Trader of secrets

Chapter Forty-Two

I make the call to the local authorities, not from the room but from a pay phone in the lobby of one of the adjoining hotels. I don’t leave my name, but I tell them about Liquida and the poster with his picture and give them the name of his hotel. Even if they don’t catch him, I am assuming that someone at the front desk will recognize his picture. They might be able to tell the cops when he left so that the French authorities will know how much of a head start he has.

When I’m done, I hang up the phone and head back to the room. Before I get there, I hear the alternating high-low pitch of the sirens from the French police cars as they arrive in the dead-end alley down the street.

By the time I get back to the room in our hotel, Harry is already there with his bags packed.

“Time to go home,” he tells me.

“Yeah, I suppose I’m going to have to call Thorpe and tell him what we found and hope he doesn’t turn us over to the French police. If he does, we’ll be here for a month answering questions. Thorpe sent me an e-mail. Told me that if we weren’t back by late tomorrow he was gonna put us on the no-fly list.”

“Nice of you to tell us,” says Harry.

“I didn’t want to worry you,” I tell him.

“Well, then, let’s get our asses in gear before he slams the door and locks us out of the country,” says Harry.

“Where’s Joselyn?”

“She’s in the other room checking her e-mail. She looked a little queasy,” says Harry.

“Yeah, I don’t think she’s used to seeing dead people,” I tell him.

What I mean is, unlike the two of us who have spent a lifetime getting off on morbid victim photos from various medical examiners in capital cases.

The door to the bedroom opens. Joselyn is standing there with a puzzled look on her face. “Hey, you guys. There’s something going on in here I think you need to see.”

“What is it?” I ask.

“Something on my computer. I just noticed. Not sure what it is.”

Harry and I follow her into the bedroom. We stand looking over her shoulders as she sits in front of the laptop.

“What’s wrong?” I ask.

“It’s this.” She moves the cursor so that the little arrow stops on an item over on the left-hand margin of the screen. “See that?”

The cursor has landed on something called “Specs.”

“What is it?” asks Harry.

“It looks like an external drive,” she says. “The problem is I don’t have anything plugged into my machine.”

“Then where is it coming from?” I ask.

“I don’t know. I suppose it’s possible it could be coming from another room, but that would be highly unusual.”

“Why is that?” says Harry.

“It’s possible you might pick up a Wi-Fi hot spot, you know, a neighbor’s Internet signal. That can travel a little ways. But an external drive, that’s usually hardwired. I’m no hardware whiz kid, but I suppose there are drives that work off Bluetooth. Although the range on that would be real short.”

“How short?” I ask.

“I don’t know, four or five feet. The signal won’t pass through a wall. I’ll tell you that. Give me a second.” She moves to a different screen, the control panel on her laptop, and finds the Bluetooth connection. She toggles it off. When she returns to the original screen, the external drive has disappeared.

She looks over her shoulder at me.

“Turn it back on.”

She does, and the drive appears once more.

“It wasn’t on your computer last night?” I ask.

She shakes her head. “No.”

Then there is only one place it can be coming from. I am looking at the bloodied glasses sitting on the bureau a few feet away. They are still partially wrapped in the tissue where I left them. I pick them up and walk toward the door.

I don’t get more than three steps when Joselyn says: “It just disappeared.”

I walk toward her.

“It’s back.”

I look at the glasses. I’d love to wash them, but I don’t dare just in case there are prints. Instead I peel off some of the tissue and hold the lenses up to the light. “That’s funny.”

“What?” says Harry.

“It’s window glass,” I tell them. “I don’t see any correction at all.” I look at the heavy tortoiseshell frames and thick temples like two pieces of lumber. When I catch them in the light, I can see that one of the temple pieces is translucent, but the other has something solid inside. “I think I found it. Watch the screen,” I tell them. Keeping my fingers on the tissue, I fold both of the temple pieces closed.

“It disappeared again,” says Harry.

“That’s cute.” I open them again.

“It’s back.” They both speak at once. Joselyn wants to know if she should open it.

“It’s your computer,” I tell her. “Do you think it’s safe?”

“After what we’ve been through this morning, who knows?” she says. She does it anyway.

When it opens, there are two folders inside, one that says

“T Data” and another that says “Notes.” She opens the first one and gets a long list of files. They run for pages.

I put the glasses back on the bureau and stare at the computer screen.

“What in the world is this?” says Joselyn. “Look at the size of some of these. And they’re all execution files. See the exe after the dot?”

“What does that mean?” asks Harry.

“That means they’re program files,” I tell him. “Applications. Software of some kind.”

“Could be malicious for all we know. I’m not going anywhere near that stuff.” Joselyn closes the folder entitled “T Data” and opens the one called “Notes.” Inside is a single file. It is entitled “Intel Notes.” “This should be safe. It’s a Word document.” She opens it.

It is not long; single spaced, it’s a little over a page in length. We start reading.

“What in the hell is Project Thor?” says Harry.

“Something having to do with NASA. He mentions it twice,” I tell him.

“And what’s AHIRST?” says Joselyn.

“I don’t know. It could be code name or maybe an acronym. A government program of some kind.”

“It sounds more like a government agency,” says Harry. “He says he wants the information forwarded to AHIRST immediately. Says it’s urgent.”

We start to concentrate on the stuff about Mexico, the Yucatan Peninsula.

“This place called Coba, I know where that is,” I tell them. I’d had a case that took me down into that area some years ago. It is where I first met Herman. “Coba is an ancient Mayan city. Ruins as far as you can see. It’s surrounded by thousands of square miles of nothing but jungle.”

“It sounds as if there’s something there now,” says Harry. “An antenna array and a facility of some kind. From the tenor and tone of these notes, this man seemed to be pretty worried about it.”

“That’s probably why they killed him,” says Joselyn.

“What has Liquida got to do with all of this?” says Harry. “This would be out of his league.”

“Not necessarily. Not if he was hired to tie up loose ends,” I tell him. “Who knows why he killed the man. Maybe he was looking for this. I have to assume that Liquida is headed for Mexico, so that’s where I’m going.”

“Just because of this note?” says Harry.

“At this point it’s the only lead I have, and I’m not giving up. Nothing has changed. The reason I have to find Liquida is still there. If I don’t find him, sooner or later Liquida is going to find me or my daughter, and we’re going to end up like that bundle in the alley. I can’t ask either of you to risk your lives any further. I recommend you go back.”

“Just like that?” says Harry.

“You never wanted to come in the first place,” I tell him.

“Yes, but that’s when you wanted me to come,” says Harry. “Now that you’re telling me to go back, I have a sudden yearning to see Mexico.” Harry, always the contrarian.

“So I guess you and I are going on to Mexico.” I smile at him.

“Not without me, you’re not,” says Joselyn. “And I suggest we put a move on it before Thorpe grounds all three of us right here in Paris.”