We looked past the mountains of gold to a digital display. It took me a second to realize it was quoting gold prices in a comprehensive range of different currencies. $27,865 USD. That was about 3K lower than the price at Tenny’s funeral.
‘Fuck me, lads,’ Red Ken said. ‘We’d better get a move on.’
Mall of the Emirates
Thursday, 30 April
1737 hrs
The taxi stopped off by the rank opposite the Virgin Megastore and I jumped out. Under my arm I had a shirt and a pair of flip-flops wrapped up in one of the hotel’s plastic laundry bags. The white Toyota peeled away and pulled into the valet-parking area. I leant back in to ask the boys whether they were absolutely sure they wanted to carry on.
Red Ken didn’t even wait for me to open my mouth. ‘Wheels already turning, son. We’re past the point of no return.’
‘OK.’ I nodded. ‘Good luck.’
I closed the cab door and tapped the roof as it drove away.
Harvey Nichols and Debenhams faced each other and took up three storeys of the mall. I headed between them, towards the huge Carrefour hypermarket. I grabbed a trolley and pushed it through the automatic barrier. If it hadn’t been for the
I played around with the mobiles and Nintendo games while I waited. It wasn’t long before I spotted Checked Shirt, only today he was in plain blue. He mooched along the store front the other side of the barrier, casting down the aisles for his target. I let him get on with it. When I saw him turn back into the throng of people moving up and down the mall I knew he’d pinged me. He knew I wasn’t going anywhere. Now that I was in, I could only exit through one of the checkouts. He could sit back and keep the trigger. Maybe somebody else would come in later on to see what I was up to.
We’d been followed from the moment we’d left the hotel. This time it was a two-car team: the Toyota and a dark blue Mazda saloon. Going by the way they operated, I was pretty sure they’d been trained by the Brits. They used the same stake-out procedures and trigger techniques.
This morning we’d played another round of golf at the same club, but instead of a buggy each this time Red Ken and Dex shared. Red Ken left us on the sixth tee, which was out of line-of-sight of the clubhouse. He’d collected the Suburban from the airport, rattled it off to the RV and got back while we were still fucking about on the fifteenth.
Checked Shirt had come into the clubhouse as we signed in, just to see if we were meeting anyone. As soon as he saw it was just us on the greens, he went and sat at a table in the corner. They couldn’t come out and follow us round the golf course. All they could do was hole up and put the trigger on where we’d come back.
They’d followed us back to the hotel. If our rooms were bugged, they’d have been disappointed. There was no planning, no talking. We’d done all that on the golf course where nobody could hear us.
I moved further into Carrefour. By now Red Ken would have arrived at the Bur Juman Centre, another of Dubai’s fifty-odd malls. They were the only places we were able to walk around and where we were guaranteed crowd cover. The streets were empty apart from Indians or Filipinos on their way to work.
The plan was now to split up and for each of us to lose his tag. Then we’d RV in the old quarter to carry on with the job as planned. Once Red Ken had dropped him off, Dex wasn’t heading for a mall. He was going to the street markets. He had clothes to buy so he could make like a local and go and nick the wagon.
I was moving down the aisles of pots and pans when White Shirt made an appearance. He wasn’t there long. His job would be to confirm I was still in the store, that I wasn’t meeting anybody, and that if I was, to decide whether they had to follow them as well.
I moved from pots and pans to bags: schoolbags, shopping bags, suitcases, rucksacks and day-sacks. I picked up a Day-Glo orange one and threw it in the trolley. In the camping-gear section I added a head-torch. Toiletries and first aid were next. I threw in a pack of surgical gloves. White Shirt shadowed me for a while, checking I was doing what I was doing rather than meeting anybody for a brush contact to exchange information.
He didn’t follow as I turned past a group of Europeans checking out iPods. He crossed into the next aisle. I carried on to the checkout. I’d lost him by then; I didn’t know where he was. There was no need to look. If he had any sense he’d wait within sight of the exit.
I paid cash, put everything in the day-sack and headed out into the mall. Again, there was no need to look. I didn’t want to show I was aware.
I headed for the escalator to the first floor. One of them would probably come with me, but not until I was at the top and about to step off. You don’t go on an escalator with your target in case they turn around and ping you.
