Change Agent

by Daniel Suarez

  However, it turned out they had no earthy aroma because they didn’t use soil. Her corporate minder told her that the plants here were nourished by a special aquaponic solution that conveyed food directly to the plant roots in the most efficient way possible. Soil was unnecessary.

  The result looked like a cross between a designer LFP store and a plant nursery.

  As she emerged from the freight elevator, Marcotte saw Singapore police everywhere. Sergeant Michael Yi Ji-chang stood waiting for her in the bare concrete elevator lobby. Brilliant light flared as 3D scans were being taken of the murder scene behind him.

  Yi nodded to her. “Synbiotoxin. Nasty one. Probably an apaxi derivative. Definitely Huli jing.”

  Marcotte nodded to an SPF detective she knew. The man didn’t immediately move to throw her and Yi out, so she proceeded as if he’d given her the okay to stay.

  Marcotte stopped at the end of aisle number seventy-four and looked down its length to see a body midway. Bloody handprints smeared the racks—with indigo backlighting making it all the more macabre. Around the body, the blood had channeled into drains in the floor.

  The victim had clearly struggled for quite some time. He was surrounded by broken glass and torn irrigation lines.

  Yi spoke. “Radheya Desai. Black market geneticist.” He peered over her shoulder. “Security video’s been erased. Two technicians and a security guard dead as well—though with fast-acting nerve toxin.”

  “Why are we here, Sergeant?”

  “Desai was my informant. Mine and Ken’s. SPF called me as soon as they found him.”

  “How long were you running him?”

  “Couple of years. Not exactly a gangster. A low-level plant editor for Pinjab.”

  “So what is it you wanted to show me?”

  Yi proceeded to move his hands around—clearly manipulating virtual objects in his LFP glasses. “Look at this layer . . .”

  Marcotte received the layer invite, and she accepted. Suddenly a virtual 2D surveillance image appeared in front of her. It showed a narrow, cluttered city street bustling with scooters and pedestrians. A glowing neon sign for a bar named Twisted flickered.

  “When I found out Desai was dead, I decided to go back and take a look at where he’d been the last few days.”

  “What did you find?”

  “Turns out Desai took a trip across the border to Johor Bahru just yesterday. Not completely out of the ordinary, but take a look at this street camera video I got from the RMP . . .”

  Marcotte watched the virtual image as a utility van pulled up to the mouth of an alley. In a moment the sliding door opened and Desai exited, wearing a fedora and carrying a cane.

  A man in a bush hat and shorts followed, and as he looked up, Yi froze the image.

  Marcus Wyckes.

  “Dae bak.”

  “Dae bak, indeed.”

  “They don’t use much facial recognition over in Johor, so I ran the imagery . . .” The image showed facial pattern recognition markers highlighting the eyes and cheekbones, then a positive identification on Marcus Wyckes.

  “So Wyckes leaned on Desai to get him across the border. Any idea how?”

  “Not yet. But there’s more.” He pointed at the bar’s neon sign in the image. “This place. I talked to friends in the RMP. It’s a biohacker bar. No interior video available, and I’ve been told not to go there asking for it, either.”

  “Gang-owned.”

  Yi nodded. “But from the time code and location on this street video, I was able to have the RMP pull the International Mobile Equipment Identity of Desai’s and Wyckes’s devices. With that I was able to geolocate their movements from this point.”

  Yi brought up a 2D map of the building roof as seen from the air. Two highlighted dots moved into the building through a sea of other dots—all unique IMEI numbers. But then the highlighted dots moved toward the back of the building. Here Desai and Wyckes apparently met with a lone third IMEI number.

  “Who’s that belong to?”

  Yi made several gestures and a 3D booking scan of Bryan Frey appeared, rotating in space before them. “Dr. Bryan Frey—unlicensed genetic engineer and minor lowlife. Designs plants, vanity pets, shit like that. Seems to be a talented fuckup. Lost his license. Wanted on low-level warrants here in Singapore, Vietnam, Laos, Indonesia, Australia, the US, and Germany.”

  “He gets around.”

  “He needs to. He’s got angry clients all over.”

  “So why was Wyckes meeting with him?”

  “I don’t know.” Yi pointed as the dots separated again. “But the meeting lasted about a half hour, and immediately afterward Frey booked a flight to Pattaya City, Thailand.”

  “How often does he travel there?”

  “Hasn’t been there since 2038.”

  Marcotte turned back to reality and Desai’s dead body halfway down the aisle. “So why’d the Huli jing clip Desai?”

  “Tying up loose ends, I expect. They’ll probably do the same to Frey sooner or later.”

  Marcotte was unconvinced. “They were doing more than getting rid of a witness here. Apaxi variants are interrogation poisons. The technicians and security guard downstairs were killed quickly—but Desai slowly.”

  Yi pondered this. “Punishment?”

  “For what? It looks like Desai helped Wyckes get across the border. You’d think that would earn him a painless death at worst. No, I think they were questioning him.”

  Yi frowned harder the more he thought about it. “What would Desai know that the Huli jing didn’t? I mean, Desai is a minor leaguer at best.”

  She turned back to Yi and his dot map, which had frozen. “Where’d Wyckes go after the meeting?”

  “Holed up in a microtel.” He shifted the map across town. “His device goes dark there the next morning.” He raised a finger. “But wait. A hire comcar departs from there at around the same time, carrying a device with this new IMEI. See?”

  She followed it as it moved north, away from Johor Bahru and up the Malaysian eastern coast.

  Marcotte paced as she pondered this. “So Wyckes was headed north, too.”

  “Yeah. Except Frey went business class. Wyckes’s new device seems to have hopped a trafficker’s boat across the Gulf. His device last pinged a tower on Tioman. Then disappeared for good.”

  She gazed at the map. “They’re both heading to Thailand.”

  “That would be my guess.”

  Marcotte turned to Yi. “Excellent work, Sergeant. Reach out to the NCB in Bangkok. Tell them we need Frey followed. I want to know where he goes and who he meets with. You and I need to hop a plane there tonight. I have a feeling Frey’s arranging something for Wyckes.”

  “You think Wyckes is going to meet Frey there?”

  “Yes, I do. And if Wyckes shows his face, we need to convince the Thais to grab him.”

  Chapter 23

  The sun was brutally hot, and the humidity made it worse. The cigarette boat drifted somewhere in the South China Sea, its liquid metal batteries exhausted. Kenneth Durand’s best guess was that the Hulks were eighty kilometers to the south. A line of rumbling thunderstorms glowered on the horizon there. Hopefully that would hinder launching drone flights. Searching for him by boat would be much harder.

  To the north Durand saw sun and clearer skies. No land in sight—though he had a rough idea where he was: still six or seven hundred kilometers south of Thailand. He didn’t have a data link to the boat, and so couldn’t access its mapping systems or its no doubt elaborate virtual console. The vessel was devoid of physical screens and gauges. But he had found a thirty-year-old GPS unit that morning in the boat’s cabin along with a reverse osmosis water maker, and canned food, liquor, beer, and bags of chips.

  He starting charging the GPS on the cabin battery, and though the internal battery didn’t c
harge, the GPS still worked. Better yet, it was so old he suspected it wasn’t going to be trackable, unlike the GPS in his phablet (which had gone overboard the night before along with his hairpiece, mustache, bush hat, and a lot else).

  The GPS showed that Durand had dead reckoned his position fairly well. He was about a hundred and fifty kilometers off the coast of Kuantan, Malaysia. Well out to sea.

  He felt a pang of guilt about the Thai smuggler who’d been washed overboard. And about the dead businessman. To his surprise, the long-tailed macaque had emerged at dawn from an open storage locker, chattering and poking around for food. How the animal had held on during the boat’s scouring submersion was beyond him.

  He fed it canned pineapple chunks, and it followed him around just out of arm’s reach the entire morning, watching his every move.

  “Sorry about your friend, monkey. Maybe he got picked up.”

  The macaque chattered in response.

  Durand wasn’t sure getting rescued by the slavers was a better fate. Still, he was glad the dead bodies and the blood had all been washed away. It made last night’s events seem like only a nightmare, and he preferred to pretend it had been just that. Only the monkey remained as evidence that anyone else had been here.

  But then he stumbled over the Skorpion machine pistol lying on the deck against the stern gunwale. That hadn’t gotten washed overboard.

  He decided he didn’t have the luxury of sitting around. He searched every locker, cabinet, and storage well in the boat, including down in the small, unkempt cabin. He came up with blankets, a flare gun, a blister pak of military-grade amphetamines, clothing, water skis and ropes, and a high-end nitrox rebreather pack along with wet suit, fins, and a Hawaiian sling for spear fishing. He checked the rebreather tanks and saw they were half charged.

  Why did the traffickers have diving gear? Did they cache supplies or bitrings on shallow coastlines? It occurred to Durand that it might be useful, and he decided to take time cleaning it up and making certain the rebreather functioned. In any event, it would give him something to do while the boat’s batteries recharged.

  Like any electric car, the boat could be quickly recharged by exchanging spent battery liquid at a service station. But if time wasn’t a factor or there weren’t battery stations available (or cost was an issue), the boat came with floating, inflatable solar cells for recharging the batteries at sea. Durand had set the solar array out and watched it automatically inflate. He should have a full charge by late afternoon.

  That is, if slavers or pirates didn’t find him first.

  Throughout the day he spotted distant trawlers heading out to sea. None got within a few kilometers of him. Neither did he see any drones or other aircraft.

  Exhausted but thinking sleep inadvisable, Durand took one of the amphetamines. He’d used them before on critical navy ops, where sleep also wasn’t an option. He resolved to toss the drugs overboard at the first opportunity, but he might need to run for the next couple days without rest before then.

  With new energy, Durand sat on one of the upholstered seats and started cleaning the rebreather equipment while the monkey watched his every move.

  “Do me a favor and screech if someone gets near. Okay?”

  The macaque chattered back as always.

  Durand suddenly noticed dried blood under his fingernails.

  He remembered all over again that he had killed people the night before. He’d actually killed people. The surreality of his situation made him momentarily unsteady.

  They were cruel men, yes. But he’d murdered them violently. He wondered if he’d ever be able to lay his head down at night without thinking of this.

  The monkey chattered at him again, bringing him back to the present.

  Thunder rumbled in the south. Flashes of lightning. More thunder.

  A quick check on the angle of the sun. It was nearing 1600 hours. Durand moved to check the LED meter in the battery well and saw he was at 87 percent charge.

  Better to get farther away sooner than wait for a full charge.

  Durand deflated the solar array and laboriously refolded it into the battery well. He could probably run a couple hundred kilometers in the night. But that still left seven or eight hundred kilometers to go—a few days’ travel at least.

  And that was if he didn’t encounter anyone.

  • • •

  Durand traveled through the gloaming. A brilliant red sunset with towering clouds rose on his left. The monkey joined him on the dashboard just ahead of the wheel. They cruised on into the night at roughly thirty knots. He avoided the lights of distant ships and smaller boats and ran with no lights himself.

  By dawn the GPS showed that Durand had reached the mouth of the Gulf of Thailand, where it narrowed to four hundred kilometers.

  No doubt there was coastal radar and military drones patrolling here, but he had to hope this tiny boat wasn’t worth investigating. That there were bigger fish in this sea.

  Certainly there were other refugee boats motoring past in the distance, packed with people. He could hear their older diesel engines from a kilometer away. When one wooden-hull fishing boat moved closer, Durand stood with the Skorpion across his chest, and they veered away—heading off to the south. His own sleek boat certainly gave the appearance of a cartel smuggler.

  The map showed the water was less than sixty meters deep, so after the batteries died in the predawn, Durand dropped anchor. He unfurled the solar array and kept an eye on the horizon and the sky.

  By late afternoon he was off again, the macaque assuming a place near the helm. Before sunset, Durand smelled a rancid stench that he hoped was a floating whale carcass. But soon enough he saw bloated human bodies in the water. The macaque fled down into the cabin at the scent.

  Durand slowed and used the fading sunlight to navigate around the corpses—several dozen of which floated on the current, clothed in bright colors. Scattered over hundreds of meters.

  Men, women, and children. Impossible to tell their nationality.

  People fleeing despair in an unseaworthy ship, no doubt. Had it sunk beneath them—or been sunk by someone else? Perhaps no one would ever know. Debris floated among them, but there were no survivors clinging to barrels or life jackets.

  Durand wondered why none of them had been devoured by sharks or other fish. But then he recalled that fish populations here had crashed—predators more than all others. Sharks were almost unseen now. Instead, these bodies rotted in the empty water amid glittering flecks of plastic and constellations of small jellyfish.

  He motored on.

  • • •

  By the time the rain came, Durand had been up for three days straight. He felt as if he was losing his mind. Hallucinating. Seeing faces in the darkness. But that was normal on so little sleep. He kept telling himself not to take seriously anything he saw that didn’t make sense. But very little did make sense—even in reality.

  The chattering macaque didn’t help, either. Was it really here? Was he misremembering that the smuggler had a monkey, or did he retroactively add an imaginary monkey to his recollections?

  Swallowing another pill, Durand motored onward—down through the center of the Gulf of Thailand in the night. Occasionally driving rains came across the water like a falling curtain, but he welcomed the rain. The rain refreshed him—brought him back to life.

  He saw things in the darkness, though. Ships. Lights. He had no idea what was real and what was not. Reality felt stretched thin. Was he even really here? Perhaps he had died somewhere back there on the South China Sea.

  • • •

  The tiny GPS map glowed in the darkness as he neared the first land he’d seen in days. Two islands, Ko Phai and Ko Lan—the latter just a couple kilometers off the coast of Pattaya City, Thailand. His destination.

  Durand kept an eye out for Thai Coast Guard patrols, but ha
ppily there were excursion boats moving all over here. So many, in fact, that he had to actively avoid their reckless antics. He flicked on his navigation lights just to fit in. Floating restaurants swept past, packed with tourists taking in the harbor sights. Pop music came to him over the water. He could see people dancing through the windows.

  Had he actually made it?

  The monkey chattered excitedly. Unless the monkey was a figment of his imagination.

  Durand motored around the flank of Ko Lan in the dark, and the lights of Pattaya City spread out before him. Hundreds of high-rise condominiums lined its miles-long crescent of beach. Bright laser light played across the sky above it, and a Hollywood-esque sign erected in the jungle hills above the city proclaimed in large, illuminated English letters “Pattaya City.”

  Durand couldn’t think of a stranger place for Bryan Frey to want to meet. It did look like Las Vegas of the Far East.

  Pleasure craft and jet skis passed by him now. People waving beer bottles and screaming in celebration.

  Durand had prepared the rebreather gear in case a police boat attempted to stop him—he’d jump overboard and swim for the beach.

  But the cigarette boat fit right in with the party atmosphere. To all appearances, Durand was a rich expat living it up in vacationland. Replete with a pet monkey.

  Durand decided to toss the Skorpion machine gun and the remaining amphetamines overboard. They would only bring trouble now. He wanted to get through this next part as cleanly as possible. Get a new phone. Message Frey and arrange a place to meet. Simple. No other complications.

  If that was really what he was supposed to be doing here. If he was really Durand.

  Durand started seeing things again—people and faces at the edge of his vision—but he was convinced they would go away once he’d gotten some sleep.

  Thumping music from a dozen venues reached him from across the bay. Saturday night. The party was in full swing.

  Durand turned in along the strand. There were almost no waves here in the cove. He decided to avoid marinas altogether and just drive the boat up onto the beach and walk away. There were already some water-jet taxis nosed up onto the sand. He’d fit right in.