Bangkok Burn by Simon Royle Read Free Book Online
Authors: Simon Royle
we're going to kill them all.” He had a hint of smile on his lips. Aunt Nings’ Doberman had a look like that. Before it was fed.
Mustang Sally
14 May 2010 Bangkok 5 pm
Uncle Mike had a saying. “Behind every pair of eyes, there's a life lived.” I was looking at Natasha's. It was research. The notebook on my lap. The red cell phone on the seat beside me rang. A last look; what's your story, Natasha? I closed the notebook. It was five in the evening. We were heading past Pinklao into Bangkok. Traffic was light going into the City, and heavy coming out. Rumors of an imminent military crackdown on the red shirts were all over the net. I answered the phone.
“Chance?”
“Yes, Cheep.”
“People saw a black van yesterday and a white van the day before. The doctor said Lilly died sometime in the morning the day before yesterday.”
“Anyone get a number on the van.”
“On the black van, yes. On the white no.”
“The black van was us. Anything else?”
“That's what I figured. No, nothing else.”
“Check around. See if anyone has heard anything about a Scandinavian or Russian gang doing kidnappings or extortion. I'll send a photo in a minute, but keep it low profile, okay.”
“Sure”.
I hung up. So the morning of the day that I was blown up, Uncle Mike was kidnapped. That was a big coincidence.
The army driver was snoring in the front seat while Chai drove trying to set a new land speed record between Phuket and Bangkok. I ran algorithms on the base stations numbers, listening to the Rolling Stones.
I had already singled out the data for the morning of the eleventh. Calls in and calls out. For Patong area base stations, this is a lot of data. An sql query sorted out those numbers that had made calls from that area in the week before. I focused on those that only made calls on that day. People passing through. For those calls I took them down to the Picocell level. A picocell (pico) is base station repeater within say carparks or a mall. A microcell would cover an area of a few malls, and of course, macrocells are the base station receivers and transceivers which can cover an area of up to, in the case of GSM, 40 Km. Patong area has ten main base stations. Each base station has a collection of microcells and picocells within it. This is a lot of phone calls, however a cell phone is simply a two-way radio. Triangulation is built into the network. All the data is there for analysis, it just takes a bit of luck and a lot of time. Normally I'd farm this out. But I didn't know who or where all of our enemies were.
I eliminated any numbers that were present at tourist spot picos. Kidnappers usually hang out in bars, restaurants, hotels and motels. I overlaid the numbers left on a satellite map of Phuket. Color-coded lines show the movement of numbers flowing from pico to pico. I color coded these according to average time spent at a picocell. If the average time spent in a picocell range is low, and consistent, then they're moving. If erratic then they're stopping places. I adjusted the algorithm to split a color for those which had a 10-20 minute stop at the microcell repeater for Uncle Mike's hill property area.
A thin neon-pink line emerged. It came in from the mainland, ran to the airport, and stopped there for 15 minutes. It then changed to 4 pink lines, went straight to the microcell area and then all 4 pink lines went to a microcell east of the bridge. The four lines tracked south-east until they disappeared out of the data range. I needed more data. I picked up the green phone. Hit 1 on the speed dial. It didn't even complete the first ring before she answered.
“Hello, Mother. How's my funeral going?” I could hear the live pipes and cymbals in the background.
“Wait a second ... there that's better. I can hear you now. The funeral is going good but four streets got hit for protection money last night: four
Mustang Sally
14 May 2010 Bangkok 5 pm
Uncle Mike had a saying. “Behind every pair of eyes, there's a life lived.” I was looking at Natasha's. It was research. The notebook on my lap. The red cell phone on the seat beside me rang. A last look; what's your story, Natasha? I closed the notebook. It was five in the evening. We were heading past Pinklao into Bangkok. Traffic was light going into the City, and heavy coming out. Rumors of an imminent military crackdown on the red shirts were all over the net. I answered the phone.
“Chance?”
“Yes, Cheep.”
“People saw a black van yesterday and a white van the day before. The doctor said Lilly died sometime in the morning the day before yesterday.”
“Anyone get a number on the van.”
“On the black van, yes. On the white no.”
“The black van was us. Anything else?”
“That's what I figured. No, nothing else.”
“Check around. See if anyone has heard anything about a Scandinavian or Russian gang doing kidnappings or extortion. I'll send a photo in a minute, but keep it low profile, okay.”
“Sure”.
I hung up. So the morning of the day that I was blown up, Uncle Mike was kidnapped. That was a big coincidence.
The army driver was snoring in the front seat while Chai drove trying to set a new land speed record between Phuket and Bangkok. I ran algorithms on the base stations numbers, listening to the Rolling Stones.
I had already singled out the data for the morning of the eleventh. Calls in and calls out. For Patong area base stations, this is a lot of data. An sql query sorted out those numbers that had made calls from that area in the week before. I focused on those that only made calls on that day. People passing through. For those calls I took them down to the Picocell level. A picocell (pico) is base station repeater within say carparks or a mall. A microcell would cover an area of a few malls, and of course, macrocells are the base station receivers and transceivers which can cover an area of up to, in the case of GSM, 40 Km. Patong area has ten main base stations. Each base station has a collection of microcells and picocells within it. This is a lot of phone calls, however a cell phone is simply a two-way radio. Triangulation is built into the network. All the data is there for analysis, it just takes a bit of luck and a lot of time. Normally I'd farm this out. But I didn't know who or where all of our enemies were.
I eliminated any numbers that were present at tourist spot picos. Kidnappers usually hang out in bars, restaurants, hotels and motels. I overlaid the numbers left on a satellite map of Phuket. Color-coded lines show the movement of numbers flowing from pico to pico. I color coded these according to average time spent at a picocell. If the average time spent in a picocell range is low, and consistent, then they're moving. If erratic then they're stopping places. I adjusted the algorithm to split a color for those which had a 10-20 minute stop at the microcell repeater for Uncle Mike's hill property area.
A thin neon-pink line emerged. It came in from the mainland, ran to the airport, and stopped there for 15 minutes. It then changed to 4 pink lines, went straight to the microcell area and then all 4 pink lines went to a microcell east of the bridge. The four lines tracked south-east until they disappeared out of the data range. I needed more data. I picked up the green phone. Hit 1 on the speed dial. It didn't even complete the first ring before she answered.
“Hello, Mother. How's my funeral going?” I could hear the live pipes and cymbals in the background.
“Wait a second ... there that's better. I can hear you now. The funeral is going good but four streets got hit for protection money last night: four
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