“Okay, boss,” Toad said.
Jake looked up and realized that Tommy Carmellini was standing near the desk, looking out the window. He must have just reentered the room.
“If anything happens to me,” Jake said into the telephone, “I want you to make damned sure Wong and Kent don’t have fun spending any of this money. Have the CIA screw with their bank records. Okay?”
“You got it, boss,” the Toad-man replied. “But you be careful, will ya?”
“Yeah.”
“When you see Callie, tell her that she’s been in my thoughts, mine and Rita’s.”
“Yeah.”
“Take care,” was Toad’s good-bye.
When Jake replaced the telephone on its cradle, Carmellini tossed a passport on the desk in front of Jake. American, with the blue cover. He opened it. Patricia Corso Parma. Staring at him from the page, however, was an excellent picture of Kerry Kent.
“Where did you find this?”
“Taped inside the air return ducting in Kent’s cube, downstairs. I found a screwdriver in her desk and went looking for something to unscrew.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“We need to talk,” Jake said to Tiger Cole. He and Carmellini had just gotten through two circles of armed guards around the museum exhibit trailer and had been allowed to enter. Cole was watching the video from the York units, which were being positioned in preselected hiding places in Kowloon. Kent was at the main control panel. Beside her sat a Chinese student from Hong Kong University whom Cole thought brilliant.
“Give me two more minutes,” Cole said.
“Where are you putting those things?”
Cole kept his eyes on the computer monitors. “In shops and basements, just getting them out of sight.”
“This will be the acid test, huh?”
“They were designed for night fighting in urban areas. The official designation is AVSPU, for Assault Vehicle, Self-Propelled, Urban. The army put them in a class with hummers and armored personnel carriers.”
When the last York was in place, Cole turned to Jake. “What can I do you for?”
“A short talk with you and Ms. Kent. Got a private place?”
“There’s a tiny office at the end of this trailer.”
“That’ll do.”
Cole spoke to Kent, and she got up from the control panel and followed Cole and Jake. Carmellini hung back, then followed her.
She glanced around at him, didn’t say anything. She was wearing tennis shoes, jeans, and a pullover today; Carmellini had never seen her in anything but a dress or skirt. Her abundant hair was pulled back in a ponytail, making her look like the girl next door.
The office was small, with just a desk and two chairs. Jake snagged one and motioned Kent into the other. Cole stood. Carmellini waited until the door closed on the three of them, then went looking for Kent’s purse.
Jake laid the passport on the small desk. “Explain this,” he said to Kerry Kent.
She didn’t reach for it. Jake passed it to Cole, who opened it, flipped through it, then tossed it back on the desk.
She nipped on her lower lip, but not a trace of emotion showed on her face.
After about ten seconds, she reached for the passport. She spent at least half a minute examining it, then laid it back on the desk.
“I never saw it before,” she said.
“Wrong answer,” Jake Grafton said sourly. “I know a lot and can guess at a lot more. Believe me, your future depends on how clean you come, right now.”
“I’m a British citizen. I work for the SIS. I don’t have to tell you anything.”
“Another wrong answer,” Jake said.
They were interrupted by a knock on the door. Cole opened it and Carmellini passed in a shoulder purse. Cole made room for him.
With another glance at Kent, Jake opened the purse, looked in. “Aha.” From its depths he removed a Derringer, a small two-barrel single-action .22 caliber. “Would you look at this.”
He opened the action. Loaded. Snapped it shut and passed it to Cole.
“Want to talk now?”
“Why?” she said. “You don’t know anything.”
“You should have gotten rid of the gun. Do the British still hang people?”
“It was given to me.”
“By whom?”
“Wu Tai Kwong.”
“Wrong answer again. How about Sonny Wong?”
She leaned back in her chair and looked in every face. “You don’t have proof of anything,” she said. “Carmellini must have planted that gun in my purse.”
Jake stood. “Tommy, stay here with Ms. Kent. Don’t let her touch anything, call anyone, speak to anyone. We’ll be back.”
He walked through the door and Cole followed him.
“What was it about the pistol?” Cole asked as they walked to the York control console.
“Wasn’t that CIA agent, Harold Barnes, shot with a twenty-two?”
A look of surprise crossed Cole’s face. “I can’t recall.”
“I can,” Jake Grafton said. He paused behind the York master control panel. “I read the report. Twenty-two slug at point-blank range above the right ear. The Hong Kong police turned the bullet over to the FBI.”
“Kent?” He sounded skeptical.
“Perhaps. I’m guessing, but it fits. Now tell me, what would happen if someone changed some of the lines of the code that the Yorks use to separate the good guys from the bad guys?”
Cole pursed his lips thoughtfully. He went over to the keyboard and began typing. He spent two minutes studying lines of software code. “Looks okay,” he muttered and came back to the control menu.
“But if one of the Yorks started shooting our guys, I would see it. I’m right here.”
“That problem could be easily solved with a bullet.”
“We’ve got to trust people,” Cole responded. “There’s no other way to do it.”
“Wake up, Tiger. Kerry Kent and Sonny Wong aren’t on the same sheet of music that you and Wu have been singing from. A wise man surrounds himself with people he trusts and checks on ‘em constantly.”
“You’re right, of course.”
“Where’s your television helicopter?” Jake asked. “You and I need to take a ride.”
“It’s back at the TV station. The PLA would gladly pot it over Kowloon tonight.”
“Call the station and have the pilot fly it down here. You and I need to borrow it.”
“Want to tell me what’s going on?”
“Not yet. Like she said, we need some proof. Call the station and get us a chopper.”
The helicopter, a Bell 206 JetRanger, landed in the street. The pilot was a small man in his mid-twenties. As the chopper was making its approach, Jake turned to Tiger Cole and said, “We better take assault rifles, just in case.”
“Okay.” He borrowed rifles from two of the men guarding the trailer.
The pilot flew the helicopter between the office towers of Victoria, then dropped to fifteen feet above the waters of the strait. They flew over the trucks and armed rebels who were guarding the tunnel and kept going. Cole pointed to a building, and the pilot slowed to a hover over the street in front of it. He let the chopper descend straight down, cushioning it at the bottom, until the skids kissed. Cole got out and led the way.
They were in front of a laundry. Not many civilians around, although heads peered out windows all along the block. With Cole leading, the two men went through the laundry, out the back, and down an alley. Forty feet or so down the alley, they knocked on a back door. It opened a crack.
Cole said something in Chinese, and the door opened.
A York unit, Alvin, stood near the front of the building, which was a shoe shop. A curtain hung between it and the shop door. It stood facing the curtain, a belt-fed machine gun in its hands and an electric cord hanging from its back. “We’re charging the battery,” Cole explained, gesturing at the cord.