The Dragon's Tale: A Jack Lauder Thriller

by Clive Hindle

  "See if I care," he said petulantly.

  "Oh yeah, see if you care." She released the pressure of her arm and with one lithe, feline movement, arched her back until she was suspended over his head, daring him to retain his spoilt mood. He couldn't but she seemed surprised he had the energy to enjoy her twice. She slapped him on the shoulder afterwards. "How did you do that?"

  "Well, back in Shields it's nothing startling."

  "You're kidding!" she replied, "you mean there's a race of supermen down there by the Tyne and no one in the world's alive to it? God preserve us from the Geordies!"

  “It’ll take more than one God.”

  Later, as he lay on the bed reading a book, she was keeping up an endless prattle from the bath. He was about to say he was trying to read when she said, "Did you notice that manager flinch when we talked about Gerry?"

  "Now you come to mention it, I did notice he seemed a touch rattled at one stage. I couldn't figure out why he was being so attentive, though, and I just put it down to Russian hospitality. I musn't have been paying proper attention."

  "Think about it. We go to the police station where you use all your naked charm to prise some information from the Chief of Police and get precisely nowhere, though the truth is you hit a nerve."

  "Did I?"

  "For sure, and you did the same with the manager here. They remember Gerry all right. I think he's still here, I think he found the girl and he's working out now how to get her out. He's obviously fallen for her in a big way. Bit like you with me."

  "Don't flatter yourself."

  She laughed gaily. "Liar! Do you want to rub my back?"

  "Not particularly, but if I have to."

  He got up dutifully and went through to the bathroom. "So what then?" he asked soaping her ivory back and enjoying the silky feel of her skin. "Do you think he struck a deal with the local Mafia?"

  "Bound to have. He wouldn't have raised all that money if he hadn't. He must have known the deal before he got here."

  "Right. Then what?"

  "Well, what would he want to do next?" she said.

  "Difficult for her to get into Hong Kong. Presumably he'd want to go back there because it's the only place he can earn big money. He might try and get her a forged passport I suppose."

  "Use your head, Jack! There's an easier way than that to get her into Hong Kong."

  "Like what?"

  She was looking over her shoulder at him in that infuriating way, saying, "Come on, come on," coaxing him to extend himself. She could be very patronising.

  "Ah!" he said as the penny dropped, "they could get married!"

  She clapped her hands. Then she was serious again, "It surely can't take that much to fix up a marriage ceremony here, even if you are a foreigner. Presumably it's a little more relaxed than it used to be?"

  Jack wasn't so sure about that. It should be with perestroika and glasnost and all that new Russian bonhomie embracing McDonald's and Pizza Hut and the all-American way of life, but old habits die hard and he doubted if the new bosses in the Kremlin had totally relaxed their control over their nationals.

  Diana was certain Gerry and his woman hadn't had enough time to get away yet. The knot would have to be tied first because he'd have difficulty getting her out anywhere else otherwise. They'd have to give some kind of notice to get married and then they’d have to get her a passport sufficient to get by Immigration in a place like Hong Kong. That would take time. She seemed quite excited by it all and he just couldn‘t fathom why. "He's still here," she said, "we might even have time to attend the wedding!"

  That was just the sort of sentimental idea a woman would have but he couldn‘t help but feel there was something else driving it. Was she still bearing a grudge? That affected him in a way he couldn‘t quite fathom until he realised it made him jealous because she was still carrying a bit of a torch for his old mate. He challenged her with it.

  “Don’t be daft!” she replied but maybe with a little too much protest, unless that was his imagination. Still, old Gerry getting married. Now there was a turn up for the book. Yes, Jack would like to be present for that one. “You can use both hands,” she added, “round the front, too. Don’t miss those puppies out.”

  CHAPTER 3

  He had one of those nights where he went off into a deep sleep and then some trigger in his head woke him up in the early hours. Within seconds he was alert to all the sounds of the city. He always found it amazing how cities never slept, how when those who live in realms of day are tucked up in bed, the denizens of the dark come out, the street cleaners, the garbage disposers, and the dwellers in the pleasure dome of night. He lay there listening to all the rich sounds of the darkness, hearing an animal yelp as it was cornered by some long-fanged predator; the squeal of tyres as some night thief took off, a police siren in hot pursuit; a drunken man and woman hurling abuse at each other. Those hours before dawn, when life is at its lowest ebb, when most deaths occur, when you slip dreamily between wakefulness and death without noticing the difference, brought the telling thoughts, ones which could inspire you for the day ahead or, like an insidious acid, eat away your will to live.

  Jack had a presentiment of impending disaster. The catalyst was the woman who lay by his side. He understood things now of which he'd been only dimly aware before. He had been alone for as long as he could remember. It seemed almost as if he had come into the world alone. Never before had he fully appreciated the immense loneliness of the individual's journey through the universe. Life is a great voyage. You are your own captain. Sometimes you are destined to meet obstacles. It may be that you are part of the obstacle. Did the forces abroad in the Titanic create an iceberg to trip over? What of those souls on board? What confluence of psychic disturbances brought them to that place at that forsaken hour? He was suddenly lost in the question of whether we live or not, whether all is illusion. Can you believe the experience of your senses? Does the objective world exist without you to experience it? Do your fellow creatures exist? He yawned and forced himself up. He looked at his watch. He must have dozed off again. It was gone nine o'clock in the morning. "Got to get on with it," he said.

  "I'm with you all the way, Jack," Diana murmured, sleepily unconvincing.

  It turned out to be an aimless sort of day. It was raining and the sky was a slate grey colour. The streets were rain-swept. People rushed along huddled together beneath drab coloured rainmacs or umbrellas. Diana and Jack wandered here and there. Enquiries at the city hall met with blank, unhelpful faces. The natives had too much on their minds to help find a missing Australian. Perestroika and, in particular, democracy wasn’t turning out as all it had been cracked up to be and the president’s reassurances were beginning to wear thin. Yeltsin himself was looking old, worn and perpetually drunk. He had lost his grip. Having come to power on a wave of popularity it had quickly dissipated with the enormity of the task in hand and the absence of any quick fix and had then disappeared altogether with the Chechen wars, which had only recently ended in an uneasy truce. The Moscow metro had been bombed the previous year with four people killed and it looked very much as if the peace wouldn’t hold and that Russia might be in line for a wave of terror. The fear was that this would see the Communist regime returned to power by the back door.

  Around eight in the evening, dispirited, they began to walk back to the hotel. Jack racked his brains to think of some way of changing the flow, getting them out of this negative current. They crossed the busy street when the lights changed. A car screeched to a halt and a man leaned out.

  "Hey English!" he yelled, "you want taxi?"

  Jack recognised the fruitcake of a taxi driver. "You must be joking," he replied, "I’ve been in your cab before. You think I'm crazy enough to get in again?"

  "No thank you, sir," Diana translated, "not after our earlier misunderstanding."

  "Hey, I told you that was mistake. I didn't realise you were good man, English. Hey, me Rudi by the way!"

  Diana seldom
left home without her wits. "Rudi, where would your average tourist take a local girl in this city?"

  "Hey, for sure, the Green Lantern!”

  "What's that, a night-club?"

  "Sure, it's a night-club."

  "Okay," she said, "you can take us there. The direct route, and no cheating."

  "No problem.”

  They climbed in the car. The driver set off like a stock car racer, swerving into the traffic, hanging out of his window and uttering a stream of abuse at every road user with right of way. He flashed a grin in the mirror as he drove through the corkscrew streets up into the centre of the city. "So what you want with local girl when you got one like this?" he asked Jack, clearly confused by the message Diana had given him. She translated with a grin on her face.

  "No," Jack said, "you’ve misunderstood. We're looking for a friend of mine who came here to see a local girl."

  "Oh yeah, friend of yours with local girl. Where'd he meet her?"

  Diana was trying to keep up a two-way commentary, "In Macao."

  "Oh yeah, one of those girls, eh? He took her for a ride. He the driver, she the taxi, yes?" He laughed crudely at his own joke.

  "Maybe this relationship is different?" Diana said.

  The driver swore, "Once a whore, always a whore. But I tell you, this friend of yours, if he is with one of those girls, he is not safe. Those girls are owned by the mob, English. These are not like other gangsters. These men used to be KGB. Once they murdered people for the State and now they murder for themselves." Diana translated all this slowly, making sure it would sink in. “I will take you somewhere these girls go. No problem. If one of them has a rich western lover the others will know."

  "That's the answer," Jack said. Why hadn’t he thought of it before?

  Despite Diana’s insistence on the direct route they got a conducted tour of the city. The name Vladivostok translates as "The Lord of the East" but at first sight it appeared more of a foundling. The locals were fond of calling it the San Francisco of Russia. It had the hills, the bay, a sea fret, which even Whitley Bay would have been proud of, and the gangsters. Apart from that it was probably nearer Sunderland than San Francisco. No one knew a great deal about it. The home of the former Soviet Union's Pacific Fleet was opened to foreigners for the first time in the 1990s. It was the home also of Russia's Pacific Fishing Fleet. It should have been an idyllic spot. The terrace of hills running down to the Pacific was a property developer's dream but the city boasted some of the ugliest concrete monoliths the old Soviet Union had to offer.

  There are places in the world’s cities where the girls who have grown too old for the tourist trade wind up. Women who look as if they've not seen their sixties for a good twenty years plaster themselves with make up and strut their stuff for anyone desperate enough to take a chance on the worst diseases known to civilisation. Vladivostok was no different. They'd been round a few of the bars where the local brass hung out but contrary to Rudi's expectations they'd got nowhere. Then he came up with the memory of a bar down the waterfront where girls who'd done a stint in Macao went.

  They stood outside the quayside bar listening to the sound of revelry within. A couple of sleepy-eyed ruffians of North Korean extraction appraised them from across the street. "Here goes," Jack said and he pushed open the door. The bar was crowded. It was one big room with cheap wooden furniture, spit and sawdust style. Men sat around as if they'd been in the same positions for years. Jack forced his way to the bar while the hubbub went uncannily silent and the pub's occupants eyed them curiously. He ordered drinks. Even Rudi was taking vodka. He'd been all right in the bars and night-clubs off the Svetlanskaya but here he was out of his depth. It showed in the way he gulped back his drink.

  Jack had managed to get Diana kidded on he was famous wherever he went. “The Stones and the Royal Family have nothing on me,” he said. “I can walk into any of the great cities of the world and be recognised.”

  “Pull the other one,” she said dismissively and she translated it for Rudi, the driver, and he laughed cynically, but it was true. How many ordinary Englishmen could walk into a smoky bar in downtown Vladivostok, hear a cheerful shout from across the other side of the room and suddenly be surrounded by Russians clamouring to buy him a beer? Jack scanned the bar anxiously for anyone who dimly resembled a good time girl from Macao. There were one or two candidates. He'd just remarked on this to Diana when a shout from the other side of the long counter proved all his kidding true. “I could have sworn I heard your name called,” Diana said.

  “Told you,” he replied.

  “Yeah, in your dreams!”

  "Jack! Jack Lauder!"

  Jack held up his hands and gave Peter a triumphant wave. Diana looked at him askance. The tall, dark figure pushed his way through the throng to get to them. Suddenly he was on top of Jack, pumping his hand like a long lost friend, while Diana and Rudi gaped in astonishment.

  "What brought you to this god-forsaken watering hole?" Peter said, "This is a dangerous place my friend, but, never mind, you are safe with me. Who are these people?" Jack introduced him to Diana.

  "Che be'a," he said.

  "She understands Russian," Jack said.

  "She understands Italian too," Diana replied, holding out her hand to the Russian sea captain.

  Peter shouted out something Jack couldn't quite catch, a mighty cheer went up, and suddenly back-slapping Russians surrounded him. "You are a total mystery, Jack," Diana said, "they broke the mould when they made you.” Much to the general hilarity of all she cuffed him round the head and when he’d returned to this week he found himself accepting cold beers from generous Cossacks. Unfortunately when they discovered she could speak the language Diana quickly usurped him as the centre of attention. Even Rudi was basking in the reflected glory as he told new friends of his adventures with the mad English in Vladivostok.

  Peter dragged Jack to one side. "It's good to see you Jack," he said, "although I didn't expect ever to see you again. You must come to my home and meet my family. We all owe you a great debt."

  Jack shrugged. "Not so, I just did my job.”

  “There is no just with people like you, Jack. Some people go the extra mile.”

  He shrugged, embarrassed. “I hope everything goes well with you now?"

  "Yes," he said, "things are looking up. The case in your country did me good because I became a figure for propaganda here. I am a skipper now with the Far Eastern Shipping Company. I captain the Nigata Ferry."

  "So no more fishing eh?"

  "No, no more fishing. These jobs become available once in a lifetime and if you keep your hands clean they are yours for life - barring revolutions that is, which in this country is..." He shrugged.

  Jack explained their reason for being in Russia and Peter’s eyes grew wider as they talked. "But I can help you with this," he replied. "I know many of these girls, not professionally, you understand,” and he gave Jack a sly dig in the ribs, “but because many cross on the ferry to China. It is not possible to get into Macao by air. The Hong Kong authorities will not let these girls in and they run considerable risks crossing China, although many do go by train. It is not unusual for them to go all the way or part of it by sea. Some of these girls come from respectable families, you know. There is nothing strange about this trade in the history of Russia. Our women have long been prized in the East for the fairness of their skin, from the seraglios of Persia to Beijing. Many are following in the footsteps of their mothers and grandmothers. There is a girl in here now, her name is Ludmilla. She is not long back from China. I will introduce you."

  It took Jack a few moments to explain the situation to Diana and she took her leave of her admirers, dispensing kisses like confetti. Ludmilla, a platinum blond, was pretty enough. Some might have called her beautiful and she had all the right features. Just a sullen cast to the eyes and forehead, and a sulky curl to the lips detracted from her good looks. Far from resenting Diana, she basked in her attention. Peter told
the girl about their mission and then both he and Jack looked on as the two of them switched into women’s talk. They rattled away thirteen to the dozen and Diana was elated. Peter dug Jack in the ribs as if in congratulation and, like many an Englishman before him, he was annoyed with his lack of facility with languages. Diana borrowed a pen and paper and handed them to Ludmilla. She began to write. "What's going on?" Jack asked Diana during this intermission.

  "She knows them. The girl is called Natalia Samosalova, she was thrown out of Macao because she found a sugar-daddy, a wealthy westerner and she stopped working for the Triad bosses. They revoked her work permit so she had to return home. Apparently the Westerner was going to follow her, he was going to buy her out of her bondage. It's something all the girls dream of happening to them. Anyway, no one believed her, they thought it was just a pipe dream. They all say they told her not to be silly, but it turned out it was true. The guy was as good as his word. He did come over. She's not heard what's happened though because she's been away in Macao herself and only got back yesterday."