“Out.”
“What out? Where did he go?”
“How should I know? You don’t pay us to put tracking devices in their undershirts.”
There was a slap and a yelp. “You were supposed to keep him here.”
“Yeah.” This time it was the thin man. “You were supposed to keep him here.”
“He didn’t take well to stalling tactics, all right? He left. He said he was going to do his laundry down by the riverside. That’s what I know. You hit me again and I’ll report you.”
Another slap, another yelp. From the sound of his voice, Kim had moved around the counter and was standing right outside the little door. “You people had better get it straight who’s in charge from now on. What happened to these TV monitors? You’re supposed to be taping everyone who comes in here.”
“They’re not on.”
“I can see that. When did they go off?”
“Yesterday, day before, who knows? I’m not a technician. We put in a request for maintenance, but they’re sealed, so someone special has to open them. He hasn’t shown up. Hey! Let go of me.”
“You screw with me once more, you’ll end up in a camp, you understand? And they aren’t nice, those guards. Get these monitors fixed. Everything else better be working, too. I’ll be back to check. And you,” I was guessing he had pointed a finger at the thin man, “you go down to the river and pick him up. If he gets out of your sight again, you’re going to be trading recipes with the crabs at the bottom of the West Sea.”
The car engines started up, and tires screamed out of the parking lot. A minute later, the clerk opened the little door and looked in. “You heard that?”
I came out and straightened up. “I heard.”
“One of these days, I’m going to put a bullet in his skull.”
“Good for you. Since when are we friends?”
“Beats me. I only do what I’m told.”
“By whom?”
“Someone better than him.” She rubbed her cheek.
“If you don’t mind my asking, what’s the handy little closet under there?”
“It leads into the main monitoring panels for the audio and video surveillance in all the room-phones, lamps, phony sprinkler heads.”
“TVs in the bathroom,” I said.
She shrugged. “Most of the time, whole floors in a hotel are devoted to monitors and transcribers and so forth, but these owners didn’t want to sacrifice profits. They must have had a lot of clout, because Security ended up with everything crammed into a room at the end of that tunnel.”
“Thanks.”
“You need another place to stay. Don’t leave me a forwarding address; I don’t want to know. If I were you, I wouldn’t leave by the front door.”
“Where?”
“There’s a back exit.” She fiddled with a dial on one of the monitors and a picture appeared. “Nobody around. They’d be in plain sight if they were back there.”
“I thought the monitors weren’t working.”
She twirled the dial again and the picture disappeared. “They’re not.”
6
The back door of the hotel opened onto a narrow street that snaked past a school and a collection of buildings that were under major repair. I wanted to get to the SSD offices, not the headquarters but a nondescript compound behind a sagging brick wall where the technical offices were located. Security was not as tight there as it was at the main building. I knew that because when I was still working at the Ministry I occasionally had gone to the compound on business. Assuming the compound was still there. Assuming the procedures hadn’t changed in five years. One thing, I knew, was working in my favor-bureaucratic time. Mountains might crumble, but regulations were for the ages. Five years was nothing for a bureaucracy. It wasn’t even worth opening a file.
As I emerged onto a main street, I heard a car slam on its brakes and watched in amazement as a blue Nissan with right-hand drive shot across six lanes up onto the sidewalk in front of me.
“Get in.” It was the thin man, and he was breathing heavily. “We thought you were at the river doing laundry.”
“I was, but I had to go back for some bleach. You don’t mind giving me a lift? Where’d you get this car?”
“We had a deal. You broke it. I’m going to bust your legs so you can’t do that again.”
“No, you’re not. You’re going to take me to SSD Compound Three. They just phoned about some photographs. Step on it.”
7
The guard at the front gate held up his hand and frowned.
“I told you we’d never get in. My plates are the wrong ones for this compound. Now I’ll have to argue with this moron.” The thin man started to open his door.
“Wait; don’t get out. Stay in the car. He’s not used to looking in a right-hand window at a driver. If you get out, you give the guard the advantage.”
“I do?”
“Make him come over here. Growl at him.” I gave it some thought. “Give him one of your stares.”
The guard frowned again and looked more closely at the license plate.
“Don’t worry,” I muttered between clenched teeth. “He’s getting nervous. He’ll come over to your side any minute and ask for ID. Tell him to get lost.”
“What? He’ll call in his commander, and they’ll take me away in chains.”
“They don’t have chains. All they have is those nose rings. Just say we need to see H4. See if that does any good.”
The thin man put his hand to his nose as the guard walked over.
“ID.” Every guard since time began sounded angry when he said that. It wasn’t anything personal.
I wasn’t too worried, but the thin man looked rattled. “I’m here with a headquarters visitor. He has official business with H4.”
The guard took a step back and saluted. “Next time, get a fucking blue pass for the windshield.”
I smiled as we drove in. “See, that wasn’t so difficult. Park over on the side. That’s where I used to put my car. Someone will come out of the building to complain, but if you lock the doors, there isn’t anything they can do. Move as if you’ve been here a hundred times before.”
“Say, you know your way around. I’m impressed.”
“Do whatever I tell you. Once we get into the photography section, you sit in the waiting room. They have collections of real good pictures, if you know what I mean.”
The offices of H4-“Silver Mountain Tractor Parts” as it was known to outsiders-were on the second floor. That was where SSD doctored photographs for use in operations. It was also where photographs were checked to make sure someone else hadn’t monkeyed with them. The people in H4 were very good at what
