Conspiracy db-6

by Stephen Coonts

  “Another person, two more, awake,” reported Rockman.

  “Kids. They’re coming to the door.” Karr climbed back up the stairs, his back against the wall.

  He reached the third-floor landing just as three girls, roughly ten years old, came out of the room and went down the steps.

  “Going out into the back,” said Rockman.

  “Probably to relieve themselves,” added the translator.

  “Tommy, the guards are moving,” said Rockman.

  Karr went back down to the second floor, opened the window, and began climbing down. As he did, he heard an angry shout from inside. He jumped to the ground; rolling to his feet, he grabbed his gun, ready.

  But the guards weren’t coming for him.

  One of the girls started to scream.

  “Get out of there, Tommy!” said Rockman. “Go!”

  71

  Once the paperwork cleared, Gallo began probing computers overseas to see if he could snag anything interesting. He sent e-mails to computers owned by people he could track down; the e-mails contained what were essentially viruses that would help him ferret out his prey. It was a bit like fishing without bait, however; it might be hours before the e-mail was even opened.

  Bored, he considered going home and getting some sleep — for about five seconds. Instead, he went to the lounge, got two Red Bulls, and came back and started looking through the in-house blog to see what the analysts had found in the data he’d help them compile.

  Two things stood out. One, a lot of the people whom he had tracked down in the States didn’t exist — their names didn’t match the Social Security numbers on their bank accounts.

  And two, their bank accounts were as empty as his was.

  “Their bank accounts look like mine,” Gallo told the empty lab. “They’re all scraping by.” It was a definite pattern, but what did it mean?

  Gallo did what he always did when he couldn’t figure something out — he lay down on the floor and stared at the ceiling.

  Maybe they just used cash.

  Sure. If they had it.

  So many people without money, though?

  So many Vietnamese people.

  Actually, most of the names didn’t look Vietnamese; they were Chinese: Chan, Wang.

  There were ethnic Chinese in Vietnam. A lot of them.

  Why would you need so many people in a network to assassinate someone?

  Well, they weren’t real people. Or they were real, but their Social Security numbers were fake.

  “Oh!” shouted Gallo, jumping up from the floor.

  72

  Tommy Karr was a dedicated professional, personally chosen by William Rubens as a Desk Three op for his athletic abilities, intelligence, and good judgment under incredible pressure. Karr had disarmed a bomb under fire while dangling from the Eiffel Tower and captured a killer while sick with a life-threatening designer virus.

  But Tommy Karr had one serious weakness: he could not ignore a cry for help from a little girl.

  He made it to the backyard just as one of the two thugs was about to smack the girl a third time. Launching himself in the air, Karr put 280-some pounds into the man’s back, crushing two of the man’s vertebrae as he hammered him into the ground. For good mea sure, Karr broke the man’s jaw and cheekbone with a hard right before jumping to his feet.

  The man’s companion let go of the girl and pulled out a pistol. Karr never saw the weapon — he’d already set himself into motion, bowling into his enemy before the man could click off the safety and take aim. The gun fell to the ground, as did the Vietnamese thug. Karr kicked his face soccer-style, snapping something in the man’s neck.

  “Tommy, what the hell is going on?” demanded Rockman.

  Karr ignored the runner. He scooped up the fallen gun and went to the three girls, who were standing a few feet away. They stared at him in amazement, tears frozen on their cheeks by awe.

  “Hey, ladies, are you all right?” asked Karr. He dropped down to his knees, bringing his six-eight frame a little closer to their size.

  “Yi,” said one of the girls, her voice very low. She pointed at Karr. “Yi.”

  “Yeah. That’s what it is,” answered Karr. “Yi.” He smiled and nodded his head. “Yi.”

  The other girls’ mouths opened even wider. The tallest girl said something Karr couldn’t understand; the others answered excitedly.

  “Yi,” they started to chant. “Yi.”

  “What’s that mean?” Karr asked the translator in the Art Room.

  “Haven’t a clue. Those girls are speaking Chinese.” One of the girls started speaking in a soft voice. Karr nodded and smiled, hoping to encourage her. At the same time he glanced toward the thugs in the corner, making sure they were still out cold.

  “Hey, Rockman, can you get someone to figure out what they’re saying?”

  “Stand by.”

  “Yi,” said Karr. He pointed at them. “Yi.” The little girls laughed and pointed back. “Yi.”

  “Well, it’s fun, what ever it is,” said Karr. He started walking toward the corner of the building.

  “Yi?” the tallest girl called after him. “Nee chü nar?”

  “She wants to know where you are going,” said a new translator, coming onto the Deep Black communications line. Her sweet voice reminded Karr of his girlfriend’s. “Is she calling you Yi?”

  “I guess.”

  “Hou Yi?”

  “Huh?”

  The translator gave him a phrase, which Karr repeated.

  This elicited a flood of sentences from the older girl.

  “They think you are the Divine Archer Yi,” explained the translator. “A mythological hero. Among other things, he shot down the sun.”

  “There’s something I’ve never done.”

  “They want to know if you will take them to the boat,” added the translator.

  “Boat? What kind of boat?”

  “America?” asked one of the girls.

  “You want to go to America?” Karr asked in English.

  Before the translator could give him the words, Rubens cut into the line.

  “Mr. Karr, I think what you are dealing with here are refugees who are hoping to escape to America,” said Rubens.

  “I believe we may find that Thao Duong is a snakehead, not an assassin. A snakehead,” added Rubens dryly, anticipating Karr’s next question, “is a person who illegally smuggles immigrants overseas.”

  73

  Rubens turned away from the Art Room’s main screen, sour and disappointed. He’d devoted an enormous amount of resources to discovering an illegal immigrant operation.

  And that was all they had to show for an operation that had included a rather large number of intercepts, data searches, and field operations.

  Dean hadn’t spoken to Phuc Dinh yet; perhaps that would yield something definitive. But Infinite Burn seemed less than likely.

  It could be very cleverly disguised and hidden, surely.

  Robert Gallo rushed into the Art Room, breathlessly shouting Rubens’ name.

  “Mr. Gallo, what can I do for you?”

  “Thao Duong is a people smuggler,” said Gallo. “I’ve been analyzing his network and—”

  “The term is ‘snakehead,’ ” said Rubens. “Good work, Mr.

  Gallo. Ms. Telach, prepare a dossier of the pertinent information for the Immigration Ser vice and FBI. And then get some sleep please. You, too, Mr. Gallo,” Rubens added. “And by that I mean in a proper bed, at home, not on the floor of your lab.” gallo returned to his lab to find Angela DiGiacomo beaming at him. He was feeling pretty confident after talking to Rubens — almost enough to ask for a date.

  But she spoke first.

  “You got something!” she said. “Another threatening e-mail to McSweeney.”

  “No shit?”

  Gallo pulled out his seat and hunkered in front of the computer. Angela put her hand on his shoulder.

  Not bad, he thought.


  “Can you track it?” she asked.

  “Maybe.” He stared at the screen. “Probably,” he said.

  His fingers started to fly around the keyboard.

  Five minutes later, Gallo looked up from the computer and realized that Angela had left. He cursed silently to himself, then went back to work.

  74

  Driving back to her hotel after speaking to the doctor, Lia wondered why she was so convinced that Forester hadn’t killed himself. Was it the kid? Amanda Rauci? Or the fact that a Secret Service agent was supposed to be tough enough to stand up to standard strains and stresses, like a marriage gone bad?

  Maybe Lia just didn’t like the idea that someone could feel so bad he would want to kill himself. She’d fought so hard to live that she couldn’t imagine the other side of things.

  Her sat phone rang. It was Chris Farlekas, the relief Art Room supervisor. Lia, as she often did, had “forgotten” to turn her com system back on after lunch.

  But he wasn’t calling to scold her.

  “We have something,” Farlekas told her. “It’s another e-mailed threat. We know where it came from. Ambassador Jackson is informing the Secret Service and FBI liaisons, but you may want to tell Mandarin about it yourself.” Farlekas explained the circumstances. The house was just north of Poughkeepsie, not far from the Taconic State Parkway or Pine Plains — but not close enough, Lia thought, to be the target of Forester’s investigation.

  “Go with them when they investigate,” Farlekas added.

  “We can analyze the computer a lot quicker than their people can.”

  75

  At eight stories high, Tam Ky’s municipal building not only towered over the town but also dominated the jungle beyond, its white body standing like a ghost before a dark castle.

  From the distance, the building made the city seem larger than it truly was, the eye and brain adding bulk to the blocks around it out of a sense of proportion.

  “I don’t want you to get insulted,” Dean told Qui as they parked. “But when we go in, I’m going to talk to him alone.”

  “I’m not insulted.” Qui took the key from the ignition and opened her door.

  There were more bicycles and motorbikes here than there were in Saigon, and many fewer cars. A large open square paved with pinkish brown stones sat before the municipal building at the center of town. Dean couldn’t remember being in Tam Ky during the war, but he was sure it wouldn’t have looked like this — bright and shining in the sun, the facades of the nearby buildings showing off new paint, the tree leaves so green they almost looked fake.

  There were no guards, and no receptionist in the lobby as they entered. The floors and walls were polished stone.

  “Second floor,” Rockman told Dean. “Near the back.” Dean passed the information on to his interpreter, who simply assumed that Dean knew where the person was he’d come to meet. They walked up a wide flight of stairs at the side of the lobby, passing a large mural of Uncle Ho Chi Minh.

  The office corridors were much less elaborate than the public area below. The carpet was well-worn and the hallways narrow. The doors to many of the offices were open, revealing mazelike interior passages and tiny cubicles separated by carpet-faced partitions. Dean didn’t see more than two or three people as he passed.

  Dean and Qui entered the second door from the end, turning until they found a woman sitting at a small desk.

  “I’m here to see Phuc Dinh,” Dean said in English. Qui translated.

  “You have an appointment?” The young woman, who looked barely out of her teens, used English.

  “No. But we have a mutual friend.”

  Dean meant Forester, but he thought of Longbow instead.

  “Mr. Dinh is out this morning. We expect him back after lunch.”

  “Our friend’s name is Forester,” said Dean. “I’ll be back after lunch.”

  He leaned against her desk, slipping an audio bug into place.

  * * *

  Dean bought Qui lunch at a café a few blocks away. While the translator went to the restroom, Dean took out his satellite phone and pretended to be talking on it as he talked to the Art Room. He’d left a booster unit in the car, but it was a little out of range; the two bugs he’d planted at the office building were sending garbled signals.

  “You’re going to have to leave a booster much closer,” said Rockman.

  “All right, I’ll do it as soon as I get rid of Qui.”

  “Do you think you’ll be able to tap the building phone network?” Rockman asked.

  “I’m not sure,” said Dean. “There were no guards in the lobby. There looked like there was a door at the other side of the staircase. But anyone could come right down and see me.”

  “You could say you were lost.”

  Dean looked up and saw Qui returning.

  “Yeah, well, I’ll make sure to update you to night,” Dean said into the phone. “Take it easy.” Qui gave him a soft smile as she sat. “Reporting in?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Did you know Phuc Dinh during the war, Mr. Dean?”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “I know you’re not here for your job, Mr. Dean. Not for the International Fund, at any rate.”

  “What would I be here for, if not that?”

  “Your conscience would be my bet.”

  A waiter approached. Dean let Qui order two large bottles of water, and then meals.

  “Do you remember the people you killed?” she asked when the waiter retreated.

  “Some I remember,” Dean told Qui honestly. “Every one of them wanted to kill me.”

  “I’m sure.”

  “What side were you on during the war?” The waiter appeared with their water before Qui could answer. She waited until he was gone.

  “The proper answer today in Vietnam, Mr. Dean, is that we were all on the same side. The proper answer is that we all fought for liberation in our own way.”

  “And what was your answer during the war?” Qui sipped her water. She was a beautiful woman, Dean realized, too old to be pretty, but age had given her a presence that a younger woman could never emulate. She looked up at him and caught him staring; something flashed in her eyes — anger, maybe, or resentment — and then she looked down.

  Dean, too, changed the direction of his gaze, turning his head and looking across the street. Two girls were jumping rope in front of a small shop across from the café. One wore a matched top and pants in pink; the other had Western-style jeans, complete with sequins down the side. They were laughing and singing a counting song as they skipped over the rope.

  “Many times I have driven men who came to the country as a kind of penance as well as curiosity,” said Qui. “I think it odd, apologizing for necessity.”

  “Maybe that’s not what they’re apologizing for.”

  “Maybe not.”

  “I won’t need you to come back with me,” Dean told Qui.

  “You can take the rest of the afternoon off. I’ll see you for dinner.”

  She nodded slightly.

  Neither of them spoke as they ate. Dean wanted to ask her about the country — ask what it was like now, and what it had been like when she was growing up. He felt an urge to ask a lot of questions, not just of her, but of everyone in the country: if the North had been defeated, would things have been better? But he couldn’t.

  * * *

  After lunch, dean took a seemingly aimless walk around town. He spotted a Dumpster behind the municipal building that would serve as a perfect hiding spot for the signal booster; pretending to toss out a bag he’d found in the road, he slid the device under the Dumpster.

  “Much better, Charlie,” said Rockman. “Thanks.” Dean took another walk. When he returned to the municipal building, he walked inside, strode to the steps at the back, and quickly opened the door to the basement. He couldn’t find a light switch; he took out his key chain and used the small LED light he kept on it to guide him down the steps.

  “N
etwork interface is going to be somewhere in the west-ern side of the basement,” said Rockman, who’d been studying an aerial photo of the building. “At least it ought to be.” The only things in the basement were metal stanchions helping to support the floor, and miscellaneous utilities.

  Dean found the telephone network access boxes and the small computer they fed in the far corner of the basement.

  He took what looked like two large pens from his pocket, unscrewed the tops from them, and then put them together.

  Then he took a thick wire from his pocket and connected one end to the tops of the pens. Standing on his tiptoes, he slid the pen onto the block ledge where the telephone trunk wire came into the building. To finish off, he wrapped what looked like a Velcro strap around the trunk line and connected it to the wire he’d inserted into the pens.

  Dean’s device was a listening system that used the phone line to send its data back to the Art Room. The device allowed the NSA to hear internal intercom calls, and made it easier to pick up regular calls as well.

  Dean had one worrisome moment as he came up the steps. He had planted a pair of video bugs so the Art Room could warn him that someone was approaching, but the coverage left a blind spot on the second-story stairs right near the hallway entrance. As he came up out of the basement, turning to go up the main staircase, a young man confronted him, asking in angry Vietnamese what he had been doing.

  The translator told Dean how to say that he was lost in Vietnamese, but Dean knew it would be considerably more effective to simply use English.

  “Mr. Phuc Dinh? I can’t find his office,” said Dean.

  “Where is it?”

  “Do you think we have offices in the basement?” demanded the man in Vietnamese.

  Dean held up his hands. He took a piece of paper with Phuc Dinh’s name on it from his pocket.

  “Dinh,” he told the man. “Phuc Dinh.”

  “You are an ignorant American,” said the man in Vietnam ese. Then he added in English, “Upstairs.”