by Jay Deb
Twelve hours later, Doerr was standing at the immigration entry, holding a red, Swedish passport. The name inside read Edvard Johansson. Mostly white men stood in the long line, waiting for their passport to be stamped. Some of the visitors were there for business, but the majority, Doerr knew, were looking for a good time.
A source had stated that Heherson lived in the jungles but liked to visit Bangkok for the occasional sexual rendezvous. His favorite place was a massage parlor on Soi 2, right off Ram Inthra Expressway, in Sukumvit.
Doerr reached the Presidente Hotel late at night. The next morning he visited the massage parlor at around noon. It was empty, and he was told to come back after three.
He returned at 2:45 and saw people going in and out. The place was preparing to be ready for prime time when Johns from all over the world would converge on them.
Doerr went inside, ordered a Singha beer and sat there for a half hour. Customers and a bunch of girls sat on opposite sides of a glass wall.
He tried to talk to the few men who were serving drinks, but they showed indifference. Sitting behind the glass wall, many girls tried to make eye contact with Doerr, but he avoided them and focused on his beer.
One woman was being excessively friendly, and she came over and sat next to him. Growing bolder, she started touching his shoulders, cheeks, and hands. He let her do that, and soon he paid three thousand baht to go into a private room with her.
She was a whitish, petite woman with black silky hair that hung down to a few inches below her shoulders. She wore a short pink skirt and a white blouse. She was about five feet and two inches and had a boyish look to her face. Doerr guessed she was about thirty years of age.
He followed the woman into the massage room. The room was about fifteen by ten feet wide; there was a queen size bed at the end, and an old TV stood on an even older wooden table near the door.
She pushed him to a sit on the bed, and then she put her hand on his belt, trying to unbuckle it.
“Please don’t,” he said.
“Why? You pay full price.” She kept pulling his belt. “I promise you enjoy it.”
“It’s okay.” Doerr pushed her hand and shifted away from her.
“Why?” The woman started removing her blouse. “You no like me?”
“It’s not that. See, I’m married.”
“Then why you come here?” The woman moved closer to Doerr, topless. “Many married people come here. It no problem.”
Doerr looked at the woman’s tiny breasts and the scar right above her navel. “Do you know Heherson?” Doerr asked.
Instantly, the woman’s demeanor changed. She took a step back and picked up her blouse. “No. Why you ask?”
“I have important business with him. Do you know when he will come here next?”
“Oh. So that’s why you here? To catch him?” The woman’s face became red with fury, and she put her blouse back on. She took two steps back and pointed to the door.
Doerr realized too late that Heherson had paid everyone there to lie for him. He knew he had blown a good lead to the Filipino terrorist. He should have befriended the woman before broaching the question. Unfortunately, the idea of spending more time with the prostitute was repugnant to him.
IN THE EVENING, Doerr walked around the area surrounding the parlor and found a hotel, about five hundred feet away. It was small, with four stories; at the door he saw local boys hanging around, harassing anyone who passed by. He walked into the hotel and proceeded to the check-in office. A short young man, sporting a beard, sat there. Despite his torn shirt, he appeared to be managing the place.
“Swadi Khap,” Doerr greeted the man in Thai. He knew that even if you didn’t know the language completely, it’s better to start with a phrase in the local language. It always drew a chuckle.
The man smiled. “You want room?” he said, as if he was having a hard time believing it.
Doerr noticed a bad smell and took a look around, searching for the source. The paint on the walls needed the touch of a fresh brush, and the concrete floor had not been mopped in a while. “Yes, what is the rate per night? I’m a little short on cash.” Doerr thought it would be best to lie about why he was there.
“Okay, maybe you see room first. You will pay three-day rent advance.”
“Sure, no problem. Now show me, please. I want a room on the fourth floor, if you have one.”
“I no have four floor room,” the man said. “I have one third floor. You want see?”
You gotta be kidding me, Doerr thought and said, “Are you sure there is nothing on the top floor?”
“Yes. Is busy season, my friend.”
The man led Doerr upstairs. On the third floor, the man quickly walked to a room and opened the door. The man walked in, and Doerr followed suit, welcomed by a musty smell. The room was specious. Aside from the bed, an old dressing table lay against the wall, an old mirror hanging right above it.
Doerr walked to the door that led to the balcony and opened it. From the balcony, he could see the massage parlor clearly – who was going in and who was coming out. Everything discernible by a human eye at the parlor door could easily be recorded by a device from the balcony.
Doerr turned to the man and said, “I will take it.”
“You pay three-day rent in advance,” the man said. “Three thousand six hundred baht.”
“I will pay you two weeks’ rent in advance. But I have a condition.”
“What is your condition?”
“I don’t want anyone to come to my room and disturb me. No one should enter my room when I’m away. In short, no one should come to my room unless I ask for it. Got it?”
The man nodded five times, and then he extended his hand. “Now give money.”
IN DOERR’S PARLANCE, it was called a neighbor, and the people who had worked closely with him knew it. A neighbor was what he called the setup that watched a place or monitored someone’s activity; sometimes it was just a listening device, at other times it was a camera equipped with motion detectors or a laser beam on a high-tech machine that could confirm someone’s voice. An advanced version of a neighbor included a video-recording system with a detector that scanned for a particular face, body contour or gait.
Doerr moved to his new stinky hotel room and was pondering how to install a neighbor to keep an eye on the massage parlor’s door front. The source had said Heherson was already in Bangkok, so there was a good chance that he could show up at any time.
Doerr stood on his balcony with a cup of coffee in his hand. He needed a twenty-four seven video-recording system, which would be triggered by someone going in and out of the parlor. But the five hundred feet distance between his new hotel balcony and the massage parlor door made usage of facial recognition technology to identify Heherson impossible.
Doerr made a call to the safe house in Bangkok. An innocent-sounding woman said ‘hello’ in a sleepy voice. Doerr said, “I need a few things.”
“What is the code word?” the woman asked.
“Navajo.”
The woman’s voice became alert immediately, “Send me an encrypted email with details of what you need, and everything will be ready within a couple days. I think you have the email address.”
“Yes, I do.” Doerr hung up.
Doerr finished his coffee and then turned his IBM laptop on. It took three minutes to boot up and showed several icons on the screen. Doerr inserted an Internet card into one of the laptop’s ports and clicked on an icon. A dialog window popped up, and Doerr entered his user ID and password.
Doerr drafted the email:
Two security cameras.
One high-precision long-distance motion detector.
One laptop equipped with image matcher software.
One Glock with a suppressor.
Three high-quality bugs.
Doerr thought for few minutes and then added – laser-equipped, long-distance voice recorder.
He was referring to a device that could pi
ck up a voice from a distance of a thousand feet by beaming a laser at the window.
He thought for few more minutes and then clicked on the send button.
THE INSTRUMENTS ARRIVED two days later. A young man delivered the goods in three large, innocuous-looking suitcases. Once the man left, Doerr opened the suitcases, took all the gadgets out and started assembling them. It was painstaking work. By ten p.m. he had managed to set up the video cameras and the motion detectors.
After a test run, he checked the recorded images from the video camera. The quality was not good, as there wasn’t much light at the massage parlor door, but he could do nothing about that.
He left the cameras on overnight. The next morning he fed the video from the cameras into his laptop and ran the software that would try to match the video against Heherson’s image. After five minutes, the software reported that there was no match. It could have been because Heherson was nowhere near the parlor, or it could have been because of the poor quality of the video. The only way to find out was to sit and watch the video, scene by scene, for hours.
He stared at the video for two hours before needing a break. He disassembled the devices and placed them back into the suitcases, so even if the hotel housekeeping came in the room to clean up, they wouldn’t see it. And if someone broke into the suitcases, Doerr would receive an alert on his cell immediately.
He left the hotel and walked aimlessly for a while. After an hour or so he returned to the shabby room and watched the rest of the video – there was no sign of Heherson.
That evening, Doerr again set up the recording devices, and the next day he went through the same routine, checking the footage; again, there was no Heherson.
On the fourth day, the software found a match, and Doerr jumped at the computer. The display showed Heherson arriving at the parlor at around ten p.m. and leaving with a happy face about an hour later. He wore black pants and a check shirt, accompanied by another man who looked like a bodyguard. Both men could be seen getting into a cab.
Doerr set up the cameras again that same evening but stayed glued to the monitor. He saw Heherson returning to the parlor at 10:05 p.m. If his job had been to snipe down the guy with an M16, it would have been a cinch. But the job, this time, was to get to him and listen to what he said into his phone. That should give enough information as to where his helpers were, and that would bring the CIA close to the hostages Heherson was holding. At the very least, Heherson’s conversations should give a good lead.
Doerr watched the monitor for an hour, and, similar to the previous day’s pattern, Heherson left at 11:15 p.m. At the front door of the hotel, a man was waiting with a motorbike. Doerr had given the man seven thousand baht earlier in the day to arrange to have a motorbike wait for him the entire night.
Doerr took the bike and leaned against the wall, kicking a beer bottle that someone had left there.
Within minutes, Doerr saw Heherson come out of the parlor and climb into a waiting taxi. The cab pulled away from the building, and Doerr followed; the cab took a few turns, and then it merged onto the Ram Inthra Expressway.
The cab, a converted Toyota Corolla, was moving slowly through the traffic-ridden streets of Bangkok. It shot ahead a few times, but Doerr twisted the throttle and caught up with the cab easily. In Bangkok, motorcycles were able to drive much faster than a sedan, due to the congested traffic that never cleared, no matter how many new roads and bridges the government constructed.
After about five kilometers, the taxi took a turn, and so did Doerr. The new road had less traffic, and the cab picked up speed. As Doerr increased his pace, the air blew through his hair, and his shirt billowed behind him. He felt uncomfortable, but he continued to drive at a safe distance behind the taxi, which he hoped would soon stop at a cheap hotel, but it didn’t. It crisscrossed through a number of streets. Doerr maintained a good distance; some roads were badly lit, and he expected that he had the stealth he needed.
A few turns later, the cab stopped in front of a large hotel. Doerr stopped in a dark shadow and watched a hotel employee come to the cab and help Heherson out. Doerr took out his smartphone, noted down the hotel name and immediately called Samuel.
THE NEXT DAY Doerr was drinking his coffee from a tiny foam cup in his hotel lobby. After four days in Bangkok, he was still grappling with jetlag. A local man sat at the next table. He wore no shirt and smoked and sipped coffee at the same time. Doerr watched a boy, barely fourteen or fifteen years old, carry in two huge suitcases. An elderly man, the apparent owner of the suitcases and obviously a new customer for the hotel, followed the boy.
Doerr wondered at what grade that boy had dropped out of school. He was so engrossed in his thought that he was startled by the ringing of his own phone.
It was Samuel. “Good job, Max. Our techies were able to hack into the hotel computers and found a room number booked against one of Heherson’s known aliases.”
“Great,” Doerr said.
“Now you need to do one more thing.”
“What is that?” Doerr asked.
“Go to his room and get his cell phone, or its number. Then we can listen in on what the bastard says.”
“I have to go to his room, when Heherson is there, and snatch the phone from his hand?” Doerr said sarcastically. “Is that what your plan is?”
“Yeah, something like that,” Samuel paused for a few seconds. “Or go through his stuff and notes to find his number.”
“I have a better idea.”
“Okay, let me hear it.”
“You guys put a satellite watch on the hotel and tell me when he goes out. Do it during the daytime, so it’s still busy, or when I walk into the hotel the employees might become suspicious. Then I’ll get in his room and plant a bug. Your techies can match the voice coming out of that bug with the cell phone transmissions. When they find the match, they’ll also have the cell number, actual conversation and who he is calling. Then my job will be over.”
“I’m not sure if that will work, Max. So many things have to go right. Let me talk to my techie. I’ll get back to you.”
“If your techie says he can’t do it, then just get a new guy.”
THE FOLLOWING DAY, Doerr went to the safe house and picked up some key cards that had various security codes imprinted on them. Swiping two or three of those cards would guarantee access to any hotel room door without complaint.
A day later, Samuel called. “My techie figured everything out, just the way you said, Max.”
“Good to hear.”
“I have more good news. Heherson has just left the hotel.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes,” Samuel replied. “I saw the real-time video feed myself.”
Doerr immediately hung up and rode his bike to Heherson’s hotel and walked inside. The hotel lobby was teeming with people, and Doerr sauntered to the elevator without raising anyone’s suspicion. No one gave him a second look, and no one followed him. Guests were reading newspapers in the lobby, and three hotel staff members were busy helping patrons with their luggage.
Inside the elevator, Doerr pressed the button for the sixth floor and was soon in front of room number 617 – Heherson’s room. Doerr looked around and wiggled the handle: nothing. He started swiping the cards he had taken from the safe house, and upon swiping the fourth card, the door clicked open.
Inside, he planted three bugs – one under the bed, one under the sofa, and the last one under the cabinet in the restroom. Doerr knew some people had a habit of sitting on the toilet for a long time and making calls from there.
Samuel called the following day and told Doerr that Heherson’s phone number had been identified by the techies, thanks to the bugs that he had placed. Langley folks heard Heherson give commands to his henchmen in the Philippines, and they received a plethora of information.
His assignment complete, Doerr packed up his bags and left Bangkok.
Chapter 7
During the flight back home to New York, he
felt good. Yes, this is what I needed.
But as soon as he disembarked from the plane, the memory of Billy’s dead body stabbed him in the chest like a sharp dagger. As he walked through the airport lounge, he saw his son’s face on the glass walls. He stopped at a coffee shop, but the caffeine only made him feel emptier.
After a few days of downtime, he received another call from Samuel. “Good job, Max. We have already identified where Heherson is holding the hostages. We got pictures of his compound, and a team of Marines are chalking up a path for the helicopters to get there. A Delta team is rehearsing how they will extract the hostages. Thanks again.”
“You’re welcome. I’m glad I was able to help.”
“Your next job will start in two weeks. Get some rest.”
Doerr hung up and decided to go and talk to the detective working on Billy’s case. Doerr was told that the investigation had hit a wall and if someone did not come up with a solid lead, the case could be closed.
Doerr returned home and set about talking to his neighbors and local shop owners, asking them to distribute pamphlets he’d had printed asking for any information about the crime. But only a few of them were willing to help.
A week later, Samuel gave him his next assignment. Only when Doerr focused on work was his mind soothed a little. The job was in London; a terrorist, originally from Jordan, was hiding in a flat in Maida Vale. Doerr was told to flush him out and force him to go back to Amman.
HIS NAME WAS Sheraz Naseer. Naseer had come to London with a single purpose – to get rid of Abdullah, the king of Jordan. Naseer had entered the country on a UK student visa with an acceptance letter from a relatively unknown London University. The only Londoners who seemed to know about the University were its staff and the students.
Naseer did everything to achieve his goal, but after liaising with al-Qaeda’s London cell and other Muslim terrorist outfits, he sadly realized that overthrowing the king would not be as easy as he had expected. He felt even more frustrated after learning that Jordan was not a big name on al-Qaeda’s priority list.