13. Phae
Phae
M arc’s and Serena’s lives were at stake, and this weapons-grade asshole had flown to Thailand to get laid.
We’d followed McDonald to the Bang Rak district, to the area informally known as Patpong Four, a street filled with gaudy bars and too many tourists, although it wasn’t as busy as its more established neighbours, Patpongs One, Two, and Three.
He wasn’t wearing a suit tonight. No, he looked as if he’d taken a wrong turn out of the country club in linen pants and a golf shirt. More interesting was his entourage, or rather, the lack of one. Tonight, a single bodyguard walked in his shadow.
“He’s up to something,” Emmy whispered as she righted a drunk woman who stumbled into her.
“Agreed.”
There was only one reason a man like Lonnie McDonald would leave most of his security back at the hotel.
He didn’t want witnesses to whatever he was about to do.
Music assaulted our ears, a cacophony of competing electro-pop as each bar tried to outdo the next.
The flashing lights were a person with epilepsy’s worst nightmare.
“Why do I suddenly feel old?” Emmy asked.
“Because we both aged out of this shit a decade ago.” I glanced across at her. “Maybe two decades for you.”
“Fuck you too. I’m only six years older than you are.” Emmy grimaced as a trio of idiots in shorts and soccer shirts nearly mowed her down. “Six-ish.”
“Ish?”
“The age on my driving licence might not be my actual age.”
“So you’re seven years older? Eight?”
“Seriously?” She peered into the ornate mirror over the credenza. “I barely even have wrinkles.”
It was true; she didn’t. And she arguably looked younger than me, what with all the cosmetic surgery her billionaire husband had probably paid for, but I wasn’t going to give her the satisfaction of admitting that. When I opened my mouth, she held up a hand.
“Don’t. Just don’t.”
Fine. Besides, who among us hadn’t fiddled with our date of birth? I had a dozen identities, some older, some younger, as did every member of the Choir, and Echo had literally never told anyone her age.
“But am I wrong about the aging-out thing?”
“Unfortunately not.”
There were plenty of men Lonnie’s age around, but the women trended younger. Half the girls beckoning men into these fine establishments looked barely legal, and in Thailand, the age of consent was fifteen.
McDonald disappeared into one of the quieter bars on the street. The Stars and Strips. Was that a typo or a description? Could be either. A bastardised version of the US flag hung outside, but the stars were hearts and the stripes were pink.
“Where are the fucking stars?” I muttered.
“Right there.” Emmy nodded toward the hostess’s nipples. Two glittery pasties barely covered the goods.
“If she’s eighteen, then I’m in the Peace Corps.” I began to see where this was going. “He’s gonna pick up a minor, isn’t he?”
Emmy made a “yikes” face. “Wouldn’t surprise me.”
The hostess didn’t ask McDonald any questions, just smiled and led him through the bar to a door at the rear. They clearly knew each other. A regular? The bartender at the Metrolux said he visited Thailand like clockwork—was this why?
Outside, we watched McDonald’s distinctive silhouette reappear on the third floor and walk past a frosted window, then another, then another. He didn’t pass a fourth.
One of us needed to get up there.
“Want to flip for it?” Emmy asked. She thought the same way I did, and I had to admire that. “Those balconies are practically stairs.”
She was right, but they were also at the front of the building in full view of the crowded street. How fast could I get up to the third floor? Ten seconds? Twenty? The Choir practised climbing regularly, both outdoors and at an indoor wall in Vegas.
“We need a distraction,” I said.
“Right. So, do you want to climb or create a racket?”
“Do you have a coin?”
She patted her pockets. “Nope.”
“I have a coin,” a drunk American interjected.
“Great, can we borrow it?”
“Sure, if you show me your titties first.”
Fuck me, it was frat boys on tour. Emmy flashed me a grin.
“Honey, you’d better be ready with bail money.”
Honestly, I hadn’t wanted to like Emmy, but she was growing on me.
“You got it.”
She slapped him hard. He tried to grab her with all the finesse of a short-circuiting robot, and she sidestepped, spun, kneed him in the balls, then twisted neatly away as an entire bachelorette party began to whoop and holler.
“Get him, girl!” the bride yelled. “He’s a creep.”
I smiled to myself and ran for the first balcony.
* * *
“Tell me you got something good.”
Emmy staggered through the door of my hotel room minus a shoe.
Her no-doubt-designer top was torn, and she reeked of alcohol.
In the meantime, I’d watched seven news bulletins, each leading with Marc’s story, and they all managed to use a lot of words to say nothing.
Nobody knew where Marc was. The Indonesian government claimed they didn’t negotiate with terrorists.
The police wanted to reassure vacationers that the attack was an isolated incident.
“Have you been drinking?” I asked.
“Some douche emptied a pint over me.”
“What happened to your phone?”
“It fell out of my pocket, and another jackass trod on it.”
Thirty minutes ago, a guy from the Blackwood control room had called me, his bored tone suggesting that Emmy-related drama was all in a day’s work.
He’d assured me she hadn’t been arrested, she’d just lost her phone, and said that I should check in to the Metrolux and leave a key for her at the reception desk.
“I broke a nail,” she added. “And possibly someone’s nose as well.”
“Congrats. All I did was play voyeur.”
“Was she underage?”
“It was a he.”
“And?”
“Definitely on the young side.”
“Nice work. Did you record it?”
I scoffed. “Of course. I’m a fucking professional. And don’t worry; McDonald didn’t see me. His mind was on other things.”
His hands too. And his stubby little dick.
“I need a shower, then we should head up to Lonnie’s room for a chat.”
My phone rang. Blackwood again. The same bored voice asked, “Is Emmy with you yet?”
“Sure, she just got back.” I’d put on my perky voice, and Emmy smirked as I held out the phone. “It’s for you.”
“Is this about the Carlisle case?” she asked the guy.
The answer must have been in the affirmative because she switched the phone to speaker while rummaging through the minibar.
“Okay, Dusk needs to hear this too. Heath wants to talk with us,” she supplied, popping the top on a can of soda and swallowing a mouthful.
A current shot through me. Were we finally getting somewhere? “What happened?”
After an electronic crackle, Heath spoke. “We have a lead.”
“What kind of a lead?”
“One of the witnesses in the hospital is more of a perpetrator. Ricky Dunkley—he’s an assistant cinematographer.”
“The guy who broke his ankle?”
“He couldn’t run to the boat, so he pretended to be a victim instead, but his story wasn’t consistent with the others’.”
“Charming of his friends to leave him behind.”
“Where are they?” I demanded.
“He claims he doesn’t know.”
“Hogwash.”
“Normally, I’d agree with you, but I think he’s telling the truth.”
“Maybe I could have five minutes to ask a few questions?”
“We already gave Mimi five minutes. Look, I’m trained in RTI, and I’d tell Mimi everything.”
RTI was resistance to interrogation, and the training covered a sliding scale of torture techniques, from those considered legitimate to those condemned by every civilised nation.
Think hooding, sleep deprivation, noise, starvation, sexual humiliation, good old waterboarding, disorientation, and pain.
You lost all sense of time in those sessions, and every minute seemed to last a year.
The only acceptable response to questions was silence.
“I’ll make Mimi look like an amateur,” I snarled, dropping my nice-girl act for a moment.
Emmy started laughing. “Trust me, you won’t.”
Ugh, so much for starting to like her.
“Wanna bet on that?”
She ignored me. “Heath, did we get anything useful?”
“Wild Roots has a base in West Papua. Somewhere along the coast where they could get a boat in.”
“Can we narrow it down?”
“Ricky doesn’t know the exact location—claims he’s never been there—but apparently, they found the place on Couch2Castle.”
I could practically hear Heath’s eye-roll. Terrorists had rented their lair from an upstart competitor to Airbnb?
“So we can get a list of possibles? How many coastal properties are listed in West Papua?”
“There are two hundred and thirty-two properties in total, and one hundred and ninety-seven are on the beach or close by.”
Damn. And we didn’t have the manpower to check them all ourselves, not in the given timescale.
We’d have to use Kopassus, or worse, the local police.
Emmy might claim Sinaga’s team was competent, but trust didn’t come easily to me, and where Marc’s safety was involved, my appetite for risk was lower than a kneecapped dachshund.
Oh, and I should probably make sympathetic noises about Serena too.
“How are they communicating?” I asked. “Can we get Ricky to check in and trace the call?”
“They use the Ether app and a VPN.”
Ah, Ether, beloved of criminals everywhere and an endless source of annoyance for Echo. Messages self-deleted shortly after being read, and there was no way to get them back.
“We can get the messages, but the VPN is a problem,” Emmy said.
What? How could she get the messages?
“That’s what Mimi reckoned,” Heath replied. “We’re getting satellite maps, and we’re going to do an initial analysis to see which of the properties would be suitable as a base for the tangos. Jezebel and Sinaga are working on the logistics.”
At least Jez was monitoring the locals.
“Keep us updated. We’re still working on the Lonnie issue, but I’m hopeful we’ll have a solution soon.”
Emmy hung up, peeled off her top, and tossed it into the trash. “That stinks.”
“Which part? Your clothing or the Couch2Castle thing?”
“All of it.”
I had to ask. “Ether? Your team found a backdoor?”
“In a manner of speaking. There is a door, but you need the key.”
“The encryption key?”
“The key is a person. A person who owes me favours.”
“A person?” That did make a certain amount of sense.
After all, I knew how Echo had gotten so many backdoors into supposedly secure databases, and it wasn’t just because she spent hours in front of a keyboard.
No, her alter ego was a shrewd businessperson.
Ether’s founder also hid behind an alias, but I figured he had to exist in the real world too. “You worked out who runs Ether?”
Emmy gave an enigmatic smile. “Maybe.”
“Mack found them?”
“Mack and Echo both have a tendency to get lost in cyberspace on occasion.”
True, but in Echo’s case, I understood all those hours spent in the digital world. The real one made her nervous. For years, she’d hidden away in dark corners with only Chase for company, but now she’d hooked up with an outdoorsy guy who pushed her out into the light from time to time.
“That’s why Echo has us.”
“Mack’s pretty sociable. More than I am, anyway—I’d rather go to a bar brawl than a birthday party.” Emmy glanced at her watch. “Give me five minutes, and we’ll go talk to Lonnie. Then we can head back to Indonesia and help with the search. Maybe find a nice spot for a holiday while we’re at it.”
“Some of us don’t have time for vacations.”
Emmy just laughed. “You should learn to relax. Lose those frown lines.”
And… I was back to hating her again.