Biowar (12 page)

“He definitely recognized the picture of Pound. I don’t know about Kegan.”

“All right. We have the shops Kegan went to the last time he was here. They’re up in Chinatown. Why don’t you head over and see if anything shakes out? Expect to be followed,” the runner added.

“Really? Bai’s people?”

“Not sure. Somebody’s watching you near the entrance. Their security camera doesn’t have a good view.”

Outside in the car, Karr took out his handheld computer and consulted his map of Bangkok.

“We need to get down by the university,” he told the driver. It was a good distance from Karr’s actual destination.

A few blocks later, Karr noticed that the driver was paying an inordinate amount of attention to his mirror.

“Problem?” Karr asked.

“We’re being followed.”

“Really? How ’bout that.”

Karr consulted his map and found a bridge about a mile from the area he’d just given the driver. As he did, the driver took a turn up a main street, entering a thick flow of bicycles. The street narrowed for a small bridge ahead, and the bikes and cars mixed with a flood of pedestrians coming in from the side.

“Wait a bit at the university, then drive around and end up at the bridge we just went over,” Karr said, slipping his handheld back in his pocket. “It’ll be a while.”

“What’s going on?”

“Just doing some sightseeing,” he said, cracking open the door.

The NSA agent barely missed bashing two women on precariously balanced bikes. His pursuers were some distance back in the throng, and while they could see what he was doing, there was no way for them to follow without making it obvious that they were doing so. He slid against the traffic flow, reached the side of the bridge, and bolted over the railing, swinging his legs around and hooking into the gridwork. His bulky frame made for an awkward fit through the closely placed girders, but he managed it anyway, dropping near the base at an embankment on the eastern side behind the car following him.

A warren of small buildings began where the bridge ended, and Karr quickly trotted into a back alley, climbing up onto a roof and looking back toward the bridge. His pursuers were stuck in the clog and if they wanted to follow him, would have to opt for the only decision that made sense, sticking on the car.

“Good work,” said Chafetz. “We’ll see if we can pull some IDs on them.”

“Bai’s people?”

“Not clear. He didn’t talk to them. We think one was watching in the lobby when you came in. We’ll get the car registration, then track it down. They’re sticking on your rental, so we’ll see sooner or later. You worry about yourself.”

“What? Me worry?”

Karr cut through another alley and then back in the opposite direction, finally finding a main street. Within a few minutes he found an empty pedicab. He had himself cycled twenty blocks to an area of small shops nestled at the foot of a mountain of apartments just on the outskirts of Bangkok’s Chinatown. He got out in front of a twenty-story high-rise, pulling a piece of paper out as if consulting the address. Karr walked down the block as if checking to see where he was, not only waiting for the driver to leave but also checking to make sure he hadn’t been followed. When he was reasonably sure he was clear, he found a basement stairway and descended a few steps, scanning his body to make sure he hadn’t inadvertently picked up a tracking device. As he dialed up the program on the handheld, a quartet of eyes appeared above.

“Hello,” said Karr as the faces disappeared.

He adjusted the program and did the sweep—he was clean—then hunted around his pants pockets for the roll of Life Savers he’d picked up at the airport back in the States.

“Hello,” he repeated as the eyes emerged on the other side of the steps. They were accompanied this time by a pair of giggles, and when Karr rose he saw two children, five or six years old, studying him as a curiosity. He reached out with the candy, but the two girls didn’t immediately realize what it was and took a step backward. Tommy started to crouch, trying to make himself less threatening, but as he did a piercing wail broke through the hum of the surrounding buildings and nearby traffic. The children’s minder—probably their grandmother—appeared from around the comer, yelling as if Karr were the devil himself. The kids froze, suddenly petrified, though it would be hard to say whether they were scared of him or their keeper.

“Just some candy,” said Karr in English, smiling at the old woman, who was now lecturing him indecipherably. He laughed, put the roll of Life Savers on the ground, and went back to the street.

“Masher,” whispered Chafetz in his ear.

“I was only giving them candy.”

“That’s what they all say.”

“You should have told me what to say in Thai.”

“You would have been arrested.”

“What was the old woman saying?” he asked his runner.

“Among other things, she has a very tasty recipe for your liver.” Chafetz’s voice changed. “You’re still five blocks away.”

“Just making sure I’m not being followed,” Karr told her. “Anything on Mr. Bai or my shadows?”

“Nothing new on Bai. The people following the car aren’t military and they’re definitely not TAT,” she added, referring to the special unit of Thai tourist police.

Karr walked a block and a half, then turned toward his destination, a row of small shops near Nakorn Kasem, the “Thieves’ Market” a few blocks outside of Chinatown’s central core. His first stop was a house shop that sold a variety of statues. Karr looked around for a minute or so, then showed the photos to the short woman who had been watching him from near the counter. The woman wanted nothing to do with the pictures and the agent didn’t press it, smiling at her and leaving a twenty-dollar bill near the register before walking out. He moved down and across the street to a tailor shop.

“Maybe I’ll get a suit of clothes and charge it to the agency,” he told Chafetz as he crossed.

“I heard that,” said Telach.

“Hey, mama, how’s it hanging?”

“Your mix of metaphors boggles the mind,” said the Art Room supervisor.

“You know, Marie, you sound more and more like Rubens every day,” he said.

The tailor also did not recognize Kegan from the picture. Karr laid a bill on the counter, slipping a fly down as well. If he kept a file on his customers—some tailors did—he didn’t consult it after Karr left.

Two stops later, he came to a restaurant. This time Karr showed cash up front, supplementing it with a few sentences of Thai from the Art Room translator. This got him immediately to the manager, who studied the photos Karr fanned out on the table nearly as intently as the hundred-dollar bill below them.

“Two days, three,” said the manager, who spoke English.

Karr nodded as if he’d expected this. “Both men?”

“Just this one,” said the manager, pointing to Kegan.

“He used a phony credit card,” said Karr matter-of-factly. He reached into his pocket for supplemental funding. “We’d like to make sure you get paid. But we have to find him to do that.”

Concern was now evident on the manager’s face, but the financial incentive did not produce a receipt or a better memory. But this was enough for a start: the Art Room would pull the restaurant’s records from the local credit card service—no subpoena was required to tap into the foreign processing unit—and grab a list of credit card numbers. They could then start examining those accounts to see if they could backtrack to Kegan.

Assuming, of course, that Kegan had really used a credit card.

Karr left another hundred on the table and started to leave.

Then he got a better idea.

“Mind if I have some lunch?” he asked.

“You’re running behind,” said Chafetz.

“I wasn’t talking to you,” he said, smiling at the thoroughly confused manager as he pulled out a chair.

17

Dean’s years in the Marine Corps had convinced him that patience was the most important innate skill a sniper could have. A steady hand, good eyes, perseverance, guts, instinctual knowledge of the way people behaved—Dean didn’t know a sniper who made it through training without these qualities. But the real diamond, the most difficult gem to find in the deep mine of human consciousness, was the ability to wait. You couldn’t just sit—you had to sit with your eyes and ears and nose open. You sat ready, and you sat like that for hours and hours and days and days.

It had been a long time since Dean was in the Marine Corps—four or five lifetimes, it seemed. But he was still very patient, or could be when the circumstance required it. As it did now.

They had landed in Hamburg, taken a taxi to a house where he’d been fed and blindfolded, then driven around for a while longer before arriving back at the airport, where they’d boarded a flight apparently for Austria. Dean assumed the elaborate arrangements were meant to give his escorts a chance to see if they were being followed, but it was also possible they were trying to skimp on plane fare—the thugs hadn’t bothered to enlighten him.

The airplane they were flying in was an Airbus A320, a two-engined commercial airliner that in this case accommodated 150 passengers, though only three-fourths of the seats on the flight were filled. The CFM International turbofans had a throaty hum that reminded Dean of the sound a dentist’s drool sucker made as it pulled saliva from a mouth during drilling—assuming that sound was amplified a hundred times.

Most of the people on the plane were businessmen and -women, though there was a mix of students and a few tourists as well. Dean didn’t recognize any of the accents as American, nor did he spot anyone whose face looked familiar and who might be part of a trail team.

After they landed, the men prodded Dean to move quickly through the terminal; one handed him a passport that claimed he was Canadian. Dean adjusted his glasses, clicking the alert on, though by now he realized the com device had been broken. He considered taking out his sunglasses as they came outside, but the afternoon sky was overcast and threatening to rain and he thought it would be too suspicious. The Art Room would be tracking him and Lia would be behind him somewhere; it was best to just be patient and see how it played out.

It always came down to patience.

A blue Mercedes met them outside the terminal. As the driver reached over to open the door, Dean caught a glimpse of a holster inside his jacket. Dean slid in between his two minders. They spoke in German to the driver, whose tone sounded somewhat dismissive, though Dean had no way of knowing precisely what they were all talking about.

Five miles from the airport, the Mercedes pulled over. Another car, this one a station wagon, stopped behind them.

“Out,” said the man on Dean’s left as the other one opened the door.

“What’s going on?” asked Dean.

“We want to search you.”

“In the middle of the road?”

“Just get out,” said the man, adding something in German before pushing him toward the door.

Two men from the other car patted him down, looking for a weapon. When the search was over, one of the men went back to the station wagon and returned with a small suitcase.

He opened the case, producing what looked like a long, thin microphone. After adjusting a knob on a control panel in the suitcase, he began running the wand over Dean’s body, looking for a transmitter.

The NSA techies had assured Dean that the com system couldn’t be detected. Its transmission circuits shut off in the presence of magnetic fields produced by devices such as the one that was being used now to scan him, and the extremely low current used in the device mimicked the current inherent in a human body. But all the assurances in the world didn’t make Dean’s stomach rest any easier as he waited for the men to finish.

“Very good,” said the man back by the suitcase.

Dean waited as they packed up the equipment. One of the two men who had met him in London went and spoke to a man in the front seat of the station wagon. He nodded and took an envelope before going back to the Mercedes. Dean began to follow, but the man who had wanded him put out his hand.

“Professor, no. Your ride is on its way.”

“I’m not a professor,” said Dean. “I work in a lab.”

The man smiled but otherwise remained silent. A few minutes later, a second Mercedes drove up. A short man in khaki pants and a gray T-shirt got out and walked over, holding a folder in his hand. He spoke English with an accent that sounded German to Dean.

“You’re not Dr. Kegan,” said the man.

“Dr. Kegan is busy.”

“Where?”

“I work for him, not the other way around,” said Dean.

“Where?”

“Drumund University, Hudson Valley Division, primarily,” said Dean. That was the lab Lia had visited; Dean’s name was now listed on the security files as that of a visiting fellow with all access privileges. “Actually I’m paid by him directly under one of his grants; I’m not exactly sure which.”

The man frowned and opened his folder. “The University of Albany?”

“What about it?”

“The name means nothing?”

“Of course it does. I did my undergrad work there. I lived in Indian Quad.”

“A state school.”

Dean shrugged. “So? Some of us weren’t born rich.”

“Your grades were not impressive.”

“I didn’t realize I was being interviewed for a job,” said Dean.

The man smirked and closed the file. “E. coli one-three-five-six -E.”

Dean stared at the man. It was obviously some sort of test, but what?

He touched his glasses, trying to make it look like a nervous tic—eminently believable.

Now he wished he had the sunglasses on. But maybe they wouldn’t have worked, either.

“One-three-five-six-E.”

“I’m not really sure I know what you’re getting at,” said Dean. “There are many strands of E. coli. Are we talking about protein synthesis or hamburgers?”

The man frowned, but something in the answer satisfied him, for he signaled to the other men. “I’m sorry, but we’re going to have to blindfold you. It’s a precaution. You won’t be harmed.”

“I’d like to get something to eat,” said Dean.

“You will be treated well once you arrive at your destination.”