15
REPLAY
Sam sat in lotus on the floor of her own room down the hall of the Prince Market Hotel, reviewing the day.
Her surveillance devices detected no new bugs on Kade or in the room. No unusual behavior on the hotel net. Typical distribution of foot and elevator traffic within the hotel, on their floor, and just outside their doors. Typical time spent in their rooms by the maids, with no unusual behavior. No flagged individuals detected by faceprinting at the conference or the hotel.
Still, Sam was worried. There had been two bursts of surprise from Kade over the course of the day. What were they?
The first had happened around 5.20pm, just after he'd reached his room. She went back to the feed from the bugs in Kade's room, played the video. The room was still and silent. The bed was made, two mints on the pillow bracketing a comment card. Kade entered, tossed off his conference tote and shoes, ate one of the mints, filled out the comment card, ate the second mint, and then lay down for a nap.
She called up her support team, requested a sweep of Kade's room tomorrow morning after they'd left for the conference. Someone would do a more detailed scan for bugs, transmitters, or anything else unusual. They'd pick up the comment card and the mint wrappers for analysis while they were there.
The second incident seemed more straightforward. She'd made note of the time when she felt it. She scanned through camera data from the conference center, found that time. It had been just moments after Kade had walked away from Shu. He'd gotten in line at one of the bars and then Professor Somdet Phra Ananda, coming from another direction, had gotten in line behind him. Kade had turned, presumably at something Ananda said, and they'd had a brief conversation.
Had Ananda said something that had shocked Kade? She found another camera angle where she could see the senior monk's face, zoomed in so it filled a frame, projected it onto the wall. She zoomed in on Kade's face, projected that in a giant frame next to Ananda. Then she synced the audio from the bugs on Kade, played it, watched their faces.
Ananda stepped into line behind Kade, eyes fixed forward, lips pressed together in that perpetual serene half smile the senior monks wore, and then… The conversation was short, hardly more than a few words. Nothing in it seemed particularly shocking.
Sam looked at the times again. Interesting. It was hard to say the exact sequence of things, given that it had taken her a few seconds to react. Even so, it seemed as if the sense of surprise might have come before he turned around and had his brief conversation with Ananda.
Sam rewound the clock, added a third wall frame with a wider view of the area, played the scene again, one-quarter speed, with the two shots in sync, timestamp displayed at the bottom of each.
Ananda stepped into line behind Kade. His face was impassive. His mouth closed. He said nothing. Kade turned. Why? And as he turned, Ananda's eyes moved, changed from the faraway gaze of someone lost in thought or taking in all around him to the near-set focus on an object in one's immediate foreground. A second passed. The time stamp Sam had noted was on the screen now. Another second passed. Only then did Ananda's mouth open. Sam queued the audio from one of the bugs on Kade. Young man, what is your name?
And then another interesting thing happened. Kade reached the front of the line and ordered his beer. While he fumbled, Ananda simply walked away, not even asking for the water or juice the monks were drinking.
Sam zoomed out, stitched together two more cameras. Ananda walked briskly, head turning this way and that, apparently searching, until he spotted a particular monk, nearly six feet tall, thin, angular, with a large hooked nose. They spoke a few words. The tall hook-nosed monk bowed, turned towards the bar where Kade and Ananda had spoken, and walked briskly there.
Kade was nursing his beer a few feet away from the bar, now. The unidentified monk stepped towards the edges of the room, outside Kade's peripheral vision, his face turned towards Kade, and waited. By this point she would have been asking Kade if he was ready to go. She watched it happen. Kade kept his eyes down on the floor. He looked lost in thought. In reality he was lost in a chat conversation with her.
And then he looked up, set his beer down on a table, and walked towards the exit to meet her. She zoomed out again. The monk followed discreetly. He had a clear view when Kade and Sam met and then walked out together. The monk paused for a moment. A few seconds later he followed them out the door.
Sam switched to an external camera. She watched herself flag down a tuk-tuk. She and Kade climbed into it and off they went. The unidentified hook-nosed monk climbed into the next one, and it took off in the same direction.
Fuck. That was twenty minutes ago. He could be inside the hotel right now.
First, secure the tactical situation. Nakamura had drilled that into her.
She felt for Kade. He was asleep, calm. Video showed him passed out on his bed, clothes on. Hallway cams. Empty. Stairwells, lobby, elevators – no orange-robed monks, no bald men. A lot of people sitting and chatting in the bar.
She took control of Kade's door, instructed it to throw the safety bolt until she overrode it. Next she sealed the stairwell doors and locked the elevator out of this floor, set alarms on them directed to her slate.
Sam grabbed the monk's face and a clip of him walking from the video feeds and forwarded them to the CIA daemon in the hotel net; told it to watch all cameras for that individual, any bald man, any monk. She instructed it to spawn a new watcher and sent it digging from the present back through time to find any telltales in the hotel logs.
And then she rewound the hotel's lobby and external cams, watched herself and Kade arrive. There they were. Climbing out of a tuk-tuk, walking through the lobby, into the elevator. She waited. No additional tuk-tuk appeared. No monk walked through the lobby.
The daemon returned. In eighteen months of data from all cameras in the hotel, it had 8,572 instances of orange-robed monks and zero of this monk. Nor were there any hits in the past twenty minutes. He was not in the building.
Sam relaxed fractionally. He had followed them, it seemed, but had not come in. Or if he had, he was much more than a normal monk. She took a breath. Forty seconds had passed since she'd realized they'd been followed. They'd elicited attention of some sort but immediate danger was likely low.
She called her support team, debriefed Nichols quickly. He agreed with her assessment. They'd attracted attention but were likely safe. Even so, he sent two of the local contractors into the lobby as backup.
OK. At this point, attracting attention was the greater risk. She unlocked the stairwell doors and let the elevators reach her floor again. She left Kade's door locked and bolted and alarms to alert her anytime someone approached their floor. The support would be here soon. She doubted there was a risk. Something had drawn Ananda's attention to Kade, and he'd wanted to learn more. That did not spell an imminent assassination attempt.
When seeking to understand, go breadth first. That was Nakamura again.