Weaponized

by Nicholas Mennuti

  “Speak English?”

  Mai giggles. “Some.”

  Fowler offers her his hand. “I’m Tom Fowler.”

  “Mai.”

  “You’re the one who helped Mr. Robinson when he had difficulty getting his ticket?”

  Mai’s face is a blank.

  “Trouble. Mr. Robinson had trouble with ticket.”

  She nods. “Yes. I did help.”

  “Good. And how would you describe Mr. Robinson?”

  Mai shrugs.

  “Was he nervous? Angry? Guilty?” Fowler has a face to go with each emotion.

  “Oh—angry. Very angry.”

  “Okay. So you tried to help him with his ticket, and then security showed up? Is that right?”

  “Yes. I tried to help.”

  “How long was Mr. Robinson with you before security arrived?”

  “Long?”

  “Minutes. How many minutes did you speak with Robinson for?”

  “Very few. Very few. One, two, maybe.”

  “Did you know the security guards? Recognize them?”

  “No. But change often. High rate of turnover.”

  Fowler smiles. “Good. That’s good.” Mai’s well versed in human resources–speak. Nice to know American corporate euphemisms for termination transcend native tongues.

  “Okay.” Fowler taps the top of her computer. “I’m going to need Robinson’s credit card info, Social, ticket number, all of it. Can you do that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. You have security cameras here?”

  “Excuse?”

  Fowler makes the motion for a camera lens near his eye. Mai nods her head enthusiastically.

  “Can you take me there? Help me find Robinson on the tape?”

  “I’ll try,” she says.

  Fowler gives her a warm grin. “All I can ask.” He gets up, takes in the layout of the airport. “What direction did security escort Mr. Robinson?”

  Mai looks around the airport and points.

  “Okay.” Fowler follows her finger. “And where is the security office?”

  Mai points in the opposite direction.

  Fowler gets part of the answer he was looking for. “That doesn’t look right, does it?” he says, more to himself than Mai, who shrugs.

  30.

  Fowler watches the tech guys scroll through footage while Mai stands at his side, keeping a lookout for Robinson on the screen.

  Fowler and Mai are drinking tea; Mai because she wanted tea, Fowler because he couldn’t get her to understand that he wanted coffee.

  Mai taps one of the techs on the shoulder. “That’s him.”

  And there’s a man standing at the kiosk struggling to understand why it won’t print out his ticket and then assaulting the inanimate device.

  Fowler squints. “Scroll forward. See if you can get me a frontal facial.”

  The camera follows the man from behind as he heel-toes it toward Mai’s desk escorted by the security guard. Then he sits down, and his face comes into full view.

  “Freeze there. Can you isolate that?”

  Tech guys shake their heads in confusion. What?

  Fowler looks to Mai. “I need a picture of him. Can you tell them that?”

  She does, and they nod in response.

  “Keep going on the archive,” Fowler says. “I want to see if I can get a look at the security guards.”

  Fowler motions to the tech guys to move the tape ahead, and he watches as the three security guards approach the man, then lead him through the boarding area and completely out of the range of the cameras.

  Fowler knows one thing:

  These guys have done this before. They’ve been trained to get out of the camera’s radius immediately. Even freeze-framing the images provides nothing but shadows and smears of gray suits.

  Fowler moves away from the terminal, nods in thanks, turns to Mai. “Tell them I need a PDF of Robinson’s picture e-mailed to these two phone numbers.” He tears apart his cigarette pack, writes the numbers on the cardboard, and hands it to her. “Do you know what I want?”

  Mai nods, and Fowler hopes she gets it. She’s impeccably polite, but her eyes call to mind the famous saying “There’s no there there.”

  Fowler steps back into the airport proper, sits in the departures lounge, and calls Rebecca.

  “Hey there,” he says. “You get the Robinson card info I sent?”

  “Got it.”

  “You’re gonna get a PDF of his face in a few. Run it through our system. See if it hits anyone we’re watching.”

  “Fowler, I know how to do this.”

  “I’m sorry.” And he is. He still hasn’t adjusted to having someone smarter than him under his command.

  “Anything at the airport?”

  “Locals had already taken prints when I got here,” he says. “Fuck knows what they picked up or smudged away. They aren’t delicate when it comes to forensics.”

  She breathes deep in agreement. “I have some potentially good news. You know the airport manager you asked me to locate, Mr. Suong? I found him. Can you take down an address?”

  Fowler gets ready to use the other half of his cigarette pack. “Yeah.…Go.”

  “Fowler, don’t leave me working pics and card info while you run around. I can do more.”

  “I’ll call you after I talk to Suong. Just see what you can do with the credit cards.”

  31.

  Lara’s driving as fast as the bruised chassis of the car allows. She’s dropped the speed down to sixty, and the steam has subsided.

  “I need you to pull over,” Kyle says, losing the last vestiges of control over his nerves.

  “Right.”

  “Pull over.”

  “No,” she says, weaving between hotel shuttle vans and honking indiscriminately.

  “I am not kidding.” he says. “Pull over.”

  “We need to make tracks from here.”

  Kyle pounds his fist against the dash. “I’ve almost been killed twice today. I need to try and process this…”

  “No stopping.”

  “I don’t care. I do not care. I need you to pull over to the side of the road now.” He raises his voice. “I am freaking the fuck out. No joke.”

  “If I stop the car, it’s not starting again. Just scream. Let it all out.”

  Kyle turns to her, incredulous. “You’re serious?”

  “Scream or don’t. But you’ve got to collect yourself. I want answers, and you’re useless to me like this.”

  Lara clicks her tongue against the roof of her mouth, a trick she uses to focus her thoughts. Then Kyle emits a primal scream straight from the center of his stomach; his innards vibrate from the effort.

  Lara’s so shocked by the primal sound that she jumps, cracks her head against the roof of the car. “Fuck you,” she says, more annoyed than angry. “You were supposed to scream…what was that sound?”

  “Sorry,” Kyle says. “Sorry.”

  Lara shakes her head.

  “I think I feel better,” Kyle says, shocked her suggested course of action worked.

  “Your lip is still bleeding.”

  Kyle flips the visor to the mirrored side and gets a look at his face. “Holy shit,” he says. “Holy shit.” He holds his finger to his pulsing lip and winces. “This is not good.”

  “It looks worse because it’s fresh. It’ll be better once the blood dries.”

  He turns his battered face to her. “You think so?”

  “We’re gonna get you cleaned up. You can’t be seen in public like this.”

  “Okay.” Kyle turns back and stares into the mirror, touching his lip even though it stings.

  “Stop playing with your face,” she says. “You’ll make it worse.”

  Kyle puts his hands in his lap. “Where are we going?”

  Lara ignores him. “I ask questions now. First one: How did you get Robinson’s passport? Second: Who the fuck are you?”

  “I’m Kyle West.
I met…I met Robinson two days ago. I was at a bar in Phnom Penh. He came in…introduced himself…we talked. He knew who I was.”

  “So what.”

  “I’m not traveling under my real name.”

  “Why not?”

  Kyle exhales. “It’s a long story.”

  “Shorten it.”

  “I can’t go back to the United States. Well, to be exact, I can’t go to the United States or to any country that has an extradition treaty with it. And Robinson knew that.”

  “So he just sat down with you and talked. That’s it.”

  “That’s it.”

  “Well, you achieved something few people do.”

  Kyle cranes his neck, a bodily question mark.

  “You met Robinson and survived,” she says.

  Kyle nods. “Yeah. You could look at it that way.”

  “What way do you look at it?”

  “That he fucked me over. That he promised to help me…”

  Lara laughs. Kyle’s taken aback.

  “God,” she says. “You must have really wanted to believe him.”

  “He said he could help me if we traded passports. He said he had information for me in England. I use his passport to go to England and get the information…and he uses mine.”

  “Why did he want your passport?”

  “He said he needed to go to Africa…he had a deal going down there.”

  “What sort of deal?”

  “Something telecom related. I don’t know.…I barely met him. I couldn’t have spent more than six hours with the guy, total.”

  “More than most.”

  “Right.” Kyle looks in the mirror again, raises his hand to touch his lip, then reconsiders but keeps staring at it. “Thank you for saving me.”

  “You’re welcome,” she says with an undisguised sneer. “Lot of good it did me.” She swerves around a cluster of tuk-tuks. “Look. The people who kidnapped you are the same people who came to kill me. They’re not going to stop. As long as they think you’re Robinson, they will not stop. Follow me?”

  Kyle nods. “I think.”

  “So we need to find Robinson right now. You met him in a bar. Did you two go anywhere else?”

  “Yeah. His hotel.”

  “You remember it?”

  “Yeah. Absolutely.”

  “Then that’s where we’re going.”

  “What if he checked out already?”

  “Maybe he didn’t. And if he’s gone, then you convince them you’re him. We need to get into his room.”

  “Wait. Wait,” Kyle says. “Now I’ve got a question. What are you to Robinson?”

  No answer; she just presses the gas.

  “I mean…you know who I am. Who are you?”

  “Your only chance of staying alive,” she says. “That’s all you need to know.”

  “That’s not an answer.”

  “No. But it’s what you’re getting.”

  “Look,” he says, “I’m holding Robinson’s passport. If anything goes down at the hotel, it’s over for me. I think it’s better for me to keep moving.”

  “Fine. Then get out. Go back to being Robinson on your own.” She motions toward Kyle’s face. “Seems to be working out well for you. I’m going to the hotel.”

  She’s got a salient argument, he thinks; any hope he has of staying alive involves her. “All right.”

  “Plus,” she says, “if he’s there, maybe we can get your passport back.”

  32.

  Mr. Suong, errant airport-manager extraordinaire, is spending the afternoon attending to matters of personal pulchritude.

  When Fowler finds him, Suong’s sitting in a high-backed salon chair letting Kaffir lime juice soak into his luxurious black locks. An organic oatmeal face mask has been spread across his visage to cleanse his pores of toxins, and an impossibly green cucumber slice resides over each eye.

  New Age music heavy on the sitar and chirping birds plays over the speakers. Suong sips on mineral water garnished with a lime slice.

  Fowler sits in the chair beside Suong, taps his shoulder, and rolls a cigarette between his fingers. “Mr. Suong,” he says. “Tom Fowler. CIA. Wanted to ask you some questions about an occurrence at your airport this morning.”

  “I recommend talking to security,” Suong says. “I’ve been here all day. I have an engagement this evening at Hun Sen’s. We’re celebrating the sale of over one hundred thousand hectares of arable land to Kuwait. And the Kuwaitis…well, for a people whose official religion forbids images, they’re quite judgmental about appearance.”

  Suong expects the mention of Hun Sen’s name to force Fowler to retreat; however, Fowler’s realized anyone who runs a business of value or consequence in Cambodia is on Hun Sen’s guest list. If Fowler didn’t talk to Hun Sen’s associates, he’d have no one to talk to. “Sure. Sure. Understood,” Fowler says. “Thing is, your security people seem to be a little hazy about the details of recent events in your airport.”

  “Such as?”

  “This morning, a man on a no-fly list, Julian Robinson, attempted to board a plane. He went to customer service for help and was apprehended by security. Problem is, these men weren’t your security detail. They aren’t security personnel, period. They were professionals.”

  “I hire professionals…”

  “What I mean is, they escorted Robinson out of the camera’s range in close to thirty seconds. And they never allowed their own faces to be captured in a frontal. That takes tactical planning and prior knowledge of the airport.”

  Suong purses his lips. “And you know this because?”

  Fowler can’t exactly come clean on this. “I just do.”

  “And my men aren’t capable of this?”

  “Your men showed up two minutes later looking for Robinson, only to find he’d already been escorted out. No one’s seen or heard from Robinson since.”

  “And?”

  “It would appear he was either kidnapped by hostiles or helped to escape.”

  “Why would someone on a no-fly list attempt to board a commercial airliner?”

  “That’s why I’m talking to you. My feeling…maybe it was a signal for his friends to come pick him up.”

  “I will perform a thorough investigation tomorrow. No stone will be left unturned.”

  “If I could just—”

  “It is so hard to find good help, Mr. Fowler. The fruits of Pol Pot’s revolution included leaving us with a devastated intellectual class.” Suong’s mask has started to harden around his wrinkles and frown lines, cleansing deeper. “I take this quite seriously, Mr. Fowler.”

  Women in floral smocks scamper around the salon, checking on customers. One of them examines Suong’s face mask, adds a little more to it, whispers something in Khmer, and Suong smiles. “I’m making progress,” he relates to Fowler. “I have extremely oily skin. Comes from an excess of hormones. A blessing and a curse, I assure you.” Suong spares no expense on his upkeep. He is his own greatest love affair.

  Fowler gets around to lighting the cigarette. “See, here’s the thing. Southeast Asia has pockets of heavy terrorist activity. I’ve placed some of these guys on no-fly lists myself in the past few months, and fuck if I know how, but they keep getting other places.”

  “Catastrophic. Corruption holds our country back.”

  “And I know guys like you, not necessarily sympathetic to the terrorists’ goals but—let’s face it—a little dirty, might let them on a plane for a little do-re-mi. Well, I’ll give you some credit, Mr. Suong—a lot of do-re-mi.”

  “I would never aid or abet known terrorists.”

  “I’m not saying anything. But do you remember Abu Bakar Bashir?”

  “Who?”

  “Bashir blew up a nightclub in Indonesia a while back.”

  “Means nothing…”

  “I ordered him no-flyed, and he gained entrance through your airport. We nailed him in Bali anyway, but…”

  “I had nothing to do wit
h that.”

  “And I didn’t say you did. Your day off, obviously.”

  “Mr. Fowler, I feel this is a line of questioning best engaged in at your office, not in a place of business and indigenous culture.” Suong says this last part with an upturned lip and sneer.

  “All I want to know is…is it possible anyone on your staff could be involved in aiding Robinson’s escape or in handing him over to forces outside this country? I’ve checked the criminal records and pay stubs of your security. It’s not beyond the realm of possibility.”

  Suong tries to remove the cucumbers from his eyes for dramatic effect, but one of the beauticians stops him and wags a disapproving finger. “Are you talking about rendition?” Suong says to Fowler in feigned horror. “Are you asking if my staff aids in renditions?”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  “I have no idea of this man’s…”

  “Robinson.”

  “Of this Robinson’s whereabouts. His name means nothing to me.”

  “I can look at this in one of two ways. One, you’re a garden-variety greedy bastard…which is to say, you’re like every single one of us walking the earth. And you’re paid a retainer by certain people not to ask questions about what goes on in your airport. Or, two, you were in on it. You know who Robinson’s friends are, know who helped him escape, and I’m going to have you charged with conspiracy for running a ratline for people on no-flys. They get tagged by the computer, and you help them leave before someone comes to pick them up.” Fowler leans in close to the rail of Suong’s chair and puts his thick hand over Suong’s slender, nearly hairless forearm. “I’m CIA, Mr. Suong. I don’t even have to charge you with anything. I can have you disappeared, send you someplace for questioning where no one’ll ever find you. So tell me: Are you just dirty, or are you a friend of Robinson’s? If you tell me the truth, nothing will happen to you.”

  “Nothing will happen to me regardless.” And without missing a beat, Suong turns his cucumber eyes toward Fowler and says, “I’m an entrepreneur. I don’t know Robinson. He is not my friend. But my airport is always open for business for friendly countries. And people know that. I think you have your answer now.” Suong touches his hair, then inhales the lingering scent of lime juice.