An Angel with a Gun Read online

  “Hey man, can we join you?”

  Andy put a hand up to shield his eyes from the sun. The first thing he thought was why did he say ‘we’ when there was only one of him. The second thing that occurred to him was that the man had a foreign accent - possibly German or Dutch. He was skinny but well-toned. Andy guessed that he was about 22 years old. His tee-shirt was tied loosely around his baggy shorts. His blonde hair was in dreadlocks with some extensions tied in. An assortment of religious amulets hung from the various chains and leather straps around his neck. Andy glanced at the three empty chairs that surrounded his little table and shrugged his shoulders.

  “Thanks dude.” The man sat down opposite Andy. “You travelled India too” he announced, recognizing one of the bangles on Andy’s wrist.

  Andy nodded.

  “Yeh. It was cool” he confirmed.

  “I was there last year before I travelled down to Sri Lanka. I stayed there for a couple of months before I came here. My name is Frits.” Frits put his hand up for a ‘high five’, but Andy wasn’t sure that being named Frits deserved a high five.

  “Are you German, dude?”

  “No. I’m Dutch.”

  “And you are called Frits? I mean, is that your real name?”

  “Yeh. What’s yours?”

  “I’m Alfie. I come from England.”

  “Cool.” Frits put his hand up again for a second attempt at a high five and this time Andy responded. Frits took a small tin from the zipped pocket in his shorts and opened it. He placed it on the table between them. It contained some hand rolled cigarettes and some matches. He nodded to Andy to help himself.

  “You can’t smoke these out here in public man.”

  “Yes, of course we can. It’s just tobacco. I have left the Ganja back in my room. Oh! Here are my friends. They are from France, but they speak English OK.”

  Andy looked around and saw two beautiful girls with long dark hair and dressed in shorts and bikini tops walking towards the table. They put a bottle of beer in front of Frits, sat in the remaining spare chairs and put their own beer bottles down on the table. Suddenly, Andy was a lot more interested in meeting new friends and introductions were made. Stories were told and Frits casually told Andy that he had met the girls the day before and they slept together in his room the previous night, because the girls hadn’t bothered to find a room yet.

  “I fucked them both man. It was the best threesome that I ever had.”

  Adele and Bibi confirmed the story with nods and shrugs and everybody then knew that, after the drinks, they would be going back to Frits’s room for drugs and sex. They were all attractive people so sexual partner selection didn’t matter. They would be swapping around anyway.

  “I like you Alfie. You’re a funny guy” said Frits, after Andy had finished telling a story about having sex with an Indian woman while her husband was asleep on the floor next to them and her baby was breast feeding.

  The stories, some true and some false, got more and more outrageous as the beer took effect. Andy had already decided that looking for a room could wait until the next day. The afternoon was slipping by when Frits suggested that they all go back to his room to smoke some weed and share a bottle of vodka. The four of them walked along Khaosan Road arm in arm and not a care in the world. This was living. Khaosan Road was a short road with long dreams.

  The room where Frits was sleeping would have been easy to miss if you didn’t know it was there. The black wooden door had the address written on it in Thai, but it had faded over years of hot sunshine. Frits led the way. The hallway on the other side of the door was dark and surprisingly cool considering that there was no air conditioning. They walked past a couple of bedroom doors to a small reception area halfway along the hallway. An elderly Thai man wearing blue football shorts and a white string vest sat asleep behind the desk, with a smoking cigarette in his mouth. Frits didn’t bother to wake him. He just walked around the desk and selected his room key from the row of nails hammered into the wall behind where the sleeping man was sitting. They walked along the rest of the narrow hallway to the stairs. A single light flickered and buzzed, but was enough to light the darkness that engulfed the stairs because of the lack of any windows. The stairway and hallways smelled of cannabis and stale beer. Frits opened the door to room six and they went inside. The room was small with just a bed, a wardrobe and a ceiling fan. A single window with ornate iron bars let in some of the hot Bangkok air from outside. Another door led to a basic bathroom. The room was cheap and didn’t pretend to be anything other than cheap. Adele suggested that they all shower together, so they all stripped off and showered before settling onto the bed to smoke cannabis and drink vodka.

  Bibi had already started giving Andy oral sex when she stopped for a moment.

  “I like you Alfie. You’re cool and you look like Jack Sparrow.” She smiled up at him. Andy smiled back and with a firm hand he pushed her head back onto his penis. He laid back and blew a long stream of cannabis smoke up towards the ceiling fan. The afternoon turned into evening and then into night. The empty bottle of vodka lay on its side on the floor. The coke can which they had used as an ashtray was overflowing with ash and stubs.

  “Alfie are you awake? Alfie!”

  The loud whisper was from Frits. Andy wasn’t asleep. He was on one side of the bed and Frits was on the other. Adele and Bibi lay between them - four travelling strangers lying naked together on a tatty bed in a Bangkok room.

  “Alfie.”

  “What?”

  “Do you want to know something?”

  “What?”

  “I work for somebody. I move drugs. I get big money and free drugs. It’s easy work. I don’t have to leave Thailand and I think they would be interested to meet you. I think they could use a man like you. You’re cool and they would look after you. Are you interested?”

  “How much money?”

  “More money than you could spend.”

  “If you are earning so much money then why are you staying in a dump like this?”

  “It’s my cover. In less than a year I have over a million baht in the bank. Are you interested?”

  “Talk to me in the morning. Go to sleep.”

  The morning arrived about an hour before the daylight did. The sounds from the street below disturbed the four naked friends; the clatter of metal utensils stirring on metal woks, the chatter of Thai voices greeting each other and spreading news and gossip. Already buying and selling. The business of the day had already started. The girls showered together and dressed in the previous day’s clothes. They picked up their rucksacks from where they had stacked them in the corner of the room.

  “We go now. Nice to meet you Frits. Nice to meet you Alfie.”

  The men nodded.

  “Where are you going?” asked Frits.

  “We go Koh Samui today. We are going to live on the beach there for a while. We have a friend who has told us about some beach huts for rent.”

  The girls opened the door and left. They each waved as they walked out. Without the girls in the room the men suddenly felt uncomfortable being naked together. They dressed without showering and went out for breakfast. Andy strapped his rucksack on his back. Whatever happened after breakfast he had intention of going back to Frits’s room without any female company. Frits seemed far too comfortable being naked with Andy for Andy’s liking. Frits took Andy to a little ‘hole in the wall’ Thai place he knew further along the street. The tables and chairs spilled out onto the pavement. They had pork noodle soup and a bottle of coke for breakfast.

  “So, are you interested?”

  “I might be. What makes you think that they would be interested in me?”

  “Because they are busy. I have too much work. They approached me on this very street a year ago.”

 
“Are they Thai?”

  “No. They are Albanian. Albanian mafia I think. The Thai’s don’t trouble them because they think that they are Russian mafia. I think if they knew that they were Albanian they would be even more scared. They have killed a few of the Russian mafia in the last 12 months that I know of. I think you could make a lot of easy money by working for my friends. An introduction would do no harm. I’ll take you somewhere after breakfast.”

  Andy stuffed another spoonful of noodles into his mouth and nodded his acceptance. After breakfast they got into one of the old fashioned motorbike tuk-tuks. Frits gave the driver the address and Andy took in the sights of the city over the next twenty minutes’ drive. Frits offered the driver 100 baht, but he insisted on 200, so Frits paid him and shrugged his shoulders. The driver cursed him in Thai. Frits didn’t know what he said, but he could tell that it wasn’t very nice. Andy followed Frits along a narrow Soi or street to a small café that advertised Albanian food and coffee. There were several tables inside, but only the two at the very back of the café were occupied by six rough looking men, who were eating corn bread and stew. They seemed to be whispering secrets to each other when they talked. Andy noticed that they were all heavily tattooed, but not with nice tattoos. These were gang tattoos - stars, numbers, daggers, skulls and the black two-headed Albanian eagle.

  The men stopped talking when Frits and Andy walked into the café. One of the Albanian men with a big knife scar down his face stood up and glared at Frits, as if he was going to kill him. Frits told Andy to take a seat at the table near the door and he walked to the back of the café to talk to the man doing the glaring. They only spoke for a few moments when the man shouted something in Albanian and struck Frits hard across the face. The slap made him stagger backwards, but he soon composed himself. The man told Frits to sit down with his friend and then told the young Albanian woman with the emotionless face behind the counter to serve them both coffees. The woman took hot sweet coffee over to Frits and Andy as Frits sat down.

  “Fucking hell dude! What was all that about?”

  “What was all what about?”

  “The dude slapped you. He hit you really hard.”

  “Oh! He was just a bit angry that I turned up with you without asking them first. Everything is OK now. I told them that you are like me and you can work for them. I told them that you can keep secrets. Don’t worry, everything will be fine.”

  Frits had a huge red hand mark across his face and Andy wasn’t convinced. He wasn’t used to witnessing such violence in real life and it made him uncomfortable. He had a sickening feeling in his stomach and he wished that he hadn’t let Frits take him to the Albanian café. The scar face man who did the slapping was on his mobile phone in serious conversation with somebody. The other men ate their stew and listened. They looked over at Frits and Andy and Andy suspected that their fate was being discussed and everyone already knew the outcome except for them.

  “Frits, what have you done?”

  “Relax Andy. It will be fine. They just like people to be scared of them. They see it as a sign of respect. Just pretend that you are scared.”

  “I am fucking scared man. What the fuck have you got me involved in?”

  A black car with blacked out windows pulled up outside the front of the Albanian café. The man with the scar down his face stubbed out a cigarette into a glass ashtray and walked up to Andy and Frits.

  “OK. Come on, we go now” he said, in a gravelly voice soaked in an Albanian accent.

  “Where are we going dude?” asked Andy.

  “I take you somewhere to meet someone.”

  Scar face gave Frits another smack around the back of the head for all the extra work he had caused him and Andy and Frits followed the Albanian man out to the car. He opened the back door for them to get in and then he sat in the front.

  Frits and Andy didn’t speak in the back of the car. They were both scared, but Andy was the most scared. He had already realized that these were bad men, but just how bad he still didn’t know. Bangkok was a city of contrasts and contradictions. Four-lane elevated super highways criss-crossed pot holed unmade roads. Magnificent, show piece bridges crossed the brown Chao Phraya River that was so polluted you would die if you tried to swim in it. The Sky train went past world class shopping malls and five star hotels as well as slums and shanty towns. Drunken homeless people lay sleeping on concrete benches and pavements and beggars sat on roadsides and footbridges shaking coins in a KFC or Big Mac cup. Majestic temples shared the streets with brothels, bars and prostitutes. Andy was staring out of the car window and the sights of Bangkok flashed before his eyes, but he wasn’t seeing them. He was being taken on a journey to somewhere he didn’t know and didn’t want to go and there was nothing he could do about it. The journey ended in a cul-de-sac of commercial buildings near to the Chao Phraya River. The buildings were old warehouses and derelict shops. It seemed to Andy that it was just another forgotten street in a city that didn’t care - the perfect place to be murdered! The car stopped at the end of the cul-de-sac in front of a warehouse. A metal roller shutter door and a wooden door were both painted black, but had needed another coat some years ago. Frits and Andy followed the driver and the man with the scared face into the warehouse. It was empty inside. They walked the length of the building to some metal stairs which took them up to an office. The man who sat behind the desk was talking Albanian on a mobile phone. He had some of the same tattoos as the other Albanian men, but everything about this man told Andy that he was in charge. He was wearing jeans, a white shirt with the buttons undone down to his navel and a dark blue jacket. Andy didn’t know if that look was the height of fashion in Albania or if it was some kind of gangster dress code. But it looked menacing and it suited the thin faced man with the angry staring eyes. After he finished the phone conversation he waved a hand towards two metal chairs and Frits and Andy sat down to look across the desk at the man they had been taken to meet. He looked back at them for several moments without speaking. He looked at Andy.

  “What is your name?” His accent was heavy. Andy wasn’t good with accents and to him it could have been Russian, Baltic or East European, but it was Albanian and it was as menacing as everything else about him.

  “Alfie. Well, everyone calls me Alfie. My real name is Andy. Andy Machin.”

  Andy, aka Alfie, aka Jack Sparrow, breathed out a huge sigh.

  “Alfie!” the man repeated slowly and Andy nodded.

  “I don’t understand why our friend Frits brought you here uninvited into our family.”

  “I thought he could work for you” offered Frits.

  The man turned his gaze to Frits. He put a finger up to his lips. With his other hand he pulled a long narrow, sharp bladed knife from the inside pocket of his jacket.

  “Be quiet, Frits. If you speak again before I ask you something I will cut your tongue out and you will have to write your answer. Do you understand me, Frits?”

  Frits nodded in case it was a trick question. The man looked back at Andy.

  “What did Frits tell you about us Alfie?”

  The man’s voice was slow and low and deliberate. Andy knew that the question was loaded and he didn’t want to set a bomb off. The Albanian started walking around the two frightened seated men in small circles as he interrogated them.

  “Nothing. He didn’t say anything.”

  “He didn’t say anything!”

  “No sir.”

  “He brought you along to meet us for a job and he didn’t say anything?”

  “He might have said that you were Albanian.”

  “Albanian?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did he tell you what work you would be doing?”

  “Driving. He said I would be driving. Well collecting, driving and delivering.”

  “Did he tell you tha
t we pay big money?”

  “Yes, he did.”

  “Did he tell you that we give you some free drugs?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you like drugs?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Did he tell you that we are drug dealers?”

  “Yes. That was mentioned.”

  “That we are Albanian Mafia. Gangsters?”

  “Yes.” Andy had a sinking feeling. He didn’t want to say anything, but now it seemed as if he couldn’t stop.