“I don’t know,” he said. “If our man is careful enough to keep the phone off the rest of the time, I doubt he’d be stupid enough to call from an insecure location.”
Kanezaki had grown a lot since I’d first met him, but he still had an annoying tendency to try to show his smarts by stating the obvious. “Of course he wouldn’t,” I told him. “But it’ll be one more piece of data to work with. I’d rather know where he places the call than not know, wouldn’t you?”
There was a slight pause while he absorbed the rebuke. Then he said, “You’re right.”
“What about the guy I posted about? Any leads on that?”
“No.”
“The government venture-capital backing? You don’t think that’s a coincidence, do you?”
“I don’t think it’s a coincidence, but I haven’t turned it into anything workable yet, either.”
“All right, then. Oh-eight-hundred GMT. I’ll call you when it’s done.”
I had a burrito and a fruit smoothie at a place on the pier, then killed time by strolling, loosening up after the long drive. I went to a pay phone at exactly midnight and made the call.
One ring, then Hilger’s voice: “Yeah.”
I noted that he picked up directly. Maybe he’d made his point about the strength of his numbers last time, and didn’t feel the need to repeat it.
“It’s done,” I said.
“I know. Nice work. You complained about five days, but in the end you only needed two.”
Maybe he already knew about Jannick. Maybe he was bluffing to impress me with his omniscience. It didn’t really matter.
“Let me talk to Dox,” I said.
There was a short pause, and then I heard the big sniper’s baritone, tinny through the speakerphone. “Dox here.”
“How are you doing?”
“Bored. This is one of the dullest groups of nitwits I’ve ever been forced to spend time with. It’s a dark day to be a Marine.”
He was telling me they weren’t leaving him alone, that there was someone with him at all times. With a little luck, they’d notice only the insult, and not the substance it concealed. But why the mention of the Marines?
I heard static, then Hilger’s voice again. “All right, you heard him, he’s fine.”
That was the second time he’d grabbed the phone in a hurry. The Marines…was that what Dox was going to say when Hilger had grabbed the phone from him last time? And what did he mean by it now? Hilger was former Army. But what about the people with him? Did Dox know one of them from his Marine days? Or did he have some other way of knowing one of them was a jarhead?
Why did Hilger keep cutting me off so fast? I had a sudden, uncomfortable thought. Far-fetched, maybe, but…
“Put him on again,” I said.
“No.”
“Put him on. You can listen, I just want to make sure it’s him and not one of your people imitating his voice.”
There was a pause, then I heard Dox’s voice. “Yeah.”
“What’s your favorite hotel in Bangkok?”
“What?”
“Your favorite hotel in Bangkok.”
“What is this? You don’t think it’s me?”
“They’re only letting me talk to you for a second at a time and your accent is too easy to imitate.”
“What accent?”
“Tell me.”
“If they hear my answer, I won’t be able to go there after this. And that would be a tragedy.”
It had to be Dox. No one else could be so obstreperous. But still.
“The name, goddamnit.”
“Look, I like the place because of the mirrors in the bathrooms. I tried to tell you about a threesome I had in one, all right? With two lovely Thai ladies. And you cut me off ’cause you didn’t want to hear.”
I let out a long breath. It was him all right. The hotel was the Sukothai, and yeah, I had cut him off the time he tried to tell me the story.
I heard the phone being moved, then Hilger’s voice. “Satisfied?” he asked.
“All right,” I said. “I’ve held up my end. Now let him go.”
“You’re not done. There are two more.”
Well, it was worth a try.
“Give me the particulars, then,” I said.
“Not yet. You’re a little ahead of schedule.”
“We’re doing this on a schedule?”
“The person’s not in position yet. As soon as he is, I’ll upload the information you need.”
On the one hand, I liked the extra time. On the other hand, once again, I hated the idea that Hilger would be able to follow me by my efforts to track his target. I hoped Kanezaki would find something to help me short-circuit the whole thing.
“How long are we talking about?” I asked.
“Forty-eight hours. Check the bulletin board then.”
He clicked off.
I called Kanezaki from a pay phone. “You get it?” I asked.
“I got it. He’s in Jakarta. Or at least he was during the time you had him on the phone.”
I was gripping the phone hard. “Where in Jakarta?”
“Pluit, it looks like. The marina.”
“Can you be more precise than that?”
“What do you want, an address? All I know is he was near a cell tower in Pluit. Without a formal request to the NSA, which will create a lot of questions and take a month to process anyway, I can’t triangulate. I can only give you a radius around a single tower. From what I can see, either he was in Pluit, or he was a little way out in the Java Sea.”
I was quiet for a moment. He was right, I wasn’t being reasonable. But damn, to feel like I was that close to having him in my sights…
“He’s got our friend on a boat,” I said. “They probably docked in Jakarta to make the call, maybe use an Internet café, whatever. But with the boat, they could move anywhere, and keep moving. There are ten million people in Jakarta alone. Leave Jakarta, and you’ve got seventeen thousand islands, only six thousand of them inhabited, and probably twenty thousand miles of coast. And that’s all assuming he stays somewhere in Indonesia and doesn’t move on. Shit, this isn’t much better than knowing he’s in Asia.”
“It’s another piece,” Kanezaki said, after a moment. “Like you said.”
I sighed. He was right again. “Is this anything you can use with what you’ve already got?” I said. “The visas, the previous known location, the government backing?”
“I doubt it. I don’t have a way to search travel records by location, only by names. It doesn’t look like our friend was traveling as himself. So it’s slow going.”
“All right,” I said, trying not to be frustrated. We had so many pieces…but they still added up to nothing. I fought the urge to just go to Jakarta, see what I could find there. Without more information it would be useless.
“What about you?” he asked. “You learn anything on the call? Anything new we can work with?”
“No. Well…maybe one of the people who’s holding Dox is or was a Marine. I think Dox was trying to indicate that, but I’m not sure.”
“All right, I’ll see if that gets us anywhere.”
Even as he said it, I knew it was unlikely. It was almost nothing.
“Anyway, that’s all,” I said. “Hilger told me he’d upload details about the next assignment two days from now.”
“Two days from now? You’re doing it again, aren’t you? Giving yourself time to…”
“I’m not doing anything. He told me the person isn’t in position yet and wouldn’t be for forty-eight hours. I’ve got nothing to do but wait. If you could come up with something in that time, it sure would be handy.”
“Otherwise…”
“Yeah, that’s right. Otherwise we get to number two on the list.”
“Jesus,” I heard him breathe.
“Don’t ‘Jesus’ me,” I growled. “I’m not going to let something happen to my friend.”
“Yeah, but…”
“Bullshit. I don’t want to hear it. Not unless you’ve ever once gotten your own hands bloody. Have you? Ever? Or do you only send out other people for the nasty stuff so you can sleep like a fucking baby at night?”