Conspiracy

by Stephen Coonts

  Whatever 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 equivalent 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.”

  51

  DEAN GOT TO the restaurant a half hour early, planting video bugs on the ladderlike streetlight posts outside. Waiting for someone to get him a table inside, he slipped a video bug under a light sconce at the front of the dining room. A waiter came and showed Dean to a table against the far wall; he could see the entire room and couldn’t have picked a better vantage.

  “OK, Charlie, we’re getting good feeds all around,” said Chafetz in his ear. “You ready?”

  “Sure.”

  “We have some additional background on your Mr. Lo,” the runner added. “Real low-level dirtbag. He served some time in a state prison for running prostitutes, but the sentence was outrageously short—a week. His name is connected to a number of businesses in the Saigon area. Our DEA has a file on him for possible drug smuggling. A real Boy Scout.”

  “I’ll try and remember my knots.”

  A few minutes later, a man in his late twenties wearing a silk shirt, crisply tailored blue jeans, and slicked-back hair under a backward baseball cap entered the café, trailed by three men wearing American-style caps, T-shirts that fell to their knees, and jeans as sharp as their boss’s.

  The man spotted Dean and sauntered over.

  “Here on business?” The man’s smile revealed a gold filling in his front tooth. Besides six or seven gold chains and a halter that read: “BD Ass,” his jewelry included a set of silver-plated knuckles.

  “I’m waiting for a Mr. Lo,” said Dean, pushing the business card across the table.

  Lo grinned. He pulled out the nearest chair, turning it backward before sitting down. The men who had come in with him stood nearby.

  “You have money?” asked Lo.

  “What for?” said Dean.

  “I have a hip-hop act that needs studio time. Many interests.”

  “I’ll bet.”

  “You know what hip-hop is? You’re an old man.” Lo laughed. “Are you sure you know what you’re getting into, grayhair?”

  “That is Lo, in case there’s any doubt,” said Chafetz. “Computer matched the face.”

  “I was told that Mr. Lo would have a business card similar to this one.” Dean tapped the card.

  Lo glanced at it. “That’s nice.”

  “So where’s Cam Tre Luc?” said Dean. It was obvious Lo wasn’t producing his card.

  “Oh, Mr. Luc is a very important person. You won’t find him here.”

  Dean remained silent, waiting for Lo to explain what the arrangement would be. The supposed hip-hop impresario leaned forward in his chair, then turned his head slowly to each side, an exaggerated gesture to see if anyone else was listening in.

  Dean thought Lo was disappointed to see that no one was. “You pay me and I tell you where to find Mr. Luc,” Lo told him.

  “No.”

  Lo looked shocked. He pulled back in the chair, then abruptly rose and started away.

  “What are you doing, Charlie?” asked Rockman in Dean’s ear.

  Dean reached for his cup of tea and took a small sip, watching as Lo and his entourage left the café. The Vietnamese man struck Dean as the worst combination of American “gangsta” clichés, aping copies of copies that he saw on smuggled MTV tapes.

  Which didn’t mean he wasn’t dangerous, Dean reminded himself a half hour later when he left the café. He walked up the block and turned to the right, just in time to be confronted by one of Lo’s companions. Dean spun around immediately, catching a would-be ambusher with a hard elbow to the mid-section. As the man rebounded off the ground, Dean grabbed the pipe he had in his hand and struck the other man in the kneecaps.

  Lo and the third member of his “posse” stood a few feet away, next to the corner of the building. Dean whipped the pipe at his remaining bodyguard, then threw Lo up against the wall, pinning him there with his .45.

  “I’m still looking for Cam Tre Luc,” Dean told Lo. “Here’s what we’re going to do. I’ll let you go now without a new breathing hole in your neck. You arrange for me to meet Luc. I meet him, then I’ll pay you five hundred American.”

  “Deal was one thousand,” said Lo.

  “That’s right. But I’m taking five hundred back for my troubles. Like you said, I’m not as young as I used to be. I’m going to need some Bengay when I go home.”

  “Saigon Rouge, midnight. He will be with Miss Madonna. Five hundred cash,” added Lo as Dean released him. “You pay at the desk when you come in.”

  “That’s a whorehouse,” said Chafetz in Dean’s ear as he walked away.

  “Well, I didn’t figure I’d be meeting him in a church,” said Dean, flagging down a passing Honda ôm.

  52

  KARR SPOTTED THAO Duong as he came out of his building. Duong turned to the left and began walking in the general direction of the port area near the mouth of the Saigon River.

  “I’m going to tag him,” Karr decided, telling the Art Room that he was going to get close enough to put a disposable tracking bug on Duong’s clothes. Karr drove down the street, then pulled his bike up onto the sidewalk to park. From the side pouch of his backpack he removed one of the filmlike personal tracking bugs, carefully peeling the back off so that it would stick to its subject.

  Though his white shirt and white cap were hardly unusual on the Saigon streets, Thao Duong was easy to spot as he approached. He walked with a nervous hop, and held his hands down stiffly at his sides, as if they were a boat’s oars trailing in the water.

  Unlike the street, which was packed solid with motorbikes and the occasional bus or taxi, the sidewalks were fairly clear, and Karr had no trouble timing his approach. Sidestepping a row of bikes parked against a building at the corner, he lumbered into Thao Duong just before the intersection, sending him sprawling to the ground. Karr scooped the thin man to his feet, planting th
e clear bug on the back of his hat at the same time.

  “Sorry, pardner,” Karr said cheerfully. “Very sorry.” He repeated the translator’s apology in Vietnamese.

  Thao Duong’s face had turned white. For a moment, Karr thought he was going to have a heart attack. But he sped forward, skip-walking across the intersection just as the light turned.

  “Working?” Karr asked the Art Room.

  “Yes,” said Chafetz. “He’s crossing the street about halfway down the block.”

  “Must have a suicide wish,” said Karr as the motorbikes whizzed by.

  ABOUT FIFTEEN MINUTES later, Thao Duong entered a three-story office building within sight of the port. The building looked as if it dated to the early 1950s, and its stucco exterior looked as if it hadn’t been painted since then.

  “Which side of the building?” Karr asked the Art Room.

  “North side,” said Sandy Chafetz. “We’re not sure what floor, second or third.”

  Karr took what looked like an expensive tourist camera from his backpack and began fiddling with the lens. The camera contained a miniaturized boom mike that could pick up vibrations on window glass, but it had to be aimed at the proper window.

  “How’s this?” he asked, aiming the device at the top floor. The feed was sent back to the Art Room via the booster in his pack.

  “Nothing. Try the next room,” said Chafetz after two minutes.

  Karr aimed the “camera” at the next window.

  “Two women talking. Next window,” said Chafetz.

  It took three more windows before Karr found the proper room. By that time, it appeared that Thao Duong’s conversation was nearly over; he was telling someone how disappointed he was.

  “It’s a dispute about money. The other guy seems to be holding him up for more than they bargained for,” explained Thu De Nghiem, the Art Room translator. “And he wants payment by the end of the day.”

  “Don’t they always?”

  “Thao Duong is coming out of the building,” said Rockman. “In a hurry.”

  A white-haired Vietnamese dockworker was staring at Karr’s camera when he turned around.

  “Take my picture?” Karr asked the man. Before he could object, Karr had clicked the “camera” off and thrust it into the man’s hands. “You look through the viewer, see? Then press the button on the top.”

  The man gave Karr a confused look, then did as he was told, aiming it in the general direction of the blond American giant who had just accosted him. As soon as he pressed the phony shutter button, Karr came toward him.

  “Didn’t work,” said the man in Vietnamese. “No click.”

  “Thanks, Pop,” said Karr, grabbing the camera.

  “No click. No click.”

  “He’s telling you that the camera didn’t work,” said Thu De Nghiem in the Art Room.

  “No, well, then I’ll have to get it checked out.” “You want the words in Vietnamese?” Thu De Nghiem asked.

  “No,” said Karr. “But tell me how to ask him where there’s a good restaurant. My stomach’s growling.”

  53

  “THE OFFICE THAO Duong visited in Saigon belongs to a company called Asia Free Trade Shipping,” Marie Telach told Rubens. “As the name implies, they arrange shipping from the port. Furniture, mostly. Some leather goods.”

  “Have you found a link to Infinite Burn?” asked Rubens, staring at the screen at the front of the Art Room. It showed a feed from the front of Thao Duong’s building. Thao Duong was back inside in his office, having returned there after visiting the Asia Free Trade Shipping office.

  “Nothing obvious. But the company does have connections in the U.S.,” said Telach. “And the man Duong met wanted more money. Maybe for a second attempt?”

  Rubens put the fingers of his hands together, each tip pushing against its opposite. Good intelligence was often a matter of making good guesses; the trick was knowing when a guess was good.

  “Nothing else?”

  “We’re looking.”

  “Stay on Duong. Arrange to intercept any international calls Asia Free Trade makes. Put together a call list, a transaction scan—find out everything there is to know about anything remotely connected to either Duong or that company.”

  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 Parisian 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.