Rising Tiger

by Trevor Scott

He kept swiveling around, trying desperately to find Alexandra. But she was nowhere in sight.

  Now he started to second-guess his partnership with her. He had put her life in danger. And now she might be lost.

  9

  As Jake simply floated down the Singapore River toward the Bay Marina, his mind drifted as boats cruised past him. At this time of night most of the boats were filled with commercial passengers drinking and partying late into the evening.

  When the smaller motor boat slowly crept closer to him, his first thought was to go under water again and hide, like he had with the larger party boats. But something made him stay up in the water, his head bobbing about in the wake bouncing against the wall. A small light from a hand-held flashlight swept across the water and caught him in the eyes. He raised his right hand from the water and was about to shoot at the light.

  “Jake,” echoed a woman’s voice. “It’s me, Jake.”

  Alexandra.

  The boat turned toward him and Alexandra reached out with a long stick, which Jake grasped with his free hand. In just seconds he climbed aboard the small motor boat and found a seat in the stern near the motor.

  Once he was aboard, the man behind the wheel quickly picked up speed, heading toward the Bay Marina that eventually flowed into the ocean.

  “Who’s our friend?” Jake asked Alexandra.

  She took a seat next to Jake. “When we hit the water I swam under water downstream for quite a while. I heard shooting and thought you might have been hit. This guy was cruising upstream and almost ran me over. I said I’d give him a hundred bucks if he could find you. We turned around up by that brewery and slowly drifted down the river. It took us a while to catch up with you. Are you all right?”

  “Yeah. And you?”

  “Just wet. I even saved the gun and magazines. What about the guy who gave them to us?”

  “I don’t know. He took a couple of rounds to his upper body. But they were twenty-two rounds. I’m hoping our shooting got the cops there quickly, along with an ambulance. He could make it. Where’s this guy bringing us?”

  “Gardens by the Bay.”

  “That’s just down from our hotel.”

  “I know. We should be able to dry off a little before heading back to our room.”

  That was a good plan. They didn’t want this guy telling the police or anyone else where he had dropped them off.

  In just fifteen minutes, the boat pulled up to a secluded area of the large Gardens by the Bay park, where giant super trees that resembled mushrooms on steroids rose up anywhere from 80 to 160 feet, and were lit by various colored lights.

  Jake gave the boat pilot a wet hundred dollar bill. The guy tried not to look at Jake with too much scrutiny. He simply nodded and turned the boat around before maxing out the motor and powering back toward the river.

  The night air was still hot and muggy, like Miami on its hottest summer night.

  “What’s going on, Jake?” Alexandra asked.

  “More than we know,” he said. “Remington obviously has more friends than we first thought. He had the banker killed in Taipei. Had the man follow me in Hong Kong. And now has infiltrated the local Agency, killing or at least badly injuring our contact.”

  “I don’t even know why we’re here in Singapore,” she said, obviously exasperated.

  “The Agency froze one of Remington’s bank accounts here. Since the man had an account here, I thought he could be hanging out here also.”

  The two of them wandered down the dimly-lit walkway in the direction of their hotel in the distance.

  “And now?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. For some reason he’s concerned about me on his trail.”

  She stopped him by grasping his arm. “No kidding. You have a reputation of being a relentless bastard. But more than that, Remington knows he can’t just buy you off. He has to kill you.”

  Jake smiled. “Well, I guess I have him right where I want him. I’m going to use his knowledge of me to get him to come to me.”

  “How do you do that without getting yourself killed?” she wanted to know. “Or me killed.”

  “Listen, I’m willing to work with you as a partner,” he said, “but maybe not on this case. I think you need to just hang out at the hotel for a few days, maybe go down to the casino, and then fly back to Germany.”

  She punched him in the shoulder. “If you think you can get rid of me that easy.” Alexandra then went into a long rant in German, which sounded like she was either scolding a child or declaring her intention to conquer the world.

  Luckily Jake understood every word. When she finally calmed down somewhat, Jake broke in. “Hey, it was just a suggestion. Don’t go all commissar on my ass.”

  She punched him again, and this time he really deserved it.

  They started wandering toward their hotel again.

  “So,” Jake started, “let me get this straight. You want to help me find this rogue bastard.”

  The two of them stopped again. This time she looked more serious. “Jake. Something more is going on here. It’s not just about Bill Remington. After you read the information I got from that Munich company, you know that China is making a major move. They just attacked a Taiwanese navy ship. If that ship had not defended itself properly, over a hundred crew would have died.”

  Jake had already thought about this as well. “I know, Alexandra. I think the Chinese wanted to start a war with Taiwan. But they also need the oil and gas from the South China Sea. So this could just be about economics.”

  “What’s the word for that in English? Hegem. . .”

  “Hegemony?” Jake provided.

  “Yes. They’re already a huge economic power. But they want to dominate the world. They want superpower status.”

  “I agree,” Jake said. “But all I can do is find Bill Remington. That’s my current job. Do you still want to help me?”

  She laughed. “I’ve been shot at before. And it’s usually when I’m in your general vicinity.”

  “What can I say. I’m a lead magnet.”

  “More like a Scheiße magnet.” Then she moved closer to him and kissed him on the lips. She sniffed Jake and added, “And I think you need to throw out those clothes and take a shower.”

  They wandered back to their hotel.

  ●

  Early the next morning Jake and Alexandra both woke refreshed. They had taken a late-night shower and stuffed their dirty clothes in a plastic bag. On their way down to breakfast, they dropped their clothes into a garbage can. Jake was starting to run out of garments.

  Done with breakfast now, they sat in their room for a moment. Jake had both Glocks apart, making sure they were clean from the dunk in the river. He also removed all of the bullets from the magazines and dried them out with the bathroom hair dryer. Then, when everything gun related looked up to his standards, he put them both back together. Of course he used latex gloves to reload the bullets into the magazines. In the end, he slapped the mags into the handles of each gun and cycled rounds into the chambers.

  While he did all of this, Alexandra was on Jake’s laptop checking on news from Munich.

  “This is really strange,” she said. “There’s no mention of three dead Chinese men in my apartment.”

  Jake set the Glock onto the table and went over to the bed next to her. “You know how that works. Your service probably scrubbed it.”

  She shrugged and kept on typing. “I guess.”

  “I’d like to know how they found your apartment,” Jake said.

  “I know. I don’t think I can go back there anytime soon. Did you sell your apartment in Innsbruck?”

  “Why? Do you want to move in?” He rubbed her bare leg.

  “Only if you’re there.”

  “Well, I still own the place. But it’s winter there now and my knee gives me too many problems in the cold. I’m think about getting a place in southern Italy for the winter.”

  She continued to type but turned her hea
d to check his eyes. “Are you serious?”

  “Yes, why?”

  “A few years ago I traveled to Calabria for a mission. I really loved the place. The food, the people, the scenic beauty. I fell in love with it.”

  “We could run our business from there,” Jake said, “and work out of my Innsbruck apartment in the summer. Or, if we want to play in the snow, we can take the train there in the winter. I’ll take one for the team.”

  “Sounds wonderful.” She opened a page on the internet and stopped typing to read. “My God.”

  “What?”

  “The Chinese fired a bunch of missiles at Taiwan. A lot of them were intercepted by American warships in the area and ground-based defense systems. But a few got through and killed a number of people. They’re still not sure how many.”

  “Shit! That’s considered an act of war against America. We have a defense pact with Taiwan. An attack on one is an attack on the other. Has Taiwan retaliated?”

  She shook her head. “No. Not yet. What do you think they’ll do?”

  “Not a helluva lot without America,” Jake postulated. “Most of their systems are defensive in nature. My guess is the U.S. will position a carrier group somewhere near Taiwan.”

  “It’s moving up the South China Sea from Japan now,” she said.

  “China wouldn’t dare attack our carrier directly. I think both sides will try to find a way to save face. But this is definitely a bold move by China. It might be a test. A precursor of things to come. It’s like chess, where you move a bishop out to see how your opponent will react. If he counter attacks, you can simply slide the bishop back to a safe spot.”

  “How does this impact our search for Bill Remington?” she wanted to know.

  “Good question. Knowing Remington, he would not be anywhere near Taiwan at this time. He could get hurt there.”

  “What about mainland China?”

  “That would be too obvious. No, Remington likes to play games. Most of his time in the Agency was spent here in Asia. He spent the most time in Taiwan, which was one of the reasons I went there first. But he would also know that I know that.”

  “And Singapore?”

  “He did two years here in his early career.”

  “Where else?”

  “He spent some time in Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand. Those were his main areas of specialty. His first wife was Thai. She came from a politically-connected family.”

  “They’re divorced now?”

  “No. She died in a car accident, leaving Remington with two small children. The children are grown now and out of college. Both are under FBI surveillance in case Remington tries to contact them.”

  “You said first wife. Did he have a second?”

  “Yeah. She divorced him after finding out he was sleeping with an Asian woman.”

  “So the second wife wasn’t Asian.”

  “No. French Canadian. But the FBI is still checking up on her.”

  Alexandra closed the laptop. “Okay. Remington has a thing for Asian women. That’s why we’re here.”

  “Mostly. But Singapore has an extradition agreement with the U.S. I stopped here for two reasons. One, he had a bank account here, which the Agency froze. But I still have an appointment to talk with his banker this morning.”

  “And the second reason?”

  “Remington still has a lot of friends here, as we found out from last night. By exposing myself here, he can make a move on me.”

  “Wait. You’re setting yourself up? That’s crazy.”

  Jake laughed. “If I tried to find him the traditional way, I would be looking for the rest of my life. He’s got the ability to change his appearance and identity, and the money to stash himself just about anywhere. He’ll use cash exclusively. Now, he could have already bought a penthouse condo in downtown Singapore, but I doubt it. My guess is he’ll end up in one of two countries. Cambodia or Vietnam. Neither has an extradition treaty with the U.S.”

  “Why not go there first, then?”

  “Because I can’t extradite him from those countries. I need to draw him out. We’ve frozen his account here, but I still think he’ll find a way to get his money.” Jake got up from the bed and went over to the guns, picking up one and sliding it into a thin holster at the small of his back. He covered that with a light tropical shirt.

  “What happens if the local police catch us with guns in Singapore?” she asked, and then picked up her own weapon.

  Jake shoved an extra magazine into a cargo pocket on the side of his leg. “I don’t think we want to find out. They’ll probably cane our asses and then throw us in jail and throw away the key.”

  She shook her head. “I just looked it up on the net. It’s six strokes of the cane and five to ten years for possession of an illegal firearm. If you use it you get the death penalty.”

  Jake gave a little whistle. “I guess we’re already guilty of that. Let’s not get caught.”

  “Hey, I’m still officially on active duty with the BND,” she said with a wry smile.

  “True. But someone there might have sold you out to the Chinese. I’m not sure I would trust them to come to your rescue.”

  Alexandra slung a small leather purse across her shoulder, the strap slid right between both of her breasts. Then she put her gun into the purse and found a spot in an inner pouch for an additional magazine.

  “You have a point, Mister Sunshine,” Alexandra agreed. “Do you think the banker will try to shoot us?”

  “No, but I specifically made an appointment with the banker, hoping he would pass the message on to Remington. So I expect him to send someone to take me out.”

  She shook her head. “Wonderful. Here we go again, Jake.”

  After locking up the laptop in the safe, they left the room and headed to the elevators.

  10

  Jake went into the main branch of the Indo-Malay Bank alone, leaving Alexandra outside to watch his back. As he walked through the massive lobby with high ceilings, he could feel the rub of the gun at his back. It was an uncomfortable location for him to carry a concealed handgun. He preferred to carry it under his left arm or on his right hip. But he had no choice now in this hot climate, where a concealing jacket would be out of place.

  He kept his eyes open for any sign of the people who had shot at him last night. The woman would be easy to remember, but the remaining man would not. He had only caught a quick glimpse of the guy as he approached from behind Alexandra.

  The bank manager was a man of Indian descent named Ravi Singh. He was a slight man with tiny hands. If the man had shaved that morning, then his beard grew really fast. Jake had given the man his real first name when he set up the appointment, wanting to make sure this man passed that on to Bill Remington. But Remington would know that Jake would use a fictitious last name, which he did. He was now Jake Jones, with an American passport to match.

  They took seats in the inner office with a grand view of the lobby through tall windows.

  “Please explain your relationship with Mister Bill Remington,” the bank manager asked.

  “As I said on the phone, our government is very interested in finding Mister Remington.”

  “With which organization in the government do you work?”

  This was normally where Jake would reach across the desk and grab the son of a bitch by the throat and let the man know who was in charge of the questions. But he took the high road for now.

  Jake said coyly, “Let’s just say I’m a concerned citizen with enough authority to continue freezing Remington’s account here. And if my investigation warrants, I’ll have this bank audited by a dozen international organizations by tomorrow. You’ll either be in jail or selling curry kabobs at a kiosk outside Universal Studios at Sentosa. Is that clear enough for you, Mister Singh?”

  The bank manager kept looking out to the lobby, as if he were looking for someone in particular.

  Finally, Singh nodded his head. “How may I help you?”

&
nbsp; Good. Jake had softened him up for a frontal attack. “All right. We have frozen his assets at this bank, but I’m guessing Remington would have anticipated that. I’ll bet he has other assets here. Perhaps in a safe deposit box.” Jake was just fishing for a response.

  It worked. The bank manager visibly gulped.

  Jake continued, “I’ll take that as a yes. So, let’s say Remington can’t come here himself to pick clean his safe deposit box. He would have trusted someone here to bring him his money.”

  “That’s not a service we provide,” Singh said, his hands up in protest.

  “Sure, not normally. But Remington can be very persuasive.” So could Jake, and he guessed now he would have to become a bit more severe with his questioning.

  ●

  When Alexandra first saw the woman walking down the sidewalk after getting out of the taxi, she wasn’t a hundred percent sure that it was the same woman from the night before. The woman last night had seemed to simply linger in the background, letting her two male counterparts do all the shooting. The Asian woman was again wearing black from top to bottom, but her hair was slicked back with jell. She appeared to be alone this time.

  Alexandra timed her approach perfectly. The two of them met where a small service alley divided the bank from a row of other tall buildings. With one swift move, Alexandra pulled the Asian woman into the alley.

  The response was immediate. The two of them went into an instant fight with punches, blocks, kicks and counter attacks. The smaller woman had some major martial arts skills, but Alexandra held her own. And the German had superior size and strength. In just a few minutes, Alexandra had the woman in a sleeper hold and had backed up behind a trash dumpster.

  Once the Asian woman passed out, Alexandra checked her for identification and weapons. First she found the silenced .22 in an inside jacket pocket. She quickly took the gun apart and threw most of it into the dumpster, only keeping the upper receiver. She could dispose of that later. Then she found the woman’s passport. It was from Thailand. Interesting.

  As the woman started to wake up, Alexandra looked around the dumpster for any danger. All she saw was the occasional pedestrian on the sidewalk. But she couldn’t wait here forever. The woman started to sit up, so Alexandra punched her in the jaw, knocking her out again.