Singapore Sling Shot - Andrew Grant [3]
One of the gunmen made a decision. He rushed towards Loh and squatted beside him. Loh, barely conscious now, felt the man’s hands searching his pockets. To an observer it would have seemed that the man was perhaps a colleague of the stricken man and that he was searching for Loh’s inhaler, because the distressed wheezing indicated that an asthma attack was in full flight. With a grunt of triumph, the gunman removed the cellphone from Loh’s pocket. His momentary triumph turned into a snarl of frustration when he realised that he was holding a ruined cellphone and not the digital recorder. He dropped the remains of the Nokia onto Loh’s thighs and stood.
Loh was conscious enough to see the cold, hateful look in the man’s eyes. He knew that without the presence of the tourists, the gunman would be breaking his fingers or worse.
“I’m a doctor, let me see him!” The voice belonged to a tall, overweight European in long, voluminous khaki shorts. From his position on the floor Loh noticed, almost distractedly, that the man’s legs were fat, white and very hairy. The man knelt beside Loh. There was a wide-brimmed hat and a startlingly red, bushy moustache. The face was sunburnt but the eyes, behind their rimless glasses, were kind. “Asthma attack?”
Loh nodded. The accent he recognised as Australian. The gunman, still standing nearby, reluctantly moved away.
“No inhaler on you?”
The stricken man managed to shake his head.
“Fortunately, or rather unfortunately, my wife is asthmatic,” the doctor said. He held out a large hand and the woman standing behind him, plump and bleached-blonde, also wearing baggy shorts, rummaged in her large shoulder bag. She found an object and put it into the doctor’s hand.
“Terbutaline, is this what you take?” The doctor held the puffer for his newest patient to see. Loh nodded and reached for the inhaler. He took it from the doctor’s palm and gratefully sucked the life-saving drug into his lungs. He wanted more, but the doctor gently took the inhaler back. “No, that will allow you to get to hospital. Technically what I’ve just done is illegal,” he said as he straightened. “However, sometimes we need to break the law to save lives.”
“Thank you,” Loh said. As the doctor stood, he could see that the gunman who’d searched him had withdrawn only as far as the end of the room. There he was standing with his accomplice, waiting, watching. The guide who had run downstairs to call for help pushed past them and came rushing back to where Loh was sitting.
“The ambulance is on its way,” she said.
Stanley Loh nodded his thanks and closed his eyes. Even if he had the energy to move, he couldn’t retrieve the recorder with all the people present, particularly Lu’s henchmen. He would go to hospital and get control of his asthma. Later he could arrange to return to collect it and present it to his associates. Before that, however, he would call his brother in Bangkok from the hospital and tell him everything that had taken place. Stanley Loh was his brother’s emissary in Singapore. He was the smiling public face for a man who preferred to remain in the shadows.
Standing on the terrace outside The QuarterMaster Store, Lu’s gunmen, along with a handful of tourists and fort staff, watched as the ambulance attendants loaded Loh into their vehicle. A few seconds later, as it roared away under flashing sirens and lights, the pair made their way back to the larger of the surrender rooms. They knew the recorder was hidden somewhere in the long room and they intended to retrieve it if they could.
Luck was against them. The constant stream of visitors through the surrender rooms didn