“You want me to go and look for him in a jungle patrolled by Muslim extremist?”
“Well possibly. We are sending out some special forces to the area and we are sending somebody to come and meet with you in Patong before you visit Ali’s Restaurant.”
“Who are you sending out to me?”
“His name is Bill McGinley. He is an SAS sergeant and he is a friend of the prince. He’s a good man and he can do things that …….well, he can do things that you might not be prepared to do, being a civilian and all that.”
“Okay. I’m in the Holiday Inn Hotel. When will he be here?”
“He is already on his way. He should be with you within the next twelve hours. He’s a good man Mr. O’Brien.”
“I’m sure he is.”
“Okay. Then bye for now.”
“Bye.”
“Oh! And Mr. O’Brien………Her Majesty is fully aware of the good work that you have done and she is delighted with the progress of the case. She has asked that her personal thanks are passed on to you and she wishes you every success in the case and she thanks you for your efforts. So thank you!”
“Okay, thanks.” Danny closed the phone.
~6~
The previous day Sgt. Bill McGinley had been in bed with Doris in her council flat when he had received the call that was going to send him to Thailand. McGinley, as everyone in the regiment knew him, had been with the regiment for over twenty years and he was well into his forties. He tended to be used mostly for training these days, but was still operational when the need arose. He was a tall man and he was powerfully built. He was Scottish by birth, born in the Glasgow slums in 1968. But by the mid-seventies his father had moved the family to England following work down the mines. McGinley could never remember ever wanting to be anything else other than a soldier. It wasn’t that he wanted to kill people. In fact, he had not really thought much about killing people until he had actually done it for the first time. No, what had always captured McGinley’s imagination was the travel and excitement that being a soldier would bring. He believed that in the army he could be someone and it offered the only real alternative from following his father down the mines. As far as McGinley was concerned it was the mines that had destroyed his father. The mines ruined his health and squashed his very soul. McGinley had vague memories from when he was very small, of his father being a strong and confident man. A man with many friends who would drink and laugh and joke. His father had lost his job in the shipyard the year after McGinley’s younger brother had died from tuberculosis. His father had taken McGinley and his mother to England and managed to find work in the mines, but he was never the same man again. Most of McGinley’s later memories of his father were of a small man who always came home black with coal dust and never stopped coughing. He drank too much and was sad too much. He died when McGinley was 15 years old. At 17 years old McGinley joined the parachute regiment and started his long army career. He had loved every single day of it. He had been watching the news of course about the kidnap of his friend Prince William. So far he had been more than a little disappointed not to have received a call. He wanted to be involved for so many reasons. The call finally arrived when he was asleep and naked in bed with Doris, after a night of heavy drinking in the Red Lion pub on the corner of High Street and Pudding Lane in the little Herefordshire village where he lived.
Doris had been McGinley’s friend for as long as he had been in the SAS, so most of the time she didn’t charge him anything. But, like the rest of the men in the regiment who used her services, he would always leave some money under her bedside clock before he left. Doris looked good for her age, which most people guessed to be between 55 and 60 years. She had been ‘on the game’ since she was 17 years old. When she was younger she looked beautiful, as the photographs of her that were framed and on display around her flat testified. There were still remnants of beauty in her face, but age had taken its toll and her body, which was once so voluptuous and curvy, was now just the plump body of an old lady. Doris loved the boys from the regiment, she always had. When she wasn’t having sex with one of them, she was baking cakes and raising money for them. She really was the original ‘tart with a heart’.
As soon as McGinley had taken the call he jumped out of bed.
“Are you going to rescue Prince William now McGinley?” asked Doris, opening just one eye and not bothering to lift her tired head off the pillow. McGinley just smiled.
“Do you want a blow job for good luck?”
“I haven’t got time Doris. I’ll have it when I get back.”
McGinley didn’t bother to shower. He dressed as quickly as he could. He stuffed two ten pound notes under her bedside clock and walked out of the front door of her council flat and down the concrete stairs, which always seemed to smell of urine, to the street outside. He jumped on his motorbike and headed straight for Sterling Lines.
~7~
Prince William was sick. Very sick! At first he thought that he was coming down with flu, but it got worse very quickly. He complained of severe chills and was vomiting and had diarrhoea. A headache so bad that he thought his brain was going to explode had put him to bed. He had muscle pains and then a fever took over and he became delirious. The fever was bad and the prince was drifting in and out of consciousness and it threatened to turn into coma.
Haadee was the most medically qualified amongst the five Syrian special forces who were holding him captive and he examined the prince. Azeez looked on.
“He’s got Malaria.”
“What does that mean Haadee?”
“It means that he is going to die unless we get him to a hospital and even then he may die anyway.”
“It is the will of Allah. Keep him alive for as long as you can.”
“I have nothing here to treat him with. I can only give him water.”
“Then do that my brother.”
Azeez informed the President.
“I need him alive” the President screamed down the phone.
“We will do our best sir, but we are running out of time.”
“The British want proof of life. Get him to record a message stating that he is being held by Myanmar rebels.”
“He is too sick. He is in and out of coma.”
“Then take photos. I need to show the British that their prince is still alive. They are on the verge of making a deal that will ensure the future of our great nation. Do it now.”
Azeez took photographs of the prince, but he looked even worse in the pictures. He looked dead already! He needed urgent medical treatment, but that was not a consideration for his captors.
~8~
Danny had left instructions at the Holiday Inn that if anybody came looking for him then to tell them he was in the Tiger bar. He sat at the bar looking up at the young girl dancing on the bar top above his head. From this close he couldn’t see much of her, only the view up the tiny red tartan skirt. Her white blouse was tied up revealing a very flat and very smooth stomach. Her tanned skin glistened with sweat as she danced. Sometimes she would catch Danny’s eye and smile at him. Every now and then she would kneel down and use her short skirt to fan Danny’s face, leaving his face just inches away from her white pants. He’d seen it all before. He smiled and smoked and drank and waited. Several of the young slim girls came and tried their luck with Danny as he sat alone at the bar, but he just smiled and waved them away with a polite ’No thank you’.
The big man came into the bar and looked around. He recognised Danny O’Brien from the photograph that he had been given. Danny saw the big man looking at him and guessed that it was the SAS sergeant Bill McGinley. He looked like an SAS man. The two men nodded to each other and Bill McGinley walked across the bar to him, taking in the sights of the tiny Thai girls dancing around him in various states of undress. He thrust a strong hand out tow
ards Danny.
“Hi Danny. I’m Bill McGinley, but everyone usually just calls me McGinley” he said, in the strongest Glasgow accent that Danny had ever heard.
“I’m Danny O’Brien and I don’t know what people usually call me.”
McGinley laughed and slapped Danny on the back.
“Can I buy you a drink Danny?”
“I’ll have a Jack Daniels.”
“I’ll have the same.” McGinley signalled to the older lady behind the bar for two more Jack Daniels and she said something in Thai to one of the younger girls, who poured the drinks and then put a little bamboo cup in front of McGinley. She took a written bill from the older lady, rolled it up and placed it in McGinley’s bill cup.
“Did she just give me her phone number?”
“No. She just gave you the bill for the drinks.”
“This is some kind of town here, Danny!”
“It sort of sneaks up on you, Bill.”
“Danny, you can call me McGinley. Everyone else does.”
“Okay. Do we need to talk about anything tonight?”
“No matey. I just wanted to meet up with you. I thought that we could roll around town and have a few drinks, get to know each other a bit and we can talk business tomorrow…if that’s okay with you?”
“That sounds grand!”
“I’ve heard a lot of good stuff about you Danny and I’ve been looking forward to meeting you in person.”
“Will ya’ kop yourself on!”
The two men walked around the bars and got drunk. They had some food which neither of them would later remember eating and they went into some Go-Go bars, which they wouldn’t remember either. They laughed and joked and started to like each other. They were peas out of the same pod! Danny woke up at 7:30 am in his hotel room and he didn’t remember how or when he got there either. McGinley woke up in his room in the same state.
McGinley rang Danny and they arranged to meet for breakfast in Danny’s hotel. They drank copious amounts of orange juice and water with their breakfasts as they chatted about the situation with Prince William and what they now knew about the Syrian men who took him. They were still guessing that the prince may be being held in south Thailand, but they didn’t know this for a fact. They didn’t have a plan, but both agreed they would have more chance working together than not. They decided to pay a visit to Ali’s restaurant that night and see what the owner had to say.
Danny and McGinley sat in a bar across the Rat-U-Thit Road from Ali’s restaurant. They sat at the back of the bar away from the street and let the local punters and holiday makers take up the stools that looked out over the road. The night was, as always, hot and sticky. The two men sat in the bar and watched Ali’s restaurant. They had a few beers but not too many. They ate ‘southern fried chicken’ that really wasn’t. They watched and they waited. Ali’s restaurant had a steady flow of customers all night. Most were either Indian or Arabic. There were a few Europeans, but there were no women. After eating the men in Ali’s relaxed and smoked the Hubble-Bubble pipes. The owner was easy to spot. He was wearing a white shirt and black trousers and spent a lot of time either outside the front of the restaurant trying to get people to come inside, or he was walking around the tables making sure his patrons were okay. After 11:00pm the place seemed to empty out. The last two men left at 11:35pm and the owner, Rafi, sat alone behind his till counter, counting up the evenings takings. He had a half smoked cigar hanging from the corner of his mouth. His eyes sometimes watered and squinted as they caught the smoke. He would be locking up at midnight. He always did. McGinley suggested that locking up time might be the best time to speak with the owner and Danny agreed. They had little intelligence on Rafi. They recognised him from the photograph that had been supplied to McGinley and the report stated that he was a former Captain in the Syrian army, but other than that they knew nothing. They could guess that Ali’s restaurant had been used as some sort of meeting place for the five men from the Syrian special forces, but on the other hand he might have just been sending food to them. That is what they wanted to find out. Anything else would be a bonus.
Rafi started to turn off lights and walked towards the metal roll shutter doors rattling the bunch of keys that he was holding. McGinley got up and crossed the road. Danny stuffed a handful of 100 baht notes into the cup and followed McGinley across the road. Rafi was pulling the shutter door down when the big Scotsman grabbed him by the throat and pushed him back inside the restaurant. The grip was too tight to allow him to scream out. He patted him down and was satisfied that he wasn’t carrying a weapon. Danny followed them inside and pulled down the metal shutter behind him. McGinley pushed Rafi all the way to the back of the restaurant and into the secure room. They had found it by accident. McGinley thought that it was going to be a store room, but he recognised a briefing room when he saw one.
He threw Rafi down on the mat on the floor and told him to cross his legs out in front of him and cross his arms in front of his chest.
“You look as if you have got this covered. I’ll have a look around the place” said Danny.
“Okay, matey. No problem. I’ll have a chat with our friend Rafi.”
Rafi had thought that it was a robbery until that point, but now that they had said his name he knew that these men were after him and not his money. Now he was scared.
Danny went back into the restaurant and started looking through the drawers and cupboards. He checked through notepads and paper work.
McGinley looked into the eyes of Rafi.
“You are going to tell me or you are going to die.”
“I don’t know what you are talking about.”
“It is not a game Rafi. I want to know about the five Syrian special forces men that you had here in this very room.”
“You have the wrong place and the wrong man. I don’t know what you are talking about. I’m a business man. I’m going to call the police.”
McGinley grabbed an arm, pulled it out straight and broke it with his knee. Rafi screamed out with the pain that bolted to his brain like an electric shock. He nursed the broken limb with his other hand and rocked back and forth.
“Give me your other arm” McGinley said, with no particular menace or threat in his voice. It was just an instruction!
“No please! Stop! I am an old man. I cannot tell you anything because I don’t know anything. I used to be a captain in the Syrian army and then I worked for Syrian Intelligence. They told me to come to Patong and open up the restaurant. They send people here to have meetings, but I don’t know who these people are or what they talk about. They come and go. I know the five men who you are talking about. Yes, they were Syrian, but I know nothing else about them. I think they were soldiers the same as you. They had two meetings in this room and I haven’t seen them since.”
“They have taken Prince William. I want to know where they have taken him.”
“I didn’t know this and I don’t know where they have taken him.”
“Have they taken him into south Thailand?”
“I don’t know.”
“Give me your other arm Rafi.”
“Okay, yes. Maybe to south Thailand, but I don’t know where.”
“Give me a name. Give me a contact down there. Give me someone who knows, Rafi, and you can live.”
“They will kill me if I do.”
“They have to find you first and I will kill you if you don’t, and I’m already here.”
“If anyone finds out that I told you then I am a dead man. I just want to run my restaurant. I have a number in my phone. The man’s name is Ahmed. He lives not far from the border with Malaysia. That is the only contact I have and I don’t even know if the soldier would have been given the same contact. Maybe he has never met the soldiers.”
“But maybe he h
as. We want to ask him. Where is your phone?”
“It is on the counter, but I don’t know if Ahmed can tell you anything and, if he knows that I give you his name, then I am a dead man.”
“Don’t worry.” McGinley shouted to Danny and Danny brought the phone into the room and gave it to McGinley.
McGinley knelt down next to Rafi.
“I’m guessing that his phone won’t be registered to him, so you are going to ring him and tell him that the Syrian President wants to send him a special package as a thank you for all his good work recently and you need an address.”
“Then he will know and he will kill me.”
“He won’t. He’ll probably be dead. If you are still worried then you have a few days to get away and start a new life somewhere. I’m giving you a second chance at life Rafi. Make the call.”
Rafi made the call with McGinley holding the phone to his ear for him and after a greeting in Arabic he spoke in English and scribbled down the address on the notepad that Danny was holding.
“Are you going to kill me now?” he asked after McGinley closed the phone.
“No, I told you. You have a second chance.”
“Will you kill Ahmed?”
“Yes, if he doesn’t take us to the prince.”
“Then you will have to kill him, because he won’t do that.”
“I suggest you go and get your arm seen to Rafi and it might be safer for you if you don’t mention to anyone that we have been here.”
Danny and McGinley lifted the roller shutter door and walked out into the Patong night air.
~9~
Danny had ridden in stolen cars before, but never in one stolen by an SAS sergeant. It was still early - 5:30am. The first signs of a new day were breaking through the dark night sky. Danny was driving as McGinley sat next to him reading a map.
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