Trader of Secrets: A Paul Madriani Novel

by Steve Martini

  Liquida glanced at his watch, checking the date. Almost a week had passed since Bruno’s original offer. If Bruno didn’t hear from him soon, Liquida would lose the job, and with it any gold-plated passports and new identities.

  He stopped the motorbike before he reached the end of Soi 2. He pulled off to the side and grabbed Bruno’s note from the bag. Liquida reached for his cell phone, flipped it open, and dialed a local number using the Thai SIM card he had purchased the day before.

  He keyed in Bruno’s extension on the Thai messaging system and, when prompted, left a message: “This is WOD.” Liquida liked the acronym. It even sounded like a Thai name. “Payment retrieved. Job offer accepted. Confirmed. Will arrive Hotel Saint-Jacques Monday A.M. Will require usual documents, at least three sets.” The last was code for passports and identity papers. Bruno’s operation excelled at this.

  Liquida pushed the end button on the phone and flipped it closed, another chore done. He fired up the bike and headed back to the hotel to pack.

  Chapter

  Twenty-Two

  By the time I scrape myself off the pavement in front of the bus and get to my feet, the girl in the flowered dress and the man she was talking to on the motorbike are nowhere to be seen. There is a growing cluster of people around me. One old lady touches my torn left pant leg below the knee. I glance down. The frayed threads look as if they are singed.

  The bus driver has set the air brake, turned off the engine, and come down out of his seat through the open bus door to see what has happened. Harry is right behind him.

  “You OK?” Harry pushes his way around the driver.

  “I think so.” I am leaning over, feeling around to make sure my leg is still there. “Did you see him?”

  “See who?” says Harry.

  “The guy on the bike.”

  “I saw him,” says the driver. “Guy’s crazy. Run right over you.”

  I ignore the driver, talking instead to Harry. “No, I don’t mean the guy who hit me. I mean the other one. The guy on the bike, the one she was talking to.”

  “I couldn’t see a thing. I was on the other side of the bus,” says Harry.

  “You didn’t see him before the bus pulled up? When she was standing there talking to him.”

  “Oh, you mean when we were back there in the doorway?”

  “Yes.”

  “All I could see was the back of your head,” says Harry. “How the hell am I supposed to see anything when you’re in the way? Next time get a glass head,” he tells me.

  “Damn it!”

  “What difference does it make? They’re gone now.”

  “Right, and one of them has the bag, the stuff from the drawer.” I am looking over the crowd to see if the girl is gone. “I couldn’t tell if she got on the bike or if she just gave him the bag.”

  “What drawer?” says Harry.

  “Never mind. I’ll fill you in later.” I hear sirens in the distance. “Let’s get Joselyn and get the hell out of here.”

  Harry and I slip back inside the building. We climb the stairs and I tap on the dark glass. “Open up!”

  A few seconds later Joselyn opens the door.

  “Let’s go.” I tell her.

  “What happened?”

  “I’ll tell you later.”

  Just then we hear footsteps coming down the stairs. Joselyn, Harry, and I head toward the back of the building. We leave the way we came, out the back and down the steps next to the loading dock. We cross the parking lot and escape through the narrow gap between the two buildings.

  * * *

  Charlie Three got to the Marriott and called Madriani’s room using one of the house phones. He was prepared to hang up if anybody answered. No one did. He tried the partner’s room and got the same result.

  He stood in the lobby debating whether he should call the bad news in to Charlie One using the radio, or if it might be wiser to switch to the cell phone. Just as he reached for the phone on his belt, a silver lining appeared over the hotel’s main entrance.

  He pulled out his phone and turned his back so they wouldn’t get a good look at his face as he pushed a single button and did a quick dial to Charlie One. The phone rang three times before it was answered.

  “Yeah!” He didn’t sound happy. Charlie One was yelling into the phone over the din of background noise. He was obviously under some stress.

  “Thought I’d let you know the three of them just walked into the hotel,” said Charlie Three.

  “You just made my day. Are they all right?”

  The agent looked over his shoulder and took a peek at the three Americans as they walked by him toward the elevator. “They look fine to me.” There was music and crowd noise on the other end of the phone, then a quick siren punctuated by a buzzer. “What the hell’s goin’ on over there?”

  “You don’t want to know,” said Charlie One.

  “You want I should call Charlie Four and we can pick up the three of them over here and put ’em on a plane in the morning? I don’t want to have to go through this again,” said Charlie Three.

  The agent in charge thought about it for a second and then said: “No. All we were asked to do is to follow them and provide protection. If they’re OK, leave ’em alone. Just stay there and make sure they don’t leave the hotel again unless you’re on them like second skin. Understood?”

  “Got it.”

  “Call Charlie Four and tell him to get over there and provide some backup. And stay off the radio. Whatever you do, don’t come back over here.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’m afraid we’re gonna be here for a while.”

  “Got it.”

  Charlie One ended the call and was about to slip the phone into his pocket when a hand reached around from behind and took it away from him.

  “I will keep this for now.”

  When the agent turned around, he saw the uniformed Thai policeman standing there in front of him. He could tell this was no ordinary cop. The man was maybe five foot eight, tall for a Thai, and very fit. He was wearing a military-style five-point hat with a shiny visor. The starched uniform bore captain’s bars and looked as if it was molded to his body. “We will have that as well.” He took the handheld radio and handed both the cell phone and the radio to the officers standing behind him.

  By now there was a good-size crowd forming out on the street in front of the green door, all jostling for position to see what was happening. Two police cars and a police pickup were parked on the road, blocking traffic in the first lane, their light bars flashing red, blue, and gold.

  “Your friend tells me you are the one in charge.”

  “Lucky me.”

  The cop smiled. “Are you armed?”

  “No.” The two agents inside the building had enough sense to lock up their .40-caliber Glocks along with the extra clips and the fanny pack holsters in the embassy car before they radioed in and told the Pattaya police who they were and where they were located. Charlie One produced his FBI credentials and then handed over his passport.

  The cop glanced at the ID and handed it to one of the other officers, who made notes while his boss looked at the passport. “I see. I take it then that you are assigned to the legal attaché in Bangkok?”

  “That’s correct.”

  “And your friend here?”

  “Same, same,” said Charlie One.

  “You will find that I speak fluent English. Would you like to try Thai?”

  “I’m sure that your English is better than my Thai,” said the agent.

  The officer considered his options, which were now much more limited. The agents had diplomatic passports and hence diplomatic immunity. He could take them into custody, but to do so would cause a big stink. “Would you mind telling me what you’re doing here?”

  Charlie One didn’t say anything.

  The cop lowered the passport and tapped it against his thigh for a moment. “Are there any more of you?”

  “Here, you mea
n?”

  “Yes.”

  “No,” said Charlie One. Of course, that all depended on how you defined the word here.

  “Do you mind my asking why, if there are only two of you and you’re both standing here together, why do you need radios to communicate?”

  “Certainly you can ask.” Charlie One had no intention of telling him anything, not now, not with the three Americans safely back in their hotel. The agent didn’t know much, but what little he knew he was fairly confident Washington would not want disclosed. Besides, the three Americans were running out of time. According to the information from bureau headquarters, they were scheduled to be back in D.C. in two days. They would either have to leave in the morning or catch a red-eye the following night. By then they would be somebody else’s problem.

  “So I take it you’re not going to tell us anything?” said the officer.

  “I’m sorry, but at the moment I’m not at liberty.”

  “I see. Well . . .” The cop took a deep breath and stood there for a moment. “Since we can’t arrest you and since you’re not willing to cooperate, I suppose there’s not much we can do, is there?”

  The agent didn’t want to rub it in. Instead he stood there trying to look sufficiently rebuked so as not to make the man feel bad. He was, in fact, sympathetic to the cop’s position. Guests in their country and brothers of the badge, they had needed help many times from the local authorities. The agent knew that it was inevitable that in time they would once again need the help of the Pattaya police.

  “Do you mind telling me how long you have been on assignment in Thailand?” said the cop.

  “Six years,” said the agent.

  “Do you like your duty here?”

  “Very much.”

  “Then I would advise that in the future it would be wise to inform us before you do something like this again. Whatever it was you were doing.”

  “Understood,” said the agent.

  “Good,” said the cop. “I will take your radios. Kindly ask your other agents not to use them. You can inform your embassy that a report of this matter will be filed by my department with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. If your ambassador wishes to get his radios back, he can check with the ministry.”

  “I suspect they probably belong to you now,” said the agent.

  The officer looked at them appraisingly. “Nice radios. You wouldn’t happen to have any vehicles around here, would you?”

  The agent didn’t say a word.

  The officer smiled at him. “In the meantime, try not to get in any more trouble.” He handed the passports and the FBI credentials back to the agent, turned, and said, “Give them back their cell phones.”

  Chapter

  Twenty-Three

  I’m sitting on the edge of the bed in my underwear as Joselyn tries to clean the burn on my lower leg with a damp washcloth from the bathroom as Harry looks on.

  “Two days, a lot of money, and a long trip, and we’ve got squat,” I tell them.

  Harry is sitting in a chair in the corner. “How do we know the drawer was even the right one? I mean, just because the letters line up with a note you found in Costa Rica . . .”

  “Puerto Rico,” I tell him. “Waters of Death, same address as on the note, and the only thing in that room that matches it is . . . Ow, that hurts!”

  “Don’t be a wuss,” she says.

  “Easy for you to say. It’s not your leg.”

  “A few more inches, and it wouldn’t have been yours anymore either,” she says. “That bike did a pretty good job on you. Didn’t your mother ever tell you to look both ways?”

  “Problem was I was looking the wrong way on a one-way street. Yeah, that’s clean enough,” I tell her. “Here, let me have the towel.”

  “You should put something on that,” she says. “There’s a pharmacy across the street.”

  “I’ll get something later.”

  “You want to lose your leg, it’s up to you,” she says. “You sleep in the other bed tonight. I don’t want that bloody stump next to me.”

  “It’s not bloody.”

  “Look at the towel,” says Harry.

  “Well, OK, so there’s a little blood. But it’s no stump.”

  “Give it time,” says Joselyn.

  “Listen, both of you, just leave me alone. I’ve got to think.”

  “About what?” she asks.

  “About that drawer and what might have been in it.”

  “Yeah, well, good luck on that,” says Joselyn.

  “We had her in our grasp,” says Harry.

  “We never got that close to her,” I tell him.

  “Of course not. Sherlock here thought it would be a good idea to let her get just a little farther ahead of us,” says Harry. “Then suddenly she and her bag take a ride on a rocket bike.”

  “OK, so I screwed up.”

  “Well, there you go. Admission,” says Joselyn. “The first step in every idiot’s recovery.”

  “God, but you’re cruel,” I tell her.

  “You’re not the one who got left behind in the dark room.”

  “I thought you would be safer there.”

  “Always thinking of me,” she says.

  “I did leave a flashlight.”

  “What can I say? Thank you. And if any words of mine ever cause you any real pain, would you like me to tell you how to ease the agony?”

  “I’m afraid to ask.”

  “Just stand up and run your lower leg into the side of a bed.”

  Harry doubles over in laughter from his chair.

  “OK, OK. I get it. You’re angry.”

  “Not at all,” she says. “If I was angry, you would know it. This is my reaction to a minor annoyance.”

  “God help me.”

  “Maybe he will, maybe he won’t,” she says.

  “In the meantime, we’re back where we started,” says Harry.

  “Not entirely,” says Joselyn.

  “What do you mean?” I look at her.

  “While you two were jousting with motorcycles and buses down on the street, I was busy doing a little research.”

  “On what?” I ask.

  “I figured that if the drawer was empty, I may as well take the label.”

  “You mean WOD?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Why?” says Harry.

  “Because I didn’t have anything to write with,” she tells him. “And my memory is not that good.”

  Harry looks a little baffled.

  “The label had more than just the three letters printed on it,” I tell him. “There was the name of a company, TSCC Limited.”

  “We assume the company rented the office space and in turn rented out the boxes to their clients,” says Joselyn. “There were also some telephone numbers, contact information for TSCC printed on the labels.”

  “Ahh,” says Harry.

  “So I suppose we can start there in the morning,” I tell her. “See if we can get a lead on Liquida by going through the company.”

  “But that’s not all,” says Joselyn. “That’s what was on the front of the label. On the back were some numbers.” She stands up and reaches into her pocket. “By the way, I’ve got your keys and your flashlight.” She hands them to me and then unfolds a small piece of paper. It’s the label that was on the drawer. She shows it to me.

  Sure enough, on the back are the numbers “00088” printed in the same font as the three letters on the face of the label, only smaller.

  “And that’s not all.”

  “What else?” says Harry.

  “I checked some of the other labels on the other drawers. Every one of the labels I checked had numbers printed on the reverse side, all of them with five digits, and all starting with zeros.”

  “What do you make of it?” I ask.

  “I don’t know. I thought the two of you might have some ideas.”

  “You know what it sounds like to me,” says Harry. “The place is nothing but a
n old-fashioned drop.”

  “What do you mean?” says Joselyn.

  “I thought it was something that went out with high button shoes,” he says. “The numbers rackets used them back in the 1920s to collect cash and receipts from their street runners. Drop it all in the box, and a bagman would go around and clean out the boxes and take it all to the central counting house. That way only one guy knew where the counting house was. Concept is simple. It’s just a way of keeping the world at a distance,” says Harry. “The OSS put a twist on it during the war. They realized you didn’t need a box. Anything could be a drop—the underside of a table in a public restaurant would do if you had some tape. You stick a message there, and as long as the people you’re working with know which table is being used, they can collect it and nobody ever has to meet. They drop some colored chalk on the sidewalk out in front of the restaurant and crush it underfoot, white to let people know that the drop was loaded and pink to let the world know the message was received; you didn’t even have to know who the people were you were working with.”

  “What happens if the other side finds out about the drop?” says Joselyn.

  Harry arches an eyebrow. “In the case of the OSS, you got trapped, tortured, and when they couldn’t get anything more out of you, you probably got hung with a piece of piano wire.”

  “So what you’re saying is that Liquida is a throwback to another age,” says Joselyn.

  “In a word,” says Harry. “He’s using a war surplus filing cabinet to collect his mail. The problem is he has it, and we don’t.”

  “But you notice he didn’t come and get it himself,” I say.

  “That would defeat the whole purpose of the drop box,” says Harry.

  “And you can bet that the people sending mail to him, the ones hiring him, they’ve never been near that box either. Let me see the label again,” says Joselyn.