Total Control by Alex Shaw

Author:Alex Shaw [Shaw, Alex]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2022-05-02T17:00:00+00:00

Present Day

Undisclosed Medical Facility, California

Tate’s eyes opened. The room was in semi-darkness. The only light came from under the closed door and a laptop to his right. There was a soft patter of keys. Tate managed to turn his head to see Plato leaned forward, typing at a small table that rested against the wall. There was another noise, snoring. Tate looked the other way and saw his brother Simon, slumped in a padded chair.

Tate spoke, his voice was croaky. ‘Are you catching up on Tea Hub?’

‘What?’ Plato turned. ‘You’re awake again, then?’

‘Yes.’ Tate saw a jug of water on the over-bed tray table. He tried to reach for it, but Plato got there first and poured him a glass. Tate drank. ‘Thanks.’

‘You’ve been asleep for another ten hours.’

‘Bugger,’ Tate replied, his voice sounding more normal. ‘But I bet I wasn’t snoring like Wee Willie Winkie over there.’

‘No, you weren’t. How do you feel now?’

‘Normal.’ He remembered Plato’s injured ankle. ‘How’s your leg?’

‘Just sprained, it’s strapped up.’

There was a yawn from the other chair. ‘Whilst you’ve been asleep, Neill has been running a search on this Gu Joon chap. So far the results have been a bit strange.’

‘Strange?’ Tate replied and Plato placed the laptop on the tray table and swung it over the bed.

‘I got three separate hits,’ Plato said. ‘One historical and the other two current.’

‘Explain?’

‘Well’ – Plato shrugged – ‘obviously we started by going with my memory of his face and then looking at local CCTV footage in an attempt to get a digital image of Gu Joon’s face we could work with. I got lucky with a security camera at North Las Vegas Airport. Using this as my “baseline”, I tried to find footage that showed a face that looks like that, in a geographical area that we would expect the face to be.’

‘OK, so you accept a “ping” in Vegas, but the one from Bognor Regis on the same day you discount?’

‘Yes.’

‘Who’d want to visit Bognor?’ Hunter pulled a face.

‘And?’

‘There was obviously the original one from the airport showing him arriving in Las Vegas. Then there was the one showing him leaving. Here.’ Plato tapped the keyboard and showed Tate the image.

‘That’s him,’ Tate confirmed. ‘No doubt.’

‘Yes. We think so too,’ Hunter, now standing and peering at the laptop screen from the other side of the bed, said.

Plato continued, ‘There is also one here, someone boarding a plane in Seoul. A passenger by the name of Po Bong.’

‘Bong?’

‘It’s the Korean for “phoenix”.’

‘Do we discount Mr Bong in Seoul?’

‘Remember,’ Hunter chided, ‘in Korean the surname comes first, so he’s Mr Po.’

Plato continued, ‘It’s possible it was Gu Joon, there was enough time for him to reach Seoul.’

‘So, where’s Gu?’

‘Ah. Gu Joon vanished after his private jet arrived in Mexico. And Mr Po is in Singapore.’

‘Neill, show him the last hit.’

‘There. It’s a match from this photograph taken at a fruit farm in North Korea in 1979.’ Plato touched the screen.

‘Who is that, “The Man from Del Monte”?’

‘No, Jack.

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