Gunmetal Gray

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

The sleek black Mercedes sedan turned onto Royal City Avenue Alley, slowed to allow well-dressed pedestrians to pass at a crosswalk, then immediately found itself locked in bumper-to-bumper traffic. It was midnight, still just a little early for the real action in all the nightclubs on both sides of the street here, but the crowds seemed to be out in full force and the lines at the best clubs were already long and getting longer by the minute.

In the back of the Mercedes a white man in his thirties adjusted his cuff links and looked out at the mass of people all around him. It was a Thursday night, but the sheer number of partiers in the area cast a vibe that felt like New Year’s Eve.

And all these civilians made Court Gentry a little nervous. He had a feeling about tonight, a sense that something could go wrong, and in Gentry’s world, wrong usually involved danger to those in close proximity to him. So as he looked around from the back of the luxury sedan at the hundreds of people here in the flashy Royal City Avenue neighborhood of Bangkok, he did not see happy young partiers out for a good time.

He saw potential innocent bystanders. Would-be collateral damage.

He pushed away the thought; he had every intention of taking things slow and easy this evening, and anyway, how much trouble could he really start himself without a damn gun?

He’d asked for a piece when the Agency outfitted him for his work here in Bangkok, but Brewer had forbidden it. He was here for recon only; he wouldn’t need a weapon, or so said the woman who Court imagined hadn’t left the safety of Langley in years.

He let it go. He wasn’t thinking about shooting up Bangkok. He was thinking about Fitzroy, about Fan, and once in a while he was even thinking about running from all this, but he knew that was more a fantasy than a plan. He had a deal with CIA and an obligation to Fitz, and he had a feeling that if he didn’t get to Fan Jiang first, the Chinese or the Russians would, and either of those outcomes would be damaging to the interests of the United States.

As he rode in the back of the Mercedes, the stark change in Court’s situation was not lost on him. Four nights ago he had been chest deep in muck in the Mekong Delta, tearing leeches from his waterlogged skin and swatting bugs on his face. Now he sat here in a sleek black Mercedes S550 as it caught the eyes of many of the passersby. He wore a gray virgin wool Tom Ford suit and a black silk Forzieri necktie. His black leather Dolce & Gabbana derby shoes cost more than most people in Thailand made in four months, and the watch on his wrist shone gold, the face read Panerai, and it was a style that went for no less than twelve grand in the luxury shops around Bangkok.

But as was normally the case with the American in the back of the hired car, all was not as it seemed. The watch was a knockoff, the suit was off-the-rack and was to be handed back to CIA station before he left town, and the Mercedes, while expensive, was only here to drop him off. He planned on taking a rented four-door Toyota parked near his destination back to his hotel.

Court had been in Bangkok nearly four days, and in that time he’d accomplished little other than establishing his cover. He had a room at the five-star Okura Prestige, he had clothes and accessories from the upscale shops, he had a new haircut, and most of the visible bug bites, scrapes, and bruises from his time in Vietnam and Cambodia had disappeared from view.

But as late as this afternoon, he did not have any idea where to find Fan Jiang.

Then Suzanne Brewer came through. He called to check in, as he had done each day since he arrived, and she explained that Fan himself had slipped a cryptic identifier into a message received by the U.S. embassy in Taiwan.

Brewer explained, “We know he is being held by the Chamroon Syndicate, and we know he is trying to inform Taiwan of his situation. His correspondence must be monitored by the gangsters with him, because all he communicated was an encrypted SOS and the Chinese characters for ‘Funky Monkey,’ his handle.”

Court asked, “Did the Taiwanese tell us this, or are we monitoring the Taiwanese covertly?”

Brewer hesitated. “That is something you don’t need to know.”

Court replied, “Actually, I do. If the Taiwanese told us directly, then maybe the Russians don’t know about it. But if we gleaned that intel from Taiwan’s secure comms, it’s a fair bet the Russians have the same capability. I need to know if the Russians are coming for Fan in Bangkok. Trust me, that was news that would have been helpful in Hong Kong and in Vietnam.”

Brewer replied, “I don’t have the authority to answer your question. I’m sorry, Violator. It’s as simple as that.”

“Then connect me with someone who does. I want Hanley to tell me, or for him to allow you to do it.”

Brewer snapped now, “I am your handler. You will not circumvent my authority.”

Court didn’t really have a way to contact Matt Hanley directly. He knew where the man lived, so theoretically he could have mailed him a letter, but he doubted he could just call some extension at Langley and ask to be put through to the director of the National Clandestine Service.

Brewer was right; she was his lifeline, and she was being stubborn. But Court let it go, because there was no time to waste. She had delivered time-sensitive information that Court had to act on immediately.

Namely, Court had to get himself to a particular nightclub this evening.

While the head of the Chamroon Syndicate was the seventy-five-year-old who started the group in the 1970s, all the operational leadership were young, wealthy, and ostentatious, including Nattapong and Kulap Chamroon, sons of the founder. They spent their days overseeing drug trafficking and computer crime and prostitution and extortion rackets, but their nights were spent blowing their money.

The Black Pearl nightclub was one of dozens of locations owned by the organization, but the local CIA station had pegged it as one of the main hangouts for the big shots in the group. Tonight, Brewer had explained to Court, a well-known European DJ was booked there for one night only, and Brewer’s research into the group told her it was an absolute given that senior members of Chamroon’s second generation of leadership would be in attendance.

She’d sent Court dossiers and digital images of the syndicate’s main players, and then she told him to use whatever means he had at his disposal to locate Fan. She suggested he go in cover to the Black Pearl, get eyes on the leadership of the organization, and size up their entourage. If he could find a way to isolate a senior member from his security, then Court could press him for details about Fan’s location.

It was clear to Court she was telling him to kidnap and possibly even torture, but as Court was an agent of the CIA and not a direct employee of the CIA, and since Brewer had not used either of the words “kidnap” or “torture,” the CIA was in the clear, no matter what he did this evening.

But Brewer stressed again, as she had done at every single step of Court’s operation, that SAD Ground Branch operatives were in the area and ready to act on Court’s intel.

Getting a table or even gaining entrance to the Black Pearl was no simple affair, especially for a big event like the DJ’s appearance tonight, but Court found a way. He was booked on the executive level of one of the most luxurious hotels in the city. Instead of having the local CIA station work to get him admittance to tonight’s big event, Court simply walked down the hall to the concierge, explained he was a big fan of the Dutch DJ, and gave the woman working there a smile and a hundred dollars’ worth of baht, the local currency. He told her the money was hers either way, but he would appreciate any help she could give him.

And, just like that, he received a call from the concierge an hour later letting him know he would have his name on a list at the front door and a private table for two inside.

Now Court walked to the entrance of the Black Pearl alone, passing the forward end of the block-long rope line of beautiful people waiting to get through the door. He spoke with a bouncer wearing a headset and holding a clipboard, passed the man one thousand baht, or thirty bucks, tucked into a friendly handshake along with a request for an out-of-the-way spot overlooking the action, and soon he was led by a beautiful hostess to a small table along a silk-curtained wall on a mezzanine overlooking the main dance floor and stage of the nightclub.

He flipped off the light at his table, ordered a Johnnie Walker Black on ice, and sat there in the low light.

The club was filling up quickly, the dance music was pumping, and the lights and fog were working in sync. Massive crystalline chandeliers hung over the entire floor, and the lights projected on them and through them pulsed with the beat.

Court looked around at the lavish establishment and wished he were instead sitting alone in a dockside Irish pub, a few stools down the bar from a couple of grumpy old men to listen in on for entertainment.

The Black Pearl wasn’t his scene.

At one a.m. the DJ from Amsterdam took the stage and the crowd went insane. The music to Court wasn’t quite as loud as an M249 machine gun firing cyclic, but it was damn close, and as far as Court was concerned, the noise of a gunfight was much more creative and interesting than this mindless and repetitive thumping and squawking.

Still, he pretended he enjoyed it and hoped like hell he was pulling it off despite the fact that he’d much rather listen to someone slaughter livestock.

The loud music and the crazed lighting effects inside the venue made surveillance difficult, to say the least, but Court had been eyeing a roped-off set of three crescent-shaped tables next to the dance floor and just to the left of the stage, expecting any Chamroon Syndicate players to head straight there if they came in the building.

At one thirty Court was moving his head with the thunderous music, nursing a scotch slowly, acting like one of the thousands of rich international businessmen he’d seen during his years traveling around the world. He’d brushed off several attempts by prostitutes to sit down and join him, and other tries by young local girls here hoping to score bottles of champagne off a rich tourist almost old enough to be their father.

After one such rebuff, Court looked back to the roped-off tables, and then he looked away. A group of about twenty men and women were in the process of sitting down, and although Court realized he would not be able to ID faces from this distance and in these conditions, by the impeccable suits worn by the men and the obvious beauty and glamorous clothing of the women sitting with them, he felt confident the Chamroon Syndicate was in the house.

Several bodyguards stood at the VIP rope, and a couple more stood behind the tables, on either side of the entourage. The guards all faced out, hands clasped in front of them, and Court imagined they would be armed with handguns.

This didn’t scare him… in fact, it pleased him, because Court knew where he could obtain a pistol if things started to go downhill around here.

He glanced sporadically towards the VIP area. As far as he could tell, all the men sitting at the tables behind the rope were Thai, and all the women European other than one lady in a sheer blue dress who appeared to be of African descent. There were fourteen females to five males, and six of the women seemed huddled especially close to one male who sat at the center of the middle table by the dance floor.

This screwed with the female-to-male ratio for the other men in the VIP lounge, but the guy getting the attention from the six girls didn’t seem to care.

Court wondered if this guy could possibly be either Nattapong or Kulap Chamroon, who were brothers and the sons of Panit Chamroon, the man who’d founded the Syndicate thirty-five years earlier by bringing various disparate criminal enterprises in Thailand under one umbrella. He’d seen pictures of both brothers, but they looked so much alike Court couldn’t tell who he was looking at across the smoky dance floor. Brewer’s dossier on the group, which Court had just finished reading in his hotel room when he got the call that his car had arrived, told him Nattapong spent more time in Bangkok while Kulap traveled regularly on syndicate business, so odds were this was the former, but it didn’t really matter to Court. He felt certain either one of the Chamroon brothers would know where Fan Jiang was being held.

Once Court established that he had eyes on people who could tell him what he wanted to know, he scanned the crowds both below him and up there with him on the mezzanine for any glimpse of others interested in this information. This was third-party awareness: the simple personal security act of realizing you and your target aren’t alone in the world, that someone else might be watching them, or watching you. Court had been surprised twice in the past week by others moving on the same objective as he, and he didn’t want it to happen again.

He looked in the best places in the bar to get eyes on the VIP section. Court himself had a good view, but he was relatively exposed in the center of the mezzanine above the dance floor. A better location to surveil the VIP area was up on the mezzanine but tucked into either corner where the lighting wasn’t as good.

Court looked idly to his left and then to his right, his head still thumping along with the music.

And then his head stopped. Well, that didn’t take long.

A Western-looking man in his forties, dressed not unlike Court himself, sat in the dark corner on Court’s right, just beyond the staircase down to the dance floor. His eyes were on the VIP section below, just as Court’s had been.

And also like Court, the man in the corner lifted his head and began scanning his surroundings.

Just then, a Thai girl who had tried and failed to get free drinks from Court a half hour earlier passed by with a girlfriend. Court reached out and took her by the arm, pulling her playfully towards him and down on his lap.

“Where have you been?” Court asked, suddenly interested in talking.

“Oh… hi,” she replied, pleasantly surprised that she’d finally managed to get this rich-looking foreigner’s attention.

Court said, “I seem to remember from our earlier conversation that you really like Cristal.”

She smiled. “I do.”

He looked at her friend now, who was already slipping into the seat across from him. “And how about you?”

She smiled herself. “Of course.”

“You both enjoy expensive champagne? That’s crazy! What are the chances?”

His new friend’s name was Sky, or that was her story anyway, and her friend claimed that her name was Nicki.

Court saw their bullshit and raised them, telling them his name was Bob and he was a yacht salesman from Florida in the “U.S. of A.” He ordered a bottle of 2006 Cristal Brut from a passing waitress, and while they waited they mostly listened to the music, because this wasn’t exactly a venue where people could chat easily, even if they had something to talk about.

Court was glad that he didn’t have to make too much idle banter. He was already thinking about the man in the corner, who, he felt certain, was here in an operational capacity. He had a slightly Slavic look to him, so Russian was his best guess, but he thought the man looked older and heavier than he would expect for a Zaslon operator, which meant he wouldn’t have been one of the men he’d seen in Vietnam.

Still, he could have been SVR.

Either way, Court knew what he had to do. He needed to get closer to the VIP area to identify key personalities, and to decide how he would go about separating one of the top dogs of the Chamroon Syndicate from his bodyguards.

So for one of the first times in his operational life, Court decided he needed to get up and dance.

The Cristal came and Court and the two ladies each downed a flute of champagne, Court thinking all along about how he was glad he didn’t have to turn in an expense report to Colonel Dai, because this five-hundred-dollar purchase of bubbly would probably result in Don Fitzroy getting one of his feet lopped off. When they finished with the drink, Nicki moved on to find a sucker of her own, and Court took Sky down to the dance floor, passing near the lone man in the corner by the stairs as they did so. Court snuck a glance in the man’s direction when he reached the stairs and saw that the man’s attention was fully fixed on the VIP section and the large contingent of Thai men and non-Thai women sitting there.

And, Court noticed, the man had a bottle of vodka on ice next to his table and a glass in his hand. This didn’t necessarily mean he was Russian, but it didn’t hurt the chances that Court had him pegged correctly.

On the floor Sky and Bob pressed in with hundreds of others, but within minutes, without Sky having any clue she was being used as cover in an intelligence operation for the United States, they found themselves near the roped-off VIP section.

Court noticed that several of the men and women had left the tables, presumably to dance themselves, but the floor was too tight for Court to see any of the known subjects of his surveillance. It didn’t matter, though, because the one Thai man still sitting behind the rope was most definitely twenty-eight-year-old Nattapong Chamroon.

Chamroon still had the six women sitting close to him, pouring his drinks and leaning in close whenever he spoke. Court put five of them as Central or Eastern European, and the other as African, African-American, or perhaps even from the Caribbean because of her dark skin. In their stilettos the women were all probably taller than Nattapong when they stood up, and one brunette was a full head taller, but gauging by the cool grin on Chamroon’s face he seemed fine with the height disparity.

The women appeared to all be in their twenties and they wore a lot of makeup, just like all the women in the nightclub, but even up close there wasn’t one who was not breathtaking.

As Court and Sky got a little closer — now it was Sky who was pulling them in the direction of the VIP section because she wanted to see the exotic women and their flashy clothes — Court noticed all six ladies had dark and serious faces. Despite their bright and luminous clothing and outwardly poised mannerisms, Court read the eyes of a couple of the girls, and he determined in an instant they weren’t here of their own volition.

As he and Sky made their way back towards the stairs up to the mezzanine, Court realized he’d seen expressions like these before in his career traveling through various terrible places.

These women were victims of human trafficking. Prostitutes, certainly working here in Bangkok for Chamroon’s own organization. Brewer’s notes on the syndicate had told him hundreds of young Central European women each year were offered good jobs in the hotel or hospitality industries in Asia, and when they arrived they were drugged, threatened, beaten, and forced into prostitution. Their passports were taken from them; local police were often in on the scheme, so the young girls had no one but one another to rely on. Soon, though, they would be moved around and administered huge quantities of drugs and alcohol, and they would give in totally to their situations.

Some would make their way back home after a time, but many would not.

Court didn’t get a close look at all the girls around Nattapong Chamroon, but he saw enough in the compliant dead eyes of a couple of them to know the score. They wouldn’t like Nattapong, but they’d be dependent on him, and this meant the girls could pose a problem if Court wanted to get him out of here, because they were all over him, and he wasn’t sure they’d even leave his side if he went to the bathroom.

Bob and Sky returned to the table, and soon the bottle of Cristal came to an end. When he declined to order another, so did Bob’s whirlwind relationship with Sky. She wandered off; to Court’s pleasure her next mark was the guy in the corner with the vodka bottle and the shifty eyes, though this man sent her on her way gruffly and continued eyeing the nightclub.

The Dutch DJ took a smoke break a minute later, and though the prerecorded music was still loud, the crowd wasn’t as engaged, so Court took advantage of the relative calm to place a phone call.

Court called Brewer, established his identity, and quickly told her he wanted the SAD men in the area to create a distraction.

Brewer replied to Court’s request instantly. “Negative. I’m not sending Ground Branch in until you have positive ID on Fan.”

Court sighed. “Look, there is too much security here for me to do this myself.”

“Do you have PID on Fan?”

“Negative, but I have an opportunity to get one of the brothers. I just need some help.”

Brewer said, “If you want someone to help you get a prisoner out of that nightclub, you know who you can call.”

Court understood what she meant, but he didn’t like it. “There are five hundred civilians in this building. If Dai’s men get involved, this could turn into a bloodbath.”

“You’ll just have to take care of everything inside the building, make it clear to him what you need. His men stay outside. Their job is to help you out of the area.”

Court didn’t hide his frustration. “Great idea, Brewer, but I don’t have a gun. Remember?”

“You’ll come up with something,” Brewer said coldly. “I’m under orders myself, Violator. Ground Branch is a single-shot weapon. They swoop in for the snatch; they aren’t a force that I can order around to flex muscle every time you want to question someone.”

“But—”

Brewer said, “If you get PID on Fan, call me back. Otherwise, the Chinese can help you tonight.”

Court hung up. As far as he was concerned, Brewer might have had her orders, but using Chinese intelligence operatives was just going to increase the chances something bad would happen tonight.

Still… it wasn’t his call to make. He looked down at his phone and keyed another number. He put a finger into one of his ears and his phone tight against the other. He could barely hear the ringing of the phone, but Dai’s voice came through loud and clear. “What is all that noise?”

Court said, “I am in a nightclub called the Black Pearl. It’s a bar owned by the Chamroon Syndicate. I am going to make a move on a member of their leadership who is here, and I need your men to help.”

Dai said, “I am glad to hear you are doing something proactive, finally, but why do you think Chamroon is the one holding Fan Jiang?”

“It is the biggest group around and it has the most reach. Chamroon Syndicate operatives smuggle through Cambodia and were likely the ones who picked Fan up there. And I’ve been asking around, and they are the only group around who can really employ a man with our target’s skills. They have a large cybercrime operation run out of the city.”

“That is all you are going on?”

Court faked a defensive tone. “Look… I don’t know for sure, but I need to force a move. Nattapong Chamroon himself is here. If I can get him out of here and someplace where I can work on him, I’ll find out where Fan is, or I’ll find out who else might be holding him.”

Dai said nothing. He clearly was not convinced.

Court played his trump card. “Did I mention that the Russians are here? They have eyes on Chamroon as we speak.”

Now Dai spoke. “I have four men just minutes from you. I can have a dozen men there in less than a half hour.”

“Thought that might get your attention. Tell them they are just here to back me up. I’ll wait for an opportunity for Nattapong to—”

Court had been watching the VIP area below while he spoke. Now, right in front of him, Nattapong Chamroon and his group downed their full glasses of whiskey and began shuffling the girls with them towards a door at the rear of the VIP area. Three bodyguards moved along with them.

When the door opened, Court realized it led to a stairwell. Chamroon and his entourage were already on the ground floor, and he saw the bodyguards leading them up the stairs, with the girls following behind. More men stood waiting on the stairs, and Court took them as security for Chamroon’s entourage, as well. He hadn’t seen these men in the nightclub and wondered what they had been doing up until now.

The VIP door closed before Court could get a head count or be sure everyone was going up, but he felt it was a safe bet. Brewer had told him that above the Black Pearl, a private club and spa entertained the rich of the city during the day, and it served as an occasional playground of the Chamroon Syndicate’s leadership in the off-hours.

“Are you still there?” Dai asked.

Now Court waved at his waitress to bring the check. Into his phone he said, “I might have an opportunity to get closer to Chamroon. Keep your guys outside and ready to help me make it out of here with a captive. And hurry them up. I don’t control the timetable with this… The bad guys do.”

“I will do as you say.”

“Remember, Dai. They stay outside. I will notify you if I need them.”

“Of course.”

Court hung up the phone, pulled out a wad of baht over a thousand U.S. in value, and began fanning bills. He was operating by the seat of his pants, but for the first time in the past four days, he had a hard-and-fast objective. Nattapong Chamroon was in his sights, and Court Gentry was supremely single-minded when he closed in on a target.