Zero Hour pp-7 Read online

  Unable to imagine the idleness of life without work, Malisse shrank from the thought that some of them might not be too much older than himself.

  He returned his eyes to Duncan — but Time, stripped naked for him like an unlovely exhibitionist, continued to distract. When Malisse had first crossed paths with the FBI surveillance expert — before calling on him yesterday, that was — his hair had been thick and brown as a mink’s. It had since thinned appreciably and faded to the color of rustspeckled tin… yet only three or four years had passed between their meetings. At fifty-three, Malisse could not help but wonder if he showed comparable signs of aging, or if his wise departure from the Sûreté had slowed down his own physical subtractions.

  But right now there were other subjects to occupy his thoughts. What had been Duncan’s last comment? Ah, yes.

  “To me, favors are the pollen of generosity, allowing sweet fruits to spring forth from friendship’s fertile soil,” Malisse replied belatedly. He drank some of his coffee, then lowered his voice to avoid being overheard by passersby. “Have I told you, for instance, what I take as my greatest and richest reward from the case we worked together?”

  “You don’t have to go through this again, Delano—”

  “My greatest, richest, most heartfelt reward has been the knowledge that furnishing you with the names of those sellers of blood diamonds from Sierra Leone — and a list of complicit money launderers in Europe and the States — has aided your efforts to dismantle their network…”

  “Delano—”

  “… taken tens of millions of dollars from the hands of Al Qaeda and Hezbollah murderers who would have used them to purchase guns, explosives, possibly even weapons of mass destruction…”

  “Delano, enough—”

  “… weapons that could have caused incalculable suffering to American, British, and Israeli civilians—”

  “Delano, I promised I’d help you, so cut the shit before I change my mind.” Duncan paused. “You brought what I need?”

  Malisse nodded, dabbed his chocolate-smudged fingertips clean on a napkin, and reached into his open overcoat for the memory stick he’d popped from his digital camera. He gave the stick to Duncan and then started on a macadamia biscotti, his eyes wandering back to the chessmen.

  Their board was still crowded, the match in its preliminary stages. No doubt they were skillful to a high degree… how to otherwise explain the rapt interest of their watchers?

  For his part, Malisse was ignorant of the game beyond the basic movement of its pieces, and had never desired to learn its rules and strategies. It took enough sweat to plot his moves through the twists and turns of reality’s difficult corridors, trying to keep a step or two ahead of the ignoble creatures he meant to bag, laying snares for them along the way.

  “Delano, I give you credit.” Duncan had snapped the memory stick into a compact aluminum-clad case and pocketed it. “You’ve got balls.”

  “For taking the photos?”

  “In the schul at the DDC,” Duncan said in hushed voice. He shook his head with appreciation. “Monster fucking balls.”

  Malisse absorbed the praise with what he hoped was a semblance of grace, if not humility.

  “I did what you asked,” he said. “There are shots of the briefcase. The hat. And many of the coat. Its lining, seams, designer and dry cleaner’s tags. Closeups of every pull or flaw I noticed in its fabric. Even the lint on its sleeves.”

  “Buttons?”

  “Front, pocket, cuff. Inside and out,” Malisse said. “You stressed that would be important, did you not?”

  Duncan nodded in the affirmative

  “We have to decide where to put multiple power sources and signal boosters. Get some lithium microbatteries in the buttons. I figure it might be a solution to the first hurdle.”

  “And the second?”

  “I want to try out some ideas,” Duncan said. “Whether they can be practically applied depends on what the pictures show.”

  Malisse looked at him.

  “I can’t settle for trying,” he said. “I need success.”

  Duncan sat a moment, then leaned forward on his elbows. “Exactly how much do you know about GPS systems?”

  “They use satellites,” Malisse said. His face was blank. “And signals from space, no?”

  Duncan studied him as if trying to decide whether or not he was joking.

  “Okay, pay attention,” he said. “Bottom-of-the-line units lock on to three sats and provide a two-dimensional fix on position — latitude and longitude. The coordinates are arrived at by simple triangulation… the travel time of the satellite signals beamed to the receiver times the speed of light. If we mount a GPS tracker underneath a vehicle, that would be all we’d need to follow it from place to place in a surveillance.” He paused, dropped his voice another notch. “If you want to trace a person with a GPS device, it’s different. Especially in a city. Two-D doesn’t calculate up and down. And New Yorkers live and work in multistory buildings, not straw huts. The second your man starts climbing a flight of stairs or steps into the elevator of a seventy-floor high-rise, you’re going to lose him.”

  Malisse nodded.

  “Thank you for the technical instruction,” he said. “I might now await the ‘unless,’ were it not for the great lengths to which I was put photographing my man’s coat. Or did I somehow mistake your reasons for wanting that done?”

  Duncan gave him another look.

  “Pinpoint homing calls for a three-dimensional GPS receiver that acquires a fourth satellite to add altitude to the calculation,” he said. “And that’s at minimum. The more extra channels your unit picks up, the more data from other satellites it can use to refine the accuracy of its positional fix, or back up any or all of the four primary sats if communications get interrupted.” He shrugged. “This isn’t spy science. Anybody can buy ninety-five-percent-accurate three-D street-point navigators for a few hundred bucks. They weigh a pound, maybe a pound and a half, and are about the size of cordless phones… compact, but too large and heavy to fit in Max Smart’s heel.”

  Malisse was puzzled. “Whose?”

  “Never mind,” Duncan said. He leaned closer to him. “Here’s your unless, Delano. Once more, so I know you understand. The only way I see putting a hidden three-D GPS monitor on somebody with available tech is to integrate its hardware into his clothes, turn his whole dress ensemble into a receiver. It’s the same concept as smart suits, e-wear, whatever the term du jour might be.”

  Malisse felt a coil of impatience in his belly. Or were his ulcers simply aggravated? He crunched into another biscotti, hopeful its honeyed coating would act as a balm in either case.

  “This you indeed told me yesterday… to my thorough comprehension,” he said, swallowing. “Now tell me how fast you can do the job.”

  Duncan looked at him, but didn’t answer at once.

  Malisse waited. His stomach remained troublesome in spite of his attempted remedy, but nothing more could be done to settle it without a cigarette — and that was denied him. The smoke police could be anywhere about, waiting to pounce at the snap of the lighter’s lid, the flick of a spark off its flint. While Malisse might have fantasized about letting himself be nabbed just so he could fire up in a jail cell — a warm, indoor place, after all — Jeffreys had informed him the citywide ban extended even to penal institutions, public workplaces that they were. Woe to the convicted felon who dared a puff of tobacco!

  He looked across the table, turning his thoughts back to business. Duncan had stalled him long enough.

  “The job,” he repeated. “How fast?”

  Duncan sighed. “Banking on the premise that it works, I’d estimate—”

  Malisse shook his head.

  “As I often told my pupils, we mustn’t skewer ourselves on the redundant,” he said, his tone short. “I ask you to reach deep into your black bag and make it work.”

  Duncan released another breath.

  “Give me a w
eek,” he said.

  Malisse shook his head.

  “No good,” he said. “It has to be sooner.”

  “How much sooner are you talking?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  Duncan blinked.

  “That’s impossible,” he said. “I’ll push for, say, four, five days—”

  “I can wait two.”

  “Three.”

  “Two,” Malisse insisted. “Two at the very most.”

  Duncan continued to look unbelieving. “You’re sure you don’t want to check the phone book for a while-you-wait snoop shop?”

  Malisse snapped him a glance.

  “Do not scoff at me, Brian,” he said. “My man has been very active.”

  “Still—”

  “There is an old children’s tale,” Malisse said. “A brother and sister enter a deep, dark forest. The boy leaves a trail of bright pebbles to mark their way home. But when they next set out, the boy forgets the stones and instead drops only breadcrumbs from his knapsack. These are eaten by hungry birds, and the trail is lost to those who might follow in search. As are the children, who, as it happens, have stumbled upon a witch’s hoard, but are nowhere to be found with the jewels.”

  Duncan looked at him.

  “You think you’re onto something big,” he said.

  Malisse shrugged over his box of treats.

  “Once, African diamonds led us to terrorists and gun runners,” he said. “We must always remember a trail of shining stones can lead anywhere, and bear in mind how quickly it may turn to crumbs that are snatched away by whatever is in the air.”

  * * *

  “You want me to do what?” Lenny Reisenberg said from where he sat behind his desk.

  “Assist in my investigation of Kiran,” Noriko Cousins said from where she stood in front of him.

  He looked at her, groping for a response, his mouth a speechless O of surprise.

  She looked back at him, waiting. Dressed in a black skirt, tights, boots. Black leather GI dress gloves stuffed halfway into a side pocket of her zippered black biker jacket. A leopard Carnaby hat tucked down over her straight, dark hair adding some Swinging Sixties flash to the ensemble.

  It was a scant two minutes after she’d come barging into Lenny’s office.

  “I’m a shipping officer,” he said at last, “not an investigator.”

  “And I’m a corporate security agent, not a volunteer for the National Missing Persons Helpline,” Noriko replied. “Which, sad to say, didn’t give me the choice to stay out of something I didn’t want any part of.”

  Lenny felt heat rush into his cheeks, thinking he could have kicked himself. That was one great answer he’d given her there. Some mighty original words popping out of his mouth. Or was his memory playing tricks by reminding him they were the very same words he’d used when Mary Sullivan had showed up to drop her little burden on his lap only a week, ten days ago? And how effective had they been for him then?

  He realized his mouth was hanging open and shut it. His fate might be inevitably sealed, but he could still hold on to a little dignity.

  “Go ahead,” he said. “Tell me how I’m supposed to help.”

  “You can start by tracing every one of Kiran’s export shipments from point of origin to final destination,” Noriko said. “Look at cargo manifests, modes of transport, travel routes, receiving terminals… pull together every available detail and give them a comprehensive evaluation. Any time-charters or tramp vessels should be red-flagged. The same goes for transshippers here or abroad, outfits you remotely suspect may be cutouts. If something smells fishy, I want to know before anyone else — meaning the police.”

  There was a pause of several seconds.

  “I’d need access to confidential filings to get anywhere,” Lenny said, then. “Nobody’s going to just hand them to me—”

  Noriko stopped him with a slicing motion of her hand.

  “That’s bullshit,” she said. “I was working the case when those lunatics blew up a piece of our city. You’ve got sources. Friends in the Customs office. I know you reached out to them for information.”

  Lenny was shaking his head.

  “Different circumstances,” he said. “You make it sound like it was easy—”

  “Wrong,” Noriko said, interrupting him again. “What you hear is me sounding like I know what has to be done. How is up to you. Easy, hard, somewhere between, I don’t care. As long as it’s right away.”

  More silence. Lenny exhaled. He was thinking that the next time he was mulling an important decision, he might have to stay away from kosher delicatessens. He was also thinking that the next time Noriko Cousins showed up at his office without notice, he’d be sure to instruct his admin to tell her he was out sick… which suddenly led him to wonder why she hadn’t lowered the boom over the phone.

  “Kneeesh, kneeesh, ought to go back to school,” he muttered to himself. “Damn right.”

  “What?” Noriko said.

  “Never mind.” Lenny produced a defeated sigh. “I’ve got one question you could maybe answer. A condition of surrender.”

  She nodded.

  “Did you walk all the way here just to watch me squirm?”

  Noriko pinned him with a look, cut a little smile.

  “Of course not, Lenny,” she said. “I took a cab.”

  * * *

  His husky six-foot-four, hundred-ninety-five-pound frame outstretched in the passenger cabin of a custom Learjet 45, Derek Glenn was studying the menu on his lap, nursing his third Dewar’s Special Reserve on the rocks, and musing that there were certain rare and satisfying instances when the high concentration of melanin in his skin bequeathed by his African ancestors gave him a distinct social advantage over white men, one such being that it was tough to get pinned as red-in-the-face drunk when your face just so happened to be darker than chestnuts roasted on an open fire.

  This fringe benefit of Glenn’s blackness was by no means the only enjoyable part of his flight from Santa Clara to New York. In fact, Glenn had been too busy marveling at the preposterous abundance of luxuries aboard the UpLink bizjet to even think about it until a few minutes ago. Get a little sample of its plump leather seats and expansive leg room, not to mention the fully stocked and flowing wet bar, the catered lunch of marinated chicken and greens, the hors d’oeuvre platters of fresh seafood, overstuffed finger sandwiches, imported cheese, and sliced fruit, and now the lavish dinner menu he’d just been handed with its main-course offerings of fettuccini Alfredo, rib-eye steak, veal in wine sauce, beef stroganoff, or blackened swordfish… get yourself a taste of these high-flying extravagances, and the next time some flight attendant on a commercial airliner offered you a rubbery cold-cut sandwich and pretzel nuggets from his or her food cart, you might be pushed into talking serious smack to the poor dupe.

  Undecided between the veal and pasta dishes, Glenn glanced over his shoulder at Ricci, who had been sitting alone toward the rear of the cabin since takeoff, staring out his window into the blue. If there had been a single damper on the trip thus far, it was his complete and utter inapproachability. But Glenn was not so stupid that he didn’t realize Ricci’s worrisome state of mind was the reason he’d been pulled from his San Diego security detail for their current assignment, regardless of the spiel Pete Nimec had given about the two of them making a crackerjack team. For that matter, Glenn’s entire reason for having flown from his hometown roost without too much complaint was an awareness that Ricci had been in a slide since Big Sur, maybe even longer, and that he’d once been the closest thing on earth the guy had to a friend.

  Glenn sighed. He had to admit helping Ricci did fit his pattern, this goddamned masochistic compulsion to take desperate causes upon himself. Born and raised in San Diego’s east side, Glenn had returned there after a decade of service with Delta’s Joint SpecOps unit and been doing the community activist bit whenever he had any time to spare, working to rescue his neighborhood from the termite gangbangers and wrecking-b
all public developers who’d been moving in on its solid citizens from both ends. He didn’t want or need Ricci as an additional reclamation project, and yet had done nothing to stop the deal from being laid on him.

  Glenn kept looking contemplatively toward the back of the plane. After coming up against a wall trying to talk to Ricci earlier, he’d figured it might be best to let him be. However, it seemed to him that now was one of those times when he ought to make another attempt at reestablishing communication. There was a lot about Ricci that he found hard to understand. A lot about him that was even harder to like. But Glenn thought he maybe understood and liked him more than it was convenient, or even healthy, to admit. Thought Ricci, for all the hardness that came along with him, might be the most stand-up human being he’d met in his entire life.

  He expelled another breath, rose from his chair, started to take his whiskey with him, and then abruptly decided against it. The handful of times they’d hung out together at Nate’s Bar in San Diego, Ricci had ordered nothing stronger than a Coke. And though it hadn’t been brought up in so many words, Glenn had always figured he’d been keeping some kind of problem with the bottle in check. He didn’t seem to have too much trouble with it, not then, but it wasn’t the same when a man was slipping down a mineshaft, looking for anything that might slow his fall to the bottom.

  Glenn knocked off the rest of his drink with one deep swallow, put his glass onto the lowered tray in front of him, slid into the aisle with the menu, and went on back past a group of four company officers, divisional COOs and CIOs who were sharing the flight east on their way to some sort of telecom industry conference. Gathered around their laptops at a circular table, they didn’t seem to notice him at all.

  Neither did Ricci. He was turned toward the window as Glenn approached, still gazing into the layer of turquoise sky through which they were streaking above a thin, vaporous floor of cirrus clouds.

  “Got a great menu,” Glenn said, and flapped it once to get his attention. “Want to come on up and order dinner?”

  Ricci slowly shifted his attention from the window.