Trader of secrets pm-12

by Steve Martini

  “Why not?”

  “I’m afraid we’re gonna be here for a while.”

  “Got it.”

  Charlie One ended the call and was about to slip the phone into his pocket when a hand reached around from behind and took it away from him.

  “I will keep this for now.”

  When the agent turned around, he saw the uniformed Thai policeman standing there in front of him. He could tell this was no ordinary cop. The man was maybe five foot eight, tall for a Thai, and very fit. He was wearing a military-style five-point hat with a shiny visor. The starched uniform bore captain’s bars and looked as if it was molded to his body. “We will have that as well.” He took the handheld radio and handed both the cell phone and the radio to the officers standing behind him.

  By now there was a good-size crowd forming out on the street in front of the green door, all jostling for position to see what was happening. Two police cars and a police pickup were parked on the road, blocking traffic in the first lane, their light bars flashing red, blue, and gold.

  “Your friend tells me you are the one in charge.”

  “Lucky me.”

  The cop smiled. “Are you armed?”

  “No.” The two agents inside the building had enough sense to lock up their. 40-caliber Glocks along with the extra clips and the fanny pack holsters in the embassy car before they radioed in and told the Pattaya police who they were and where they were located. Charlie One produced his FBI credentials and then handed over his passport.

  The cop glanced at the ID and handed it to one of the other officers, who made notes while his boss looked at the passport. “I see. I take it then that you are assigned to the legal attache in Bangkok?”

  “That’s correct.”

  “And your friend here?”

  “Same, same,” said Charlie One.

  “You will find that I speak fluent English. Would you like to try Thai?”

  “I’m sure that your English is better than my Thai,” said the agent.

  The officer considered his options, which were now much more limited. The agents had diplomatic passports and hence diplomatic immunity. He could take them into custody, but to do so would cause a big stink. “Would you mind telling me what you’re doing here?”

  Charlie One didn’t say anything.

  The cop lowered the passport and tapped it against his thigh for a moment. “Are there any more of you?”

  “Here, you mean?”

  “Yes.”

  “No,” said Charlie One. Of course, that all depended on how you defined the word here.

  “Do you mind my asking why, if there are only two of you and you’re both standing here together, why do you need radios to communicate?”

  “Certainly you can ask.” Charlie One had no intention of telling him anything, not now, not with the three Americans safely back in their hotel. The agent didn’t know much, but what little he knew he was fairly confident Washington would not want disclosed. Besides, the three Americans were running out of time. According to the information from bureau headquarters, they were scheduled to be back in D.C. in two days. They would either have to leave in the morning or catch a red-eye the following night. By then they would be somebody else’s problem.

  “So I take it you’re not going to tell us anything?” said the officer.

  “I’m sorry, but at the moment I’m not at liberty.”

  “I see. Well…” The cop took a deep breath and stood there for a moment. “Since we can’t arrest you and since you’re not willing to cooperate, I suppose there’s not much we can do, is there?”

  The agent didn’t want to rub it in. Instead he stood there trying to look sufficiently rebuked so as not to make the man feel bad. He was, in fact, sympathetic to the cop’s position. Guests in their country and brothers of the badge, they had needed help many times from the local authorities. The agent knew that it was inevitable that in time they would once again need the help of the Pattaya police.

  “Do you mind telling me how long you have been on assignment in Thailand?” said the cop.

  “Six years,” said the agent.

  “Do you like your duty here?”

  “Very much.”

  “Then I would advise that in the future it would be wise to inform us before you do something like this again. Whatever it was you were doing.”

  “Understood,” said the agent.

  “Good,” said the cop. “I will take your radios. Kindly ask your other agents not to use them. You can inform your embassy that a report of this matter will be filed by my department with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. If your ambassador wishes to get his radios back, he can check with the ministry.”

  “I suspect they probably belong to you now,” said the agent.

  The officer looked at them appraisingly. “Nice radios. You wouldn’t happen to have any vehicles around here, would you?”

  The agent didn’t say a word.

  The officer smiled at him. “In the meantime, try not to get in any more trouble.” He handed the passports and the FBI credentials back to the agent, turned, and said, “Give them back their cell phones.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  I’m sitting on the edge of the bed in my underwear as Joselyn tries to clean the burn on my lower leg with a damp washcloth from the bathroom as Harry looks on.

  “Two days, a lot of money, and a long trip, and we’ve got squat,” I tell them.

  Harry is sitting in a chair in the corner. “How do we know the drawer was even the right one? I mean, just because the letters line up with a note you found in Costa Rica…”

  “Puerto Rico,” I tell him. “Waters of Death, same address as on the note, and the only thing in that room that matches it is… Ow, that hurts!”

  “Don’t be a wuss,” she says.

  “Easy for you to say. It’s not your leg.”

  “A few more inches, and it wouldn’t have been yours anymore either,” she says. “That bike did a pretty good job on you. Didn’t your mother ever tell you to look both ways?”

  “Problem was I was looking the wrong way on a one-way street. Yeah, that’s clean enough,” I tell her. “Here, let me have the towel.”

  “You should put something on that,” she says. “There’s a pharmacy across the street.”

  “I’ll get something later.”

  “You want to lose your leg, it’s up to you,” she says. “You sleep in the other bed tonight. I don’t want that bloody stump next to me.”

  “It’s not bloody.”

  “Look at the towel,” says Harry.

  “Well, OK, so there’s a little blood. But it’s no stump.”

  “Give it time,” says Joselyn.

  “Listen, both of you, just leave me alone. I’ve got to think.”

  “About what?” she asks.

  “About that drawer and what might have been in it.”

  “Yeah, well, good luck on that,” says Joselyn.

  “We had her in our grasp,” says Harry.

  “We never got that close to her,” I tell him.

  “Of course not. Sherlock here thought it would be a good idea to let her get just a little farther ahead of us,” says Harry. “Then suddenly she and her bag take a ride on a rocket bike.”

  “OK, so I screwed up.”

  “Well, there you go. Admission,” says Joselyn. “The first step in every idiot’s recovery.”

  “God, but you’re cruel,” I tell her.

  “You’re not the one who got left behind in the dark room.”

  “I thought you would be safer there.”

  “Always thinking of me,” she says.

  “I did leave a flashlight.”

  “What can I say? Thank you. And if any words of mine ever cause you any real pain, would you like me to tell you how to ease the agony?”

  “I’m afraid to ask.”

  “Just stand up and run your lower leg into the side of a bed.”

  Harry doubles over in laughter fro
m his chair.

  “OK, OK. I get it. You’re angry.”

  “Not at all,” she says. “If I was angry, you would know it. This is my reaction to a minor annoyance.”

  “God help me.”

  “Maybe he will, maybe he won’t,” she says.

  “In the meantime, we’re back where we started,” says Harry.

  “Not entirely,” says Joselyn.

  “What do you mean?” I look at her.

  “While you two were jousting with motorcycles and buses down on the street, I was busy doing a little research.”

  “On what?” I ask.

  “I figured that if the drawer was empty, I may as well take the label.”

  “You mean WOD?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Why?” says Harry.

  “Because I didn’t have anything to write with,” she tells him. “And my memory is not that good.”

  Harry looks a little baffled.

  “The label had more than just the three letters printed on it,” I tell him. “There was the name of a company, TSCC Limited.”

  “We assume the company rented the office space and in turn rented out the boxes to their clients,” says Joselyn. “There were also some telephone numbers, contact information for TSCC printed on the labels.”

  “Ahh,” says Harry.

  “So I suppose we can start there in the morning,” I tell her. “See if we can get a lead on Liquida by going through the company.”

  “But that’s not all,” says Joselyn. “That’s what was on the front of the label. On the back were some numbers.” She stands up and reaches into her pocket. “By the way, I’ve got your keys and your flashlight.” She hands them to me and then unfolds a small piece of paper. It’s the label that was on the drawer. She shows it to me.

  Sure enough, on the back are the numbers “00088” printed in the same font as the three letters on the face of the label, only smaller.

  “And that’s not all.”

  “What else?” says Harry.

  “I checked some of the other labels on the other drawers. Every one of the labels I checked had numbers printed on the reverse side, all of them with five digits, and all starting with zeros.”

  “What do you make of it?” I ask.

  “I don’t know. I thought the two of you might have some ideas.”

  “You know what it sounds like to me,” says Harry. “The place is nothing but an old-fashioned drop.”

  “What do you mean?” says Joselyn.

  “I thought it was something that went out with high button shoes,” he says. “The numbers rackets used them back in the 1920s to collect cash and receipts from their street runners. Drop it all in the box, and a bagman would go around and clean out the boxes and take it all to the central counting house. That way only one guy knew where the counting house was. Concept is simple. It’s just a way of keeping the world at a distance,” says Harry. “The OSS put a twist on it during the war. They realized you didn’t need a box. Anything could be a drop-the underside of a table in a public restaurant would do if you had some tape. You stick a message there, and as long as the people you’re working with know which table is being used, they can collect it and nobody ever has to meet. They drop some colored chalk on the sidewalk out in front of the restaurant and crush it underfoot, white to let people know that the drop was loaded and pink to let the world know the message was received; you didn’t even have to know who the people were you were working with.”

  “What happens if the other side finds out about the drop?” says Joselyn.

  Harry arches an eyebrow. “In the case of the OSS, you got trapped, tortured, and when they couldn’t get anything more out of you, you probably got hung with a piece of piano wire.”

  “So what you’re saying is that Liquida is a throwback to another age,” says Joselyn.

  “In a word,” says Harry. “He’s using a war surplus filing cabinet to collect his mail. The problem is he has it, and we don’t.”

  “But you notice he didn’t come and get it himself,” I say.

  “That would defeat the whole purpose of the drop box,” says Harry.

  “And you can bet that the people sending mail to him, the ones hiring him, they’ve never been near that box either. Let me see the label again,” says Joselyn.

  I hand it to her.

  “TSCC. What do you think it stands for?” she says.

  “We could Google it. But if Liquida is typical of their clientele, I doubt they’re advertising on the Internet. More likely to be word of mouth,” says Harry.

  “Let me see,” I look over Joselyn’s shoulder. “We could call the number. It’s after hours. Maybe they’ve got a tape.”

  A quick consensus that we have nothing to lose finds me with the receiver to the room phone in my hand. I dial for an outside line, a local number, and punch in the eight digits.

  I take up the pen and pad by the nightstand and listen for a few seconds as I make a note. “Trident Storage, Courier and Communications,” I tell them.

  “That sorta covers the field,” says Harry.

  “Sounds like they will forward your mail if you want it,” says Joselyn.

  “Except that woman didn’t look like any kind of courier I’ve ever seen,” I tell her.

  “This is a different kind of courier service,” says Harry.

  “Did they mention any office hours on the tape?” she asks.

  “No. Just push number one if you’re calling to have your mail forwarded. Number two if you want to make arrangements to rent a box and three if you want to cancel service.”

  “Which makes you wonder if they actually have an office,” says Harry.

  “I think we’ve seen the office,” I tell him.

  “So where does that leave us?” Joselyn looks at the two of us.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Liquida parked the motorbike in a sea of other bikes at the curb along Beach Road, at the intersection of the narrow alleylike soi that ran along the side of his hotel. He put the bike helmet under the seat and dropped the keys in with it, then locked the seat down. He wouldn’t need the bike again.

  He walked up the narrow side street. It connected with Second Road, but Liquida didn’t go that far. Instead he entered the hotel through the garage and went in the back way. He wanted to avoid any possibility of running into the taxi bike kid at the stand or the girl from the beer bar on the corner across from it. By morning when the car and driver came to pick him up and Liquida checked out, both the girl and the kid would be long gone, catching up on z ’s for the next night’s work.

  Liquida climbed the back stairs, slipped into his room, and dropped the beach bag on the bed. He sighed and stretched out on the mattress, relishing the day’s work. He realized just how well things had gone. Liquida had not had this much good fortune in months; in fact, not since helping himself to the stash of gold coins from the house in Del Mar near San Diego more than a year before. In the end, that whole episode was soured by the lawyer and his partner, who put the feds onto Liquida’s safe-deposit box where the gold was stored.

  He noticed that the maid had already been to his room. She had turned down the bed, pulled the blinds, and closed the curtains. He was snug as a bug in a rug with the money, his bags almost packed. But he was tired. He had a few more things to do before he could sleep.

  He used the room phone and called Air India. He booked a one-way ticket, business class, on an early morning flight from Bangkok to Paris with a connection in Delhi. He used a credit card under the Spanish passport name to hold the ticket and told the ticket agent that he would pay for it with cash at the airport counter.

  Next he called the car service and arranged for a vehicle and driver to pick him up at the front of the hotel at 5:15 the following morning. It would give him plenty of time to get to the airport ahead of the 8:55 flight. He called the front desk and asked them to bring up his bill so that he could settle it before he went to bed. Liquida didn’t want to go do
wn to the desk. The lobby of the hotel was too close to the taxi stand where the bikers hung out. He didn’t want to take the chance that one of them might walk by and see him.

  When the bellhop delivered the bill, Liquida paid with cash using a five-hundred-euro note. When the bellhop returned with the change, Liquida gave him a good tip.

  He took a shower and packed the last few items into his luggage. Turning off the lights, he got ready to crawl into bed, then decided to get some fresh air by opening the window.

  Liquida drew back the curtains and pulled the cord on the blinds. The traffic on Second Road had thinned considerably. Vehicles were now rolling freely over almost the entire road so that his attention was fixed on the animated motion rather than the one blocked lane on the far side. Liquida turned and took a step toward the bed before the image fully registered in his brain. When it did, the heat that erupted out to the tips of his ears made him feel as if the blood in his veins had become a cauldron of molten lava.

  He whipped his head back toward the window. For several seconds he stood there slack-jawed, staring at the light bars on the two police cars and the pickup truck across the way.

  They were parked blocking the number one lane on the other side of the road-directly in front of the green door, the entrance to the building where Liquida’s box was located.

  There were cops everywhere, too many uniforms for Liquida to count. They crawled over the sidewalk in front of the shops on the other side of the street like ants. He watched as three more cops pulled up on motorbikes, parked them, and joined the growing crowd.

  Liquida turned and did a double take on the beach bag near the foot of the bed. He pounced on it like a leopard, dumped all the currency on the bed, and began poring through it all over again, this time more carefully. In a panic, he ripped two of the bills in half before he realized that they were not actually glued together. A thousand euros gone, but Liquida didn’t care.

  He very nearly grabbed his luggage and ran, leaving the money behind. But a thin seam of logic settled his nerves. He regrouped and began to think. If the euro banknotes housed a tracking device, the cops would already be at his door.