The Kiss of the Dragon

by Lilburne, Guy

  “Please Mr. O’Brien, take a seat.”

  “Thanks.” Danny sat down and Sak settled back behind his huge desk.

  “I am very intrigued, Mr. O’Brien. Why would MI5 come to see me?”

  “I want you to tell me about Jack Morgan.”

  Sak tried to keep a cool veneer, but this big man sitting at his desk stared right into his soul. His piercing blue eyes were hard to look into, but impossible to look away from. He had no smile, just a battered face that knew no fear. Sak desperately wanted to know how much the British Government knew about his operations. The silence started to get too long to be comfortable.

  “And why would I know anything about Jack Morgan?” Sak tried to keep a smile, but it was getting more and more difficult by the second.

  “Jesus! You’re going to feck me around, are you? I was hoping we could have a little chat and both end up happy with the outcome. You are in deep, deep shite and I am the only person who can make it go away. You really don’t want to piss me off Sak.”

  Sak gulped hard. He knew that Danny still had him in his stare and would have seen it. Sak started to sense that not everything was what it seemed with Danny O’Brien. He felt fear rising in his body.

  “I do not understand, Mr. O’Brien. Do your government officials usually talk to people in this manner?”

  “Will you kop yerself on, Sak?” Danny took the gun from the back of his waistband and slammed it on the desk. Now the rising fear in Sak turned to panic. He knew he had been caught with his guard down and he knew that he was in immediate danger.

  “I’m no more a fecking secret agent then you are a business man. You’re in the shite and I can get you out of it. But you have got to stop fecking around with me. I’m not MI5, but they are not far behind me. Be smart Sak. You do not want anybody official looking very closely at you or your businesses. I am not interested in what you buy and sell and I’m not interested in who you traffic. I have been asked to find Jack Morgan. I have found out that I am not the only person who wants to find him. The other people are a lot more scary then me. Now, I don’t want to hurt anyone, but I haven’t got time to play games. I know you had his bar off him and sold it to your aunt, Fon. I know all about the crocodile farm in Khanchanaburi. I know all about the precious stones and opium smuggling. I know all about you, but do you know what Sak? I am not fecking interested. The only thing I want to know about is Jack Morgan. You have to make a decision and make it fast. It might make the difference between all your problems disappearing, or your entire world coming crashing down around you. Stop fecking around and tell me about Jack Morgan, and then me and all the other people who want him will not be bothering with you.”

  Sak could not hide the fear in his face. He had no idea how Danny knew so much about him, how he had managed to trace him or find out about Captain Morgan’s Bar. He did not want anybody official looking too closely at him or his businesses. He already had a big budget for paying off the police, as and when he needed to. He knew that if governments were involved, either Thai or foreign, then it was going to be outside of his capability to pay them off.

  “I’m fecking waiting” snarled Danny.

  “I’m afraid you won’t be able to find Jack Morgan. He is dead.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “I did not kill him.”

  He looked at Danny for a reaction, but there was none.

  “I did not kill him. Do you believe me Mr. O’Brien?”

  “You know who did though Sak, and I am getting tired of waiting to hear the story.”

  “Yes, I know who did. But it would be very dangerous for me to tell you.”

  “It is more dangerous if you don’t. Now tell me about Jack Morgan.”

  “Jack Morgan was a farang. I met him by accident really. It was in a nightclub here in Bangkok. He was paying for a lot of girls and he was buying a lot of drinks. He was the life and soul of the party and engaged with our group. He told me about the bars he owned around Bangkok, Pattaya and Patong. He also told me about his business interests back in the UK and in America. He was not happy about how much he was paying for the heroin that he was moving. Because of the big amounts he spoke about and his easy manner, we got speaking. I told him that I could probably help with the demand and supply, and at the right price. I arranged a meeting the next day and we stayed in the club and had drinks. Too many drinks. I had a number of staff with me. Bodyguards, I think you would call them. The atmosphere was a happy one and I liked my new business friend. I told him about another business acquaintance I had; a big Chinese man called Wong. About all the contacts we had between us all over Europe and America, a network of Chinese and Thai Restaurants, who helped us distribute ‘goods’. I had taken my laptop with me Mr. O’Brien. There were a lot of very sensitive things on my laptop; addresses, names, contacts, phone numbers, email addresses, figures, supplies and goods. A lot of my business interests and a lot of Wong’s. When Jack Morgan left the club nobody paid any attention. He had stolen my laptop. Unfortunately, nobody noticed until the next day. When I checked, none of my staff had it and it had not been left at the club. I tried to trace Jack Morgan, but everything he had told me had been lies. He had no bars and no businesses. Well, except for Captain Morgan’s Bar in Patong, and that was not worth anything. Everything he had said was just nonsense. He had taken me in, but worst of all, he had stolen my laptop. I was hoping to sort it out myself and was hoping that I would not have to tell Wong. But he found out for himself very quickly. Jack Morgan started contacting all the people on the laptop and negotiating special rates with them. A lot of people snapped at the amazing prices and quantities that he quoted. A lot did not and contacted Wong’s people to see what was going on. Enough took up his offers and transferred huge quantities of money. Morgan also had enough information on the laptop to have the wrong people collect the goods and distribute them where he told them too. They did not know it was not a directive from Wong. So you see, Jack Morgan was just a thief, who suddenly had an opportunity to steal a large amount of Mr. Wong’s ‘goods’ and a lot of his money. I do not think Jack Morgan thought it through, or at least he had no idea who Wong was. Jack Morgan was a dead man as soon as he stole that laptop. Now, I owe Wong a lot of money. The theft by Jack Morgan is down to me. Wong had sent messages to Jack Morgan on my laptop and, when Jack Morgan replied to one of the messages after a few weeks, and agreed to make a meeting with Wong to sort things out, he virtually signed his own death warrant. When I heard of the planned meeting I went to stop it, because I knew that Wong would kill him. I thought that there might be a better way to try and recover what he had stolen. I was too late, and by the time I had arrived at the crocodile farm, Jack Morgan was already dead and being fed to the crocodiles. Wong had pulled out his three gold teeth with a pair of pliers while he was still alive. He put them on a Buddha necklace and he wears them, even now, around his neck. He used my auntie’s farm to dispose of Jack Morgan. I have lost a lot of face to Wong, and even now things are very difficult between us. Wong has established control again over the distribution network, but a lot of people lost out on a lot of money and goods. A few made money and got goods very cheap. This caused problems, but they have all been sorted out now.”

  “Sorted out, because people have been killed. You have caused a global gang drug war.”

  “I think that is a slight exaggeration Mr. O’Brien. And I did not cause it. Jack Morgan has the blood of all these people on his hands, but now, he too has paid the price.”

  “Who is Wong?”

  “If you go after Wong, you will meet the same fate as Jack Morgan.”

  “Let me worry about that. Who is he?”

  “Wong is a Chinese man. What you would call a gangster. His brother is a member of the Chinese Government. He has business premises here in Bangkok.”

  “Where?”

  “He m
ight not be there. He rarely is.”

  “Give me the address.”

  “It’s in China Town, down by the river near one of the piers. It‘s at the end of Ratchawong Road.”

  “Write it down for me.”

  Sak was starting to relax slightly, but his hand was still shaking when he wrote.

  “So, if he isn’t there Sak, where will I find him?”

  “He has his base up near Nong Khai, along the Mekong river. If things would ever get too difficult for him, then he can just cross the Mekong into Laos. It is up in the hills. I have never been there. I believe he has factories there and operates his exports from there.”

  “Heroin?”

  “And people. Girls are trafficked to Europe and America for the sex trade. It is not a business that I agree with.”

  “Jesus!”

  “You realise Mr. O’Brien, now that I have told you this, someone is going to die? Either you or me or Wong. Maybe all of us. This will not end well.”

  “It might end better for you than you think. If I can get to the bottom of the missing Jack Morgan, then I don’t think anyone else is going to bother with you.”

  “Wong will bother. He is a dangerous man Mr. O’Brien.”

  “So am I.”

  Danny stood up, tucked the gun back inside his waistband and turned to walk out of the office.

  “Mr. O’Brien, If I am the gangster that you think I am, then you must realise I would be able to have you killed before you even got back down to the street. If I was such a gangster, then what would stop me from doing this?”

  “I can get your laptop back.”

  Danny left the office.

  He made his way to the lift, past the reception staff and two maintenance men in blue overalls replacing one of the lights. It was a couple of minutes by the time he got a lift and travelled back down to the main reception. The two maintenance men folded up the ladder and carried it into Sak’s office. Sak looked up, disturbed by the two men in his office.

  “What are you doing in here?” he demanded.

  The nearest man to him swung the metal ladder and crashed it across Sak’s head, sending him to the floor.

  Danny stepped out into the hot Bangkok sun and Nok smiled and waved to him from across the Road.

  The smash of the taxi windscreen and the screech of brakes stopped everyone in the street. The bonnet was crumpled. The smashed, lifeless body of Sak Wannadee was on top of it, just yards away from Danny.

  “Jesus!”

  He crossed over the road to Nok.

  “Come on. Let’s get out of here.”

  They disappeared into the crowd.

  Chapter 44: Ticky’s tears

  Ticky did not know if it was daytime or nighttime. The room in which she was kept had no window. Her only light was the low glow of the lamp, which came on just before any men came into her room. She was kept naked and in the dark. She did not know how many days she had been there. She did not know how many men had come into her gloomy room and hurt her. Nobody smiled at her. Nobody talked to her. Nobody loved her.

  She knew that she was not the only girl being held in this place. She could hear others. They were not talking, but there were sounds; sounds of the men coming and going, sounds of crying, sometimes the sounds of a beating. Sometimes there was just the sound of one of the girls coughing, which never seemed to stop.

  There was no TV, no magazines; there was nothing. Just the dark and the sounds Ticky knew, which meant that somebody was coming to her. There was the sound of a heavy bolt being slid open, then the sounds of two sets of footsteps coming up the stairs. She knew every creak of every step. Then the lamp in her room would come on as she heard the two locks on her door being opened, and the chain being taken off.

  Her keeper, a middle aged Chinese man, would show in the customer and then leave again. Ticky always had the same wish, that this customer would not hurt her. When the customer left, her keeper would come and take her out of the room and into a bathroom, with no door across the corridor. He would stand and watch her use the toilet and shower and then take her back to her room. There were another three locked bedroom doors on her landing. She did not know how many floors the building had. She could just remember that she was brought up a lot of stairs when she was first brought here. Maybe she might sleep now. Ticky slept when she could, when the lamp went off. Sometimes, it was just for a few hours. Sometimes it was longer.

  Sometimes she could not sleep at all. Ticky cried a lot, but Ticky’s tears were silent. She was tired of the beatings and the rapes.

  Chapter 45: The News

  Within hours of the death of Sak Wannadee, a story was printed in The South China Post, published in Hong Kong.

  Headline. ‘British Secret Service Implicated in Killing of Thai Drug Lord.’

  The story went on to name the secret service agent as Danny O’Brien, and posed three questions. Why are MI5 operating in Thailand? Is the CIA also running operations in Thailand? What is the Thai government going to do?

  Within two hours the story was being aired on every TV news channel around the world. The British Foreign secretary was quick to appear on the BBC early morning news, with a total denial of any knowledge of Danny O’Brien. He said live on TV that they had no agent called Danny O’Brien and that nobody in MI5 was running any operations in Thailand. He had personally rung the Thai Foreign Secretary to assure him that this was a ‘Red Herring’, a total ‘non story,’ He had offered any assistance required by the Thai Government to get to the bottom of the death of Mr. Sak Wannadee.

  The Whitehouse also issued a public denial that they had any agents operating without the proper authority in Thailand.

  The world’s media was all over the story. Stories of secret agents and murders grabbed public attention. The story was being carefully fuelled and manipulated to cause maximum embarrassment to both the British and American governments. Further leaks were made to the press that the Mazda pickup truck, which was blown up in Bangkok, was hired by Danny O’Brien in Phuket, and the unidentified foreigner, who was killed in the blast, was CIA special agent Bradley Kuikski. Photos of Danny O’Brien entering and leaving the British Embassy, and a photograph of the MI5 identity card he used to get into the Wannadee Corporation Head Office, were also leaked.

  Downing Street and the Whitehouse both issued further denials and the Prime Minister and the President were speaking to each other on the phone. Neither of them had sanctioned any operations. Behind the scenes on both sides of the Atlantic there was a mad scramble being made to find out who had. The men who had were in the same scramble to cover it up, were withdrawing the agents involved and distancing themselves. In the words of the American President,

  “The shit has really hit the fan.”

  In Thailand, the government simply said that they would not comment until they had received an explanation and an apology from the British and American governments for any illegal operations that they may be running on Thai soil. After that they kept a dignified silence.

  As soon as Danny and Nok saw the story on the BBC world news, they left the hotel and headed back to the grubby little Dtoi Hotel near Khaosan Road. At least there, nobody would pay them any attention. Danny kept running things over in his mind, but he did not have the answers. He knew that there were some major forces at work here. Some big players. But who were they and who were they playing for? Who would have access to leak the information that they had leaked, and the skill to drip it the way they did, catching the British and the Americans with their pants down. Most of all he was asking himself ‘How the hell did I get involved in all this?’

  “Tee rak, what we do now?”

  “I am just thinking about it, Nok.”

  “You think we better go to police now?”

  “Jesus Christ Mother of God! No! It is
being broadcast all over the world that I have just killed a man. We can’t go to the police Nok. Something is going on here, but I don’t know what. Whoever leaked all this stuff would know that it wasn’t me who threw Sak Wannadee off the building. But they chose not to leak that, because it obviously suits them to let everybody think that it was me and the British government who were responsible, and that somehow the CIA are involved. I don’t really know what is going on here yet, but I’m going to carry on and find out. Nok, I think it might be better if you go back home to Surat Thani.”

  “No tee rak. I stay with you. You need my help and I am good detective now. I am not afraid, I same same you. I tough old bastard. And, after this all finish, I open up detective business, make a lot of money.”

  “Yes, you told me” Danny laughed. He held out his arms and gave Nok a hug. She was right, he did need her help. She had been brilliant so far.

  Nok was happy being held in a hug in Danny’s arms, but she still whispered the question. “What we do now, tee rak?”

  “We go to find a big Chinaman called Wong. There can’t be that many Chinese people called Wong. How difficult can it be?”

  “Tee rak, many persons called Wong,” Nok did not realise that Danny was joking, which made it even more funny. When Danny started laughing so did Nok, which made Danny laugh even louder. Nok had never seen him really laugh before. He looked handsome when he laughed.

  Nok went out to the market and came back with sunglasses, scissors and hair dye to change Danny’s appearance. With his greying hair now cut short, dyed black and wearing sunglasses, he looked different. He looked ridiculous. He looked like an old man trying to look younger, walking around with a pretty Thai girl more than half his age. He fitted in perfectly. They walked to China Town, confident that they were virtually unrecognisable and impossible to be identified in the crowd. Impossible that is, except for the Asian men who had been following them since Khanchanaburi. Danny walked slowly and conducted anti-surveillance; putting in lots of loops (doubling back in a big or little circle to see who is coming towards you, and again if they also circle), and choke points (going through a narrow point like a bridge or an alley or even a doorway, and then watching to see who else comes through the choke point after you. Nine times out of ten this will identify a tail)