The Hunt for Shambhala

10

“You should have told him the truth,” said Riley. “Then he might have stuck around. As it is now, it’s just the three of us versus whatever the hell Kuan might throw at us.”

“That’s if we can find him,” Selena said.

“We know Ko Chalam is one of those islands,” Riley said. He pointed across the water to several small islands a mile or so away.

Selena, Riley and Charlie were sitting under the shade of a bar on Lamai Beach on the island’s southeast coast. Riley couldn’t remember how many times he’d been here but it was Selena’s first visit, and she was mesmerized by the colors of the ocean as the sun sank below the western horizon.

Ahead of her across the beach was a clear sky lit the color of hot copper by the dying sun, and behind her a thick tree line of tropical palm trees marked the boundary between the beach and Marina Villa. The thumping bass of a nightclub somewhere behind the palms fought for her attention with the sound of people laughing and horsing around in the surf.

“We didn’t need him to stick around,” Selena said coolly. And it was true, she thought. The American had flown them farther than the original agreement and had been paid for his trouble. She wasn't even sure if the liked him very much. He seemed distant, arrogant and obsessed with his stupid plane. Now, Mitch Decker was a mile up the coast and preparing to fly his plane out of here for good. She glanced at her watch and saw he would be taking off in less than an hour.

“But he has a plane, Lena. How many people do you know who have their own plane?”

“A plane?” she scoffed. “Looked more like an old banana crate with a couple of ironing boards sticking out the sides. I can still hear those bloody engine even now.” She rubbed her ears and winced at the memory.

“Still…” Charlie said. “Atticus is running things on fumes, Lena, and you know it. This could really help us all out…”

“Never mind him,” Selena said sharply. “Besides, Mr Decker wouldn’t have liked the truth,” she said flatly, and pulled her sunglasses down over her eyes. “He’s obviously a loner.”

“How can you tell that?” Charlie said.

“Just by looking at him.”

“Come on!”

“He’s just ridiculous, with that Han Solo thing he has going on.”

“Huh?” Riley said.

She looked at him and raised her sunglasses. “The stupid leather jacket, for one thing.”

“That’s a US Marines leather flight jacket, Lena.”

“Oh, is it?”

“Yes.”

“It still makes him look like Han Solo.”

“He looks nothing like Han Solo.”

“He does! He even has the stupid Han Solo face.”

“You realize that’s Harrison Ford’s actual face, right?”

“I’m not talking about this anymore. You’re terrible.”

Terrible he might be, but she was grateful he and Charlie were with her tonight. Unlike all the others having fun on the beach, none of them was here to revel in the pleasures of Ko Samui. Beyond the line of coconut palms on the dunes behind them was the Paradise Grand Hotel, owned and operated by Lee Kuan. Finding the information about the heroin trafficker’s ownership of the island hotel had been one thing but finding the man himself had been another.

After they had checked in, Selena asked some casual questions in the hotel bar while Riley starting talking to the maids. Charlie had gone farther afield and asked questions in other bars up and down the coast.

No one seemed to know much about the Big Boss until the Australian chanced upon some of the hotel’s cooks standing around smoking outside the kitchens. One of the sous-chefs there knew a little about the man who signed the payslips, and told him he had one of the penthouse suites at the top of the hotel.

Riley got excited and thought he’d hit the jackpot until the man casually told him, between drags on his Samit 90, that Kuan rarely spent the night there and instead disappeared somewhere every evening around dusk in a chopper from the helipad at the rear of the hotel complex. The chef was vague about where it went, but there was loose talk of a private island nearby.

He cased the area and worked out that the helipad was in a staff-only zone of the grounds, but choppers taking off and landing there could be monitored easily from the beach to the south of the hotel. Killing a few hours on a Thai beach while waiting for Kuan to take off hadn’t been a hard choice, but spying on the chopper was essential because there were several islands in the waters around Ko Samui.

Using official Thai government channels to find out which was Kuan’s would have taken too much time and money. Instead Riley had unpacked a beach towel and a monocular telescope from his bag and the three of them had hit the beach for the afternoon.

Now, as the sun started to slide, their thoughts turned back to the island.

“And they definitely said it was one of those islands?” Selena said as she sipped a beer.

Riley nodded and handed her his phone so she could see an image on it. “He wrote it down for me. The word read: “เกาะฉลาม”.

Selena looked down at the word. “Means nothing to me. Can’t read Thai.”

“As I said, it translates roughly as Ko Chalam, or Shark Island.”

Charlie gave his famous, cheery laugh. “Sounds nice. Safe.”

Riley laughed. “Come on, what super villain these days hasn’t got a private island in shark-infested waters?”

“I see your point.”

Riley said. “It was in OK Magazine a few months ago.”

“Are you serious?” Selena asked.

Riley took her by the shoulders. “Do I look like the sort of person who reads OK Magazine?”

“If I’m being honest, no.”

“Plus, I’m not sure OK readers want to know about how psychopathic heroin traffickers decorate their bathrooms.”

“There is that, too.”

An hour or so passed and Riley received a reply from his former SAS boss, Colonel Craig Denning. Denning was now based in Sydney and working freelance in international security. He still had serious contacts in the senior ranks of the army and intel services, and he’d come through with some interesting information on Kuan.

Along with the Thai National Intelligence Agency, both the CIA and the ASIS, the Australian equivalent, all had neat little files on him. Most of the heroin he trafficked out of Asia ended up on US and Australian streets, and for that reason he had attracted the attention of all three agencies.

Denning had refused to email any part of the file to Riley, and both men knew why — Riley had asked knowing the answer before the last word had left his lips. But his old boss had given him an outline over the phone and that was good enough for the purpose of this mission.

Kuan was one of Thailand’s most dangerous men, controlling an enormous empire of organized crime all over the region. A former army officer, he had deep-level contacts inside the ruling military junta that constituted the Thai Government, and he mercilessly exploited this to keep the wolf from the door.

“Hey — check out the chopper!” Charlie said.

“This might be our man,” Selena said.

They watched a Bell Jet Ranger turn into the setting sun and fly out toward the line of islands in the west. Riley tracked the path of the chopper carefully through his monocular, extending the telescope to keep it in sight the whole way. When it reduced power and descended toward a small island in the south, he handed the monocular to Selena. “Looks like we found our secret hideout.”

“Interesting.”

“Good job, Riley,” said Charlie.

As Selena held the compact telescope to her eye, Riley opened the map he’d gotten in the hotel lobby and ran his fingers over the blue paper ocean. “This is the place all right.”

“We’re making progress,” she said.

“That should please Atticus, at least,” said the Australian.

Selena said nothing and watched as the Bell disappeared out of sight behind a jumble of palm trees.

Riley ran a hand through his short wiry hair and sighed. “I’m going in the sea to freshen up for a second, and then we’re getting a boat and heading west to have a chat with Dr. No over there.”

She watched him get up and jog down to the water. He stopped for a few seconds on the shoreline to talk with a couple of young tourists — German women, she guessed, or Scandinavians maybe — and then he waded out and started to swim toward the horizon. She thought about joining him — the humidity here made it feel like someone was spraying her with a plant mister every few seconds — but decided to save her energy for her trip to the island.

“Where does he get so much energy?” Charlie said, leaning back into his beach chair and sipping his lager.

“Really don’t know,” she replied lazily. “Maybe all the sodding Milo he drinks.”

Charlie laughed. “You think it was a mistake letting Decker slip away?”

She waited a while before replying. “It wasn’t a question of letting him do anything, Charlie. He’s his own man and he has his own life. We can do this without him.”

“I guess you’re right.”

“Of course I am.”

She wasn’t sure whether she believed that or not any more. Maybe the lads were right and they should have tried to keep Decker around, but it was a lost chance now. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. As soon as it was dark, she had a date with destiny, but it meant somehow getting onto an island surrounded by sharks first.