Conspiracy

70

Thao Duong’s bedroom floor was filled with dust. Tommy Karr’s nose started twitching as soon as he got down on all fours and began creeping toward the side of the bed, where the Vietnamese bureaucrat had dropped his shoes. Karr stopped twice to suppress sneezes, pinching his nose closed and holding his breath.

The second time he stopped, he felt something run over the back of his thigh.

A mouse? Or a very large centipede?

Karr clamped his hand over his mouth, leaned forward as quietly as he could, and grabbed Thao Duong’s left shoe.

Then Karr sat back and rolled onto his side, doing a modi-fied sidestroke to the door. Karr got to his feet in the next room but kept holding his breath until he was outside on the fire escape. As soon as he had closed the window behind him, he began coughing and gasping for air at the same time.

“Tommy, are you OK?” asked Marie Telach from the Art Room.

“Just need some chicken soup,” he told her.

“Jeez, aren’t you full yet?” asked Rockman.

Karr checked his pants and shirt, making sure that he wasn’t covered with insects. Then he went to work on Thao Duong’s shoe. The heel was easily removed, but there was a problem — it was so worn that not even the slim transmitter would fit inside. Karr settled for placing two of the much smaller temporary trackers, which not only had a much more limited range but also would send signals for at best twelve to sixteen hours.

Karr ransacked his brain and examined the feed from the surveillance bugs, trying to think of an alternative hiding spot, but Thao Duong’s relatively bare existence made it impossible. He didn’t use a briefcase or a mobile phone. Karr would have to return the following night to replace the bugs.

And maybe the dust. He pulled off his shirt, planning to use it to clean the floor so it wouldn’t be obvious from his marks in the soot that someone had come in.

“All right,” he told Rockman finally. “I’m going back into the apartment. Hopefully I won’t sneeze.” Thao Duong had begun to snore loudly. Karr’s nose began to itch as soon as he tiptoed across the threshold. He slid the shoe into place, then began dusting.

A centipede scurried under Thao Duong’s bed as Karr backed out of the room.

At least it wasn’t a rat, Karr thought to himself, retreating from the house.

There were plenty of rats in the building Thao Duong had visited earlier, including a pair with two legs who were sleeping in the front vestibule, pistols in their laps.

Karr could see both men from the landing of the second-floor hallway where he climbed in through the side window.

He positioned a video bug so Rockman could keep an eye on them, then moved down two steps and lowered a video bug from a telescoping wand to examine the rest of the first floor.

The open, loftlike space was crowded with sewing machines and large, empty shelves and bobbins where fabric and thread had been stored.

It was also well populated with vermin, who were running laps between the refuse.

Karr went back up the stairs and slipped over to the doorway to the second floor. If there had ever been a door here, it was long gone, as were the hinges and any other trace. This room, too, was open, though there were no machines — only wall-to-wall bodies.

Karr tacked a video bug on the wall, then tiptoed to the nearest figure, huddled fetuslike on the bare wood floor. The man wore only a pair of shorts. His chest moved in and out fitfully; except for that, there was no sign he was alive. Near him were three children, also each wearing only one piece of clothing, each with a hand wrapped over another’s shoulder.

“Must be a hundred people here,” whispered Karr.

“We count one hundred and two,” said Rockman.

Karr backed out quietly, then crept up the steps to the third floor. The space appeared to be totally abandoned; overturned chairs sat under a thick layer of dust in the middle of the floor. With his nose starting to revolt, Karr went up to the fourth and last floor. This, too, was empty; large pieces of the ceiling hung down, and here and there he caught glimpses of the moonlight shining through the cracks.

“I can’t imagine that place was a whore house,” Karr told Rockman, placing another video bug near the doorway.

“Just a flop house,” said Thu De Nghiem. Then the translator added bitterly, “Uncle Ho’s legacy.”

“So what was our guy doing here before, you think?” Rockman asked.

“Maybe he’s going to take some of that rice he tracks for the government and give it to these people,” said the translator.

“Somehow I doubt that,” said Karr. He slipped back down the steps toward the window he had used to get in. Just as he reached the landing, Rockman warned Karr that one of the people in the room on the second floor had woken.

“Sitting up,” said Rockman, his voice stopping Karr mid-step.

He was only about six feet from the window, but he’d have to pass in front of the doorway to get there. Karr leaned back against the wall.

“Another person, two more, awake,” reported Rockman.

“Kids. They’re coming to the door.” Karr climbed back up the stairs, his back against the wall.

He reached the third-floor landing just as three girls, roughly ten years old, came out of the room and went down the steps.

“Going out into the back,” said Rockman.

“Probably to relieve themselves,” added the translator.

“Tommy, the guards are moving,” said Rockman.

Karr went back down to the second floor, opened the window, and began climbing down. As he did, he heard an angry shout from inside. He jumped to the ground; rolling to his feet, he grabbed his gun, ready.

But the guards weren’t coming for him.

One of the girls started to scream.

“Get out of there, Tommy!” said Rockman. “Go!”