An Empty Coast Read online

  She steadied her breathing. Irina habitually made one more stop before hailing a cab back to her villa. The building was the antithesis of the rest of her whistlestop luxury tour. There was only one reason someone like Irina would enter the dilapidated colonial-relic apartment block. Ross’s police sources had told him this place was inhabited by junkies and the dealers who preyed on them. It was a dangerous environment for the take-down, but it was also the only location in this teeming city where Sonja could get to Irina away from prying eyes. If anyone did see her, Sonja had reasoned in her planning, they would be too stoned or too afraid of the law to report her.

  Irina looked behind her, but even that move was well known to Sonja, documented in a Post-it note she had placed on the planning board in her apartment. Sonja was ready for it and had ducked into the alcove of a tailor’s shop. When Sonja emerged Irina had already entered the apartment block.

  Sonja followed her inside and took up a position under the first flight of the concrete staircase, in a foyer that smelled of urine. Irina would be above her, knocking on the door of apartment four. Sonja hadn’t got close enough to know what the callgirl was buying, but assumed it would be something high end to match her other tastes. She only bought on the day she was to meet Tran Van Ngo, which she did every week, without fail, on a Tuesday.

  Sonja shrugged off her daypack, unzipped it and took out the sunglasses case and a pair of latex surgical gloves. She snapped on the gloves and opened the case. From it she took a syringe. She sent a text message to Ross. In position.

  Her phone vibrated three seconds later. Ditto.

  The clack of high heels above confirmed Irina had made her purchase. Sonja removed the plastic cap from the needle on the end of the syringe. As Irina descended the last stair and walked around the bannister Sonja emerged from the shadows. Irina looked surprised but not alarmed to see another western woman.

  ‘I wonder if you could help me,’ said Sonja, feigning an American accent. ‘I’m lost and I’m looking for the war relics museum.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I’m late,’ Irina said, and walked past her.

  Sonja had hoped for such a response. She moved behind Irina and, bringing her hand up to cover the other woman’s mouth, stuck the needle into her neck and depressed the plunger, shooting the Ketamine into Irina’s veins. Sonja dropped the syringe and crushed it with the heel of her hiking boot. Irina stopped her muffled calls for help and frantic clawing when she felt the blunt steel barrel of Sonja’s SIG in her rib cage.

  ‘Move,’ Sonja hissed, ‘or you’re dead.’ She could feel Irina already becoming unsteady on her feet. By the time they made it to the door of the apartment building Irina couldn’t form coherent words and she was becoming heavier in Sonja’s arms. Ross was double-parked. A motorcyclist honked his horn and yelled at him to move, but he got out of the little Toyota and opened the back door. An elderly Vietnamese woman was saying something to Sonja while she half carried, half dragged Irina to the car. Ross answered the woman in her language as he grabbed Irina’s long legs and slid them into the back of the car.

  ‘I told her that she’s just fainted and we’re taking her to a doctor.’

  ‘Good.’ Sonja smiled and nodded at the woman, then finished folding Irina into the back seat. She closed the door, then she and Ross climbed quickly into the front. ‘Now drive. Not too fast.’

  In Sonja’s rented apartment, an hour later, the Ketamine began to wear off. Irina was tied to a dining chair. Sonja pointed the pistol between the woman’s eyes as she hooked a finger in the gag and pulled it from her mouth.

  Irina coughed. ‘Who are you working for, what do you want? Get me water.’

  ‘You’re in no position to make demands,’ Sonja said. She faced Irina, while Ross stood behind the woman.

  Irina looked around her. ‘It’s late. What time is it? There are people who will miss me. They don’t like to be kept waiting. They’ll look for me, kill you.’

  Sonja smiled. ‘It’s not “they”, is it, Irina, it’s “he”. Tran Van Ngo, your regular Tuesday night fuck.’

  Irina spat on the floor, then laughed. ‘You’re going after him? That’s crazy. Now you will die, for sure.’

  Traffic hummed outside and music played in a neighbouring flat. Through the fabric of the blind, the light was fading. ‘We’re going to call Madam Nhu, and you’re going to talk to her,’ Sonja said.

  ‘Like hell I will. He’ll kill me if he thinks I had anything to do with this. You do know that, don’t you?’

  Sonja nodded. ‘If you don’t do what I want, I’ll kill you.’

  Irina shook her head. ‘No way. I’m not going to do it. You can go to hell.’

  Sonja picked up Irina’s Gucci handbag and opened it. ‘I’ll meet you there soon for a latte. You know, I thought you were a user, that maybe you were buying cocaine or some designer drug to get you through your weekly appointment with Tran, but I never figured you for a mule.’ Sonja pulled out three wads of US dollars and waved them in front of Irina’s face.

  Irina said nothing.

  ‘How you make your money – screwing people, dealing or couriering drugs – is not my concern. All I want is to get into Tran’s villa, past his bodyguards, and have some alone time with him.’

  Irina laughed again. ‘If you do, you’ll never get out alive.’

  ‘That’s my problem. Now, we’re going to call Madam Nhu and you’re going to tell her that you’ve come down with acute food poisoning and that you can’t make it this evening. You’re going to add that you’ve just had a call from an old friend from South Africa, another working girl who came over here to see a client and has a few days spare. You’re going to say that your friend – me – would be happy to visit Tran tonight and that you can vouch for her.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Fine,’ said Sonja. She stuffed the SIG into the waistband of her jeans. From behind the white sofa she pulled a plastic tarpaulin and began unfolding it, in front of Irina. She placed it on the parquetry flooring. ‘Give me a hand to get it under her,’ she said to Ross, who remained out of Irina’s field of vision.

  ‘Really?’ Ross said.

  Sonja put her hands on her hips. ‘Don’t go soft on me. It’s simple. I wasn’t bluffing when I said I’d kill her. She knows too much.’ Sonja hadn’t told Ross she was prepared to kill Irina if she didn’t cooperate – she’d said they would lock her up somewhere and try another strategy to get to the Vietnamese gangster. The shock in the Australian’s voice was helping her convince Irina she was ready to execute her and that this wasn’t an orchestrated ruse. ‘We dump her body, make sure there’s a card from Madam Nhu’s in her purse, and I tip off the cops. It shouldn’t take them long to call her. In the meantime, I show up at the whorehouse, say I’m a friend of Irina’s and looking for her. I also let slip I’m in need of work. I’m tall, now blonde, and I’m a western hooker. Madam Nhu won’t want to offend her number one client so she might just send me to Tran.’

  ‘Sonja . . .’ Ross said.

  ‘You can’t kill me,’ Irina said.

  Sonja smiled. ‘Don’t be silly. Of course I can, Irina. In a heartbeat. If I leave you now and I don’t complete my mission, you’ll run to Tran, then I’ll be compromised. It’s a wicked world we live in, isn’t it?’

  Sonja shoved Irina in the chest, tipping her back on the chair legs, and slid the tarpaulin underneath her feet. ‘That should do it.’ She moved behind the callgirl, grabbed the back of the chair and pushed it forward. She eased Irina down until her head and knees were on the plastic.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Sonja put the tip of the silencer at the base of Irina’s skull.

  ‘All right, I’ll make the call!’

  *

  Sonja was collected from Madam Nhu’s in Tran’s black Bentley. She had seen the car before and recognised the chauffeur-cum-b
odyguard. His suit was a tight fit, from muscle, not fat, and he was slightly bowlegged, as if walking on his toes, expecting a fight. The man said nothing to her as he opened the rear door, reluctantly going through the motions, then slammed it. He checked on her every now and then in the rear view mirror; a bodyguard wouldn’t like a change in routine, but a boss would not meet his guests without a woman hanging off him.

  She had stood in the tastefully decorated lounge of the well-appointed villa that served as an upmarket brothel. Prostitution, Sonja had learned, was illegal in Vietnam, but it still went on. Karaoke bars and massage parlours served one end of the market, while the upper echelon was catered for in private residences; it was even illegal for a westerner to have a Vietnamese woman enter his hotel room unless they were married. In Madam Nhu’s home the man had frisked her, running his hands up under her skirt and around her breasts and checking her purse as the elegantly turned-out older woman looked on impassively; she had no doubt seen worse humiliations.

  They drove through the falling evening. People were still thronging the streets, more of them tourists now, seeking out bars and restaurants. Sonja wondered what the place was like during the war. She’d served with Americans, in Sierra Leone and later in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Vietnam veterans were the oldest of the private military contractors – the media called them mercenaries – but they had the most interesting stories. Some had found it impossible to settle into civilian life after their tour of duty here and had drifted to Africa, rolling from one war and one country to the next. She thought of her homeland, which in reality was a dim memory. She was looking forward to seeing Emma again, but that would have to wait. She forced herself to concentrate on the mission.

  The driver pulled up at an ornate wrought-iron security gate. It rolled open without the bodyguard pushing a button; Sonja noticed the security cameras mounted on the gate posts as the Bentley motored through. She waited for the driver to open her door, and when he did, she felt as though she were stepping into an oven after the brief respite of the limousine’s air conditioning.

  ‘Miss Schmidt,’ a man in a white dinner jacket and black bow tie said as she unfolded herself from the car. It was the name she had given Madam Nhu, and which Irina had confirmed.

  ‘Mr Tran.’ She towered above him in her heels, but she and Irina were about the same height, and from her surveillance Sonja had noticed the escort always wore stilettos, open toed. Tran looked her up and down; despite his sartorial cool he appraised her like a criminal judging the value of a piece of stolen merchandise. His gaze lingered on her pink-painted toenails. ‘Delighted to meet you.’

  He took her hand and held on to it, looking up into her eyes. ‘As am I. But you must call me Ngo.’

  She nodded her head. ‘Cam on ong.’

  He smiled and led her along a paved walkway to the colonnaded entry of his white stone mansion. ‘My humble home.’

  ‘It’s beautiful.’ She lowered her voice: ‘Irina sends her apologies.’

  He looked to her again. ‘This is most irregular, but I have important guests. I will not say I am happy about this change in plans, about any change of plans, but I thank you for agreeing to, er, fill in for Miss Aleksandrova.’

  The thank you sounded anything but sincere, but Sonja was pleased he seemed to have accepted the lie. Her research on Tran Van Ngo, much of it garnered by Ross, told her he preferred the company of western women. Irina was the latest in a string of similar-looking women. She knew from the dossier they had prepared that Ngo was older than his smooth skin and full head of hair would have had her believe; he was sixty-two years of age and had joined the Viet Cong as a boy soldier, just sixteen, and served in the latter stages of the war against the Americans. He had joined the People’s Army of Vietnam after the war and had risen to the rank of colonel in the subsequent battles to free Cambodia from the Khmer Rouge, and against the Chinese on Vietnam’s northern border.

  He had left the army for a career in business and, ostensibly, made his money through import and export. The idealistic teenage communist guerrilla, perhaps disillusioned by wars against other comrades, had eventually realised that power came not from the barrel of a gun but from powders and pieces of green paper: the currency of the foe and the ideology he’d once fought. Ross’s sources said Tran had made his fortune in heroin, women – he supplied young Vietnamese girls, some underage, to gangster contacts in Cambodia – and, lately, rhino horn. His legitimate front and the washing machine for his cash was a property development business.

  ‘I have many business contacts here tonight. My company is developing luxury apartments and a new hotel on the coast at Da Nang.’

  Sonja nodded. ‘Irina told me.’

  He stopped as they entered the foyer. ‘What else did she tell you?’ His tone was low and annoyed.

  ‘Nothing. She likes you, you know?’

  He frowned, but Sonja sensed him relax, or try to relax. No boy could resist having a note passed about him between two girls in school.

  ‘Irina and I have a business relationship, just as you and I will have a business exchange this evening. Nothing more. Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good.’ He held out his arm, bent at the elbow, and she took it. ‘When you’ve finished charming my guests and I’ve done my business with them I’m going to take you upstairs and make love to you.’

  Sonja nodded. ‘I understand.’

  ‘I don’t have a wife, in case you’re wondering,’ he said.

  ‘It’s none of my business.’

  ‘And I don’t care if Irina “likes” me or not. I pay for what I want, what I need. I have no need for sentimental attachments. I just want you to be clear about this.’

  ‘I’m clear.’ In fact, she felt the same way.

  Chapter 2

  Namibia

  Emma Kurtz hurt all over. The sunburnt skin on her shoulders stung where her sweat-soaked safari shirt rubbed against it. Her knees were throbbing, her back was aching, her lips were split and chapped and her right hand was cramping from holding the trowel for hours on end.

  A shadow passed over her, blessed relief for an instant, until it moved. ‘Not quite as glamorous as you first thought, eh, Miss Kurtz?’

  Emma blinked and saw the sun backlighting the wild mass of curly white hair that flanked Professor Dorset Sutton’s bushy-bearded face. She tried to speak, but her throat was so dry she had to swallow first. ‘No, Prof,’ she croaked.

  ‘Lara Croft swanned around in her black tank top and short shorts and Indiana Jones spent more time machine-gunning Nazis than digging, but it’s nothing like the movies, is it?’

  She was annoyed at him, but bit back a reply. She knew where the Lara jibe had come from. She’d dressed pretty much as he’d described, right down to the ponytail, on the first day of the dig, yesterday, and she’d paid the price of not covering up under the unforgiving African sun.

  Natangwe, kneeling a few metres to her right, gave a soft laugh.

  ‘Got something to add, have we, Mr Heita?’ Sutton strode over to him. ‘You’re searching for your country’s history, young man, not digging a shit pit. Go easy with that trowel.’

  Natangwe was swaddled in a jumper and jeans and woollen balaclava, like it was the middle of winter rather than forty degrees Celsius. Emma had thought him the silly one, but he’d been protected from the sun’s rays. Emma was still coming to terms with Namibia and the people who lived here. She’d marvelled at the sight of female road workers, toiling over boiling tar in the ferocious heat but, like Natangwe, cocooned in winter woollies at the time. The whites swaggered about in short denim shorts that looked like Daisy Duke’s cast-offs, and the Herero women wore voluminous approximations of Victorian hooped skirts.

  Although Emma had been born in the UK she felt a kinship to this quietly baking landscape. Her mother and the grandfather she’d never known had be
en born here, and Grandpa Hans’s grandfather had come here from Germany at the turn of the twentieth century as a soldier. Her grandmother, however, was English, and she had hated Africa. She’d left Grandpa Hans in Botswana and Emma’s mother, Sonja, had also eventually run away from the old man. Emma had never known her biological father; he’d been killed in the troubles in Northern Ireland, where Sonja had served as a soldier in the British Army before Emma was born.

  Lately, Emma had felt a sense of dislocation, not as acute as her mother’s but confusing nonetheless. When Sonja had taken her from the UK to live in Los Angeles, at first Emma had revelled in the novelty of seeing so many places and stores she’d only ever seen on TV. But it wasn’t home. She had no friends of her own age there and, given that she wanted to be a battlefield archaeologist, she and her mother had jointly decided that the best place to study was Glasgow University, a world leader in the field.

  ‘I can’t believe you want to study old battlefields,’ her mother had said to her as they’d waited at LAX to board the flight to Scotland.

  ‘Mum, it’s hardly surprising when you think about it.’

  Sonja had agreed with a sad frown. Emma had not been a perfect teenager; in fact for a few years while she’d lived with her gran she’d hated her mother. Sonja was no ordinary single mother; she provided for her only child by working overseas in the world’s conflict zones, as a bodyguard and private military contractor – a modern-day euphemism for a mercenary. Emma’s circle of friends were left leaning, opposed to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Emma had been too ashamed to tell them what her mother did.