Singapore Sling Shot - Andrew Grant [55]
“Ridding the world of a piece of shit!”
“My brothers will …”
What Raymond Mendez’s brothers would or would not do stayed with the younger Mendez. The single shot that killed him hit him precisely between his eyes. The low-calibre round didn’t exit his skull, and the entry wound was little more than a small dark dot on the falling man’s forehead.
Five minutes after Raymond Mendez died, Thomas Lu was standing in the shipping container. Opened in front of him was a large bale of hemp and plastic that was almost exactly two metres square. The wires that had held it closed had been cut. The thick hemp and multiple layers of plastic and paper at the top of the bale had been sliced open and pulled back to reveal tightly packed bound bundles of bank notes: US dollars, millions upon millions of them. Behind the first bale sat another, and another and another. Four bales, each filled with large-denomination American dollar notes.
“Two billion dollars,” Thomas Lu breathed, “and now it is all mine.”
Lu took a bundle of bank notes and stepped out of the container.
The body of Raymond Mendez was now gone, as was the Lexus and the men who had arrived in it.
“Now we will have our share and more besides,” Lu said as he broke the binding tape and fanned the bundle of notes in his hands.
“And we will see the last of you, Sami Somsak.”
20
They say all good things must come to an end. I guess that’s so. All I know is that on the flight back from Bintan, I didn’t want my weekend to end. How many years had it been since I actually had a weekend that wasn’t dominated by pure lust but by something else? Whatever was happening between Simone and me was something that was new to me.
I mean, I’m not naïve, far from it. I married my former wife, the beautiful and brilliant Sylvia Dixon, when we were both caught up in an absolutely out-of-control whirlwind of sexual lightning. Sylvia and I were total sexual dynamite together, and unfortunately, on my part at least, that was our relationship, our marriage. In due course, my inability to keep my hands off other women spelt the end of our marriage.
With Simone there was wonderful sex, but there was more. She too was smart and beautiful and more, much more besides. Maybe because I’d aged a few years since I’d been married to Sylvia, I was becoming a normal human being for the first time. The futility of just screwing about in Hong Kong for the past few months had finally sunk in. It had been selfish and futile and puerile. I’d been like a randy hound chasing bitches in heat. It was nothing but empty sex.
“A penny or two for them?” Simone had turned away from the spectacular view as we approached Singapore, flying over the hundreds of ships at anchor below us. Ahead was Sentosa. She was smiling at me.
“Just thinking,” I replied, giving her a grin. I wasn’t ready to confide certain thoughts to her. Not yet!
As we came across Sentosa, I peered down towards the concourse where the fort road, aquarium and resort entrances collided with Siloso Beach. No police vehicles this time round. We buzzed over the twin spans of the monorail bridge and now, when I saw just how far I had dropped into the water that night, I winced. I’d been damn lucky to survive that in reality. Jumping out of a Sea King hovering at ten metres in a training situation is one thing. Jumping off a bridge into unknown waters is entirely another. When I’d thought I’d felt the bottom under my feet, I probably had.
We wound down on the helipad at Changi and did the customs and immigration thing and were in a cab back to the city within half an hour. Simone suggested I go up to her apartment. I begged off for the moment. I said farewell to her with an almost chaste kiss and as the cab pulled away, she waved me out of sight. Damn! Things were moving too fast and I was powerless to stop this roller-coaster ride. Did I want to stop it?
Back at the hotel, I phoned Sami. He was okay. A broken bone in his left wrist and a few bruises were the sum total of the physical damage. However, he was very, very intensely