they did. If they said they needed a new, state-of-the-art machine to keep up with the opposition, they got a new machine.
The door to the second floor from the stairway was locked. “This one is compliments of me,” the thin man said. He took out a leather pouch with several small tools in it, selected one, and opened the door. “We’re even.”
“Even,” I said. “There’s the waiting room. Go in there and look important. I’ll be out in a few minutes.”
The third door down the hall was open. The desks hadn’t changed; nothing had changed, not even the rounded shoulders of the man sitting with his back to the door, peering through a microscope.
I knocked softly. “Can anyone come in?”
The man swiveled around in his chair. “Long time, Inspector.” He stood up. “Who let you through the front gate?”
“Nice way to greet an old friend. Have a minute?”
“Sure. That’s probably how long we’ll have before the guards come up and drag you away.”
“Not to worry. I’m here with someone from SSD headquarters.”
“That so? I suppose they’re in the toilet powdering their nose.”
“Actually, they’re in the waiting room.”
“You don’t mind if I look? The last time you and I did business, they lifted my file for investigation and my rations were suspended for two months because you weren’t properly escorted.” He walked down the hall. In a minute, he was back. “OK, your escort is swooning over the photographs. We can talk. What can I do for you?”
“A little background.”
“As in information? That I can’t do. Pictures we can discuss. Information is something else. You know that.”
“All right, pictures. If I wanted to modify pictures from a hotel security camera, what would I have to do?”
“Depends on the camera. If it’s an old one that takes photos every few seconds, it doesn’t much matter. The photos are crap and the time between the frames makes it nearly impossible to get a believable continuity. We don’t touch them anymore. There are only a few hotels in the city that haven’t changed over to the new technology yet.”
“What about hotels overseas?”
“We don’t have access.”
“Nowhere?”
He scratched his head. “Mostly nowhere.”
“How about Macau?”
“MSS doesn’t like us fooling with their stuff.”
“But you do.”
“I don’t pay attention to what’s on the film or where it’s from. The job description comes in on the orders, I push a few buttons on the machine, zip, zap, a new reality is born.”
“If I was in a new five-star hotel in Macau and I wanted to evade the hallway security cameras, could I do it?”
“Sure. All you’d have to do is call the control room and tell them to turn off such and such a station.”
“But that would leave a gap, a blank spot. Everyone would know.”
“An empty inside corridor is an empty inside corridor. It looks the same all the time. No problem with changes in shadows. Once in a while a maid walks by. If you don’t really care, you just put in a stock scene. No one can tell with the new digital stuff. They say they can, but they can’t. If you are going up against someone who is more careful, double-checks the schedule of the help and that sort of thing, then you have to be more careful, too. That takes some coordination with the locals. But it can be done.”
“Zip. Zap. Coordination?”
“You know, a local service. Friends in the right places.”
“Gangsters?”
“You’re asking for information, O. No information about gangsters asking for film to be altered from Macau. I can’t share that sort of thing with someone like you, no matter how many times you ask. Nothing about suitcases, either. Now, get out of here, and take your friend with you. You’d better wipe his chin; I think he’s drooling all over his shirt.”
A small word of appreciation was on my lips when a huge explosion rattled the building and knocked us both off our feet.
“What the fuck?” My friend picked himself from the floor. “It will take weeks to recalibrate everything after that. This is delicate equipment.” An alarm began to sound in the hall. “That’s it; you’d better get out of here before they start shooting first and then forget what the questions were.”
8
By the time the thin man and I got downstairs to the car, there was full-blown panic in the compound. The guard who had admitted us was lying on the ground, his face bleeding from flying glass. Another guard had his pistol out and was pointing it at pedestrians who were running past, shouting and crying.
No one looked twice when the thin man’s car made a tight turn and flew out the front gate.
“Some photographs!” The thin man shook his head in admiration. “I’m going to get myself transferred.”
“Did you hear the explosion, or were you too busy turning pages?”
“I heard it.” He pointed at a cloud of smoke billowing over the city. “Must have been an awful jolt over there.”
“Isn’t that where my hotel is?”
There wasn’t much left. One side of the building had been sheared away, and the roof was in danger of caving in at any moment. I spotted Kang in a crowd of people pushing against a police cordon that had been thrown up in front of the parking lot. No one had any training for this sort of thing, and all the cops looked nervous. The officer in charge was running up and down the line bellowing at his men to keep everyone back.
“I’ll get out here,” I said to the thin man.
“Oh, no. I’m not letting you out of my sight again.”
“I’ll be right there.” I pointed to the crowd. “There’s no way I’m going back up to my room, and I can’t go anywhere else until I have another place to stay, can I?”
“I’ll park. If when I get back you’re gone, I’m putting you on a shoot-on-sight list.”
“Since when is there such a thing?”
“Since right now. If you think I don’t have the authority to do it, try me.”
“You spit, I’ll raise my hand.”
I jumped out of the car and hurried over to Kang. “This is your doing. That’s why you told me to get another room.”
Kang seemed unperturbed. “No. We were going to cause some damage, scare the fish in that ugly rug, but not blow the whole damned place up. Half the staff was killed. Someone else did this. I wouldn’t put it past Kim to have set the bomb so he could blame us.”
“Kim might do something like that. I’ll tell you for sure who would-Zhao.”
