At Hell's Gate

by Mark Abernethy

  ‘My God, I saw the whole thing,’ she said, and I knew she’d put on some perfume. ‘Is your ankle okay?’

  I winced, and gave a bit of a yelp when I squeezed my ankle. She put down her tote bag and said, ‘Wait there – I’ll get some ice.’

  So now she was trusting me with her bag. I stayed in that position and while I was waiting, I could see the HiAce pull out from behind the cabana and take off quite sedately down the service road. At times like this, some operators want to cut and run. Not me. I like to play it out, put on the full theatre so any fold-backs with police and intel only come back to innocent old Mike, with his girlfriend on a holiday at Cebu: no friends, no associates, no meetings.

  Marika arrived back with a plastic bag filled with ice, and her manager in tow. Perfect, I thought: a two-person alibi. I put the ice bag on my ankle and fanned myself for a couple of minutes. Then I tried to stand and hobbled a bit on the sore ankle.

  ‘Thank you so much,’ I said. ‘I’m going to get back to the hotel and lie down – wow, that was so embarrassing.’

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ said Marika, and I thanked her as I limped away.

  *

  Once I was back at the hotel, I went to Alex’s room and knocked. No reply. That was strange. This was our meet-and-debrief point: he was handing off to me, passing on the airline tickets and the paperwork, and taking a shuttle to the airport, while the other three split up at the airport and the warehouse.

  I knocked again, and then I was going to text, but decided against it. If he was with the bad guys, a text could be incriminating.

  I looked at my watch. Twenty minutes until Liz was out of the spa. I walked down to reception and was about to ask if there was anything going on when I heard some Aussie tourists gabbling over by the main glass doors at the drop-off apron. I walked up to them and asked if everything was okay.

  ‘A guest was just run over,’ said a woman who was crying.

  ‘Who?’ I asked.

  ‘I dunno, I think he’s an Aussie,’ said the woman, and then she pointed and the girl with her – her daughter? – said, ‘He’s still there.’

  I followed the pointed finger, jogged outside, and on the other side of the main road, I saw a man lying on the ground. I couldn’t see who it was for the ambulance people. I must have missed this because I’d walked back from the golf club.

  I hurried across the road, through slowing-down traffic, and was in time to see Alex being lifted into the ambulance. He locked eyes with me – through an oxygen mask – and turned his hands up. There was nothing he could do.

  I didn’t have time to react. Alex was in the ambulance, and as the paramedic shut the doors I asked him if the guy was all right. He said, ‘Broken leg and shock,’ and climbed into the vehicle, which sped off.

  I walked back to the hotel, freaking. Alex had my airline tickets, and remember that this was before eTickets that you kept in your iPhone wallet. Those pieces of paper were essential for me and Liz, and they also created a paper trail back to me and Alex – they connected us, something I wanted to avoid. There was also the matter of the picture files in Alex’s camera: any nosy cop going through those might wonder at all the shots of a prominent businessman who’d disappeared on the same day as Alex was run over.

  Damn it!

  By the time I got back to the hotel reception, I’d collected myself. ‘Hi, I’m staying here and I just picked up this phone from the man who was run over.’

  ‘Oh, yes, sir,’ said the receptionist.

  ‘Yeah, and I want to get it back to him – do you know which hospital they’re taking him to?’

  ‘It would be Doctors’ Hospital,’ said the receptionist. ‘On the road to the airport.’

  I thanked him and wandered down to the spa. It was all spacey music and lemongrass incense. ‘Is Liz finished?’ I asked the girl, and she said she’d finished five minutes ago.

  I virtually ran to our room, and stormed in. Liz was lying on the bed in a hotel gown, looking very relaxed.

  ‘A New Zealand chap got hit,’ I said, abruptly. ‘We have to get to the hospital.’

  ‘What?’ she said, sitting up. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘A bloke called Alex was knocked over on the street about a quarter of an hour ago, and I told the hotel – given we’re Aussies – that we’d go down there and make sure he has the medical insurance and his embassy knows.’

  She shook her head, clearly not in favour of this.

  ‘Your medical knowledge will get us in there,’ I said. ‘If it was me in his place, you’d want someone to help.’

  ‘Okay,’ she said, and got off the bed. ‘Your timing stinks.’

  We got to the Doctors’ Hospital about fifteen minutes later, and walked straight from the cab to the admissions desk. I told the woman that the person’s name was Alex, he was a New Zealander, and because I was an Australian – and I’d met him at the hotel – I wanted to check he was okay and that his insurances all stacked up. She didn’t seem convinced, so Liz stepped up, asked about the leg break and the drugs and the cast and what kind of bed he was in, and the admissions person said, ‘Oh, you’re a doctor or a nurse?’ and Liz nodded and smiled, and in a jiffy we were being led down the ward and into a room with two people in it.

  ‘This is Mr Alex,’ said the woman, and it was obvious that Alex was in the land of nod, thanks to some morphine. The hospital woman hung around while I cased the bedside table. I immediately spotted the airline tickets sticking out of his half-opened bumbag, and the Nikon was right there on the table.

  ‘Love, could you go over his medication, please?’ I asked, and Liz walked to the medical sheet at the end of the bed, started reading it, and the woman left the room to get the doctor. I stashed Liz’s and my airline tickets straight into my pocket and quickly picked up the Nikon, turning it on. I saved the images to the card, and as it was downloading – agonisingly slowly – I could hear voices approaching.

  As the doctor walked through the door, I ejected the camera card and palmed it, carefully replacing the camera on the table.

  I took over now and told the doctor that I was worried because Alex – who I’d met once at the hotel, a nice chap – perhaps wasn’t fully insured.

  The doctor looked at the sheet at the foot of the bed and said, ‘They found an insurance card in his wallet – it’s all covered. I’m sorry, what did you say your name was?’

  ‘James Smith,’ I said, ‘staying at the Crimson – gee, it’s great down there.’

  I could sense Liz becoming confused and wanting to talk about the leg and the drugs, but I ushered her out of there and we made straight for the hotel.

  Once we were back in our room, I thanked her for her help.

  ‘My help?’ she said. ‘Doing what?’

  ‘We looked after a fellow traveller,’ I said. ‘It meant a lot to me.’

  We stayed one more night and left for our flight early – skipping breakfast at the hotel.

  As we took off and gained altitude, Liz leaned over and gave me a kiss.

  ‘What was that for?’ I asked.

  ‘For trying really, really hard to not lie to me,’ she said.

  ‘I do my best,’ I said.

  ‘Your best is better than most men’s perfection,’ she said, and I blushed with pride.

  ‘You’ll do me,’ I said, and we banked for home.

  About The Contractor and Mark Abernethy

  The Contractor worked in domestic and foreign intelligence organisations before returning to his first trade as a builder. He now divides his time between building houses and taking private intelligence contracts.

  Mark Abernethy is a journalist and professional writer. Born in New Zealand, he has lived in Australia for most of his adult life. He is the author of six spy-thriller novels and the ghost writer of many commercial titles.

&nbs
p; Also in The Contractor series

  SIX OTHER BIG UNIT TRUE STORIES

  The Contractor

  As told to Mark Abernethy

  ‘I fix things. I can build you a house or remodel your bathroom.

  I can also make bad situations – and bad people – disappear.’

  Meet Mike. The Contractor. Runs a building site, drives a ute, likes a beer, loves his nail gun. Friends know him as ‘the Big Unit’.

  But Mike is hiding in plain sight. When the call comes he’s another kind of ‘contractor’, one as handy with a Colt M4 as he is with a hammer and nails.

  In these six action-packed true stories we follow a real Aussie spy retired to a life ‘on the tools’, only to find a bad world still needs good guys like . . . THE CONTRACTOR.

  Some of the people in this book have had their names changed to protect

  their identities.

  First published 2017 in Macmillan by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Ltd

  1 Market Street, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, 2000

  Copyright © Mark Abernethy 2017

  The moral right of the author to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted.

  All rights reserved. This publication (or any part of it) may not be reproduced or transmitted, copied, stored, distributed or otherwise made available by any person or entity (including Google, Amazon or similar organisations), in any form (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical) or by any means (photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise) without prior written permission from the publisher.

  This ebook may not include illustrations and/or photographs that may have been in the print edition.

  Cataloguing-in-Publication entry is available

  from the National Library of Australia

  http://catalogue.nla.gov.au

  EPUB format: 9781760557607

  Typeset by Post Pre-press Group, Australia

  Cover design: MDCN Creative

  Cover images: Shutterstock

  The author and the publisher have made every effort to contact copyright holders

  for material used in this book. Any person or organisation that may have been

  overlooked should contact the publisher.

  Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people should be aware that this book may

  contain images or names of people now deceased.

  Love talking about books?

  Find Pan Macmillan Australia online to read more about all our books and to buy both print and ebooks. You will also find features, author interviews and news of any author events.