The Riddle (A James Acton Thriller, Book #11) (27 page)

“Have
you seen it?” asked Laura.

Mai
shook her head. “No, there was no time. I just copied the files. They could be
blank for all I know.”

Acton
frowned. “Let’s hope not.” He looked around. “Do you have a computer we can
watch them on?”

Mai
asked one of Cadeo’s men who pointed to a metal cabinet. She rose and opened a
drawer, pulling out an old Lenovo laptop. She turned it on and once booted,
inserted the memory stick. A directory listing popped up showing only the
catalog.

“There’s
nothing on it!” cried Acton in dismay. Mai smiled and changed the folder
settings, a list of files appearing. Acton chuckled. “Never mind. Premature
panic.”

“You’ve
never suffered from that before,” grinned Laura.

Acton
shot a shocked look at his wife then laughed.

Mai
looked at them having no clue as to what they were talking about.

Good
thing.

“Mai!”

They all
looked at the shout, one of Cadeo’s men pointing at the forgotten television.

“—true,
Wolf, the entire American delegation is under attack by Vietnamese authorities
as we speak. I’m not sure if you can hear the gunfire, but I can. A desperate
battle is being fought one floor below us right now, our brave men and women of
the Bureau of Diplomatic Security, hopelessly outnumbered, are trying to delay
our capture, and perhaps death, at the hands of those who would claim to be our
hosts.”

“You
are in danger now.”

“Absolutely,
Wolf, we have wounded and at least two dead already. Unless this unwarranted,
and may I say unprecedented attack is halted immediately, I’m afraid many more
will die.”

“Why
not surrender? Isn’t it true that the Vietnamese have accused one of your
security team members of the assassination of Russian Prime Minister Anatoly Petrov?
Why not hand him over and end this?”

“That
isn’t an option, Wolf. Even if I was willing to ignore all of the principles we
believe in such as due process and innocence until proven guilty, the
Vietnamese have proven with this brazen, brutal attack that justice is not
their goal. Our man is not guilty, he was here at the hotel during the time of
the attack, and other than a photocopy of a stolen identification card, the
Vietnamese authorities have provided no actual proof our agent was involved.

“We
have eyewitnesses to the attack that have sworn it was a Vietnamese national,
at least twenty years older than our agent, who was the assassin, and that the
shooter was known to Prime Minister Petrov. I won’t say on the air what the
Prime Minister admitted to before he was shot, as I’m sure the Russian
government will want to confirm these stories before they are made public,
however should it look like we may lose this battle, I will of course provide
you with the full details of the accusations, as I would hate to see it lost
with our deaths.”

“Are
these eyewitnesses the two archeology professors, Professor James Acton and his
wife Professor Laura Palmer?”

“Yes,
among others from my security detail and a Vietnamese national, all of whom
were in the room when the shooting began.”

Acton
and Laura stood in front of the television, even Cadeo having returned after
one of his men called. The fear in Atwater’s voice was plain, though she was
doing an admirable job of trying to hide it.

But no
one could.

The
gunfire was plain to hear, and Acton was certain he had heard at least two
explosions, Atwater wincing both times. What they were, he couldn’t be sure,
but he had to assume grenades.

Which
meant this was either an all-out attack, or an all-out defense.

Either
way it would mean a lot of deaths.

He felt
Laura’s hand grip his as his thoughts immediately went to Dawson and the
others. He knew Spock was there with him and Niner had escaped, but he had no
idea who else was there that they might know. It could be the entire team for
all he knew.

If
it’s all of them, they’ll hold out until the last man.

Suddenly
Atwater turned her head as shouting was heard off camera. Dawson’s face appeared
momentarily as he came into view, grabbing Atwater from the stool she was
sitting on, lifting her as he yelled, “Get to the tenth floor, now!”

He
disappeared off camera as screams and shouts could be heard, then a terrific
explosion tossed the camera off its tripod, it bouncing off the floor, then
seeming to freefall as the CNN announcer was left dumbfounded.

And
Acton was left with all hope cleaved from his stomach.

Just
then the channel went blank and a message appeared that looked like a Windows
error message.

“What
happened?” asked Laura.

Rapid
fire Vietnamese was shot back and forth as Cadeo hammered at a keyboard sitting
on a nearby table. Mai turned to them. “He said they were streaming that over
the Internet. It looks like they’ve shut it down.”

“What,
the Internet?” asked Acton. “How?”

“It’s
very easy to do here. All providers are controlled by the government. They
simply need to make some phone calls. Anyone who disobeys is thrown in prison.”

Acton
checked his phone. “Cellular network is down too.”

As if on
cue the rest of the room checked their phones, grumbling and cursing following.

Laura
pulled her satellite phone out of her purse. “This may be our only lifeline.”

Acton
pointed at the laptop. “We need to get proof that Niner wasn’t the shooter.”

Daewoo Hanoi Hotel, Hanoi, Vietnam

Igor Sarkov knocked on the door to the security office, not waiting
for a response, instead opening the door and stepping inside. The room was
cramped, as most were, one side filled with banks of monitors and computers, still
functioning as the main floor had power. Two men watching the monitors as if
tuned to an American movie network ignored him.

Sarkov
glanced at what they were looking at and frowned.

The
Vietnamese appeared to be positioning themselves for an assault from the
seventh floor, if his reading of the security feeds was correct. He could see
the American positions on the eighth floor, the ninth dark.

They
must have used the elevator shafts to get to the seventh floor.

He had
to admit the tactic surprised him. He had never been overly impressed with the
Vietnamese government or its adjuncts. They were competent but lacked
creativity, their thinking trapped in the past, hindered by a communist mindset
that hadn’t evolved like China’s had. Though he had no love for the Chinese
government, and they were clearly still a brutal regime, they at least were
moving forward with economic reforms, if not political. And if there was
something he was certain of it was that a healthy middle-class, which in today’s
China was growing rapidly—from only 4% of urban dwellers in 2000, to 68% in
2012—was something a communist government was ill-equipped to deal with. People
with stable, comfortable incomes had time to think about politics and democracy
when they weren’t obsessed with how they were going to put food on the table
the next day.

China’s
economic growth would be its political undoing.

But
Vietnam was far behind, though he imagined the Chinese would have reacted much
the same way. The difference though was again economic. The Chinese would weigh
the economic benefits of pissing off the United States versus pissing off
Russia. And they would most likely side with the United States in the immediate
aftermath. About the only thing Russia could offer was oil, natural gas and
military hardware, and those deals took time.

Vietnam’s
economy was far less dependent on the Americans with less than 20% of their
exports going to the United States and less than 5% of their imports coming
from them. Russia was even more insignificant, however China wasn’t.

But
economics didn’t enter the mindset of a communist when there was an opportunity
for political embarrassment or gain. He had no doubt that the Vietnamese
government was not only trying to avoid embarrassment, they were trying to
curry favor with his own country to get a cut rate deal on military hardware,
about the only thing the American’s weren’t willing to offer.

But if
they killed the Secretary or a significant portion of her entourage, even the
Russian government, he would hope, would distance itself.

Part of
him, most of him, wanted to warn the Americans of what was coming, but that
would certainly earn him a quick trip back to Moscow. He watched helplessly for
a moment as the camera showed a security detail monitoring one of the eighth
floor stairwells.

When he
sucked in a breath of realization.

Eighth
floor!

“The
cameras on the eighth floor are working?”

“Yes,”
answered one of the men in English.

“But I
thought the Americans ordered the cameras on their floors disabled.”

The man
looked uncomfortable and remained silent.

Sarkov
decided intimidation would work on the diminutive man and glared at him,
leaning in while jabbing a finger in the air. “Well?”

“It
was!” the man sputtered. “I swear! But when I came on shift they were back on!”

“How?”

He
shrugged, but not convincingly so. “I-I don’t know.”

“But you
can find out.”

The
man’s head bobbed rapidly as he turned back to the computer, furiously hitting
keys. He pointed. “I-I can’t be sure, but Duy from the Eco Office must have
turned them back on for some reason.”

“Eco
Office?”

“It’s an
environmental program that monitors individual utility usage.”

“Why
would he turn the security cameras on for that?”

“They’re
connected. Why, I don’t know. I just watch the cameras.”

“Where
is he now, this Duy?”

“At
home. His shift ended a few hours ago.”

“I want
his employee file. Name, photo, address, phone number.”

“Y-yes.”
The man hit a few keys and soon had the employee file printing. He handed it to
Sarkov.

“How
long have those cameras been on?”

“At
least a few hours.”

“Check.”

Some
more keys were hit. “They were turned on at 8:17 this morning.”

“And
they remained on?”

The man
nodded.

“Bring
up the footage from this morning.”

The
screens flipped from the live action upstairs to the calm of the morning, the
eighth floor from several views displayed.

“Fast
forward.”

The
footage raced forward several minutes before Sarkov pointed. “There!” A hotel
staff member appeared from around the corner, pushing a maintenance cart. “Who
is that? Is that him?”

“No,
that’s Phong,” said the other man.

Sarkov
nearly froze. “Did you say Phong?”

The man
nodded. “He’s a maintenance worker. He’s been here forever. Since the beginning
I think.”

Sarkov
watched the man knock on a door then swipe his pass, disappearing inside.
“Whose room is that?”

The man
shrugged. “They’re all assigned to the American security detail. We aren’t
given that information.” The man’s eyes narrowed as he looked at his terminal.
“Wait a minute.” He hit a few more keys. “He used Duy’s pass!”

Sarkov
frowned. “Give me the employee record for this Phong person.” Another printout
was handed to him just as the door opened, Phong reappearing and pushing his
cart back from where he had come. “Follow him.”

“No
need. He left five minutes later for the day, sick.”

Plenty
of time to get to the museum.

The more
he learned, the more he realized the professors were telling the truth. The
American Agent Green had nothing to do with this and it was this maintenance
man—he glanced at the printout—Phong Son Quan—who was actually the shooter.

He
needed to see the museum footage before it was erased. He had handed the memory
stick over to security staff at the embassy but had yet to hear anything. If it
too showed this man entering the museum, then it should be an open and shut
case.

“Keep
the camera on that door. Fast forward until someone comes out.”

The
image sped forward then the door opened, as did several others within the
frame, agents rushing out, readying their weapons.

Including
one Asian American DSS agent named Jeffrey Green.

At
10:02am.

Exactly
when the Prime Minister was being shot.

The
entire hotel rumbled.