Exit wound ns-12 Read online

  Besides that, first-class seats in aircraft had been bugged on European and American airlines as early as the 1980s. Industrial espionage was rife. It still was. We worked on the assumption that every seat was bugged on every airline.

  Red Ken’s plan had few moving parts. Keep it simple, stupid, was a principle all three of us knew worked, and as we were all stupid to be on this job it was a good one. We were going to play a round straight off the plane at six thirty. That was when we’d meet the man who’d organized it – organized it far too much, in fact, even down to the passports.

  Red Ken wouldn’t give any more details about who he was. ‘He doesn’t want you to know until you meet, son. He’s a funny fucker like that. But he’s going to make us all a lot of cash – so just wait.’

  I’d been bombarding him with questions for days. For starters, why had Red Ken, Dex and Tenny been picked as a crew?

  ‘Because we’re good.’ Red Ken was serious. ‘There can’t be any room for fuck-ups. That’s what Special Forces are about – in and out before anyone knows. This isn’t about running into a bank with sawn-offs and grabbing the till. This is about lifting gold that no one knows exists – it needs to be done covertly. That’s your reason, Nick.’

  I explored the chicken-something while Dex put on his headphones and laughed too loud at a movie.

  Red Ken leant across the spare seat between us and gave me a nudge. ‘He was like that when we came over last time. I even think it’s the same film.’

  The final of the two recces had been a week before the funeral. Tenny would have been on his post-tour leave, before returning to the battalion to go through the process of getting out – having massively boosted his pension.

  Dex caught us laughing at him and pulled off one earphone. ‘What?’

  Red Ken pushed himself forward so his head was nearly between the rests. ‘I was saying Nick should apply to your club.’

  ‘You’d love it.’ One earphone was still on his cheek. ‘I’ll introduce you to the pro and maybe we can get your game up. Then I’ll-’

  I reached between the seats, pulled back the earphone and let go.

  ‘Very funny.’ He broke into a laugh and then his eyes were back on the screen.

  I bit the cellophane off my rectangle of cheese. ‘I wish I was like knob-head Laughing Boy, not a worry in the world, just getting on with life and a dodgy G-and-T.’

  Red Ken sat back in his seat and stared at the blank screen in front of him. ‘That’s not the way, mate. You got no one meeting you when you get back from the trip?’

  ‘Like I said at the funeral, no one.’

  ‘That’s harsh. I’ll have my girls waiting for me. The youngest, Charlotte, has just brought my first grandchild home for a second christening. It’s a girl.’ He ripped the end off a citrus handwipe. ‘The Brits got pissed off over the fact she was going to get christened in Sydney. It’ll be a great day. Looking forward to it big-time.’

  15

  We dumped our bags at the hotel and had a quick shower and shave. We had to look the part: no stubble on the car-showroom salesmen. The choice of hotel was perfect – near the airport and the golf club, and just short of the city proper. It had seen better days, but fitted our apparent budget.

  Half an hour later we met up again in the foyer, golf bags beside us and spiky shoes hanging from the straps.

  Red Ken turned down the concierge’s offer of a hotel car. We could have been going to any of the eight or nine courses, so why give away a precise destination when we didn’t have to? Hailing a cab from the main drag didn’t turn out to be easy. It got to the point where Dex was thumbing hopefully at every 4x4 that passed. As if.

  Red Ken had been smoking in the shade along with the rest of the social lepers. He took me to one side. The sun bounced off his gigs as he moved his head and grinned. ‘You might not like who we’re meeting up with this morning any more than we do, but it’s too late to say no. Just think of what this gives us, Nick. Think about Janice and the kids. That’s why we’re here. Besides, you have to look after us two, right?’

  Dex wandered back, dejected.

  I laughed. ‘Didn’t they teach you cab skills in the RAF?’

  Red Ken looked up and down the road. ‘I’ll show you how it’s done in Para Reg.’ He stubbed out his cigarette and stepped off the kerb. Of course a cab was approaching – that was why he’d done it. He waved it down.

  We loaded the clubs into the boot and Dex jumped in next to the driver. He was an Indian in a white shirt and tie. Dex was going to blend in perfectly. ‘Dubai Creek Golf and Yacht Club.’

  There wasn’t much else to say. We weren’t going to talk in front of our new mate, even though the big thing for me was that we were on our way to meet the middleman for this ‘little wheeze’, as Dex kept calling it. He had his head buried in Golf Clubs of the World and was getting very hyper.

  He turned and nodded with excitement. ‘Par seventy-one, 6,857 yards.’

  I nodded back as if I gave a shit. Red Ken smiled, but it faded as he looked out of the window at the throngs of Filipinos and Indian cleaners washing store-fronts. Cranes cut into the sky in all directions above half-finished buildings. The ones that had been completed towered above us. I’d never seen so much marble, glass and steel. Dubai looked like Hong Kong on steroids, designed by architects on LSD.

  We peeled off the highway and hit the approach road to the clubhouse. It had been designed to look like an enormous white Bedouin tent, pitched in a sprawling oasis of green.

  The cab drew up outside the main door and Dex jumped out. He busied himself with loading the bags onto a trolley while Red Ken left to look for the elusive fourth man of this crew. I was left to pay the taxi. That was one bit of cab skills they both knew.

  A Land Cruiser drew up behind Dex while he was still unloading. The driver and passenger were two sun-dried women in their sixties. They looked like they’d been getting drunk in the city since Margaret Thatcher’s era. They had all the golf gear on, down to the peaked plastic hats without the crown. Their jewellery jangled, but not as much as their accents. The driver left the engine running. One clambered down in a pink polo shirt, checked shorts and golfing shoes and shouted back into the wagon, at her blue-shirted friend, ‘I’ll get a boy.’ She was Romford, born and bred.

  She walked between the bonnet of her 4x4 and the rear of our taxi as Dex straightened up from the boot. She pointed at her wagon. ‘When you’ve finished with those, our bags are in the back.’

  I opened my mouth to object but Dex was too quick. He put on the worst Indian-waiter voice ever. ‘Yes, memsahib.’ He gave an exaggerated bow that was totally wasted on them as they disappeared into the clubhouse.

  ‘What the fuck you doing, Dex? We got a job to do here, mate.’

  He smiled and did the Indian shaking of the head to indicate yes. ‘Getting in character.’

  Red Ken came back in time to see Dex at the back of the Land Cruiser and me with the trolley holding our bags. Another Indian guy was waiting to drive it away. ‘What’s he doing now?’

  I explained as we picked up the bags and headed inside. Red Ken steered me to a leather sofa while we waited for Dex. We watched as he deposited the bags with the women in the foyer. ‘You know, this place is filled with so many obnoxious, incompetent fuckers, especially in senior positions. Back in the UK they wouldn’t last ten minutes behind the counter at McDonald’s, let alone in management.’

  Dex waited for a tip. The sun-drieds ignored him.

  Red Ken was living up to his name – come the revolution and all that. ‘I bet those two have maids like everyone else here, running round doing everything but wipe their arses. They used to be Filipinos, but now it’s Somalian girls. These people get a maid and they have total power over her. They keep her passport, even though it’s illegal. They decide what to pay her, and even when she can have a break or a day off.

  ‘Chrissie hated the way they were treated. Some of the Brit girls used to get on
to her. They said she was too soft with the two girls who ran the house, setting a bad example by not treating them like shit.’

  Dex walked away empty-handed but smiling. I realized he was singing. ‘“Jolly boating weather…”’ His Indian-waiter accent was outrageous. ‘“And a hay harvest breeze…”’

  The Romford Two were sure he was taking the piss but they didn’t know how.

  Red Ken picked up his set and handed Dex his. ‘You finished? Can we go and get on?’

  Dex grinned and carried on singing. ‘“Swing, swing together…”’

  I followed them outside. We sat in the shade to put on our spiky shoes. As soon as we headed back out into the sun, I could see four buggies waiting for us. In one of them sat an egg-shaped guy, his little white legs dangling just above the buggy floor. His short-sleeved white shirt bulged above his smartly pressed red chino shorts and knee-length white socks.

  ‘Spag.’ Dex beamed. ‘How are you, old chap?’

  16

  I tried not to look surprised.

  Spag stayed under the canopy but a fat and hairy hand stretched out for mine as Dex and Red Ken loaded the clubs into the other three buggies. I clasped his stumpy sausage fingers.

  ‘You look well, Nick.’

  The same couldn’t be said for him. The face under the peak of the cap had had too many visits to the food hall, and its owner had spent far too long sat on his arse. I couldn’t see the eyes behind the dark lenses but I liked to think they were bloodshot. He still wore his seventies porn-star moustache, but like the hair growing out of his ears, it was greyer.

  He let go of my hand and put his foot on the pedal. We followed and drew up at the first tee. Spag climbed out, pressed a blue tee into the grass and a ball on top. By the time he stood up again his face was red and sweating.

  The other two were out of their wagons, staying out of range of his swing.

  Red Ken nodded at me. ‘We knew you’d be pleased.’

  Dex watched with a hand over his eyes, waiting to see where this ball was going to end up.

  Spag took a practice swing. ‘We’ve got a good tee-off time here. Nobody up our asses, listening in.’ His club went back and whacked the ball. I lost sight of it in the low sun.

  ‘Me next.’ Dex selected a club and approached the tee. His whiter-than-white teeth gleamed as he grinned at me. ‘It’s a small world, isn’t it?’

  The whack as his club hit the ball sounded more solid than Spag’s had.

  As Red Ken took his practice swing, Spag came and stood next to me. ‘Damn shame about Tennyson. Goddam Taliban, we should nuke ’em back to the Stone Age.’

  I nodded to keep him talking.

  ‘These guys wanted you on the job all along, you know – like getting the old band together. But nobody knew where to find you. Maybe Tenny getting killed was kind of a blessing.’

  I looked down at him. I couldn’t see his face past the peak of his cap. ‘I doubt he’d see it that way. How did you find them?’

  ‘Right here, on this course. Red was working here at the time. Then I tracked him down in the UK. I need guys I know, who won’t sink under pressure. You still one of those guys, Nick?’ He kept his eyes on Red Ken as he twisted his body, following the imaginary line his ball was going to take. He was waiting for an answer but I wasn’t going to play his game.

  ‘I need people who I know trust each other and know what they’re doing – and more than that, who are mission-oriented. Nothing will get in the way of the mission.’ Spag shooed away an invisible fly. He still wasn’t getting an answer. Fuck him.

  ‘Why aren’t you on the ground with us?’

  His laugh rang out a split second before Red Ken’s club connected. The ball flew off at an angle.

  ‘Bollocks!’ Red Ken glared at him, but Spag was oblivious.

  ‘Once out with you guys was enough.’ The roar of an aircraft taking off just a K away drowned even the hum of traffic on the freeway. He had to raise his voice. ‘That’s for people like you. Like Red’s burger theory – I’m a facilitator, I make things happen. You’re the burgers and I’m, like, a tender sirloin.’

  ‘How did you find out about the gold?’

  ‘Kinda when Saddam got captured and interrogated.’ He slapped my back with a smile. ‘But that’s history now. Today we start making the future the way we want it to be.’

  ‘So how does that happen? Where does the gold go? You got the plane – that means there’s others involved. Why don’t we know about them?’

  Once we lifted the gold we were taking it to an airstrip equidistant between Dubai and Abu Dhabi, used by both cities’ VIPs. Aircraft could come and go without their famous or infamous passengers getting noticed, which wouldn’t have been the case at the two cities’ main airports.

  There were others involved, of course, and he wouldn’t tell Red Ken and Dex about them. It worried me that they didn’t seem to care.

  Spag looked at me through his gigs; no expression and no answers.

  ‘Who’s buying the gold?’

  He displayed a set of nicotine-stained teeth. ‘Know what? Red said you weren’t that happy about the deal. But you’re asking a lot of questions you don’t need to know the answers to. That kinda gives me the shakes, Nick.’

  ‘I like to know what I’m getting involved with, that’s all.’

  ‘If you need to know anything, go ask Red.’ He nodded over towards the tee. ‘It’s waiting.’

  17

  Dex laughed at me as I sort of lined up my shot. The only time I’d hit a golf ball before, it had involved getting it through a windmill and into a clown’s mouth. It flew way off to the left into a patch of wasteground. It made even Red Ken’s look good.

  Dex was loving it. ‘Maybe your handicap should be thirty balls, not thirty strokes.’

  Spag put his club into his bag and manoeuvred his fat frame into the buggy. ‘Fuck it, who cares? It gets us moving and out of earshot. I’ve got plenty of balls, we’ll just throw one out for him.’

  We rattled over the immaculate lawns towards their balls. In the middle distance, yachts sailed past on their way down the Creek. Shiny steel-and-glass monoliths lined the drags like rows of giant dominoes.

  Red Ken’s had landed on a decent bit of grass. We parked in the shade of a clump of palm trees and he shaped up to it.

  Spag was straight down to business. ‘Red, you got anything new to tell me?’

  ‘No. Today is about getting Nick up to speed. Same as we would have with Tenny. We then keep our cover going tomorrow morning. Prep in the afternoon, and lift tomorrow night. Make the RV and then back for one more round before flying back to UK.’

  Spag pointed a porky finger. ‘Enough with the bullet points – I need to know the plan, in detail.’

  Red Ken selected another club. ‘All you’ve got to know is that we’ll be at the RV and we’ll have the doors.’

  The plane would be at the airstrip at 0130 hours Friday morning, and would stay on the ground for thirty minutes. Spag said air-traffic control had it logged in as a normal private flight, carrying out a drop-off.

  I put my hand up. ‘I have a question.’

  Dex was out of his buggy and peering up the fairway like an explorer, throwing up bits of grass in the non-existent wind.

  Red Ken and Spag said it together: ‘What?’

  ‘How do I get my money?’

  Dex turned back, swinging a club from the bottom end. ‘It’s all sorted, chappie. Spag has given us all half a bar USD as a down-payment. Tenny wasn’t too keen on having his share in advance, while he was still serving our noble Queen.’

  Red Ken motioned him on. ‘Oi, shit for brains. Get on with it.’

  Dex enjoyed insults, but only from friends. ‘So I’ve been holding his money, and that’s yours now, of course.’

  ‘Sounds good – but how and when do we get the rest?’

  ‘Everything’s organized.’ Dex went to high-five Spag as he sat in his buggy but got nothing in return. �
��This chap is going to transfer the cash into an EBT – employees’ beneficial trust – within three days. It’s the same vehicle those naughty bankers use to move their multi-million-dollar bonuses out of harm’s way. Everything’s good, everything’s legal. And that’s why we love you, isn’t it?’

  Red Ken had taken his second shot and it wasn’t much better than his first. He hurled the club back into his bag. ‘Dex is right. It’s all legit, son. You’ll have no funny money to deal with. If you take it into the UK, they’re going to want to tax you – that’s how legal it is. How do you think I got my Merc? The system works.’

  ‘But where’s that money come from? Like the sirloin here just said, he’s a facilitator. He makes things happen. So who’s the Kobe beef – you know, the banker – coughing up a shed-load of cash just for us to be on the job? Haven’t you bothered to ask? Lads, what the fuck’s going on?’

  Dex put his arm round Spag. ‘Our chubby little friend won’t tell us, and I, for one, do not care who our banker is. But this chap here, he knows that if our money isn’t in the EBTs within three days bad things will happen. Don’t you, old chap?’

  Red Ken had recovered from his disappointment. ‘He knows we’ll find him.’

  I was sure they would, but that didn’t help me know what I wanted to know.

  Dex slapped Spag on the shoulder and headed for his buggy. I had expected Spag to do his nut by now, but he kept his cool as we all mounted up and headed for his ball. I even saw him smile a little as he drove.