Sins of the Father (5 page)

Again, the nod-and-grunt combo. Peter smiled, took out the phone, and dialed the Chechens. The guy with the creepy voice picked up, sounding more eager than ever. Peter switched to Russian, telling him to wait at the eastern stairway on the thirtieth floor. The man on the other end went into elaborate detail about what would happen to Peter if he tried anything funny.

Peter made himself smile and nod for the benefit of the Koreans, and then ended the call.

“They will be here,” he assured them. Then he showed the Koreans five fingers to indicate how long it would take to fetch the Chechens and get them set up on their end of the roof. With that, he headed over to the eastern tower.

* * *

The Chechens were waiting there in the eastern stairwell. There were five of them, and they seemed shockingly young—not one a day over twenty. They were all roughly bearded and underfed, clad in ill-fitting, brand new suits and cheap ties that made them look like hillbillies dressed up for a court appearance. They hadn’t bothered to buy new shoes to go with the new suits, and were all wearing battered combat boots.

Two of them had brought baggage. One had the requisite briefcase, and the other had an unexpected duffle bag almost certain to be full of killing tools. He suppressed a shudder and hoped they would be pointed at someone other than him.

“
Pozdravleniya
,” he said, then added, still in Russian, “Which of you is Umarov?”

To Peter’s surprise, the one who stepped forward and introduced himself as Umarov in that now-familiar, creepy phone-sex voice was the youngest-looking of the group. He was of a slight build, with narrow shoulders and small hands, as if he hadn’t received enough nutrition as a child. He had a sharp, Slavic profile and his light-brown beard was wispy and still baby-fine. He couldn’t have been old enough for a legal beer in the US, but he had terrifying zealot’s eyes.

A guy his age should be busy trying to start a garage band, or talk girls out of their
trusiki, Peter mused. But the world was full of child soldiers, teen gang members, and lost boys of all kinds. There was nothing he could do to save them from the fate they chose. And it wasn’t like he was planning to kill these guys himself—just point them at the Koreans. If they didn’t want to start something, they didn’t have to.

And if they
did
shoot first, they still might win and walk away unharmed.

Peter wasn’t putting their fingers on the triggers. He just provided them with the opportunity.

That was what he told himself, anyway.

He turned and let the Chechens into the locked stairway. They followed him upward, their boots thudding on the stairs, and out onto the windy roof. As soon as they had emerged, they set themselves up in a precise, military formation. The guy with the duffle bag unzipped it and pulled out an AK-47, then stepped off to one side, his jaw clenching and unclenching as he chewed a wad of gum. He kept the barrel pointed down, but was bird-dogging the Koreans the entire time.

The others passed around a variety of firearms as if they were candy bars, while Peter stood there trying to look calm and relaxed.

Jaruk’s 1911 against the sweat-slick small of his back no longer seemed like much of an asset.

He asked Umarov if they were ready. The Chechen nodded and gestured for the kid with the briefcase to hand it over to Peter.

This was it. His moment to shine.

Peter nodded. His palm was slick with nervous perspiration, and he had to grip the handle tightly to keep it from slipping while he walked toward the wasp-waisted center of the roof.

As he reached the skylight, he couldn’t help but notice that the Koreans had also gunned up, and were scowling through the gloom at the Chechens. Although being in the crossfire made Peter feel like a mechanical duck in a shooting gallery, he also knew that all those guns would keep the two groups focused on each other, and not on him. Which was exactly the way he had planned it.

Nevertheless, it felt as if his heart was trying to beat itself to death against the inside of his ribcage, and the high wind was wicking the cold sweat away from his exposed skin, making him feel chilled and shivery. Yet he couldn’t let himself think about any of it. He had to concentrate on the sleight of hand that was coming next.

When he reached the skylight with the missing pane, he dropped the Chechens’ briefcase into the suite below, smoothly grabbing his own identical case, and never breaking his stride.

The Koreans were so busy giving the Chechens the stinkeye that they barely noticed Peter until he was right beside them, handing the case over to Mr. Park. The Korean nodded and passed it to the tall guy with the bleached hair, trading it for the one he was holding.

But Park didn’t hand over the Korean case. Instead, he waited silently as the tall guy opened the one Peter had given them, and began to inspect the contents.

This was a tricky spot. The point where everything could go to hell.

Peter held his breath, and clenched his fists.

Inside the case was a device of Peter’s own creation. He’d told both sides that he could deliver to them a device which would allow the user to hack and reprogram armed UAVS, also known as drones. In reality, the Korean was examining an old laptop motherboard and frame, grafted to a touch-screen tablet and the controller for a toy helicopter.

It only needs to be convincing for a few minutes
, he reminded himself. He’d told each group that the other one was selling this technological unicorn. Both parties thought
they
were the buyers. Peter already had the Chechen money, which he’d dropped through the skylight. Now he needed to get the Koreans’ payoff, as well, so that it could join the first case in the suite below.

On paper, it all looked simple.

Peter liked to believe that, after a decade of experience as a freelance “social engineer,” he was able to predict human behavior like a veteran sailor could predict the tides. Along the way, however, he’d also learned to expect the unexpected.

Stay calm
, he reminded himself.

To his amazement and relief, Blondie nodded his approval. Peter felt every muscle in his body turn to relieved jelly as he let out the breath he had been holding, trying not to be too obvious.

So far so good.

Mr. Park handed Peter the other briefcase, motioning with his weak chin, gesturing toward the antsy Chechens. Peter thanked him in Japanese, and started back across the roof.

When he reached the skylight, he made the second crucial swap, smoothly dropping the Koreans’ case into his suite and grabbing his own. He could feel the Chechens’ hard eyes boring into him as he cleared the final stretch, hoping all the while that the shadows had kept his secret.

By the time he reached the other side, he was clenched-up again. He handed the ringer case to Umarov. They were less than ten feet away from his escape route now, but one of the Chechen boys had positioned himself in front of the door. Peter’s only hope was that when the
govno
hit the fan, the goon would leave his post to join in the action, giving Peter the opportunity to take a powder, unnoticed.

The kid with the Kalashnikov drew down on the Koreans with rock-steady hands. He spat his wad of gum off to one side, narrowly missing Peter’s sneakers. Umarov opened the case, revealing its contents—several copies of the “Gentleman’s Guide” to Bangkok’s red-light districts.

Life would be so much better for this kid
, Peter thought to himself,
if he spent his rubles on a hot soap massage with a happy ending.
Umarov swore and flashed a low hand signal. The kid with the rifle unceremoniously shot Mr.

Park in the face. His aim was superb, considering the lighting, the high wind, and the distance of the target.

This couldn’t be his first time.

Peter hit the deck and covered his head with both arms.

The Koreans returned fire.

Chaos erupted with so much noise that it was impossible to distinguish one sound from another. Bullets struck the rooftop and dislodged bits of concrete, but most of them flew by at a safe height. After a few seconds Peter pulled the gun from the small of his back and raised his head to check out the scene.

One of the Korean muscle twins was bleeding from his left arm, but still firing steadily from the cover of the western stairwell, while the other dragged his fallen boss around the back. Blondie had thrown himself down on his belly with the precious case under his chest, and was shooting wildly every which way.

Peter eyed the door to his eastern exit, wondering where the guy who’d been standing there had gone. He was about to make a run for it when his question was answered by a hand gripping the back of his shirt, and then hauling him forcefully around the back of the stairwell.

It was pretty much the only serious cover. All five of the angry Chechens were crammed there together, in the narrow strip that separated the structure from the spindly railing on the edge of the roof. Taking turns leaning around the corner and shooting at the Koreans, they were having some kind of unfathomable argument in Chechen, which Peter didn’t understand at all.

What he
did
understand was that he was stuck on the wrong side of the stairwell—the side that didn’t have a door. He needed to get the Chechens to cover him, while he made a run for the door. Otherwise he’d get plugged the second he stuck his head out.

But his brain was spinning, coming up blank, again and again.

He had to think.

Think!

Die Hard
jokes notwithstanding, Peter wasn’t an action hero. He knew how to use a gun, but he was an average shot under the best of circumstances. He wasn’t particularly brave. Reckless, yes, but not because of courage.

He really wasn’t a bad ass.

But he
was
good at manipulation. That was his super power. The ability to think on his feet, and talk his way out of any situation. Not that it was doing him much good.

Think, Peter!

Suddenly, it hit him. He knew exactly what he needed to say, and was retrieving the proper Russian translation from his adrenaline-addled brain when one of the boys took a bullet in the shoulder and reeled backward, spinning and slamming into him.

Peter let out an involuntary shout and fell into one of the slender railings that stood between him and the deadly thirty-story drop to the hot Bangkok street below. Unsurprisingly, the half-assed railing bent backward under his weight, and his feet slipped into the narrow gap between the railing and the edge of the roof.

He dropped Jaruk’s gun and flailed for balance as both his legs followed his feet. He was narrowly saved from falling to his death by a flat metal post, which wedged between his legs and slammed into his junk, preventing the rest of his body from slipping through.

Bolts of pain shot through him.

Never in his life had he been so happy to be hit in the nuts.

The awkward fall left him balanced like a witch on a broomstick. Instead of its usual vertical position, the post was sticking horizontally off the edge of the roof at a 90-degree angle. It had been attached to the roof with four bolts, three of which had been torn loose by Peter’s weight. The only thing holding him up was that one bolt and the two flimsy wires connecting the bent post to its wobbly neighbors.

Below his dangling feet lay the teeming nighttime city.

Concentrating on breathing through the nauseating pain and trying to recover enough to climb back up onto the roof, he forgot for a crucial moment what a bad idea it would be to look down.

He looked down.

Vertigo slammed into him harder than the wounded Chechen, and he swallowed an airless, terrified gasp, grasping frantically for the post. He could see dozens of tiny motorbikes and taxis flowing like glowing corpuscles along Wireless Road, far below. Ant-sized people swarmed around the brightly lit, multicolored fountain in front of the neighboring shopping plaza. It might have been a beautiful view, if he weren’t about to fall into it.