Pacific Underbelly - Book 3 Timor: Pacific Underbelly, #3

By James Gault

A simple mission of diplomacy and liaison to the island of Timor turns both violent and life-threatening for Pete Martyn and his attractive wife when they stumble across criminal elements on that outwardly peaceful island. That those criminal elements were pursuing the interests of ruthless Asian crime syndicates drew heightened danger. Matters become entirely more complex when espionage becomes suspected, including suspicions about the involvement of Pete's wife

• Language: English
• Publisher: James Gault
• Release date: Sep 30, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223823773

James Gault

James, or Jim by preference, is an ex Naval Captain who has spent much of his life at sea mucking around in ships and boats. He has had a wide variety of roles from operational to training, policy-making and diplomatic, including voluntary work as a firefighter and marine rescue skipper.He has an abiding interest in history, both fact and fiction. These days the joys of reading and writing are preferred, especially writing about the fictional adventures of others. He lives in a small coastal town in Australia.

Book preview

-1-

TOKYO 2011

There was an air of quiet expectancy in the room, although the faces of the eleven men seated around the large and intricately carved antique rosewood table revealed little. Their uniformly bland expressions were complemented by equally uniform attire: dark business suits and neat ties of muted pattern. Only the occasional rustle of papers broke the prevailing silence until the door opened and a large man of dark skin, short hair and an unmistakable air of authority entered. All rose as Daichi Saito, Chairman of Koto Engineering Industries, bowed formally and took his seat at the head of the table. When the assembled Board Members had settled once again, Saito-San lifted the single sheet of paper in front of him and gave a rare smile.

‘I am pleased to announce that our tender for the supply of our new hybrid diesel-electric buses to the State Government of Victoria has been successful. With this success comes many opportunities and challenges. We must make sure that we seize the opportunities and confront the challenges. We have committed to using local Australian steel and much of their existing fabrication infrastructure. That does pose risks. Hayashi-San will address our risk minimization strategy’. With that he nodded politely to the company’s Chief Financial Officer who stood and bowed to his Chairman.

‘Honoured colleagues’, he began, ‘we have identified three key risk areas underlying this important program. Those are international currency fluctuations; the market price of steel and the prospect of Victorian wage rises exceeding inflation. Prudence dictates that we provide ourselves with a hedge against any of those variables adversely affecting the company’s interests. To that end we will be making a modest investment in Australian gold bullion. That commodity has been rising strongly in value for the past ten years and there is no reason to suspect any change in that situation arising in the foreseeable future. I assess that ten million US dollars of capital investment will provide the necessary safeguard and may also present a welcome extra opportunity for additional profit over the longer term’.

Muted applause followed Kazuya Hayashi’s statement as he bowed again to the Chairman and resumed his seat well pleased with himself. Had he then known that he was arranging the purchase of gold bullion at close to its peak and preceding a substantial mid-term reduction in value he would have been mortified. Regardless, he stood with his fellow Directors as the Chairman left the room and waved to a nondescript individual seated discreetly in the far corner of the room to join him. That nondescript individual was Haruto Shibata. Though far too junior to be allowed a seat at the boardroom table, he was present to record proceedings and to his utter surprise he was then quietly tasked with arranging the bullion purchase.

‘You should be able to negotiate at least 360 kilograms of bullion at today’s prices’, advised his boss, ‘it can be stored with the company’s bank, but make sure there is a sufficient quantity of accessible small denomination bars, say five and ten grams each, suitable for marketing promotional purposes’. By market promotion Hayashi meant bribery, but that did not need stating aloud. ‘Let me know when everything is in place’, he finished.

Haruto had little going for him in a physical sense: he was short, skinny and of poor complexion. Equally, he was of relatively poor parentage. He did, however, hold twin degrees in economics and commerce and worked hard to maintain his position in the company, acquired through both diligence at his studies and the discreet lobbying of his uncle. That his uncle was oyabun, or head, of the district Yakuza was distinctly helpful but never acknowledged, nor known to anyone else in the company.

It was to his uncle that Haruto made his way as soon as the working day ended. As an adherent to the Shinto religion, he made sure to stop by a local jinja, or public shrine, to seek the forgiveness and blessing of the Kami for what he was about to do. Bowing formally to the resident priest, or Kannushi, at the entrance, he placed a small bundle of notes in the box provided for such donations, rang the adjacent bell to attract the Kami’s attention and clapped loudly. What followed was a short period of silent pleading for acceptance that his loyalty to his Yakuza family needed to outweigh his acknowledged moral obligation to his employer. Satisfied that he had chosen the correct course, he continued on his way into a rather less salubrious neighbourhood.

The Shibu Club was by no means discreet: neon flashing lights, loud music and a pavement full of youngsters in trendy Western clothes gathering in growing numbers as they met up with friends before entering the gaudy entranceway. Haruto seemed somewhat out of place in his conservative suit and tie and was unsurprisingly stopped from entering by a burly and well-muscled attendant who questioned his intentions.

‘I wish to speak with my uncle Takumi-San’, declared Haruto confidently.

This unexpected demand was met with raised eyebrows, a suspicious stare and rapid speech into a microphone on the guard’s lapel. They were joined by another similarly muscled guard who took Haruto firmly by the upper arm and almost frog-marched him through a crowd of mingling drinkers, along a passageway and into a slightly less noisy side corridor where he stopped and knocked on an unmarked door. On hearing what could only be called an indistinct growl the guard opened the door and poked his head inside.

‘There’s some suit out here boss who claims to be your nephew’.

Haruto could not hear the response but the guard shrugged and turned back to him, waving at him, apparently to lift his arms. Complying, he was immediately and thoroughly frisk searched and then left to his own devices. Entering what he thought was an office, but furnished more in the manner of an elaborate lounge area, he spied his uncle seated in an armchair sipping from a glass of pale spirit. Haruto was casually appraised from head to foot and a cautious smile appeared on his uncle’s face.

‘Sit’, he was commanded as he was waved to a spare chair opposite his uncle. ‘Two years since you have visited your old uncle’, Takumi declared, ‘you should visit family more often nephew. I hope all that expensive education has been worthwhile: are you progressing in that engineering place you work at?’

‘This unworthy nephew offers a thousand apologies for his disrespect Uncle, but I believed it best if I kept our honoured relationship discreet. I will ever be thankful for your generosity to myself’, Haruto continued, ‘but it is as your equally unworthy kobun that I come to you today, as you properly hold my esteem as my oyabun as well as my uncle. I come to report an opportunity for your consideration’.

Takumi’s eyes narrowed perceptibly but simply leaned back in his chair and waved dismissively. ‘Explain!’

Haruto took a deep breath and launched into a clarification of his present company position and newly acquired role of arranging the purchase and shipment of some ten million US dollars in gold bullion. ‘I expect to make the necessary arrangements over the next few days’, he finished as he awaited some sign of interest from his uncle. No such sign of interest was forthcoming. Takumi simply ordered him to come and see him again at the same time the next day and pressed a discreet button next to his chair. A polite knock preceded the office door opening and the guard who had previously escorted and frisked him loomed over Haruto’s shoulder. He stood, as the interview was clearly over, but so did Takumi who approached and placed an arm around his shoulder.

‘This is Haruto Shibata, my honoured nephew’, Takumi explained to his guard, ‘introduce him to the team and make sure they know to treat him respectfully’.

With that, Haruto was ushered from the office and suffered the embarrassment of a series of bowed introductions to a series of employees, whom he mostly thought of as guards, before being left politely on the outside pavement. He wandered home to encounter a sleepless night as he tossed and turned worrying about what he might have set in motion. He had been astonished at how simple it was to purchase what was for him an enormous quantity of gold bullion. The Sydney bullion company might well have been making arrangements for a shipment of soap powder for all the interest they expressed in his relatively brief telephone discussions. The most challenging element had been arranging insurance, but Haruto was determined on that requirement, despite it costing almost the equivalent of his annual salary.

The following day was filled with a flurry of activities in which Haruto excelled; financial negotiations and agreements spread over nearly eight hours of phone calls, faxes and emails. By the end of a busy day’s effort he had his boss’s signature on the various agreements and he even received a smile of acknowledgement from the Chairman when he approved the final international Letter of Credit. He left the factory with a spring in his step and fortified himself with a shrimp and asparagus pasta from a street stall before making his way circuitously to the Shibu Club.

On arrival at his uncle’s club Haruto was met with more deference than he had previously experienced in his entire life. Even his uncle was gracious by his standards and offered him a glass of Fu-ki spiced plum wine which, though outside his usual tastes, he sipped gratefully.

‘The shipment will be in five wooden crates of about seventy-five kilograms each and will arrive by air on a Fedex freight service into Haneda air cargo terminal in ten days’ time. From there it will be taken by armored vehicle to the Azura Bank in Shibuya. The bank will not permit its main vault to be opened outside working hours, so if the shipment arrives at an inconvenient time it will be parked under guard in the bank’s wire enclosure at the rear until unloading can occur. Until acceptance by the bank, the shipment will be fully insured so that Koto Engineering will not suffer any financial hardship should that occur’.

Takumi looked thoughtful for a few moments, took a sip of his own drink and reached across to Haruto with a mobile phone.

‘I have decided to take an interest. Keep that safe. Use it to inform me of details as they come to hand. You will find the name Shibu in the contacts: it will connect directly to me. Do not use the phone for any other purpose. I now take the opportunity to thank you nephew: we will not meet again until this is over. Go, enjoy yourself’.

With that Takumi stood and Haruto left for home in something of a daze. He did not enjoy himself.

BRAZEN ROBBERY proclaimed the Tokyo newspapers eleven days later. In the hours just before daylight an armored car was apparently held up at gunpoint by masked intruders in a reinforced van that had been rammed through the gates of the Azura Bank. The armored car’s guards had seemingly been shot in the back of the head and thus in cold blood and the thieves had taken off with an unspecified quantity of cash or goods. The Keishicho, or Tokyo Metropolitan Police, had issued an urgent alert for a black Ford Transit van with damaged front bodywork, noting that the occupants were believed to be armed and dangerous.

The sole occupant of that particular black Transit van would have been both alarmed and amused to have himself regarded as in any way dangerous, and he was certainly not armed. He and his girlfriend, who was following in her own car, were being well paid to dispose of the vehicle and pulled in at an isolated spot near the docks to do so. A match applied to a box of standard household firelighters thrown on to the rear seat proved an economical solution to their task and they were away in the girl’s car before smoke was eventually reported. The torched van was merely a tangle of burned wreckage before local firefighters arrived to hose it down.

Doing some hosing down of his own was Takumi Mitsui, Oyabun of the prefecture’s Yakuza and coincidentally second cousin to the Superintendent of the Administration Bureau of Keishicho. He had received a message from the latter expressing alarm at the brutal murder occurring in their own district and advising that jurisdiction on the robbery was being taken away from the Keishicho and transferred to the Regional Police Bureau. That organization was reportedly initiating a much more vigorous pursuit of the murderers and was about to conduct a massive search of all known garages, vehicle workshops and warehouses in the region. The hosing down related to a similar need to calm his two agitated deputies who were more concerned about the potential vulnerability to discovery of their newly acquired goods. Those goods were presently hidden beneath a stretcher cleverly fitted within a standard ambulance borrowed from the Tokyo Fire Department. The ambulance itself was parked in a vehicle workshop in the largely residential district of Akabane in northern Tokyo.

‘We need to proceed carefully but calmly’, Takumi counselled his deputies. ‘We need to relocate the goods away from Tokyo quickly and preferably north so we don’t go through the city. Suggestions?’

There were a few moments of tense silence before one of the deputies spoke up. ‘We have a distribution storage shed up at Tomioka’, he announced cautiously. ‘It’s disused most of the time and I think it’s empty at the moment’.

‘Where’s Tomioka?’ queried Takumi.

‘Up the main highway in Futaba District in Fukushima Prefecture’, the deputy responded, ‘very quiet coastal area; nothing much there except the big power station’.

‘Ok, make it happen. I want someone more responsible in charge than those fools you detailed for the robbery. You go yourself’, he directed his older deputy, ‘and take my son for your recovery vehicle, he needs the experience. I’ll make sure he knows that he reports to you’.

Decision made and duly transmitted to those involved, the ambulance and its cargo departed northern Tokyo the next morning and were safely tucked away in a locked shed in Tomioka by early afternoon. That shed happened to be less than half a kilometre from the Fukushima nuclear power plant. The gold was destined to remain there for some time. In mid-afternoon that Friday 11 March an earthquake of nine on the Richter scale struck off the coast of the Tohoku region. Massive damage ensued from a tsunami generating waves of around seventeen metres in height. The reactors of the nearby Fukushima nuclear power plant flooded, shut down and subsequently suffered meltdown with widespread radiation leakage. The tsunami caused the loss of many thousands of lives as it struck the coast, with extensive flooding and damage up to twenty kilometres inland. Of concern to the Mitsui Yakuza clan was that a twenty kilometre exclusion zone was almost immediately established around the nuclear plant: their gold was effectively locked away. Of more concern to Takumi himself was his son who, together with his supervising deputy, had gone missing.

-2-

AUSTRALIA - PRESENT DAY

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Peter Martyn sat in momentary shock, spoon of cereal poised midway between bowl and mouth. It took a great deal to shock him, although he was conscious that his Hong Kong born Chinese wife Alison was often given to surprising him.

‘They want what?’ It was probably fortunate that the cereal hadn’t made it all the way to his mouth otherwise a minor choking fit would have been