The Payback

by Simon Kernick

  In truth, I knew very little about Bertie Schagel. For security reasons, we always met in different locations around South East Asia whenever he had a job for me to do, and I had no idea where he actually resided. I didn’t even have a phone number for him. He did all his communication via email from different hotmail addresses, always keeping details to a minimum. When he wanted me for a job, he wrote a message in the drafts section of an email account that only he and I had access to, giving me instructions about where we were to meet. I would read and delete it, then write another message in the drafts section in response, usually confirming my attendance. That way, no actual correspondence was ever sent across the net, which meant our conversation couldn’t be monitored by any interested parties. Schagel was extremely careful in the way he did business. To be honest, I couldn’t even have told you if Bertie Schagel was his real name, although I suspected strongly that it wasn’t. All I knew for sure was that he was utterly ruthless, and if I could have stopped working for him, I can promise you that I would have done.

  But for the moment at least I was tied to him, so that when he called I came running, just like he knew I would.

  I got the taxi driver to drop me off in front of L’Hotel, a gleaming forty-storey structure in the Causeway Bay area of the city. Then, when he’d pulled away, I picked up the bag I’d been told to bring containing enough clothes for three days, and doubled back along the Causeway Bay Road, with its monolithic buildings looming up on either side of me, until I came to the green oasis of Victoria Park.

  It was late afternoon and unseasonably warm and humid for February, with the sun managing to poke its head through the clouds as it began its descent over Kowloon. A t’ai chi class for senior citizens was in progress on one of the greens, while couples of all ages sat on the benches lining the pathways, some holding hands as they enjoyed both the warmth and each other’s company.

  I kept my head down as I walked. I didn’t want to meet anyone’s eye. These people might have been Chinese locals who would probably never in a million years have recognized me as a fugitive ex-police officer from England, a man wanted on murder charges by Interpol for almost the whole of the previous decade, but I’d learned through bitter experience that there’s no such thing as being too careful. Looking round furtively, I felt a pang of jealousy. Having been on the run for so long, I was in a state of perpetual loneliness, and it pained me to see the settled, shared lives of other people, because to do so served as a constant reminder of what I hadn’t got.

  At the end of the park, I crossed the footbridge over the six-lane Victoria Highway and, remembering my instructions, walked along the modern waterfront of Causeway Bay harbour, amazed at how quiet it was, until I came to a flight of stone steps that led down to the water. A motorized white dinghy containing a muscular western man I didn’t recognize, in T-shirt and sunglasses, bobbed up and down below me. The man gave me a cursory nod as I walked down the steps and clambered aboard, then, without a word, he started the engine and pulled back.

  The harbour was lined with a varied cluster of boats, with the most expensive nearest the shoreline, while the local junks were relegated to a far corner, next to the outer harbour wall. It was therefore no surprise that our journey lasted all of fifty yards until we came to the back end of one of the sleekest, most expensive-looking yachts in the place. Bertie Schagel was not the kind of man to scrimp when it came to his own comfort.

  A second westerner in T-shirt and sunglasses appeared on deck and took hold of the proffered rope as I came up the back steps. I slipped on the fibreglass and almost tumbled backwards, and he had to grab my arm to steady me. I nodded in thanks, recognizing him from my last meeting with Schagel in a Singapore hotel, slightly embarrassed to have lost the cool demeanour I like to portray in situations like this.

  The guy pointed towards the lower deck, and taking a last look at the setting sun, I went through an open door and into the air-conditioned coolness of a dimly lit room where a very large man with a very large head sat in a huge leather tub chair that still looked tight around his rolling, multi-layered midriff. Bertie Schagel’s thinning grey hair was slicked back, and he was wearing a black suit with a black open-necked shirt beneath it, from which sprouted a thick, wiry wodge of chest hair. He had an outsized glass of something alcoholic in one hand and a Cuban cigar, already half-smoked, in the other, making him look uncannily like Meatloaf in a Gordon Gekko fancy-dress costume.

  ‘Ah, Dennis, good you could make it,’ he said with a loud smile, not bothering to attempt to extricate himself from the chair, which would have taken far too long. ‘Take a seat. Would you like a drink of something?’

  Normally I would have baulked at the prospect, as I never liked to mix business with pleasure, or spend any more time with Schagel than I absolutely had to, but the flight from Bangkok had taken it out of me. I told him I’d have a beer. ‘Singha, if you’ve got it.’

  ‘We’ve got everything,’ said Schagel, before leaning over his shoulder and calling out to someone to bring it through.

  A few seconds later, a dark-skinned Thai girl with dyed-blonde hair came through the door behind him, carrying the beer. She couldn’t have been more than eighteen at most, which made her at least thirty years short of Schagel, and she was wearing tight denim hotpants and an even tighter, garish pink halter-top that clung like a second skin to her boyish body. As she set the bottle and a coaster down on the teak coffee table, Schagel leaned forward and, with an unpleasant leer, slapped her behind with a painful-sounding thwack. The girl flinched with shock but otherwise made no move to acknowledge what had happened, and retreated from the room without meeting my eyes.

  It was clear that Schagel was humiliating her for my benefit. He seemed to like doing that. Once, at another of our meetings, I’d been made to wait while he’d yelled abuse at someone in an adjoining room (I never knew if it was a man or a woman because whoever it was didn’t speak once), ending his tirade with an audible slap before lumbering back into the room and greeting me with one of his sly, knowing smiles. I think it was his way of reminding me that he was the boss, the one in control; that he could do exactly what he liked, and there was not a thing that I, or anyone else, could do about it.

  Only once had I ever defied his orders. He’d wanted me to kill a middle-aged Russian housewife based in Kuala Lumpur on behalf of her businessman husband, who it seemed didn’t want to have the hassle of a divorce. The husband must also have been mightily pissed off with her about something because his instructions were that she was to be kidnapped, taken to an isolated location, and then beheaded live on film, a copy of the footage to be delivered to him afterwards.

  It never ceases to amaze, or sadden, me how twisted human beings can be. As Schagel had told me about the job, I was thinking about how low I’d fallen to be having such a conversation. He’d offered me a hundred and fifty thousand US dollars to do it – triple what I would normally expect – and it was clear he was getting paid a hell of a lot more than that. But I’d turned him down flat.

  I’m not a good man. I’ve killed people in my life who’ve probably not deserved it. In fact, scotch that, I know I have. I’ve acted as judge, jury and executioner when I’ve had absolutely no right to do so. But I’ve also lost a lot of sleep over what I’ve done. Woken up in the middle of the night, sweating and terrified, as the ghosts of the past haunt my dreams, knowing that they’ll always be there with me right up until the end of my life, and possibly even beyond. I’ve got morals. I like to think the hits I carry out are on people who’ve done some kind of wrong. That they’re not innocent. This woman was guilty of nothing, and I drew the line immediately, knowing that ultimately my sanity depended on it.

  Schagel hadn’t taken it well. He’d threatened and cajoled me, claiming that he could have me arrested at any time and then I’d be spending the rest of my life in jail. He could have done too. He knew far more about me than I knew about him, having set me up with the fake identity I now lived under. And
, unlike me, he had some very powerful friends. But I’d stood my ground and eventually he’d given up. He didn’t betray me to the authorities, either. I guess, in the end, I was too useful to him for that. Unfortunately, I still read in the newspapers a few weeks later that the headless corpse of a fifty-six-year-old Russian woman had been found floating in the Klang River just outside KL. My stand might have served to make me feel a little better, but it hadn’t done her much good.

  I picked up the beer and took a long slug, relishing the coldness and the hoppy taste. Sometimes in life there are few things better than a cold beer.

  ‘So, to what do I owe the pleasure of your company, Mr Schagel?’

  ‘Ah, straight to the point, Dennis. That’s what I like about you.’ He smiled, lizard-like, and crossed his hands on his lap, loudly cracking the knuckles. ‘So, I shall be straight to the point also. It’s a job in the Philippines – a country I understand you’re familiar with.’

  I nodded. The Philippines. I hadn’t been there in over six years, and I immediately wondered how exactly Schagel knew I was familiar with it. I certainly hadn’t told him, and as far as I was aware no one knew about the three years I’d spent there after I’d first gone on the run from the UK. But for the moment I let it go. ‘Who’s the target?’

  ‘An Irish ex-pat and long-term resident of Manila. His name’s Patrick O’Riordan.’ Schagel reached down behind his chair and grabbed a plain brown envelope, which he handed to me.

  I opened it and pulled out an A4-sized black-and-white headshot of a fit-looking western man in his early fifties with a shock of bouffant-style curly white hair and high, well-defined cheekbones. He was looking straight at the camera, a confident half-smile on his face, as if all was well in his world. Which it probably was.

  ‘It should be a straightforward assignment,’ continued Schagel. ‘As far as the client has led me to believe, Mr O’Riordan will not be expecting anything.’

  Sometimes the people you target are suspicious of what’s coming and take measures to protect themselves, or check for surveillance, which makes tracking them slightly harder. The good thing from my point of view is that this usually means they’re guilty of something. But if Patrick O’Riordan – whoever he was – wasn’t expecting anything, it was possible he was an innocent man. That, or a foolish one. Either way, it unnerved me a little that right now he was going about his daily business unaware that two people were discussing the mechanics of his murder a thousand miles away.

  ‘What’s his background?’ I asked.

  ‘He’s a journalist for the Manila Post.’

  ‘Someone must really dislike his work.’

  Schagel smiled. ‘Someone does. Did you know that more journalists are murdered in the Philippines than in any other country in the world?’

  ‘I didn’t,’ I said, although it didn’t surprise me. In my experience, the Philippines was a lawless, corrupt place where people from all backgrounds tended to use the gun as a first rather than a last resort.

  ‘Mr O’Riordan lives with his wife in the city. The client only wants him targeted, but if the wife gets in the way …’ Schagel shrugged his shoulders, and his outsized head seemed to sink into them. ‘Then you will need to get rid of her too.’

  My face showed no reaction to his casually callous tone, but by the way he was looking at me I could tell he was watching for one. Testing whether or not I could be relied upon to put a bullet into the woman if she got in the way.

  I asked him what the pay was.

  ‘The remuneration for this particular job is seventy-five thousand US dollars, payable at the end of the task in the usual manner.’

  The usual manner was in the form of a deposit paid by a Hong Kong-registered shell company into the numbered Panama-based bank account that Schagel had set up for me three years earlier. I would then move it to an account that I held with the Bangkok Bank (also set up by Schagel), and from there I could send money transfers as and when I needed them to a local Laotian bank. The sizes of the payments made were never enough to bother the authorities, and although it was plenty of hassle, it was a hell of a lot less suspicious than carrying large amounts of cash around between countries.

  Schagel puffed lordly on his cigar. ‘In Manila, you’ll be supplied with an unused gun with a suppressor attached. Use that. The client would prefer O’Riordan to be targeted in his own home, and that when you have dealt with him, you set fire to the place.’

  I nodded to signify that this was OK, even though it meant that I was almost certainly going to have to kill his wife too – a task that filled me with a hypocritical distaste.

  ‘The only stipulation with this job is that it has to be done fast. Very fast. I have already booked you on the Cathay Pacific flight tonight at ten p.m. Your flight home is open-ended, but the client wants him dead by two p.m. local time tomorrow. That’s why the pay is higher than usual.’

  ‘There’s no way I can guarantee that, Mr Schagel. I don’t like hurrying these kinds of jobs. You know that. Too many things can go wrong.’

  ‘And that’s why the client came to me. Because he wants a professional to do it. Someone who can act swiftly and decisively.’ He waved the stub of his cigar at me. ‘You have proved many times that you are this kind of professional, Dennis. So do this task for me. O’Riordan has to die by two p.m. tomorrow, otherwise the job is off and I am left looking bad.’

  I started to say something but he put up a hand, signifying that it wasn’t up for discussion, and I knew better than to try. He motioned towards the envelope in my hand. ‘There’s also a phone in there. In the notes section, you will find Mr O’Riordan’s home and work addresses, and several of the establishments he frequents in the area.’

  ‘What if he isn’t in the city?’ I asked, rummaging inside and pulling out a new iPhone.

  ‘I am reliably informed he will be.’

  It seemed Schagel’s client knew a lot about the man he wanted killed, but that suited me fine. It made things a lot easier.

  ‘There’s also a pre-programmed telephone number on there for use in emergencies if you need to get hold of me day or night. Call it, leave a message, and I will be back to you within the hour. When you’ve given me confirmation that the job’s done, delete everything from the phone and get rid of it in a way it can’t be found. Now, have you memorized the target?’

  I nodded, putting the phone in my jeans pocket, and handed him back the envelope with the photo inside.

  I’ve carried out four hits on behalf of Bertie Schagel in the past three years, and he’s always operated in the same way. Methodically, and with every angle covered. Always in a position to deal with any unforeseen problems but leaving behind absolutely nothing to link him to the actual crime itself. But at least he was reliable, and in my line of business, that’s something that’s priceless.

  I also knew not to ask too many questions. I never did any more. Not since the Russian woman. I still liked to think my targets were all bad guys (and they had all been guys) who’d deserved to meet a sticky end, but I couldn’t put my hand on my heart and swear it with total confidence, especially now that I’d found out O’Riordan was a journalist. But because I’d turned down that one job, I knew that Schagel no longer trusted me entirely. He liked his operatives to be like him, utterly devoid of human compassion. Thankfully I had yet to stoop that low, although occasionally in the dark, solitary moments when I contemplated my place in the world, I wondered if it was only a matter of time before I finally did.

  He downed the remainder of his drink, then gave me a look that told me our meeting was over. ‘I can organize a taxi to the airport for you if you wish?’

  ‘No, it’s OK. But there is something I’ve been wanting to talk to you about.’

  He looked suspicious. ‘Really? What’s that?’

  I hadn’t been looking forward to this part of the conversation, but I also knew that it had been coming for a while. ‘My retirement. I’ve done quite a lot of work for you now, but
I’m making a living running my other business, and I want to make a go of it. I’ll do this job for you, but afterwards, I’d like to bring our relationship to a close.’

  Schagel looked at me through the cigar smoke with an air of vague amusement, as if I’d told him an inconsequential joke and he was humouring me. ‘You haven’t forgotten, I hope, Dennis, what I did for you?’

  I hadn’t. It was why I owed him. If Bertie Schagel hadn’t come to my rescue, I would have been facing the prospect of the rest of my life behind bars. He hadn’t done it for altruistic reasons, but even so, he’d still done it. ‘No,’ I said, ‘but I reckon when I’ve done this job, number five, that I’ll have paid my debt to you.’

  ‘It cost me a great deal of money and effort to remove you from custody. You are wanted for mass murder by the British authorities, and they have notoriously long memories. Yet I still managed to secure your freedom.’ He paused. ‘There will come a time when your debt to me is repaid. I’ve always told you that. But right now, I need you and the services you provide, and I pay you well for your troubles, do I not? Even though, on occasion, you haven’t, as the Americans would say, played ball.’ He cleared his throat. ‘But if you do this job for me within the timescales you’ve been set, then maybe we talk again. OK? But make sure you do it.’

  You had to hand it to Schagel. He was a good salesman and the way he put it almost made me feel guilty that I’d brought the subject up. And the truth was, I had to do what he said, because that was my problem these days: I was in hock to the wrong sort of person.