by Barry Eisler
The stalls looked promising, although I was concerned that, after his recent experience in Manila, Manny might have some sort of phobic reaction if he entered a restroom and noticed that one of the stall doors was closed. But then I noticed something that might be even better.
Between the sinks and the urinals was a large mahogany door. On it hung a brass sign with black lettering:
BUILDING ORDINANCE
(CHAPTER 123)
NOTICE DANGER
LIFT MACHINERY
UNAUTHORIZED
ACCESS PROHIBITED
DOOR TO BE KEPT LOCKED
Interesting, I thought. If the passenger elevators went up only to thirteen, this access must be to a freight unit. The door opened out, and there were three sets of heavy brass hinges running up its left side. I tried it, and, per the ordinance, found it was indeed locked. The lock, though, was a cheap single wafer model, what you might find on an old desk or filing cabinet. It wasn’t there to protect valuables, just to comply with a local building ordinance. After all, who in his right mind other than a maintenance man would want to access the lift machinery?
I didn’t even need a lock pick—I simply forced the mechanism with a turn of the Benchmade folder. Then I slipped the knife into the crack between the door and the jamb and eased the door open. The hinges gave a long squeal and I thought, Shit, hadn’t thought of that. Should have brought some lubricant.
I glanced inside. There was a small corridor, providing, I supposed, maintenance access to the elevators. It looked good. There were variables—Manny might have a new bodyguard, or might otherwise not show up alone, or he might not come at all—but this could work.
But what about those hinges. I walked back to the sinks and picked up one of the bottles of lotion. Gardner’s Hand Lotion, the label advised, Replete with Lavender and Other Essential Oils. Well, it wasn’t WD-40, but let’s see. I emptied a healthy amount onto one of the wash towels, then wiped down the hinges. I swung the door open and closed a few times, and the essential oils worked their magic. The squealing stopped.
I wiped down the bottle, put it back on the shelf, and tossed the wash towel into a basket that the China Club had thoughtfully provided for this very purpose. I exited the restroom and began to descend the winding staircase. A waiter on his way up passed me but paid no attention.
Two-thirds of the way down, I had a clear view of the elevators and the coatroom from which May had emerged when I first arrived. The area was empty. May must have been elsewhere for the moment, attending some aspect of preparing the restaurant. She might wonder at not having seen me leave, but I felt I could count on her to assume she had simply failed to notice my departure. Hopefully she would forgive Mr. Watanabe his rudeness in not saying thank you and a proper good-bye.
I turned around and went back up the stairs. This time I really did use the bathroom—I didn’t know how long I’d be without access. Then I opened the closet door again and stepped inside. I pulled the door shut behind me and waited for my eyes to adjust to the darkness. There was just a little light coming from the elevator shaft behind me. The lack of illumination in here wasn’t the problem though—what I really needed to see was the bathroom, and, with the heavy mahogany door closed, that was impossible.
I set down the attaché and popped the hinges. The case opened with a muted double click. I pulled out the Surefire E1E mini-light I was carrying and twisted it on, then slipped into the deerskin gloves. I looked around to see what I might have to work with.
Propped against the wall to my right was a mop in a bucket. On the floor, a plunger and a few rudimentary tools, including a screwdriver. I opened the door, then slid the screwdriver between the door and the jamb on the hinged side at eye level. I pulled the door inward. The steel shaft of the screwdriver created tremendous pressure on the hinged surfaces around it, and something had to give. But it wouldn’t be those heavy brass hinges—instead, the wood itself provided the path of least resistance, and the edge of the door and jamb deformed around the screwdriver as I pulled relentlessly toward me. I went back and forth several times until I was easily able to almost close the door with the screwdriver still in the way.
I stepped outside. I closed the door, then opened it without a problem. Just wanted to make sure that nothing was going to stick as a result of my handiwork. It would have been embarrassing to have to call for Dox to come let me out. I looked at the dent I had made at the intersection of the door and jamb. It was virtually unnoticeable. Even if someone put his eye right up to it, all he would see inside was darkness.
I went back inside, closed the door, and put my eye up to the jamb.
Perfect. I had a clear view of the area to my right, which included the urinals and stalls. Every time I heard someone come in, it would be a simple matter to visually confirm who it was.
I repeated the operation on the knob side of the door. When I was done, I had a view of the entrance and sinks. I checked from the outside and confirmed again that the door opened and closed without a problem, and that the second hole, too, was unnoticeable.
I slipped an earpiece and lapel mike into place and checked the illuminated dial of my watch. Almost six o’clock. Dox and Delilah should be arriving anytime now. I wouldn’t be able to use the gear to communicate with them until they were in the building—fifteen floors of steel and concrete would block the signal for sure.
At just after six o’clock, I heard Dox’s soft twang. “Hey, partner, it’s me. Are you there?”
It felt good to hear him. “Yeah, I’m here. The men’s room on the fourteenth floor.”
“Well, that’s a nice coincidence. I was just going to use that very facility. Can you hear me? I’m on my way in.”
A moment later, I heard the restroom door open, then footsteps on the marble. Dox moved past my position. The goatee was gone, and I was pleased at the way its absence changed his appearance.
He stepped up to one of the urinals and started to use it. Looking over at the open stall doors, then to his right, he said, “Looks like you’ve got a good spot. Where are you?”
“The closet. To your right.”
“Ah-hah, I should have known. Hey, man, no peeking.”
“Don’t worry,” I said, surprising myself with a rare rejoinder, “from this far, I can only make out large objects.”
He chuckled. “That’s a good one. Say, you don’t hang around in men’s rooms habitually, do you? You seem awfully good at it.”
All right, I should have known better than to try to one-up him. “Where’s Delilah?” I asked.
“She grabbed us a table in the dreaded Long March Bar.”
“Crowded?”
“Not yet, but it’s filling up. No sign of our friends. I sure hope they show. If they don’t, I’ll start to worry something might have happened to them.”
“Yeah, that would be too bad.”
He zipped up and headed over to the sink, winking at my position en route. “Ooh, look at these fancy soaps. I like this place. Ordinarily I’m not terribly fastidious about washing my hands after urination, but tonight I believe I’ll make an exception.”
I checked through the other hole and watched Dox lathering his hands. “Damn,” he said, “I can’t get used to the way I look in these clothes and without my trusty goatee. You think Delilah meant it when she said I have good bones?”
“I’m sure she did,” I said, feeling a little impatient. “Look, you might want to hurry. If our friends show up, you don’t want to accidentally pass them in the hallway. Even without the goatee that was hiding your good bones.”
He dried his hands with a towel and tossed it in the basket. “Okay, partner, that’s a fair point. I’ll be in the bar, keeping your girlfriend company. Seriously, I’ll be right here, talking into your ear the whole time. If you need me, I’ll come running.”
Even in the midst of all the annoying palaver, it felt good to hear him say that. “Thanks,” I said. “I know you will.”
TWENTY
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A FEW MINUTES LATER, I heard Delilah. “Hey, John. Just checking the gear.”
“I hear you.”
“Good. We’re in the bar. We’ve got a nice table in the far corner. You can talk to us anytime. We’ll monitor the transmitters and let you know what’s going on. Any problems, just let us know.”
“Okay,” I said.
Dox said, “We’ll switch off now so we don’t bore you with our pretend conversations about strategic partnership opportunities in Asia and how we’re getting traction with our paradigm shifts and inflection points. Unless you want to listen in, just to make sure I’m behaving myself with your girlfriend.”
“Please, shut it down,” I said.
He laughed. “Okay. Remember, we can still hear you, so if you need anything, just speak up.”
“Okay.”
He cut out.
I waited for nearly an hour in silence. Three times, someone came in to use the restroom. Each time, I checked to see if it was Manny or Hilger. It was possible that one or both of them might stop in on their way to the private dining room, in which case Delilah and Dox wouldn’t be able to warn me. But it was always someone else.
The closet was fairly roomy, and I was able to move around a bit, do a few squats and stretches. There was a time when I could go to top speed without a warm-up, but that sort of thing was getting harder lately, and I wanted to stay limber.
I was doing some isometric neck exercises when Dox came back on. “Okay, partner,” he said, “our guests have arrived. They’re being seated right now.”
“How many?”
“Two, it looks like. Hilger and Manny. Hang on, let me change frequencies and listen in for a minute.”
A moment later, he came back on. “Yeah, it’s just the two of them. Hilger asked the hostess to escort ‘Mr. Eljub’ when he arrives. So it looks like it’s going to be just the three of them. You were right, Hilger didn’t change the plans.”
“ ‘Eljub,’ ” Delilah said.
I asked, “What of it?”
“I’m . . . not sure. Just wondering who the mystery guest might be.”
“I’m more concerned about where he’s sitting. And about whether he gets up.”
“Of course.”
I said, “Dox, can you switch the audio so that I can listen in, too?”
“I can, but then you won’t be able to hear Delilah and me.”
“That’s okay. You can cut back in anytime you think you need to.”
“Gotcha. Okay, here you go.”
There was a hiss, and then I was listening to Manny and Hilger. Hilger’s voice I remembered from listening to him through a parabolic microphone in front of Kwai Chung. He had a memorably slow, confident, reassuring way of speaking. Manny’s voice was higher; his tone, higher-strung. It sounded as though he was complaining to Hilger about security, specifically about having to leave his bodyguard outside.
“He can do you more good monitoring the entrance than he could have in here,” Hilger told him.
I wondered if he believed that—there were pros and cons, as I saw it—or if he was just trying to placate Manny, who struck me as a bit of a whiner.
Manny said, “I don’t think so. Anyway, after what happened in Manila, I feel more comfortable with him close by.”
“I’ve told you, I’m known at this club and I don’t have a bodyguard. If we post a man outside the door, it’s only going to make the staff curious about who I’m entertaining. Curiosity is the last thing we need tonight.”
“He could have just eaten with us. The staff wouldn’t know his role.”
“That’s true, but then we wouldn’t be able to speak freely. Look, I told you, Rain is in Bangkok. We almost had him there yesterday. He’s on the run now, and my men are pursuing him. You don’t have anything to worry about.”
For a moment I wondered anew whether Hilger’s operation was in fact CIA. He certainly sounded like the government, describing an “almost had him” as a comforting sign of success. I sensed he would have been right at home spouting off about “catastrophic successes” and the other such doublespeak of the age.
Manny said, “I want to know when you get him.”
“Of course.”
Well, Hilger’s going to have a little explaining to do to Manny later tonight, I thought. On the other hand, if things went as planned, Hilger wouldn’t be any more able to explain than Manny would be to listen.
The audio cut out. There was a hiss, and Dox was back in my ear. “Saw Hilger pull some bug-detection gear from an attaché,” he said. “Glad we’re using video. I’m gonna go dark for ten minutes or they might pick up the signal.”
“Good,” I said. The transmitters broadcast on radio frequency, which is present in the background in any urban location, and we were using low signal strength, boosted outside the room by the repeaters I’d put in place. So the concern wasn’t the transmitters’ ambient presence, only their susceptibility to a deliberate sweep, which might follow the signal they emitted like a trail of electronic bread crumbs. Once the sweep was completed, we could safely come back online.
After ten minutes, I heard Dox again. “Okay, here we go. I’ll switch you over.”
Another hiss, and I was listening to Hilger and Manny again. Manny was saying, “He knows he’s important. It’s going to his head.”
Hilger chuckled.
“I mean it, that’s why he’s late. He’s just showing us that he can make us wait for him, and that he knows we’ll put up with it. Arabs. This is just like them.”
“Let’s remember that we’re all friends tonight, all right?” Hilger said. “No nationalities around this table. No stupid allegiances.”
I thought I heard the sound of glasses clinking.
They were quiet after that. Ten minutes passed, then I heard the sound of a knock on their door, of chairs being pushed back. Hilger said, “Hello, Mr. Eljub. Welcome.”
At last, I thought. Mr. VBM.
“Ali, hello,” Manny said. “Glad you could make it.”
“Please, call me Ali,” a new voice said, in accented English that I had trouble placing. Arab, maybe, with something European behind it. Whoever he was, he must have been talking to Hilger. Manny had already presumed. Or else they knew each other.
“Ali, welcome,” Hilger said again. “Please, have a seat.”
I heard chairs being moved around. Hilger said, “You had a good flight, I hope?”
“Uneventful. But slow. There’s so much airline security these days!”
This provoked a laugh. Hilger said, “And the hotel?”
“I don’t think I can complain about a suite at The Four Seasons. Thank you for taking care of it.”
“My pleasure.”
I heard another knock at their door. Hilger said, “Yes.”
There was a woman’s voice, asking them about drinks.
“Shall we order?” the man called Ali said. “I’m starving.”
“Yeah, it’s gotten pretty late for dinner,” Manny said, and I thought, Not just a whiner. Passive-aggressive, too. Not that my growing distaste for him would be a factor one way or the other. I wasn’t feeling anything right now other than the usual, slightly heightened focus of being in the middle of an op. And I was going to keep it that way until after it was too late to make a difference.
“All right, let’s,” Hilger said. “Ali, let me suggest the . . .”
There was a hiss. Dox cut in: “We’ve got something interesting here, partner. Listen to your lady.”
Delilah said, “It’s not Eljub. It’s Al-Jib. Ali Al-Jib.”
“I don’t know the name,” I said. “Should I?”
“What about A. Q. Khan?” she asked.
Khan again. “Yeah, I know of Khan,” I told her, thinking of my conversation with Boaz and Gil in Nagoya. “Pakistani scientist, nuclear starter kit, et cetera. It was in the news a little over a year ago, then it died down, right? The outgoing CIA director, George Tenet, was bragging about it.”
“Yeah, how Christians In Action was down Khan’s throat and up his ass and in some other hard-to-reach places, too,” Dox added.
“I think it was more like ‘inside his residence, inside his facilities, inside his rooms,’ ” Delilah said. “But yes, that was the propaganda the U.S. was putting out. They were hailing Khan’s arrest as a great victory. But then why is the U.S. still investigating his network? Why is the International Atomic Energy Agency doing the same?”
“Oh, you know,” Dox said. “In these matters, the government usually continues the investigation just to determine whether what they’ve achieved is merely a ‘great victory,’ or if it could in fact be more accurately described as a ‘historic triumph.’ I’m sure they don’t think the network’s still operational after all that clever spying they did to stop it.”
“It is operational,” Delilah said. “Despite the arrests. It’s like Al Qaeda—the leadership is damaged, but then new, less centralized actors begin to emerge in its place.”
“Al-Jib?” I asked.
“Exactly. Ali Al-Jib is part of this new generation. He was educated in East Germany, the Central Institute of Nuclear Research in Rossendorf. There are more like him, men who were trained behind the Iron Curtain and then lost to the world’s intelligence services in the turmoil following the end of the Cold War. A lucky find of some Soviet-era documents pointed us in the right direction.”
“Maybe we should switch the frequency back to Hilger and company,” I said. “Not that this isn’t interesting, but we don’t want to get distracted.”
