Sea of Lies: An Espionage Thriller (17 page)

She stepped up and pecked him on the lips.

He luxuriated in her fresh, feminine smell. There were a lot of pheromones floating around room 837.

Focus.
Focus.

“I’ll see you later. I will buy a new phone today, so at some point my local number will work. The task force will give you a local disposable phone. Please text my Singapore cell when you have a number.”

He finished dressing and eased out the door while Millie trawled through her email at the desk.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

TRIANGULATED

MONDAY EARLY MORNING, MARCH 10, SINGAPORE, RANGOON, SOUTHERN CHINA

Cabs were absent outside the hotel, so he walked two hundred yards down the road to Mt. Elizabeth Hospital, where a blue cab was rolling down the emergency room exit ramp. His mind went to Kyaw on Saturday night. Stabbed through the wrist, nearly bled to death and operated on only to be gutted in his bed, with his tongue cut out for good measure. Nolan rode to his neighborhood in low spirits, exiting the cab around the corner as before.

*  *  *  *  *

“It’s confirmed? You’ve got Zeya?” Hecker was elated.

“Yeah, he’s in the back of my SUV. We’re taking him to Dubern Park to get checked out. I’m guessing cracked ribs, maybe a dislocated shoulder. A couple of black eyes and definitely missing teeth. They kicked the bejesus out of him.” Ryder recited his DEA colleague’s litany of injuries while Zeya adjusted his fetal position on the back seat, trying to find the posture that hurt least.

“What did it cost us in the end?”

“Ten thousand US and almost five million
kyat
contributed to the Corrupt Airport Police Benevolent Fund. Pretty much what we planned to spend to see the air freight cargo manifests since Saturday morning. Our relations aren’t good right now with the airport, boss. Nolan’s laptop is gone for good, too.”

“Damn. That can’t be helped, I suppose. What about the port out at Thilawa? Any sign of those containers?’

“Good news is that the customs chief took our money, a little less than Zeya’s ransom. Our folks are looking through the customs declarations and bills of lading, but it’s an ungodly mess. It’s unlikely that whatever it is we’re looking for has already sailed given the limited lead time. Hutchison International Terminals out of Hong Kong runs the container port proper, but we have no jurisdiction and they’re a lot less likely to be open to a bribe. Meanwhile, there are three thousand containers in the port with no one keen to knock the seals off any for fear of what they might find . . . and who the owner might be. Can you ask the NSA to share what they’ve found?”

“Yeah, I’ll ask Matthews to task the NSA to look into it. If they’re not inside Hutchison International’s IT systems, I’ll pay for your next date with Millie.” Hecker was feeling better now that Zeya was out of custody.

“Don’t even joke about it. I have a feeling our new buddy Bob is smitten,” Ryder said.

“Well after you broke that gal’s heart, she’s looking to rebound. Speaking of Nolan, while you were at the airport bailing out Zeya, I spoke with Barling in Singapore. He’s already convinced the Singapore police to either let us have a concealed carrier trail Nolan or put a couple of their own Internal Security Department men on him.”

“Have you heard from Nolan?” Ryder asked.

“No, but I forwarded several emails to Millie and him a couple of hours ago. She was online and said she’d pass the info along. That was about one in the morning Singapore time, so maybe you’re right about the hookup.”

“Of course I’m right. They were making moon-eyes at each other.”

“Yes, it’s so easy to be critical when you are on to fresh pastures.”

“Who are you now, Oprah?” Ryder was laughing.

“Any word on Teller’s whereabouts?”

“Nothing, but I’ve been out of touch for a couple of hours because of Zeya. I’ll put in a call and let you know if anything’s happened. I’m running on vapors. You OK if I get a few hours’ sleep?”

“I’m exhausted, too. I’ll set the alarm for ten here at Club Avatar. Are you certain we didn’t find anything actionable from the satellite shots?” Hecker asked.

“Not a clue. Just a smattering of light commercial and passenger vehicle traffic. No prime movers or containers in transit. I think we can rule out a dash to the Thailand border if it’s something big we’re looking for,” Ryder offered.

Hecker said, “You know, Nolan could be right and Teller is playing us like a string instrument. We’ve spent the last six hours either getting Nolan out of the country or Zeya out of custody. That whole time we’re haphazardly looking for Teller, but we’re not looking for any HVTs, at least not in any organized fashion. Don’t forget we sent the Airstrip One samples to Singapore last night in the diplomatic bag. They’ll be at the labs later today, so we might get some answers in a day or two.” Ryder was an optimist: you had to be to snipe from a mile away in variable crosswinds.

“That’s all from me. Wake me up if Zeya’s hurt worse than he looks. If he can travel, he moves overland to Thailand today. For now, let’s try to get some rest.”

“Night, boss.”

*  *  *  *  *

Nolan sat at his desk in the home office off the master bedroom. From the edges of the blackout curtains, he could see it was getting light. The noisy birds started their daily boasting around 6:45, nature’s alarm clocks. With the help of his trusty penlight, he’d removed the three 64GB microSD cards from their hiding places inside hollowed-out fishing lures. Nolan had a dozen tackle boxes and over three hundred lures stored in the adjacent built-in cabinet. Watermen’s original flash drives were long since destroyed, though Nolan had thoughtfully hidden duplicates loaded with all the NSA documents Watermen or his pet journalists had leaked to date, and anything from the public domain remotely related to the NSA or surveillance. Nolan figured these might buy him a couple of hours on the unlikely assumption he wasn’t in custody when they were discovered.

The master microSD card sat in the expansion slot of his tiny Sansa MP3 music player, while the duplicate was in a hollowed-out Singapore dollar coin in his pocket alongside the special disk he was lovingly preparing for the Russians. Watermen’s email was on the screen. There were two—no, make that three things wrong with it. To indicate that they weren’t under duress, Nolan and Watermen sent their encrypted emails at times that were either multiples of seven or eleven. The time stamp on Watermen’s message was 4:45 Moscow time: off by a minute. Not a big deal to most people, but they had communicated like this for over a decade and this was the first miss. The date also was wrong:
9 March
was British style; Watermen was a
March 9
person. Finally, Eric left Nancy, not the other way around. A missed time stamp and two inversions from someone who reset his watch daily if it was off by one second were either clues or a warning. Nolan’s mind was so fogged he couldn’t think clearly. He wasn’t about to reply to Watermen, much less upload the NSA trove to the dark web, until he had this figured out.

Nolan had nurtured a love-hate affair with the Fourth Policy since fishing those two flash drives out of the beer bottle. He’d sent them from Guam to his mother-in-law’s house and later retrieved them from Joanie to take a closer look. Sure enough, one of the drives had QIZCVAGLDWKSP printed on it in micro-type. Nolan correctly guessed that this was an encrypted password amenable to one-time pad decryption. He and Watermen had been fooling around with one-time pads and other old-school spycraft techniques off and on for the last two decades. Nolan rummaged around and found his remaining sheets in a drawer. Within fifteen minutes, he had transformed QIZCVAGLDWKSP into PLINYTHEELDER. Not a unique password to be certain, but he supposed Watermen had been hedging against Nolan’s no longer possessing the one-time pad and having to guess. Nolan was shocked that his protégé thought so little of the secrets within. Any major intelligence service’s brute force algorithm would crack that password within minutes if an analyst had directed the search with contextual clues. Nolan’s conclusion was that his godson had been under incredible pressure when he’d fabricated the two thumb drives.

Nolan had taken a quick look to ensure that the week or so bath in the acidic beer hadn’t penetrated the plastic wrap. Everything was intact, so he transferred the files to a single 64GB microSD card encrypted with high-level ciphers and hid it away inside a fishing lure he’d tailored to that purpose. After making a duplicate proof, Nolan manufactured a third 64GB microSD card much like the first, but waiting to be doctored to further confuse the Russians against the day he swapped this bogus media for Watermen’s freedom. That was now maybe two hundred hours ago, with layer upon layer of misdirection and deviously bad information woven throughout. By osmosis, Nolan had also become an expert on the NSA’s global surveillance programs, something he wasn’t keen to publicize. The time drew near when he’d be able to rid himself of these incriminating chips and avoid a lifetime in prison.

If Watermen won his freedom without the benefit of a ransom, Nolan planned to return a proof disk to his godson and destroy the other two. The danger, intrigue and significance of possessing the NSA files gave his life an edge that his hacker outsourcing duties couldn’t supply. It was time to hand over the One Ring or drop it into the fires of Mount Doom.

Rereading his urgent Agency emails, and skimming and deleting the merely important ones took another hour. Neither CNN nor BBC websites offered any insights into the location or status of MH370, its cargo or passengers. Nolan wrote to Hecker that the mangosteens on MH370 were most assuredly the fruit in the burned crate they assayed in the destroyed warehouse at Airstrip One. Hecker replied with a one-liner saying he hadn’t a clue as to why anyone would give a rat’s ass about mangosteens. Hecker went on to report that Zeya was free, but Nolan’s laptop was still in jail. Nolan had a flutter of anxiety thinking about his laptop in enemy hands. He drew a deep breath and tried to relax. Agency encryption was the toughest in the world including biometric scans before he could log onto any Agency server. On top of that, he’d laid on security measures of his own. His laptop was impregnable unless the CIA, NSA, Russia’s Federal Security Services or China’s Ministry of State Security got hold of it. He shook his head to clear the cobwebs, but only gave himself a headache. Neither Teller nor his government patron would be able to come close to unlocking it. He had to focus on real dangers and suppress concerns about hypotheticals.

An encrypted Safe-mail message from Mei Ling reported that the junior Nolans were now in Canada, speeding north thanks to Bert’s lead foot. They’d obtained a rental car using Mei Ling’s Larson BC driver’s license and a large cash deposit in lieu of a credit card. Mei Ling supplied their new contact numbers for the two burner phones that they’d purchased. Nolan replied that the kids should get groceries for two weeks. If Bert had brought his books, the cabin’s high-speed satellite internet connection routed through untraceable intermediary services would allow him to stay current and anonymous.

Nolan typed with heavy fingers, backspacing to correct as many of the errors his tired eyes could spot. Had they heard from their mother recently? All he knew was that she’d arrived safely at the Guangzhou airport.

He had to get some sleep, even though there might be two teams waiting outside to do him harm. The York Hotel—even on the off chance Millie was still in the room at 7:30 a.m.—would be safer than staying here. He would request personal security, something he’d not needed since that tour of Baghdad and Ramadi. He could call Dick Constantine, the Singapore station chief, and ask for an escort to a safe house or the embassy, but then he’d be in a debriefing room for the next three hours. Nolan couldn’t take that right now. So it was back to the York with the spare room key card to crash until lunch. After all, he was still officially on holiday to clear accrued leave.

It was nearly full light as he locked the kitchen door. It made no sense to crawl around in storm drains when any neighbor looking out of a second-floor window would see a middle-aged white man on all fours down there. That sight would have the police on him in a jiffy. The fellows from Moscow might be outside, but they wouldn’t have seen him enter. Teller’s people . . . well, right now they could be sprinkling gasoline on his roof. It was a damned dangerous world.

He decided to live a little dangerously, walking down the drain at the back of his house until he found a low wall protecting a back-facing home with a bit of patio and a side yard. He climbed over, walked by the side of the house and unlatched the front gate to get out onto Watten Terrace, a short street that paralleled his own. He was lucky to land a cab at the bus stop alongside the skinny park that fronted Dunearn Road, the main thoroughfare.

No one was in room 837, but it had been ransacked. His empty duffel bag was upside down at his feet. Millie’s giant suitcases were open as well, clothes and accessories strewn over the two beds. Handcuffs, a quirt and what appeared to be a leather hood caught his eye. In the bathroom, the mess per square foot was even worse with his-and-her toiletries strewn everywhere.

Nolan put the security bar on the door and turned the deadbolt for good measure. The phone next to the toilet hadn’t been dismantled, so he could dial his replacement, Independent Programming Private Limited’s junior resident hacker-handler. “Gus? Bob here. Yes, back in town a day early. You at the office? Good. Look, all hell has broken loose at the York Hotel. I’m in room 837 . . . no, don’t call the police. I’m calling the Agency for backup right now. If you have a weapon, bring it. Otherwise run over here now. It’s about two hundred yards from our offices. You know the hotel, right?”

He plumped the pillows and rumpled the bedspread and sheets of the second bed enough to make it look like someone had slept in it without touching or displacing the suitcase’s worth of women’s clothing already dumped on top.