At Hell's Gate

by Mark Abernethy

  I told Liz I needed to get a jug of water and walked to the bar. I’d accessed photographs of MG and Rich – and they’d seen a shot of me – so when I was standing beside MG and looking straight ahead he knew who I was.

  ‘You got here yesterday?’ I asked.

  ‘Yep, boss,’ he said.

  I assessed MG. Wide face, brown hair and a compact, athletic body. He wore cargo shorts and a polo shirt – a real blender. ‘Seen Eagle?’ I asked.

  ‘Yep,’ he said. ‘Got his car and apartment number, and I followed him to the golf course.’

  I nodded, and asked the barmaid for a pitcher of water and two glasses. ‘I’ll bring it to your table,’ she said, and I nodded.

  ‘Did Eagle play eighteen holes?’ I asked.

  ‘Nope,’ said MG. ‘Went to a golf pro – did an hour.’

  ‘What time?’

  ‘Fifteen hundred.’

  ‘With the missus?’

  ‘Nope,’ he said. ‘She shops.’

  ‘What does he do the rest of the day?’

  ‘Lies beside the pool, talks on his phone, swims in the sea.’

  ‘Okay, what room number are you?’ I asked, and he told me. As I moved away I saw a brochure stand with the spa special deals on it. I picked one up and I got back to drinking with Liz. ‘You want a spa tomorrow morning, love?’ I asked, showing her the brochure. ‘Pedicure, facial, massage – could be nice.’

  She liked the look of it and we agreed to book her in. And then we called for another bottle of the Chardonnay, and we did some solid planning that night about what we could do in life.

  At the bar, MG drained his beer and left.

  14

  After breakfast Liz raced back to the room and then went down to the spa for her appointment. I dressed in my boardies and headed for the pool. On the way out, I saw Rich in the lobby, and let him get a good look at my towel. I bought a John Grisham book at the kiosk – which gave me a great counter-surveillance platform – and then I walked outside, found a recliner beside the pool.

  First, MG wandered out and took a recliner two away from me, and then Rich came over ten minutes after that, threw his towel on a recliner and dived into the water. I dived in too, and MG came over, sat on the edge with his feet in the water. To an observer, we were just three hotel guests using the pool.

  ‘Eagle has a standing golf pro lesson at fifteen hundred,’ said MG, talking but not looking at me. ‘His wife is never around in the afternoon.’

  ‘No kids?’ I asked.

  ‘His children are nineteen and twenty-one – I guess they’re not around. I haven’t seen them.’

  ‘Rich, you done the drive?’

  ‘Twenty-three minutes at fourteen hundred,’ he said. ‘Seventeen minutes at twenty-one hundred.’

  Rich had a very strong Liverpudlian accent, and he looked like a brawler. A tall, craggy build – a sort of Liam Neeson look, if the movie star was missing his upper left canine tooth.

  ‘You did that in a cab?’ I asked.

  ‘Aye,’ he said. ‘Caught them from up the road, and timed it when we went past this place.’

  ‘Can we do the lift in a taxi?’ I asked. ‘What are the cabbies like around here?’

  ‘They have vans,’ said Rich, ‘but they’re very touristy.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘So any ideas about where to do it and how to lift him?’

  ‘I’m thinking we grab him as he walks to the golf course,’ said MG, kicking his feet lazily in the water. I noticed MG was a clean-skin – no tatts. ‘He takes a path through the trees, which ends up at the clubhouse.’

  ‘Anyone else use it?’ I asked, and MG acknowledged that it wasn’t exactly deserted.

  ‘There’s a backpacker hostel down the beach,’ I said. ‘Rich, how about you act like a backpacker, go down there and find a vehicle for sale on the noticeboards.’

  ‘Budget?’ he asked.

  ‘Two thousand, US,’ I said. ‘I think we need our own untraceable vehicle for the lift.’

  ‘Aye,’ he said.

  ‘If you can’t find one today or tomorrow, I’ll throw it to Alex – he looks younger than you.’

  We went over the patterns and the weak spots. There was no panic with these two: the Eagle was right where we wanted him, and we knew where we had to take him. Now all we needed was a low-visibility place to grab him, and a vehicle to transport him in.

  As we dried-off, I took US$2000 from my black bumbag beside my towel, and slipped it into the pages of the John Grisham book. ‘Read that, Rich?’ I asked, holding out the book.

  ‘No, man,’ he said, taking the book and reading the back cover, quite intently.

  Nice tradecraft, I thought.

  ‘Twenty-one hundred hours at MG’s suite,’ I said, and they nodded and we went our separate ways.

  I strolled along the beach dunes, north of our resort, and drifted into the grounds of the complex next door: Barry Lao’s holiday place.

  This place had a core of a resort on the beach – with pool, bars and restaurants – but its northern reaches seemed to be individually owned serviced apartments. This wing of the resort backed onto a golf course. I walked the pathways, and past the sign on the stairwell that signalled Lao’s apartment number. It was nice back here. I kept going and came out at the golf course, close to the clubhouse and the pro shop. The pro was standing with a client on the driving range tee, working on the woman’s swing.

  I looked around. The main road was close by. At the end of the driving range was a gate that opened onto a service road, which led onto the main road. Nothing was obvious to me, but there were options.

  Walking back to the hotel, my phone buzzed: Alex had just arrived at the hotel.

  I walked into the lobby and had a small look around. Ken was at the end of a bar that had a coffee machine on it.

  Ordering a coffee, I sat on a stool while Ken looked at a magazine. I told him quietly that we needed a body bag, wrist-ties and maybe something to calm down an emotional Eagle. He nodded without looking at me. The barista’s machine pumped away and I told Ken to be at MG’s suite at 9 pm. ‘Tell Alex.’

  ‘Got it,’ said the Aussie, and he left.

  15

  We had another epic afternoon and night, and we took it to bed earlier than usual. Liz and I were enjoying each other’s company and I was in a state of deep relaxation even as I ran the job. We fell asleep, and when I saw it was shortly past 9 pm, I got out of bed and pulled on some clothes.

  Liz was dead to the world – with the weird shifts she worked in the hospital emergency department she needed this break. I padded down the hall and took a flight of stairs down to the next level and along to MG’s suite. I knocked and MG opened almost immediately. He’d been waiting at the door.

  ‘They all here?’ I asked.

  ‘Yep, boss,’ he said, a flat Texan twang coming out through his nose.

  I walked through into the living area of the suite where my team was assembled.

  ‘Lads,’ I said, sitting at the dining table. ‘Let’s go through it, from the top.’ I pointed at Ken.

  ‘I have secured a body bag, wrist locks and duct tape,’ he said. ‘I have a cab driver I met who can get me Mogadon, Xanax – even Halcyon if we need it.’

  ‘Any preferences?’ I said, throwing it to the team.

  ‘Xanax is fastest acting, and least likely to kill the Eagle,’ said Alex.

  ‘Okay – Xanax it is.’

  ‘Alex, what have you got?’

  The New Zealander brought out a Nikon digital SLR camera, and handed it to me. ‘That’s what I took this arvo.’

  I scrolled through the shots, which followed Lao from his apartment to the golf course. Lao was a trimly built fifty-five year old who liked golf shorts and loud golf shirts. The roll of photos included shots of him trying to hit
the golf ball; then followed him around the back of the clubhouse to a small cabana.

  ‘You seen the chick yet?’ said Alex.

  I glanced at him, then kept scrolling. The cabana door opened as Lao approached, and then there was a shot of a pretty Filipina sticking her head out the door. When Lao ducked inside, one shot showed that the pretty girl was naked.

  ‘Fuck me,’ I said.

  The photographs ended and I passed the camera to MG. ‘No more?’

  ‘There were staff around and I couldn’t keep it up. I waited for a while, bought a beer in the golf clubhouse, and seventy minutes later, that girl in the cabana? She’s in the bar, serving.’

  We all looked at each other. It was a wrinkle, but sometimes they produced opportunity.

  ‘Good work, Alex,’ I said. ‘Same again tomorrow – let’s find the pattern. I’d really like to know if he’s paying her.’

  ‘Maybe we use this?’ said MG, holding up a small black box attached to a black cord. The cord had a small cylinder and a suction cup on the end.

  ‘That a voice recorder?’ asked Alex.

  ‘And a microphone that you can attach to glass.’ He handed it to Alex, who took it with a smile. ‘Anyone speak Tagalog?’

  ‘Tom señor,’ said Rich.

  I said, ‘Sigurado,’ which was about the only Tagalog I knew.

  ‘They’ll speak in English,’ said Alex. ‘I’m sure of it.’

  I pointed at Rich.

  ‘I went down to the hostel and found a HiAce campervan for sale on the wall. They want eight hundred US. I got the number, called it, and I’m waiting for a call back.’ He held up a long strip of paper; he’d clearly torn off all the For Sale notes on the corkboard. ‘I’ve timed the run to the warehouse – between seventeen and twenty-three minutes, depending on night or day.’

  ‘MG,’ I said.

  ‘The Eagle spends his days at the pool, on the beach or at the golf course,’ said MG.

  ‘Or up to his nuts in guts,’ said Ken, and the blokes sniggered.

  ‘Point is, he spends a lot of time outdoors, unguarded, unaccompanied, and not particularly worried.’

  ‘MG, thanks for that,’ I said. ‘From here on in I need you to give us the all-clear on surveillance, okay? If there’s any nosy buggers around, countering us, I want to know.’

  ‘Roger that, boss,’ he said, popping a stick of chewing gum in his mouth.

  I wanted Alex to be the planner, so I looked at him. ‘Enough to go on for now?’

  He looked up from writing on his pad. ‘I’ll take some shots around his pool tomorrow, have a look at those,’ he said. ‘But for now, that cabana is looking good.’

  I stood. ‘There’s a boat trip from the resort tomorrow. Anyone not following the Eagle should be on it.’

  Then I told them the escape and evade plan – a hotel adjacent to the airport, where they were all booked in. All they had to do was prove who they were and they’d be let into the room, and there they could take their envelopes with alternative ways off the island and out of the Philippines.

  I could see Rich eyeing the minibar, so I left them to it.

  16

  Liz and I got out of the water, back onto the resort’s boat, and took off our diving masks. We’d had an amazing swim among the fish. Once we were dried off and seated on the rear deck of the vessel with the other passengers, I went and grabbed us a couple of cold beers. Ken was at the bar. ‘Xanax in place – I’m good to go,’ he said, looking at the barman.

  ‘Good,’ I said. ‘Give Alex a hand working out what’s up with this cabana girl. I need him to concentrate on the planning.’

  ‘Roger that,’ said Ken, and moved off.

  I drank with Liz and we had a laugh. She got talking to another woman sitting beside her, a nurse from California. What a small world. So I stood and moved to the side railing where Rich was making small talk with a middle-aged Chinese bloke. I leaned on the rail on the other side of Rich and waited for them to stop talking. Eventually the Chinese dude moved away and Rich said, ‘I bought it this morning, seven hundred dollars.’

  ‘Okay,’ I asked. ‘Let’s park it off-site.’

  ‘I’ve parked it among some apartments, about ten minutes’ walk from our hotel.’

  ‘Great,’ I said. ‘The places we can grab him – where he’s not with his wife – are the cabana, and also the swimming pool, the beach and the golf course,’ I said. ‘Today and tomorrow, you work with MG on the surveillance-detection, okay? And find where the CCTV cameras are hiding. I don’t want any surprises.’

  I spent another two days having the time of my life with Liz, and I started to consider marriage. She knew I was doing some work on the side, and that I was up to something, but she just wore it. She made everything cool.

  After we’d been at the resort for four days, I got Liz a golf lesson at the golf club after breakfast, and I had a look around. The cabana was connected to a service road which joined the main golf course road halfway down; it was surrounded by trees and the door faced away from the clubhouse. I walked back to the resort quickly and texted the team, asking them to meet me at the pool.

  The only one not there when I arrived was Rich; he’d gone into town to get a new fan belt for the HiAce, an oil filter and a bottle of oil. It needed a new tyre too.

  ‘I’ve only got twenty minutes,’ I said as we all took recliners to sit in. ‘Alex, do we have a plan?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, but he picked up his Nikon and gave it to me – a perfectly innocent tourist-to-tourist action. ‘By the way, boss, those are shots of the wife. If you see her around, that’s the Eagle’s missus.’

  I scrolled through and took a deep breath. She was a short Filipina in her late forties, parading around in a black one-piece and high heels, with silicon pumped into her boobs and fat sucked out of her arse.

  ‘Where were these taken?’ I asked.

  ‘At their pool.’

  ‘Jesus wept,’ I said, handing back the camera. ‘I won’t forget that one.’

  Alex pulled a bunch of folded A4 paper from his pocket and read off a plan that made sense to me: I would delay the cabana girl in the clubhouse, on a pretext – I’d find something; MG and Ken would receive the Eagle in the cabana, bag and tag him, drag him to the HiAce – driven by Rich – and we’d take him straight to the warehouse drop.

  Then the team would do a staggered departure from the Blue Reef Resort, with airline tickets handed out by Alex.

  There was a moment of silence. ‘Any concerns, any questions?’ I asked.

  ‘We’re clear of surveillance,’ said MG. ‘No concerns there.’

  ‘That girl is usually at the cabana before the Eagle,’ said Alex. ‘Can you keep her for – say – fifteen minutes, assuming the Eagle is also late?’

  ‘If I can’t, I’ll call you direct,’ I said, holding up the burner phone. ‘But that’s an emergency – otherwise we stay off these things.’

  They all nodded.

  ‘If we can get our vehicle back, is everyone okay for a fifteen hundred go time?’ I asked.

  ‘Let’s do it,’ said MG, and the lads all nodded.

  I was back.

  17

  At a quarter to three, while Liz was enjoying the steam room and a massage, I sidled into the bar of the golf clubhouse and asked for a beer, a San Miguel on tap. The cabana girl from the photograph served me. Up close I could see she wasn’t as young as I’d thought – maybe twenty-five, twenty-six years old. But she was a looker, with that dark hair all pushed up into hair combs.

  ‘That tortoiseshell?’ I asked as I paid for my drink, and pointed to her hair. ‘I mean – they’re the real thing?’

  She paused and looked at me, probably trying to assess my intentions. I kept a smile going and she said, ‘They’re my grandmother’s. They very old.’

  ‘No,
they’re quite incredible,’ I said. ‘They swap hands for a lot of money now, the real ones, but I think there’s more value in keeping them – using them, for what they’re intended.’

  She beamed. ‘Yes, I agree,’ she said. ‘Whenever tourists ask to buy them, I say no. They don’t have the money value.’

  ‘I know,’ I said. ‘Check this out,’ and I pulled out my keys. On the end was a piece of tortoiseshell, crafted into a key ring.

  ‘Wow,’ she said, touching it and picking it up. ‘Where did you get this?’

  ‘It was my mother’s, given to her by her mother, and when I was younger the comb broke and we couldn’t glue it back together. So I took the pieces and made them into key rings – my mother had one and I have one.’

  ‘It’s so beautiful,’ she said. ‘What a great idea.’

  I shrugged. ‘I’m a builder – it just seemed like a good idea at the time.’

  Behind her the clock said 2.56.

  ‘You’re a builder, from Australia?’

  ‘Yep,’ I said with a smile. ‘Mike – I’m staying up the beach at the Crimson. There’s a conference up there, for construction.’

  ‘Hi, I’m Marika,’ she said.

  We spoke a bit more and I could see she wanted to back away, but was also enjoying talking to me. Then her manager tapped his watch, and told her it was past three. She apologised and cut back through the swinging staff doors, and I stood and walked out to the front of the clubhouse. From where I stood I could see the HiAce in place behind the cabana – the guys were in place and if it was going to plan, the Eagle was about to be transported. I waited for Marika to come around the corner, and when she did, she was in a hurry. Then I stepped off the lowest step of the stairway, and faked a fall. I even yelled a bit and grabbed at my ankle, and when I was in a sitting position, there was Marika crouching beside me, asking if I was okay as I rubbed my lower leg.