Besides, you’re going to feel really stupid when you’re lying in hospital dying of nothing.’ She studied my face for a reaction, still smiling, her hand held high with the cigarette between her two fingers facing me. She soon realized she wasn’t going to get one, so went back to thumbing through her guide. As I shifted to look up at the television I felt the small of my back sticking to the chair through my T-shirt.
My gaze wandered to the mosque. Set back about thirty or forty metres from the road, it was a one-level building, with a blue roof, a white muezzin tower with loudspeakers, and a couple of corrugated carports. It was definitely a working-man’s mosque.
Just down the street was a Buddhist temple, and Hari Krishna was ready to bang a few cymbals only ten minutes further along. I’d worked in Malaysia before, during my time with the Regiment, and I knew it was one of the few places on earth where Buddha, Allah, Hari and even Jesus could go out for the night and not have a fight. Earlier today I’d seen Australian mothers on the beach in tiny bikinis shoving chips into their children’s mouths, alongside women covered from head to toe in black doing the same to theirs.
Our drinks arrived as the organ-player in the Palace began to tell us he’d left his heart in San Francisco. Suzy took another drag; her eyes didn’t leave the page. I had a sip of juice as the mosque parking area began to fill with people arriving for evening prayers. A small gang of bikers buzzed in, dismounted and headed straight for the brightly lit reception area. I had a good view of the immediate interior as they took off their shoes and washed their hands and faces before disappearing to talk with God.
‘Have you ever considered colonic irrigation?’
I snapped my head back to Suzy.
She took another drag and turned the pages towards me to show a woman lying on her side, covered in towels and drinking cappuccino through a straw. The pupils of her large brown eyes dilated as she looked up into the lights. ‘A lot of people come to South East Asia just for the detox spas, you know. Apparently it does wonders, really gives your insides a spring-clean.’
I shook my head slowly. ‘I’ve tried to be a bit careful about what I let people shove up my arse.’
‘The average American male dies with five pounds of undigested meat inside him.’
I guessed it was only natural for her to be concerned about the new love in her life. ‘I’m not American.’
‘Same difference. I’ve seen what you throw down your neck. You should think about it. You are what you eat, you know.’ She put the book on the table and lifted her cigarette to her mouth.
‘So that would make me a double burger with fries, would it?’ I pointed at her. ‘And you a fucking nicotine- stained banana.’
‘Can’t be that bad – I’ve seen you looking at me by the pool. Those shades of yours aren’t as dark as you think.’ She pulled a face and went back to her book.
2
I was with her here in Penang on George’s instructions. As he kept on saying, ‘If someone hits you and they threaten to hit you some more, you’ve got to stop them. Period.’ But as always, of course, I was also here because I needed the money.
Suzy and I didn’t know the whole story, and that was fine by me. Too much information gave me a headache, and Suzy probably felt the same. We were just small cogs in a big machine. I’d learnt the hard way that it’s better to be just clever enough to plan and carry out the task you’re given, and not to ask the reasons why.
The job was deniable. The Malaysian government had no idea what was happening – not because they couldn’t be trusted: Malaysia had a strong, stable government and a good record against terrorism. It was just that the fewer people who knew what we were here for, the better our chances of success.
It was a joint US/UK operation, a first for me. There weren’t many Americans on vacation in Malaysia, especially with the current situation, but a Brit couple was quite a normal sight. Being sent back to the UK had been a bit like going back in time because it was the Yes Man who had given us our final brief, the very person I’d gone to the US to escape. I couldn’t say I enjoyed it much, but it was great knowing that I was only his property for a short while before I returned to the US and became George’s again.
The other first was that I’d never worked with another K. In fact, it was the first time I’d ever knowingly been within a hundred metres of one. It probably never occurred to Suzy that I was anything but a Brit operator like her – my cover documents certainly wouldn’t have told her. I was called Nick Snell again, the same cover as when I’d been a K.
On the final day of our preparation he’d sat on the settee in the safe flat in Pimlico, as wired as an army officer about to give a pep talk to his troops before they go to war.
The Yes Man always liked to talk about things he’d read in reports, forgetting that people like me and Suzy had got hold of the stuff in the first place. ‘Don’t you two believe the hype,’ he’d said. ‘That’s for those out there.’ He pointed at the window. ‘They need to think we are fighting the ignorant, destitute and disenfranchised – but we’re not. Nor are the enemy crazed, cowardly, apathetic or anti-social. If any of these terror groups relied on such maladjusted low life, they simply wouldn’t be able to produce effective and reliable killers who are prepared to sacrifice themselves in the process.’
‘No, sir.’
Suzy always called him ‘sir’.
I avoided calling him anything – just in case the words ‘arsehole’ or ‘bastard’ slipped from my lips by mistake.
All around us mobile phones started tuning up: it was like the digital version of the ‘Hallelujah Chorus’. Their owners just stood up and walked away, not even looking to see who was calling. They knew it was God.
Suzy knew too. ‘Not long to go now.’
Malaysian mobiles could ring you five times a day for prayer, and also had a Kiblat finder to point the faithful in the direction of Mecca if they were stuck in the shopping mall and couldn’t make it to a mosque.
Suzy went back to mugging up on arse tubes, and smoked and drank without lifting her eyes from the page while I watched a couple stop and look at the menu board outside the Palace, then listened to the excited waiter rush out and try to lure them under the corrugated sheeting. He had to shout to make himself heard above the organist, who was now going on about a girl from Ipanema.
No need to hustle for business over at the mosque. Scooters and cars kept arriving, and plenty more came on foot. I let my gaze wander to the left, to a shack with a blue plastic tarpaulin over a scaffolding frame as an awning, surrounded by scooters and motorbikes in various stages of cannibalization or repair.
It was the entrance to the left of the workshop that I was most interested in. A neon sign with Chinese lettering was set into the road close by. I didn’t have a clue what it was advertising, but it lit up the doorway beautifully.
Five minutes went by before the target appeared. He was wearing a clean white shirt over grey tracksuit bottoms and flip-flops. He turned to his left, and walked along the cracked, greasy pavement past the workshop. I leant closer to Suzy and tapped the table lightly. ‘There’s our boy.’
Smiling at me, she closed the guidebook and put it into her bag. The Indian girl must have taken this as a sign we were leaving, and immediately came over and asked if we wanted more drinks. Suzy nodded. ‘Two more, the same.’
The target was in his late forties, Indian, Pakistani, maybe even Bangladeshi. He climbed gingerly over the metre-high spiky fence that divided the motorbike graveyard from the mosque. His short black gleaming hair was neatly combed back and kept in place by gel or tonic. We both watched as he removed his shoes, headed for the taps, then disappeared inside with the rest.
The drinks arrived and Suzy paid the girl, letting her keep the pound’s worth of change. Her face said we’d just made her day, but Suzy wasn’t being generous. We didn’t want her having to come back to us when we needed to leave in a hurry.
A couple of backpackers, gap-year age, came and sat down at a nearby table and ordered the cheapest thing on the menu as they checked out their red, peeling skin. Their conversation was drowned as the call to prayer wailed out from the loudspeakers in the tower, even bringing the organist to a standstill.
All we had to do now was wait for the target to reappear. We didn’t know his name. All we knew was that he
