Spy Who Jumped Off the Screen : A Novel (9781101565766) (30 page)

Chapter Thirty-six

After
Surpass
's chopper had
flown overhead, Ty followed Isabella to the interior dry dock in which the small tender was now cradled alone.

The berth was already filling with seawater, the craft rising nearly to the level of the steel mesh treadway upon which they stood. No sooner had the tender escaped the yacht's open stern than Isabella floored its throttle, steering it toward shore. After the breakwater she slowed the craft, maneuvering it along the frenzied waterfront to the yacht-club quay from which Ian had departed the day before. This unnerved her, but she understood there was no other choice, as that was where their shore agent would see them through immigration and the
douane.

They hailed the first taxi that swerved toward them and directed the driver to 111 rue
Siaghine, the shop address shown on Philip's receipt. The late-morning traffic was halting, and Isabella felt her impatience rise as so many motorists jockeyed for starting position at each red light, only to bunch up in every-man-for-himself congestion. It was hot and the taxi's air-conditioning was in desperate need of coolant. Isabella looked anxiously at Ty, then rolled her eyes. At the corner of rue de la Poste, stranded in another jam, they paid the driver and got out, deciding that it would be quicker to walk. The shop they were looking for was not far along on the southern side of the street. A short green awning had been lowered over its windows in an effort to protect its wooden merchandise from sunlight.

Once inside, they were at first left alone to examine the various boxes, frames, knickknacks and utensils on display. The cool, shadowy interior was pungent with the scent of shaved cedar and beeswax. No sooner had Ty begun to investigate the enormous pyramid of boxes than the merchant with the slanted smile and missing bicuspid approached him. “Aren't they beautiful?” he said.

Ty nodded. “There are so many different ones,” he replied.

“Here, let me show you my favorite,” the merchant said. “This one has a secret compartment. You turn this knob once, nothing happens, but twice, voilà!”

“How fiendishly clever,” Isabella remarked as Ty examined it and the merchant withdrew for a few seconds to greet other customers. “It could hardly hold a bomb, could it?” she whispered.

“Don't be so sure,” Ty said. “There are binary explosives that wouldn't require any more space. Of course, they'd be hard to come by.”

“But not impossible to come by?”

“Not for a certain sort of person.”

“Try it yourself,” the merchant said upon returning.

“That's exactly what I was doing,” Ty said. “How much do you want for it?”

“Fifty euros.”

Ty understood he was expected to bargain, although something about the process had always felt indecent to him. “Is that your best price?”

The merchant raised his palms as if to say,
Why would you even ask a question like that?

“Do you like it?” Ty asked Isabella. “Or is there another one you prefer?”

“I think it's sweet,” Isabella said.

Ty regarded the merchant, still awaiting his answer.

“For the American”—the merchant smiled—“forty euros. Do we have a deal?”

“We have a deal,” Ty said with relief.

“I am so glad for your wife.”

Isabella smiled.

“You could do worse,” Ty told her.

As the merchant withdrew a sheet of printed tissue wrapping paper and set about his ritual, a group of tourists suddenly appeared on the shop's threshold, chattering among themselves as they debated whether or not to enter. They were a traveling party of American retirees, several women and only three men, and as they drew closer Ty recognized the soft Virginia dialect of his youth.

The shopkeeper was about to hand Ty his purchase when one of the American women said, “Excuse me, but aren't you Ty Hunter?”

Ty put out his hand. “That's the name my parents gave me,” he said.

“I know your mother,” the woman said.

This stopped Ty in his tracks, for he would not, he knew at once, be able to negotiate his usual gracious exit from such an encounter. “You do?” he asked.

“So do I,” said another woman.

“Well, I can't claim to,” added a man in an extra-large golf shirt that did its best to contain his paunch, “but I can tell you that I've heard so much about her I feel I do.”

“I know what you mean,” said one of the other men, a taller, gaunt gentleman in a Hawaiian shirt.

Ty laughed. “My mother gets around,” he said. “How do you all know her?”

“Yoga . . . aerobics . . . and gym. We're all part of the same senior center.”

“That's great,” Ty said. “What brings you to Tangier?”

“It was cheaper than staying home,” one of the women suggested, laughing at her witticism.

“What my wife means is that the tour was offered at an awfully good price. We wanted Dorothy to come.”

“I wish she had,” Ty said.

“Oh, but you know her! She's always got so much going on,” said the first woman. “She's
so
proud of you. She talks about you all the time.”

“We should have a photo,” one of the others implored.

“Would you be kind enough?” inquired the gaunt man of the shopkeeper.

“It would be my pleasure,” the latter said, with a measure of trepidation.

As he spoke, his son came in off the street, wiping his brow from exertion. The shopkeeper immediately handed him the American's Cyber-shot. “He's a very much better photographer than I am—a real technologist!”

They formed a close arc, with Ty and Isabella at the center. The boy, with a steady grip, aimed the camera at them. “I count to three,” he commanded. “You say, ‘Big movie star.'”

They laughed. The boy snapped two successive exposures, then handed the camera to Ty for his approval of each. As Ty returned the camera to its owner, the boy, without warning, darted out of the shop but within seconds had returned from the newsagent directly across the street, bearing a furled copy of
¡Hola!,
a Spanish celebrity magazine that featured Ty on its cover. The boy placed the oversize magazine directly in front of his father and then, when his father had had time to absorb the identity of his famous customer, opened it to a two-page spread devoted to Ty's recent appearance at the Film Festival in Cannes.

Eventually, having been rewarded with their photograph, the Virginians began to drift way.

“Thank you,” Ty said as the merchant finally handed him his package. “Oh, and one more quick thing, if I may.” He directed his remarks not only to the shopkeeper but to his son, who seemed caught in the spell of Ty's fame, taking in every word.

“Of course,” the merchant said. “Whatever I can do for you, Mr. Hunter, will bring me joy.”

“Have you ever seen this man?” Ty inquired, producing a flattering, wallet-size photograph of Philip Frost that Isabella had lent him.

“Yes,” the merchant said, “I have. And it was only yesterday, I believe.”

Ty exhaled a deep breath. “That's right, it would have been yesterday. Did he buy anything from you?”

The man's eyes grew curious. “He did. He bought a box.”

“Like the one I've just bought.”

“Very, very similar it was. Of course, no two boxes are ever exactly alike.”

“I understand,” Ty said. “Apparently he was a better bargainer than I.”

“I'm not sure I understand,” the merchant replied.

“He paid twenty-five euros,” Ty said, but when this appeared to distress the man, tempered his remark with a laugh. “Not that I mind about that. I think you gave me more than a fair deal at forty.”

“I am so glad.”

“He wasn't nice,” the boy interjected.

“What do you mean?” Ty asked him.

“Nothing,” the boy said.

“No, tell me, please,” Ty said.

“You're his friend.”

“Not exactly.”

“He wasn't fair,” the boy explained nervously. “He took advantage. He wasn't nice like you and the lady.”

Ty studied Isabella's face.

The boy continued. “I did not know who he was or where to find him. I did not know he was the friend of Ty Hunter, the movie star.”

“Never mind all that,” Ty said. “Why would you have wanted to find him? I thought you didn't like him very much.”

The boy hesitated. “To give him
this,
” he replied at last, withdrawing Philip's iPhone from a pocket of his cargo shorts.

“Where did you get that?” the merchant demanded of his son.

“He dropped it.”

“You should have given it to me in case he came back for it.”

The boy kept eyes on the floor. “I know,” he said. “I am sorry. I did wrong.”

“Thank God you did,” Ty said. “May I have it please?”

The boy appeared relieved to place the phone in Ty's hand.

“It is pass-code-protected, isn't it?” Ty asked.

The boy nodded. “It's too bad,” he said, cracking a momentary smile.

“Well, thank you for looking after it so well,” Ty said. “I'm sure the owner will be glad to have it back.” Reaching into his wallet, he found a ten-euro note and pressed it into the boy's quivering hand.

Bewildered, the merchant said, “I don't understand why he deserves a reward.”

Ty smiled. “Oh, but you'll have to trust me that he does. Your son did a very important and good thing, even if it was by accident.”

In the street again, Ty said, “It makes you sad, doesn't it, a kid like that? You'd like to take him away, but of course you can't, because this is his home and it doesn't matter that the opportunities are so much greater just fourteen miles across the sea.”

“It would break his father's heart,” Isabella said, “and his mother's, and doubtless his, too.”

“That's the problem,” Ty said. “The world's just not fair.” He paused, struck by and now reflecting upon how much more thoughtful Isabella was than most of the women he had encountered recently. Then, returning to the task at hand, he asked, “Do you know Philip's pass code?”

“I did. Try F1D1C and see if it works.”

Ty did as she suggested, and the iPhone sprang to life. “The second big break of the case,” he said with a laugh. “We're on a streak. What's F1D1C?”

“Pi, alternately in letters and numerals,
backwards
.
Philip's an engineer, never forget that.”

“It's cute, I suppose, but it's not a very strong pass code, which makes me think there isn't much on the phone he cares about protecting.”

“He was upset when he discovered he'd lost it,” Isabella said. “Do you have any idea what you're looking for?”

“A way in,” Ty said.

“Obviously, but will you know it when you see it?”

“Chances of that are slim to none,” he said, “but I won't be the one doing the looking.”

They walked downhill for several minutes until Ty paused in front of a small shop whose crowded window featured all manner of gray-market electronics products. Inside, he purchased and quickly pocketed a four-gigabyte SanDisk memory stick and a USB connecter cable for the iPhone. At the next intersection, they came upon a taxi discharging its fare and immediately jumped into the old white Citroën. Ty directed its driver to the place de France, where the electronics dealer had told him they would find an Internet café.

“Café” was hardly the word for the bustling, casino-like room that reminded Ty of the Japanese pachinko parlors he had encountered during his tours to promote his films and endorse watches and men's cosmetics. Rows of solitary, transfixed individuals in red-and-yellow carrels sat before flat computer screens with wide, blank stares and, in most cases, no more than a half-consumed, forgotten latte or espresso or decaf perched on one of the identical black Formica tables before them.

The laptop Ty rented had been fitted into a steel frame that in turn had been bolted to the table on which it rested. He paid in advance for an hour's use of the computer. From the start menu, he pressed
RUN
, then
IPCONFIG
. When the computer's Internet protocol address appeared in the display box, he entered that number in his BlackBerry. From the same phone, employing it in its encryption mode, he called Oliver. “I have a Christmas present for you,” he said.

“I hope it's female.”

“No, but it rhymes with female.”

“Here it is, and lovely it is, too: an IP address. What the fuck, if I may ask, am I supposed to do with it?”

“Call in the geeks. Have them send me a program into which I can download the contents of Philip Frost's iPhone.”

“Bloody hell!” Oliver exclaimed.

“It's a long story,” Ty said.

“I'll bet it is.”

“Once I've done that I'll download the same contents onto a memory stick. Better safe than sorry is what I'm saying, and if there are any large files, I don't want to take the chance of their being corrupted in transmission. How will I get it to you?”

“Where are you now?”

“Tangier.”

“So you said in your e-mail this morning, but where in Tangier?”

“L'Homme Sage Café d'Internet, just off the place de France.”

Oliver paused. “There is a fellow at the American Legation,” he said, thinking out loud.

“Not far, really, but not exactly the right building to be spotted going into or out of,” Ty said.

“Nor was I suggesting that you do so,” Oliver replied. “I take it you plan to go from where you are back to the tender and then to
Surpass.
”

“Where else? I'm used to the good life, you know.”

“Only too well,” Oliver said. “So when you leave there, stroll for a minute or two. You're tourists, right—why not? Then, on impulse, decide to have a drink or a croque-monsieur or whatever you fancy at the Café de Paris. Do you know where that is?”