes from a photo array of known and rumored bisexual Hollywood actresses under the headline THEY SWING BOTH WAYS.

  Ian ignored the question. “You’re going to be a sensation and the studio will want to exploit that. They’ll rewrite Straker, set it someplace like San Francisco’s Chinatown, and you’ll be back in front of the cameras in two months.”

  Ian’s words were like a hot shot of caffeine delivered straight into Mei’s bloodstream. She perked up immediately. “Do you really think so?”

  “Even if I’m wrong about Straker, you’ll still be a big star,” Ian said. “If that’s what you want.”

  “As a billionairess, I have become accustomed to a certain standard of living,” Mei said. “Celebrity strikes me as the best way to get it.”

  “You’re going to love America,” Margo said and began browsing a photo array of enormous female butts, in tight pants and workout sweats, under the headline CAN YOU IDENTIFY THESE KARDASHIAN BOOTIES? “You’ll fit right in.”

  The motor home stunk. They had a working toilet but not much circulating air, so the combined body odor from the three of them was becoming a fourth presence, another person to avoid bumping into in the dark. The motor home fit snugly into the ventilated container, so they really didn’t have the option of getting out and walking around.

  After what seemed like weeks, not days, they felt the ship slow and get pushed into port and then it became a matter of waiting for the container to be lifted off the deck. Because of their impatience, the wait seemed even longer than their journey, but they used the time to get dressed and clean up the motor home as a courtesy to their host. Finally, they felt the shake of the crane clutching the container and the rapid elevator-like ascent as they were carried into the air and onto the dock. It seemed to take another eternity before they heard someone working the latches on the container door.

  Ian, Margo, and Mei moved apprehensively to the front of the motor home to see what awaited them. They’d literally been in the dark for days, so they didn’t know if they’d arrived in Singapore, or returned to Hong Kong, or had been rerouted somewhere else. They could be facing allies, pirates, or a firing squad.

  A blinding bright light illuminated the inside of the container. Ian held up his arm in front of his face to shield his eyes and squinted into the light. There were four dark, vaguely human silhouettes framed in the container’s entrance. The figures looked like the aliens leaving the mother ship in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. One figure stepped forward from the rest. He was a rotund silhouette with a hat and walking stick.

  “We might as well go out and see who they are,” Ian said. “There’s nothing gained by staying in here.”

  The three of them stepped out of the motor home and were greeted in front of it by a middle-aged man in a Panama hat and a white seersucker suit that strained to contain his large, round belly. But his most prominent feature was a thick mustache with flamboyantly curled ends that dramatically underlined his bulbous drinker’s nose and rosy, round cheeks. He leaned on a pearl-handled walking stick for style rather than balance.

  “Welcome to Singapore, my friends. I’m Terrence Trafford, CIA head of station here in this lovely island city-state.” Trafford had the vaguely British accent of monied East Coast Americans popularized by Cary Grant and John Hillerman as Higgins on Magnum, P.I.

  Ian rushed up to Trafford. “How is the president of the United States?”

  Trafford raised a bushy eyebrow at the strange question. “As presidential as ever. Today he tweeted that a CNN reporter’s brain couldn’t fit in a flea’s scrotum.”

  Ian was relieved to hear that but that didn’t ease his anxiety. The president needed to be warned that his life was in immediate danger.

  Trafford peered past Ian at Damon’s rolling mansion. “A luxury motor home in a shipping container. What a remarkable way to travel. I can see this catching on among the well-heeled Asian refugee class.”

  “Is there such a thing?” Margo asked.

  “There will be if China keeps jailing their billionaires,” Trafford said. “I foresee a whole new class of boat people driving their Rolls-Royces into one of these things and sailing them to freedom in a new shopping mecca.” He raised his walking stick and pointed it at Mei. “You’re the first.”

  “What happens to me now?” Mei asked.

  “There’s a private jet waiting to whisk you to the land of In-N-Out Double-Doubles, shiplap, and Real Housewives, where you’ll be deplaned, debriefed, debugged, detoxed, depleted, and, finally, deposited in the city of your choice,” Trafford said. “Toodle-loo!”

  And with that, two of his men dutifully stepped forward to escort Mei out to a panel van with GULLIVER TRADING COMPANY and a Singapore address inscribed in elegant script on the sides. Parked beside the van was a Mercedes-Benz S-Class, undoubtedly Trafford’s conveyance, as Trafford would have put it.

  Mei got into the van without so much as a wave or a smile goodbye to the two people who’d whisked her to safety from Hong Kong. Ian was sure that he’d catch up with her again at the Straker premiere.

  Trafford turned to Ian and Margo. “I imagine you’d both like a shower, a fresh change of clothes, and a nice meal, all of which await you at the legendary Raffles Hotel, where I’ve reserved rooms for you. Afterward, we can debrief over a refreshing Singapore Sling in the Long Bar and toast the ghosts of Somerset Maugham, Ernest Hemingway, Joseph Conrad, and Rudyard Kipling.”

  “We don’t have time for that,” Margo said. “We need to talk to Healy right away on a secure line.”

  “It’s three a.m. in Langley and you both look and smell like vagrants,” Trafford said. “Surely a few hours won’t make a difference.”

  “You’re wrong about that,” Ian said. Wang Jing had told them they had five days before the intel Mei gave them lost most of its value. To Ian, that meant the president would be dead within the next two days. They didn’t have a second to waste. “Those hours could determine the fate of our nation for the next century.”

  “Well, we certainly wouldn’t want that,” Trafford said. “Come along. I’ll pinch my nose and roll down the windows.”

  He turned and waddled off toward the Mercedes-Benz.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  Singapore. July 6. 4:10 p.m. Singapore Standard Time.

  If Trafford felt any urgency, it wasn’t expressed in his driver’s leisurely speed or the station chief’s relaxed travelogue as they drove from Tanjong Pagar harbor to the Gulliver Trading Company’s office in Boat Quay on the southern bank of the Singapore River.

  “Singapore is a former British colonial trading post that’s half the size of Los Angeles, but with much better cuisine,” Trafford said. “There are twenty thousand food stalls offering every kind of dish you can imagine, all of it absurdly cheap and wonderful. The 5.6 million people who live here love to eat, mostly because there’s nothing else to do. I’m proof of that. When I was assigned here thirty years ago, I was as thin as the soggy rattan cane the authorities use to whip people for breaking their countless petty rules. Get caught chewing gum or, God forbid, spitting on the streets and it’s twenty-four lashes on your bottom. Of course, if your bottom likes that sort of thing, there are men and women on Geylang Road who will gladly cane you, and so much more, for a reasonable fee. It’s all totally legal, because second to eating, indulging your erotic desires is all that’s left to do. This is not a place you want to live if you are given to gluttony.”

  Their short journey took them west through the cluster of office towers in the city center and gave them a view of the Marina Bay Sands hotel and casino, Singapore’s new defining landmark, which looked to Ian like a giant surfboard across the t
op of three skyscrapers.

  “It’s an abomination,” Trafford said, following Ian’s gaze. He told them that he much preferred the last remaining vestiges of colonial Singapore like Boat Quay, a densely packed neighborhood of nineteenth-century shophouses tucked between the new glass towers of the financial district and, across the mouth of the Singapore River, the neo-Palladian Old Parliament House, the Raffles Hotel, and the Padang cricket field.

  “Foreign spies have been working out of Boat Quay since the early 1800s, when it was the port of Singapore,” Trafford said as they threaded down Lor Telok in Boat Quay and parked at the corner. “That changed in the mid-twentieth century when the port moved to Pasir Panjang on reclaimed land west of here. Now this is where the Singapore soccer moms go for Pilates and boba.”

  They got out of the car. The Gulliver Trading Company, the cover for the CIA station, was on the second floor of a colonial-style shophouse with a Thai restaurant below. The shophouse next door, with a more Asian flair, had a noodle house on the first floor and the Rope, Hardware, and Paint Merchants Association on the second floor. Which intelligence agency, Ian wondered, was hiding behind that association?

  Trafford led them to a side door and typed a code into a keypad, and they went up a steep staircase to a small office where four ceiling fans with rattan-mesh blades pushed the air over several unoccupied desks. Either the agents were all out spying, Ian thought, or there wasn’t much need for spies in Singapore.

  “Can you set up the call?” Margo said to Trafford.

  “This way.” Trafford opened a door that had a red light mounted on top. They entered a cramped, windowless conference room dominated by a long table, its far end pushed against the wall below a flat-screen TV and camera. Six chairs were squeezed between the table and the walls, which were lined with stacks of bulging cardboard boxes labeled “Top Secret” with a Sharpie.

  The station chief closed the door, went to an ancient desktop computer tucked into a corner, and leaned over it to type some commands on the keyboard.