Free Death in the Kingdom by Andrew Grant

led into the superstructure of the fifty-five-foot-long tub. He was holding out an aluminium plate full of an evil red curry. I could have sworn there were things moving in it.
    â€˜Fuck off!’ I muttered in English, waving him away.
    â€˜You too,’ he replied in Thai as he vanished back inside. I had to grin at that. I’d given the crew the standard greeting when I’d come on board. So apart from a couple of sawatdee khraps , I hadn’t said a word to anyone in any language. I’d just planted myself out there with my back against the bulkhead and there I’d stayed. I wasn’t sure whether it was better to speak their language or plead ignorance and stay with English. I knew speaking Thai could gain me a little respect with this gang of cut-throats. By not speaking it, however, I also knew I might hear something that could ultimately be used to my advantage. Hell, it could even save my life.
    Choy and a couple of the crew had had a long conversation as my kit had been off-loaded from The Cabbage’s Jeep Cherokee onto the boat. Unfortunately I hadn’t been able to put my fake Marlboro pack in Choy’s pocket, so I didn’t know what the hell had been said. Had he told them, ‘When he’s shown you where the wreck is, hit him behind the ear and drop him over the side’? Maybe he had said, ‘Look after the Englishman well because I want him in one piece when you get back!’ I knew it would have been one of those, probably the latter because the bastard wanted to kill me personally. Choy’s obsession with my death was as plain as the belly on a laughing buddha. I had no illusions at all that, no matter which way this whole thing went, he and I would have our day of reckoning—Tuk Tuk’s word or not.
    I’d called Bernard from Ranong and told him he’d have to do without his daily telephone date for as long as I was out chasing his damned lead box, satellite phone or not. I knew once we pushed out beyond the harbour it would be difficult to pick up a bird, even if I had the urge. I also figured I was going to have my hands full. Tough! Strangely enough the old bastard hadn’t seemed unduly perturbed at the prospect of not hearing from his favourite agent. Sometimes that arsehole was impossible to figure. What did I mean sometimes? I meant all the time.
    Was I scared? Of course I bloody well was. All the fucking secret agents and undercover types in movies come across as having balls of steel. But in the real world, we all sweat bullets and our guts churn. Sometimes I wanted my mummy, but I figured the Walther in the holster in the small of my back was more use in the real world. Sorry mum!
    I crossed in front of the cabin to the dry side of the tub. Here, out of the spray and the wind, the smell of dead fish wafted back from the open deck well, set between the raised rear superstructure and the bow. The derricks that controlled the big prawn nets were positioned on each side slightly forward of the three-foot-deep recess in the deck. I’d seen these things working before, swinging their big fine-mesh nets in over the side of the boat and dumping kicking prawns and shrimp by the hundredweight into the well. The take was then quickly sorted for debris and the prawns sent down a chute into ice in the hold below. All very interesting but I didn’t think they’d bothered to clean that damn tub since it had first floated. That was why the smell of rotting sea life was so fucking overpowering.
    The trawler escort—an unnamed, rusted long-liner about the same size as our tub—was a hundred yards behind and out to one side. Watching it split the waves with its sharp bow as it rose and twisted through the swells before falling and twisting down again didn’t do a lot for me, or more precisely, for my gut. I lit a cigarette and shifted my gaze to somewhere over the grey horizon. I was hoping the smoke would hide the rotten fish