Plausible Deniability: The explosive Lex Harper novella

by Stephen Leather

  Still in their garish American style clothes and flanked by the two burly Thai minders, they walked slowly towards the embassy while Harper once more ran counter-surveillance. When he saw Harper approaching, the guard at the gate - obviously now well-briefed - stepped aside and waved them through. As soon as they were inside the embassy, Harper nodded to the two Thai minders, who melted away back into the crowds around the gates. He began to relax as he and the boys passed through the marble lobby and were steered into the room where the HOC was waiting,

  He had greeted Harper without warmth before, but his attitude now changed completely. He shook him by the hand, then turned to the boys, and having checked that their faces matched the photographs on the ID cards, he broke into a broad grin. Ignoring their ridiculous clothes and filthy condition, he embraced them both, pouring out a flood of Arabic and praising Allah for their safe deliverance. Abandoning any thought of further security screening, he immediately ushered the boys and Harper through from the anteroom to a lavishly furnished receiving room, where servants were waiting with mint tea and fresh dates, but the boys were so deep in withdrawal they barely took in their surroundings.

  ‘They need urgent medical help,’ Harper said to the HOC. He nodded and hurried out of the room but when he returned a few moments later it was not with a medic but the ambassador, a tall, overweight figure with a hooked nose and a carefully manicured goatee. The headdress of his flowing white robe was banded with gold, which Harper knew was a sign of high birth.

  The ambassador took the boys’ hands, also praised Allah for their safe return from danger, and then told them they would be able to speak to their fathers by phone very shortly, but the news that their sons had been found had already been communicated to them.

  He then turned to Harper. ‘And what is your role in this, Mr … I’m sorry, I don’t believe I’ve been told your name?’

  ‘Just call me Lex, Mr Ambassador,’ Harper said, ‘but please get some medical help for these boys straight away. They have been through a lot and their troubles are not yet over.’ He pulled up the sleeve of Faisal’s jacket to reveal the track marks on his arm.

  The ambassador’s face darkened, but he picked up a phone at once and barked a series of orders into it. Within moments a couple of embassy underlings ran into the room and began to lead the boys away. Faisal pulled away from them, grabbed Harper’s arm and began to pour out his thanks, but Harper held up a hand to stem the flow and just said, ‘No thanks needed. Just get yourselves well again.’ He thought about giving the boys a hug, but decided protocol required something more formal, so he shook their hands instead.

  Left alone with the ambassador and the HOC, Harper answered a few of their questions and explained some, but only some, of the circumstances by which he’d come to find the boys. When he’d finished, the ambassador fell silent for a moment but then gathered himself, and extended his hand. ‘Not only the boys’ fathers, but the whole kingdom owe you a debt of gratitude,’ he said. ‘How may we contact you, so that we may express our thanks in a suitable way?’

  ‘As I’ve already told your HOC, I didn’t do this for a reward,’ Harper said. ‘I gave our young friends a contact number for me, though I do change my number fairly frequently.’

  The ambassador gave an enigmatic smile. ‘Then we must make sure to use it swiftly. And what kind of work brought you to Thailand?’

  Harper returned the smile. ‘I’m ex-military, now working in the security field.’

  ‘An answer that explains everything and nothing,’ the ambassador said, still with the same smile. ‘But your business is your own affair of course, and I’m just grateful that, thanks to you, the young princes will be restored safely to their families. Insh’Allah, all will be well with them from now on.’

  ‘They were princes?’ asked Harper. ‘They didn’t tell me that.’

  ‘Their fathers teach them at a young age to conceal their royal heritage while overseas. It is safer that way.’

  ‘Was any ransom paid?’ asked Harper.

  The ambassador’s smile snapped off like a light. ‘That is not something I can discuss.’ He paused, gathering his thoughts and when he spoke again, the diplomatic smile was back in place. ‘You understand of course, that such matters are highly confidential. Were it to become known that the Saudi government was willing to pay substantial ransoms for the return of our kidnapped nationals, the number of kidnappings would increase dramatically, I think.’

  ‘I understand completely,’ Harper said.

  The ambassador gave him a thoughtful look. ’Tell me, Lex, are you familiar with the Saudi custom of Honour and Dishonour? Under our customs, bad deeds can lead to blood feuds lasting for generations but by the same token, doing a special favour for a Saudi can lead to a lifelong alliance in which “Your enemy is my enemy; your friend is my friend”. We now have a debt of honour to you and rest assured it will be repaid in full.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Alas, I have important business that will wait no longer. Thank you my friend, your service to the kingdom will not be forgotten.’

  The HOC showed Harper out, but he paused as they reached the entrance gates. ‘Let me make some enquiries, Lex, and then, if you are willing, we may perhaps speak again about a matter of mutual interest.’

  Harper smiled. ‘You may find me a little elusive.’

  ‘And you may find that we can be very thorough and very persistent. The expatriate community in Thailand is a small one, and if we wish to find you, rest assured, we will do so. We are a wealthy nation, and wealth can buy knowledge, and knowledge is power. But if we should send for you, it will be because we believe we can do good things together, to your benefit as well as ours.’

  CHAPTER 6

  Harper returned to Pattaya and was walking along the beach road a couple of mornings later, on the way to his favourite coffee shop, when he became aware of a Thai man standing on the pavement ahead of him, looking in his direction. He was dressed in civilian clothes, but something about his bearing told Harper that he was police or military. Harper slowed his pace a fraction, raised an arm as if waving to a car passing in the opposite direction and used that as cover to glance behind him. Another heavy-set Thai twenty yards behind him slowed his own pace too, pretending to study a window display, and just behind him yet another man put his foot on a bench and began re-tying a shoelace that was not undone.

  Harper felt the adrenaline surge as he went into fight or flight mode. The path of least resistance lay ahead. He could flatten the man staring at him, lose the two who were following him and circle back to his apartment to grab his bug-out bag. If his place was also being watched, then he had enough in the hip-pack he wore, including his fake Irish passport, to get out of the country either through the airport or, more likely if he was under such intense surveillance, across the border into Cambodia or Laos, or across the Kra Isthmus and down the peninsula to Malaysia.

  While Harper was processing this, as if reading his mind, the man ahead of him spread his hands in a friendly gesture, smiled and called out ‘Please do not be alarmed. I merely wish to give you an invitation from my employer. He would be honoured if you would join him for lunch tomorrow at this Japanese restaurant in Bangkok.’ Still on maximum alert, Harper walked slowly forwards and took the card that the man was holding out to him.

  ‘And your employer is?’

  The man smiled. ‘All will be revealed at the restaurant. My employer said one o’clock tomorrow.’ He turned and walked away and when Harper glanced behind him, he saw that the two men tailing him were also heading away back up the street.

  For a few moments he hesitated, assessing his options. It was possible he was being lured into a trap, but if so, why choose a public place like a restaurant rather than somewhere more discreet? And in any case, had the mysterious figures genuinely wished him harm, there had been ample opportunity here in the street to shoot him or overpower him by sheer weight of numbers. The summons, couched in the polite terms of an invitation, was bo
th puzzling and more than a little alarming, but Harper’s curiosity was also piqued.

  The following morning, he made the ninety minute drive from Pattaya to Bangkok and reached the street where the restaurant was sited two hours before the specified time. He found a cafe and took a seat at a window table where he could observe the front of the restaurant, then sat there sipping black coffee and watching and waiting. He could detect no sign that anyone else had the building under surveillance and, other than a few tourists and Thai businessmen taking an early lunch, there appeared to be no significant traffic in or out of the restaurant until just before one o’clock, when a limousine with military pennants on its wings pulled up outside. A uniformed soldier, acting as chauffeur, jumped out and held the passenger door open and Harper caught a brief glimpse of a tall, dark haired figure dressed in the uniform of a Colonel in the Thai Airborne Forces, striding across the pavement and disappearing inside the restaurant.

  Harper took his time, finishing his coffee and paying his bill before walking across the street and into the restaurant. Although he did not give his name, the maitre d’ appeared to know exactly who he was and at once led him up the stairs to a private room on the first floor. Harper’s host, the man he had seen earlier, rose to greet him. ‘Thank you for joining me at such short notice,’ he said. ‘My name is Colonel Channarong. I’ve been hoping for an opportunity to meet you for a while and now, here we are.’ He gave a broad smile. He looked to be in his early forties, with jet-black hair and a charming, urbane manner that did not distract Harper from noting the shrewdness of the other man’s penetrating gaze. He made small talk about the weather and the latest political crisis in fluent English and when Harper complimented him on his language skills, the Thai smiled again. ‘I acquired them at considerable expense to my parents, at a public school in the UK.’

  He then summoned a waiter and ordered lunch for both of them. ‘I know this restaurant well. You will allow me to order for both of us?’ It was as much a statement as a question.

  Harper shrugged. ‘Why not?’ He was wondering to himself how long the game of cat and mouse would continue before Channarong came to the point. He had his answer after they had both been served with a glass of sake. The colonel put the tips of his fingers together as he studied Harper across the table. ‘You have lived here for some time, Mr Harper - as you see, I know your real name.’ He could not hide a slightly self-satisfied smile as he said it. ‘I have many sources of information, both official and unofficial, and very little happens here that does not come to my attention sooner or later. I could tell you things that would make even your hair stand on end. There are wealthy Europeans, most of them British, of course, given your countrymen’s traditional appetite for such things, whose liking for sex with very young boys would end their careers in an instant and probably lead to imprisonment if it were ever to be revealed. There are Middle Eastern princelings with a taste for equally unusual and extreme forms of sexual gratification, and many others who think they have found a safe haven here: money launderers, swindlers and con men, thieves and even murderers …’

  ‘Don’t forget blackmailers,’ Said Harper, interrupting the man’s flow.

  The colonel raised an eyebrow but continued speaking. ‘We are, how would you put it? A broad church? And we can accommodate all sorts of people.’

  ‘Just as long as they’re able to make their pay-offs.’

  ‘I would have preferred a more elegant way of putting it, Mr Harper,’ Channarong said, ‘but yes, their welcome comes at a price. They must make a contribution to the cost of their freedom to enjoy their pastimes, though it is probably much less than the taxes they are evading in their home countries.’ He paused, giving Harper a calculating look. ‘Now I’m not sure if you fully understand how things work here. We in the military have found it necessary to replace the civilian government from time to time but even when a civilian government is in office, do not ever be in any doubt about where the real power lies in this country.’

  His voice was now cold and the look he directed at Harper was even more glacial. ‘For myself, I’m very well connected to our friends in the US special forces and military intelligence, and in the past my military career has taken me into Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam.’ Again there was the bleak smile, ‘albeit in an unofficial capacity, shall we say.’

  Harper kept his expression neutral as he studied the Thai colonel. Despite his urbane manner, he looked like a man who would kill you without a second thought if you tried to double-cross him, or cut your hand off with a knife if he happened to take a fancy to your signet ring.

  ‘So, to the business of this meeting,’ Channarong said, dabbing the corner of his mouth with his napkin. ‘No one enters and leaves this country with the regularity with which you have done, without coming to our attention. Nor, despite the warm welcome we offer to foreign investors, can someone with no company directorships or other visible sources of income, pass such substantial sums of money through his various bank accounts, here, in Singapore, and, no doubt, many other offshore jurisdictions, without attracting our interest.’ He paused. ‘So we not only know who you are, we know what you are involved in. And not everyone here is as fond of the British as I am. Now you may have heard that we lost several members of our special forces recently?’

  Harper felt his pulse begin to accelerate, but kept his expression neutral. ‘I’m sorry to hear that but it’s the risk that every soldier runs.’

  The colonel’s cold smile did not alter. ‘That’s true, of course, but these men were not killed in action. They were executed right here in Bangkok. It could have been a gangland killing, but that doesn’t really add up.’

  ‘Really? Why is that?’

  ‘Because although they were involved with narcotics, anyone on the street would have known that these particular men had some very high level protection. And whoever killed them didn’t touch the heroin - and there was well over a million dollars worth of that - lying in plain view at the apartment where they were shot. Some dollars had been taken, but I suspect they were stolen by the women who had been mixing and packing the heroin. Again, that was a rather quixotic gesture and most unlike the actions of any gangster I’ve ever met. In fact it was more the sort of act one might expect from an English gentleman.’

  Harper kept his gaze steady. ‘And if you’ve done your research on me Colonel, you’ll know that while I may be English, I’m definitely not a fucking gentleman.’

  ‘Indeed so,’ Channarong said, ‘but it remains a puzzle nonetheless. All the more so, because there has been no attempt to move in on the heroin operation, which if it had been a gangland killing, would certainly have happened by now. And there’s one more strange thing: the method of killing did not have the hallmarks of a gangland execution either. This was not a drive-by shooting, cutting them down in a hail of bullets. It was meticulously planned and executed, taking advantage of the one flaw in the apartment’s very effective security arrangements.’ His gaze again flickered to Harper’s face.

  ‘Well that’s certainly puzzling, but why are you telling me all this?’

  ‘Because I was wondering if you could shed any light on it,’ he said. ‘You weren’t involved by any chance, were you - directly or indirectly?’

  ‘Of course not.’ Harper’s mind was racing but he kept his voice steady. ‘Why would you think that I was?’

  The colonel’s smile grew even more frozen. ‘Because those men were known to you. They were part of your escort on a recent operation you undertook into Myanmar. Yes, Mr Harper, I also know about that.’

  Harper shrugged. ‘Then you’ll also know that my escort abandoned me in Myanmar, leaving me to make my own way back across the border.’

  ‘Indeed so, which is precisely why you might have wanted to take revenge.’

  Harper shrugged. ‘If I tried to take revenge on everyone who had let me down, Colonel, I’d never have time to do anything else. Now, I’m sorry to hear about your men, but I had nothing
to do with that.’

  There was a long silence. Channarong lit a cigarette and blew a stream of smoke towards the ceiling before again fixing Harper with his gaze. ‘The fate of those men is not an overriding concern for me personally - they were disposable and easily replaceable - but they were working for a very senior Thai general and, to put it mildly, he is not well pleased at the disruption to the income stream that funds his rather extravagant lifestyle. He’s already had us turning Bangkok upside down, shaking down every informer and street criminal, and he won’t rest until he finds the person or persons responsible and has them killed.’ He paused again. ‘As I said, whether those men lived or died was a matter of indifference to me, but the perpetrator also gave me personal cause for annoyance by removing two young men who were staying in the apartment as my guests, while a suitable method for reuniting them with their families was being discussed.’

  ‘That sounds awfully like kidnapping, Colonel,’ Harper said, leaning back in his chair with a nonchalance he didn’t altogether feel, ‘but I’m still not sure how any of this affects me.’

  ‘Because unless you have some, how can I put it - logistical assistance here - sooner or later you may find yourself arrested, or you may be killed. This is not a land the puts much stock in British notions of justice, Mr Harper, like innocent until proven guilty. Where the general is concerned, there is no requirement for due process of law, proof of guilt beyond reasonable doubt, or even any evidence. Mere suspicion is enough and the sentence is always summary execution. So I am offering to provide you with the logistical assistance you will need, including providing the general with a suitable scapegoat for the killing of his men.’

  Harper studied him for a moment. ‘So what are you looking for in return, Colonel?’ he asked eventually. ‘I don’t expect that you are offering this from the kindness of your heart.’