The Solitary Man (Stephen Leather Thrillers) Read online

  Inside the wall was a building, possibly three hundred feet long and at least two storeys high, possibly three. Hutch could see the grey-tiled roof and just over half a floor. All the windows were open and he couldn’t see any bars on them. It could have been an administration building, but it appeared to be unoccupied. Next to it was an equally long building, but it was lower, and all he could make out was the top of the roof. What Hutch really needed to make any sense of what he was looking at was an aerial plan of the compound, but he knew that there was no point in asking Bird if he had one. From where Hutch was standing, it looked as if the road ran the full length of the wall, and then branched off to the left, following the wall around.

  It was too hot to walk, and Hutch’s cotton shirt was already drenched with sweat. They went back to the car, past the same two bored guards. Two camera-bedecked tourists, Germans judging by their accents, arrived in a taxi and went over to the furniture store. Hutch guessed that the store, if not the prison itself, was on the tourist trail, which might account for the guards’ lack of interest in visitors.

  Bird drove slowly down the dirt road. At the far corner of the perimeter wall was a larger watchtower, with a searchlight. It had a similar barred doorway at the bottom. A hatless guard was smoking a cigarette, looking back into the prison. Hutch squinted, trying to see if the guard was armed. Bird groped under his seat and pulled out a pair of green rubber-covered binoculars and handed them to Hutch. Hutch took them gratefully and focused them on the watchtower. The guard wasn’t holding a weapon, though that didn’t mean he didn’t have one close by. Hutch examined the doorway at the base of the watchtower through the binoculars. He could just about make out a lock, though he couldn’t see what type it was.

  Bird turned left, dropping down into first gear and slowing the Capri to a crawl. The perimeter wall was a different colour, beige rather than white. Ahead of them was a large shed, little more than a metal roof held up by white-painted steel beams which sheltered a line of grey and white coaches. The side windows were covered with thick wire mesh and Hutch realised they must be used for transporting prisoners. There were eight in all, and several other vehicles, mainly jeeps. There appeared to be no one around so Hutch told Bird to stop the car.

  Hutch got out and went over to the nearest coach. On the side was a line of Thai writing and the prison insignia. Hutch tried the door to the driver’s cab and wasn’t surprised to find it locked. Next to the driver’s seat were two other seats, presumably for guards. The main door was at the rear of the coach. It was also locked, but Hutch knew he wouldn’t have trouble opening either door. And with security as lax it was, he doubted that he’d be stopped if he climbed in and drove one away. Hutch walked to the rear of the coach and looked in through the window, which had no bars or mesh. The seats in which the prisoners were transported were in a cage that ran almost the full length of the bus. At the back of it was a seating area, presumably for more guards.

  If Winter’s friend was taken out of the prison, and if he knew which coach would be used, then it wouldn’t be difficult to hide a gun on board. He went back to the Capri and climbed in next to Bird. The sweat dried on his skin almost instantly. He pointed for Bird to drive on.

  As far as Hutch could tell, there were no surveillance cameras and the watchtower halfway along the wall was empty. Beyond the wall was another two-storey building with a white sloping roof. A rope stretched from the windows of the top floor to the Capri would pass clear over the wall and the wire. Hutch checked out the upper windows through the binoculars. The rooms appeared to be empty. Maybe they were sleeping quarters and all the prisoners were in the prison workshops. If the rooms were where the prisoners spent the night, and if Winter’s friend was on the top floor, and if they could get a rope to him, and if he could slide along it without being seen . . . Hutch smiled. There were so many ‘ifs’ that it was ridiculous. He wasn’t drawing up a plan of action, he was clutching at straws.

  Further along the road stood a terrace of two-storey houses, many with awnings in front to shield the lower rooms from the sun, and facing them was a new four-storey block of what looked like apartments for guards and other prison personnel. Some of the houses had been converted into small food shops selling noodles, soup and soft drinks, and several women looked up expectantly as the Capri drove by. The road ahead seemed to be a dead end. Bird did a three-point turn and drove back to the main road. Hutch took a last look at the perimeter wall. Unless he was missing something, it certainly wasn’t a high-security institution. He hoped that Winter would have more information for him.

  ‘Where do we go now?’ he asked Bird.

  ‘Your hotel,’ Bird replied as he accelerated down the outside lane of the expressway to the city.

  ‘The Oriental?’

  Bird grinned. ‘No. Not the Oriental.’

  It wasn’t until they drove down a narrow alleyway in the south of Bangkok that Hutch realised why Bird had smiled. At first he’d thought that they were taking a short cut but Bird brought the car to a halt in front of a shabby building. The entrance was open to the street, and a folding metal grille had been pulled back against a wall of peeling paint. A wrinkled old man wearing only knee-length shorts sat on a three-legged stool and worked a sodden toothpick in and out of his front teeth.

  ‘You’re joking,’ said Hutch.

  Bird gestured with his hand for Hutch to get out of the car.

  Hutch opened the car door. The sounds of the street poured in, along with the heat and humidity. He took his holdall off the back seat as Bird got out of the car. Bird spoke to the old man in rapid Thai and the old man grinned and nodded. He continued to chew on his toothpick as he led the two men up a narrow staircase. Cockroaches scattered underfoot and a small white lizard watched them from the ceiling where it hung upside down, its blinking eyes the only sign that it was a living thing. Hutch pulled a face at the smell of old sweat and rotting fruit. He looked through an open door into what was clearly a communal bathroom. There was a hole in the floor rimmed with dried faeces and a hosepipe connected to a tap on the wall. Hutch instinctively put his hand up to cover his mouth. The old man looked back over his shoulder and cackled.

  Hutch’s room was on the top floor. It was barely eight feet square with a single bed and a teak veneer wardrobe. There was no window and the lightbulb was of such a low wattage that murky shadows lurked in the corners. A cardboard cockroach trap lay half under the bed. He dropped his holdall on the floor. There were two sheets on the bed and no blankets, but it was so hot that Hutch doubted he’d need them. He bent down and examined the top sheet. There were tiny flecks of blood down one side. He straightened up, a look of disgust on his face.

  ‘Why is Winter at the Oriental and I’m stuck away in this fleapit?’

  ‘Fleapit?’

  Hutch waved his arm around the room. ‘This . . . this place. Why does he want me to stay here?’

  ‘He didn’t say.’ He looked at his wristwatch. ‘We must go.’

  ‘Go where?’

  Bird had already walked out of the room into the hallway. As the old man stepped aside to let Hutch follow him, Hutch saw that the jamb was splintered as if the door had once been kicked open. He suddenly realised that he’d left his holdall on the floor so he went back for it, then chased after Bird.

  He caught up with him getting into the Capri. ‘Where are we going?’

  Bird waited until they were both sitting in the car before answering. The smile had vanished from Bird’s face and his eyes had a hardness that hadn’t been there before. ‘It wasn’t smart to talk about Billy in front of the old man,’ he said, then started the car and drove on down the street.

  It was a thirty-minute drive to the Oriental Hotel, most of it through heavy traffic. The roads were hazy with exhaust fumes and motorcycles buzzed past both sides of the Capri.

  Winter was waiting for them in the foyer of the hotel and when he saw the Capri pull up he walked out through the glass doors held open by two teenag
ers in white uniforms. He slid into the back of the car and Bird drove off.

  Winter patted Hutch on the back. ‘How did it go, old lad?’

  Hutch twisted around in his seat and glared at him. ‘What are you playing at, Billy?’

  Winter raised his eyebrows in mock innocence. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Why am I in the Cockroach Motel and you’re in a five-star hotel?’

  Winter took a large cigar from his jacket pocket, bit off the end and lit it with a match. ‘Best we’re not seen together too much, Hutch. Best we keep our distance. You won’t be there long.’ The car was filling with cigar smoke, making Hutch’s eyes water, so he wound down the window, but the exhaust fumes were just as bad. ‘How did it go at the prison?’ Winter asked.

  ‘We drove around it. It doesn’t look too secure.’

  ‘Yeah, well, they execute the really tough criminals in Thailand,’ said Winter with a grin.

  ‘The wall doesn’t look too difficult. A decent pole-vaulter wouldn’t have any trouble.’

  ‘I doubt that our man is up to pole-vaulting his way out,’ said Winter.

  ‘I was joking, Billy.’

  Winter took his cigar out of his mouth and jabbed it at Hutch. ‘Yeah, so was I.’

  ‘I meant the wall is relatively easy to get over. The watchtowers look like the weak links; there seemed to be gates leading to the outside and certainly some of the towers were unoccupied.’

  Winter drew deeply on his cigar. He held the smoke, then exhaled through his nostrils. ‘The gates’ll be locked, right?’

  ‘I would have thought so.’

  ‘Can you open them?’

  Hutch rubbed his chin. ‘Probably. They looked old, nothing too difficult. Assuming they’re used, that is. They could be rusted, for all I know, or even welded shut. But I don’t think I’d bother trying to pick them. We could use a Land-Rover with a winch. There’s a moat but we could run a wire over it, attach a winch and rip the bloody thing out. If your man was waiting on the inside, he’d be able to walk out. Assuming he can get to the watchtower.’ Winter pulled a face as if he had a bad taste in his mouth. ‘What’s wrong?’ asked Hutch.

  ‘Nothing,’ said Winter. ‘What would you need?’

  Hutch shrugged. The Capri turned on to a main road and joined a line of unmoving traffic. ‘That would depend on how easy it is for your man to move around inside the prison. Have you got a floor plan? Something that would give me an idea of the layout inside?’

  Winter shook his head. ‘Afraid not.’

  ‘Can you get one?’

  Winter took another long puff at his cigar, his pale eyes fixed on Hutch. He exhaled. ‘That might not be necessary, old lad.’

  Hutch frowned and twisted around in his seat. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean we’re going to put you inside.’

  ‘Inside? What, as a visitor?’

  Winter’s eyes narrowed. He was smiling but Hutch could see that there was no warmth in the expression. ‘Not exactly,’ he said.

  TIM CARVER STOOD IN front of the large-scale map of the Golden Triangle which had been pinned up on the wall of his office since long before he’d been given his Bangkok posting. The map, predominantly dark and light greens, didn’t do justice to the area. There was something primordial about the region, as if it belonged to a time long ago, before helicopters and automatic weapons and syringes, a time when men were hunter-gatherers, living off the land, struggling to survive because survival was a fulltime job. Carver wondered how long he’d have lasted out in such a wilderness, armed with nothing more threatening than a sharp stick. He smiled to himself. About a New York minute, he thought.

  Myanmar was still shown under its old name, Burma, given to it by the British, and its capital marked as Rangoon instead of its new name of Yangon. Carver had been into Myanmar several times, as a guest of the government, to see how their armed forces were trying to deal with the opium warlords in the country’s north-eastern Shan state. The four million Shan people had been fighting for independence since 1958, ten years after the British had pulled out, and for most of that time the opium trade had funded their military activities. The Burmese government wasn’t just taking on a criminal organisation, it was facing armed guerrillas who were fighting for independence, and everything that Carver had seen suggested that the fight would continue for years.

  Zhou Yuanyi was a different animal, though. He had no political ambitions, he was interested solely in the profits he was making from his drugs activities, and as such he was probably a softer target. Carver ran his finger along the blue strip that represented the Mekong River, then edged it upwards into the Golden Triangle. He circled the area with his finger, only a few square inches on the map but in the real world hundreds of square miles of jungle, more than enough space for an army to hide. Zhou had his poppy fields there, his heroin refineries, his supply dumps, his training grounds and his bases.

  Carver went back to the desk and opened the file on Zhou Yuanyi. It was depressingly thin. Zhou was Chinese, probably from Yunnan. He’d been an officer in the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army, one of a number of resistance armies fighting the Burmese leadership. He’d quit the army when he was in his late twenties, taking with him a hundred or so soldiers. They set up their own camp and began levying taxes on opium traders operating in their area. More and more disenchanted guerrillas joined Zhou. He began to pay hilltribes to grow opium for him, and in the early nineties he’d started to set up his own refineries. The DEA estimated that Zhou’s organisation was now responsible for up to ten per cent of the opium grown in the Golden Triangle. But whereas most of the drug warlords shipped raw opium out of the area, Zhou shipped high-grade heroin, vastly increasing his profits. Estimates of his wealth ranged from US$150 million to US$300 million, the bulk of it invested in property in Thailand and Hong Kong.

  Much of what was in the file was second hand, intelligence gathered from the periphery of Zhou’s operations. As Carver had told his boss, there were no photographs of the man, or his lieutenants, not even descriptions. Even the name on the file might not be genuine. The agents who had tried to get closer to the centre had all ended up dead.

  Carver ran his hand through his hair and massaged the back of his neck. His first thought had been that Jake Gregory had set him an impossible task. How was he expected to do what the Burmese army had tried to do and failed? How was he supposed to get a man who had never been photographed and who was surrounded by hundreds of armed men? A man who was prepared to brutally torture and murder anyone he suspected of planning to betray him? Gregory hadn’t even given Carver time to voice his reservations. Sitting in the airport restaurant he’d outlined his scheme, and Carver’s role in it. There had been no discussion; Gregory hadn’t even asked Carver for his opinion on the operation.

  Carver flicked through the file. The last page was a list of names, members of Zhou’s organisation who’d been imprisoned. Most of them were nothing more than mules, couriers who’d been caught trying to smuggle heroin out of the country, but a few were Thai middlemen, the equivalent of wholesalers, holding stocks of the drug before passing it on to the couriers. The arrests had been so low grade that Carver doubted that Zhou was even aware of them. In all, just two hundred kilos of Zhou’s heroin had been seized in the past twelve months. He probably spilled as much in his refineries.

  Carver took out the list and ran his eyes down it. He needed a man on the inside. Someone he could use. Someone he could send into the Golden Triangle. Someone expendable.

  ‘YOU’VE GOT TO BE joking,’ said Hutch, his drink halfway to his lips. He put the glass of beer down on the bar. ‘No way.’

  Winter raised his eyebrows in mock surprise. ‘I thought you’d jump at the chance,’ he said.

  Hutch glared at the older man. Bird sat a few feet away, saying nothing. ‘I’m not going inside. You can’t make me.’

  Winter sipped his brandy and Coke. ‘Look, you’re making a big thing out of nothin
g,’ he said. ‘You’ll be inside for a week, no more. One week. Seven days. You did four years. You can do seven days standing on your head.’

  ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  Winter put his head close to Hutch’s, so close that Hutch could smell the brandy on his breath. ‘I did twelve years, old lad, don’t forget that. I did a twelve stretch, so don’t let me hear you crying about seven fucking days.’

  ‘Why can’t you speak to someone who’s already done time there? They’ll be able to tell you about the layout. Or bribe one of the guards.’

  Winter swivelled around in his seat. Facing the bar was a large window, ten feet high and almost twenty feet wide. Through it he could see six rows of benches, filled with young Thai girls wearing white toga-like dresses. Each had a number on a small blue badge pinned to her chest. Some of the girls watched a television set, several were painting their nails, and one sat knitting, her mouth moving silently as she counted stitches. Most sat with sublimely bored expressions on their faces. When Hutch and Winter had first walked into the room the girls had all perked up and given them beaming smiles, but when it became clear that the men weren’t in a rush to make their selection, they had settled back into inactivity.

  ‘Because we have to make contact with our man inside,’ said Winter. ‘We have to tell him what we’re planning to do. You’re going to have to show him where to go, what he’s got to do. You’re going to have to hold his hand.’

  Hutch looked at Winter sharply. ‘Is he okay? There’s something you’re not telling me, isn’t there?’

  Winter studied Hutch for a few seconds. ‘He’s gone a bit stir-crazy, that’s all. That’s why you have to go in. He needs calming down.’

  ‘Bloody terrific,’ said Hutch. He put his head in his hands and closed his eyes. ‘You’re a bastard, Winter.’

  ‘I’m no happier about this than you are. Believe me. I’m not here by choice, either.’ He looked at the girls, a slight smile on his face. ‘See anything you fancy, Bird?’ he said, speaking out of the corner of his mouth as always.