Trader of Secrets: A Paul Madriani Novel

by Steve Martini

  Harry let out a deep sigh. He was standing there catching his breath when he heard them. Much slower and lighter this time, a tapping patter on the concrete steps. High heels. The place was getting busier than Union Station. Harry turned around and rapped on the glass. “Come on!”

  The patter of the footsteps was getting closer. They seemed to be slowing as they approached the second floor. Harry skated on the balls of his feet down the hall as fast as he could. He grabbed the door and slid into the men’s room. He held the door open and caught his breath as he peered through the crack.

  The woman entered the hall from the stairwell. She didn’t even slow down. Instead she walked right up to the dark glass in the door and slipped a key into the lock.

  Chapter

  Twenty

  Traffic was thick as cement. It was approaching the peak of rush hour. Cars and tall tourist buses were parked in the lanes on Second Road. The little blue baht buses, light pickup trucks with stainless steel tops and benches in the back for passengers, were stacked up all over the shoulder of the road picking up and dropping off fares.

  Liquida watched the gal in the flowered dress as she threaded her way through the stalled traffic, checking between lanes so that she didn’t get creamed by a motorbike riding the lines.

  As soon as she disappeared, Liquida went back toward the table in the beer bar. He snapped his fingers, and the taxi bike kid got up from the table. He left his beer, and together the two of them headed back to the taxi stand where the bikes were parked. Liquida gave the kid a five-hundred-baht banknote. “You know what you’re supposed to do?”

  The kid nodded.

  “Sabai, comprende?” said Liquida. “You understand?”

  “Yeah, yeah. Soi 2.”

  With that Liquida turned and headed quickly back toward Second Road. When he got there, he turned right. But he didn’t go into his hotel. Instead he walked past it and kept going south along the sidewalk. He looked across the street to see if there was any sign of the girl. He didn’t see her. By now Liquida figured she must be inside the building.

  He picked up his pace and kept walking. He glanced over as he passed the green door on the other side of the street. He walked another fifty yards and stopped near the curb. Liquida took one last look around and then stepped off the sidewalk. He used a key from his pocket to pop the seat on one of the motorbikes parked at the sidewalk. He grabbed the helmet from under the seat and put it on. Then he fastened the strap under his chin and closed and latched the seat.

  Liquida took a deep breath, put the key in the ignition, threw his leg over the bike, straddled it, and began to roll it backward out onto the shoulder of the road. He turned the handlebars to the left and worked the bike back and forth a little with his feet until it was parallel to the stalled traffic and just a few feet off the road.

  Cars and buses were creeping forward, inches at a time. Liquida turned the key and pushed the starter button on the bike. The little Suzuki Hayate started up instantly, its engine purring almost silently as it idled.

  Liquida had rented the motorbike the day before. He used it the previous night to scout out the area behind the office building looking for signs of surveillance. He didn’t see anything, but he still wasn’t convinced. It was the reason he had lived this long.

  * * *

  Joselyn and I take turns working high and low, using the small flashlight to quickly scan the labels on the filing cabinets and hoping the single battery in the Maglite lasts.

  We get to the bottom drawer at the end of the last aisle. Joselyn looks up at me. “That’s not it. So either there’s nothing here, in which case we’ve wasted a lot of time and a good deal of money, . . . or else it’s the one we saw back over there.”

  None of the labels on any of the cabinets bear the words Waters of Death.

  “That would explain why the fellow who leases the office—I assume he owns TSCC limited, whatever that is—why he told Thorpe’s people that he never heard of anything called Waters of Death,” says Joselyn.

  “Do you remember where it was?” I ask.

  She gets to her feet and starts walking along the back wall past the end of each aisle until she comes to the second row of cabinets. Using the Maglite, she flashes it up and down the face of each cabinet. “It was around here somewhere.”

  “As I recall it was up high, first or second drawer,” I tell her.

  She moves forward a few more cabinets. “Here it is.” She holds the light on the label. In the center of the two-by-three-inch label is the word WOD in large block letters, all capped. It is printed on the same form as every other label, with the three large black letters just under the smaller green print showing “TSCC Ltd.” and telephone numbers.

  Joselyn reaches up and grabs the handle on the drawer and pulls, but it is locked. You can see the small brass cylinder lock jiggle in its setting just a speck each time she jerks on the handle. “Any ideas?”

  “No. Last time I saw one of these locked up like that, it was in our office. Somebody lost the key. We had to call in a locksmith. It would take a crowbar to pry it open, and then we’d probably make enough noise to bring the whole place down on us.”

  Something catches my eye on the top right corner of the cabinet. “Here, let me see that.” I take the flashlight from Joselyn and look more closely.

  It’s an old decal about an inch long, pasted to the corner of the steel frame right at the top. It’s old and worn, very nearly scraped off the metal, but I can make out enough of the letters to piece it together.

  “What I said about prying it open with a crowbar . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “Forget it. It’s military surplus stuff. See that?” I touch the old decal. “It says ‘U.S. Army Signal Corp.’ It’s probably left over from the Vietnam War. Thailand was a big R & R center, rest and recuperation for the troops. If I remember right, they had a big air base around here somewhere. That’s probably where it came from.”

  “So?”

  “So the U.S. government doesn’t buy cheap stuff. You’re probably looking at a twenty-thousand-dollar filing cabinet—to go along with their forty-thousand-dollar toilet seats and their fifteen-thousand-dollar hammers. And even if they overpaid, that’s heavy-gauge steel. You won’t find that in Office Depot.”

  “So where’s the nearest locksmith?”

  Just as she says it, there’s a tap on the glass at the door. I turn and look over the top of the cabinets. I see Harry’s silhouette backlit against the lights out in the hall. “Come on, we better go.”

  “What’s the matter, getting nervous?” says Joselyn. “You don’t like the idea of doing time in a Thailand jail?”

  “We can try and figure out something tomorrow,” I tell her.

  Joselyn and I start to move toward the door when I look up and see Harry’s shadow receding like a sprinter away from the glass. “Hold on a second!”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I don’t know.”

  As we are standing there, another shadow approaches the door. This one is much smaller than Harry, with a feminine form.

  I twist off the Maglite. Joselyn and I retreat back down the aisle as fast as we can. We reach the end of the row just as we hear the key in the lock at the door.

  It opens as we slink around the corner behind the end cabinet. I am down on one knee with Joselyn behind me. She has a hand on my shoulder, breathing in my ear as the lights in the room suddenly flash on.

  The unexpected brilliance blinds me. I hear the door close and then the click of high heels as they cross the linoleum floor and head down the aisle directly toward us.

  I push back against Joselyn, trying to retreat. Just as I do, the woman slows down. She takes a few tentative steps and then stops. For a few seconds I hear nothing, then the jiggle of keys. It’s followed by a slight metallic click, and an instant later a drawer slides open.

  I can’t resist. I ease my head toward the corner of the cabinet until my left eye just clears th
e edge.

  The woman is standing in the aisle maybe ten feet away with her back to me. She is leaning over an open drawer removing papers and a few envelopes, putting them in a bag.

  Joselyn taps me on the back. She wants to know what’s happening.

  I shake my head, wave her off.

  A second later the woman closes the drawer. She pushes the lock back in, turns the key, and removes it. She straps the bag over her shoulder and heads for the door.

  I slowly settle back against Joselyn.

  The door opens, the lights go out, and then the door closes behind the woman.

  Joselyn lets out a long deep sigh. “That was close. Now it’s time to get out of here,” she says.

  “No! You stay here in case we need to get back in.” I twist on the flashlight and hand it to her as I get to my feet and head down the aisle.

  “Where are you going?”

  “She just cleaned out the drawer,” I tell her.

  “You mean WOD?”

  “Yes.”

  Chapter

  Twenty-One

  Liquida saw the girl coming out of the building as he sat on the bike with the engine purring. She had the white canvas bag, carrying it with the straps over her shoulder. He could tell there was something in it from the way it drooped.

  She walked a short distance up the sidewalk on the other side and then slowly began to cross over. Liquida watched her as she carefully threaded her way through traffic.

  He looked to see if anyone was following her. It was possible they could be watching her from a distance. If they were, all hell was going to break loose in about twenty seconds.

  She reached his side of the street and headed down the sidewalk in front of Liquida’s hotel. Just as she stepped off the curb across from the beer bar, the kid on the taxi bike pulled out of the side street directly in front of her.

  They talked for a second as Liquida watched. Then the kid handed her the five-hundred-baht note. She took it, and a second later handed the bag to the boy on the bike.

  The kid took off like a shot, turned north onto Second, and screamed along the shoulder of the road, streaking past the stalled traffic like lightning.

  It happened so quickly that Liquida barely had time to react. He slapped the face mask down on his helmet, twisted the throttle, and took off after him. He tried to gun it and glanced down at his speedometer just as the flailing form darted out from in front of the stopped bus. He jerked the bike to the left. The guy did a toreador move to the right, hips and ass in reverse. Liquida screeched by him, shaving the front of the guy with the right side of the bike and the hot muffler.

  He didn’t bother to look back. Instead, Liquida twisted the throttle all the way over. The bike shrieked along the side of the road, leaving all of the commotion behind. Liquida raced along, trying to catch a glimpse of the kid, but the taxi bike was gone.

  * * *

  By the time Harry sees me coming out of the office door, the woman with the bag is halfway down the stairs.

  He steps out of the men’s room. “Let’s get out of here.”

  I put a finger to my lips.

  “What’s up?” he whispers.

  I motion for him to join me at the stairwell. We wait until I hear the wooden door downstairs open and then close again.

  “Come on!” We head for the stairs.

  “What the hell’s goin’ on?”

  “The gal with the bag . . .”

  “Yeah.”

  “She may be delivering to Liquida,” I tell him.

  We hustle down the stairs into the hallway on the ground floor. We stop just inside the door that leads out to the street. I open it six inches or so, just enough to see out.

  “There she is.”

  She is off to the right, walking up the sidewalk away from us. The loud flower print of her dress and the oversize bag over her shoulder make her easy to track even with the glut of pedestrians at rush hour.

  “Let’s go.” Harry tries to push by me.

  “No, no. I can see her fine from here. Give her a second. See where she goes. She’s starting to cross the street.”

  “What, you’re gonna let her get away?” says Harry.

  “No, but if Liquida is out there somewhere watching her, he’s gonna bolt the minute he sees us. We may not get another chance.”

  I watch her as she crosses over. I am getting a little nervous. If she jumps into the back of one of the little blue trucks, the ones they use as buses, and heads down a side street, we could lose her.

  “What’s she doing now?” says Harry.

  “She’s over on the other sidewalk. Let’s go. . . . No, hold on! She stopped. She’s talking to somebody.”

  “You think it’s Liquida?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think so. . . . Oh shit!” I am out the door before Harry can move, running for the street. I hurdle a vendor out on the sidewalk and weave between the cars stopped on the road. I cross three lanes when I run smack into the side of a large white tourist bus that pulls up. His air brake hisses as he stops. I hear the high whine of the motorcycle engine over the heavy rumbling diesel as I race toward the front of the bus.

  Out under the bus’s massive windshield, I look to the right searching for the woman and the man on the motorbike, praying that she is still there and has the bag.

  As I run out from in front of the bus I get only a flashing glimpse of the oncoming rocket through the periphery of my left eye. Throwing my body back, I feel the end of the handlebar as it carves a path across my lower stomach, followed by scorching heat on my left shin. I land on my ass in front of the wheel of the bus, stunned and praying that the driver sees me and doesn’t lurch forward.

  * * *

  Up on the third floor, Charlie One wasn’t even looking through the spotting scope. He had his hands full fielding orders from the U.S. Embassy in Bangkok. They instructed him to notify the Pattaya police as to their location and to wait there until the police arrived. The embassy was busy making apologies to a higher authority.

  “What should we do about the three U.S. citizens?” He listened over the cell phone as they gave him instructions. Then he ended the call.

  “What do they want us to do?” said his partner.

  “Punt.”

  * * *

  Up ahead, two parked baht buses had the shoulder blocked. Liquida found an opening, moved to the right, and started streaming through the groove between the stalled vehicles. He rode the line, easing off whenever he approached a blind spot. He stopped at a red light and glanced skyward to see if there was anything moving overhead. It looked clear.

  He was certain that nobody could have followed the kid on the ground. It would have been impossible on anything but a bike. And if motorcycle cops had gone after him, Liquida would have seen them.

  The light turned green. Within seconds the twenty or so bikers at the head of the line took off down Second Road headed for the Dolphin Circle and the roundabout a mile away.

  Liquida hung back and allowed some of the traffic to pass him. A minute and a half later he approached Big C, a large shopping center off to the right. He drove in front of it and stopped at the curb directly across from the intersection of Soi 2. He sat there for a few seconds looking down the narrow side street as traffic moved past him.

  About a quarter of the way down there was an empty parking lot on the left side of Soi 2. It was in front of a nightclub that Liquida knew did not open until at least nine at night. Sitting in the parking lot on his bike wearing his grimy green vest was the taxi kid. Liquida could see the white beach bag hanging from the handlebars of the kid’s bike like a trophy.

  He looked to make sure there were no other vehicles in the lot. There was nothing moving on Soi 2. Liquida waited for a break in traffic on Second Road, then swung across the lanes and onto the narrow side street. He went straight to the parking lot next to the taxi bike, peeled off a thousand-baht note, gave it to the kid, and took the bag.

  The kid pocket
ed the money and took off, heading down Soi 2 for Beach Road and back to the taxi stand.

  Liquida didn’t waste any time. He scooted over near a trash can in front of the nightclub and quickly went through the contents of the bag. He opened the envelopes and examined it all. Anything not important he tore up into little pieces and tossed into the trash can.

  He ripped open the large insulated brown envelope and found four packets of wrapped five-hundred-euro banknotes, each bound with a brown paper wrapper. He also found a printed note from Bruno Croleva giving him the initial details of the new job, the where and when of Liquida’s next travels. He looked closely at the mark on the bottom of the page. Bruno never signed anything. Instead he used a signet ring like the ancient Roman consuls. He would use an ink pad and punch his seal on the bottom of the page. A signature on incriminating documents was hard to deny. A signet ring could always be melted, and yet to those who knew it, the mark was unique—an arrow with crossed serpents.

  Liquida didn’t bother to count the money. Instead he tore off the wrappers, tossed them in the trash, and then flexed the bills carefully in small groups, bending them to see if any of them were unduly stiff. He looked for any notes that might be glued together. The cops now had tiny radio-emitting wafers thinner than a credit card and not much bigger than a postage stamp. These were tracking devices that, if you didn’t find them, could lead authorities right to your front door. When he was finished, he tossed the insulated envelope into the trash, keeping only the money and Bruno’s note.

  In less than two minutes, Liquida buzzed out of the parking lot headed for Beach Road. He was feeling relieved and rather pleased with himself. There was no reason to worry after all. The drop box in the office was perfectly safe. He would change it soon, but for now it was good. It was also the only way to contact Bruno, the lockbox in conjunction with TSCC’s messaging system. Liquida would have to notify him that the job was accepted. And he would have to do it soon; otherwise Bruno would hire someone else.