Conspiracy

50

The window at the agricultural ministry that Karr had broken the night before had already been patched by a piece of cardboard. If there had been an inquiry, neither Desk Three’s phone taps nor the bugs in Thao Duong’s office had picked it up.

What ever had disturbed Thao Duong the night before was not bothering him now, at least not outwardly; the Art Room translator told Karr that the Vietnamese bureaucrat was going through papers studiously, at times muttering the equiva-lent of “OK” or “Yes” to himself but saying nothing else.

The scan of his computer hadn’t revealed anything more interesting than an unexpected increase in the rice harvest.

The experts had decided that the key Karr had photographed definitely fit into a lockbox of some sort, but they had no clue about where that box might be.

Growing bored, Karr walked to his motorbike, parked in a cluster in front of a café a block away.

“Sandy, I think I’m going to shoot over to Thao Duong’s apartment and have another look around,” Karr told his runner.

“I’d like to see if he hid the strongbox somewhere nearby.”

“We didn’t see it on the video bugs you guys planted last night.”

“I don’t think he brought it in. Maybe there’s a place behind his apartment

house. Let me know if he leaves his desk.”

It was only six blocks to Duong’s apartment house. Karr cruised past the front of the building, then drove around the back and into the alley where they’d gone in the night before. The alley looked even narrower than it had in the dark.

Beyond the fence at the back was a row of dilapidated shanties. When he’d seen them last night, he’d thought they were unoccupied. Now he saw enough laundry hanging amid them to clothe a small army.

There were no good hiding places in the alley, and the dirt behind the building hadn’t been disturbed. If Duong had retrieved a strongbox last night, he hadn’t hidden it here.

Karr rode his motorbike out of the alley and around the block, cruising around a man pulling a small cart of wares.

He started to turn right at the next block, then realized he was going the wrong way down a one-way street. He veered into a U-turn and found himself in the middle of a flood of motorbikes, which zagged every which way trying to avoid him. Horns and curses filled the air.

“Jeez, this is as bad as Boston,” said Karr.

“Subject is moving, Tommy,” said Chafetz. “Heading for the elevator.”

“Ah, very good. On my way.”