Zero Days, page 17
Drayton looked away from her, feeling awkward.
She was getting undressed. Right there, in the room. As if Drayton didn’t exist.
He picked up the television remote and started flicking through the channels. Then started playing awkwardly with his phone. Looking to the window. Trying not to pay attention to her, but not doing a very good job of it. She was skinny, but athletic. Pale and well-toned, he assumed from the boxing.
But it wasn’t just her nakedness that drew his eyes, it was her tattoos.
A snarling tiger covered her entire back, wrapped around her spine. Its head was just below the nape of her neck, its tail ending in the small of her back. Big claws reached for her shoulders, which were decorated with slithering snakes. A tarantula sat above her left breast, one of its legs reaching down towards a pierced nipple. Something that looked like an owl peered from her left buttock. A flock of birds around her ankle. An enormous dragon curled up around the inside of her left thigh, its head just below her navel, breathing jagged fire towards her shaved pubis.
She wrapped a towel around herself and then looked at Drayton.
‘What’s up?’ she said. ‘You never see a naked woman before? Were you wearing a blindfold in those bars tonight?’
‘Not with tattoos quite like that. What do they mean?’
‘Whatever you want them to mean. The Thais call them Yantra. They’re spiritual. Popular with boxers. Power, protection, fortune. That kinda shit.’
‘And you believe that?’
‘Not really. But I like tattoos.’
Then she went to take a shower.
While she showered, Drayton undressed and climbed into bed. He switched off all the lights apart from the one beside Vika’s bed. He’d never particularly liked tattoos on women, and she was covered in them, yet he found Vika’s rawness attractive. He was aroused by her in a way he would never have expected or couldn’t explain. But now he felt cautious, nervous even. And not just on account of the way she wielded those legs. It was the way she looked at him. The attitude.
He was wide awake when she came out of the bathroom, but kept his back to her, embarrassed by his squeamishness. He could hear her moving. Switching the light off. And then he felt the warmth of her body beside him, the cold of the nipple ring pressing into his back. She curled a leg over him, then pulled him towards her. He needed no encouragement, his caution evaporating as her pierced tongue darted towards his. In the near darkness, it looked like the snake on her shoulder, the stud on its tip catching the light from the window. It was as if they were battling for a boiled sweet that bobbed and slithered around their mouths.
She never spoke, not a word, neither of them did, the tattooed animals demanding his attention. The snake, the birds. Then the tarantula. After that, the glaring owl. Then he was face to face with the dragon as it curled up her thigh and he followed the trail of its fiery breath. She dug her nails into his back, her cry transporting him back to the pavilion where she’d ambushed him. Only now her swinging legs were wrapped tight around him.
She left his bed as suddenly and wordlessly as she’d arrived, back to her own. He began to follow her, wanting to chase the animals one more time, maybe a more leisurely safari, taken at his pace this time. But when he drew close he saw she had her back to him, and all he could see was the snarling head of the tiger poking out above her sheet, it’s wild eyes fixed on him. Don’t even think about it.
*****
Drayton was in a deep sleep when Vika’s computer started quacking like a duck, the alarm she’d set to tell them when Dobberman the duck-fucker’s cell phone was powered up and back online. It took a while for Drayton’s brain to boot up, to fully remember where he was. A shoe bounced off the headboard of his bed, then a pillow hit him. Which is about when he heard Vika’s voice ordering him to get his arse over to the laptop.
‘It’s show time,’ she said.
She activated Dobberman’s microphone, and then his cameras, switching between front and back as they tried to make sense of what was going on.
The first thing they saw was a grainy image of the creep’s chubby, unshaven face, half asleep and staring at the phone. Staring at them. His face illuminated by the light from the screen. Maybe checking the time.
The microphone picked up his heavy breathing.
Vika adjusted some of the settings on her laptop, trying to increase the brightness. Preparing to download the creep’s data. Plunder the phone. She was smiling now. Enjoying herself.
Dobberman was muttering to himself, the sound not good. Fucking something-or-other. Stretching the arm with the phone and hitting a bedside light switch that didn’t respond. A fat finger filling the screen. Click. Click. Click.
The power seemed to be out.
Vika switched to the phone’s back camera for a better view of the room.
Dobberman switched on the phone’s torch, and got out of bed. As he moved, the image on the laptop screen moved with him, swaying along with his arm. The camera caught the fuzzy outlines of a desk, a chair, a fan.
It looked pretty surreal. Drayton now smiling too.
The microphone picked up the whirring of the fan, then the distant hum of cicadas. The clicks of a gecko. Dobberman turned into another room, or maybe a corridor. Either way, it was much narrower, the image fuzzier. He said something, but it wasn’t clear at first, the mic not properly picking it up. Then he said it again. More distinct this time.
‘Hey, is someone there? Hey, who is that?’
Vika and Drayton leaned towards the laptop.
Both stopped smiling, as the image on the screen moved sharply, a sudden and rapid jolt. The mic picked up a heavy thud. The image froze. Then it was moving again. Moving randomly. Jumping and falling. As if the phone was being waved around. The laptop showed a jumble of fast-moving and blurry images. Blacks. Whites. Jittery lines at all kinds of angles, coming in and out of focus. Washed out as the light from the torch was reflected back from a mirror.
Then the phone seemed to fall again before making a hard landing. But it was still in Dobberman’s hand, the camera pointing towards him, his fat face in profile, filling the screen. He was on his back, on the bed, a hand hard over his mouth.
He was trying to shout. Trying to scream.
Then the hand was replaced by a pillow, a pair of thick arms pushing hard on the pillow, squeezing the breath out of him. Dobberman writhing beneath it. The mic picked up his desperate, muffled cries. The image started to move again. A series of sharp and violent downward movements, the mic picking up dull smacks at the end of each. He was fighting back, smashing his phone into the back of the person on top of him.
The movements became slower. The rasping fainter. Until they both stopped. The arms kept the pillow in place for a while longer. Just to be sure. Then the arms slowly eased their grip. The camera was still pointing at the pillow. And at the arms holding it in place.
Vika and Drayton both saw it. The tattoo on the nearest of the thick arms. It was a spider. Thick spider legs reaching down towards the wrist and wrapping around the forearm.
The arm reached for the phone, picking it up. For a moment a face filled the lens of the camera, and in turn the window of Vika’s laptop. It was the cold, chiselled face of a man with cropped blonde hair. A deep scar on the right side of his face running from his forehead to his eyebrow, then starting again below his eye. A deep crevice down his right cheek that seemed deeper and darker in the light from the phone’s torch. Then he turned off the phone and the window on Vika’s laptop went to black.
She continued to stare at the screen, a clenched hand over her mouth. Drayton put a hand on her arm. Then she slowly closed the laptop.
‘Yuri. It was Yuri,’ she said.
‘I think I’ve met him,’ Drayton replied
‘We need to go,’ Vika said. Quiet, but urgent. ‘And we need to go now.’
They left the hotel through a back entrance, to a narrow alleyway, to avoid the road that led to Dobberman’s house. Vika said they should get clear of the area just as soon as they could. That she knew a place. Somewhere outside the city that would be safe while they figured out what to do next.
The dingy tourist hotel seemed safe enough to Drayton. But there was an urgency about Vika that he hadn’t seen before and which he wasn’t about to question. She knew those people. Knew what they were capable of. And she knew what was at stake.
The alleyway led to a wider and busier road, but as they turned onto that road they froze. A man was standing in the shadow of a storefront a few metres ahead of them. A tall man with a shaved head. There was no mistaking it, even in the early morning gloom. The man raised his arm, reaching out, something shiny in its hand, raising it towards them.
The man moved out of the shadows. Approaching them. They began to back up, but then stopped because he was wearing a saffron coloured robe and was holding out a bowl. A monk, a shaven-headed monk, collecting alms. He was joined by two more, doing their dawn rounds. Drayton emptied his change into the bowl. Rarely had he felt so relieved to be parting with a fist full of coins.
Vika hailed two motorbike taxis, their drivers wearing numbered orange vests.
‘Where are we going?’ said Drayton.
‘A place. Like I said.’
Vika took the motorbike in front, riding side-saddle, as if she’d done it many times before, rucksack flung casually over one shoulder. Drayton almost fell off as soon as he’d got on his. Holding his bag on his knee with one hand, gripping a bar behind his seat as tightly as he could with the other.
Hating every second of the ride.
The sun was coming up. A hazy, muggy morning. Traffic was light, but that didn’t make the journey any less nerve-wracking for Drayton, terrified at each turn, convinced he’d end up under a bus, or else be asphyxiated by the noxious fumes.
The motorbikes dropped them under a bridge near a wide river, and they walked the last few metres to a waterside platform, alongside which, moments later, swept a long torpedo-shaped boat. The Chao Phraya River taxi. It hovered by the platform, just long enough for passengers to clamber on and off before a conductor shouted and blew his whistle. The engines crackled and then roared, and the boat bounced and then swept back into the churning waters of Bangkok’s main waterway.
Even at this hour, the river was busy with dodging, jostling boats of every shape and size. The river taxi quickly became packed. A heaving mass of school kids, monks, office workers and a handful of intrepid tourists clinging to seats and overhead bars. There were red plastic seats in pairs on both sides of the boat, and Drayton sat beside Vika, watching the river traffic playing what seemed to him to be an enormous game of chicken. To see who’d move out of the way first. After a while he stopped watching, thinking that was better for his shredded nerves. And as the hot sun hit the boat, he was grateful for the clouds of spray that showered them each time they thudded against turbulent water.
At first the river was lined with high rises. This was the modern Bangkok of tall hotels, shopping malls and towering office blocks. There were temples. A gilded palace. But they soon gave way to the older Bangkok; a more ramshackled collection of wooden buildings and homes on stilts. Some derelict. Piles of rubbish. Then, as they left the city behind them, flooded fields of tall grass.
‘This is us,’ said Vika, as they approached a small covered platform, where the boat thrust its powerful motors into reverse, hovering just long enough for them to step ashore.
They followed a raised walkway across a flooded field, which led to a cracked deserted road, a handful of wooden homes and a general store on one side. Kids playing in a yard. The road crossed a swollen canal and then passed a pair of towering electricity pylons, beyond which sat a large low building of wooden walls and corrugated metal roof.
Drayton heard a rhythmic thud, thud, thud from within.
Grunts and shouts.
The building was open on one side, facing a yard, lines of punch bags hanging from the ceiling, boxers pounding them with their fists and legs. A raised boxing ring beyond. Others were sparring. Boxers kicking at trainers wearing flat gloves to absorb the blows. Several boxers were doing push-ups in the foreground; others were preparing for a run.
‘We’re here,’ said Vika, jogging ahead of Drayton, dropping her rucksack, and landing a series of blows to the nearest punch bag. Then she sent her shin crashing into the gloves of a trainer standing nearby.
‘Well hello Punch,’ said the trainer with a strong American accent. ‘Always good to see you back. In trouble again?’
CHAPTER SIX
Bret (Fisheye)
Near Bangkok, Thailand
‘Good to see you Fisheye,’ said Vika, smashing her shin into his gloves again. ‘We could do with somewhere to hang for a few days.’ She reached for a pair of boxing gloves, quickly and effortlessly slipping her hands inside.
‘This is Drayton,’ she said. ‘He’s working with me. Drayton, this is Bret. An old friend.’
Bret nodded towards Drayton, raising a glove, eyeing Drayton warily.
Drayton raised a hand and attempted a smile. So this was Fisheye, an old friend, and another one of the hacker handles on Milo’s list.
Drayton reckoned Bret was around his age, or pretty close to it, and in good shape. There were streaks of grey in his short beard. Long fair hair held up in a bun and bleached by the sun. Tattoos on bronzed muscular arms. A tiger’s head and a dragon. He was wearing a pair of dark red shorts and a white T-shirt with the words ‘Fuck Google. Ask Me’ below the search engine’s logo.
‘There are spare rooms out the back,’ he said. ‘Help yourself. You know where they are.’
‘Bret runs the school with his Thai partner,’ Vika told Drayton. ‘They have kids coming from all over the world to train here.’
‘So this is where you learned to box?’
‘On and off,’ Vika replied, sounding vague. Non-committal, as always.
There was an intimacy between Bret and Vika, which wasn’t hard to see. But not one of lovers. Watching them together, it struck Drayton as being deeper than that. An intimacy of old friends and confidants. It quickly became clear to him that Vika had told Bret everything that had happened in Bangkok, and on their second morning at the boxing school, he found them together in Bret’s bright, air-conditioned office on the ground floor of a newer two-storey block to one side of the yard. They were reviewing Vika’s recordings from the hack of the surveillance cameras at the house where Dobberman was being held. The camera was cut off around half an hour before Dobberman was killed.
‘That’s why they cut the power. To take the cameras out,’ Bret said. ‘Probably from a junction box in the road.’
They didn’t immediately see Drayton. Too pre-occupied with each other. He was about to knock, get their attention. Walk over and join them. But then he stopped and backed up slightly because they started to talk about Vika’s brother.
‘Have you heard from Thomas?’ Bret said.
Vika didn’t immediately answer, looking down.
Then she said, ‘Nothing. He’s dead. I feel it.’
‘Hey,’ said Bret. ‘Look at me. You can’t give up hope, you hear me? You can’t give up hope. It’s Thomas. He’ll find a way …’
Bret stopped mid-sentence, and both of them looked towards the door. Towards Drayton. Because a toddler had come crashing past his feet, riding a toy car, pursued by a young Thai woman.
Vika left the room.
Bret picked up the toddler, a boy, maybe two years old. He held him high, making cooing noises that made the toddler giggle. He kissed the child, then kissed the woman before handing her the child.
‘I’ll be up soon, honey,’ he said, before turning back towards a bank of three computer screens on his desk.
‘Nice looking kid,’ said Drayton.
Bret didn’t reply. Just kept looking at the screens.
‘Tell me about Thomas,’ said Drayton. ‘What’s happened to Vika’s brother?’
Bret looked at Drayton now, but all he said was, ‘Didn’t she tell you?’
Then he stood and followed the woman and the child out of the room.
Several stray dogs watched Drayton as he crossed to where the boxers trained. The same wary look he’d got from Bret. Maybe that’s where the dogs learned it from.
There were two training sessions a day. One at dawn and the other late afternoon. The place was now empty except for one boxer, pounding a punch bag. Relentlessly. Intensely. It was Vika, landing blow after blow. Drayton watched for a while, wondering what she was thinking. Who she was thinking about as she pummelled the heavy bag with her shins, knees and fists.
He bought a couple of cold beers from the general store beyond the canal, then sat watching kids play soccer in the street. They asked him to join, dragging him into their game, and soon he was playing the pied piper, dribbling a football, a dozen kids snapping at his feet. Then several older boys joined the game, which was like no other soccer match Drayton had played before. A no holds barred and chaotic scramble for the ball. He retired towards the general store to buy another beer, exhausted.
It was dusk by the time he got back to the boxing school, the late afternoon training session coming to an end. He found Vika and Bret in the office, at a coffee table in front of an ice bucket and a couple of bottles of Mekong whisky. They were well into the first bottle.
‘Pull up a chair, Drayton,’ said Bret, offering a glass of the whisky. ‘It’s one of Thailand’s finer exports. This and kick-boxing.’
Bret seemed more relaxed. Vika too. The whisky starting to do the talking.
Drayton asked them how long they’d known each other, and Bret just said that it had been a while. Then he left the room because his toddler was having a meltdown outside.
