Sigurd echoed his friend’s frown, stroking his great braided beard as he studied the ruined stream.
‘I don’t know, but I don’t want to take that chance,’ he muttered. ‘We’ll do our business here and then get out as fast as possible. Bangkok is a dirty shithole, but it doesn’t have anything on this blighted place. Funny how a comparison for the worse makes one see things in a new light, no? Ha! “Bangkok the Beautiful”, after this hell!’
Thirty minutes later they reached the grounds of what looked like an abandoned military base. Twenty-foot-high concrete walls, topped with tangled coils of razor wire, stretched out from side to side for at least a kilometre each way, and imposing steel gates stood silent and impassable before them. The driver parked the car and turned to beam his idiot’s grin at them again, moisture gleaming on his discoloured teeth and blackened gums.
‘We here, okay.’
Sigurd nodded, glowering at the driver until the man turned around.
‘You’d think this stupid mortal would’ve put a drop of his riches into getting those fucking teeth looked at, wouldn’t you?’ he remarked snidely to Hrothgar, his upper lip curled with distaste. His hand slipped inside his coat pocket and his thick fingers came to rest on the handgrip of the Desert Eagle pistol he always kept holstered at his side. ‘I fear nothing,’ he whispered to himself under his breath. ‘I am the terror in the night, I am Death incarnate.’
The driver, meanwhile, took out his phone and made a call. When the other party picked up, he jabbered gutturally in Mandarin and then turned around and gave the Norsemen another broken-toothed smile.
‘Boss come now, okay? We go inside, you talk boss.’
Sigurd stared coolly at the man and nodded, waiting in silence for a few minutes before the gates began to creak open from the inside. The driver put the SUV into gear, and they rolled into the compound, which they soon noticed was not abandoned. Troops in grey and black urban camouflage gear manned the walls, and machine gun towers were positioned at key vantage points, invisible from the outside, but affording anyone occupying them a commanding view of the landscape. Rows of barracks occupied one corner of the compound, and a large open training ground covered another. Upon this flat expanse of concrete a number of uniformed children, who looked to be around nine or ten years old, were practicing hand-to-hand combat drills with AK-47 assault rifles with bayonets attached. Occupying the centre of the compound was a complex of buildings which seemed to be a school of sorts.
The driver pulled up outside an office and gestured for Hrothgar and Sigurd to exit the vehicle. Sigurd climbed out and grunted, shaking out his heavy arms and stretching his long legs, which were aching with a dull and persistent pain after the five-hour drive. From the office waddled a short, plump Chinese man, middle-aged and dressed in a stylish gunmetal grey suit. The meticulously slicked but thinning hair atop his square, flat face added to his formal appearance.
‘Greetings Mr Yolkov and Mr Goremykin. My name is Mr Li; we spoke on the phone a few days ago. It is always a pleasure to do business with our neighbours from the north,’ he said in passable Russian, smiling warmly all the while and clasping his chubby hands together in a gesture of benevolent welcome.
Sigurd and Hrothgar, who were posing as members of the Russian mafia, reciprocated the man’s greetings in perfect Russian. He pulled a silver cigarette case out of his jacket and offered them each a cigarette. They declined so he shrugged, popped one in his mouth and lit up before continuing to speak.
‘Would you like a tour of our operation first,’ he asked, ‘or would you prefer to skip that and get straight to examining the products?’
Sigurd allowed his eyes to rove over the imposing geometric masses of concrete and steel before replying.
‘Let’s go on a little tour, Mr Li. I’d like to see how the product is created before we commit to a purchase.’
Mr Li grinned and squeezed his hands together.
‘Of course, of course!’ he said, clapping a vigorous hand repeatedly on Sigurd’s back.
Sigurd, who stood a full two heads taller than Mr Li, glared down at him with his ice-blue eyes, and then darted out a viper-striking hand to grip the man’s arm with sudden viciousness.
‘Don’t touch me,’ he hissed, with deadly wrath frothing in his eyes. ‘Ever.’
Mr Li swallowed and nodded, withdrawing his hand slowly and then letting it hang flaccidly at his side.
‘Come my friends,’ he said, a little less buoyantly this time. ‘Let me just call the manager. She can explain the details of the production process.’
Mr Li ambled back into the office and returned a few moments later accompanied by a rotund, dour-looking Chinese woman in her fifties or sixties. She was outfitted in the same black and grey urban camouflage fatigues that the troops stationed around the facility were wearing, although she did not seem to be as fighting fit as any of the others who wore this uniform. From beneath thickly lidded eyes she stared with blank disinterest at the men before mumbling an unenthusiastic greeting in Mandarin from her down-turned fish mouth.
‘She says—’ Mr Li began.
‘Hello, welcome, whatever,’ Hrothgar growled Russian. ‘I don’t give a shit. Show us how you make your products.’
Mr Li and the manageress began to walk at a brisk place towards the back of the office complex. Mr Li, smoking almost frantically, struggled to keep up on his stumpy legs, while Hrothgar and Sigurd trailed behind them and whispered to one another in Old Norse, keeping their eyes peeled for any signs of danger. Mr Li discarded his cigarette butt, and then they entered the back of the complex through a four-inch-thick steel door, which was manned by a pair of guards armed with a kitted-out HK416 assault rifles.
As they stepped
