Bob had not instructed Zachary Taylor to return immediately from his illicit mission, so the mercenary decided that the best course of action involved drinking. Sadeski would not see any of his crewmen again until the sun had been gleaming off the tall statue near the dock for hours. When Zach returned nearly fourteen hours after last seeing Sadeski, he concluded that his actions had been justified. The captain was sitting on the prow of the Northern Cross, observing the tourist beach with a brooding expression, his legs dangling over the armor plate. Gordon Weston was absent-mindedly mopping the deck near the stern. With the daylight, motorboats had taken to the shallow bay and now sped past the ship sporadically. Taylor suddenly wished he had a motorboat himself.
"Well? What's up?" the captain barked. His voice snapped Zach back to reality.
"Uh, well, I, uh, lost him." Taylor tried to sound convincing. He knew Bob could detect lies, and the older man's mood appeared to be downright foul.
Luckily for Zach, Bob did not seem to be focused on the answer. "Oh. Too bad," the mercenary growled. "Gordon, maybe you can try. We should figure out what's going on."
Weston sighed and leaned the mop against the cabin. "I can try, but he needs to come back first. Tracking the GPS on his phone is useless, he'd probably move by the time I got there."
"We can't track the GPS anyway." Bob pulled himself to his feet. "He did something to it, it's been stuck on that resort island ever since we went there. And all of the calls coming out go to another one of our phones. Mark's already annoyed about this, so we're on our own unless something happens."
Gordon rubbed his rapidly developing beard. "We should really think this through a bit. He's behaving strangely, but not really in a bad way, and not strangely enough to interfere with work. Even assuming sabotage is involved, which is a worst-case scenario, he's not doing anything just yet. He hasn't stolen anything..."
"If anyone's stealing things, it's that weird new guy." Taylor was now leaning against the far side of the cabin. "I don't like him at all."
"Neither do we." Bob began pacing the deck. "He acts like a guy I knew in Bosnia. That guy wound up stealing from half the company and got run over with a jeep. Don't antagonize him and don't let him out of your sight around the boat or anywhere we're sleeping. He knows the area better than us and he looks like he's about to steal something most of the time. He's not coming back to Thailand with us."
Weston pushed a crab off the deck with the mop. "Sounds like a plan. Now, about Rene. We can't just leave him here, and we probably don't want to. He's been a decent crewman regardless of his attitude, and you can't deny that." Bob muttered something inaudible. "Let's go over what we've got. His phone only makes calls to us and is apparently on an island in Thailand. My first suspicion would be that he messed with the GPS program."
"Yeah, that was mine." Sadeski stopped to watch a pair of boats pass by.
"That's not the only thing that could have happened, though. As implausible as it may sound, I think there's a chance that he may have lost his phone at some point and is now using one of the spares. If that's the case, we should be able to just wait until he's fairly far from the boat and then ask Mark for the locations of all of our phones. How many are there now, anyway?"
"Uhh... eight." Taylor was feeling somewhat excluded from the conversation by this point. "Morchester has one, and one fell in the ocean off Iceland."
"Right. We can find which one Rene is using if he's far enough from the boat when we call Mark. Where did you lose him, Zach?"
Zach suddenly wished he was still excluded. "Um, near the cheap hotels district. To the west, near the old town. Anywhere on land is far enough to show up away from our signal, though." He nervously glanced over at Bob, who was still watching the boats with a strange expression on his face.
"OK. Now we've got a plan. We can call Mark the day before we take off and ask him to check the locations on all the phones. That way we can make sure our Chinese friend didn't steal any at the same time. We can use that as the cover. Sound good, Bob?"
"Uh-huh." Sadeski seemed to be somewhere else mentally. The boats he had been watching were now at the far end of the bay, mere specks against the shimmering waters, but the captain's eyes were aimed at something that didn't seem to be present between the dock and the beach. He suddenly stalked off the boat. "Keep an eye on anyone who shows up. I trust you two. I don't trust them." Bob strode off down the dock.
Taylor watched him depart, waiting until Bob was out of earshot to speak again. "He's the one acting strange lately."
"He can be explained, and he's the boss." Gordon sighed. "He had to explain to that woman who ran the dock that he's not coming back. That never goes well. No number of years in this job can get you over that. He'll be his normal self as soon as we've got Takeshi back and we're out of Bangkok." The crab had clambered back onto the deck. Weston pushed it off again.
"I've got something to tell you." Zach fidgeted with a thread coming loose from his jacket. "I didn't lose Rene. I know exactly where he went. He won't go back, though. He caught me, and caught me pretty badly. I've got nothing. But he knows Bob's suspicious of him. So, the jig is up. If he doesn't act on it fast, he's probably fine."
"Good analysis. You don't need to tell me why you didn't tell Bob." Gordon chuckled. "He would just get madder at you."
Sadeski would have agreed, had he heard the conversation. He had wandered into the cluster of squat gazebos and was now sitting in one, his eyes closed and a frown on his face. From the next gazebo, a young Chinese couple stared at him and whispered to each other. Sadeski noticed them, but paid them no heed. One of the great advantages of being a mercenary was never having to worry about social standing, just professional reputation and ability. This too was in the back of his mind- he felt as if the area where his eyes and brain came together had been replaced by Leah Silverstone. No matter how many times Bob found himself in this situation, it was always the same response. He couldn't just cast her away like the gawking tourists.
"Damn it." Bob abruptly stood and opened his eyes. The tourist couple suddenly fell silent. Sadeski strode out of the wooden structure, headed for the market district. Alcohol solved everything. That was another response that stayed the same.
The crew came and went as the hours passed. Zachary Taylor spent most of the afternoon on a small island at the mouth of the bay which was little more than an artificial sandbar. Gordon followed Bob to the market district shortly after noon and returned before his captain with a bag of pirated CDs and DVDs. While everyone else was out, Rene Levancon finally made his way back to the ship- Gordon found him eating take-out in the kitchen. Sadeski was back aboard the boat by five P.M., and just after dusk Sun Xianli wandered into the control room. He barely had time to sit down before Zach, recognizing that the freelancer would probably not help the matter of convincing Mark to find the phones, dragged him off to the beach. Rene Levancon was gone within another half-hour. As planned, Gordon followed a few minutes later, dressed all in black. Bob was left alone on the boat.
Mark Birch seemed slightly more awake than normal when he answered the call. "Seven A.M.! Bob, this is a gift!" His voice dripped sarcasm. "What's up today? How's the new guy holding up?"
"He's a goddamn kleptomaniac." Bob slammed his beer can down on the table. He was not pleased with the low-quality Chinese beer he had bought. "I think he stole a phone."
"Damn, and he came recommended." Birch seemed genuinely saddened by Bob's suspicions. "Which phone is missing?"
Sadeski took another swig of beer. "I dunno. They all look the same. Can you get me a map of where they all are?"
"Sure thing. Hang on a bit." Birch swiveled in his chair to face the other computer, humming a song. "By the way, Zeke's finally off his job. He's going to Albania. So you're the lucky one. Man, I'd kill to go to where you guys are."
"Killing's done. Sorry. Almost wound up being Takeshi."
Birch's face reddened even in profile. "Don't joke about that, Bob." A world map appeared on Bob's computer screen. "So we've got one last seen near Iceland, one in London, one in southern Thailand- but we know that's Rene's and his is broken- and a whole bunch in one spot on Hainan. Let me zoom in a bit." The tiny island expanded to fill the screen, growing until only Sanya was visible. "Right. Five on the boat. Who's over there on the beach?"
"Uhh... Zach is." Bob scratched his head. "And there's one off to the northwest. That's strange, Rene went that way."
The map vanished, only to be replaced with a completely deadpan Mark Birch. "This isn't about the new guy, it's about Rene, isn't it?" Birch leaned back in his chair. "God dammit, Bob..."
"No, no. The new guy really is a kleptomaniac." Bob tilted his head back to get the last of the beer from its can, then launched the can into a wastebasket. "I guess he didn't steal any phones. I'm still worried about him. Thanks, though."
"Don't do anything you'll regret, Bob." The cheap camera did not detect Sadeski's sudden twitch as he reached for another beer. "Have fun." The call ended abruptly.
Bob sighed deeply and opened the can. A kleptomaniac, a possible saboteur whose activities had gone without investigation for too long already, and neither were what he was drinking away. Fun was not what Bob would call it.
ns 15.158.61.20da2
