Dead of Night

by Michael Stanley

  He listened again. ‘I can’t do that. I have two big customers coming this morning. If I’m not here, they’ll go somewhere else.’ He started pacing around the small shop. ‘Yes. Yes. All right. Right away.’

  He hung up and turned to her. ‘You must go. Now. I have a meeting I must go to.’ He herded her to the door.

  ‘Can I come back and talk to you?’

  ‘No. I have nothing more to say. Goodbye.’ He pushed her out of the door.

  There was nothing she could do. She left, but she was determined that this wasn’t the last time she would talk to him. And she’d learned one piece of information – it sounded as though the plan didn’t involve a big kill of rhinos. That was good.

  As she walked along the street, she wondered what she should do. The phone call was clearly something to do with her – or with something she would be interested in. When she reached the end of the block, she pretended to look in a shop window, but kept glancing back at Joe’s shop. Sure enough, after a few minutes she saw Joe locking up. He then headed off in the opposite direction. Crys decided to follow. She knew she was taking a big chance, but this was her only good lead. Everything else led to a dead end. She’d survived hell in South Africa. She was confident she could survive in Vietnam.

  For the next fifteen minutes, she hurried to keep up as Joe rushed through the labyrinth of streets and alleys. Soon she had no idea where she was or where they were headed. But the longer they walked, the fewer shops there were and she realised they’d entered an industrial area.

  Now, there were almost no other people about. She felt her adrenaline level increasing. This was becoming more risky. It was harder and harder to ensure Joe wouldn’t see her if he looked back. She hid behind corners of buildings until he either turned down another road or was far enough away he wouldn’t recognise her. She was both scared she would lose him and scared he would see her. Sweat trickled down her face as she scampered from one hiding place to the next, feeling faintly self-conscious. She wasn’t trained to do this; if anyone was watching her, they’d know she had to be tailing someone.

  Eventually Joe turned down a road and, by the time she’d reached the corner, he was nowhere to be seen.

  She looked down the street. Given the pace he’d been walking, she figured that he could have reached three of the six buildings on the street, but there was no indication of which he’d gone into. She pulled back, out of sight from any of the buildings, and thought about her options.

  The stupid choice was to knock on each of the warehouse doors. The prudent one was to head back to the hotel. But could she risk losing what might be her only chance?

  As she was making up her mind, she heard a door slam shut. Peeking around the corner she saw three men she didn’t recognise walking up the street towards her. She immediately walked away from them. That way, by the time they reached where she’d been hiding, she’d be halfway down the block. Hopefully they would think she was just visiting one of the other warehouses in the area.

  She didn’t look back.

  But as she reached the next cross street, two more men came around the corner, just ahead of her. As she stepped aside to let them pass, she realised that one was Joe.

  He stopped, looking at her, his face a mixture of surprise and anger. She froze for a second, staring into his eyes.

  She spun round to run, but in a flash, he reached out and grabbed her arm. ‘Come with us,’ he said. His grip tightened on her arm till it hurt.

  She tried to shake loose, but he was strong. He just clenched her harder – until she thought her bones would crack.

  ‘Let me go!’ she cried, struggling.

  ‘I told you I had nothing more to tell you.’ He started dragging her along. ‘Now you’ve made my boss mad. He wants to meet you. And you’re not going to like that.’

  She saw that the other three men were now close. ‘Help me!’ she shouted trying again to shake loose from Joe’s grip.

  ‘Please help me,’ she begged.

  The three men stopped.

  One of them laughed. ‘So, this is the stupid American,’ he said in Vietnamese.

  With a lunge, she finally wrenched herself out of Joe’s grasp and tried to bolt away. But there was nowhere to go, and she ran right into the arms of one of the other men.

  ‘I’d like to take her home,’ he said holding her arms to her sides, his hot breath against her face. ‘I can teach her a few things.’

  She struggled some more, her fear skyrocketing.

  Joe grabbed her left arm while the other man held the right and they yanked her along towards one of the warehouses. The pain in her shoulder was excruciating.

  She could hear them joking with each other in Vietnamese about what they’d like to do with her. It was all she could do not to show she understood. Pain lanced through her shoulder. She stopped struggling. There was no point.

  What were they going to do to her?

  She was pushed into a chair in front of an old, metal desk. The chair opposite her was empty.

  Then they waited. The five men stood behind her chatting to each other. None of the talk was about rhinos or South Africa or even about her. It was typical men’s talk – football and, surprisingly, women’s volleyball. But even that was predictable – the discussion focused less on the game and more about how the players would be in bed. She gripped the sides of the chair. How could she get away? The men were between her and the door.

  Suddenly, the talk stopped, and a male voice greeted the men. They responded respectfully. Then, a nondescript, middle-aged man walked around the desk and sat down behind it. He stared at her for several seconds before speaking.

  ‘You cause me big problem,’ he said in heavily accented English. ‘You steal money in South Africa. Now you try to find out about our rhinos.’

  ‘How did—?’ Crys began.

  He opened a drawer, took out a piece of paper, and slid it across the desk towards her. She leaned forwards and picked it up – it was a photo of her, tied to a chair. The chair where Pockface had held her. She didn’t remember him taking the photograph, but then she looked almost unconscious in the picture.

  ‘Hurt?’ asked the man, smiling and pointing at her fingers, which were still strapped together.

  She couldn’t speak.

  ‘We hurt you much more…’ He wasn’t smiling now.

  ‘You are wrong, Mr…?’ He didn’t finish her sentence. ‘I didn’t steal any money from anyone.’

  He ignored that. ‘What you do here now?’ He glared at her. ‘I think you make Ho tell you about me.’

  She shook her head. ‘Ho was dying. He didn’t say anything.’ She turned in the chair and pointed at Joe. ‘I followed him.’

  Nobody said a word, but the man behind the desk didn’t look at all pleased by that news. She looked back at him and tried to sound calm and matter-of-fact, but her hands felt clammy and her pulse was racing.

  ‘I’m writing a story for National Geographic about the killing of rhinos and the smuggling of rhino horns. That’s why I was in South Africa. That’s why I’m here now. I want to speak to everyone involved so people get an accurate picture of what’s happening.’

  ‘Why you follow Joe?’

  ‘I asked him about an operation to kill lots of rhinos in South Africa. He wouldn’t answer me. That’s why I followed him. I want to know more about it. It’s the whole point of my job.’

  ‘Who told you about South Africa?’

  ‘The police in South Africa said they’d heard some rumours.’

  ‘Police very stupid in South Africa. Too difficult to kill many animals. I think you force Ho Van Tan to tell you what money was for before you kill him. He tell you this stupid story to confuse you. He was carrying money for us. He dead now. You kill and steal money!’

  She shook her head. This was even worse than she’d feared. ‘I think Ho was stealing your money. He killed the pilot of the plane. Shot him in the head.’ The words were tumbling out. ‘Then he tried to s
hoot me. But he was injured.’ Desperation popped an idea into her mind. ‘He died in the Land Rover I was driving to take him to hospital.’ The story was close enough to the truth.

  The man frowned. ‘Ho not steal money. Trusted partner.’

  ‘You can believe what you like, but I think he decided to steal from you and hide the money. He didn’t have any money when I found him.’

  The man stared at her for what felt like an age. ‘No. I think you don’t tell the truth. You know where money is. You tell us now or you not happy.’

  ‘I can’t tell you what I don’t know. I’m just a journalist…’

  The man stood up. ‘We find out if you know.’ He nodded at the men behind me.

  She was grabbed by the arms – again wrenching her sore shoulder – and pulled up from the chair. Then they pushed her through a side door into a large room that was obviously a warehouse.

  The boss man walked up to her and stuck his face right in front of hers. ‘I give you fifteen minutes to change your mind. If you don’t tell me where the money is, you will see what we do to people who try to steal from us. Not nice.’

  He turned to Joe and spoke to him in Vietnamese. ‘You showed her the way here. If she doesn’t tell me where the money is, you will make her talk.’

  Joe nodded with a smile. ‘Thank you, Chu Nhan.’

  Crys suppressed a shudder, convinced still that she shouldn’t let them know she understood.

  ‘But if she still doesn’t tell me, you are to blame for this problem.’ Joe’s face fell.

  With that the man walked out, and the others followed, leaving Crys to try to find a way out of the mess she’d got herself into.

  She stood in the middle of the empty room, desperate to find a way out but at a loss what to do. There was another door at the opposite end of the room, so she ran over to it and turned the handle, but, of course, it was locked. She looked around. The only windows were too high to reach. They were near the top of one wall, and the ceiling was about ten metres above her.

  With no escape route, she looked for something she could use as a weapon. The only furniture in the room was a metal chair and an old desk with a lamp with a naked bulb. Apart from that there were only some empty cardboard boxes with MANGOES printed on the outside.

  And her cell phone was in her backpack, which one of the men had ripped from her when they’d dragged her into the building. It was sitting on the boss man’s desk.

  The situation looked pretty hopeless. She shook her head.

  Why didn’t she learn her lesson in South Africa?

  She searched the room again in case she’d missed something. The only thing she found, behind the mango boxes, was an old can of paint and a bottle of what smelt like paraffin with barely any liquid left in it.

  She’d just sat down at the desk when the boss man’s door opened, and he walked in.

  ‘Get up.’

  He held a camera in front of her – her camera. It showed a photograph of her translator.

  ‘Who is this?’

  ‘My translator, Mr Phan Van Minh.’

  ‘How did you find him?’

  ‘Someone from the Department of Intercultural Affairs sent him. He must work for them.’

  He swiped through a few photos, then stopped. ‘And this?’

  ‘He’s the first dealer I spoke to. Mr Le Van Tham. The department arranged my meeting with him too. And I think he arranged for me to speak to his supplier in Saigon Port – Mr Ng.’

  The boss man swiped some more. ‘This him?’

  I nodded.

  ‘And how do you know about Joe?’

  ‘Look, everything I’m doing here has been arranged by the Department of Intercultural Affairs. I don’t know how they chose the people I should meet. I said I wanted to meet different people – dealers, suppliers, importers, people who use rhino horn. Everyone associated with the trade. I assume it’s a legitimate government agency.’

  He stared at her for a few moments. ‘Why no photo of Joe?’ he said at last.

  ‘He told me to leave when I asked him if he’d heard about an operation to kill lots of rhinos in South Africa.’

  He stared at her again and shook his head in disbelief. Then he looked at his watch. ‘Five minutes more, then Joe have some fun.’

  He turned and walked out, and she heard the key turn in the lock.

  So, they definitely weren’t going to kill animals in South Africa. But they were obviously planning something. Perhaps they were going after horn or tusk stockpiles.

  But there was nothing she could do about it. There was no one she could alert.

  In the meantime, she had a more pressing problem. How was she going to stop Joe from beating the life out of her?

  Chapter 30

  By the time Joe walked in, she had come up with a plan, although it wasn’t very solid.

  ‘Please don’t hurt me,’ she pleaded. ‘I’ll tell your boss where the money is.’

  ‘You tell me, then I tell him.’

  She shook her head. ‘I’ll only tell him.’

  He hesitated, chewing his lip, clearly thinking of the consequences for him if she said nothing. He left the room and returned a few moments later with the boss man.

  ‘You have bad men working for you,’ she said.

  The boss man frowned.

  ‘The police put me in jail after Ho died, but your friends from Mozambique bribed a guard to let me out. You know they broke my finger.’ She held up her hand. ‘And that’s when I told them where the money was buried. I didn’t want them to hurt me more. So, they must have the money now. But I didn’t see it because the police came while they were gone and set me free.’

  ‘They say they not find money. You give wrong place.’

  ‘They would say that, wouldn’t they? They wanted to steal the money from you. I heard them say so. I gave them the right location. They would’ve killed me if it was wrong! I think they were working with Ho. Going to steal your money and divide it.’

  The boss man stared at her for a long time. She held her breath. She knew the story was credible. Everyone involved in this business was violent and out for themselves. If they could betray each other, they would.

  At last the boss man turned to Joe and said in Vietnamese, ‘Get food and water for one week. Then lock all the doors. We need to leave now. We’ll talk to her when we get back from South Africa. We can get to the bottom of this story when we meet up with the Portuguese men.’

  Relief washed over Crys, and she started to breathe again. At least she’d bought some time. But now she was a prisoner … again.

  About an hour later, she heard doors banging and a car start up and drive away. She was alone. She had a week to try to figure something out. And she’d learned another important piece of information – the big hit was about to happen – probably on Sunday, just as Pockface had said.

  But, again, there was nothing she could do about it, nobody she could tell. And if she didn’t find a way out of her predicament, she’d be in very big trouble at the end of that week.

  She gave it about fifteen minutes, hoping all the men had left, then she started shouting as loudly as she could in English and in Vietnamese.

  ‘Help! Help me, please!’ She shouted at the two doors; she shouted at all four walls; she shouted at the ceiling.

  There was no response.

  Nor could she hear any voices.

  She walked around again, shouting as loudly as she could. To no avail.

  This was getting her nowhere. She decided to conserve her energy and shout for help again about the time people would be leaving work – around five o’clock, still several hours away.

  She’d be crazy with fear if she was here for a week. The thought chilled her to the core.

  She had to find a way out.

  She closed her eyes and breathed slowly for a few minutes, then started to search every inch of the room for something that could help her to escape.

  But other than the mango boxe
s, ten in number, the can of paint, and the paraffin, there was nothing. And she was going to have to use one or more of the boxes as a toilet, a pretty disgusting thought.

  For food, they’d left her cans of vegetables and cans of fruit, together with ten litres of water in a large, plastic container. There was also a can opener and a single spoon. They weren’t going to help her get out of there.

  She decided the best thing she could do was to centre herself, so she took one of the boxes, separated the glued ends, and created a rudimentary rug on which she could meditate. For the next half hour or so, she stretched and quietly chanted.

  When she’d finished, she opened a can of beans and wolfed it down. Ten minutes later, she’d eaten the whole lot and started on a can of peaches. They were too sweet, but satisfied her hunger. Food out of the way, she settled down to think through her predicament.

  There had to be a way to escape…

  Her first plan was to try to reach the windows high on the wall by stacking the mango boxes on top of each other. She tried standing on one, but it collapsed immediately. In that form, it wasn’t going to work. Knowing triangles made strong structures, she then tried making triangular trusses from the boxes. She could form the triangles, but had nothing to keep them in place, so they also collapsed immediately. She gave up – the boxes weren’t going to be of much use.

  What could she try next?

  She looked around and the windows caught her attention. She wondered if people walked past them. Maybe she could let them know she was inside.

  She decided to try and throw some cans through the windows. She didn’t know whether anyone would see them, but she had to give it a go.

  Crys took a can of peaches and used the can opener to scratch the Vietnamese word for help on both ends. If someone picked it up, she hoped they’d look up and see the broken window. She also hoped they’d see her call for help and act on it.

  When she was finished, she threw the can at the windows, but missed, and it fell back. It took her three more tries before the can broke the glass and disappeared. She could only wait and hope.