Singapore Sling Shot - Andrew Grant [30]
“Lieutenant-General T Numata, Chief of Staff, Southern Army,” Sami said. The name appeared as white block letters painted on a wooden plaque sitting on the table beside the attaché case. The image flicked back to Numata’s hands.
“Smart Stanley,” I said. The poor guy had had the presence of mind to choose the arm that lay at a slight angle across the body. The sleeve opening was partially obscured by the hand itself.
“He pushed it as far up into the sleeve as he could reach,” Sami said. The sleeve and hand came in for a close-up shot, filling the screen. There was no sign of the digital recorder. “The recorder is about the size of a cigarette lighter,” Sami added. “Basically it’s an MP3-type device that Stanley used as a personal note taker.”
“So the plan is to hit the surrender room, disable the alarm, get the recorder and get into the water straight out front. What about the proximity alarm?”
“I don’t think it will be an issue. One of my people triggered it. She accidentally dropped her camera over the railing. It appeared to be just a localised buzzer and sounded in the chambers themselves and The QuarterMaster Store below. It probably doesn’t go onto a monitoring switchboard.”
“You’re right,” I replied. “If I hit and run, it’ll only sound for a few seconds while I’m groping our little waxwork and anyway, Lu’s people will have already seen me on camera so they’ll be moving. That being the case, what’s a buzzer between friends?”
“Precisely. You grab the recorder, get out of the building and hit the water. We’ll be waiting. A most simple plan!”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “What could possibly go wrong?” I muttered dryly. Mentally my fingers were crossed. The great god Murphy and I were absolute enemies. The bastard had played his games with me too many times for me to ever think anything was going to go according to plan—ever!
“They must come for it. We know that Stanley made a very long telephone call from his hospital room. He told someone where he had planted that cursed recorder.”
Thomas Lu was pacing the lounge of the Silver Sands’ presidential suite. The room was virtually empty of furniture. The naked walls were stripped to bare plaster. The carpet was gone and only a layer of rubberised underlay muffled the sounds of the agitated man’s movement.
There was a trestle table against one wall, and on the table sat four small television monitors. Two men sat watching the screens. Another man sat on a straight-backed chair to the left of the table. He wore a radio headset connected to the console that was positioned on the rung of a ladder that leaned against the wall beside him.
Thomas Lu was talking mainly to himself. He was a worried man, scared even. Nothing had gone as he had planned it. Stanley Loh had rejected the offer to sell. He had recorded the threats and the pleas that he, Thomas Lu, had made to the dead man. Now that damn recorder was a sword, a very big, sharp sword and it was hanging directly over his head.
Lu knew that whomever Stanley Loh had contacted from his hospital bed would come for the recorder and doubtless the evidence it contained would be used against him, to destroy or blackmail him.
Thomas Lu had been certain that with Loh’s family held captive, he could have made the man talk and tell him where the recorder was hidden. Loh and his family would still have been killed, of course, but he would have played the lie long enough to have retrieved the recorder. As it was, Loh’s final act of getting himself shot had foiled even that alternative. The man who killed Loh was dead a heartbeat after Loh’s body hit the floor, killed by Lu in a fit of frustrated