The Miraculous Plot of Leiter & Lott

by Jonathan Lowe

  "Couple aspirin will do." He held the ice pack onto his head while Doug got his clothes. Then, as he dressed, he watched Doug survey Nasheed's bedroom. "Anything missing?" he called.

  "I wouldn't know. There's been some rummaging, for sure."

  Etherton examined a latched footlocker near the wall beside the bed for signs of tampering.

  "Where were you when I called?" he asked. "With Swann? Aazad?"

  "Neither. I'm afraid they don't have much faith in our theory, my friend. Until this moment, I'd almost given up on it, myself. About your call, Nasheed is on his way back now, and you shouldn't be here alone when he. . ." Etherton broke off. "What makes you so sure your guy wasn't C.I.A. or police, anyway? And that the girl was our Japanese hooker?"

  David repositioned the cold pack on his head, getting up. "It's just a hunch. I don't know. Maybe more than that. Like I said, I didn't see the girl."

  "So you think," Doug suggested, "they're both in bed with Seacrest? Because obviously your guy Vaughn was lying about Nasheed."

  "If you say so."

  "I do. Even Gulf News mentions Shakil in Shanghai." Etherton watched as David hobbled forward, out of the bathroom. "But if it is Seacrest behind them, why do this, anyway? What were they looking for?"

  "If I had to guess," David contended, "they were looking for evidence of what we know. Then again, they know we suspect Seacrest, so why let me live, other than that you weren't here and they couldn't get us both? And why risk this at all? They could be caught, interrogated. There could be a link in their backgrounds back to. . . whoever."

  "Unless Swann Tower is next on the hit list," Doug said. "Like tonight, for instance. In which case maybe they would take the risk, considering the bigger risk of launching an attack without knowing what we have. Since that would definitely validate our theory."

  David tottered into the room, toward where Etherton now examined an ebony dresser, careful not to disturb any latent fingerprints. "Right," he said.

  "Here's another bizarre thought," Etherton added. "What if they didn't intend to hit Swann's family directly at all? What if the strike was supposed to be like the first one? Random."

  David tried to absorb it, squinting across the dim room through a dull veil of pain. "You mean, in keeping with our diversion theory, it makes no sense to hit Swann's family if you're going to hit Swann Tower next?"

  "Bingo. It's too risky a coincidence. So if the family was the target, the aerial attacks end with that, but if not. . ."

  "Then they're looking to catch Swann without his bodyguards, and make it look like suicide?" David completed Doug's logic. David steadied himself against the wall. "And since Swann doesn't have a condo or office here, this is a likely place he'd visit as Nasheed's friend?"

  "Exactly."

  "So when was the last time he was here?"

  "Swann? About a month or so ago, before he went to Africa. Nasheed had him over for dinner one night while I was out. I'm thinking now that Aazad was here too."

  "What about dragon lady? Did you ask Nasheed if he knew her?"

  "No, I didn't talk to him," Doug said. "Swann did."

  David pinched the bridge of his nose. "Whoever Vaughn is, he seemed to know Nasheed's schedule. So why would Swann be here without him? And why search the place, then make it look like theft, and like I was with a hooker?"

  "In case Shakil arrived before you woke up? Who knows. Let's just hope there's a clue here somewhere, or Nasheed can tell us what's missing."

  David sighed, wondering what he would tell Nasheed himself--that he fell for misdirection, a magic trick. . . so convinced that he didn't even ask for I.D.? He looked at Etherton, standing idly in the overhead beam on Nasheed's bachelor-pad Star Trek set. "Aren't you going to call building security, and at least warn Swann, if not the police?"

  Distracted, Etherton went over to Shakil's computer in the far corner of the room to examine the tower console beside the screen and keyboard, both lit by a focused beam of recessed lighting there. "Uh oh," he muttered, at last.

  "What is it now?"

  "Guess we'll have to call somebody. Looks like they got into this thing. Screws missing." Doug bent closer. "Yeah, here's one on the floor, right here. How much you want to bet the hard drive is gone?"

  David imagined the girl in the room, with the man who said he was Paul Vaughn, C.I.A.. "I'll take that bet," he said.

  "You will?"

  "Because what if the girl really has been here before this?"

  "Dragon lady, you mean."

  "Right. Dragon lady."

  "So?"

  "So if Swann mentioned her to Shakil, that's why he's coming back. He knows her. He knows our theory now, too. Where were you when Swann told you he'd talked to Nasheed?"

  "I was here, on the phone," Doug said.

  "Well, that's it, then. Maybe this was a theft, or maybe it wasn't. But I think the real purpose for their visit wasn't to steal something. It was to remove a bug or two she'd planted earlier."

  "Bravo, Sherlock," said Etherton, clapping slowly. "Maybe somebody should hit you on the head more often. But it still doesn't prove dragon lady isn't also C.I.A.. Or just a rather uncommon thief."

  ~ * ~

  They sat on the couch in Nasheed's media pit, the TV screen above them tuned to CNN, while commentators anxiously tracked news from Dubai, speculating about a possible imminent attack. Etherton held his cell phone in one hand and a remote control in the other as they debated their options. "What if we call the American embassy," he wondered aloud, "and tell them a guy claiming to be C.I.A. just hit you over the head. Call their bluff. Fight fire with fire."

  "What hard evidence do we have to show anyone yet," David asked, "other than the lump on my thick skull?"

  Doug glanced down at his watch. "I don't know, but we better come up with a plan pretty soon. The El Haj party starts in just over three hours. Same time as Nasheed gets here."

  David looked up at the ceiling next to the TV monitor, trying to imagine such a thing. "Almost forgot. What is it, a nine-eleven party? Like a hurricane party?"

  "Hopefully without fireworks," Doug replied. "Either way, I'm not going to be there. Swann and Baloum won't either. But your buddies might."

  "My buddies," David repeated. "They don't deserve to be warned, but the others do."

  "On the other hand, everyone who shows up must know there's a risk. Just not as much of a risk as you think there is."

  "Me, not you?"

  Doug hesitated before speaking. "No one says you have to go, David," he said. "I wouldn't blame you, either, for not wanting to dance the night away after being hit on the head. Especially when there's a chance a buzz bomb might crash through the window and make it your last dance. And we shouldn't stay here, either. We should both get rooms at the Marriott, and distance ourselves from this. Whatever it is."

  "How could you sleep? I know I couldn't."

  "We'll sleep better after I make my calls."

  "Calls?" David asked. "To whom?"

  "To Shakil, for one," Etherton replied, opening his phone. "Then to building security to ask them if they've finished checking the lobby's surveillance videos, looking for someone matching the description of the dragon lady. Swann ordered that much, at least."

  David took the remote control, and cut down the TV volume while Etherton speed dialed. An image began to form in his clouded mind. He environed a party, but at ground level, not atop a tall building. Everyone looking up. Etherton interrupted his vision, saying, "Hi, Shakil, this is Doug again. Give me a call before you get here. It's urgent. Thanks." Etherton ended the call, then punched in another number. After explaining the situation to that respondent he listened intently to the answer to his question, "What other surveillance cameras?" Finally, he closed his phone and grinned.

  "Well?" David asked.

  "Well," Etherton said, "We can add to the lobby and parking garage entrance videos everyone getting off on this floor in the past few hours. There's no camera in the hall
way, but there is one in every elevator and stairwell. In the elevator it's a little red fish eye, right next to the floor display above the door. It takes a photograph every time the door opens or closes, and includes a record of which floor the elevator is on when it does."

  "There's our evidence, then." David stood and went to the telescope next to the window. Swiveling it to the extreme left, toward the oblique form of the Seacrest Tower, he began a downward scan of the rooms visible below theirs at this angle. Left, right, and left, he moved the scope in jerky cadence down, tracking the short swings on the lowest focused power.

  "What are you doing?"

  He started to explain his chance trance, but when he passed an anomaly, like a visual bump in the sweeping, narrow field that dipped below the level plane, he stopped and reversed his tracking only to settle on a single rectangular space. Between partly open curtains he could now see the triangle shape which had attracted him, and after only a moment he realized what it was. The triangle of a tripod had--at the apex--the glass eye of a telescope, and although he could not see the barrel of the scope, he knew that was because it was perpendicular to his line of sight. The scope was aimed directly at them. There was no one at the eyepiece, though, and the room behind it was empty. For the moment.

  "Do you have a. . . a camera mount for this telescope?" he asked, suddenly feeling claustrophobic, his chest and his heart like a metronome winding tighter.

  "A what?"

  "A mount. A camera mount or a camera with a zoom lens."

  He left the telescope. He had to get out of there. He head began to pound again. His chest felt even tighter.

  Etherton went to the telescope, where he'd left it positioned. Looked through it, then looked back at him as he moved toward the guest room, where his luggage was.

  19

  He was halfway down to the lobby, Doug having promised to follow soon, when he remembered his passport. He stared up at the electronic floor display above the door, noting the inconspicuous tiny camera eye there, and wondered if the American embassy idea held the most merit. He should lay out everything that had happened, just as Doug would with building security, and see if they could get the damn thing back. Then he could book a flight to Paris, rent a room, visit the Louvre, sit in some parks and sidewalk cafes with espresso and pastries, and forget about the top one percent who dominated the tabloids and Vanity Fair profiles with their scandals and excesses. He'd skip the castle tour of the Loire Valley, too, or the French Riviera, in favor of simple villages in wine country. Maybe take a canal cruise through Burgundy and along the Rhône.

  Instinctively, just as the elevator door slid open, he put a hand to his forehead, shadowing his face as he pretended to scratch at his hairline. Guilt? he wondered. No, there was no reason for that. Etherton would see to it Swann was informed of their new suspicions.

  So why run?

  He decided it must be the same reason he hadn't looked at himself in the mirror in Nasheed's bathroom, and it had something to do with not trusting his own instincts, not just illness. That he didn't feel well had seemed like an excuse to take Doug's suggested out. Having come to face the two men who most typified the sleaze who'd taken his mother's remaining nest egg before her death, was he now, on the eve of possibly meeting one or both of them, going to let his fear for his own safety dominate his actions? He'd consoled himself that the party might be cancelled, although he didn't yet know that for sure.

  He stepped out in the lobby, exiting the elevator. He pulled his suitcase behind him, the little wheels at two of its corners spinning and clattering across the hard marble floor as the unwieldy case rocked unsteadily toward the main glass doors.

  "Mr. Leiter?" a commanding voice suddenly called from behind him.

  He slowed a bit, but kept moving, staring ahead. Then he heard steps behind him too, clacking to intercept. Just before hands gripped his shoulders on either side, he stopped.

  "We need to show you something," another deep voice said in a Russian accent.

  ~ * ~

  He recognized the big blond guy as one of Swann's bodyguards, a man who looked like an aging Rambo nemesis, complete with cold, unblinking eyes, but minus any overt threat except for a tendency to dip his head like a prizefighter about to rope a dope. The other man was a middle aged Aussie in a gray suit who wanted to be called Malcolm. His neatly trimmed goatee accented an intelligent, rugged and symmetrical face above a trim but lithe physique. In the security office Malcolm pointed at a video monitor as Swann's humorless stand-in touched a controller. The screen lit up, showing the photo of an empty elevator.

  "This is the shot taken six minutes after the one with you and the man you claim said he was C.I.A.. You'll notice the outline of a woman's head just in the middle bottom, there. She was standing up against the door, and must have been pressed against it. It's the only blind spot in the space. The only thing we know from this picture is that her hair is long and dark. However. . ." He motioned for the Russian to click ahead. "However, you'll see that we have other images of a woman fitting your description taken at other times in other elevators. Is this the woman you mean?"

  "Dragon lady," David confirmed, as the images appeared, showing the tall Japanese hooker he remembered from the El Haj, standing amid other riders. "Yes, she's the one with a dragon tattoo on her ankle. What about Vaughn?"

  "Vaughn," the security man repeated to the blond.

  The images moved back to stop at the photo of a clean shaven Arab man in a white dishdash. The man's head was bowed away from the camera, and in the elevator photo he had turned completely away while David stood in front of him.

  "I didn't notice that," David said.

  "Go figure," said Malcolm. "By the way, the elevator camera is mentioned nowhere in the building's literature, but both this guy and the girl knew when to hide, and where the blind spot is."

  "So he. . .they. . . really are C.I.A., then?"

  Malcolm shook his head. "No, the C.I.A. isn't this clever, and what would be their motive? We have a complete dossier on Shakil Nasheed, and they've never asked for it." He paused. "We also know that the girl really is a hooker, because we have images of her going round to other floors in this building over the past three months. Would the C.I.A. have a real hooker on their payroll? Well, I suppose it's possible, but it's unlikely. And now here's another thing. We have an image of your man Vaughn leaving, but he's leaving alone. The girl isn't with him. In fact, Mr. Leiter, your dragon lady hasn't left the premises at all. We have video of all exits to prove that." He paused as the monitor went dark. "She's still here, in the building, continuing her usual good work."

  "Is this my problem?"

  The two men exchanged glances. "Obviously you don't think so," Malcolm said. "But aren't you curious, considering what just happened?"

  "No," David lied, "I'm not. Not if my life is at stake."

  The man nodded. "So you're not planning to go to the police?"

  Remembering the passport again, David said, "Actually, I. . . suppose I am. I have to. Unless you think you can get my passport back."

  "Who has it?"

  "A man named Muaz Salik."

  "I believe I've heard that name before. What if I tell you that if you help us I'll get your passport back for you?"

  "You can tell me anything. Doesn't mean it's true."

  Swann's bodyguard leaned down, his minty breath a heat on the back of David's neck. "So you're not going to cooperate?"

  Considering the odds, he said, "Maybe if the price was right."

  "And what would that price be?" Malcolm asked, eyebrows narrowing, a hint of amusement in his tone.

  "You tell me."

  The security head motioned for the bodyguard to leave the room. When he was gone, Malcolm rubbed an index finger over his lips, then said, "I'll tell you what, Mr. Leiter."

  "Call me David."

  "David. Right. Okay. If you help us out here, I'm sure we can pick up your plane fare back to the States."

 
"I'm not going back to the States," David informed him.

  "No? Where, then?"

  "Paris."

  "Okay. Paris."

  "Sorry, not good enough."

  Malcolm took in a breath and let it out, slowly. "Okay. How about this. We fly you to Paris, and put you up in a Swann property there for. . . say, two weeks? All expenses, of course."

  "Not even close," David said.

  Malcolm narrowed his eyes this time, both hands raised to his hairline as though he were looking through a tunnel. "You'll have to excuse me, Mr. Leiter. I mean David. Just what exactly do you want?"

  David stood, and for a long time considered it, before he reached down for the handle of his suitcase. "One million dollars," he replied, at last, "and my passport by tomorrow."

  20

  The laughter exhibited by Swann's security men subsided when he told them what he wanted to do with the money. After explaining that the full million wasn't needed--that it only had to look or sound like a million in a leak to the press--he didn't need to explain to them why the word million itself had a magical impact on those hearing it, or that anything less might prove ineffective. With only a kernel of his idea cracked open, each man then offered their own contribution to the hasty scheme, which flowered quickly. Swann himself was contacted next, and the full situation carefully detailed, along with what David and Etherton had both seen. After five tense minutes Swann called back and approved the plan, which now involved a surprise engagement party for an unnamed Bollywood star, like one Victor Seacrest was known to admire, at a restaurant near the Seacrest Tower. Speculation from the anonymously leaked tip-off would swiftly circulate like a virus through the local press, who would wonder whether it was Nadira Babbar, Suchitra Patil, or indeed Rhea Kumar who would show up. The venue, Swann decided, would permit ample use of cameras at the event, and his own added stipulation was that a room in the Seacrest be obtained for the unnamed star, which would provide access to the building itself. Swann's own men could then mingle with the paparazzi, survey Seacrest Tower, and move into it with the principals.