Steve Martini - Trader of secrets

The patter of the footsteps was getting closer. They seemed to be slowing as they approached the second floor. Harry skated on the balls of his feet down the hall as fast as he could. He grabbed the door and slid into the men’s room. He held the door open and caught his breath as he peered through the crack.

The woman entered the hall from the stairwell. She didn’t even slow down. Instead she walked right up to the dark glass in the door and slipped a key into the lock.

Traffic was thick as cement. It was approaching the peak of rush hour. Cars and tall tourist buses were parked in the lanes on Second Road. The little blue baht buses, light pickup trucks with stainless steel tops and benches in the back for passengers, were stacked up all over the shoulder of the road picking up and dropping off fares.

Liquida watched the gal in the flowered dress as she threaded her way through the stalled traffic, checking between lanes so that she didn’t get creamed by a motorbike riding the lines.

As soon as she disappeared, Liquida went back toward the table in the beer bar. He snapped his fingers, and the taxi bike kid got up from the table. He left his beer, and together the two of them headed back to the taxi stand where the bikes were parked. Liquida gave the kid a five-hundred-baht banknote. “You know what you’re supposed to do?”

The kid nodded.

“Sabai, comprende?” said Liquida. “You understand?”

“Yeah, yeah. Soi 2.”

With that Liquida turned and headed quickly back toward Second Road. When he got there, he turned right. But he didn’t go into his hotel. Instead he walked past it and kept going south along the sidewalk. He looked across the street to see if there was any sign of the girl. He didn’t see her. By now Liquida figured she must be inside the building.

He picked up his pace and kept walking. He glanced over as he passed the green door on the other side of the street. He walked another fifty yards and stopped near the curb. Liquida took one last look around and then stepped off the sidewalk. He used a key from his pocket to pop the seat on one of the motorbikes parked at the sidewalk. He grabbed the helmet from under the seat and put it on. Then he fastened the strap under his chin and closed and latched the seat.

Liquida took a deep breath, put the key in the ignition, threw his leg over the bike, straddled it, and began to roll it backward out onto the shoulder of the road. He turned the handlebars to the left and worked the bike back and forth a little with his feet until it was parallel to the stalled traffic and just a few feet off the road.

Cars and buses were creeping forward, inches at a time. Liquida turned the key and pushed the starter button on the bike. The little Suzuki Hayate started up instantly, its engine purring almost silently as it idled.

Liquida had rented the motorbike the day before. He used it the previous night to scout out the area behind the office building looking for signs of surveillance. He didn’t see anything, but he still wasn’t convinced. It was the reason he had lived this long.

Joselyn and I take turns working high and low, using the small flashlight to quickly scan the labels on the filing cabinets and hoping the single battery in the Maglite lasts.

We get to the bottom drawer at the end of the last aisle. Joselyn looks up at me. “That’s not it. So either there’s nothing here, in which case we’ve wasted a lot of time and a good deal of money,… or else it’s the one we saw back over there.”

None of the labels on any of the cabinets bear the words Waters of Death.

“That would explain why the fellow who leases the office-I assume he owns TSCC limited, whatever that is-why he told Thorpe’s people that he never heard of anything called Waters of Death,” says Joselyn.

“Do you remember where it was?” I ask.

She gets to her feet and starts walking along the back wall past the end of each aisle until she comes to the second row of cabinets. Using the Maglite, she flashes it up and down the face of each cabinet. “It was around here somewhere.”

“As I recall it was up high, first or second drawer,” I tell her.

She moves forward a few more cabinets. “Here it is.” She holds the light on the label. In the center of the two-by-three-inch label is the word WOD in large block letters, all capped. It is printed on the same form as every other label, with the three large black letters just under the smaller green print showing “TSCC Ltd.” and telephone numbers.

Joselyn reaches up and grabs the handle on the drawer and pulls, but it is locked. You can see the small brass cylinder lock jiggle in its setting just a speck each time she jerks on the handle. “Any ideas?”

“No. Last time I saw one of these locked up like that, it was in our office. Somebody lost the key. We had to call in a locksmith. It would take a crowbar to pry it open, and then we’d probably make enough noise to bring the whole place down on us.”

Something catches my eye on the top right corner of the cabinet. “Here, let me see that.” I take the flashlight from Joselyn and look more closely.

It’s an old decal about an inch long, pasted to the corner of the steel frame right at the top. It’s old and worn, very nearly scraped off the metal, but I can make out enough of the letters to piece it together.

“What I said about prying it open with a crowbar…”

“Yes?”

“Forget it. It’s military surplus stuff. See that?” I touch the old decal. “It says ‘U.S. Army Signal Corp.’ It’s probably left over from the Vietnam War. Thailand was a big R amp; R center, rest and recuperation for the troops. If I remember right, they had a big air base around here somewhere. That’s probably where it came from.”

“So?”

“So the U.S. government doesn’t buy cheap stuff. You’re probably looking at a twenty-thousand-dollar filing cabinet-to go along with their forty-thousand-dollar toilet seats and their fifteen-thousand-dollar hammers. And even if they overpaid, that’s heavy-gauge steel. You won’t find that in Office Depot.”

“So where’s the nearest locksmith?”

Just as she says it, there’s a tap on the glass at the door. I turn and look over the top of the cabinets. I see Harry’s silhouette backlit against the lights out in the hall. “Come on, we better go.”

“What’s the matter, getting nervous?” says Joselyn. “You don’t like the idea of doing time in a Thailand jail?”

“We can try and figure out something tomorrow,” I tell her.

Joselyn and I start to move toward the door when I look up and see Harry’s shadow receding like a sprinter away from the glass. “Hold on a second!”

“What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know.”

As we are standing there, another shadow approaches the door. This one is much smaller than Harry, with a feminine form.

I twist off the Maglite. Joselyn and I retreat back down the aisle as fast as we can. We reach the end of the row just as we hear the key in the lock at the door.

It opens as we slink around the corner behind the end cabinet. I am down on one knee with Joselyn behind me. She has a hand on my shoulder, breathing in my ear as the lights in the room suddenly flash on.

The unexpected brilliance blinds me. I hear the door close and then the click of high heels as they cross the linoleum floor and head down the aisle directly toward us.

I push back against Joselyn, trying to retreat. Just as I do, the woman slows down. She takes a few tentative steps and then stops. For a few seconds I hear nothing, then the jiggle of keys. It’s followed by a slight metallic click, and an instant later a drawer slides open.

I can’t resist. I ease my head toward the corner of the cabinet until my left eye just clears the edge.