Singapore Sling Shot - Andrew Grant [29]
Simone was waiting for me in the foyer lounge when I arrived. I revised my plan for the evening. She had arranged a sitter for her boys and tomorrow was Saturday. She didn’t work Saturdays. Tomorrow she wanted me to meet the kids. That set alarm bells ringing way back in my brain. Whatever, I thought, we will have a picnic. In the meantime we have some time to ourselves.
10
You drop me here, thirty metres off shore and I swim to the landing. From there it’s up the ladder. I clamber around the steel plate at the top and into the observation post.”
“Will you use the tunnel or take the ridge line?” The map Sami had spread on the desk was actually a large-scale satellite photograph and it showed Fort Siloso and the body of the island back to the bridge in great detail. Sami’s finger was tracing the topside route. I shook my head.
“I’ll use the tunnel. I want to delay getting caught on camera as long as possible. When I come out of it I’ll be running. I’ll have maybe five minutes tops to get into the surrender rooms, grab the recorder and get back in the water.”
Sami nodded and dropped a key onto the table in front of me.
“For the door into the first surrender room,” he said.
“How the hell did you get that?”
“Singapore’s finest pickpocket managed to get an impression of it,” he replied with a smile. Then he laid a small strip of paper beside the key. “The alarm code for the main alarm. Standard thirty-second delay, and before you ask, we planted our own mini-camera focussed on the keypad. We recorded one of the guides setting the alarm and locking the place down for the night.”
“Smart,” I responded, meaning it. “So, you’ve had people in and out of the place all along. Surely they could have lifted the recorder.” I probably sounded a bit pissed off. I was beginning to feel as if I was being unnecessarily set up for this exercise.
“Too risky,” Sami responded. “Yes, we’ve had people in and out, and so has Lu. My observers have picked a steady stream of loiterers in the surrender rooms. They rotate about fifteen people through there every couple of hours. They go away, change a shirt, put on dark glasses or whatever and come back in singles and pairs. They’re using Lu’s hotel, the Silver Sands, as their base. It’s here.” Sami indicated a building situated about a half kilometre away from the fort entrance down Siloso beach.
I did some calculations. If all of Lu’s people were stationed there at night, I could stroll out of the Japanese surrender room and stop for a cigarette before I hit the water. Hell, I could probably even have a latte. I shook my head. I was dreaming. While most of Lu’s thugs might be down the beach, I would put the big money on the fact that there would be half a dozen close to hand and they would be in radio contact with those monitoring the cameras. These guys were most likely in the hotel.
“We really have only one chance at this, Daniel, and that is why it has to be you. It’s about a lot more than the money. This is about my half-brother and his family and the others. I want to bring Lu down, disgrace him, humiliate him and then crucify him, and that little recorder is the only thing that can do that. We have to do it right.”
“Okay,” I conceded, and he was right. Given any other building in any other location I’d have argued, but the unique location of the fort made getting away with the goods difficult enough, and having Lu’s loiterers in the surrender rooms was the clincher. They were just waiting for someone to turn up and retrieve the recorder. There was no alternative. The pick-up had to be done when the place was deserted.
“So where the hell is the damn recorder?”
“In the right sleeve of this man here.” Sami touched a button on his laptop and the face and upper body of a wax mannequin dressed in the uniform of a