were, in fact, staring at him. “Part of the image, Sandy. I’m supposed to be a lovable, nutty bear.”
“Well, you have the role down well:”
“Except that I’m smarter than the average bear, right?”
“You said that; I didn’t.”
“Yuk, yuk.” Karr twisted around. He’d managed to pick out all of the security people and was confident that no one else inside was watching him. “So does Bai know something or what?”
“He’s not using the phone or the computer. We’ll activate the fly you left once you’re out of the building.”
“He definitely recognized the picture of Pound. I don’t know about Kegan.”
“All right. We have the shops Kegan went to the last time he was here. They’re up in Chinatown. Why don’t you head over and see if anything shakes out? Expect to be followed,” the runner added.
“Really? Bai’s people?”
“Not sure. Somebody’s watching you near the entrance. Their security camera doesn’t have a good view.”
Outside in the car, Karr took out his handheld computer and consulted his map of Bangkok.
“We need to get down by the university,” he told the driver. It was a good distance from Karr’s actual destination.
A few blocks later, Karr noticed that the driver was paying an inordinate amount of attention to his mirror.
“Problem?” Karr asked.
“We’re being followed.”
“Really? How ’bout that.”
Karr consulted his map and found a bridge about a mile from the area he’d just given the driver. As he did, the driver took a turn up a main street, entering a thick flow of bicycles. The street narrowed for a small bridge ahead, and the bikes and cars mixed with a flood of pedestrians coming in from the side.
“Wait a bit at the university, then drive around and end up at the bridge we just went over,” Karr said, slipping his handheld back in his pocket. “It’ll be a while.”
“What’s going on?”
“Just doing some sightseeing,” he said, cracking open the door.
The NSA agent barely missed bashing two women on precariously balanced bikes. His pursuers were some distance back in the throng, and while they could see what he was doing, there was no way for them to follow without making it obvious that they were doing so. He slid against the traffic flow, reached the side of the bridge, and bolted over the railing, swinging his legs around and hooking into the gridwork. His bulky frame made for an awkward fit through the closely placed girders, but he managed it anyway, dropping near the base at an embankment on the eastern side behind the car following him.
A warren of small buildings began where the bridge ended, and Karr quickly trotted into a back alley, climbing up onto a roof and looking back toward the bridge. His pursuers were stuck in the clog and if they wanted to follow him, would have to opt for the only decision that made sense, sticking on the car.
“Good work,” said Chafetz. “We’ll see if we can pull some IDs on them.”
“Bai’s people?”
“Not clear. He didn’t talk to them. We think one was watching in the lobby when you came in. We’ll get the car registration, then track it down. They’re sticking on your rental, so we’ll see sooner or later. You worry about yourself.”
“What? Me worry?”
Karr cut through another alley and then back in the opposite direction, finally finding a main street. Within a few minutes he found an empty pedicab. He had himself cycled twenty blocks to an area of small shops nestled at the foot of a mountain of apartments just on the outskirts of Bangkok’s Chinatown. He got out in front of a twenty- story high-rise, pulling a piece of paper out as if consulting the address. Karr walked down the block as if checking to see where he was, not only waiting for the driver to leave but also checking to make sure he hadn’t been followed. When he was reasonably sure he was clear, he found a basement stairway and descended a few steps, scanning his body to make sure he hadn’t inadvertently picked up a tracking device. As he dialed up the program on the handheld, a quartet of eyes appeared above.
“Hello,” said Karr as the faces disappeared.
He adjusted the program and did the sweep — he was clean — then hunted around his pants pockets for the roll of Life Savers he’d picked up at the airport back in the States.
“Hello,” he repeated as the eyes emerged on the other side of the steps. They were accompanied this time by a pair of giggles, and when Karr rose he saw two children, five or six years old, studying him as a curiosity. He reached out with the candy, but the two girls didn’t immediately realize what it was and took a step backward. Tommy started to crouch, trying to make himself less threatening, but as he did a piercing wail broke through the hum of the surrounding buildings and nearby traffic. The children’s minder — probably their grandmother — appeared from around the comer, yelling as if Karr were the devil himself. The kids froze, suddenly petrified, though it would be hard to say whether they were scared of him or their keeper.
“Just some candy,” said Karr in English, smiling at the old woman, who was now lecturing him indecipherably. He laughed, put the roll of Life Savers on the ground, and went back to the street.
“Masher,” whispered Chafetz in his ear.
“I was only giving them candy.”
“That’s what they all say.”
“You should have told me what to say in Thai.”
“You would have been arrested.”
“What was the old woman saying?” he asked his runner.
“Among other things, she has a very tasty recipe for your liver.” Chafetz’s voice changed. “You’re still five blocks away.”
“Just making sure I’m not being followed,” Karr told her. “Anything on Mr. Bai or my shadows?”
“Nothing new on Bai. The people following the car aren’t military and they’re definitely not TAT,” she added, referring to the special unit of Thai tourist police.
Karr walked a block and a half, then turned toward his destination, a row of small shops near Nakorn Kasem, the “Thieves’ Market” a few blocks outside of Chinatown’s central core. His first stop was a house shop that sold a variety of statues. Karr looked around for a minute or so, then showed the photos to the short woman who had been watching him from near the counter. The woman wanted nothing to do with the pictures and the agent didn’t press it, smiling at her and leaving a twenty-dollar bill near the register before walking out. He moved down and across the street to a tailor shop.
“Maybe I’ll get a suit of clothes and charge it to the agency,” he told Chafetz as he crossed.
“I heard that,” said Telach.
“Hey, mama, how’s it hanging?”
“Your mix of metaphors boggles the mind,” said the Art Room supervisor.
“You know, Marie, you sound more and more like Rubens every day,” he said.
The tailor also did not recognize Kegan from the picture. Karr laid a bill on the counter, slipping a fly down as well. If he kept a file on his customers — some tailors did — he didn’t consult it after Karr left.
Two stops later, he came to a restaurant. This time Karr showed cash up front, supplementing it with a few sentences of Thai from the Art Room translator. This got him immediately to the manager, who studied the photos Karr fanned out on the table nearly as intently as the hundred-dollar bill below them.
“Two days, three,” said the manager, who spoke English.
Karr nodded as if he’d expected this. “Both men?”
“Just this one,” said the manager, pointing to Kegan.
“He used a phony credit card,” said Karr matter-of-factly. He reached into his pocket for supplemental funding. “We’d like to make sure you get paid. But we have to find him to do that.”
Concern was now evident on the manager’s face, but the financial incentive did not produce a receipt or a better memory. But this was enough for a start: the Art Room would pull the restaurant’s records from the local credit card service — no subpoena was required to tap into the foreign processing unit — and grab a list of credit
