Biowar

16

Karr bounded off the plane into the airport, pushing through the knots of medical and sex tourists whose pace slowed as they realized their moment of decision or indiscretion was finally near. A potbellied American in a perfectly tailored silk suit stood at the right of the funneling line; Karr made a beeline for him, pointing to him as he came close.

“Deavor, right?” said Karr.

The man nodded. He was a military advisor to the ambassador, tasked to meet Karr and take him into the city. Karr pumped the man’s limp hand, then reached over and grabbed the hand of an associate who’d been trying to act nonchalant in the background. There were two other men nearby, all part of the security detail and undoubtedly thinking they were passing incognito in the mix. Karr didn’t bother saying hello to them, as it would break the unwritten rules of etiquette — never tell your host how incompetent he was.

They paid the briefest of courtesy calls to the back room of the Thai customs agency, then went to a pair of waiting cars. A light rain was falling, casting the city in a gray shroud.

“So you’re with the CDC,” said Deavor, leaning over the front seat.

“I’m kind of a consultant for them,” said Karr.

“You’re a doctor?”

“Why? You got a broken leg?”

“I have this numbness in my pinkie every so often.”

“You smoke?” asked Karr.

“What’s that got to do with anything?”

“If you don’t want my advice, don’t ask for it,” said Karr.

“That’s caused by smoking?”

“Not necessarily. You try sex?”

“Now I know you’re putting me on.”

Karr laughed at him. “You could have a screwed-up disk, or just the muscles pulling it are out of whack. Massage’ll loosen it up. Or sex. Those don’t work, see a chiropractor.”

Deavor looked at him, trying to figure out if he was on the level or not.

“Thanks, Doc,” he said finally.

“Don’t mention it.”

The embassy put Karr up in a house occasionally used by Marines assigned to the security detail. Karr knew it would be bugged, but he was surprised to find not only American and Thai devices, but a Chinese pair as well — an interesting fact that Rubens would no doubt relish passing along as a less than subtle dig against the CIA, which would have certified the lodgings as clean.

The sheer array of bugs was impressive, but none presented a real problem; he disabled them all, then fired up his handheld and retrieved the latest dossier prepared by Desk Three.

The NSA had found an old credit card account, since closed, that Kegan had used on a visit to Bangkok about a year before. They had also been able to connect Pound, the lab assistant, to a $300 cash withdrawal from an ATM in the arrival hall of Terminal 1 at Don Muang Airport two weeks ago; he’d used his mother’s account. But so far they hadn’t been able to locate any records indicating what he had done after that. His mother, in a nursing home in Kentucky, didn’t know where he was. An Alzheimer’s patient, she didn’t really know where she was.

One of the E-mails Pound had sent to Kegan had been posted from a kiosk in Bangkok a few blocks from the hotel Kegan had stayed at. The other had been tracked to a small Thai military unit on the border with Myanmar.

A wild-goose chase, but one with promise.

Karr had never been in Thailand until today. Had he been asked what he expected, he probably would have drawn a verbal picture of small huts and rickshas in crowded, muddy streets. The streets here were crowded and there were rickshas — here called samlors. But there were also a variety of motorbikes, slightly larger motorcycles (though still small by American standards), tuk-tuks (three-wheeled motorcycles with roofs that had no real counterpart in the West), cars, truck-buses (pickups with double-deck standing-room-only spots in the rear), ordinary buses, and a range of delivery vehicles and trucks. There was also an elevated rail system called Skytrain and any number of ferries and boats plowing through the waterways that crisscrossed the city.

Karr stared at the city through the front seat of his car, rented with a driver by the Art Room through a fictitious account. Luc Dai, the driver, was a former freelance newspaper writer who’d found it much more lucrative to rent out his car than his typewriter. A Vietnamese national who’d spent considerable time in America, Luc Dai was exactly the sort of person who’d be “rented” by various intelligence agencies, though if he was working for any, the Art Room hadn’t told Karr.

The light rain that had greeted him at the airport was gone. They threaded through the congested streets and found the Bangkok Star Imperial Hotel, which was among the most expensive in the city. Karr told the driver he’d be inside for a while, then hopped out as a uniformed doorman reached for the door.

The hotel had some claim to its fame, or at least its high cost. Outrageously ornate, its ceiling glowed with a thick layer of gold leaf, showing off what was said to be up to a million dollars’ worth of precious stones and jewels encrusted in a design that imitated the visible constellations. Below the stars an elaborately designed handwoven rug depicted the earth as a mythic kingdom of gods and dragons. The carpet was not merely spotless but also seemed to have been woven only the day before. The hotel desk sat beyond several groupings of lushly upholstered chairs, its massive beak like the hull of a boat. The wooden trim and accents were inlaid and highly polished.

Karr walked to the young man at the far end of the desk and in English asked for “my good friend Mr. Bai.” The man bowed his head, then led the way through a paneled hallway to a room that looked decidedly more utilitarian than the lobby; its whitewashed walls provided the backdrop for three banks of nine-inch television sets offering a uniformed guard with a view of the hotel environs as well as the lobby, elevator, and upstairs hallway. The young man muttered a hello — it was definitely English — to the guard, then knocked at a metal door at the far end. A few words flew back and forth in Thai.

“Mr. Bai has much work,” said the man when he returned.

“Great,” said Karr. He remained planted in place.

The man frowned and returned to the door. More Thai flew around until finally the door opened and a short man in a brown silk suit emerged to shake Karr’s hand as if he were an old friend.

“Bai,” whispered Sandy Chafetz, the runner in the Art Room. They’d tapped into the hotel’s security system; she could see everything that was happening.

“A friend in D.C. sent me,” said Karr.

“Oh, very good,” said Bai, ushering Karr inside as if he’d been expecting him half the day.

Old enough to be Karr’s father, Mr. Bai had escaped from Burma as a young man, then joined the Thai Army. As an officer he’d had some dealings with the American military in the seventies and eighties, and he still had occasional contact with the embassy, though mostly now as an expediter for the hotel. He accepted Karr’s hints without question or elaboration, ordering tea and nearly insisting that Karr have something stronger. But for all his jovial hospitality, Mr. Bai showed no sign of recognizing Kegan or Pound when Karr showed him the photos.

“They’re not among our guests, are they?” asked Mr. Bai.

“You tell me.”

Mr. Bai studied the photos again, then shrugged. “If they were guests they did nothing to attract attention.”

“You think you can look up some names in your computer?” Karr asked.

Desk Three had already run the same check — Karr was asking not only to see how cooperative Bai might be but also to emphasize how serious he was about finding the men.

Mr. Bai’s expression grew grave. “The privacy of our guests is extremely important.”

“Oh, I’m sure of that,” said Karr.

He smiled at the hotel security chief, who soon enough reached for the keyboard of his computer. The names were printed at the bottoms of the photos.

“No,” said Mr. Bai.

“How about recently?”

“How recent?”

Karr shrugged. “Ever, I guess,” he said offhandedly.

Bai frowned.

“Three years?” offered Karr.

“Two is all I can manage.”

“Go for it.” He’d been prepared to settle for one.

Mr. Bai hesitated, then clacked a few more keys. “Doesn’t look like it.”

“Ah well, life’s like that, you know?” Karr got up, sliding a business card on the desk. It listed the CDC as his employer, giving a local number that would be intercepted by the Art Room and rerouted to Karr’s sat phone’s voice mail. “If something rings a bell, you can get me through the embassy.”

Bai smiled and, once more the hospitable host, led him back to the lobby.

“So are those real jewels or what?” Karr asked as he shambled past the reservations desk.

“What are you talking about?” asked Chafetz.

“The ceiling,” he told her.

“I haven’t a clue,” she said. “Why are you talking to yourself? Aren’t you afraid people will stare at you?”

“Nah. They see big blond crazy Americans all the time.” Karr smiled at a pair of elderly European women who were, in fact, staring at him. “Part of the image, Sandy. I’m supposed to be a lovable, nutty bear.”

“Well, you have the role down well:”

“Except that I’m smarter than the average bear, right?”

“You said that; I didn’t.”

“Yuk, yuk.” Karr twisted around. He’d managed to pick out all of the security people and was confident that no one else inside was watching him. “So does Bai know something or what?”

“He’s not using the phone or the computer. We’ll activate the fly you left once you’re out of the building.”

“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.