Alan started to look in one of the folders, and Dukas said that they should go about it in an organized way, which was to find the inventory folder and the summary folder and get some idea of what the hell the thing was. The summary was at the bottom, of course, and it was only when they had covered the desk belonging to his absent assistant, Dick Triffler, as well as his coffee table and all the chairs, that they found it, and then Dukas sat at his desk and Alan leaned over him from behind, his hand with the missing fingers supporting him on the desktop — the first time since the shooting that he’d forgotten the hand enough to let somebody else see it up close.
“Radio transmissions,” Dukas said, reading. “ ‘Burst transmissions of unknown origin — northwestern North America—’ What the hell has this got to do with that shit Suter?” He looked up at Alan. “Can I turn the page?”
“I’ve been waiting.” Alan grinned.
“Speed-reader, great. Okay—’detected by National Security Administration—’ I thought this was an Agency case, what the hell? Where’s the inventory? Where’s the document history?” Dukas began to burrow as Alan read on. When Dukas came back, he had a red folder and a green one, both stamped “Top Secret,” and he fell into his chair and opened the red folder. “Okay, yeah — NSA started it and got zip and booted it to the FBI, who made it a case and apparently sat on it for five years. Then they booted it to the Agency — some great case, it’s been through three other agencies and nobody’s found out diddly-squat. Oh, swell — here’s why they broke down and sent it to me — signed out to Ray Suter two days before Shreed took off for Pakistan. Jee-sus H. Christ, he didn’t have it long enough to read the fucking summary. What’d you learn while I was slaving in the folder piles?”
“That it’s a case that nobody’s solved in nine years. Your big chance, Mike.”
Dukas sighed. “I was hoping I’d get something I could, you know, at least use to tie Suter to the Shreed investigation.” He threw down the red folder and opened the green one. “Oh, ow,” he said. “Ow, ouch, oh, shit — radio interference reports up the wazoo! Ouch. ‘Frequency Analysis Tables 1.1 through 1.17.’ Oh, shit.” He sighed. His right index finger ran down the page and he muttered, “Radio, radio… interview, interview, interview—” He looked through the wall of crates at the stacks of folders and growled, “They’ve dicked me.”
And Alan said, “What’s that?”
He had reached over Dukas’s shoulder and turned up the page so he could read ahead.
“What’s what?”
Alan turned the page all the way over. “ ‘Communications Plan, Jakarta, Indonesia.’ ”
Dukas looked at the entry. “Jakarta, Jesus. That’s a long way from northwestern North America.”
“Kind of jumps out at you, doesn’t it.”
Dukas wrote the ID number down on another Post-it and went around the wall of plastic crates and started going through the folders once again. He came back with a slender folder in a white cover with “Top Secret” and “Eyes Only” and “Eurydice” on the front. “You’re not supposed to see this,” he said.
“What’s Eurydice?”
“It’s a classification group, which you’re not supposed to know about, so don’t ask.” He sat down again and opened the folder.
“Holy shit,” Alan said. “It is a comm plan for Jakarta.” He looked over his shoulder. “What’s Jakarta got to do with the Northwest?”
“More to the point, what’s it got to do with Ray Suter?” Dukas wrinkled his nose. “I smell an analyst at work.” He opened the folder on his desk, pressing the fold with the flat of his right hand and wincing because the effort hurt his chest. He pointed at the folder, which, opened, had papers attached to both inner sides by long, pointed prongs through holes in the paper. “Right side,” he said, “meat and potatoes. Left side, the analyst’s brilliant synthesis of materials.” The comm plan was on the right side. On the left, on top, was a sheet that said simply, “No action recommended.” Below it were several sheets with long numbers at the top. On the top sheet, however, a different hand had written in pencil, “Follow this up — S?”
“Suter’s writing?” Alan said.
“Beats me; I don’t even have a sample of that. ‘Follow this up — S, question mark.’ S for Suter? S for Shreed? S for shit?” He made a farting noise with his lips and tongue.
“Yeah, but, Mike, at least Suter had it. So why did Suter have it? You say he was into Shreed’s business — what was he looking for? Maybe this is something you can run with, after all.” Alan began to turn the pages of the analyst’s report. “Doesn’t seem to be all there,” he said.
“It wouldn’t be. The number’s a high one, meaning that this is part of something else. ‘Observation of courier contact site.’ See, this is what caught the analyst’s eye — actually, probably an abstract someplace. Yeah — here on the second page, see—’The courier is believed to have visited the U.S., with special relevance for naval facilities in California and the Pacific Northwest.’ Aha, says the analyst, that might have a connection — notice the ‘might’; the woman — it’s usually a woman — is reaching; she’s desperate. She gets a copy of the relevant stuff and smacks it into a folder and here it is.”
“Who wrote the report?”
“Who knows? Some agent doing his job; he’s busted a comm plan, written it up, turned it over to his case officer, and here it is.” He tapped the comm plan’s several pages of narrative.
Alan reached over and turned the pages on the left side, reading quickly, then did the same on the right. The paper was slightly brittle, the comm plan itself old enough to have been done on an electric typewriter rather than a computer printer. He lifted the top page on the left again and said, “1993.”
“A little long in the tooth,” Dukas said.
“But they never checked it out.”
Dukas stretched. “So?”
Alan cocked his head. “Well— Somebody, maybe Suter, thought it was worth following up.” His old grin, not seen for a month, partly returned. “Doing something is better than doing nothing — right?”
Dukas shook his head. “You’re having an idea. I don’t like that.”
“I just thought somebody could go to Jakarta, check it out — follow it up, like it says here—” He looked like a kid asking for the day off from school.
Jerry Piat moved his practiced hand from the bargirl’s neck, over her breasts, down her flat and naked stomach, his hand always light and playful, never heavy or commanding. He hooked a leg under both of hers and rolled them both over so that she was above him, her breasts heavy against him, her long hair a black cloud that smothered him in incense. At least, it smelled like incense.
He watched her with the detached part of his brain, the part that wouldn’t ever turn off, not when he was fucking, not when he was getting shot at, and that part registered that she was fourteen years old and had a Hello Kitty bag for her makeup. She liked him.
The phone rang. His hand found it, lifted it from the receiver, and dropped it back to the cradle. She laughed, happy that she was more important than a Bule (Westerner’s) business call, but Jerry was just following the signal procedure — his agent, Bobby Li, would give him one ring, and then he would go out to a pay phone to talk. It wasn’t exactly Moscow rules, but it was tradecraft, and Jerry was alive and sane where a lot of his peers were either dead or content to run Chinese double agents and lie about their access. Jerry rolled them both over again, still agile at fifty, and kissed her, hard, on the lips, which clearly surprised her.