Ruthless.Com

Chapter Twenty-Three

"— ello, Max? Max, It's Kirsten. Call me on my mobile soon as you can.''

"Max, this is Kirsten again. Still waiting to hear from you.''

"Hello, Max? Same message as before."

"Max, where are you? It's been four days and I'm getting really concerned. My sister and her husband are telling me to call the police, and maybe they 're right. This is all so confusing for me. So please, if you hear this, get in touch.''

"Max, I've decided to do what Anna wants and contact the authorities—"

Nimec clicked off the answering machine and looked at Nori in silence.

Though it was still not yet full morning in Johor, and both were running on empty, they were in Blackburn's spare, single-room living quarters at the ground station, having decided to check it out for clues to his whereabouts before heading off to bed. There had been nothing to help them on that score, but Kirsten Chu's frequent and increasingly worried messages — the most recent of which had been left two days earlier according to the machine's time/date stamp — at least revealed that she had not completely vanished from the face of the earth as well. And while the messages also seemed to confirm Nimec's feeling that Max had gotten into some kind of serious fix, they ultimately engendered more questions than they answered.

"Sounds like she's staying with her sister," Nori said after a while.

"Hiding out's more like it," Nimec said. "You catch the sister's name or do I have to run through the tape again?"

"Anna," Nori said. "No second name, though. And Kirsten mentioned there being a husband, so it'd be a different surname from her own. Makes it harder to track her down."

"A lot of married women keep their family names these days."

Nori shook her head.

"You're thinking like an American," she said. "Asian societies aren't quite so liberated."

Nimec sighed.

"Why the hell would she ask Max to call on her cell phone?" he said. "Wouldn't it have been simpler to just leave Anna's number for him?"

Nori thought about that a moment.

"Simpler for us, absolutely, but her situation's another matter," she said. "Put yourself in Kirsten's shoes. Whatever she's been into with Blackburn, it's something her family's probably better off not being enlightened about."

"For their own safety, you mean."

"Right," Nori said. "The less they know the better. Also, it sounds to me like Max would have been against Kirsten calling the authorities to report whatever happened—"

"Or at least she feels that way," Nimec said. "We can figure out why later, but go on, I didn't mean to interrupt."

"My point is that she seemed to be under pressure from her family to make the call, and would've been torn in two different directions about actually doing it. Could be the sister and her husband had misgivings about Blackburn… why wouldn't they, when you consider the whole situation? If you're Kirsten, you're going to feel uncomfortable about having him get in touch with you on their home phone, maybe kicking off a round of difficult questions from Sis. The other way's a lot more private."

"Except, as you've already indicated, it stinks as far as we're concerned," Nimec said. "Joyce has numbers for Kirsten's home and business phones, but not the cellular."

"No address?"

"Besides her office at Monolith, no."

"What about Max's notes on his investigation? The ones he gave to Joyce?"

"I didn't even know they existed until yesterday, when I called to tell her I'd be coming to Johor. They're encoded on his PIM, and it'll take some time to decrypt and go through them."

She nodded, thinking. "I assume we want to steer clear of the badges."

"For the time being, yes. Not that we even can be sure she's phoned them. Or, if she has, that she's told them where she's staying."

"It's even an open question which police force she'd call," Nori added. "Her sister could live on either side of the causeway. Or elsewhere. National borders are close in this neck of the woods."

"True enough, but we do we know Kirsten lives in Singapore. If we're lucky, she'll be listed in the public telephone directory. And that might give us the info we need."

"Maybe, maybe not," Nori said. "Most young, single women leave their addresses out of the listings. It's standard protection against sickos."

"Now you're the one thinking like an American… and a New Yorker at that," Nimec said with a wan smile. "Singapore isn't the kind of place where there's going to be a problem with obscene phone callers. If she's in the book, we'll likely find out where she lives…"

"And the next step would be to get in there and look around for something with Sis's address written on it," Nori said, completing his thought.

Nimec nodded agreement.

"I hate to risk breaking and entering," he said. "But if we have no better alternative…"

Nori wobbled her hand in the air to interrupt him, then gestured to the key he was holding, a spare they had obtained from Station Security to gain access to Blackburn's room.

"Leave that part to me," she said.

It was a little past four in the afternoon when the two men in the Olds Cutlass drove up to the entry gate of the UpLink Cryptographies facility in Sacramento, slowing to a halt as they reached the guard station.

"Detective Steve Lombardi," the driver told the guard through his open window. He tilted his head toward the man in the passenger seat. "My partner here's Detective Craig Sanford."

The guard regarded them through his mirrored sunglasses.

"How can I help you?" he said.

"We need to speak to the supervisor in charge," Lombardi said. "We've got a subpoena for crypto keys, you know the deal."

The guard nodded. It was SOP for law enforcement to deliver court orders whenever there was an investigation or legal action involving the release of data-recovery keys used by UpLink software. With everybody from banks to supermarkets to Mafia hoods using crypto in their daily business operations nowadays, and thousands of keys stored in the data-recovery vaults, and all kinds of civil and criminal cases in which computerized files were requested as evidence, it wasn't unusual to get as many as four or five visits a week from police officers delivering subpoenas.

"Just need to see your ID and papers," he said.

The driver took the requested items out of his sport jacket and gave them to the guard. A moment later the passenger reached over and passed the leather case holding his own badge and identification through the window.

The guard angled his mirrored lenses down at what he'd been handed, glancing over the police tins, unfolding the court papers.

"Everything kosher?" the driver asked.

The guard studied the ID and paperwork another second, then nodded and returned them through the window of his booth.

"Go right on ahead, fellas," he said.

The doorman at the luxury condo near Holland Road, on the eastern part of Singapore Island, had scarcely arrived for his morning shift when he saw the pale blue taxi pull up near the entrance and discharge its passenger, a slight, nicely dressed young woman carrying a couple of overstuffed travel bags. The luggage aside, she looked as though she'd been traveling, her hair slightly messed, a somewhat frayed expression on her face.

As she struggled toward the building with the bags, he set down his tea and rose from his desk to get the door.

"Can help?" he asked in typical Singlish fashion, blending English words with Chinese sentence structure.

She set the bags down on the carpeted floor of the vestibule and fussed her hair into place.

"Yes. Or I hope so, anyway," she said. "I'm here for Kirsten Chu."

The doorman regarded her a moment. Her American accent explained why he had not recognized her as an occupant of the high-rise. But he was familiar with the woman whose name she'd mentioned.

"Apartment Fifteen, I can call up, lah." He reached for the intercom's handpiece. "Your name, please?"

"No, you don't understand," she said. "Kirsten won't be home until tonight, and I was supposed to let myself in. But now I can't…"

She let the sentence trail off.

"Yes?" he said.

"Maybe I'd better start over." She looked upset. "I'm her sister Charlene, and I'm here visiting from the States. Did she mention my name to you, by any chance?"

He shook his head.

"Well, I suppose there wouldn't have been any need" she muttered to herself, rubbing her forehead.

"Yes?" the doorman said again. He was becoming increasingly baffled.

When she looked up at him, her large brown eyes were moist.

"You see, I have a key to her door… well I had a key to her door… but I think I may have lost it at the airport…."

"Yes?" he said for the third time, suddenly afraid she might burst into tears.

"Listen," she said agitatedly. "I don't quite know how to ask you this… it makes me feel so foolish.. but could you let me into her apartment? I haven't any idea where else to wait for her… she went to pick up our other sister, Anna… and isn't supposed to be home until very late, you see.. and I've got these bags…"

He gave her an uncomfortable look. "That against rules, miss. Okay if you want leave bags with me, but I not can—"

"Please, I'll show my passport if you need identification," she said at once, her voice trembling. She crouched over the bags she'd deposited on the vestibule's carpet, unzipped one of them, and began fumbling around inside it.

"Miss—"

The doorman cut himself short. Just as he'd feared, she had begun to sob. Tears spilling down her face, she bent there in front of him, pulling items out of the bag, dropping some of them in her distress, stuffing them hastily back into the bag and fishing out others….

"Wait, wait, my papers are in here somewhere… I'm so sorry… I just have to find them…."

The doorman looked at her, feeling sorry for her, thinking he couldn't just stand there and watch her cry.

"It okay, miss. It okay," he said finally, reaching for the intercom button. "I call superintendent, tell him let you in, no problem."

Noriko stood and wiped a hand across her eyes.

"Thanks, that's so kind," she said, sniffling. "Really, I don't know what I'd've done without you."

The driveway leading up to the encryption facility terminated in a parking area outside the main entrance, the left side of which was reserved for staff, the right for visitors. The men in the Cutlass swung into the visitors' section, found an empty slot, strode across the lot toward the flat cinder-block building, and approached the armed guard posted at the door.

"Detectives Lombardi and Samford?" he said, smiling pleasantly.

They both nodded.

"I was informed you gentlemen were on your way from the gate," he said, and gestured toward the walkthrough weapons-detector beside his station. "If you'd please leave your service weapons with me, and place any other metal articles you may have in the tray to your right, you can step through the scanners and come in."

"We're cops, and cops carry guns," the man who'd announced himself as Lombardi said. "It's in our regulations."

"Yes, and I apologize for the inconvenience. But a facility of this nature has to take added precautions, and most departments cooperate with them," the security man said. "If you'd prefer, I can call ahead to Mr. Turner… he's the supervisor you're going to see anyway… and request that he waive the requirement. I'm sure it wouldn't be much of a problem."

Lombardi shrugged.

"No need," he said. "Policy's policy."

The two men unholstered their firearms — both were carrying standard Glock nines — and turned them over to the guard, then deposited their coins and key chains in the tray and passed through the archway.

"Thanks for your cooperation," the guard said. He looked at his LCD display, gave the items in the tray a cursory glance, then held it out for the detectives to retrieve their property. "Follow the entry hall straight back, turn right, then cut another right at the end of that corridor. Supervisor's office will be the fourth door down. I'll have your weapons right here when you leave."

Lombardi stuffed his key chain into his pocket.

"Just hope we don't have to chase any armed robbers while we're here," he said, smiling a little.

The guard laughed. "Have no fear," he said. "This place is as safe as they come."

Nori slipped into the rear of the white company Land Rover parked in a shopping mall off Holland Road, three blocks up from Kirsten Chu's residence.

"Found what we wanted," she said. "And more."

"Any problems getting in and out?" Nimec asked from the front passenger seat.

"Nope. The doorman has a crush on me. He talked the super into giving me a key," she said. "Anyway, I've got a personal phone book with a number and address for a Lin and Anna Lung in Petaling Jay a."

"Where the hell's that?"

"Back over the causeway, lah. Outside KL." This from the driver, a Malay named Osmar Ali who was with the Sword detail at the ground station.

Nimec nodded.

"You sure you have the right party?" he asked Noriko.

"Pretty much," she said. "I also dug up an open mailing envelope with a return address that matches the one in the book. There were some photos of a couple and two kids inside it. And a letter starts with a 'Dear Sis.' "

"Okay." Nimec turned to look at Osmar. "Petaling Jaya… is it within driving distance?"

Osmar shrugged. "Can go, yes, but it a few hundred kilometers," he said in rough English. "Be faster we drive back to ground station, take helicopter."

Nimec thought in silence a moment. Then he reached for the cell phone resting in the molded-plastic cup-holder beside him.

"Better let me have that number, Nori," he said. "I want to see if anybody's home before we come knocking on their door."

The pair of men strode through the corridor after leaving their guns at the checkpoint, their eyes noting the button-sized lenses of surveillance cameras near the ceiling. Unlike commercially produced cameras, these miniature units were recessed behind the walls rather than mounted on visible brackets, and would have gone unnoticed by the average person.

They reached the T-juncture at the end of the hall, but instead of immediately turning right as instructed, paused to scan the doorways in both directions.

Midway down the corridor branching to their left was an office door marked SECURITY. The one who called himself Lombardi gave the other an almost imperceptible glance and they went over to it, walking side-by-side at an easy pace, nodding amiably to a woman who passed them going the opposite way.

Two plainclothes security men were sitting at a bank of closed-circuit monitors when the office door opened inward from the corridor. They were not surprised, having seen the approaching detectives on their screens, and assumed they wanted information.

"Can we help you gentlemen?" one of them said, swiveling to face the door.

The man called Lombardi entered, followed by his partner. They let the door close behind them.

"We're looking for the supervisor's office." He smiled, his hand casually tucked in his pants pocket. ' Thought it was supposed to be right around here somewhere."

"Took a wrong turn," the security man said. "When you leave this office, hang a right and—"

Lombardi's hand came out of his pocket holding his key ring. Before the security guards could register what was happening, he brought up its rectangular fob and quickly tugged back the attached chain with his free hand. This cocked the firing mechanism of the weapon, which was only three inches long and contained two.32-caliber bullets. He pointed it at the man facing him and pushed a button on its side.

The slug that coughed from the tiny gun's bore would have been lethal at twenty yards, and the shooter was a mere fraction of that distance from his target. It struck the guard in the middle of the forehead and killed him instantly, slamming him back into the panel of monitors.

The shooter pivoted toward the other guard. His face white with shock, he was reaching for the holstered weapon under his jacket. The shooter pushed the button and fired his second shot, striking the guard in the center of his face. And then the face was gone. The body sprawled backward, blood, bone fragments, and tissue spraying the screens and walls behind him.

The shooter looked at his partner, gesturing toward the dead men.

"Close," he said. "I only expected there to be one of them."

The man near the door nodded.

"Let's take their guns and get on with it," the shooter said.

When she heard the phone ring at nine-thirty, she wondered if perhaps Anna had forgotten something in her rush to leave the house. The kids had acted up and been late getting ready for school, and Anna, who dropped them off every morning on her way to work, had made her exit amid quite a hustle and bustle.

"Hello?" she said, picking up.

A strange male voice. "Kirsten Chu, please."

She hesitated, her heart suddenly banging in her chest. She'd been expecting a call from the police, which was the reason she hadn't volunteered to help out her sister and deliver Miri and Brian to their classrooms herself. The police, this had to be the police. Anna and Lin… and Max, of course.. were the only other people who'd know to find her here. And the person at the other end wasn't any of the latter.

"Who's calling?" she asked in a cautious tone. Purposely offering no acknowledgment of her identity.

"My name is Pete Nimec, and I'm—"

She didn't even hear him finish the sentence, so completely overwhelming was the recognition that swept over her. Her heart beat harder, faster. She inhaled, feeling as if the breath had been knocked out of her.

"Dear God, that's the name," she said, the words springing from her mouth on their own. "You're Max's friend, aren't you? The one he wanted me to call?"

A beat of silence. "Yes, I am. I—"

"How is he?" she interrupted. Worry had swept chillingly through Kirsten's initial excitement. If Max were all right, why wouldn't he be calling?

"Kirsten, we need to meet. I have to speak with you in person, find out what's happened to him. To both of you."

"You mean you don't know…."

"No, Kirsten. I don't. No one's heard from him."

She clutched the phone, her hand shaking around it. Her entire arm shaking.

"Then how.. how did you get this number?"

"I'll explain all that later. I promise. Right now it's just urgent that we get together. I'll come to you there. It's probably best if you stay put."

Kirsten breathed.

What reason was there to trust this man? This name Max had mentioned once in a moment of urgency? This voice? The truth was that she hardly even knew whether Max was the person he'd seemed to be…

Except that wasn't true. She did know. Maybe not everything about him. Maybe not as much as she should have known. But as she'd told Anna just days ago, she loved him….

Had loved him long before he'd put his own life at risk to save her…

And what was love, always, always, but a leap of faith?

"All right," she said. "I'll be waiting."

The supervisor at the encryption facility — the name plaque on his office door read Charles Turner — was shaking his head as he pored over the court papers he'd been issued.

"I must tell you, this is rather atypical," he said, glancing up at the two detectives standing before his desk.

"How so, sir? I checked the subpoenas myself to make sure they crossed all the t's."

"No, please, don't misunderstand me," Turner said. "The papers are fine. But normally I get advance notification from the officers coming for the codes. They're stored on compact disc in our vaults, you understand, and there's a rather stringent checkout process. Going through it at the last minute, well, I'll have to drop everything, Detective Lombardi…"

"We're really sorry for the inconvenience," the man standing in front of him said. "But this is our first time dealing with a matter of this type as officers."

Turner sighed and rose from his desk, looking annoyed and somewhat flustered.

"You may accompany me to the data-storage wing, though only authorized personnel are allowed in the vaults. You'll have to stay out in one of the waiting areas while I track the disk you want."

"Will it take very long?"

"It shouldn't," Turner said. "The corporation whose key-codes are being requested isn't one I recognize offhand, but the disks are catalogued on our electronic database. I can rush everything through in half an hour, maybe a little faster."

"That'd be fine with us."

Turner harrumphed, and came around the desk toward the door.

"Lead the way, sir," the detective said, falling in behind him.

The men had left Penang State, southeast of the Malaysia-Thailand border, shortly after they'd received the call from Luan. That had been some hours ago, at dawn, and they'd been driving their van down the main coastal highways to Selangor ever since. The trip would have been lengthy under the best of traffic conditions, but there were herds of beachgoing tourists jamming the roads near the bridge and ferry terminals to Georgetown, and the delays had stretched miserably in the hot, beating sun. The men in the van had, furthermore, wanted to keep a moderate speed so as not to risk being pulled over by police. The kris tattoos on their hands would bring about an instant search, and once that happened their problems only would be starting. If the police found their weapons, they could look forward to many hours of painful interrogation, followed by many years of being locked away in prison holes. And that would be a far cry from the reward they were expecting for the successful completion of their task.

The Thai had promised them a fortune.

A fortune in greenbacks for capturing a woman and delivering her to him in Kalimantan.

They had joked crudely about her physical attributes when they received the call. And in spite of their grindingly slow progress, it would not be long before they saw the object of Luan's desire for themselves. They were already better than halfway down through Perak, and would be crossing into Selangor within a couple of hours.

With luck, Kirsten Chu would be at the address they had been given. And if not, they would gladly wait there for her to arrive.

She was, after all, one woman who was very much worth it.