by Barry Eisler
I rolled my eyes. Dox was as deadly a sniper as I’ve ever known, but we’d have to work on smoothing out some of the rough edges.
I heard them move past my position. There was a bit of muffled conversation. Then they were on their way back to the door. Dox said, “Thank you again, thank you,” and I heard the door close.
A moment later he opened the bathroom door. “You can come out now,” he said.
“Any problems?”
“Nope. I think the robe helped, like you said. You know, you’re pretty good at this stuff, actually. Hey, maybe we should raid the minibar. This is the opportunity of a lifetime.”
“Was he able to give you the PIN Winters used?”
He nodded. “Eight-eight-seven-one.”
“Good. Nice work. What did you touch?”
“Just three things. The door handle, the bathroom door handle, and the safe.”
“Okay,” I said, handing him a fresh pair of gloves. “The alcohol and bleach are in the bathroom. Wash your hands with one, rinse, then use the other. You had Winters’s blood on you, too. Then put the gloves on. I’ll wipe down the places you touched.”
I grabbed a hand towel and took care of the surfaces he had mentioned, then joined him in the bathroom and did the sink when he was finished there. He pulled on the gloves again and I put the supplies, including the hand towel, into the bag in which we’d brought them. I set the bag down in front of the door so it would be impossible to forget.
We walked over to the safe, which was now open. There were three items inside. A wallet. A passport. And a Treo 650 smart-phone.
Dox pulled on his clothes while I checked the items. First, the passport. It was U.S.-issued, and indeed for Mitchell William Winters. Then the wallet, which contained credit cards and an Indonesian driver’s license with a Jakarta address, also for Mr. Winters. In the billfold, there were Indonesian rupiah, U.S. dollars, Thai baht, and Hong Kong dollars.
Back to the passport. Mr. Winters was quite the traveler. He had stamps from all over the world, most recently Thailand, of course.
The Treo was what I was most looking forward to. I picked it up and turned it on. The screen lit up, asking for a password.
Dox said, “Shit.”
I considered for a moment, then keyed in eight-eight-seven-one.
The screen changed to the home menu. We were in.
“Hot damn, nice going, man!” Dox said, clapping me on the back. “Shame on old Mr. Winters, using the same password in different places.”
I looked at him and raised my eyebrows. “Do you use different passwords for all your different devices?” I asked.
“Well, uh . . .”
“No one does. In the never-ending battle between security and convenience, convenience always wins.”
“I guess that’s true.”
I smiled. “Of course, now you know better. Remember: security is like a chain. It’s only as strong as its weakest link.”
We started going through the Treo—contacts, appointments, memos. There was a lot in the device.
“This is taking too long,” I said. “Let’s put the passport and wallet back in the safe. We’ll take the Treo with us. It’s possible someone will know it’s gone, but I think it’ll be worth that risk.”
“Works for me.”
“You leave ahead of me. Don’t go out the same way you came in—you don’t want that security guard to see you leaving shortly after he saw you come in. Meet me in twenty minutes on the Surawong side of Patpong Two.”
He grinned. “Sure, I know Patpong.”
“I know you do. But we’re just going there to find an Internet café. Don’t get distracted.”
“I was afraid you might say that. Why an Internet café?”
“Just a feeling. We might want to follow up on some of what we find in the Treo. We could do this from the laptop at the hotel, but I like to do my surfing anonymously.”
He grinned. “Me, too. You never know when the government is going to crack down on us pornography hounds.”
Dox went ahead. I put the passport and wallet back in the safe and relocked it. I gave the room a last once-over to make sure we hadn’t disturbed anything. It all looked good.
I checked through the peephole. All clear. I opened the door with my shirt and took the stairs down. I used a side exit, then walked down the sois paralleling Silom into Patpong.
SIXTEEN
TWENTY MINUTES LATER, we were sitting in an Internet bar off Surawang, going through the Treo. The date book was interesting. It had an entry for a meeting at 19:00 the following day. The entry read: TD, JB, VBM @ CC.
“Code,” I said, musing.
“Gee, you think?” Dox asked.
I ignored him. “Let’s see what else is in here,” I said.
There were a few dozen names in the contact list. I knew only one of them. Jim Hilger.
“Look at this,” I said, pointing to it.
“Hilger,” Dox said. “The guy from Hong Kong? The CIA NOC?”
“Yeah, Mr. Non-Official Cover. The one who skimmed two million dollars from what Belghazi was paying those Transdniester types who we thought were Russians.”
“That was supposed to be our money, partner. I’ve been hoping to run into this feller so we could have a good honest talk about it.”
I nodded and went to the memos section. There was only one entry: the confirmation number for an open-ended electronic ticket from Bangkok to Hong Kong.
“Looks like our friend Winters was planning on a visit to Hong Kong,” I said, indicating the entry. “There’s this ticket. And he had Hong Kong dollars in his wallet.”
“Hilger’s based in Hong Kong, ain’t he? Or he was when we took out Belghazi.”
“Yeah, I’m thinking the same thing.” I went back to the calendar entry, but still couldn’t make sense of Winters’s code. I looked at it for about a full minute, but nothing came.
“How does it work?” Dox asked. “If you stare at it long enough, does it suddenly reveal its secrets?”
I sighed. “No, probably not. But . . . ‘at CC’ . . . and he’s going to be in Hong Kong . . .”
I spun around to the keyboard and brought up Google. I keyed in “Hong Kong CC.”
I got entries for Hong Kong Correspondence Chess. The Hong Kong Computer Center. The Hong Kong Cricket Club. The Hong Kong Cat Club.
“Ah-ha, the old rendezvous at the Hong Kong Cat Club,” Dox said. “Those devils, we should have known.”
I could tell that, if Dox and I were going to keep working together, ignoring him was a survival skill I would have to develop. “Hong Kong Cricket Club,” I said. “Hong Kong Cat Club. Hong Kong . . . China Club.”
“China Club?”
I nodded. “It’s a private club with a five-star restaurant at the top of the old Bank of China building in Central. They’ve got one in Beijing now, too, and in Singapore.”
“We didn’t get a hit for that, though.”
“Yeah.” I keyed in “China Club Hong Kong” and hit “enter.” I got about three million hits, none for what I was looking for.
“You sure about this place?” Dox asked.
“It’s exclusive. It wouldn’t surprise me if they didn’t have a website and I doubt they advertise.” I keyed in a number of variations on what I was looking for until I came up with a phone number. I picked up my cell phone, turned it on, and input the number.
The phone on the other end rang once, then again. A woman’s voice answered: “Good evening, China Club. How may I assist you?”
“Restaurant reservations,” I said.
“My pleasure,” the voice said.
I waited a moment, then a man’s voice said, “China Club Restaurant. How may I assist you?”
“I’d like to confirm a reservation,” I said. “Jim Hilger. Tomorrow.”
There was a pause, then the voice said, “Yes, sir, seven o’clock tomorrow evening, private dining room, party of four.”
“Thank you so mu
ch,” I said, smiling.
I hung up and looked at Dox. “Dinner tomorrow night at the China Club, party of four, private dining room. I think they must have forgotten to invite us.”
He grinned. “Well, maybe we ought to just join them anyway.”
“I’m beginning to think we should.”
“Do we know who else will be there?”
I shook my head. “I couldn’t ask that. They probably wouldn’t have known, and anyway the question would have seemed odd.”
“Well, it was a near thing back there in front of Brown Sugar,” he said, “but now that I think about it, it might have loosened things up for us, given us the break we’re looking for. Nothing like a little serendipity to make a man feel all is right in the universe.”
The massive adrenaline surge that had helped me survive Brown Sugar and its aftermath was ebbing, but I could still feel its effects. Getting to sleep tonight was going to be a bitch.
“So it looks like Hilger was behind Winters,” I said. “For a while there, I was concerned it was the Israelis.”
“You think Delilah would set us up? I don’t believe that. Plus she doesn’t know my number.”
“Oh, you didn’t get around to giving it to her?”
“Stop it. That wouldn’t be right.”
I scrubbed a hand over my face and thought. “Even before we found that Treo entry, I doubted it was the Israelis. Although if some Russians have your number, I suppose there are a lot of other players who might have gotten ahold of it, the Israelis included. But Delilah only just found out about you. I don’t see how the Israelis could have gotten your number that quickly. Plus, they’re relatively weak in Asia, which is part of the reason they wanted me to do Manny in the first place. I doubt they have the technical means, on the ground, immediately deployable, to track a cell phone in Bangkok.”
He nodded. “All right, so we can rule out the Israelites, I agree.”
“Now let’s assume that Winters was hooked up with Hilger. It sure looks that way—we’ve got the entry in the Treo, the Hong Kong connection, the dinner reservation. We think that Hilger is CIA. Does that mean that all this is coming from the CIA?”
“Not necessarily. Hilger might be with the CIA, but he’s not synonymous with the CIA.”
“Correct. But the Agency has your phone number, don’t they?”
“They do, yeah, they’ve been a client. Never thought that would be a problem before.”
“Does the Agency know about the work you’ve done for the Russians?”
“I never told them about it. When I’m not leaving my cell phone on and trying to have my way with the lady-boys, I can actually be fairly discreet.”
I chuckled. “Well, the Agency might know anyway. They’re spies, after all. Winters might have told us he got the number from the Russians to hide the CIA’s involvement.”
“Or he might really have gotten it from Ivan.”
“Yeah. No way for us to know, not yet. But whoever Winters was with, they had access to some pretty sophisticated equipment. They had to be able to track your cell phone to Bangkok, which would mean access to the carriers, and they had to pinpoint it at Brown Sugar, which required sophisticated equipment and know-how. Also, they moved fast. We arrived in Bangkok from Manila only two days ago, so they were able to get everything in place in”—I glanced at my watch—“a little over sixty hours. Pretty impressive.”
“Yeah, but on the other hand, you said those Thai guys weren’t pros.”
“No, they weren’t. They were outsourced—hell, two of them ran off as soon as they started taking fire.”
“Guess the money wasn’t worth it.”
“Exactly. Now, if the snatch had been a CIA op, I would have expected an integrated group from the Agency’s paramilitary branch. They’ve got the operators, and they can move fast if they want to.”
He leaned back in his chair. “Tell me again. How do we know Hilger is CIA?”
“We don’t for sure. But two people implied that he was—Kanezaki, and the late Charles Crawley the third.”
Crawley was the Agency staffer who had tried to hire Dox to take me out. Dox warned me. After which I had what the government likes to call a “full and frank discussion” with Mr. Crawley, uninvited, in his suburban Virginia apartment. He had told me about a Hong Kong NOC, but wouldn’t give up the NOC’s name. The way Hilger had shown up afterward had left me in no doubt.
“Well, if Hilger’s CIA,” Dox said, “and he was behind Brown Sugar, why did he send a bunch of locals instead of the A-team?”
“He didn’t send a bunch of locals. He sent Winters. Winters assembled the local team.”
“I see what you’re saying. That’s the right way to look at it.”
I looked at him. “So the question . . .”
“Is, ‘Who is Old Man Winters?’ ”
“Right. Was Winters Agency, or not? Right now, I’m guessing not. Which would tell us a lot about what Hilger is really up to.”
I turned to the monitor and Googled “Mitchell William Winters.” We got no hits.
Dox said, “It seems that Mr. Winters has spent some time flying under the radar.”
“It does. Hang on a minute.”
I went to the bulletin board I used with Tatsu. There was a message waiting from him: the two dead men were named Scott Calver and David Gibbons. That tracked with what Kanezaki had told me. They were both ex-military, Third Special Forces. First Gulf War vets, honorable discharges. After that they entered the State Department Foreign Service, with postings to Amman, Karachi, and Riyadh.
Except for proper names, the message was in Japanese. I translated for Dox. He said, “So they left the Third Special Forces to become diplomats. Now there’s a believable career path.”
“Yeah,” I said. “At one point, they were Agency. But the message says they left in 2003. Looks like Kanezaki was being straight when he described them as ‘ex-company.’ ”
I glanced back at the screen. Tatsu’s post said the two men had left the government to join “Gird Enterprises.” I read it to Dox.
“What do you make of that?” he asked.
“A company, I’m guessing. My contact says he has no further information on it, but . . .”
I Googled “Gird Enterprises” and “Gird Enterprise.” Nada.
I went back to Tatsu’s post. At the bottom, there was an additional paragraph.
When you have a chance, there is something of a personal nature I would like to discuss with you. It’s not related to the matter at hand. Will you be in Japan soon? Perhaps we could get together for tea and our small talk, which I confess I quite miss. I hope you are well. Please be careful.
I wondered what the personal matter might be, and hoped that Tatsu and his family were all right. I typed in a message:
I need information on Jim Hilger, American resident in Hong Kong, reportedly a CIA NOC. There’s a connection with a man named Mitchell William Winters, probably residing in Jakarta, probably with a U.S. military special operations background, probably with experience in Thailand. Possible connection of both to “Gird Enterprises.”
And I would very much like to see you for tea and to discuss the personal matter you mention. I hope you and your family are well. Thank you for all your help, and please take care.
“What about Kanezaki?” Dox asked.
I went to that bulletin board. There was a message waiting:
I’m still looking into things, but running into a lot of interference and have to be careful. Anything more you can give me could help.
I typed in, What can you tell me about “Gird Enterprises”? Apparently the two departed men left the government for something by that name. I closed the two bulletin boards and reflexively purged the browser.
“Let’s see if there’s anything in the news,” I said.
I Googled a few variations on “Shooting in Manila Shopping Mall CIA.” And came up with a very interesting headline, from the Washington Post: “Two Slain Ame
ricans Reported to Be CIA Officers.”
“Shit, look at that,” Dox said.
We read the article. Apparently, “sources” were claiming that the two dead men were CIA. A CIA spokesman, citing Agency policy, refused to either confirm or deny the affiliations of the men.
We were quiet for a moment. Dox said, “Kanezaki said they were ex-spooks.”
I nodded. “He did.”
“Well, I’d have to call this a discrepancy.”
“Yeah.”
“Maybe your lady found out something that might shed some light on the situation. Why don’t you give her a call?”
I thought for a moment. For all the reasons Dox and I had just discussed, I didn’t think Delilah could have been involved in what had happened in front of Brown Sugar. What was bothering me was that I was hoping she hadn’t been involved. I realized this was dangerous: it used to be that I would just do the math and accept the results. I didn’t hope one way or the other or have any other particular feelings about it. Now I was emotionally invested in the outcome. That made me wonder whether I could trust myself not to skew the data.
I’d have to figure that one out as we went along. If I could.
I called her. There were three rings, then she answered. “Allo?”
“It’s me. Okay to talk?”
“Okay to talk. I was just going to post you something.”
“Where are you?”
“Bangkok.”
“So am I. Can you meet?”
“No. Gil is here. I have to be careful. And so do you.”
“He’s here?” I asked.
She must have heard something in my voice. Or else she had just come to know me well enough to know what I was thinking. Either way, she said, “Don’t even think it.”
I didn’t answer. I don’t like the feeling of being hunted. I tend to take it personally.
“Don’t even think it,” she said again. “If something happens to him, you will make an enemy of me. I promise.”
All right, Gil was on her team. I needed to remember that.
“I understand,” I said. “I’ll just keep a low profile.”