At Hell's Gate

by Mark Abernethy

  I smiled. ‘I stay out of prison – and I’m pretty good at it.’

  She looked away, then looked back. ‘Mr H will do the deal, because you and Lennie are in it. But let me meet them, and we’ll go from there.’

  ‘You want me to hook you up?’

  ‘Sure,’ she said. ‘Sooner the better.’

  I pulled out my burner phone, and showed her. ‘Why don’t I call him now – make it totally transparent?’

  ‘Okay.’ She shrugged, and sipped her wine. She was good at appearing relaxed but she didn’t miss a thing.

  I input Joel’s number and hit the green button. He picked up, agitated.

  ‘Joel,’ I said. ‘It’s Mike.’

  ‘Fuck!’ he yelled, and I held the phone away from my ear slightly. ‘Where the hell have you been?’

  ‘Nice to hear from you again, Joel,’ I said. ‘Best regards.’

  ‘Fuck, Mike!’

  ‘I’ve been meeting the people who own a business you’re interested in, visiting that business, and discussing broadly your needs and whether they can fulfil them.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And they are professional operators, the plant and machinery is very new and top quality, and they can fulfil your order. I was impressed.’

  I could hear Joel cycling his breathing. He was stressed. ‘Okay, Mike. Let’s get this going. But first we have to talk about Carl – what the fuck . . .?’

  ‘Who?’ I asked.

  ‘Don’t play stupid,’ he said, and I couldn’t tell if he was angry or nervous. ‘You attacked my bodyguard. He’s in hospital – cracked skull. Jesus Christ!’

  ‘Calm down, mate,’ I said. ‘Are you talking about Yellow Shirt?’

  ‘Who else did you assault yesterday?’ he screeched.

  ‘Let’s look at it another way,’ I said. ‘A large, muscular man followed me into a park, and when I asked if he was looking for me, he kicked me in the bladder.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes, really,’ I said. ‘Now, I can take a lot of harsh language and cross words, but if you kick me, you’ll get a smack. Fair enough?’

  Across the table Cynthia was laughing.

  ‘You almost killed him, Mike,’ he said, quieter now, and I sensed that someone was in the room with him.

  ‘We on speaker, Joel?’

  ‘No,’ he said.

  ‘Keep it that way,’ I said, sitting up straight in my chair. ‘You alone?’

  ‘No, thanks, Mike,’ he said, and now he was dissembling. What the fuck was going on?

  ‘Stay calm and let’s make an arrangement, okay?’

  ‘Yep, let’s lock it in,’ he said.

  ‘We’ll meet you in the arrivals lounge of Kualanamu airport, midday tomorrow,’ I said, talking to Joel but nodding to Cynthia, who gave me a thumbs-up.

  ‘Um, that’s . . .’

  ‘Just say yes, Joel.’

  ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Yes. That’s Medan, right?’

  ‘Right. Are you okay?’

  ‘I’ll be there at midday, we’ll do this,’ he said, and that’s when I knew someone had grabbed the phone and put it on speaker.

  ‘Okay, Joel,’ I said. ‘Midday at the arrivals lounge. See you then. And by the way, bring bank details and your company incorporation documents, okay?’

  ‘Sure, Mike,’ he said. ‘See you then.’

  I passed on dessert but Cynthia ordered the mud cake and called for two more drinks. After a big day, the booze was hitting me. ‘So who’s your bodyguard?’ I asked, looking around the dining room.

  ‘Oh,’ she laughed at me. ‘That would be you, old boy.’

  ‘Thanks for the warning,’ I said.

  16

  MG picked up a rental Land Cruiser and stopped at the Alpha Inn just before ten the next morning. I climbed in and noticed the Texan looked a bit fresher than me: not only had he teetotalled it the night before, but he’d slept on the sofa bed of Cynthia’s suite at the Radisson. I couldn’t tell if she was joking about the bodyguarding bit, but once she’d said it I couldn’t really ignore it. So I found her a sober bloke who could more than handle himself.

  He parked in the drop-off apron of the Radisson and went in to get her. I kept the sun visor down and scanned the area, looking for eyes. The constant layers of complexity in this gig were doing my head in. The US$100K suddenly didn’t look so flash, especially since I’d had to employ MG to cover me and I’d had to defend myself against Yellow Shirt. Just to clarify: every time you have to engage in physical violence or gunplay, you increase your chances of being caught or followed. You probably double your chances of fatal injury and steeply reduce your effectiveness. This is another reason why I operate as a tourist in most countries, unless I have to do it differently. Tourists don’t beat up big muscly guys; tourists don’t have to dispose of 9mm pistols. It isn’t cool and it brings heat, and with heat comes lots of ducking and weaving and hiding in your hotel room. Where you can’t work.

  I was annoyed that Carl Yellow Shirt had pushed things so far, but I was even more annoyed with myself. I could have simply lost the bloke. But then again, if I hadn’t incapacitated him, I wouldn’t have discovered the location app that was tracking my phone. Mostly, I was fixating on Joel’s situation: what was his relationship with his employer, exactly?

  MG and Cynthia walked from the hotel lobby to the Land Cruiser. She was dressed in black bell-bottomed slacks and a cerise blouse. I noticed that MG carried himself very differently when he did personal security details: there was a certain position he took to his client, and a scanning way of looking at the world. He even opened the rear door by first putting his arm around the back of her shoulderblades.

  ‘Hi, Mike,’ she said, as MG snibbed the lock and shut the door behind her. ‘We okay?’

  ‘We’re good,’ I said, and we took off.

  We were twenty minutes into the half-hour drive when MG piped up. ‘By the way, Big Unit,’ he said. ‘We have some firepower.’

  ‘Big Unit?!’ said Cynthia. ‘Oh my God – I thought I’d left Australia behind years ago.’

  ‘Don’t knock it,’ I said. ‘What’s this about firepower?’

  ‘MG told me he’d prefer to have a weapon if he was my bodyguard, so I let him have mine,’ Cynthia explained.

  I looked sideways at MG, who shrugged. ‘SIG. Nice piece.’

  We parked in the short-term car park, having endured the annoying judder bars that marred the airport’s approach expressway. I asked the others to stay put while I walked into the arrivals section of the glass-covered international terminal. Medan’s airport was only a few months old, a really impressive replacement for the old Polonia that operated from the middle of the city, with sometimes disastrous results. It was 10.25 am, plenty of time to find the best position and to fan out and see who was around. I walked different sides of the large, busy halls, looking for types and faces – people who’d flown in early and were already waiting for the meeting.

  A flight had just landed from Bangkok and the place was swimming with people. Not a great way to weed out the bad guys, and another reminder why I liked to use tourist as my cover. Tourists at airports tended to move in mass migrations, but not orderly ones. Easy to hide in – hard to surveil.

  I did find a large coffee shop area, up against the big windows. MG and I would be able to cover Cynthia at this place, and it afforded us a fast way to leave because it was near the exits. The drawback to arrivals lounge meetings? Everyone is sitting around waiting, messing with their phones. No one looks out of place because everyone is killing time. In a situation like this I’d ideally like a third person sitting in the car at the exit, and an extra bodyguard in the arrivals hall. But I was dealing with what I had, and having MG on short notice was lucky enough.

  I grabbed the table I wanted in the coffee shop, and texted MG. Th
ey arrived a few minutes later and took a seat. The arrivals board said the AirAsia flight from Singapore was on time, and at midday, the board blinked up with ‘Landed’ and we waited. I stood and walked to the actual concourse, looking to see who else was lining up to greet the passengers. Half of Medan was waiting. I raised five fingers at MG and moved towards the exit of the customs and immigration area. If I could pick up Joel as he came out of the gates, I’d probably get a better flash of who – if anyone – was following him.

  The trickle of people out of security turned into a solid flow and after thirty people had gone past me, I saw Joel. He seemed to be alone, but as I moved towards him I realised he was with a woman. A blonde, well-groomed woman I’d once mistaken for a bloke: Chris McCann.

  And she did not look happy.

  17

  I walked on eggshells to the table at the coffee shop and made the introductions, leaving MG out of it. Chris McCann wanted coffee and an internet connection. And then she wanted some alone time with Cynthia. The males decamped and we found a table nearby. But it was too far for MG, so he stood and walked to a place against the wall behind Cynthia’s table, and besides a quick look over her shoulder at the American, Chris seemed to accept it.

  ‘So, they sent the boss,’ I said to Joel, who looked a little freaked.

  ‘Yep,’ said Joel.

  A little penny dropped. ‘She was at the Conrad the whole time, right?’

  He shook his head. ‘Shit, Mike, you were following me? What is it with you people?’

  I shrugged. I wasn’t going to tell him how I knew about the Conrad. ‘Look, if Chris wants to do the negotiation, that’s her business. But why were you sent out as the Judas goat? What’s going on?’

  He did his best not to use facial expressions. His boss was a few metres away and I could tell he was scared of her. Now I knew who’d been in his hotel room the night before.

  ‘What’s going on?’ he said, looking intently at a packet of sugar. ‘You tell me, Mike.’

  ‘Who is this Carl bloke?’ I asked. ‘Was he protecting you or spying on you?’

  ‘Stop it, Mike,’ he said, a beaten man. ‘I’m a fucking lawyer, okay? I was sent out here to negotiate a backup supply of weapons and from day one it’s been all wrong.’

  ‘Wrong?’ I said, looking across at MG, who had moved his body mass between Cynthia and a group of young local males who were now sitting at a nearby table.

  ‘I can’t have this conversation,’ he said.

  ‘If I know what’s going on, then maybe you can help me to help you.’

  ‘Fuck, Mike,’ he said. ‘Start by not mentioning my kids again, okay? Christ almighty!’

  I agreed with him. ‘I was trying to get you focused. This is an arms deal, which means arms dealers. I wasn’t threatening your kids.’

  He flipped the sugar packet and focused on the Bahasa fine print on the back. ‘If I help you, how do I know that you’ll help me?’

  ‘You’re my client,’ I said. ‘You’re my first priority – see my buddy over there?’

  He followed my head point. ‘The thuggy guy?’

  ‘I brought him in to protect Cynthia – the counterparty. Where am I sitting?’

  ‘Right here,’ he said.

  ‘Right here, Joel,’ I agreed. ‘So what’s going on?’

  ‘That person you beat up?’

  ‘Yep,’ I said.

  ‘He was more focused on following you than he was on my welfare,’ said Joel, looking at the table. I scanned the concourse, wondering if another Chris McCann employee had been on that plane and was now circling us.

  ‘Why do you say that, Joel?’

  ‘I got the impression they were tracking you somehow, and that most of the conversations were about your whereabouts and who you were meeting.’

  ‘Why?’

  Joel made a face that said he didn’t know. ‘Maybe they want direct access to the arms dealers? That’s the only thing I can think of.’

  I nodded slowly but now my brain was spinning. Where had I carried that infected smartphone? I’d taken it to my meeting with Lennie. It had been with me in my room at the Pan Pac. And if I hadn’t confronted Carl Yellow Shirt, the infected smartphone would have been with me in Medan, on a helicopter and on a ship somewhere on the high seas.

  Okay, I thought. They wanted me to lead them to the floating armoury. So the bigger problem was now this: why would a bunch of arms buyers want to know the whereabouts of the arms sellers?

  I had a few ideas, and none of them were good.

  18

  I was now in a bind. My client was misbehaving but they hadn’t done anything officially against the floating armoury. I was employed by Coastal Resources, to do a specific job, which was about to be executed – the client had been introduced to the armourers. But now I had other responsibilities: I was responsible for Cynthia’s wellbeing and I had to protect Lennie and his contacts, or I’d have a whole new class of enemy.

  I watched Chris and Cynthia talking – they were pointing at laptop screens and making phone calls. They seemed to be getting along and from the body language I assumed the Coastal Resources bona fides were stacking up and the two of them were swapping details on their laptops.

  ‘What do you usually do, Joel?’ I asked.

  ‘I formulate scope of work agreements and I’m on the ground to sort out contractual disagreements,’ he said. ‘The fact that I trained in the British Army is not that important – I never saw combat or anything.’

  ‘So what did you do in the army?’

  ‘I worked mainly at the Ministry of Defence, the Oil and Pipelines Agency, actually.’

  ‘And that’s where Coastal Resources found you?’ I asked.

  ‘Coastal has a lot of contracts with Whitehall,’ he said. ‘They’re basically a government outfit.’

  We stared at each other. ‘What does that mean?’ I asked, and I could see the terror in his eyes.

  ‘Forget it,’ he said.

  ‘Forget what?’ I asked. I now looked more intently around the concourse. If I were staking out this meeting in Sumatra, I’d have some local assets doing the watching. I had a closer look at the three young men at the table neighbouring Cynthia’s, and they were all on their smartphones. Around us were lots of loitering Indonesian men. Nothing out of the ordinary.

  ‘Just fill me in,’ I said. ‘What is Coastal?’

  ‘It’s owned by fund managers and nominees,’ said Joel, quietly.

  ‘And?’

  ‘And, those funds and nominees are apparently big investors in the arms industry,’ said Joel, nodding his head.

  Cynthia and Chris stood up, and shook hands. Chris walked to our table and Joel stood up.

  ‘Looks like we’ve got a deal,’ she said, forcing a smile through a rigid face. Cynthia kept a poker face.

  ‘Mike, can I have a word?’ said Chris, and Cynthia moved away. ‘I need Joel to stay on and tidy up the loose ends,’ she said. ‘If it goes smoothly we’ll have delivery by Wednesday.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said.

  ‘I need you to accompany me back to Singapore,’ she said, and she fixed me with a stare. She was pulling rank, letting me know who was paying the bills.

  ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘I have my things at the hotel . . .’

  ‘No,’ said Chris. ‘We’re leaving now. We’ll be boarding in twenty minutes.’

  I was about to say I’d need my passport but I had my backpack with me and didn’t want her to call my bluff.

  ‘You have a ticket, in my name?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  ‘I need to brief my employee,’ I said, and she looked at MG and nodded, but reluctantly.

  I walked to MG, who was standing over Cynthia. ‘I have to go with the boss,’ I said, loud enough for Cynthia to hear. ‘Cynthia is to leave her pho
nes and laptop at the hotel – she can’t take them back to the ship.’

  MG nodded – aware that I thought Cynthia’s devices might be infected – and Cynthia made to ask me a question.

  ‘We’ll talk later,’ I cut in before she could say anything.

  I caught a glimpse of the other group and saw a gallery of expressions: Joel’s fear; Cynthia’s confusion; MG’s deadpan determination.

  Then I turned and followed Chris McCann. It wasn’t until we were sitting in the departures lounge, waiting for our Garuda flight, that Chris really spoke to me.

  ‘Thanks for that, Mike,’ she said. ‘You delivered exactly what we needed, and quickly too. You have no idea how many time-wasters are operating out there.’

  Actually, I did have an idea. They occasionally followed me into public parks and tried out their kung fu on me. But I didn’t say that. ‘It was a case of right time, right person. I had access, that’s all.’

  ‘I like the way you operate,’ she said, fishing her laptop out of its carry case. ‘We need people like you, with your skills. Maybe we can talk about a retainer?’

  I smiled. ‘I only take a retainer from certain clients,’ I said.

  She opened the laptop and I could see her entering the portal of Coastal Resources Group Limited. ‘I have a fair idea who those clients would be,’ she said. ‘And I’d never force you to shift them down the priority list.’

  ‘If I’m on a retainer to you, then I have to think twice when the others call,’ I said. ‘And they are not people you put on hold.’

  By now I’d decided Chris was former intelligence, and while I didn’t have to know the details, I knew she knew what I was talking about. The foreign governments who retain me have the right to call whenever they like and ask me to do just about anything, anywhere in the world. They are not gazumped by corporate clients and they are never put on the backburner. If I started doing that, I might have some short-term financial gain but I’d lose my access and relevance, and with it a whole lot of benefits.