“The hall is z-shaped,” added Rockman. “The guards can’t see each other, or the room itself.”
“Does that door on the top connect to the back stairwell?” asked Karr.
“Yes,” said Rockman. “Looks like the guard sits in front of the door. Has a chair there and everything. Once you get the video bugs in the lobby, we’ll be able to ID the subject when he comes in. Then we’ll follow him up to the second or third floor, wherever he goes.”
Karr turned to Dean. “Ready?”
Dean nodded.
“Sometimes a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do,” Karr said, preparing to give his body to science.
* * *
Dean kept his finger against the rifle’s laser button as he watched from the window, ready to flip it on. His glasses would show him precisely where the A2’s bullets would hit if he fired. But that wouldn’t necessarily save Tommy Karr if things went bad.
“He’s coming around the side of the building right now,” said Rockman from the Art Room.
Besides the Global Hawk’s images, low-light video was being provided by a small unmanned aircraft nicknamed the Crow; Dean and Karr had launched it from the roof of the building when they’d arrived. The Crow’s image was being displayed on the screen of Karr’s PDA, which he’d left on the floor near the window for Dean, but Dean found the image distracting, and it was much easier to rely on Rockman as his long-range eyes and ears.
Karr sauntered into view, a big blond American walking like he owned the world. Dean tensed as a black sedan pulled onto the block; he raised the boxy assault gun, ready to fire. The rear door of the car opened. A single, diminutive figure got out. It was a middle-aged woman, who crossed the street in front of Karr and went into the building. Karr let her get ahead of him and paused for a moment to look around, as if worried that someone might see him. Then he spun toward the entrance.
“Here goes nothin’,” said Karr cheerfully, ducking inside.
* * *
The woman who sat on the couch that dominated the entry hall at Saigon Rouge didn’t know what to make of the tall blond American who crowded her doorway. She did, however, know what to do with the two hundred-dollar bills he took from his pocket.
“You are American?” said in English.
“Norwegian,” Karr replied. And then, in halting and poorly accented Vietnamese, he told her that he had heard from certain friends that Saigon Rouge was the only place to visit when in town.
“You speak Vietnamese?” she answered.
“Just a little,” he told her. “Mom taught me.”
“Your mother, Joe?”
“She came from Lam Dong Province.”
This baffled the woman even more; Karr had zero Vietnam ese features, and Lam Dong was not known for producing giants. But she had seen many strange things in her years as a madam, and questionable parentage was hardly unusual, let alone relevant in the face of a fee several times over the normal charge.
“No guns inside,” she told him, holding out her hand.
“Now how do you know I have a gun?”
“Everyone have gun. We search.”
A squat bodyguard dressed in a brown Vietnamese suit came out from the other side of the flowered screen opposite the couch. Karr took his Beretta from his belt and handed it over, then dropped to his knee and took the small Walther from its holster above his right ankle.
“I get it back, right?” he said, handing the gun to the madam.
“You get back, yes. Search him, please.” The man found Karr’s Walther TPH pocket pistol on his left ankle. The bodyguard smiled triumphantly and rose — missing the other Walther on Karr’s right ankle. Barely five inches long by three inches high, the tiny gun fired .22-caliber bullets, but it was better than nothing.
“Must’ve forgotten about that one,” said Karr as the madam took the weapon.
“No joke, honey,” said the madam. She hesitated, then waved her bodyguard back to his hiding spot. “You follow me, and no tricks.”
“You’re the one with the tricks.”
“Very funny, Joe. Norwegian has a good sense of humor.” She led Karr through a beaded doorway to what in a normal house might be a parlor, though here it would have been more accurately called a bullpen. The woman who had preceded Karr into the building was just leaving with a much taller red-headed girl wearing a silk kimono that reached to the top of her thong strap. Four other girls lounged on the couches, wearing Western-style lingerie. It was just going on eleven; business wouldn’t pick up for another hour or so, which was when Cam Tre Luc was expected.
“Who?” said the woman, gesturing. “You make a pick.”
“So hard to decide,” said Karr, glancing around.
“You want Miss Madonna,” Rockman reminded him.
Karr knew who he wanted, but he didn’t want to make it too obvious. He also wanted to give himself time to plant a video bug here. He’d slapped one apiece on the frames to the doors as he’d come through but thought he needed at least two in this room to cover it adequately.
Two women got up from the couch and walked over toward him in a languid, dreamy dance, hoping to help him make up his mind.
“Cute,” purred one of the girls. The other began blowing in his ear.
“Decisions, decisions,” said Karr.
There was a small bust of Ho Chi Minh in the corner. The vantage was perfect, but there was no place to put the bug where it wouldn’t be obvious. Karr decided he would have to settle for the underside of the table.
“Come with me, Joe,” said one of the prostitutes, running her hand down his side. She wore an oversized yellow camisole that fell just far enough below her waist to make it clear that was all she had on.
“Whoooph,” said Karr. “Getting hot in here. Say — can I have a drink?”
“Tommy, don’t drink anything,” hissed Rockman. “It may be doped.”
The second girl, who wore a long strapless gown, began rubbing Karr’s other side. He slid between them, angling for the couch near the table where he wanted to plant the bug.
This was an invitation for the other girls to join in. They were girls — Karr doubted any of them were older than fifteen.
The madam went to a secretary-style desk at the side of the room and revealed a small bar. Karr snaked his hand around the girl with the strapless gown and slid the bug under the end table. She naturally interpreted this to mean that he was interested in her, and ran her hand up and down his thigh.
“What you drink, Joe?” asked the girl in the camisole, pouting because she seemed to be losing out.
“Water,” said Karr.
“Water?” asked the madam. “You need vodka. It will make you loose. You are too tight now. High-strung.”
“Oh, is that what you call it?”
The girls giggled. The one in a see-through pink chemise got up and began doing a dance in front of him, wiggling her breasts.
“I was told there was a girl named Miss Madonna,” said Karr. “Is she here?”
“Miss Madonna?” The madam made a face as if she did not know who he was talking about, then shook her head.
“She was the best, I heard,” said Karr. “I came all the way to Saigon to see her.”
The girls began rubbing him frantically, hoping to get him to change his mind. Karr kept his gaze on the madam.
“Very expensive,” she told him.
“Two hundred not enough?” asked Karr, reaching back into his pocket for the bills.
“Five hundred.”
“I think two is more than enough.”
“Three-fifty.”
“I have three.” Karr removed the bills from his pocket.
“All I have.”
Another frown. “Fifteen minute,” said the woman.
“Thirty.”
“Twenty.”
“Deal.” Karr pushed himself up from the couch — which wasn’t easy. “Sorry, ladies. Another time, I’m sure.”
* * *
“Karr’s on his way up,” Rockman told Dean. “They’re taking him to see Madonna. All right, he’s in — the room, I mean.”
“I figured that out,” said Dean.
“Miss Madonna has the suite at the back of the third floor. There’s a window on the alley. No fire escape.” Somehow, Dean didn’t think the code enforcement people would care. He turned his attention back to the street, watching as a light-colored Toyota Land Cruiser pulled up near the whore house. Two men dressed in black jumped out from the back, scanned the street, then tapped on the truck’s roof.
“Hey, Rockman, what kind of vehicle does Cam Tre Luc have?”
“Yeah, we see that, too,” said Rockman. He cursed — it looked like their subject was more than an hour early. “We’ll check the image when he comes into the hallway to be definite, but that looks like him.”
57
The Vietnam national phone company had an admirable security system designed to prevent computer break-ins. It was so admirable, in fact, that Gallo had studied the system it was modeled on as a sophomore in college.
If he recalled correctly, the class mid-term required students to demonstrate all six ways of breaking into the system without being detected.
Gallo had shown there were actually eight.
After he broke into the system, Gallo obtained a list of every phone call Thao Duong had made in the past two years. Gallo then obtained lists of everyone those people had called — and everyone whom they had called. He then took the American numbers — Canadian, Mexican, and Ca rib be an as well as U.S. — and requested call lists on them. Ironically, though these requests were filled voluntarily by the phone companies, they took the longest — several hours rather than the ten or fifteen minutes it would have taken Gallo to get them by breaking in.
Bureaucracy.
Gallo shared the information with the other analysts, who used it in a number of ways. One created a chart showing Thao Duong’s “friend network”—acquaintances whom he regularly spoke to — and looked for interesting individuals.
Another focused on finding banks and financial institutions active in the list, and began tracing transactions that Thao Duong might be involved in. Another compared the phone numbers against intercept lists, looking for people whom the NSA or other agencies were already monitoring.
Two facts emerged from the analysis: Friends of Thao Duong had made wire transfers totaling over one hundred thousand dollars within the last week. Another set of friends had connections with the shipping industry, and with China.
The one thing that did not show up was connections to government officials outside of the agricultural ministry. As omissions were often more important than inclusions, this was noted as well.
Gallo also used a tool that compared the network of connections he had compiled to other known organizations, including al Qaeda. The tool tested how similar this network was to different profiles — in other words, did it look like a terror organization or a Girl Scout troop?
The tool worked on the theory that groups with the same goal tended to work in the same way. To use a very simple example, the members of a bowling league would tend to meet once or twice a week at a specific location within driving distance of their homes. They would generally purchase certain specific items — bowling shoes and bowling balls, for example. Most would fit a specific demographic, and would group themselves with others of an even tighter demographic on their team — the under-30 league, or the under-40 league, for example.
Rarely could the tool definitively identify what a network was or ga nized to do. It didn’t in this case, though some form of international commerce or trade was suggested. Its real value was suggesting other areas of inquiry. According to the tool, there should be more bank transfers as yet unde-tected. It also suggested that, based on the call patterns, Thao Duong was an important member of the network, but not the top person. Several other individuals — or nodes, as the program called them — were highlighted for in-depth investigation. Beyond looking for criminal and public records pertaining to them, the analysts would look at financial records, transaction lists such as credit card charges, and anything else they could find. Gallo handed off the list to the analysts, asking that they compile profiles. Several were in America.
Within two or three minutes of sending the request via e-mail, he got a phone call from Segio Nakami, the number two on the Desk Three analytic team. Almost the exact opposite of Johnny Bib, Nakami was considered eccentric at the Agency because he wasn’t eccentric.
“Robert, you’re asking for profiles?” said Nakami.
“Yeah, I got this thing going for Rubens in Vietnam.”
“There are Americans on the list.”
“Yeah?”
“What are you looking for?”
Gallo explained what he was doing.
“Did you fill out the papers?” asked Nakami when he finished. By “papers,” Nakami meant legal requests; the forms were actually done electronically.
“I thought, like, I didn’t have to because Rubens said go.”
“No, you have to fill them out.”
“Um, it’s going to like take two hours.”
“Are you on real time?” asked Nakami.
He meant, was Gallo supporting a mission, where the information was needed right away or in “real time”? Except that Nakami didn’t mean that all, because he knew very well that Gallo wasn’t down in the Art Room.
“No,” said Gallo.
“I’m sure Mr. Rubens didn’t want you to bypass procedure,” said Nakami. “Let me know if there’s a problem.” Stinking lawyers, thought Gallo, reaching to bring up the proper screen.
58
“Bottom line, forester was a burnout. He was never going anywhere in the Ser vice. His wife was giving him the boot.
And he had this personality — he’d just basically given up on things. The only exception to that was his girlfriend, and frankly, that seems like it was pretty one-sided.” Special
Agent John Mandarin leaned back on the park bench in front of the Danbury town hall, where Lia had arranged to meet him. “That’s why he killed himself.”
“So you think I’m wasting my time checking into Forester’s death,” said Lia, recapping in a sentence what Mandarin had taken five minutes to explain.
“Look, it’s not my time, so I can’t tell you what to do,” said Mandarin. “But off the record, I think the director—” Mandarin stopped mid-sentence. Lia followed his glance toward two young women walking across the street.
“They’re underage,” snapped Lia.
“Just looking,” said Mandarin lamely. “The thing is, it was pretty obviously a suicide. Staging that — it’s real easy in the movies, OK? But in real life, those things happen a certain way. When I was a policeman for a while I saw two of them. Which is a lot. And I’m not the only one who thinks that. The FBI came over as soon as the state police figured out the guy was a federal agent. There was no jurisdictional backbiting here, no finger-pointing. We were called and we came. Believe me, if there had been any sign of anything other than suicide, somebody would have seen it.”
“So if it’s all so obvious, why isn’t the case officially closed?”
“You mean why is the director still asking questions?” Mandarin smiled. “I think the director was kind of shook by it. Frey was Forester’s first boss, showing him the ropes. Or supposed to. I think he felt guilty about it.” Mandarin shook his head. He had a slightly older woman in his sights now, good-looking, with tight, expensive jeans.
Lia resisted the urge to elbow him in the ribs.
“Frey had a reputation as a real hard-ass,” said the Secret Service agent finally. “That’s how he got to where he is now.
He came down hard on people. Too hard, probably. He stuck a couple of things in Forester’s file early on. Little things, but, you know, anyone looking at them sees whose initials are at the top there, and they’re going to figure that this guy is not on the chosen list, if you know wha
t I mean.”
“Frey held him back?”
“No. Not on purpose. He probably thought he was doing him a favor.” Mandarin laughed. “I worked with Frey when he was one of us. Yeah, I’m that old.” He laughed again, even harder. “Very, very, very competent guy. The guy you want watching your back, believe me. The President can trust him. But tough on the help. Kicked me in the butt more than once.”
“The state police report noted the chain wasn’t locked on the door.”
“Ehhh. Not a biggie.”
“There were no prints on the doorknob, which seems strange,” Lia pointed out. “Not even Forester’s.” Mandarin held his hand out in front of him. “Door was a handle type. I go to open it, I push down, odds are I don’t leave a print. Spring brings it back behind me. Everybody obsessed with forensics, but a lot of times in the real world things don’t follow a script.”
Mandarin leaned back on the bench, stretching.
“I’m only holding the case open because not all the reports have come back yet. I’m not pushing for them to come back,” he added, giving her a sideways glance. “Because I have better things to do, if you get my drift.”
“I don’t.”
“I’m in a no-win position. The big boss wants me to find that it wasn’t suicide. Everybody else in the world tells me it was.” Mandarin shook his head. “I’m sorry. He killed himself.
I don’t like to think of it myself, but that’s the bottom line.”
“Even if it was a suicide,” said Lia, “he’s our only connection to Vietnam.”
“I guess. I don’t buy the whole overseas-conspiracy thing.”
“Why not?”
“For one thing, the shooter missed. A government goes to the kind of lengths you’re talking about here, they’re going to pick someone who doesn’t miss.”
“Everybody misses once in a while.”
“Maybe.”
“What do you think happened?”
“Really pissed-off constituent decides to do the senator in. Hired a crazy to help. Or maybe he’s a crazy himself.”
Conspiracy db-6 Page 16
