Russell Blake - Betrayal

Rob edged over, cutting off a van that rebuffed him with an angry honk, and then swerved around a stationary taxi before making the left onto the larger boulevard.

“Okay. We’re three blocks back. See if you can get us within a couple, but not too close. I don’t want to queer this by getting right up on him,” she instructed.

They jockeyed back and forth until they were two hundred yards back, then settled into a tracking pace that stayed even with Lap Pu’s car.

“Look. You can see his taillights up by that truck. This is close enough,” she said.

“Yes, master. Oops. Mistress .” He stressed the sibilance mischievously.

Twenty minutes later, the Mercedes swung onto a residential street with high-rise condominium buildings towering on both sides. The driver reached up and hit a remote control, and an electronic gate rose. They watched as the Mercedes moved into the underground parking garage, and then the barrier descended.

“Let’s see what we can get on this building. I want everything possible. Blueprints, a list of residents, you name it. My bet is a guy like Lap Pu won’t be in a one bedroom. Probably one of the larger units, possibly the penthouse.”

“I’ll send the request to Edgar. Now what?”

“Now? Now we wait. Let’s get the surveillance team in place.”

Rob nodded and made the call.

~ ~ ~

The following day at one p.m., Pu left his condo with an entourage of bodyguards. The watchers followed him to a large traditional Thai restaurant, where he met with a group of business associates for two hours. In the meantime, Edgar got Jet the plans for the building, and they quickly pinpointed Pu’s likely condo — a four-bedroom, forty-two-hundred-square-foot unit that occupied a third of the penthouse. His neighbors were a prominent real estate developer and a television celebrity.

The downside was, that on first blush, the condo seemed impenetrable, at least without getting caught. To breach it and shoot her way out would not have been a problem, but for any sort of stealth approach, it posed a host of issues.

She studied the diagram and felt a tingle of anticipation. There was always a way. It would just be up to her to find it.

Three hours later, she had devised a scheme. It would be risky and involve an element of luck, but then again, most of her life had been like that, so she wasn’t dissuaded. The building had a weakness, as did his condo.

Jet picked up her phone and called Edgar, taking two minutes to describe what she would need by six o’clock that evening.

Pu looked out over the Bangkok skyline, its lights twinkling like a holiday pageant as far as his eye could see. It had been dark for almost an hour, and he stood in his silk bathrobe, smoking a Lucky Seven cigarette as he gazed out at his empire, a crystal tumbler of single malt scotch in his hand. The television murmured in the background, the news blinking images of the world’s daily atrocities at the back of his head as he contemplated the night sky.

A trace of jasmine lingered in the bedroom from where his new favorite, Suchin, had spent a frolicking two hours with him, having only recently departed. She was a delight, barely eighteen, exceptionally beautiful and smart. But a conniver, he could tell, always trying to calculate how to best exploit any given situation.

He didn’t mind. That was her role. He was money and power, she was beauty and grace, but she wanted what he had to offer more than he needed what she could provide. And so the dance without end went, the pirouettes and pas de chevals artful, if obligatory.

He had never harbored any desire to settle down after his wife died in a car accident eighteen years ago, struck down without warning in the prime of her life. Companionship was easy to find when you were a rich sex industry magnate in Bangkok, and he had a virtually endless stream of eager friends to share his bed and table. It might be a shallow life, but it had its pluses, he mused, blowing a white cloud of nicotine at the uncaring ceiling.

Pu tossed back the last of his scotch and stretched, enjoying the familiar burn of the smoky nectar as he cracked his neck and then stubbed out his cigarette. He glanced at his watch. It was time to rinse off and then gear up for dinner, followed by the inevitable meetings that were a part of managing his network of businesses.

He padded to his nightstand and unclasped the stainless steel Rolex Submariner that he’d been wearing for a decade — preferring it to the more ostentatious styles worn by his peers, whose platinum Masterpieces and Presidents screamed wealth to anyone interested. Pu preferred a low-key appearance. He knew how much money he had, and he didn’t need to proclaim it to the world. Leave that to the younger peacocks intent on fanning mating displays with their feathered finery. At fifty-nine, he didn’t have any need to prove anything to anyone — the only benefit from growing older he could see.

He placed the watch next to his empty glass and dropped the cigarette butt into it, the ember hissed out in the dregs, a few drops he had neglected but nonetheless came to good use. With a final look at the skyscrapers stretching endlessly into the distance, he turned and moved into his mammoth master bath suite, custom-designed to his taste by one of Bangkok’s top firms and lovingly crafted from the finest Italian marble — one of his few indulgences, to be savored in private.

Jet watched the scene on the screen of the PDA she clutched in her hand, twenty feet above Pu’s balcony on the roof of the thirty-two-story building, a warm sea breeze caressing her features as she followed his progress into the bathroom. With a final glance at the image, she reeled up the fiber-optic camera she’d lowered into place and zipped it in her windbreaker pocket before stepping off the building edge into nothingness.

Six seconds later, she had rappelled down to the terrace and was sliding the glass door open — it being a safe bet that Pu wouldn’t lock it that high in the sky. She knew he had a complement of bodyguards in the front room, but nobody would be expecting an intruder from above, much less a black-clad female ninja.

Without wasting a second, she made for the nightstand and scooped up the Rolex before moving soundlessly to the corner of the room and dropping into a crouch.

She pulled a tool out of her pants pocket, affixed it to the case back, and turned. The waterproof casing gave with a jolt. After placing the watch on the polished granite floor, she retrieved a small plastic bag containing the micro-transmitter, which could be tracked by satellite as well as with a handheld device — much like the one she’d been implanted with.

The chip fitted perfectly, the dot of super glue holding it firmly in place on the inside of the case back. A tiny battery with six months’ life was incorporated into the circuitry.

Jet’s ears strained for any suspicious sounds as she reassembled the watch, locking the back into place with a snick. She looked at her own watch and saw that she had been in the condo for ninety seconds.

She rose and replaced the Rolex on the nightstand, listening as the old sex lord finished his shower, and inched to the door again. She stepped out onto the terrace, and just as she was closing the door, she heard the water shut off.

When Jet reached the railing’s edge, she snapped herself back into the hanging harness and began winching herself up, but the damned contraption caught with a lurch and stopped winding.

A flicker of motion caught the corner of Pu’s eye from the terrace as he emerged from the bathroom with a plush green towel wrapped around his slight frame.

A moth fluttered against the glass and then flew off into the sky in pursuit of more hospitable surroundings. Pu watched its unsteady flight for a few seconds and then turned, scooped up his watch and put it back onto his wrist before returning to brush his hair and shave.