“You will wait,” the man told him.
Stoner nodded. In a few minutes, a large Anglo with a very bright red face rushed into the reception area, nearly out of breath.
“Conrad,” he said. “You’re Stoner?”
The CIA officer nodded.
“Ah, good. Come with me. We’re off.”
“Off?”
“We’ve got to get to Kampung Ayer,” he said in a thick and proper English accent. “That’s where our acquaintance is.”
A few minutes later, Stoner found himself in the stern of a small water taxi, speeding toward the floating island that lay in the mouth of the capital, an ancient tongue stuck in the ocean’s shallow bay. Built largely on stilts, the water village, a maze of wooden promenades and buildings lashed together with thin ropes, was home to more than thirty thousand people. The air had a pungent odor; the water went from deep blue to an almost coppery red as they drew closer to the village.
Conrad gave the taxi operator a few directions and they began threading their way through a narrow lagoon. Two turns later, they stopped in front of a large white structure that looked like an American double-wide trailer. The rusted tin roof boasted two large satellite dishes at its apex.
“Off we go,” said Conrad.
Stoner got out. The taxi backed up and sped off.
“We’ll get another, don’t worry, old chap. Plenty hereabouts.”
The two men walked up the plankway to the building. Stoner was surprised to find a cool interior and a thick, new-looking carpet. A young man sat at a desk that could have been a reception area at a better doctor’s office in the U.S.
“Cheese in?”
“Ah yes, Mr. Conrad. Please go.”
Stoner followed Conrad through the door into what looked like a small den. A large TV screen filled one side; CNBC was on. Near the television a man in shorts and T-shirt sat on a leather couch, a phone at his ear. He had a pair of laptops out — one on the floor, one next to him on the couch. Conrad pushed over a large chair for Stoner, then got another for himself. The man on the phone — Cheese — continued to talk for a while, mentioning some sort of stock he wanted to short — then finally concluded the conversation.
“Listen, I got to go,” he told whoever was on the other line. “I have MI6 and the CIA sitting in my office. Yeah, looks like I got big trouble.”
He punched the phone, then rose, jabbing his hand toward Stoner. “James Milach. They call me Cheese because I made a killing in Kraft. No shit.”
Stoner shook his hand. “Stoner.”
“Beefeater told me. You figure it out yet?” he added, turning toward Conrad.
“Still working on it.”
“Thinks he may be related to Conrad, the author. Except what he doesn’t know is, Conrad was Polish,” said Cheese, sitting back on his couch.
“There is a possibility I’m related,” Conrad told Stoner. “And the author traveled through here. I, of course, was raised in London. Unlike Cheese, who is so obviously an American. Though he has settled in rather well.”
Cheese wasn’t paying attention. He looked at the laptop, then studied the stock screen at the bottom of the TV. “I hate these stinking time delays.”
“I’ve been trying to come up with a list of chip fabricators,” Stoner said. “Ones that are active in Asia, that have custom capabilities but would work quietly for another country. I’ve looked into official sites, but I’m told that—”
“Yeah, yeah, I know. Beefeater told me all about it. I can help. Hang tight a sec, okay?”
Cheese grabbed his phone and quickly punched a combination of numbers. “Hey, screw what I told you yesterday. Dump ’em. Yeah. I don’t care. Buy IBM or Intel. Whatever. Just do it. Quick.”
“Cheese spends an inordinate time thrashing about in the stock market,” said Conrad.
“Why don’t you just use your laptop and make your own trades?” Stoner asked.
“Oh, I do. But sometimes when you want to make certain moves, brokers are useful. You may have to spread things around. It’s more a hobby these days. Then again, there’s always hope I’ll come up with something to beat Kraft and get a new nickname.”
Conrad chuckled.
“So you can help?” said Stoner.
“Chip fabricators. Processor chips doing really high-grade stuff. Not a lot of them in Asia that aren’t, you know, say, under a government’s thumb. My bet would be Korea,” said Cheese.
“Yes,” said Stoner. Another officer had checked on the Korean plants very extensively, and had assured him they weren’t involved.
“All right, so forgetting Korea, what do we have, right?” continued Cheese. “We’re talking very high-end processors and no questions asked. Right?”
Stoner nodded.
“I know of a factory in Thailand. I’d start there.”
“Others?” asked Stoner.
“My assistant will get you a list. But forget it. If it isn’t that Thai place, it isn’t anywhere. Anything you need, they’ll do. Of course, if you look at the customs records, what few there are, you’ll see they only make chips for VCRs and TVs, that sort of thing. Don’t believe it.”
“Can they do memory chips and CPUs? Specialized work?”
“One of their partners was a Taiwan company owned by Chen Lee. You hear of him?”
“No.”
Cheese smiled. “His company ever goes public, you want a piece of it. He’s the king of salvage. Anyway, he withdrew his financing or something about a year ago. I don’t know the whole deal. Supposedly it was a top operation, though why they located there, I wouldn’t begin to guess.”
“Maybe so nobody would come around asking questions.”
Cheese shrugged. “Anyway, they’d make something for you. They’re desperate. Or they were.”
“Were?”
“I believe they’re bankrupt, now that Chen cashed out.” Cheese jumped up. “I got to hit the treadmill down the hall. You guys want to come or are we done? I got sweats if you want. Shower when you’re done.”
Stoner looked at Conrad. His red face had turned beet red at the prospect of exercise.
“I think we’re done,” said Stoner. “If I can get that list.”
“They’re telling the Sukhois to the south to come home,” said Captain Justin Gander, one of the intercept officers upstairs who was listening in via the Elint gear on the plane. A translation unit in the computer could give on-the-fly transcripts of voice messages.
Zen checked the counter in the screen on the left, noting that they were now about thirty seconds beyond the designated launch time for the dummied-up Hellfire. He wasn’t sure why Starship had missed the launch.
“Sukhois are saying — having a little trouble with the translation — they’re going to inspect another aircraft.”
“What aircraft?” asked Zen. The Sukhois were a good seventy miles south and back further to the west.
“They’re calling it a Xian. Hang on — all right, registry is Brunei,
“Great place for sight-seeing,” said Zen. “Our ghost clone show yet?”
“Nada. Got a lot of traffic out near Taiwan. We’re reading pretty far.”
Zen grunted, preparing to bank the Flighthawk as they came to the end of their orbit.
“Zen, looks like they held off on the Hellfire launch because of civilian traffic,” said Merce Alou, who was piloting the plane. “They’re giving positions to the Australian frigate.”
