The Assassin (Max Doerr Book 1) (6 page)

The
following morning, Doerr opened his eyes as the phone blared; sunlight broke
through the white blinds, infusing just enough light for him to see the
cordless phone lying on the corner table. He extended his right hand and picked
it up.

It
was Samuel. “Good morning, buddy.”

“Good
morning.” Doerr was sleepy; years of working late at the newspaper had given him
the bad habit of sleeping late. “I was expecting your call, but not so early.”

“Hey,
you passed the test.”

“What
test?”

“Remember
the guy with the gun at the bar.” Samuel laughed. “He was our guy. I sent him
to make sure you haven’t lost your reflexes after years of working a desk job
at the newspaper.”

“First
of all, I don’t have a desk job. Secondly, why the hell did you send someone to
hurt me?” Doerr sat up and became angry. “What if I’d really got hurt? The guy
took a big swing with his gun.”

“I
knew you would take care of him and pass. Besides, Victor and I were there. But
I knew you would do the job, as you always did. I want you back, Max. Can I
have your word?”

Doerr
calmed but said nothing. He pondered whether he should tell Samuel about his
precarious family situation.

“Max?”
Samuel said.

“Yeah,
sorry. Let me think about it. I’ll get back to you in a few days.”

“Okay,
the official letters will be mailed out to you on Monday.”

DOERR
WAS THINKING over a lot of things. He still could not make up his mind whether
to rejoin the CIA, back where he had once been humiliated. He wondered if he
would have worked for the CIA at all if someone other than the kind old man,
Ted, had approached him. Now that he was seriously considering rejoining the
agency, the fond memories of his obese mentor came back.

“You
have to learn how to be beaten,” Ted had said one day.

“What?”
Doerr was surprised. “I thought we’re supposed to straighten out the bad guys.”

“Do
you know how many able guys the agency loses every year?” Ted had said, smiling.

“How
many?”

“Tens,
sometimes over a hundred in a year. Guys get kidnaped, shot, ambushed. It
happens all the time. So you have to know how to be beaten, then stay alive. If
this scares you, I would suggest you reconsider whether you will join us.”

The
pep talk had given him the final push to become a spook. His own father had died
from cancer when Doerr was sixteen. Ted had seemed like a father figure when Doerr
started at the agency. But the relationship had tapered off over time. Now,
three long years after quitting, he wanted to talk to Ted. In fact, he was
desperate to speak to Ted. After scanning through his contact list, he came up
with Ted’s home number.

The
old man would certainly provide the right advice. He dialed the number.

“Hello,”
a faint woman’s voice answered.

“Can
I talk to Ted?”

The
woman at the other end didn’t say anything.

“Hello?
Hello?” Doerr said.

“Ted,”
the woman finally replied in a broken voice. “Ted died last year.”

“What?
How? How did it happen?”

The
woman once again remained silent. Doerr realized that he was talking to Ted’s
grief-stricken widow.

“Don’t
say anything. I was a big fan of Ted,” Doerr said. “I want to talk to you in
person. I’ll come and visit you tomorrow if that’s okay with you.”

“Okay,”
she replied and gave an address in Rochester, New York.

Doerr
realized he would have to drive for eight hours to get there by the evening. He
dialed Rent-A-Car’s number to book an early morning pickup.

THE
SUN WAS coming out of its night-long slumber, and the dark tarp over the sky was
lifted. Doerr held the steering wheel straight with both hands. The rented red
Ford Focus trudged forward at sixty-eight miles an hour, cutting through the
air that was getting ready to warm itself up. He had a long drive ahead.

When
he drove along Highway 490 West into a Rochester suburb, it was a little past six
p.m. During the whole trip, he had kept wondering how Ted could have died.
Was
it his obese body that revolted against him or an accident? Or was it an enemy’s
bullet? That couldn’t be it,
he thought.
Ted wasn’t a field agent.

Guided
by the GPS, Doerr reached Ted’s house at six thirty. He parked his car on the
roadside and walked toward the door.

The
pinkish petals of the magnolia in front of the white-shingled house seemed to smile
to him. He walked over the grass, reached the door and pressed the doorbell
once, and then two more times.

A
thin woman, wearing a purple blouse, opened the white wooden door slowly. She
was slim.   

“I’m
Max.” He extended his hand. “I called yesterday.”

The
woman took his hand. “Janice. Please, come in.”

She
showed him inside the house and asked, “Do you want something to drink?”

“No,
thank you.” He sat down on the sofa. “I was fairly close to Ted, at one time.”

She
sat opposite him, her legs crossed. She looked at her knees and said, “He never
mentioned your name.”

Doerr
understood that Ted had recruited many people to the agency. He could not have
mentioned each recruit to his wife. Doerr looked straight at her eyes. He
wanted to ask how Ted had died, but he could not pose the question.

The
widow stared at the brown carpet for perhaps five seconds and then looked up.
“He went to Venezuela. They needed to put some moles in Hugo Chavez’s inner
circle. Ted thought he would be the right person. I forbade him.” She paused.

Doerr
could see the glistening layer of moisture forming over her eyes. He waited.

“But
he didn’t listen.” She wiped the tears off. “He went to Caracas. He emailed
about how beautiful the city was, sent me photos. Later I came to know he had
gone to the inner city to hire someone who had close contact with a minister.
The source was a trusted man but turned out to be a double agent. Ted was duped
and taken prisoner. But somehow he managed to text the CIA, who were ready with
guns and whatnot. Ted broke through the window. Cut his hand and face. His
shirt was bloody, the guys told me later. They found him running toward them in
an alley.” She paused and showed her two fingers, an inch apart. “They were
this close to saving him.”

“Then
what happened?” Doerr asked.

“His
weight caught up with him. He stopped to catch his breath. Three local goons,
with guns in hand, appeared behind him. The CIA men killed one of the three.
But Ted’s huge body was standing in between them, blocking their view. They
couldn’t get a good aim. One of the goons raised a gun and shot Ted in the back
of the head. He dropped, and the CIA guys released hellfire. All three goons
were dead, but so was Ted.”

Doerr
was flabbergasted. So many brave men die every year. How shameful it was that
men like Ted weren’t worshiped by the American people. Few would know his
bravery.

He
stood up and placed his hand over hers.

AFTER
LEAVING JANICE’S house, he checked into a nearby Days Inn motel. The night
seemed darker and longer with Ted’s death lingering in his mind. Doerr felt
death was everywhere; it was all pervasive and could reach anyone, at any time.
Nobody was safe.

He
felt lonely and remembered his old buddy Dan, who had been his classmate at Cornell
University. He lived in Buffalo, worked for a large bank, and was single. He
called Dan, and his friend insisted that he go over to his house immediately.

Doerr
arrived at Dan’s house late in the night. The two friends quickly got
reacquainted and settled in for the night, talking, with beer bottles in hand.

“When
we meet at the alumni congregation, we always talk about you,” Dan said. “There
were always rumors that you joined the CIA. Is that true?”

Doerr
avoided that question and asked a counter-question. “Are you happy with what
you do?”

“Most
of the time. Sometimes it’s a stretch. Where do you work now?”

“I’m
between jobs right now.” Doerr wanted to change the topic away from his work. “What
is your plan for tomorrow?”

“When
was the last time you visited Niagara Falls?”

“About
ten years back, I think, maybe even more.”

“Then
why don’t we head there tomorrow? We can go to Canada the day after.”

“Niagara
Falls sounds good, but I have to head back home late tomorrow.”

THE
NEXT MORNING, they were beside the big fall. They rode out on the
Maid of
the Mist
. The boat moved slowly toward the bottom of the fall. The roar of
the falling water grew louder. The mist thickened and threatened to engulf the vessel.
The boat was barely a hundred feet away from the bottom of the fall, where six
hundred thousand gallons of water fell every second. The engine came to a halt,
and the boat stopped moving. It kept bobbing back and forth. The thick columns
of water in the fall made such a deep noise that everything else seemed
insignificant. As Doerr held on to the rail to balance himself, unable to see
anyone else, he made up his mind. He would return to the CIA and serve his country.
People like Ted’s work should not go in vain.

When
he returned to his New York home, he went straight to the mailbox and pulled
out six white envelopes, some junk mail and a large brown envelope. He held the
large envelope up and looked at the top left corner – Critical Institute of
America. He knew who that envelope was from – the CIA. Twelve years ago he had
received exactly the same envelope from Ted.

Once
in his apartment, he tore open the envelope. The offer letter had the name
Central Intelligence Agency written at the top in golden letters; on the top
right was the eagle logo. The salary they were offering was $140,000 per year.

That’s
generous
.

Doerr
called Samuel. After pleasantries, he said, “I’ve made up my mind, Samuel. I’m coming
back.”

“Good,
welcome back, Max. You are a good son of this great country.”

“The
salary is a bit generous. I wasn’t expecting that much,” Doerr said.

“That’s
because your salary has been calculated as if you never left the agency. You
deserve it.”

“Thanks,
Samuel, can we talk about the job now?”

“All
right, let’s talk business.” Samuel laughed.

“Please.”

“Your
first job will be in Bangkok, in three weeks. This guy, Heherson, from the Philippines,
has been hiding there. You need to find him and extract some info. I’m emailing
the complete dossier on the bastard. Take a look.”

“I
will. Bye.” Doerr hung up, unbuttoned his shirt, lay down on the sofa and
closed his eyes.

He
was tired from the long drive and quickly fell asleep. When he woke up, the room
was dark. The green alarm clock displayed 9:10 p.m. He felt the sourness in his
mouth. He stood up and turned the lights on. The silence in the room was depressing,
and he felt lonely.

Better
get used to it
, he told himself; in Bangkok there wouldn’t be any
friends or family, only enemies.

THE
UNITED AIR Boeing 747 was full to the brim. If it had one more passenger, the passenger
would certainly have had to squat on the floor. As the pilot finished his welcome
message, Doerr repositioned himself on the blue, business-class seat. The aircraft
took off from La Guardia Airport, and the five-hour-long flight to LAX began.

As
the short air hostess brought him a glass of white wine, Doerr opened the
dossier on the Filipino man – Heherson – who was his new target. The man was
said to be five feet six inches tall and about forty years old. He had a large
bald patch on his head, and although he was a man of thin stature, he had a large
belly. Heherson had started his career as a drug peddler at the age of
fourteen. At sixteen, he had been caught by the police. Due to the country’s
tough drug laws, his prospects had looked bleak. A judge had spared his life
but sentenced him to spend the rest of his life in prison. Heherson spent the next
six years in a federal penitentiary, where he met his mentor – a major figure in
a terrorist group linked to Abu Sayyaf. Heherson and his mentor broke out of jail,
along with four others.

Since
then, Heherson had been a headache for the Philippines government, and two
years back, when he had kidnaped two Americans, he became a target for the CIA.
The hostages had been kept on a remote island. Heherson moved them from place to
place, and the CIA had never been able to locate the captured Americans to
retrieve them. They were always one step behind.

The
dossier contained a total of twelve photos of Heherson in different disguises. One
showed him with sideburns that almost went down to his throat. Another
photograph showed the man as clean shaven. In another, he wore a long red and
white Santa hat. Doerr started visualizing the man.
He would be thin like bamboo;
recent running around to evade capture by the CIA had perhaps made him thinner.
He might have grown some sort of beard, to hide his appearance.

At
Los Angeles, Doerr switched to a Thai aircraft for the final ride to Bangkok. The
aircraft took off into the salty Pacific air. The air hostess demonstrated the
safety procedures, but Doerr looked outside; the enormous city of Los Angeles
became smaller and smaller and was finally lost in the darkness. 

Twelve
hours later, Doerr was standing at the immigration entry, holding a red,
Swedish passport. The name inside read Edvard Johansson. Mostly white men stood
in the long line, waiting for their passport to be stamped. Some of the
visitors were there for business, but the majority, Doerr knew, were looking for
a good time.

A
source had stated that Heherson lived in the jungles but liked to visit Bangkok
for the occasional sexual rendezvous. His favorite place was a massage parlor
on Soi 2, right off Ram Inthra Expressway, in Sukumvit.  

Doerr
reached the Presidente Hotel late at night. The next morning he visited the massage
parlor at around noon. It was empty, and he was told to come back after three.

He
returned at 2:45 and saw people going in and out. The place was preparing to be
ready for prime time when Johns from all over the world would converge on them.

Doerr
went inside, ordered a Singha beer and sat there for a half hour. Customers and
a bunch of girls sat on opposite sides of a glass wall.

He
tried to talk to the few men who were serving drinks, but they showed
indifference. Sitting behind the glass wall, many girls tried to make eye
contact with Doerr, but he avoided them and focused on his beer.

One
woman was being excessively friendly, and she came over and sat next to him.
Growing bolder, she started touching his shoulders, cheeks, and hands. He let her
do that, and soon he paid three thousand baht to go into a private room with
her.

She
was a whitish, petite woman with black silky hair that hung down to a few
inches below her shoulders. She wore a short pink skirt and a white blouse. She
was about five feet and two inches and had a boyish look to her face. Doerr
guessed she was about thirty years of age.

He
followed the woman into the massage room. The room was about fifteen by ten
feet wide; there was a queen size bed at the end, and an old TV stood on an
even older wooden table near the door.

She
pushed him to a sit on the bed, and then she put her hand on his belt, trying
to unbuckle it.

“Please
don’t,” he said.

“Why?
You pay full price.” She kept pulling his belt. “I promise you enjoy it.”

“It’s
okay.” Doerr pushed her hand and shifted away from her.

“Why?”
The woman started removing her blouse. “You no like me?”

“It’s
not that. See, I’m married.”

“Then
why you come here?” The woman moved closer to Doerr, topless. “Many married
people come here. It no problem.”

Doerr
looked at the woman’s tiny breasts and the scar right above her navel. “Do you
know Heherson?” Doerr asked.

Instantly,
the woman’s demeanor changed. She took a step back and picked up her blouse.
“No. Why you ask?”

“I
have important business with him. Do you know when he will come here next?”

“Oh.
So that’s why you here? To catch him?” The woman’s face became red with fury,
and she put her blouse back on. She took two steps back and pointed to the
door.

Doerr
realized too late that Heherson had paid everyone there to lie for him. He knew
he had blown a good lead to the Filipino terrorist. He should have befriended
the woman before broaching the question. Unfortunately, the idea of spending
more time with the prostitute was repugnant to him.

IN
THE EVENING, Doerr walked around the area surrounding the parlor and found a
hotel, about five hundred feet away. It was small, with four stories; at the
door he saw local boys hanging around, harassing anyone who passed by. He
walked into the hotel and proceeded to the check-in office. A short young man, sporting
a beard, sat there. Despite his torn shirt, he appeared to be managing the
place.

“
Swadi
Khap
,” Doerr greeted the man in Thai. He knew that even if you didn’t know
the language completely, it’s better to start with a phrase in the local
language. It always drew a chuckle.

The
man smiled. “You want room?” he said, as if he was having a hard time believing
it.

Doerr
noticed a bad smell and took a look around, searching for the source. The paint
on the walls needed the touch of a fresh brush, and the concrete floor had not
been mopped in a while. “Yes, what is the rate per night? I’m a little short on
cash.” Doerr thought it would be best to lie about why he was there.

“Okay,
maybe you see room first. You will pay three-day rent advance.”

“Sure,
no problem. Now show me, please. I want a room on the fourth floor, if you have
one.”

“I
no have four floor room,” the man said. “I have one third floor. You want see?”

You
gotta be kidding me
, Doerr thought and said, “Are you sure
there is nothing on the top floor?”

“Yes.
Is busy season, my friend.”

The
man led Doerr upstairs. On the third floor, the man quickly walked to a room
and opened the door. The man walked in, and Doerr followed suit, welcomed by a
musty smell. The room was specious. Aside from the bed, an old dressing table
lay against the wall, an old mirror hanging right above it.

Doerr
walked to the door that led to the balcony and opened it. From the balcony, he
could see the massage parlor clearly – who was going in and who was coming out.
Everything discernible by a human eye at the parlor door could easily be
recorded by a device from the balcony.

Doerr
turned to the man and said, “I will take it.”

“You
pay three-day rent in advance,” the man said. “Three thousand six hundred
baht.”

“I
will pay you two weeks’ rent in advance. But I have a condition.”

“What
is your condition?”

“I
don’t want anyone to come to my room and disturb me. No one should enter my
room when I’m away. In short, no one should come to my room unless I ask for
it. Got it?”

The
man nodded five times, and then he extended his hand. “Now give money.”

IN
DOERR’S PARLANCE, it was called a neighbor, and the people who had worked closely
with him knew it. A neighbor was what he called the setup that watched a place or
monitored someone’s activity; sometimes it was just a listening device, at other
times it was a camera equipped with motion detectors or a laser beam on a
high-tech machine that could confirm someone’s voice. An advanced version of a neighbor
included a video-recording system with a detector that scanned for a particular
face, body contour or gait.

Doerr
moved to his new stinky hotel room and was pondering how to install a
neighbor
to keep an eye on the massage parlor’s door front. The source had said Heherson
was already in Bangkok, so there was a good chance that he could show up at any
time.

Doerr
stood on his balcony with a cup of coffee in his hand. He needed a twenty-four seven
video-recording system, which would be triggered by someone going in and out of
the parlor. But the five hundred feet distance between his new hotel balcony and
the massage parlor door made usage of facial recognition technology to identify
Heherson impossible.

Doerr
made a call to the safe house in Bangkok. An innocent-sounding woman said ‘hello’
in a sleepy voice. Doerr said, “I need a few things.”

“What
is the code word?” the woman asked.

“Navajo.”

The
woman’s voice became alert immediately, “Send me an encrypted email with
details of what you need, and everything will be ready within a couple days. I
think you have the email address.”

“Yes,
I do.” Doerr hung up.

Doerr
finished his coffee and then turned his IBM laptop on. It took three minutes to
boot up and showed several icons on the screen. Doerr inserted an Internet card
into one of the laptop’s ports and clicked on an icon. A dialog window popped up,
and Doerr entered his user ID and password.

Doerr
drafted the email:

Two
security cameras.

One
high-precision long-distance motion detector.

One
laptop equipped with image matcher software.

One
Glock with a suppressor.

Three
high-quality bugs.

Doerr
thought for few minutes and then added – laser-equipped, long-distance voice
recorder.

He
was referring to a device that could pick up a voice from a distance of a
thousand feet by beaming a laser at the window.

He
thought for few more minutes and then clicked on the send button.

THE
INSTRUMENTS ARRIVED two days later. A young man delivered the goods in three
large, innocuous-looking suitcases. Once the man left, Doerr opened the
suitcases, took all the gadgets out and started assembling them. It was painstaking
work. By ten p.m. he had managed to set up the video cameras and the motion
detectors.

After
a test run, he checked the recorded images from the video camera. The quality
was not good, as there wasn’t much light at the massage parlor door, but he
could do nothing about that.

He
left the cameras on overnight. The next morning he fed the video from the
cameras into his laptop and ran the software that would try to match the video against
Heherson’s image. After five minutes, the software reported that there was no
match. It could have been because Heherson was nowhere near the parlor, or it
could have been because of the poor quality of the video. The only way to find
out was to sit and watch the video, scene by scene, for hours.

He
stared at the video for two hours before needing a break. He disassembled the
devices and placed them back into the suitcases, so even if the hotel housekeeping
came in the room to clean up, they wouldn’t see it. And if someone broke into the
suitcases, Doerr would receive an alert on his cell immediately.

He
left the hotel and walked aimlessly for a while. After an hour or so he
returned to the shabby room and watched the rest of the video – there was no
sign of Heherson.

That
evening, Doerr again set up the recording devices, and the next day he went
through the same routine, checking the footage; again, there was no Heherson.

On
the fourth day, the software found a match, and Doerr jumped at the computer.
The display showed Heherson arriving at the parlor at around ten p.m. and leaving
with a happy face about an hour later. He wore black pants and a check shirt, accompanied
by another man who looked like a bodyguard. Both men could be seen getting into
a cab.

Doerr
set up the cameras again that same evening but stayed glued to the monitor. He
saw Heherson returning to the parlor at 10:05 p.m. If his job had been to snipe
down the guy with an M16, it would have been a cinch. But the job, this time,
was to get to him and listen to what he said into his phone. That should give
enough information as to where his helpers were, and that would bring the CIA
close to the hostages Heherson was holding. At the very least, Heherson’s
conversations should give a good lead.