Escape Read online

  ‘Yeah, I guess. Are we all right for New Year’s?’

  ‘You bet. Just tell Damien to bring three trucks and park them away from the coast. We’ll radio in on 468.75 megs. You want to write that down?’

  ‘That’s okay, I’ll call if I forget.’ Barry lowered his tone. ‘Um, have you got any of that, whatsit?’

  ‘You mean the, ah, how’s-your-father?’

  ‘No, no. The thingummy with the slight, you know, look about it.’ Barry made orchestra conductor’s gestures.

  ‘Oh, right. The wazzername. Yeah, sure, but put well away. It’ll have to be tomorrow. I can only get it between two and three in the morning.’

  ‘Well, if it’s not too much hassle.’ Barry was apologetic.

  ‘A bit but no problem. We’ll make it Monday, say Sunday. No, Monday’s fine.’

  ‘S’Monday it is.’ Barry understood. ‘Where’s the boss today? He told me to call sometime.’

  ‘Dammit,’ I swore. ‘Lost the number but it’s room 589. Sydney Hilton, under some cover name. Don’t call between eight and eleven tomorrow night. It’s all happening then. Wait until the Latvians have gone ...’

  And more of the same nonsense. When we’d finished I led Barry down into the dark street, gave him tickets to four cities and advised, ‘Just keep it up for a week. I’ll be back by then. Even if they only follow up a tenth of that crap they’ll be stretched.’

  ‘Dave, you really think the cops will go for any of it?’

  ‘Maybe not. We were talking right on top of the bug. It’s built into the drinks cabinet. Anyway, I’ll pull it out tomorrow and dump it in the river. The more crap they think that lot is the more they should believe Michael’s call. By the way, did you really want me to get you some stuff?’

  ‘No, not at all. Did you really think that? I was ad-libbing. You know, give it the touch.’ Barry was the night porter at an edgy city hotel that I used sometimes for afternoon chemistry. He had ambitions as an actor.

  ‘Don’t ad-lib Barry, I’m confused enough already.’

  My travel schedule required a flight from Melbourne at lunchtime on Monday, then a flight to Bangkok arriving late that night. Australian immigration computers log details of all incoming and outgoing passengers and, for this exit, I would use the new passport, gained in utter secrecy.

  Passports could no longer be acquired safely by the simple mailing of a birth certificate of someone who had died in infancy. All applicants were now required to appear in person at a local post office where senior staff would check for their existence against entries in a national health-registry database. In addition whoever countersigned the applicant’s photograph—usually a doctor or dentist already on record—would be telephoned for confirmation.

  The path through these traps lies with encouraging someone who’s never had a passport to prepare all his documents including having his photographs countersigned. Then, as may happen, all those documents are mislaid. A duplicate set with a new photograph—but otherwise with all the same details—is then presented to Mr Postman. Should he call the doctor the conversation would never turn to a description of the new applicant. Eye colour and height no longer figure on applications, even when biometric.

  On arrival at Bangkok I would not tarnish this pristine passport with the stamp of a ‘country of interest’ but present another. This second passport, not of such pedigree yet good enough for moving in and out of Thailand. As this was in a different name I had bought duplicate tickets. (Under the hard labour of three hours on five trains and underground pedestrian links to a lunch-hour carnival of Vietnamese travel agents’ shoplets beyond my watchers’ eyes.)

  Tuesday in Bangkok would begin at seven in the morning with the first of an ambitious three meetings—I’d dreamed of more until considering the city’s traffic jams—before a late-night flight with SAS to Belgium via Denmark.

  On arrival at Copenhagen on Wednesday I’d have the opportunity to unburden myself of the second passport I’d been using in Thailand. The Copenhagen transit lounge had a small post office from where I could mail the passport and any other bothersome documents back to Australia. (Sadly that post office is these days landside and there exists only one lonely red-and-bomb-proof postbox near the A-gates. Intrepid travellers must now bring their own stamps and apply caution as well.) I’d hoped a fellow traveller who was resident in Copenhagen could join me for the flight to Brussels, although I now doubt that Søren would have managed to get out of bed in time for an eleven o’clock morning flight.

  By then in Europe I would switch to an old British passport, the third in use for this five-day trip. European Union passports are not stamped for travellers anywhere within the continent. This UK passport was necessarily dog-eared. European officials, especially the British, regard new passports as objects to be thoroughly examined. The reverse is true of Australia where holders of new and rarely used passports are considered good citizens. Perhaps the opposing attitude of customs inspectors is explained by their contrasting views of international travel. The English are expected to seek imperious amusement at the expense of foreigners while Australians feel they should take foreignness in small doses. Alternatively it may be that Britons so loathe their local neighbours they take any opportunity to flee the cold, whereas any Australian daring to leave even temporarily his god-blessed and sun-kissed land cannot be less than a traitor in the eyes of airport officials. A careful smuggler in transit may only meet these prejudices, not dismiss them.

  So arriving in Brussels with Søren on Wednesday we would taxi into town to meet Hanna at the superb Austrian patisserie in an arcade by the old Metropole Hotel. Straw-haired Hanna, originally from Saarbrücken, had just turned thirty-one and felt unhappy at not having a Danish friend within her business network. Søren would meet Hanna; they would take each other’s numbers and their time at the café while I would have to fang back to the airport for the afternoon Sabena flight to London, taking only a box of strawberry-custard glazed tarts (the finest in Europe) and Hanna’s francs (the fairest).

  Keeping to the third (UK) passport I planned to arrive at Heathrow and sink into a London Underground tube to arrive at Hammersmith in time to visit a self-storage locker before a meeting at a hotel in South Kensington. The hours between seven and nine that evening would be set aside for anything spontaneous. Collapsing to the floor, for example.

  At nine with free time done, to the airport again for a British Airways flight to Sydney, stopping at Singapore to refuel. There, another transit-lounge posting of documents and a final bit of work on the passport with which I’d left Australia. Although it would already have an exit stamp from Sydney’s Kingsford Smith terminal, it would be otherwise blank. No record of any landing, anywhere.

  I’d prepared a UK Immigration stamp using a toner-transfer sheet from Letraset that allows original artwork to be photocopied onto small sheets of plastic. This sheet would be hidden within my hand luggage lining and would include extra dates in case I missed any flights. I planned to apply this transfer stamp to my passport in the aircraft toilet once airborne from Singapore as many transit-lounge toilets have hidden security cameras. Finally I’d made ticket stubs for the SYD-LHR-SYD segment that I would claim on arrival.

  Arriving at Sydney on Friday morning (Thursday would be lost crossing the dateline) I was to retrieve my wig from the left-luggage depot, make a final posting and then board a domestic flight to Melbourne in time to meet the one o’clock appointment with Melvin, my probation counsellor, at our club for the reformed at Carlton Gardens—by then minus the wig, of course.

  There are those among you who might argue against the ambition of this itinerary and I shan’t argue back—although I’d undertaken such intensity before without failure. That fall at Bangkok cannot be attributed to overreach or fatigue alone. There had to be more.

  Monday morning. The Honda in which I’d been waltzing with surveillance police for the past months was now in an underground car park where it could do no harm. Police h
ad earlier installed a tracking device in-line with the radio’s antenna. From the car park the signal would not reach ground level. I was on board a flight from Melbourne wearing a grey-flecked wig and an itchy moustache.

  After touchdown I left the light disguise in a locker then checked in and boarded the flight from Sydney to Bangkok. Not so much as a ripple of interest passed the eyes of the burly immigration officer as my new passport was scanned into his computer. Airborne, I was sure that no one knew of my departure. This much was true. Arriving in Thailand after midnight on Tuesday, I became Mr D Westlake.

  For many years I’d lived under the most severe observation and monitoring. That burden evaporated at altitude. Now I became cleansed as though by a transfusion from poisoned blood to pure ichor. Even more years had been taken since last I’d stood in the land of the Thai. Finally I had returned and was immediately blasted with air and sense memories as I stepped into the heat outside Bangkok’s Don Muang Airport. Under a mask of aviation fuel, sweet-scented orchid blossoms curled around the terminal from 200 taxis whose mirrors were draped with garlands. Ginger seared by cooking oil added to the mix, along with a confection of cosmetics-and-soap odours propagated by hard-working air conditioners. The driver who took me into town couldn’t understand why I wanted to keep the window open, what with half the smells of the city flowing in from the freeway. For all my detailed scheduling for this week I hadn’t factored for the sudden loss of gravity that occurs when freedom mixes with a concentrated elixir of refreshed memories. Still, such things are of no substance; only a sentimental milksop allows drops of time to interfere with business.

  A polite but otherworldly voice woke me at six that morning after I clawed across the bed into consciousness. I’d signed ‘Westlake’ at the reception desk of the Oriental Hotel just three hours earlier and had booked a wake-up call before blacking out.

  Barely awake, I walked from the hotel along Silom Road after dawn to check for watchers and there were none. Stacks of newspapers lay unopened and taxi drivers slept in their cars. The only sound in that near-empty street came from their cars’ radios. Despite many years visiting Thailand I’d never before heard the national anthem at that hour. Of course, I think this now but I’m sure it passed my mind then to keep walking, keep flying and speed to Europe. To unearth the Luxembourg money and buy a house at the edge of the Mediterranean. Spend afternoons in the sun with the garden-keeper’s wine and the English papers, tut-tutting at others’ follies. No, that thought never really came till later.

  By seven I was at the Montien Hotel eating breakfast and reading The Post, waiting for Tommy. He was late.

  In his younger days Tommy had been one of the most well-travelled, independent traffickers from Chiang Mai. His world map was studded with pins for all of Europe’s capitals. When travelling west ports in the UAE, Morocco, British Columbia and California would see him welcomed before moving on to the frontiers of Auckland and Melbourne. Among Tommy’s holdings sat the guesthouse in Chiang Mai. It was a safe haven in the north for any scratching hippie or tense foreign adventurer, for Tommy’s assessing eye watched his guests’ sleep patterns with a professional interest. His lodgers were never troubled by greedy local policemen or even problems with unpaid board. For these travellers were Tommy’s and would form a contact network that kept him in the air for many years. These new sons and daughters were not permitted to leave with the white cargo they sought. Tommy would deliver. At considerably greater cost but deliver he did. Wantonly.

  When Tommy came of age I’m sure his respected—and quietly infamous—uncle took him aside on some estate patio to say, ‘I’ve got just one word to say to you, my boy,’ warmly gripping Tommy’s shoulder. ‘Narcotics.’

  Tommy’s uncle on his mother’s side was one of the big four of the Golden Triangle. A man with his own brand, the Flying Horse. Uncle Lou had opium farmers under contract deep into Laos and agents who protected the most well-equipped laboratories, producing heroin with purity greater than that of Khun Sa’s agencies and a density above General Lee’s. Working through Cambodia Lou had supplied heroin to US troops during the Vietnam conflict, a branch that could not have made him many official American friends, although in later years—just to show that there were no hard feelings—Uncle Lou would send his own children to American universities. At home Lou kept a firm hand on his subordinates and grew cautious concerning his nephew’s ambitions. Perhaps that was the reason no drugs were dispensed from Tommy’s guesthouse. I’d been told Lou had once been arrested. The US DEA had put in a lot of work and money to ensure that uncle’s Volvo was sandwiched on Chiang Mai Road when its trunk was packed with 400 kilos of heroin.

  What with so many round-eyed foreigners nosing into the case it was not until the highest Thai Supreme Court appeal that a final judgement was applied. Uncle Lou’s acquittal was one of the most expensive court decisions ever bought in Thailand, Tommy had proudly told me—US$500,000. ‘Gosh,’ I’d said, although I rarely use cuss words.

  ‘What does my horoscope say?’

  I looked up from my paper at the booth of the Montien coffee shop to see Tommy smiling. Almost an hour late.

  ‘Well, hello.’ I stood to embrace Tommy. It had been over ten years and we’d both survived. ‘And happy birthday—you don’t look fifty.’ Tommy’s smooth face, more Indian than Thai, concealed all thought.

  ‘Let’s not stay here.’ Tommy folded his arms behind his back. ‘My wife’s got a townhouse across the river. We can talk there.’

  ‘Sure.’ But before leaving the Montien I gave Tommy his birthday gift, a German teddy bear. Tommy was a collector so it seemed odd that he took the bear from its box and tucked it under one arm.

  ‘I’m just a kid at heart.’ Tommy winked, easily demonstrating his colloquial English.

  On board the platform ferry crossing the Chao Phraya I asked Tommy about his phones.

  ‘Absolutely fine,’ Tommy assured me. ‘I’ve got one of the best policemen. High up. He’d tell me if there was anything.’

  Even so, by the time we were drinking coffee at Tommy’s townhouse I had asked for the telephone number of the shop next to Tommy’s Chiang Mai office.

  ‘If I need to call, I’ll call the place next door,’ I said. ‘Then you can just walk through one door. I don’t mind waiting on the line.’

  We then got down to talking shop. Tommy would not easily accept the changes that had occurred with the 1990s when the collapse of the Berlin Wall had opened the way for a cascade of cut-price smugglers.

  ‘Tommy, there’s no way you can make US$250,000 on a kilo anymore.’ I wanted to sound reasonable. ‘There’s Albanians trading women for kilos of brown shit. Standards have gone right down the plughole.’

  ‘How about Iceland? I heard prices are very good there.’ Tommy was usually enthusiastic for the few places he knew nothing about.

  ‘Sure and the Galapagos has quite a little scene, too.’ I shook my head. ‘Who’ve you been talking to—The Three Monkeys?’

  The Three Unwise Monkeys were a trio of halfwits who had once tried and failed to sell a kilo of heroin in Britain. Large Raj, a tall chubby Hindu; Tramshed, a gangling, nervy Sikh; and Shemp, an Indian conman from Singapore had all arrived in England to jointly mismanage an operation any one of them could have capably bungled on his own. Unsatisfied with the price offered by their expatriate countrymen they roamed London, approaching strangers.

  At the time police scanners had just come in vogue among techno-villains. My little crew had accidentally tuned in to the radio chatter of the surveillance police as they shadowed the then unknown incompetents.

  ‘I don’t believe it.’ I recall overhearing the voice of some undercover man coming from the scanner. ‘The skinny one is sitting in the Water Rat. He’s in a cheap suit and tie drinking 7Up trying to collar the passing druggies. They’re running away from him!’

  The skinny one, I would later learn, was Tramshed scouting for talent. He’d thought it wise to dress up for trave
lling and business meetings and was a total abstainer. Despite all the radio talk, no clear information was given identifying The Three Monkeys’ hotel so we were unable to warn them before their arrest. Yet for a week our afternoons were absorbed by tuning in to this sad soap opera.

  These unlucky magi had survived their consequent years in prison. It was said that Shemp never slept under the covers of his bed, not wanting to be seen—even in his prison cell—without his designer footwear. Upon release Tramshed tried to leave the prison with eighty-three unopened tins of sardines that he’d saved during his five years. Large Raj was the clever one and later had taken over a run-down travel agency in Bangkok where he and Tramshed now spent their days. Shemp had since been arrested in Singapore for trying to sell phoney contracts for ammunition to the Israeli army.

  ‘I was at their little agency about a year ago.’ Tommy brought me up to date. ‘They’re running a thing where they take money from Pakistanis who want to go to Japan.’

  ‘Is there anything to it?’ I was always curious to know about new trade routes.

  ‘Oh, it’s for real,’ Tommy said. ‘Expensive but for real.’

  The emigration scheme relied on two anomalies: firstly, that one of the few places to which Pakistanis may still travel without a visa is Fiji, the Pacific-island nation. Secondly, that the only flights from Bangkok to Fiji were via Tokyo’s Narita Airport. This airport did not operate after midnight so when transit passengers arrived too late for their onward connection, they would be issued with a twenty-four-hour transit visa for Japan, take the bus into Tokyo and then disappear.

  ‘Large Raj and Tramshed would be happy to see you.’ Tommy wrote their agency address on the back of his used boarding card. ‘They’re always asking about you.’

  ‘Sure, why not? No problems with that lot, is there? No one on their case?’ I didn’t want to arrive just as the duo was lighting exploding cigars.

  Tommy assured me that no officials had any interest in the skulduggery at Large Raj’s agency and we spent the next hour haggling over the merits of shipping a tonne of Thai sticks. Tommy thought anything involving ships was hard work and he had no patience for sailing times.