Devil's Gate

45

KURT AUSTIN SAT huddled over a laptop computer in his room. He and Joe had arrived back safely at the hotel and reported seeing a leopard in the shopping district to the proper authorities. And then they’d promptly gotten down to business.

For Joe that meant a hot shower and tending to his various wounds. For Kurt it meant toweling off his face and hair, changing into dry clothes, and getting on the horn to NUMA headquarters. He needed downloads of information, some which NUMA had access to, some which they had to beg Interpol, the FBI, and other agencies for.

Fortunately, NUMA had a long and positive history with these agencies, and there were enough markers to call in to still be on the right end of the balance sheet.

He’d been working at it for nearly forty-five minutes before Joe reappeared through the room’s adjoining door.

“What took you so long?”

“I was cleaning the gravel out of my knee.”

Kurt laughed. “That’s what you get for wearing Italian shoes to foot-race in the rain.”

“I didn’t know we were going to be running all over town,” Joe said.

Truthfully, neither did Kurt. “How’s your arm?”

Joe held it out. The claw marks were bandaged but clearly visible. “That’s gonna make a great story one day. Maybe even for your old girlfriend at the zoo.”

Joe did not seem too amused. “Very funny,” he said. “Just tell me my favorite Armani shirt didn’t die in vain.”

Kurt turned back to the computer. “A valiant sacrifice, my friend. And not without results.”

He brought up parallel lists.

“On the right, we have official confirmed sightings of our friend Andras, courtesy of Interpol, the FBI, and someone Dirk knows at the Agency.”

As Joe studied the list, Kurt read the names off. “Pyongyang eighteen months ago. Singapore five weeks later, on the exact date Ion gave us.”

“Score one for snake intimidation,” Joe said.

“Yeah,” Kurt said. “It gives a whole new meaning to squeezing information out of a suspect.”

Joe laughed, and Kurt continued.

“After Singapore, we find Andras in Kaohsiung, Taiwan. He’s there for twenty-four hours, at which point he disappears for three months until a possible sighting in Yemen. Six weeks later he was confirmed in Madagascar.”

“Madagascar?”

Kurt nodded. “Another possible in Cape Town, South Africa, back to Madagascar again, and then three months ago an extended stay in Lobito, Angola. Well, extended for him. Four sightings in approximately three weeks before he vanished. The next time he pops up is when I ran into him on the Kinjara Maru. But if Dirk’s theory is right and he was part of the crew that loaded that superconducting material onto the ship, that would put him in Freetown, Sierra Leone, less than a month ago.”

“Okay,” Joe said. “So we know his course. How do we figure out what he’s traveling on? He could be on an oceangoing yacht, a freighter, a garbage scow. Maybe the submarine we’re looking for is his.”

“I don’t think so,” Kurt said. “My encounter with him on Santa Maria occurred almost simultaneously with the attack on Paul and Gamay five hundred miles away. The submarine they’re looking for has to be under someone else’s command. But the rumor about Andras is, he doesn’t trust anyone enough to even have a second-in-command. He works on a totally flat command structure. It’s him and a bunch of pawns. That way, there’s no one in a natural position to challenge or usurp him.”

“Sounds paranoid,” Joe said.

“Absolutely,” Kurt said. “And that means if he had a submarine, he wouldn’t hand the keys to someone else, especially not someone he picked up at Mr. Ion’s Shop of Mercenaries.”

“Good point,” Joe said. “So it’s a surface ship. But there are probably ten thousand ships capable of making the journeys he’s made.”

“Maybe more,” Kurt said. “But think about it this way. Starting with Singapore and its harbormaster’s records, we can substantially narrow that list down. If we assume he was there on February fourth, and that his vessel was in the harbor or nearby, we can eliminate ninety-eight percent of the vessels in the world’s inventory right off the bat.”

He looked at his notes. “During the days Andras was here, one hundred seventy-one oceangoing vessels were either docked here or anchored offshore and submitted papers to customs officials.”

“That’s not a small number, Kurt.”

“No,” Kurt said. “But if we cross-reference it with the other places Andras was seen and the ships docked in those places at the time, we narrow it down substantially.”

“I’m guessing we don’t have records for Yemen, Madagascar, or Angola,” Joe said.

“No,” Kurt said, “but we have satellite images of their harbors on pretty much every day of the year, including those days that Andras was reported present.”

“And?”

“With the exception of South Africa, one ship has been present or in close proximity to every spot our friend Andras has been in the past year and a half. And only one.”

Kurt clicked on a name from the list on the right-hand side of the screen. A photo came up, displaying a large tanker with a black-painted hull, a white main deck, and a Liberian flag flying from its mast.

“The Onyx,” Kurt said proudly.

Joe looked impressed but skeptical. According to the stats at the bottom, the ship was a 300,000-ton supertanker. “You’re telling me this guy has that kind of funding?”

“Didn’t you ever read Sherlock Holmes?”

“I saw the movie,” Joe said. “Does that count?”

“It’s elementary, my dear Zavala,” Kurt said. “Rule out the impossible, and whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. This ship was docked offshore in every port Andras appeared in over the last year except Cape Town. But the sighting there was debatable. Also, she’s too wide for the Suez Canal, which may explain the long route around Africa to Freetown before they pulled their little bait and switch on the Kinjara Maru.”

Joe began to look convinced. “Who’s she registered to?”

“Some corporation out of Liberia that no one’s ever heard of,” Kurt said.

Joe stepped back, still looking concerned. “So let’s tell Dirk and Brinks we think this ship might have our suspect on it, call it a day, and go fishing.”

Kurt shook his head. They needed hard evidence. And if by any chance Andras had the scientists on the ship, they needed the element of surprise. Otherwise the people he was interested in saving — Katarina, in particular — would be in worse danger than ever.

“Since when has the machinery of government sprung into action because a regular Kurt or Joe thinks any particular thing?”

Joe looked away. “Not often.”

“Exactly,” Kurt said. “We need proof.”

“You want to get on board that ship?” Joe guessed.

Kurt nodded.

Joe looked resigned to helping him as usual but seemed none too happy about where this was going.

“And how exactly do you plan on boarding a hostile vessel, crewed by terrorist thugs and killers who are undoubtedly watching for any type of advance from any quarter or direction, without them knowing about it?”

Kurt smiled. He had a plan. It may have been even crazier than his last plan, but that one had worked.

“The same way you remove a tiger’s teeth,” he said. “Very carefully.”