“Well, yeah.”
The way Llewellyn said it Thorpe knew it wasn’t good news. “Give it to me.”
“It seems science wasn’t the only thing on the fringe for our man Leffort.”
“Go on.”
“He had a kinky nightlife.”
Thorpe’s head snapped toward Llewellyn. His eyes opened wide as he held the smoking cigarette off to the side. “You’re gonna tell me he fell in with some Russian belly dancer,” said Thorpe.
“No. At least I don’t think so. You can read the details tonight before you go to sleep.” Llewellyn flipped a copy of a document onto the desk in front of Thorpe. “I’d recommend you take a cold shower first. It’s Leffort’s last fitness report for his security clearance.”
“Cut to the chase. What’s in it?” said Thorpe.
“More to the point, you might want to ask who did the investigation and wrote it up.”
“Who?”
“The National Security Agency,” said Llewellyn.
“Why not us?” This was normally something done by the FBI.
Llewellyn made a question mark out of the expression on his face. “You’ll find some large portions of their report are redacted. Anything and everything having to do with the project Leffort was working on, as well as some other things. According to the report, they had their eye on him all the time.”
“Then why don’t they tell us where he is?” said Thorpe.
“Good question. To read it, they were getting ready to cancel his security clearance, dump him from the project, and castrate him; that is, if you believe what’s written on those pages. Of course, NSA never got the chance. It was a matter of unfortunate timing according to them.”
“Leffort rabbited,” said Thorpe.
Llewellyn nodded. “It makes for interesting reading, but if you’re smart, you don’t want to be sitting upright in bed when you open it. Cuz all that self-serving crap inside, it’s gonna spill out all over you and make for a damn mess,” said Llewellyn. “You want to know what I think?”
“That’s why we’re talking here,” said Thorpe.
“I think that report and the investigation that goes with it were both done after the fact.”
“You mean after Leffort disappeared?”
“Exactly. You can read it for yourself. Form your own conclusions,” said Llewellyn. “NSA is trying to cover their skirts. They redacted the names of all the witnesses they talked to, including the women Leffort had trysts with. You have to wonder why.”
“Maybe Leffort was into pillow talk about the project?” said Thorpe. “Classified information.”
“To read the report, the only classified information any of these women had was as to the location of warts on Leffort’s tallywacker. There’s not the slightest hint that any of them knew squat about Leffort’s work. Nor is there any indication that any of them were extorting him for classified information. First thing I thought of was spies,” said Llewellyn. “But there’s nothing there. Not even the slightest whiff that any of them were in the employ of a foreign power. NSA doesn’t even bother to raise the specter. So why withhold their names?”
“You tell me,” said Thorpe.
“Because NSA doesn’t want us talking to them,” said Llewellyn. “They deleted the names because they knew we’d get the cart back behind the horse. They knew we’d find out that they didn’t interview the witnesses until after Leffort disappeared.”
“I don’t get it,” said Thorpe.
“You will in a moment, all nine yards,” said Llewellyn.
Thorpe didn’t like the sound of that.
“It explains how they found out somebody was lifting information from the NASA computers. After the fact. When Leffort was already gone. The same way they got the names of the women. This guy was running wild on a top-secret, highly sensitive program and they had no clue. And now the shit is about to hit the fan, and everybody in town, except us, is looking for a rock to crawl under.”
“The White House and the brass at the Pentagon are looking for somebody to blame,” said Thorpe.
“Right,” said Llewellyn. “And NSA is a little too close to home to crap in that particular backyard. So they’re looking for someplace else to take a dump.”
“Us,” said Thorpe.
Llewellyn nodded.
“Next you’re gonna tell me that NSA had lead responsibility for security on this mystery project,” said Thorpe. “Whatever the hell it is.”
“No, not just lead responsibility,” said Llewellyn, “exclusive responsibility. Everybody else was cut out, all the defense intelligence agencies, protective services, security management at NASA-they were all cut out of the loop. That should give you a hint as to what’s going on here. It’s why we weren’t asked to do the security background update on Leffort.”
“And NSA blew it!” said Thorpe.
“Yep.”
“I knew it. I knew it. This thing smelled the minute I got that call from the White House.” Thorpe got up out of his chair, waving the cigarette around like a torch. “So now they dump it on us to find these guys, and if we fail, it’s our ass in the flames. And if that’s not enough, they want to play hide the ball. They can’t tell us what it’s about. Son of a bitch,” said Thorpe. “Damn it!” He stood there, face full of fury, tendrils of smoke surrounding the shadow of his head on the wall, the fumes appearing as if they emitted from his ears. He swallowed hard. It was one of the few times that Llewellyn could remember ever seeing signs of fear on his friend’s face.
Thorpe took a deep drag on the cigarette and sucked it into his lungs to quell the anger. He held the smoke for a long moment and then expelled it toward the ceiling.
“That shit’s gonna kill you,” said Llewellyn.
“What, this?” Thorpe held it up in front of his face and looked at the cigarette. “This is therapy. It’s the fucking National Security Agency’s gonna kill me.”
Chapter Seventeen
What are they doing now?”
Two FBI agents from the embassy in Bangkok stood in a room on the third floor in the office building in Pattaya. They were two stories above the green door, the entrance to the building, watching Madriani and the two people with him.
“They’re standing out on the sidewalk looking at the door from across the street. Can you beat it? Travel halfway around the world, then stand there with your thumb up your ass.” One of the agents looked through a spotting scope set up in the vacant third-floor office.
They had used a credit card to slide the cheesy lock open on the door and established a blind inside. They set up the spotting scope far enough back from the windows that with the interior lights out anyone looking in from the outside would see nothing. From here they got a bird’s-eye view of everything on the other side of the road. To cover this side, an agent in shorts and a tank top, looking like an expat, was camped out in a shop across the street. Another was in the Thai restaurant downstairs.
The radio crackled in the agent’s ear. “Do you see ’em?”
“Charlie One to Charlie Three, stay off the air if you can. They’re still on the street. We’ll let you know if they move.”
The problem was that the call for assistance from Washington had come without sufficient advance warning so that the embassy was unable to coordinate their actions with local Thai authorities. Consequently, the agents were on their own, using a communication channel that they couldn’t be sure wasn’t being used or monitored by the Pattaya police. Their instructions were to watch and report, to provide protection if necessary for the three U.S. nationals, and to watch for the man named Liquida, though they had no photographs, only a rough description.
We stand there on the sidewalk, parting the waters with throngs of pedestrians flowing around us as we watch the naked door across the street and debate what to do.
“Why don’t we go round back?” says Harry. “See what’s there.”
Looking at the door, not knowing what is inside, neither Joselyn n
or I want to argue with him.
We walk down the sidewalk to the south, half a block closer to our hotel, and cross traffic where a narrow lane intersects Second Road on the other side.
It looks like more of an alley than anything else. But it must go somewhere. Cars and motorcycles are moving on it in both directions, so we follow it. A little farther on, maybe fifty yards, Joselyn stops. Harry and I keep walking.
“What about right there?”
Harry and I turn to look at her. She is pointing off to the left toward a narrow walkway between two buildings.
“It looks as if it might go through,” she says.
I take a peek. The walkway looks as if it passes between the buildings and widens out into a parking area behind the building with the green door.
“Let’s try it.” We start walking single file toward the narrow passage.
“Charlie One to Charlie Four, you got ’em?”
“No. This is Charlie Four. Give them a minute.” The agent was sitting in a restaurant next to the pharmacy just two shops down from the green door. He had a perfect view of the three Americans across the street. He watched them as they crossed over until they got too close to the sidewalk on this side where he couldn’t get an angle any longer. He was sure they were coming this way, heading for the entrance to the offices upstairs. If he panicked and raced out, he’d run right into them coming the other way.
“Charlie Four, do you have them?”
“No.”
“Where are they?”
“I don’t know. They could be hanging on the corner. Give ’em a couple more seconds.”
“Can you see them?”
“No, but I’m on it. Moving now.” Charlie Four tossed some Thai money at the waitress to pay for his iced tea, told her to keep the change, and hoofed it out onto the sidewalk. There was no sign of them at the corner. He looked south down Second Road against the direction of traffic. He couldn’t see them, though. The sidewalk was crowded. In running shoes and shorts, he’d have no difficulty catching up with them-if he only knew which way they went. “Got a problem here,” said Charlie Four. “Need help. They either went south on Second, in which case they’re probably headed back to their hotel. Or else they went down the side street. It’s Soi…” He looked for the street sign. There wasn’t one. “I’ll take the side street.”
“I got Second Road,” said Charlie Three.
Charlie Four turned left and headed down the narrow side street. There was no sign of the two men or the woman. Like everything else, the side soi s were getting crowded as people caught up in the rush hour looked for alternate routes.
There were cars and pedestrians, motorbikes and vendors with their pushcarts, all moving and jostling for space on the narrow side street. The agent caught a lift, jumped on the back of a moving baht bus, and tried to use the elevated height to see if he could find them in the crowd. The bus found an opening and headed down the street with the agent on the back, his eyes scanning the distance for the three Americans.
Liquida had no intention of going anywhere near the green door or the locked box upstairs. Nor did he want to take a chance on the company’s courier service, not now. One thing was certain; it was Bruno’s voice he had heard on the telephone message he picked up in Dubai. The question was whether the FBI had their hand up his ass playing puppet using the Chechen to try and hook Liquida and reel him in. If that’s what was happening, any deliveries from Bruno would be made by a courier with a government pension and a badge. Still, Liquida desperately needed the money that was in that drawer, assuming it was there.
He looked at his watch. It was after four. Traffic was beginning to thicken up out on Second Road. In a few minutes the street in front of his hotel would be a parking lot. He had things to do. He got up from the chair, slipped out one of the stilettos from the rolled cloth pack, and dropped his pants. He taped the long straight weapon to the inside of his left calf using a foot and a half of vet wrap. It was an area of the body that, unless police saw some bulge, they often didn’t frisk all that carefully. A piece of steel like the thin stiletto could easily slip by. He pulled his pants up and checked to make sure that nothing showed.
Then he grabbed a white canvas beach bag that was lying on the bed. The bag had two sturdy strap handles and was big enough to hold a couple of fair-sized phone books. He had purchased the bag earlier that day from an outdoor display on Beach Road, a place called Mike’s Department Store.
Liquida headed out of the room and down the stairs. He passed through the small lobby in front of the clerk at the desk and stepped out onto the sidewalk, which was teeming with pedestrians. He instantly lost himself in the sea of people moving quickly around the corner onto one of the side streets.
Ten feet farther on, two Thai teenage boys, motorbike taxi drivers, lay lounging on the long seats of their bikes while a third one sat perched in a low beach chair up on the sidewalk. They were all wearing worn and soiled green vests with the name of a local beer bar on the back. This was their turf, the corner where they hung out hoping to pick up fares. For a few baht they would give you a thin plastic helmet, let you hop on the back of their bike, and deliver you anywhere in the city. That is, if you could hang on and if you didn’t mind the occasional near-death experience.
Chapter Eighteen
The narrow walkway between the buildings delivered Harry, Joselyn, and me into the middle of a parking area directly behind the building with the green door. In the back was a small loading dock, and on the elevated concrete pad was a steel overhead door that was closed. Next to the loading dock was a set of cement stairs leading to a heavy steel door, only this time the door was open.
Harry and I look at each other. “Listen.” I turn to Joselyn. “Why don’t you stay here? If we’re not out in, say, ten minutes, go see if you can find a local Thai policeman and tell him where we are.”
“I got a better idea. Why don’t you stay here and I’ll go in?” Joselyn doesn’t wait for me to answer. Instead, she takes off like a greyhound for the open door, Harry and me trailing along in her wake.
Inside the door is a large storage area, a stack of fifty-gallon drums against one wall and what looks like part of a motorized rack for hanging clothes in a commercial laundry. We don’t loiter. Instead, we pass quickly through another door and find ourselves in an open hallway. We move down the hall toward the front of the building; the smell of food, chicken broth and steamed noodles, fills the air.
“I’m gettin’ hungry,” says Harry.
“You want to stop and eat?” asks Joselyn.
“Not now, but when we’re done, yeah,” he says.
We reach the front of the building and end up at the foot of a staircase leading up to the second floor.
“According to the note, it’s upstairs, second floor, room 208,” I say.
Harry is already climbing, two steps at a time. We get to the top and start checking off the numbers on the doors. The place is a rabbit warren of small businesses, some white collar, others providing support services for some of the shops on the ground floor. We pass by one and see several women inside working sewing machines, stitching jackets and slacks, probably for the tailor’s shop downstairs. The next door is all the way open, swung back against the wall. I very nearly pass it when Joselyn taps me on the arm. She points to the open door, the numerals 208 reversed on the translucent glass on the upper panel of the open door.
“Maybe we got lucky,” she says.
We peek inside. I am guessing that the room is maybe twenty feet deep by thirty feet wide. There are no windows or desks, just filing cabinets arranged in neat rows with narrow passageways between each row. I count six rows. There is a man in the far corner standing on a tall ladder up against the ceiling. His back is to us. He’s changing out fluorescent tubes in one of the light fixtures.
Before I can stop her, Joselyn dips down low and slips through the open door. She scurries into the aisle between two of the rows of cabinets, keeping low so the
guy on the ladder can’t see her.
“What’s she doing?” Harry whispers in my ear.
I shake my head.
When I see her again, she’s on her hands and knees peeking around the corner of the end cabinet, crooking her finger at me to join her.
The guy on the ladder is almost done. He is replacing the long plastic cover, clipping it into place on the light fixture.
I lean toward Harry and whisper: “Stay here and keep an eye. Warn us if anybody comes.”
The guy is halfway down the ladder. Before Harry can say a word, I slip down low and cross the open space between the door and the cabinets. I end up in the aisle between the first and second row of cabinets, huddling up close next to Joselyn down on the floor.
She is giggling silently, a single finger to her lips shushing me to be quiet. We hear the tall aluminum ladder being folded up and a second later the clatter of metal as it hits up against some of the cabinets while the guy makes his way down the long aisle. He is four rows over. I am praying he has no more lights to fix. I glance up. The fixtures overhead appear to be fine.
We press deeper down the aisle as he approaches the open door. We have an angle of defilade unless he actually steps into our aisle. A few seconds later the lights go out. Then we hear the door close.
Joselyn and I sit on the floor in silence for a few seconds as we listen to the clatter of the ladder being carried down the hallway until we can no longer hear it.
“Now we look,” she says.
“How?”
“You think it would be safe to turn on the lights?” she asks.
“Not with that glass door. Gimme a second.” I fish in my pocket for keys. I don’t know why I’m carrying them halfway around the world from my house and car. I suppose it’s habit. On the key ring is a tiny Maglite powered by a single triple-A battery. I’m hoping it’s not dead. I twist the end of the little flashlight and we get a beam.
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