Conspiracy

54

Dean caught up with Karr just after Thao Duong had begun to move again, this time walking in the opposite direction from the waterfront. At first they thought he was going back to his apartment, but about a block away he veered right and began zigzagging through a series of small alleys.

“Thinks he’s being followed,” said Dean. “We better hang back for a while.”

“He’s going to take one of those taxi bikes,” predicted Karr. “Come on. I have a motorbike around the corner.”

“You think I’m getting on the bike with you?”

“It’s either that or walk,” said Karr.

“I’d rather walk,” insisted Dean.

Karr obviously thought he was joking, because he started to grin. Dean relented when Sandy Chafetz told them that Thao Duong had apparently found a Honda ôm, since he was heading north at a good clip.

They followed Thao Duong to the north side of the city.

Dean kept his eyes closed the whole way.

“He’s in a bus station,” Chafetz told them when they were about a block away. “Odds are the key he had last night fits a locker there.”

“Not much of a bet,” said Karr. He pulled off the street into a small loading area at the side of the station. “You feel like driving for a while, Charlie?”

“You follow him. I feel like stretching my legs.”

“What are you going to do?”

“See what else is in his locker.”

The tracking data from the Art Room was good enough to locate a person to within a meter and a half. That still left Karr nine feet of lockers to check. Each door was just over a foot square, and they were stacked six high.

“Can you give me a little help here?” he asked Chafetz.

“Your guess is as good as ours.”

Karr reached into his pack and pulled out his night glasses, hoping that the infrared lenses would pick up a temperature difference in the locker that had been recently opened.

It didn’t.

He glanced around the waiting room, hoping there might be a video camera trained on the locker area. But there were none.

There were forty-eight lockers. He’d start in the middle, and work his way outward. He’d check two or three at a time, then go away, make sure he wasn’t being watched, and take two or three more.

Not ideal, but the best solution under the circumstances.

He’d plant video bugs so the Art Room could watch his back.

Should’ve let Charlie take this one, he thought to himself as he scouted out the best places to put the bugs.

Dean followed thao Duong back to his office, circled the block, then found a café nearby to hang out. The place dated from the days when the French ruled Vietnam; its facade, woodwork, and furniture were all modeled on a Pa ri sian café. Dean wondered if the familiarity had provided any comfort to the French diplomats and soldiers watching the last vestiges of their empire slip away in the late forties and early fifties.

A half hour later, Chafetz told him a young man had just walked into Thao Duong’s office and received an envelope.

“Follow the messenger and see where he goes,” the runner told Dean. “The locator bug is still working on Thao Duong, so we’ll know if he leaves the building. This looks more interesting.”

Dean left a few dollars — American — to pay for his coffee, then went to get his motorbike. As the young man who’d made the pickup came out of the building, a blue motorbike pulled in front and stopped. The kid hopped on and sped away.

Dean managed to get close enough to read part of the license plate for Rockman. But the bike’s driver knew the city far better than Dean, and was considerably more aggressive in traffic; within four or five blocks Dean had to concede he’d lost him. Dean headed to the riverfront area and with Chafetz’s help found the Asia Free Trade Shipping building, but there was no trace of the messenger there, either.

“she’s asking what you’re doing,” the translator told Karr as he opened another locker.

“Does she work here?” Karr asked.

“I don’t think so. See, most—”

“Tell me how to ask that in Vietnamese.” Thu De Nghiem gave him the words. Karr repeated them to the woman as best he could. He also continued to work the lock with his pick. The others — he was now on number thirteen — had been easy; this one seemed to be gummed up with something.

The woman’s tone became more high-pitched. Karr prodded his tool in the lock, then finally heard a click.

He turned to the woman. “My key always sticks,” he told her in English, though by now he was reasonably certain she didn’t speak it.

“She says she’s going to report you to the authorities,” said Thu De Nghiem. “She thinks you’re a thief.”

“I am a thief,” said Karr brightly. “How old you figure she is? Sixty?”

“Younger,” said Nghiem, who was looking at a feed from Karr’s bug.

Karr opened the locker and saw a large manila envelope, similar to the one he had found beneath Thao Duong’s desk.

He gave it a big smile and took it with him to a nearby seat.

The woman followed; her harangue continued uninterrupted.

“You remind me of my mother,” Karr told her.

She kept right on talking.

“Yo, Thu,” Karr said to the translator. “This lady reminds me of my mother. What are the words?”

“For what?”

“You… remind me… of… Mom.” Clearly perplexed, Thu De Nghiem translated the sentence. Karr repeated the words loudly and correctly enough to stop the woman’s rant. He then proceeded to spin a story in English and mispronounced Vietnamese about how he had returned to Saigon to find his mother, who had come to the States, given birth to him, then abandoned him and returned home to Saigon.

“You look very much like the picture Dad has on the bureau back home,” Karr declared, in first English and then Vietnamese. “Are you my mom?”

The woman mumbled something, then fled.

“Did I get the accent wrong?” Karr asked the translator.

“She thinks you’re a nut,” said Nghiem. “I promise you, she’ll be bringing back the police.” Karr laughed and peeked into the envelope.

“Wow,” he said.

“Mr. Karr, do you have a problem?” asked Rubens, coming on the line.

“No problem at all,” said Karr. He pulled out his PDA and popped the camera attachment on. Then he held it inside the envelope far enough to get a picture of the bundles of hundred-dollar bills sitting there. “No, I have no problem at all. At least none that a hundred thousand bucks can’t solve.”