by Mark Dawson
To a point, Hicks thought. Milton was the reason that he had not gone into intelligence; he had refused his transfer to Group Fifteen because he saw something that he believed made him unsuitable for the role. It turned out that Milton had been right about that.
“Well?” she asked.
“I was a soldier,” Hicks said. “For a long time. I got out and I found myself in trouble. Milton helped me.”
“That’s why you came? You owe him?”
“Yes,” Hicks said. “I do.”
IT TOOK two hours to drive to Bilibid. Hicks looked through the windshield at the building ahead of them. It was oddly ostentatious for a prison, with a facade that looked like a castle with two towers and crenelations across the top of the structure that looked like battlements. A tall flagpole, easily a hundred feet high, held aloft a Filipino flag that draped limply in the feeble breeze. A sprinkler chugged rhythmically back and forth across the wide patch of lawn between the parking lot and the entrance.
“That’s a strange building,” he said.
“That part is old. The prison is behind it. It’s new. They built it a few years ago.”
“It’s secure?”
“Yes,” she said.
“So what do we do now? How are you going to get me inside?”
“I’ll come in with you. I’ll say you’re from the British embassy and that you need to speak to him.”
“Why would I come to the local police to do that? Wouldn’t I just come down on my own?”
“They won’t ask questions. The guards are lazy.”
Iron gates rolled shut behind them, restricting their access to the road by which they had arrived.
“If they do?” Hicks asked.
“They won’t. Trust me.”
HICKS GOT out of the car.
Josie followed him. “I’ll go first,” she said. “And let me do the talking.”
“Understood.”
They crossed the lawn and followed a neat path that led to the main entrance. There were two guards at the open doors, leaning against the wall with cigarettes in their mouths. They glanced up at Josie and then Hicks and then resumed their conversation.
Hicks followed Josie inside. It was cooler here, the shelter of the thick stone walls providing pleasant relief from the strength of the sun outside the door. Hicks saw an office with a Plexiglas window dividing it from the lobby. There was a short corridor ahead of them and then another lobby that was equipped with two X-ray machines and an airport-style metal-detecting archway.
The guards might be lazy, he thought, but it wasn’t going to be easy to bring anything into the facility.
Josie made her way to the Plexiglas window and spoke through a grille to the clerk behind it. Hicks waited a few paces behind her. He watched the comings and goings in the lobby: uniformed guards passed through on their way to or from the interior of the facility, all of them armed with pistols that they wore holstered on their belts; clerks and officials crossed the space, using the doors on either side to, Hicks guessed, make their way to their offices. He saw a blaze of bright light from the second lobby with the security equipment, a pair of double doors had been opened, and he caught a quick glimpse of the courtyard beyond.
“This way, please,” Josie said to him.
“Is everything all right?”
He saw satisfaction in her eyes. “Yes, sir,” she said. “Mr. Smith is going to be brought to the visitors’ room. We’ll see him there.”
53
THE VISITING room was functional. It was the communal space where the inmates were brought to meet with their visitors. Hicks would have preferred somewhere private, but they would have to make do with what they had been given. He was grateful that he had been able to make it this far without his cover story being questioned. Officer Hernandez had accompanied him to the room and then taken a chair in the waiting area. Hicks said that he would collect her when he had finished with Milton and then they would leave together.
He glanced around the room at the other inmates: they were male, tough and bore the bleakness of their situations across dead-eyed and expressionless faces. Many of them had prison ink on their exposed skin, their arms, legs, and faces decorated with crude tattoos. The inmates were distinguished by their orange shirts. Their visitors, for the most part, were dressed poorly, their tired and mismatched clothing suggesting that they, and the men that they had come to visit, originated from the poorest strata of Filipino society. Hicks remembered the gleaming new airport and the skyscrapers of upscale Manila that he had seen as he and Hernandez had driven south, and knew that a place like this would have collected the dregs.
Hicks looked at his watch. He had been here for ten minutes. He turned to the door, wondering whether he should go and speak to Josie, when the main set of double doors on the north wall opened and a man was brought inside. He was marked out as an inmate by the same uniform as the others, and Hicks almost disregarded him. His face was bruised and marked by cuts that had been clotted with dried blood. One eye had been forced shut by a socket that was swollen and blackened. He walked with a limp, hunched over with an arm pressed to his side as if to protect damaged ribs.
Hicks looked away, and then, as he noticed that the newcomer was coming across to his table, he looked again.
He hadn’t recognised him. It was Milton.
“Jesus,” he said.
Milton nodded and lowered himself gingerly down onto the hard wooden seat. “Thanks for coming,” he said.
“Can we speak safely?”
“They don’t listen in,” Milton said. “We’re lucky. If this was a room to ourselves, they’d bug it. I don’t think they care here so much.” He stretched out his shoulders, exhaling painfully from the effort. “How do I look?”
“Terrible.”
“I’ve felt better. I’ve been roughed up every day since I’ve been here. You got my message, then?”
“She called me last night.”
“And you came right away?”
Hicks nodded. “I flew overnight.”
“I bet your wife was pleased about that.”
“We owe you, Milton. She knows.”
“You don’t owe me anything.”
Hicks waved that away. “We’ll have to agree to disagree on that.”
“Well, thank you. I appreciate it.”
“What’s happened to you?”
“You mean how did I end up here?”
Hicks nodded.
“I was tricked.”
He told Hicks his version of the story: how he had been approached in London, how he had been told that he was a father and that the mother of his child wanted to see him. He explained how he had been framed so that he could be brought here to be tortured by a man from his past with a grudge to bear.
“They’re clever,” Milton said when he was finished. “They knew me. They knew exactly which buttons to press. I’ve been alone for a long while. And that’s fine—I don’t want sympathy; it’s my choice. But when someone says that you have kin… a son…” He paused. “I let it blind me. I should have been more careful and now, because I wasn’t…” He paused again. “She’s dead and here I am.”
“This man—who is he?”
“Fitzroy de Lacey. He’s an arms dealer. I was responsible for him being convicted. He was here for ten years.”
“Was here?”
“He got out two days ago. I don’t know how. The regime changed. Maybe it’s more friendly to him. Maybe he’s offered to work with them. But he’s had help from the police. I should be in a holding facility in Manila, not down here. Hernandez said that her boss arranged the transfer. And then she was threatened and thinks it was him. So I think we can assume that he’s involved.”
Milton glanced meaningfully at Hicks. He waited until the guard who had approached their table from behind had continued upon his way.
“You’re not going to be able to take many more beatings like that,” Hicks said.
“I know,” Milton said. “But I thi
nk I’ve bought myself a little time. I put some of de Lacey’s goons in the infirmary when they came for me yesterday. They said I killed one of them. They’ve put me in solitary until they can work out what to do with me.”
“And when they put you back in circulation again?”
“I’m hoping you might have been able to get me out by then.”
Hicks sucked his teeth. “That won’t be easy,” he said. “The guards aren’t anything special, but the building looks secure.”
“I agree. You’re going to need help.”
“You got any ideas?”
“Actually, I do. I have someone in mind: a man I worked with when I was in the Group.”
“One man? This isn’t a two-man job, Milton.”
“I know, but he’s brilliant.” He hesitated. “Well, he’s eccentric, but he’s also brilliant.”
“At what?”
“Computers. I think this will be right up his street.”
“What’s his name?”
“Ziggy Penn.”
“Never heard of him,” Hicks said.
“No reason why you would. He’s a bit of a hermit.”
“It’s your funeral. Where do I find him?”
“The last I heard he was in Korea, but he’ll have moved on now. He doesn’t stay in one place long. Tends to wear out his welcome. The last time we worked together I had to bail him out of trouble with Yakuza in Tokyo.”
“So? How do I get to him?”
“There’s a UseNet group. It goes way back, before forums. It’s run by fans of The Smiths.”
“Right,” Hicks said. “The Smiths.”
“The site’s legitimate, but Ziggy monitors it. He has software installed. It pings him if a certain message is posted.”
“What do I post?”
“You’ll need to remember it: ‘The last night of the fair, by the big wheel generator.’ Make an account, open a new message, and post that.”
Hicks screwed up his face as he tried to remember. “What is that? ‘Rusholme Ruffians’?”
“I didn’t know you liked The Smiths, Hicks.”
Hicks smiled and shrugged. “I lived in Manchester when I was younger. I prefer the Mondays, but I can live with Morrissey. I’ll do it as soon as I’m out. What’ll happen next?”
“He’ll reply and tell you how to contact him off the board. He’s a bit unusual, like I said. Cut him some slack. We’re going to need him. Tell him what’s happened and that he needs to get here as soon as he can.”
“If he says no?”
“He won’t. He owes me a favour or two.”
“I see a theme developing here.”
Milton grimaced; Hicks realised it was actually a thin smile.
“You need anything else?”
Milton’s expression was wry once again. “A helicopter in the yard?”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
Milton reached across the table and took Hicks by the hand.
“Hey!” a guard shouted.
Milton squeezed Hicks’s hand. “Thanks. I won’t forget this.”
“Hey! No touch!”
Milton let go.
“Try to stay in one piece,” Hicks said.
“Get Ziggy and then work out how to get me out of here. I can look after myself until then.”
JOSIE LED the way out of the prison. She was silent until they got back into her beaten-up old car.
“Well?” she said. “What are you going to do?”
“You don’t need to worry about—”
“You’re going to try to get him out?”
“He shouldn’t be in there,” he said. “You know that. He’s been set up.”
“I know he has,” she said.
“And we can’t wait for him to go to trial.”
“It wouldn’t matter,” she said. “It wouldn’t be fair. It’ll be fixed.”
“There you go.”
“So you’re going to get him out?” she said again.
He didn’t reply.
“You know you’re going to need help, don’t you? I don’t care who you are or what you and he used to do. You’re out of your depth here.”
“You don’t know that,” he said.
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “I do. And you are. You need help.”
“You’ve done enough. Milton wanted me to say thanks. He’s grateful. But that’s it. He doesn’t want you to get involved.”
“I haven’t got a choice,” she said, laying her hands against the wheel. “I am involved. Do you have any children, Mr. Hicks?”
“I do. I have two.”
“So you’ll understand. I have a little boy. Someone pushed a picture of him outside his school under the door to my mother’s apartment. There was a bullet with the picture.”
“Milton told me. And that’s more than enough reason to get as far away from us as you can.”
“And go where? And do what? If you try to get him out, what do you think is going to happen to me and my boy? They’ll find us.” She shook her head. “My boss is involved. I don’t know how, just that he is. If I help you get Milton out, you can help me. Right?”
“Help?”
“Help me find answers. And make it how it was before.”
Hicks looked at her. Her face was set hard, but he could see the twitch of a muscle in her cheek. She was trying to play it tough, but she was frightened. That wasn’t unreasonable. Hicks knew what the climate was like in Manila these days. Murder was common currency. The police acted with impunity. Milton had already been caught up in the maelstrom of corruption and violence that had been unleashed here. Josie and her son were on the edge of the vortex, trying to strike away from it, but she was compromised and the pull of the current was relentless.
Hicks would have been frightened, too.
“Okay,” he said.
54
HICKS WAS at the airport at midday. He found a space by the rail in the arrivals hall and held up a piece of blank paper upon which he had written the name ANDY ROURKE.
Both his time of arrival and the name of the passenger he was ostensibly there to meet had been agreed upon over the course of a series of emails that had taken place the previous evening. He had visited the UseNet forum that Milton had identified and had left the message as he had been instructed.
What happened next was still a matter of some confusion for him: a forum reply had appeared beneath his comment that comprised just a single, nonsensical hyperlink. He had clicked the link and a chat box had appeared. The conversation had been very one-sided, with his interlocutor—Hicks had presumed that it was Ziggy Penn—firing off a series of curt questions.
Hicks had initially been reluctant to reply freely and had said as much; the reply was instant and indignant. The chat was secure, Ziggy said, and protected with military-class encryption. And unless Hicks answered each of the questions to Ziggy’s satisfaction, the conversation would be terminated and there would be no second chances.
Hicks had little choice but to trust that Ziggy was as Milton had described him, so he had answered the questions thoroughly. Hicks explained that Milton was in trouble and that he had requested that he contact Ziggy so that he might come and help.
That had been twelve hours ago.
And now Hicks was here to wait for him.
He looked up as the next group of new arrivals emerged into the hall. There was the usual mixture of men and women on business, backpackers, tourists and locals returning home. One of the passengers stood out: he was of middling height, a little overweight, wearing a New York Jets ball cap and a pair of dark glasses. He was carrying a laptop bag over his shoulder and he walked with a pronounced limp.
He glanced at the signs that were being held up by the waiting taxi drivers and paused as he saw the one that Hicks was holding up.
“Mr. Hicks,” he said.
“That’s right. Ziggy Penn?”
He didn’t answer the question. “I recognise you,” he said instead.
/> “I doubt it. You’ve never seen my—”
“Of course I have,” the man said peremptorily. “Your Facebook profile took ten seconds to find. You’re not very good at keeping out of the limelight.” Hicks started to protest, but Ziggy cut him off. “Don’t worry, neither is Milton. He thinks he’s off grid, but he doesn’t know what that means these days. Not really. Right, then—where’s your car?”
“Outside,” Hicks said, pointing in the direction of the short-stay parking lot.
“Let’s get going.”
HICKS OFFERED to put the bag in the trunk, but Ziggy declined, clutching it tightly to his chest like a toddler with a cherished toy. Hicks went around to the driver’s side of the car, opened the door, and got in.
“Where are we going?” Ziggy asked.
“We’re going to meet someone who might be able to help us.”
Hicks turned out of the parking lot and headed east. The rental had an integral satnav unit and Hicks had entered the address in Taguig that Josie Hernandez had given him. It was a short drive to the east on Andrews Avenue. The satnav suggested that they would be there in thirty minutes.
He glanced over at Ziggy. He had taken out a large cellphone and was flicking his finger down the screen, scrolling through pages of text that Hicks did not immediately recognise.
“What are you doing?”
“Nothing that you need worry about.”
He killed the screen and put the phone back into his backpack.
Hicks turned left at the Colonel Jesús Villamor Air Base and merged onto the southbound Metro Manila Skyway.
“I know plenty about you already,” Ziggy said, apropos of nothing.
“Really?”
“There’s not much I don’t know. Alex Hicks. Two kids, wife, you live near Cambridge, you’re ex-military.”
Hicks got the sense that the man was showing off and that he wanted Hicks to be curious to know how he had found that out about him. He was tempted not to indulge him, but he couldn’t resist. “Okay,” he said. “How did you get all that?”
“You logged into the forum through your Google account, which is stupid, by the way. And your password was embarrassingly easy to crack. Your wife’s name and your birthday. Really? It took me ten minutes while I was waiting at the airport. I did it on my phone—that’s how easy it was.”
