Breadth first. From the top again. Kade's jolt of surprise in the late afternoon. She pulled up the feed from the bugs in his room and on his body around that time. Kade was not a good liar, not good at masking his emotions, except when he activated the emotion-suppression software he had. And Sam was fairly certain he'd activated that after the jolt of surprise, either to manage his own reaction to something, or to hide it from Sam.
The cameras in the lobby and elevators showed no jolt of surprise. It had happened sometime after he got out of the elevator. The video from the tiny bugs in his room was low quality. She couldn't see the minor tics that would give someone away to her in person.
Audio then. Sam closed her eyes, then played only the audio stream from the moment Kade entered the hotel. The lobby was loud, but even so she could hear his breathing and his footfalls. The transition to the elevator was obvious. His breathing stood out in the relative quiet of the small space. Then the elevator door opened; his breathing was louder now. Footfalls. Breathing. Trouser legs rubbed against each other. Pause as he reached his door. Beep of the door lock as he swiped it and it accepted him. Click of the door as it unlocked a fraction of a second later. A breath as he walked into the room. Audio from the room bugs joined the audio from the bugs on his body now. His conference tote bag landed on the floor in a light thud and a crumpling of cheap plastic. A breath as he kicked off the shoes. Foil unwrapping, the sound of chewing as he popped the first mint into his mouth. And then… a break in the rhythm. A breath missed. Chewing paused. A second passed. Another. Another. And then he swallowed, and breathed again.
That was it. Sam paused the playback and opened her eyes. On the slate, Kade was frozen, still standing, the comment card in his hand. She couldn't tell what was on it, but something there had caught his attention. Excellent.
And the interaction with Ananda? Sam pulled up the interlocking video again.
Assume it was two seconds between his jolt of surprise and when I noted the time, she thought. Mark the point two seconds earlier…
She replayed the videos at one tenth speed this time, zoomed in to each of their faces in two projections on the wall, out to the level of their two bodies together in a third. Ananda stepped behind Kade. His face was serene, impassive, lips curved into just the slightest smile at nothing at all. The marker happened. Kade's whole face twitched. The angle of his neck changed. He inhaled sharply. A quarter-second later his eyes and chin moved to the left, starting the turn that would bring him around. Ananda stayed impassive, serene.
No, wait, play that again, focus on Ananda. She went backwards, forwards again. He stepped behind Kade. The time marker arrived. Kade reacted. And a quarter-second later, there, on Ananda's face, there was the tiniest flutter. Ananda's nostrils flared by the barest margin. His eyes flicked from their thousandyard stare to focus on something in front of him. Kade had just barely begun his turn, only milliseconds before. There was no time for Ananda to have responded to the motion. He was responding to something else.
Sam thought furiously. Ananda had been a monk for forty years. He'd spent more hours in meditation than Sam had spent awake. He must have nearly complete control over his expression, over his underlying emotions. He'd trained himself to accept the world with equanimity. But not perfectly so. Something had cracked that long-practiced equanimity. For a split second, Professor Somdet Phra Ananda, eminent Buddhist monk and accomplished neuroscientist, personal friend to the King of Thailand, had been sufficiently surprised that something broke through that Buddhist calm and made itself known on his face in the tiniest of ways. Something to do with Kade.
Neither Sam nor her support team observed the third tuk-tuk, which had followed the unidentified monk, nor the large darkskinned man in black clothing within it.
Across town, in his tiny rented room, Wats zoomed in on an image of a tall, bald, hook-nosed Thai in monk's robes. Who was this man? Why had he followed Kade and Cataranes? Whoever he was, he'd spooked the ERD. Two military types had arrived at the Prince Market Hotel half an hour ago. They were Thai men with the bulk of augmented muscle, wearing blazers in this heat, blazers large and loose enough to conceal weapons in. They were still there, sipping sparkling water in the lobby. Just two businessmen out late for some Perrier in a hotel lounge on a Monday night. Yeah, right.
He stared at the monk's picture again.
Who are you?
This was a complication. An unknown. Wats didn't like unknowns.
16
A SLIGHT CHANGE OF PLANS
Kade woke before the alarm. He looked at the clock. 5.47am. Too early by far. He rolled over, but sleep wouldn't come. Today was the day. He'd meet Shu for lunch. What would happen then? Would she offer him the postdoc? Would she ask him about Nexus?
Could she truly deliver on what her mind had hinted at? Wasn't that what he wanted?
Wats. Was he really here? Was there any way to reach him?
And Ananda. Had that been real? Had he imagined that? Was the monk running Nexus?
Kade tossed and turned. It was no good. His mind was spinning too much for sleep.
He rose and threw open the curtains. It was raining outside. It would be a muggy steamy rain, he was sure. Three hundred feet down from his window, Bangkok was alive. Traffic was a chaotic dance of scooters, tuk-tuk, taxis, and private cars zipping to and fro, barely avoiding collision. Pedestrians moved in rivers of human bodies down the sidewalks, holding cheap umbrellas or wearing cheaper clear plastic ponchos. Bicyclists pedaled in the rain between pedestrians and motorized traffic. Food stalls occupied every corner but one, selling noodles or sticky rice topped with mangoes. Steam rose from them. On the fourth corner stood a small temple. Even in the rain, Thai men and women streamed continually in and out of it, paying their morning respects to whatever Buddha or bodhisattva was within.
In other circumstances he would love to explore this exotic, confusing city.
He pulled open his slate, instead. There was a message from Ilya asking how his trip was going, a dozen threads within the lab on various topics, and a single message from Su-Yong Shu.
Kade,
An unavoidable conflict has come up with lunch. Could you do dinner tonight instead? My driver can pick you up at 7pm from your hotel.
Best,
SYS
Curious. Kade shrugged. He fired off a quick reply. 7pm at his hotel would be fine. He answered a few more messages, then showered and went down to breakfast.
Sam seemed unperturbed about Su-Yong Shu moving their plans for the day. She ran him through the plan for interacting with Shu twice over breakfast. Kade felt as ready as he was ever going to be. Sam seemed to agree.
The conference whizzed by in a blur of sessions and brief conversations. Neuro-Optics: Laser Based Neural Stimulation. Hilbert Transforms in Deciphering Neural Correlates of Emotion. Planning and Deliberative Structures: Neural Circuitry and Firing Patterns.