Devil's Keep (24 page)

“True. But the destination would have to be an island. And along that flight path, anywhere near it, there’s really only one island of any size.”

She zoomed in on the map, to the red line, and moved the view along the line until a single island appeared in the otherwise unbroken field of blue.

She switched to an online view, Google Earth, a satellite image. At first the screen showed just deep blue, but as she zoomed in, an island took form. It was mottled white and dark, roughly a half-moon shape.

She said, “It’s about forty hectares, almost ninety acres. The locals call it
berbalang
—that’s a mythical
flesh-eating ghoul. There’s another name. In the early nineteenth century, eight British seaman were cast up on the island after a storm swamped their ship in the Celebes. Only one got off alive, three months later. His personal account was a publishing sensation in England, and he gave the island an English name. Devil’s Keep, he called it. What a charming spot it must be.”

Stickney said, “Any idea what’s on the island? Why would anyone fly here?”

“It’s supposed to be uninhabitable,” Arielle said. “The last record of activity was a failed attempt at a coconut plantation in the nineteen fifties. But this is one of the most isolated spots in Southeast Asia. I don’t mean just geographically. It’s far from the shipping lanes, miles north of Malaysian territorial waters, and so out-of-the-way and so deep in Muslim territory that the Philippine Navy would have zero presence anywhere in the area. This is as close to a no-man’s-land as you’re likely to find. So if you ask what’s on the island, the answer is: there should be nothing, but there could be anything.”

When the rich feel a need to look closely at some remote part of the world, they don’t usually travel there to do it.

They buy aerial photos.

Favor did this routinely with property that he was considering. Often he would do it even after he had visited the property. He found that the view from above provided context and scale that were hard to grasp from ground level. Usually he would try to find
existing high-resolution imagery, if it wasn’t out-of-date. But if he couldn’t get what he wanted, he would commission a set of images, either aerial photos or satellite images, from the several commercial companies that offered custom high-resolution imagery from orbiting satellites.

That was how he tried to get a closer look at Devil’s Keep Island.

First, Arielle searched the world’s inventory of all known commercial suppliers of high-resolution ground imagery. She had done it so often, this required less than a minute. She had written a program that automatically queried all the indexes of available imagery, both free and for sale. The search turned up nothing beyond the low-resolution imagery used in Google Earth.

She contacted the commercial satellite operators individually, but the soonest opening was ten days away, and they couldn’t wait that long.

Then she began a search for aerial photo operators in Asia. This required some research, since she was unfamiliar with the aerial imagery business there. But within twenty minutes she was on the phone with the manager of an aerial photography outfit in Kuala Lumpur, who said that he would add Favor’s order to a queue that was seventy-two to ninety-six hours long.

“Double the fee if he moves us to the head of the queue,” Favor said.

She conversed briefly with the man in Kuala Lumpur and told Favor: “He can’t do that, but he
can bump us up a day. That’s forty-eight to seventy-two hours, weather permitting. I think that’s the best he’ll go, Ray.”

“What’s the equipment?” Favor asked.

“Beechcraft King Air with an UltraCamXp. He suggests two flight runs at an altitude of three thousand feet.”

Favor considered this. The King Air was a substantial twin-engine turboprop. At three thousand feet it was easily spotted from the ground. One pass at that altitude would be suspicious. After two passes, everyone on the island would know that they were being watched.

He said, “That won’t go. I want one pass, eight thousand feet, straight from horizon to horizon. If anybody notices, it should seem to be random. I’ll sacrifice a little resolution for stealth. We may drop in on that rock one of these days, and I don’t want them stirred up before we get there.”

Marivic Valencia stood on her wobbly perch and looked over the wall into the cell on the other side.

She could have done this at any time when Junior was there. The wall was the same height all around the room, and she could have looked over at Junior just as she looked out onto the hillside and the dock.

But she hadn’t wanted to see Junior. Without the wall they couldn’t have talked so freely, she was sure of that. Putting a face on that voice—and letting him see her—might have spoiled it.

But this was different. She had been checking
over the wall since the orderlies first brought Ronnie in and laid him down on the cot. At first he was out hard, then shifting fitfully as he tried to get past the waning effects of the drugs. She knew how that felt.

Now she watched as he opened his eyes and stared up at the ceiling. He sat up unsteadily on the edge of the cot.

”Ronnie. Up here.
Ronnie
.”

He looked up at her eyes, barely visible over the top of the wall.

He didn’t seem surprised.

He smiled.

“Found you,” he said.

Shortly before midnight, Ray Favor walked down the long hallway in the lower level of the Impierno building. He was headed for the Ultimate VIP Safari Suite at the end of the hall, and the massage attendant named Patricia was walking beside him.

She said, ”Like MacArthur, you have returned.”

He had asked for her automatically, without thinking.
PuhTREESia.
He would have preferred nobody at all: he needed two or three minutes alone in the room, and he had to find a way to get it.

“Just leaving the office?”

He wore black slacks, expensive loafers, a shirt with a button-down collar, left open. Mendonza had assured him that this was the look of a business executive in Manila, where a traditional jacket and tie marked you as a stuffy outsider. And he was carrying a leather briefcase. The briefcase was the point of the charade.

He said, “Yes, it’s been a long day.”

“And now you want some relaxation,” she said as they approached the room.

“Yes.”

“All right. I will help you to relax.” She opened the door for him, let him enter. She walked in after
him, shut the door, and locked it from the inside. She put her hand out, motioning for the briefcase.

“You don’t need that here,” she said.

He kept it, putting it down on the floor against the nearest wall.

”I would like a drink,” he said. “Will you get me one, please?”

“Of course.”

“Scotch whiskey, no ice. Water on the side.”

He took some cash from his pocket and held it to her, thinking that she would take it, leave the room and go to the bar to bring his drink. It was all the time he needed.

But she shook her head and waved off the money.

She reached for a telephone on the wall.

“The room boy will bring it,” she said. “You can pay when you leave.”

Room boy?
Christ, Favor didn’t need this, someone knocking at the wrong time.

He said, “No, it’s all right.”

“All right? No drink?”

“Maybe later.”

She put down the phone and stood looking at him. Perplexed. Maybe a little impatient.

This was not going well.

She turned away, took a clothes hanger from a hook on the wall, and handed it to him.

“I will prepare the bath,” she said. She turned toward the shower room. The shower room with its wall of glass.

He said, “I have a request.”

She stopped, turned back to him.

“What is your request?” Definitely impatient now.

“I would like to watch you in the shower.”

“You mean washing? You wish to watch me bathing?”

“Yes,” Favor said.

She seemed to find this amusing. She broke into a laugh, put a hand to her mouth to cover the giggle.

“It’s one of my pleasures,” he said. ”To watch a beautiful woman bathing.”

This happened to be true. Favor also liked to watch a beautiful woman brushing her teeth, combing her hair, eating a chocolate cupcake. To Favor, the most ordinary act became fascinating when it was performed by a beautiful woman.

Patricia stopped giggling.

She said, “As if I’m alone. And you are hidden, and you are watching me. Yes?”

“Yes,” he said. “That’s it.”

“I understand,” she said. “You are
pakipot
. You understand
pakipot
? Like, shy?”

“That’s it,” Favor said.

She reached for his arm, tugged him over to the massage table. It faced the glass wall of the shower room.

“Sit,” she said. “Relax.”

He sat up on the table. She went to a bank of light switches on the nearby wall. Tapped one—a bright light came on in the shower room, shining down from the ceiling. She tapped another, then another.

The lights went off in the main room. Only the single bright overhead light of the shower room broke the darkness.

He heard the padding of bare feet on the floor.

Nearly a minute passed, with just a soft rustle from near the shower room door.

She stepped into the light.

She was naked, her hair pinned up. She turned on the water of the shower, tested it, stepped beneath it. The water ran over her bare shoulders, down the curves of her body.

She was turned away from him. Letting him look, giving him plenty of time to feast his eyes. She reached for the soap, still deliberately angled away from him.

Favor climbed down from the table. He went around to the wall, felt for the briefcase, found it, opened it. He felt around inside, took out a metal penlight. He shielded it with his body and turned it on.

In the open briefcase was Stickney’s device. It was the section of PVC pipe, capped at both ends, perforated by about a dozen drill holes. Near one end, a timing device. At the other end, glued in place, was a small battery-powered alarm clock. Braided wire ran from the back of the clock, down through a hole in the pipe.

Favor looked back over his shoulder. Patricia was soaping herself now, with deliberate, languid movements. Playing to him.

Favor carried the open briefcase to a corner of the
room. From there, he was almost out of sight from the shower. At the top of the wall was a metal vent. Air-conditioning: he could feel the cool air as it blew out in a hush.

One of the features that made the Ultimate VIP Safari Suite attractive to Favor was a plush armchair. He hadn’t seen a chair in any of the other rooms. He brought the chair over, stepped up on it. The vent was now at his eye level.

Two screws held the vent cover in place. He unscrewed them, dropped them into his shirt pocket, then removed the cover and leaned it against the wall. He shone the penlight inside the vent. It was a rectangular aluminum duct, a few inches high and about a foot and a half wide. From inside the wall it bent ninety degrees to the left, and when Favor pointed the light that way, he could see where it joined a larger duct about five feet away.

This was a main duct of the building’s air-conditioning system—he was sure of it.

He bent down and picked up Stickney’s device and a black metal tube. He gently placed the device inside the opening, pushing it toward the intersection of the main vent as far as he could reach.

He placed the black tube into the vent. It was photo equipment, a monopod—like a single leg of a tripod—used to steady a camera for offhand shots. Favor pulled out section after section, each time pushing the device closer to the larger vent. The fourth section extended the tube to six feet, and when Favor gave the fully extended tube a last
push, he felt the device hit the far wall of the main duct.

Perfect.

He quickly retracted the monopod, took it out. He replaced the vent cover, screwed it back on, and closed the briefcase.

He returned to the massage table and looked toward the shower. Patricia was still in the light, under the streaming water. Still turned away from the table. She was washing her right arm, the arm bent in front of her, turning it as she soaped it with her left hand.

She looked over her shoulder, straight at where he would have been sitting.

Favor knew that she couldn’t actually see him in the darkness, but she was focusing where he was supposed to be. It was a stunning look, earthy and provocative and inviting.

She held the look for several seconds before she glanced away and continued to wash.

Favor watched for about a minute. Maybe longer.

He was carrying some cash in the pocket of his trousers. He took it out, a folded packet of one-thousand-peso notes. He counted them. Fourteen.

He thought,
Thank you so much.

He laid the bills on the table and left the room.

Favor woke around 5:30 a.m., buzzed with an aimless and unfocused energy. He told himself that he should sleep a little longer. He would need the rest.

Often when he woke too early he would think about the hours ahead, how he planned to spend the time. It was a useful trick for clearing his head, and sometimes he would doze off, sleeping on his plans for the day to come. But not now. Thinking about his plans for the day just amped up the buzz, knowing what they intended to do before the next sunrise.

He got up, pulled on nylon shorts and a thin T-shirt. He laced up his running shoes. He left his cell phone on the table but brought the back-door key, and headed out into the streets of Tondo.

Eddie Santos rose just before sunrise. He scribbled
Good morning!
to his daughter on a notepad and left it at her usual place at the table; she would see it when she had breakfast. Then he picked up his wallet and car keys and went out.

Totoy Ribera began his day by stopping for a breakfast of fried eggs and rice and sausage, taking the chance to fill his stomach while he could.
He expected to be in his car for hours, still looking for whoever was behind the Nissan sedan and Tres Agilas and all the other shell entities that enveloped them. By the end of the previous day he had felt locked in a maze of corporate names and addresses, all fruitless, a convoluted trail that seemed to loop back onto itself. But he wasn’t quitting. This wasn’t even completely about the Americans (who hadn’t surfaced for almost two days). This was personal, some unseen wise guy taunting him with his cleverness. Totoy couldn’t wait to get his hands on the wise guy.