45
KURT AUSTIN SAT
huddled over a laptop computer in his room. He and Joe had arrived
back safely at the hotel and reported seeing a leopard in the
shopping district to the proper authorities. And then they’d
promptly gotten down to business.
For Joe that meant a
hot shower and tending to his various wounds. For Kurt it meant
toweling off his face and hair, changing into dry clothes, and
getting on the horn to NUMA headquarters. He needed downloads of
information, some which NUMA had access to, some which they had to
beg Interpol, the FBI, and other agencies for.
Fortunately, NUMA had
a long and positive history with these agencies, and there were
enough markers to call in to still be on the right end of the
balance sheet.
He’d been working at
it for nearly forty-five minutes before Joe reappeared through the
room’s adjoining door.
“What took you so
long?”
“I was cleaning the
gravel out of my knee.”
Kurt laughed. “That’s
what you get for wearing Italian shoes to foot-race in the
rain.”
“I didn’t know we
were going to be running all over town,” Joe said.
Truthfully, neither
did Kurt. “How’s your arm?”
Joe held it out. The
claw marks were bandaged but clearly visible. “That’s gonna make a
great story one day. Maybe even for your old girlfriend at the
zoo.”
Joe did not seem too
amused. “Very funny,” he said. “Just tell me my favorite Armani
shirt didn’t die in vain.”
Kurt turned back to
the computer. “A valiant sacrifice, my friend. And not without
results.”
He brought up
parallel lists.
“On the right, we
have official confirmed sightings of our friend Andras, courtesy of
Interpol, the FBI, and someone Dirk knows at the
Agency.”
As Joe studied the
list, Kurt read the names off. “Pyongyang eighteen months ago.
Singapore five weeks later, on the exact date Ion gave
us.”
“Score one for snake
intimidation,” Joe said.
“Yeah,” Kurt said.
“It gives a whole new meaning to squeezing information out of a
suspect.”
Joe laughed, and Kurt
continued.
“After Singapore, we
find Andras in Kaohsiung, Taiwan. He’s there for twenty-four hours,
at which point he disappears for three months until a possible
sighting in Yemen. Six weeks later he was confirmed in
Madagascar.”
“Madagascar?”
Kurt nodded. “Another
possible in Cape Town, South Africa, back to Madagascar again, and
then three months ago an extended stay in Lobito, Angola. Well,
extended for him. Four sightings in approximately three weeks
before he vanished. The next time he pops up is when I ran into him
on the Kinjara Maru. But if Dirk’s
theory is right and he was part of the crew that loaded that
superconducting material onto the ship, that would put him in
Freetown, Sierra Leone, less than a month ago.”
“Okay,” Joe said. “So
we know his course. How do we figure out what he’s traveling on? He
could be on an oceangoing yacht, a freighter, a garbage scow. Maybe
the submarine we’re looking for is his.”
“I don’t think so,”
Kurt said. “My encounter with him on Santa Maria occurred almost
simultaneously with the attack on Paul and Gamay five hundred miles
away. The submarine they’re looking for has to be under someone
else’s command. But the rumor about Andras is, he doesn’t trust
anyone enough to even have a second-in-command. He works on a
totally flat command structure. It’s him and a bunch of pawns. That
way, there’s no one in a natural position to challenge or usurp
him.”
“Sounds paranoid,”
Joe said.
“Absolutely,” Kurt
said. “And that means if he had a submarine, he wouldn’t hand the
keys to someone else, especially not someone he picked up at Mr.
Ion’s Shop of Mercenaries.”
“Good point,” Joe
said. “So it’s a surface ship. But there are probably ten thousand
ships capable of making the journeys he’s made.”
“Maybe more,” Kurt
said. “But think about it this way. Starting with Singapore and its
harbormaster’s records, we can substantially narrow that list down.
If we assume he was there on February fourth, and that his vessel
was in the harbor or nearby, we can eliminate ninety-eight percent
of the vessels in the world’s inventory right off the
bat.”
He looked at his
notes. “During the days Andras was here, one hundred seventy-one
oceangoing vessels were either docked here or anchored offshore and
submitted papers to customs officials.”
“That’s not a small
number, Kurt.”
“No,” Kurt said. “But
if we cross-reference it with the other places Andras was seen and
the ships docked in those places at the time, we narrow it down
substantially.”
“I’m guessing we
don’t have records for Yemen, Madagascar, or Angola,” Joe
said.
“No,” Kurt said, “but
we have satellite images of their harbors on pretty much every day
of the year, including those days that Andras was reported
present.”
“And?”
“With the exception
of South Africa, one ship has been present or in close proximity to
every spot our friend Andras has been in the past year and a half.
And only one.”
Kurt clicked on a
name from the list on the right-hand side of the screen. A photo
came up, displaying a large tanker with a black-painted hull, a
white main deck, and a Liberian flag flying from its
mast.
“The Onyx,” Kurt said proudly.
Joe looked impressed
but skeptical. According to the stats at the bottom, the ship was a
300,000-ton supertanker. “You’re telling me this guy has that kind
of funding?”
“Didn’t you ever read
Sherlock Holmes?”
“I saw the movie,”
Joe said. “Does that count?”
“It’s elementary, my
dear Zavala,” Kurt said. “Rule out the impossible, and whatever
remains, however improbable, must be the truth. This ship was
docked offshore in every port Andras appeared in over the last year
except Cape Town. But the sighting there was debatable. Also, she’s
too wide for the Suez Canal, which may explain the long route
around Africa to Freetown before they pulled their little bait and
switch on the Kinjara
Maru.”
Joe began to look
convinced. “Who’s she registered to?”
“Some corporation out
of Liberia that no one’s ever heard of,” Kurt said.
Joe stepped back,
still looking concerned. “So let’s tell Dirk and Brinks we think
this ship might have our suspect on it, call it a day, and go
fishing.”
Kurt shook his head.
They needed hard evidence. And if by any chance Andras had the
scientists on the ship, they needed the element of surprise.
Otherwise the people he was interested in saving—Katarina, in
particular—would be in worse danger than ever.
“Since when has the
machinery of government sprung into action because a regular Kurt
or Joe thinks any particular
thing?”
Joe looked away. “Not
often.”
“Exactly,” Kurt said.
“We need proof.”
“You want to get on
board that ship?” Joe guessed.
Kurt
nodded.
Joe looked resigned
to helping him as usual but seemed none too happy about where this
was going.
“And how exactly do
you plan on boarding a hostile vessel, crewed by terrorist thugs
and killers who are undoubtedly watching for any type of advance
from any quarter or direction, without them knowing about
it?”
Kurt smiled. He had a
plan. It may have been even crazier than his last plan, but that
one had worked.
“The same way you
remove a tiger’s teeth,” he said. “Very carefully.”