Trader of secrets

Chapter Seventeen

What are they doing now?”

Two FBI agents from the embassy in Bangkok stood in a room on the third floor in the office building in Pattaya. They were two stories above the green door, the entrance to the building, watching Madriani and the two people with him.

“They’re standing out on the sidewalk looking at the door from across the street. Can you beat it? Travel halfway around the world, then stand there with your thumb up your ass.” One of the agents looked through a spotting scope set up in the vacant third-floor office.

They had used a credit card to slide the cheesy lock open on the door and established a blind inside. They set up the spotting scope far enough back from the windows that with the interior lights out anyone looking in from the outside would see nothing. From here they got a bird’s-eye view of everything on the other side of the road. To cover this side, an agent in shorts and a tank top, looking like an expat, was camped out in a shop across the street. Another was in the Thai restaurant downstairs.

The radio crackled in the agent’s ear. “Do you see ’em?”

“Charlie One to Charlie Three, stay off the air if you can. They’re still on the street. We’ll let you know if they move.”

The problem was that the call for assistance from Washington had come without sufficient advance warning so that the embassy was unable to coordinate their actions with local Thai authorities. Consequently, the agents were on their own, using a communication channel that they couldn’t be sure wasn’t being used or monitored by the Pattaya police. Their instructions were to watch and report, to provide protection if necessary for the three U.S. nationals, and to watch for the man named Liquida, though they had no photographs, only a rough description.

We stand there on the sidewalk, parting the waters with throngs of pedestrians flowing around us as we watch the naked door across the street and debate what to do.

“Why don’t we go round back?” says Harry. “See what’s there.”

Looking at the door, not knowing what is inside, neither Joselyn nor I want to argue with him.

We walk down the sidewalk to the south, half a block closer to our hotel, and cross traffic where a narrow lane intersects Second Road on the other side.

It looks like more of an alley than anything else. But it must go somewhere. Cars and motorcycles are moving on it in both directions, so we follow it. A little farther on, maybe fifty yards, Joselyn stops. Harry and I keep walking.

“What about right there?”

Harry and I turn to look at her. She is pointing off to the left toward a narrow walkway between two buildings.

“It looks as if it might go through,” she says.

I take a peek. The walkway looks as if it passes between the buildings and widens out into a parking area behind the building with the green door.

“Let’s try it.” We start walking single file toward the narrow passage.

“Charlie One to Charlie Four, you got ’em?”

“No. This is Charlie Four. Give them a minute.” The agent was sitting in a restaurant next to the pharmacy just two shops down from the green door. He had a perfect view of the three Americans across the street. He watched them as they crossed over until they got too close to the sidewalk on this side where he couldn’t get an angle any longer. He was sure they were coming this way, heading for the entrance to the offices upstairs. If he panicked and raced out, he’d run right into them coming the other way.

“Charlie Four, do you have them?”

“No.”

“Where are they?”

“I don’t know. They could be hanging on the corner. Give ’em a couple more seconds.”

“Can you see them?”

“No, but I’m on it. Moving now.” Charlie Four tossed some Thai money at the waitress to pay for his iced tea, told her to keep the change, and hoofed it out onto the sidewalk. There was no sign of them at the corner. He looked south down Second Road against the direction of traffic. He couldn’t see them, though. The sidewalk was crowded. In running shoes and shorts, he’d have no difficulty catching up with them-if he only knew which way they went. “Got a problem here,” said Charlie Four. “Need help. They either went south on Second, in which case they’re probably headed back to their hotel. Or else they went down the side street. It’s Soi…” He looked for the street sign. There wasn’t one. “I’ll take the side street.”

“I got Second Road,” said Charlie Three.

Charlie Four turned left and headed down the narrow side street. There was no sign of the two men or the woman. Like everything else, the side soi s were getting crowded as people caught up in the rush hour looked for alternate routes.

There were cars and pedestrians, motorbikes and vendors with their pushcarts, all moving and jostling for space on the narrow side street. The agent caught a lift, jumped on the back of a moving baht bus, and tried to use the elevated height to see if he could find them in the crowd. The bus found an opening and headed down the street with the agent on the back, his eyes scanning the distance for the three Americans.

Liquida had no intention of going anywhere near the green door or the locked box upstairs. Nor did he want to take a chance on the company’s courier service, not now. One thing was certain; it was Bruno’s voice he had heard on the telephone message he picked up in Dubai. The question was whether the FBI had their hand up his ass playing puppet using the Chechen to try and hook Liquida and reel him in. If that’s what was happening, any deliveries from Bruno would be made by a courier with a government pension and a badge. Still, Liquida desperately needed the money that was in that drawer, assuming it was there.

He looked at his watch. It was after four. Traffic was beginning to thicken up out on Second Road. In a few minutes the street in front of his hotel would be a parking lot. He had things to do. He got up from the chair, slipped out one of the stilettos from the rolled cloth pack, and dropped his pants. He taped the long straight weapon to the inside of his left calf using a foot and a half of vet wrap. It was an area of the body that, unless police saw some bulge, they often didn’t frisk all that carefully. A piece of steel like the thin stiletto could easily slip by. He pulled his pants up and checked to make sure that nothing showed.

Then he grabbed a white canvas beach bag that was lying on the bed. The bag had two sturdy strap handles and was big enough to hold a couple of fair-sized phone books. He had purchased the bag earlier that day from an outdoor display on Beach Road, a place called Mike’s Department Store.

Liquida headed out of the room and down the stairs. He passed through the small lobby in front of the clerk at the desk and stepped out onto the sidewalk, which was teeming with pedestrians. He instantly lost himself in the sea of people moving quickly around the corner onto one of the side streets.

Ten feet farther on, two Thai teenage boys, motorbike taxi drivers, lay lounging on the long seats of their bikes while a third one sat perched in a low beach chair up on the sidewalk. They were all wearing worn and soiled green vests with the name of a local beer bar on the back. This was their turf, the corner where they hung out hoping to pick up fares. For a few baht they would give you a thin plastic helmet, let you hop on the back of their bike, and deliver you anywhere in the city. That is, if you could hang on and if you didn’t mind the occasional near-death experience.