Bad Intentions Read online

  BAD INTENTIONS

  MATT LYNN

  First published in Great Britain 1997 by William Heinemann

  an imprint of Reed International Books Ltd

  This edition published 2012 by Endeavour Press Ltd.

  The extract from 'Crazy Love' by Van Morrison is quoted by permission from International Music Publications Ltd.

  The extract from 'Watching the Detectives' by Elvis Costello is quoted by permission from Plangent Visions Music Ltd.

  To my parents

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter28

  Epilogue

  PROLOGUE

  A thin bead of sweat, hot and sticky, rolled gently off the man's brow and along the edge of the gun that was wedged firmly into the folds of flesh around his throat.

  Sam Draper was nervous and afraid. The burning intensity of the late afternoon sun mingled with the rising terror of the moment had soaked his shirt and skin. His lips could taste the salty liquid dripping from his forehead, and the taste was bitter and sour.

  'Kneel.'

  The accent was English. London, working class. The speaker was six feet or more, dressed in khaki shorts and a denim shirt, with broad shoulders and wavy blond hair. He seemed ill at ease, here in the countryside of northern Thailand. A long way from the Whitechapel snooker halls and pawn shops that might have been his more natural habitat.

  'Fuck you.'

  The gun wedged tighter into his neck. Draper could feel the metal stretching the membranes. Any tighter and the skin would burst. The pain was starting to sear through his muscles and up into his jaw. 'I said kneel, fuckhead.'

  Draper dropped to his knees. The mud on the ground was dried and cracked, burnt out by the long summer. A crap assignment, he thought to himself. With a crap ending. It should have been a milk run. An easy way to pay the mortgage. Investigate the illegal counterfeiting of drugs on behalf of the World Pharmaceuticals Forum. Checking up on a bit of dodgy faking for a trade body. Nothing complicated. Good fees and unlimited expenses. A joy ride. Not a ride where you expected to run up against any serious gangsters. Certainly not heavy thugs from the East End.

  Until now. Too bloody close, he told himself. The factory had not been that hard to find. A few discreet questions placed among the rougher trade in the Patpong bars. Put a fifteen-year-old whore in the laps of those men, swill some Carlsberg down their throats, and their tongues soon started to loosen. A joy ride. A trip up to the country, a few snaps with a zoom lens. Nothing difficult. Money in the bank.

  Too close. The factory was bigger than he expected. And the security tighter. Nothing like the fake Rolex or Chanel factories he was used to investigating in South-East Asia. More sophisticated. And run by professionals.

  He could see the plant now, stretching out before his eyes. A simple compound built from bamboo and corrugated iron. Inside there was a printer churning out the packaging and next to it a pill manufacturing machine. Canisters of chemicals were hung above a rotating drum. Out of it spat an endless series of perfect little round pills. Pill after pill after pill. Hundreds of them. Twenty or so Thai workers, old mostly, both men and women, collected the little packages, and put them into their boxes, neatly folding and sealing up the containers. To Draper's tutored eye, it looked like a high-quality fakery. Prozac, today, judging by the lettering. But no doubt there was a different drug every few days. Thai forgery factories, he knew from experience, were masters of the art of flexible manufacturing.

  'Too close,' he muttered to himself, out loud this time. Nobody listened or responded to his words. His head was spinning and his vision blurred. The sweat was dripping over his eyebrows, mixing with the blood still seeping from the cuts, clogging up his eyes. The guards had pounced on him a couple of hundred yards outside the compound. Caught him red handed with the zoom lens. A chance patrol, perhaps. More likely the area was rigged with electronic sensors. These people seemed to have plenty of money. No expense was being spared.

  Four Thai guys. Youngish, mid-twenties, but experienced and tough. Trained. Two sharp blows and then they dragged him, already bruised and bleeding, into the compound. And introduced him to the Englishman.

  'You might want this.'

  The Englishman handed down a square, black strip of cloth, pressing it into his hand. Draper knew what it was for. A blindfold. He wiped the moisture from his eyes, and took the cloth, tying it tightly around the back of his neck. Blackness.

  'Jimmy,' the Englishman shouted. 'Get the camera. Time for some snaps.'

  Draper could see nothing but he heard the sound of feet scurrying across the dirt surface, and, a minute or so later, he heard the sound of a man returning. He muttered a few words in Thai that Draper could not understand.

  The Englishman bent down and stuffed a small photograph, and two sheets of documentation into Draper's breast pocket, positioning them so the photo of an Oriental woman was just visible. The barrel of the gun rapped sharply against his chin. The Englishman was so close Draper could feel his warm breath on his cheek.

  'Smile for the camera,' he said.

  'Fuck you,' Draper repeated. It was all he could think of.

  Above him he heard the click of the camera, once, then twice, then three times, and the whirring of the motor rolling on the film. In the distance he could hear the clatter of the factory. Otherwise, he was surrounded by silence.

  His head recoiled as he felt the gun being thrust into his ear. Beneath him he could feel his knees trembling, and in that instant he felt his hands fall forward. He was kneeling on all fours now.

  'Closing time, matey,' said the Englishman. Draper could hear the camera clicking above him. And then he heard the sound of the trigger being squeezed.

  ONE

  The man's head was lying down in the cracked dirt. A single gunshot wound was visible to the side of his face, and the blood, running into his sweat-soaked hair, was still moist. His eyes had a sad and sorrowful look; a look of remorse and regret that his life should have been emptied by a single, callous bullet on a strip of parched wasteland. Poor guy, thought Jack, as he placed the black and white photograph carefully down on the table. Nobody wants to die. Not ever. And certainly not like that.

  'Welcome back, Mr Borrodin,' said the Chairman.

  Jack glanced upwards. It had been two years now since he had seen Sir Kurt Helin face to face, but the patriarch of the Kizog pharmaceuticals empire had changed little. His hair was a fraction thinner perhaps. Its shade a touch whiter maybe. And the wrinkles around his jowls had grown deeper. But the eyes were the same; dark and piercing with a sly, combative sparkle.

  'Your posting? How did you find it?'

  'Challenging,' Jack replied. 'Hot. Bad traffic.'

  The Chairman rose up from behind his long wooden desk, walking closer to Jack. His back arched slightly, betraying his age, and there was a slight limp in his left leg. Jack could see him more closely now. He looked older. His face was tired and drained. Worse for wear.

  Jack could feel the Chairman's hands patting him on the back,
and he recoiled slightly from his touch. 'I won't trouble you with an old man's advice,' he said. 'Except for this. Not everyone gets this kind of a chance. But everyone should take it when they do.'

  A break, thought Jack. For the past two years he had been working in the Bangkok office, a sleek air-conditioned suite in one of the downtown skyscrapers. There were only five of them there, two from head office and three drawn from other parts of Kizog's world-wide empire, plus some local support staff. The work had been difficult. Trying to recruit a salesforce, establish distribution systems, open up the market, and keep tabs on the competition. All in a country where the infrastructure to support a modem multinational business was only just emerging. It was challenging enough in itself. But most of all it was impossible to keep track of where you were in the company. There was no flow of gossip from head office. No speculation. No rumours. Precious little networking to be done. And no way of knowing where you stood in the race; a kind of career limbo. Of course, there was always the remote possibility that the results would speak for themselves. Yet somehow Jack doubted it. Results seldom spoke for themselves at Kizog.

  People spoke for themselves.

  'I was surprised to get your call,' he said.

  The Chairman's eyes opened wide. 'But why, my dear boy, why?'

  'I felt I had been sidelined,' Jack replied. 'Sent out to Thailand because I wasn't going to make it back here. The Japanese have a phrase for it, don't they. The man who sits by the window.'

  A broad grin creased up the lines on the Chairman's face.

  'Purgatory, that's all. A boring but necessary interlude before the ascent to heaven. I'm exaggerating, naturally. But head office anyway.'

  'What exactly do you want me to do, sir?'

  'What do you want to do, Jack?'

  Jack eyed him closely, but beyond the outline of a small, greying man, wrinkled by age, he could see nothing of any tangible substance. The Chairman was as elusive and inscrutable as he had always been. There was the same knowing look, the same calculated air of infinite wisdom, the same casual humour, and the same veneer of warmth and concern. One of the great salesmen of all time. And still, Jack pondered, one of the most tempting men he had ever encountered.

  He was, of course, a legend among the younger staffers. Amyth, simultaneously inflated and ridiculed, as leaders of organisations usually were. Time forgot how long Sir Kurt had been in the company; since before Jack was born, that much was sure. A lifetime. He had started as a scientist in the early sixties, risen to be head of research and development, and moved smoothly on to become chief executive in the early seventies, before assuming the chairmanship of the company. He was, by now, the company personified. Its successes were his successes, its faults his faults; a point reinforced every year in the long essay on the state of the business and the world that prefaced the annual report.

  'Nothing out of the ordinary,' Jack replied. 'To contribute to the company. And to do well personally. To get ahead.'

  'That's settled then.'

  Jack laughed. 'Any specific instructions, sir?'

  The Chairman walked closer, standing no more than a foot from Jack. 'Be very careful,' he said. 'You know what head office can be like.' And then, his eyes moving away again, he turned to the intercom on his desk. 'Send them in,' he said.

  'Be careful of what, sir?' Jack asked.

  The Chairman smiled. 'Your enemies, of course.'

  The door opened and two men were ushered into the office. The Chairman stood up to greet them, padding silently across the floor, softly shaking their hands. He turned and introduced them to Jack. 'Herbert Strowser the third, and Dieter Schmidt, both from the secretariat of the World Pharmaceuticals Forum,' he said. 'This is Jack Borrodin, a special assistant of mine, and one of the cleverest young men in this organisation. We can trust him. He may even have a role to play in these events.'

  Jack shook hands with the American and the German. Strowser was just over six feet, with greying hair, a tanned, weather-beaten complexion, and the look, Jack decided, of a man who could handle himself in a corporate struggle; Schmidt was shorter, with a squashed appearance, and eyes that darted around the room with mistrustful speed. Behind him, a secretary was bringing in a silver tray of coffee, placing it carefully down on the table. The four of them sat down on the two black sofas at the far end of the expansive office, the two sides facing each other, Jack averting his eyes. Be careful of which enemies, he wondered to himself.

  'How can we help you this morning?' began the Chairman.

  'These are difficult times,' said Strowser. 'As you know, Sir Kurt, counterfeit pharmaceuticals have long been a problem for our industry. In many Third World countries, racketeers and gangsters have been churning out fake copies of patented medicines to sell at a fraction of their real cost.'

  'I am aware of this,' replied the Chairman softly. 'And the position of this company has always been clear. There are millions of people out there who can only afford the counterfeit medicines.'

  The German replied this time. 'We now have information that counterfeiters are starting to target both the United States and Western Europe,' said Schmidt. 'One or more sophisticated counterfeiting rackets are operating on both continents with the technology and expertise to put fake drugs into the healthcare system. There have been one or two isolated incidents of this before, but usually they have been pretty amateur, a matter of faking the packaging and not much else. This is much more serious. These people know the formulations of the drugs they are copying and are turning out exact replicas. We estimate the losses to the industry could now be running as high as two billion dollars.'

  Strowser and Schmidt looked to the Chairman, scanning his face for some reaction, but it was on hold, a blank screen, transmitting no signals. 'The policy of the Forum in the past has been to keep the existence of the counterfeiters secret,' continued Strowser. 'Medicine depends on confidence. If people started to lose faith in our products, then we could see some really dramatic falls in sales.'

  'Keep it all covered up, eh gentlemen?' said the Chairman, the smile on his face widening as he spoke.

  Strowser appeared uncomfortable with the remark. 'Most members feel an investigation contained within the industry would be the best way of dealing with this,' he answered flatly.

  'You want money,' said the Chairman. 'But of course. Why didn't you say so.'

  Strowser pulled a pair of pictures from his briefcase. He passed them first to the Chairman, who glanced down briefly before passing them on to Jack. Both portrayed the man lying dead in the dirt. They were the same pictures he had seen on the Chairman's desk only a few minutes earlier. For a brief moment Jack gazed again into the eyes of the victim. Why did the Chairman already have these pictures? he wondered. And why would he let me see them?

  The two men turned towards Sir Kurt, waiting for a reaction. He paused, rolling his eyes towards Jack, fixing upon him a look that was both conspiratorial and knowing. Jack turned away, unsure of the correct response. 'One man working for us was close to cracking a counterfeiting ring operating out of Thailand. He died last week. Executed as soon as he was captured,' said Strowser.

  The Chairman nodded, cloaking his expression in an air of gravitas. 'How much would you say this man's life was worth, Jack?'

  'About £10,000.'

  The Chairman turned to Strowser and Schmidt, an air of amused sympathy playing on his face. 'The callousness of youth,' he sighed. 'They think life is cheap. When you get to my age you realise just how much it costs. Now tell me, how much do you need?'

  'It is impossible to quantify the commitment, Sir Kurt, because of course we cannot be sure how long it will take to solve this problem,' said Schmidt. 'But I would estimate somewhere in the region of £250,000. From each of the major companies.'

  'Kizog will make its full contribution,' said the Chairman. 'Jack here will assist your people in any way he can. I am sure you'll find him invaluable.'

  The American and the German thanked the Ch
airman and stood up to leave. 'Our people will be in touch,' said Schmidt, shaking Jack by the hand.

  Jack nodded and said nothing, watching them carefully as they departed from the office. 'I'm a little confused, sir,' he said soon after the two men had departed.

  The Chairman nodded, but remained silent. 'You described me as your special assistant,' Jack persisted.

  'Good title, don't you think. Hard to pin down.'

  Jack hesitated, anxious to make a good impression on the Chairman, and yet at the same time reluctant to accept any posting that was not clearly defined. 'And my tasks, exactly?' he asked.

  'I'd make it up as you go along, if I were you,' the Chairman replied casually. 'All the best jobs are self-invented.'

  Tara Ling clipped the plastic name-tag on to the collar of her red cardigan, pausing only momentarily to read the slogan that ran across the bottom of the visitor's pass. 'Kizog- Better Medicines for a Better World' it read, the words printed out in slanted blue lettering.

  She walked across the marbled foyer and took a seat on the row of black leather sofas, below a wall of display screens. Turning upwards, her eyes scanned through the confection of good deeds written up on the wall, digesting the mixture of smiling pictures and smiling words. Happy children, black, white and yellow, held hands, whilst the blurb chirruped away about the contribution the company was making to the health of the world.

  Lies, stupid lies, Tara told herself. Inside her mind she began compiling an alternative script; an internal monologue of the inequities imposed on the poor and afflicted of the world by the commercial pharmaceuticals industry. So what am I doing here? she asked herself, before her attention was snapped by the approach of a woman in her late twenties. Dr Peter Scott was ready to see her now.

  Tara followed into the lift, and up to the fifth floor. Along the directors' corridor, thick carpets, soft underfoot and perfectly silent, led up to the sombre panelled doors. The opulence, the lavishness, of the decoration felt misplaced to her; it was distant from the spartan surroundings of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, where she worked now.