Trader of Secrets: A Paul Madriani Novel

by Steve Martini

  I hand it to her.

  “TSCC. What do you think it stands for?” she says.

  “We could Google it. But if Liquida is typical of their clientele, I doubt they’re advertising on the Internet. More likely to be word of mouth,” says Harry.

  “Let me see,” I look over Joselyn’s shoulder. “We could call the number. It’s after hours. Maybe they’ve got a tape.”

  A quick consensus that we have nothing to lose finds me with the receiver to the room phone in my hand. I dial for an outside line, a local number, and punch in the eight digits.

  I take up the pen and pad by the nightstand and listen for a few seconds as I make a note. “Trident Storage, Courier and Communications,” I tell them.

  “That sorta covers the field,” says Harry.

  “Sounds like they will forward your mail if you want it,” says Joselyn.

  “Except that woman didn’t look like any kind of courier I’ve ever seen,” I tell her.

  “This is a different kind of courier service,” says Harry.

  “Did they mention any office hours on the tape?” she asks.

  “No. Just push number one if you’re calling to have your mail forwarded. Number two if you want to make arrangements to rent a box and three if you want to cancel service.”

  “Which makes you wonder if they actually have an office,” says Harry.

  “I think we’ve seen the office,” I tell him.

  “So where does that leave us?” Joselyn looks at the two of us.

  Chapter

  Twenty-Four

  Liquida parked the motorbike in a sea of other bikes at the curb along Beach Road, at the intersection of the narrow alleylike soi that ran along the side of his hotel. He put the bike helmet under the seat and dropped the keys in with it, then locked the seat down. He wouldn’t need the bike again.

  He walked up the narrow side street. It connected with Second Road, but Liquida didn’t go that far. Instead he entered the hotel through the garage and went in the back way. He wanted to avoid any possibility of running into the taxi bike kid at the stand or the girl from the beer bar on the corner across from it. By morning when the car and driver came to pick him up and Liquida checked out, both the girl and the kid would be long gone, catching up on z’s for the next night’s work.

  Liquida climbed the back stairs, slipped into his room, and dropped the beach bag on the bed. He sighed and stretched out on the mattress, relishing the day’s work. He realized just how well things had gone. Liquida had not had this much good fortune in months; in fact, not since helping himself to the stash of gold coins from the house in Del Mar near San Diego more than a year before. In the end, that whole episode was soured by the lawyer and his partner, who put the feds onto Liquida’s safe-deposit box where the gold was stored.

  He noticed that the maid had already been to his room. She had turned down the bed, pulled the blinds, and closed the curtains. He was snug as a bug in a rug with the money, his bags almost packed. But he was tired. He had a few more things to do before he could sleep.

  He used the room phone and called Air India. He booked a one-way ticket, business class, on an early morning flight from Bangkok to Paris with a connection in Delhi. He used a credit card under the Spanish passport name to hold the ticket and told the ticket agent that he would pay for it with cash at the airport counter.

  Next he called the car service and arranged for a vehicle and driver to pick him up at the front of the hotel at 5:15 the following morning. It would give him plenty of time to get to the airport ahead of the 8:55 flight. He called the front desk and asked them to bring up his bill so that he could settle it before he went to bed. Liquida didn’t want to go down to the desk. The lobby of the hotel was too close to the taxi stand where the bikers hung out. He didn’t want to take the chance that one of them might walk by and see him.

  When the bellhop delivered the bill, Liquida paid with cash using a five-hundred-euro note. When the bellhop returned with the change, Liquida gave him a good tip.

  He took a shower and packed the last few items into his luggage. Turning off the lights, he got ready to crawl into bed, then decided to get some fresh air by opening the window.

  Liquida drew back the curtains and pulled the cord on the blinds. The traffic on Second Road had thinned considerably. Vehicles were now rolling freely over almost the entire road so that his attention was fixed on the animated motion rather than the one blocked lane on the far side. Liquida turned and took a step toward the bed before the image fully registered in his brain. When it did, the heat that erupted out to the tips of his ears made him feel as if the blood in his veins had become a cauldron of molten lava.

  He whipped his head back toward the window. For several seconds he stood there slack-jawed, staring at the light bars on the two police cars and the pickup truck across the way.

  They were parked blocking the number one lane on the other side of the road—directly in front of the green door, the entrance to the building where Liquida’s box was located.

  There were cops everywhere, too many uniforms for Liquida to count. They crawled over the sidewalk in front of the shops on the other side of the street like ants. He watched as three more cops pulled up on motorbikes, parked them, and joined the growing crowd.

  Liquida turned and did a double take on the beach bag near the foot of the bed. He pounced on it like a leopard, dumped all the currency on the bed, and began poring through it all over again, this time more carefully. In a panic, he ripped two of the bills in half before he realized that they were not actually glued together. A thousand euros gone, but Liquida didn’t care.

  He very nearly grabbed his luggage and ran, leaving the money behind. But a thin seam of logic settled his nerves. He regrouped and began to think. If the euro banknotes housed a tracking device, the cops would already be at his door.

  He scooped the money back into the bag and stepped toward the window again. He could see no indication that the cancer of lights and uniforms had spread to this side of the street. If the cops had a lead on him, it was possible they were just starting with their search. If he moved fast, he still had time.

  Liquida threw on his clothes, keeping an eye on the spectacle across the street as he buttoned his shirt and buckled his belt. He slipped his feet into the loafers, not bothering with socks. His mind was working all the angles as he did it.

  He picked up the phone next to the bed, checked the number, and called the driver who was scheduled to pick him up in the morning. When the man answered, Liquida identified himself by the name on his Spanish passport. He asked how much it would cost to take him to the airport in Bangkok immediately, tonight.

  When the man quibbled and said he was already off work, Liquida offered to pay him an additional five thousand baht if the man picked him up in fifteen minutes. The driver told him he could be there in ten.

  “Just one change,” said Liquida. “Pick me up at Beach Road, the intersection of Soi 13. You will see me. I will be at the corner on the sidewalk with my luggage. Good. See you there. Ten minutes.”

  Liquida grabbed the white beach bag with the cash inside and stuffed it into the large suitcase. He was taking a chance. Customs generally limited the amount of cash transported across international boundaries to ten thousand dollars unless the funds were declared. Liquida couldn’t declare the money without explaining where it came from. He had no choice. He would have to run the gauntlet and hope they didn’t look in the bag when he arrived in Paris.

  Once there he could use several bank accounts that he maintained in Europe and make deposits through ATM machines. If he spread the funds among several accounts, it would draw less attention. By the time he flew out of Paris, he would no longer be carrying large sums of cash.

  He checked his watch, then grabbed the binoculars from the suitcase and took one last look out the window. Liquida couldn’t figure how the cops might have gotten onto him. It was possible that they simply stumbled on the drop box. If so, Li
quida’s timing was impeccable. But he didn’t believe in either religion or chance.

  He looked to see if either the woman from the bar or the taxi bike driver were among the throng of cops across the street. It was possible either one or the other might have taken his money and then called the police if they were suspicious. If they were being questioned, that would explain it.

  He scanned the crowd, looking for the woman’s bright-colored dress. He didn’t see it. What he did see were two tall Westerners, what the Thais refer to as farangs. As he surveyed the crowd, the swirl of commotion, the two Caucasians seemed to be in the eye of the storm. One of them was talking to a Thai cop who looked to be in charge. Liquida didn’t have to wait long for confirmation. The cops handed documents back to the two men, what looked like passports and two blue credential cases, the kind used by Interpol, the police, and the FBI. Liquida had seen enough.

  He pulled the cord on the blinds and stepped quickly across the room. He repacked the binoculars, grabbed his shaving kit from the bathroom, stashed it in his luggage, and dropped the room key on top of the nightstand. He zipped up the suitcase, grabbed the overnight bag, and stepped out the door, headed for the back stairs.

  Chapter

  Twenty-Five

  What does that give us?” says Harry. “We have ‘T’ for Trident; ‘S’ is storage. Presumably those are the locked drawers themselves, unless there’s another storage location we don’t know about. The first ‘C’ stands for courier and the last is communications. The courier I think we know. So what kind of communications you think they’re offering?”

  “I’m guessing it’s probably the client messaging service, the other phone number on the label,” says Joselyn.

  “I’m for calling it,” I tell her.

  “Let’s do it,” says Harry.

  I pick up the phone and dial. Joselyn is over my shoulder listening with her ear next to mine. She picks up a notepad and pencil from the nightstand. Two rings and a digital voice answers. “To collect or leave a message, enter the extension number followed by the pound sign. To delete or change messages left on any of your assigned extensions, enter your code.” I wait for a second and there is a beep.

  I hang up.

  “We need to know the extension number to leave or collect messages,” I say.

  “Back where we started,” says Harry.

  “Not necessarily.” I dial again. This time I wait for the beep and enter the five numbers printed on the back of the WOD label: 00088. Then I punch the pound sign. I wait a few seconds and the system hangs up on me. I try again, only this time I drop the three zeros. I get the same result. The system disconnects. I get a dial tone. I try a three-digit extension and a four-digit extension, dropping one of the zeros on the first call and two on the second. I strike out each time. “Now we’re back where we started,” I tell them.

  “Let’s think about this. The instructions on the phone indicate more than one extension per client,” says Joselyn. “And Liquida would want more than one.”

  “Why?” says Harry.

  “Because he would need a separate extension for each of his clients. He’s not going to want client A listening to the messages he leaves for client B, or for that matter the messages they leave for him, not in his line of work.”

  Joselyn is right. Liquida would want to keep it all straight. He would want to limit each message to as few ears as possible.

  “The instructions on the phone mentioned something else, called a code.” She is looking at notes she made on the small writing pad.

  “Yeah, I know. I already thought about it,” I tell her. “But the only numbers we have are the five digits on the back of the label. I’ve dialed them in every combination I can think of. If that’s Liquida’s code, it should have connected, and it didn’t.”

  “Yes, but you didn’t dial the right way.” She’s looking at her notes. “You entered the pound sign. The instructions didn’t say anything about a pound sign for the code, only for the extensions.”

  I dial again, all five digits—00088. This time I omit the pound sign. We wait. A second later, we hear the digitized voice once more.

  “Press one for extension 13. Press two for extension 47. Press three for extension 76. Press four for extension 128. Press five for extension 343.”

  I press one. “There are no messages.” I do the same with the second and third extensions. There is nothing on either of them. When I press number 4, the mechanical voice says: “There are two messages. Press one to hear the first message.” I do it. We hear a voice.

  “This is WOD.”

  The small hairs on the back of my neck rise with the sound of his voice. I am holding the phone out so that we can all hear it. Joselyn pens a note as quickly as she can, just the essentials: “payment,” “job accepted,” “Saint-Jacques,” “Monday A.M.” Then the voice says: “If you wish to delete this message, press seven.” The call ends. “Press one to hear the next message.” I hit one.

  It’s another male voice, somebody by the name of Bruno. “The payment for the last job was sent three days ago. Sorry for the delay. I have another commission for you if you are interested. It’s a big one. Six-figure fee. Details are with the money. Advise as to availability.” And then a click as the man hangs up. “There are no other messages. If you wish to delete this message, press seven.” I hang up.

  Joselyn heads to her laptop already set up on the desk near the television.

  “Where the hell is the Hotel Saint-Jacques?” I ask.

  “Gimme a minute,” she says.

  “There is no clue as to where Liquida is calling from,” says Harry. “He could be anywhere.”

  “My guess is he’s here,” I tell him.

  “Why, because of the girl with the bag? I wouldn’t count on it. The contents of that bag could be anywhere by now. They could be shipped overnight halfway around the world by morning.”

  I look at my watch. “Friday. We have three days. One thing we do know is where he will be come Monday morning. We need to get ahold of Thorpe. Call it in to him.”

  “Your watch is wrong,” says Harry. “When you changed the time, you forgot to change the calendar. We lost a day. We crossed the international date line, remember?”

  “You’re right.”

  “It’s Saturday night,” says Harry. “Twelve hours’ difference between here and the East Coast. Opposite ends of the earth. That means it’s Saturday morning in Washington.”

  “Oh, hell,” I tell him.

  “Thorpe’s office is closed,” he says. “We could leave a message.”

  “He’ll get it Monday morning,” I tell him. “It’ll be too late.”

  “So we call the FBI, one of their field offices,” says Harry. “They gotta be open on weekends.”

  “Where?”

  “I don’t know,” says Harry. “Not here. In the States.”

  “They won’t know us from Adam,” I tell him. “By the time they check us out and get on top of it, Liquida will be gone.”

  “Hotel Saint-Jacques. It’s in the Latin Quarter, Left Bank. It’s Paris,” says Joselyn. “He’s headed for Paris.”

  * * *

  Liquida zoned out in the back of the limo on the way to the airport. For ninety minutes he drifted in and out. His only worry now was whether the Thai authorities at the airport might have a description of him, or worse, a sketch provided by Madriani’s daughter.

  If they had the Spanish name from his passport, they probably would have nailed him at the hotel in Pattaya. The hotel had taken a copy of the passport. Liquida had to assume that the passport was still good. He would get a new one the minute he connected with Bruno.

  “Oh, shit!” With the name Bruno, it hit him right between the eyes.

  “A problem?” said the driver.

  “No, no, everything’s fine.” The message Liquida had left for Bruno was still on the tape. With the cops drilling out his locked box it wouldn’t take long before they discovered the message syste
m. That is, if they hadn’t already found it.

  Liquida whipped out his cell phone and started dialing. He waited for a moment while the instructions played out, then keyed in the code. He listened to his own message and took solace from the fact that the system was still up and running. The message was still there. If the FBI had found it, Liquida was guessing that after listening to the messages, they would have taken the system down and hauled the hardware back to their lab for analysis.

  He waited for the message to Bruno to end. The moment it did Liquida pressed seven. “Message deleted.” He went on to Bruno’s original message left for him and erased that as well. “There are no messages on your system.”

  He wondered if the eggheads at the FBI would have any way to retrieve deleted messages. If so, by the time the lab sorted it out, he would be gone. Liquida made a mental note to keep his stay in Paris brief.

  Chapter

  Twenty-Six

  The doorbell rang in the D.C. condo. Sarah turned the dead bolt, unhooked the chain, and opened the door without hesitation. She already knew who it was.

  “Hello, Ms. Madriani?” The man was in his midforties, with short gray hair cut military style and parted neatly on the left. In a blue worsted suit he could have passed for an Iowa banker, but for the FBI credentials he was holding with the flap on its leather case hanging down.

  “You must be Agent Ellison.” Sarah spoke without looking at the agent or his credentials.

  “So they tell me.”

  Sarah’s gaze was stranded on the Olympic-class eye candy standing behind him. By the time she forced her attention back to Ellison, he was already smiling.

  “That’s OK. I’m getting used to it. Being a potted plant, I mean.”

  “I’m sorry.” Sarah smiled and felt her face glow red.

  “The good-looking one here is Mr. Adin Hirst,” said Ellison. “Don’t feel bad. You should see the secretaries in my office. He leaves in a few days. The place is going to look like a wake when he goes.”