hurting his son. Then, as the child squeezed into the small spaces, his knees pressed up against his chest, listening in the darkness for heavy footsteps, his breaths were quick and short and shallow. There was never enough room in the cupboards for him to breathe properly. So now, whenever he felt under stress, he filled his lungs right up; felt them expand as he opened out his rib cage, straightened his back, sat up erect: tall, strong and proud. But no matter how hard he tried, he could never fill them right up. They were always a bit squashed, a bit stuck together. The more he thought about it, the more obsessed he became and so the noisier was his breathing. Terry knew it. He’d seen the Colonel this way many times. At the moment, with all the stress and excitement, the Colonel was fully wound up and on the edge of exhaustion. He was continually hyperventilating. The Shabu wouldn’t let him rest. The more hyper he was, the more Shabu he snorted.
‘I have gathered you here because I have news on the shape of things to come: changes that will affect us all here in Angeles, in our world. In the kingdom that I created. Christ!’ He banged his palms on the table. Sophia tutted as her crayons rolled off onto the floor. She scrambled under the table to pick them up. ‘I shaped this place. From a scruffy little nothing that provided comfort to servicemen on the Clark military base, I turned it into a world-famous sex resort.’ He looked at the men around the table. They stared back. Nobody was going to disagree with the Colonel, especially when he was in psycho mode. His face was rubbery and feverish. His eyes were the colour of a raspberry split. He licked his dry lips continually. He was as jittery as a fly.
‘For some time I have been telling you about a man who will change things around here; a man who is going to help us turn this place into a five-star paradise. Blanco is coming. Today he sent us a show of faith.’
There was a general look of confusion and concern around the table. The Colonel’s surprises were seldom nice.
‘He has proved to me that he is committed to us. Now, this man wants you all to join him. This is our chance to go global. We can take our empire to the four corners of the world and make millions, or we can stay here in our small kingdom and count our pennies. He offers you the hand of friendship.’
‘He can stick his hand up his own arse,’ said Laurence, and looked at the others for support. Reese sniggered whilst Brandon sat stony-faced, watching and waiting. Laurence grinned and gave a deep chuckle. Terry glared at Reese. Reese, feeling suitably chastised for sniggering, went back to flicking his cigarette packet.
‘We ain’t givin’ up nuttin’,’ said Laurence. ‘We got a good thing goin’ here, don’t we?’
The Colonel swivelled his head round towards Laurence and smiled his ‘nearly smile’.
‘Pro-tec-tion,’ he over-enunciated. ‘Should this world of ours need defending we will have a mighty army at our disposal. We have the government, for Christ’s sake—you can’t get much bigger than that.’
Laurence gave a snort of derision. Brandon stared at him. Terry couldn’t believe that the big guy wasn’t going to shut up. Reese stopped his twirling. Even he knew that the Colonel wanted an audience and wasn’t asking for feedback.
‘We don’t need no fuckin’ protection. Who’s gonna fuck wid us here?’ Laurence tried to redeem himself. ‘In our own fuckin’ country? We own Angeles.’
Terry looked at the Colonel, who merely stared at Laurence and waited for him to dig himself a bigger hole.
‘Excuse me, boss, I mean you own Angeles, and we work for you,’ he said, backtracking as fast as he could.
The Colonel always prized himself on being a good judge of character. He trusted these men in so far as he knew their limits and knew their price. Reese was stupid but predictable. Brandon was a thug. Terry was clever. But Laurence was sneaky. He had become a little pre mature in his ambitions. Laurence was not to be trusted—the worst of all sins.
Terry spoke up. ‘Get smart here. This is no minor league. Blanco heads a syndicate so powerful that it will wipe all others off the board and we’ll be part of it. Not just a part—we are key to its success, right, Colonel? We have been offered the chance of running the whole of Angeles, Olongapo, Cebu and Puerto Galera just the way we want. We will take out all opposition; wipe it off the board. We will set up new trafficking routes, build hotels and bars up and down the islands. The whole of the Philippines will be controlled by one syndicate and…’
‘AND…’ The Colonel turned back to Laurence with not even a nearly smile on his face. His eyes were piercing. ‘If you are not for Blanco, you are against him and us.’
‘Colonel, I didn’t mean…’
The Colonel silenced him with his raised hand.
‘I know what you meant. I know everything. When you came here you were a bum with nothing but pussy and beer on your mind. I gave you all that you wanted. You sit here in your fancy clothes that I paid for and you question my authority?’
The Colonel was spraying the table with spit. Sophia had stopped her crayoning to watch the patterns it made as it landed on the table.
Laurence shrugged and shook his head. He looked hastily around the table and realised he was on his own.
‘I don’t question it, boss. Just want to be sure, that’s all. I like things the way they are.’
‘Do you? You’re happy with what you have, are you, Laurence, not thinking of branching out on your own?’
Panic flitted across Laurence’s face.
‘No way, boss.’
‘Sure,’ said Terry. ‘We have a good life here. But there’s always more. We stick together and we can achieve it. Is that right, Colonel?’
The Colonel relaxed. He could always rely on Terry. Terry was a shrewd businessman like himself. Terry was the brains in Angeles. The Colonel looked at each man in turn.
‘Now it’s our turn to prove ourselves to Blanco. We can’t afford to make mistakes. We are supposed to be professionals, not fucking amateurs. We were given a job. All we had to do was get the women to the UK and liaise with the Chinese, then we would get our money.’ He turned his head slowly towards Brandon and Laurence. ‘What happened in London was a major error. It looked bad…very bad…We looked like fucking arseholes.’
Brandon stared back at the Colonel. Laurence looked around the table nervously. Sophia picked up Princess Pony and held it up to her face and stared at Laurence through the pony’s pink mane. Sweat was overflowing from Laurence’s frown lines and trickling down the side of his face. Sophia was watching a big droplet form at the end of his nose and she was counting the seconds it took to drop.
‘What did happen in London, Laurence?’
Laurence flashed a look at Brandon. Brandon kept his eyes glued on the Colonel. Sophia giggled as the sweat drip landed on the table.
‘We was caught out, is all. They caught us unawares.’
‘How “unawares” exactly?’
‘One of the women needed teachin’ a lesson—causin’ trouble. I was busy, didn’t see them comin’.’
‘And where were you, Brandon, when this punishment was being handed out?’
‘I
