Читать книгу Jane Hawk Thriller - Dean Koontz - Страница 27

With its thousands of blacktop rivers and millions of metal currents, the Los Angeles evening rush lasted not one hour, but three or four. The Valley streets overflowed with vehicles surging-slackening-surging to and from the dysfunctional freeways. Vikram gave Jane an address, but the flood of traffic didn’t frustrate her. There were many questions to be answered, explanations to be made, and an understanding to be arrived at before they reached their destination.

She said, “You could have confronted me in the library.”

Vikram shook his head. “Not safely, I think. When you see me suddenly show up, you don’t see a lean but sinewy dark-eyed black-haired young man who might have been a Bollywood star. Instead you see FBI, and you think you’re trapped. So logically, an unfortunate confrontation ensues.”

“‘Lean but sinewy’?”

Vikram shrugged. “When describing myself to various online matchmaking services, the word ‘slim’ can be interpreted as meaning skinny or worse. Anyway, say I show up in the library and say just maybe you don’t shoot me, there’s still bound to be a scene that people are witness to. They call the police, they post it on YouTube, and we are toast.”

“Your relatives herded me into that vacant photography studio. Why weren’t you waiting for me in that place, where there weren’t any witnesses?”

Vikram raised his right hand, pointing at the roof of the SUV with his forefinger, as if to say, One important point to consider. “Remember, the chase had only just begun, and you were virtually sweating adrenaline.”

“I don’t sweat virtually.”

“Nevertheless, the math said the risk of my being shot on sight was still too high at that time.”

“‘Math’?”

“I have my formulas. It was wiser to lead you through a few twists and turns, give you time to understand this wasn’t a standard law-enforcement operation. Then I show up alone, no backup, and you realize I am harmless.”

“Who is Garret Nolan?”

“Mr. Motorcycle? He’s not one of us. He was just a hiccup. There are always hiccups. Some say that life is one long series of hiccups, although personally I’m not so pessimistic. Farther along that street from Mr. Nolan, a Honda waited at the curb, its engine running. A bright red Honda. Studies show that, in a crisis, the eye is drawn to red things. My brother, wearing a flamboyant red shirt, was prepared to leap out of the red Honda and dash into a Chinese restaurant, ostensibly to pick up an order of takeout, but in fact giving you a chance to steal his wheels, which of course we could track by its GPS. However, you found Mr. Nolan first. Beware, the traffic light is about to turn red.”

Jane braked to a stop. She looked at her passenger.

Smiling into her silence, Vikram said, “What?”

“You scripted it like some chase scene in a movie?”

“When I build a back door into the computer system of a major telecom provider, I don’t just wing it, you know. To get away with it, I have to be meticulous. Being meticulous is what makes me Vikram Rangnekar.”

“If Garret Nolan was a hiccup, unexpected, how did you track me from the time he gave me a ride?”

“Just in case, my cousin Ganesh tagged you earlier in the library.”

She recalled the plump guy in khakis and a yellow pullover, at a workstation near her in the computer alcove. “‘Tagged’?”

“As you were leaving, Ganesh fired a little device loaded with an adhesive microminiature transponder. Hit you in the back.”

When she had glanced at Ganesh, he’d been holding something in his left hand, down at his side. “I didn’t feel it happen.”

“You wouldn’t,” Vikram said. “It’s low-velocity. The soft projectile weighs three-quarters of an ounce. It partially unravels and weaves itself into the fabric of your coat. Lithium battery the size of a pea. It’s trackable by satellite, just like any vehicle with a GPS.”

She said, “Jhav.”

Vikram’s eyebrows arched. “That is a Hindi word.”

“But appropriate.”

“Wherever did you learn that word?”

“From you.”

“Not possible. I would never use that word in the presence of a woman.”

“You use it all the time when you’re at a computer, backdooring your way into one place or another.”

“Is that really true? I was unaware. I hope you don’t know what it means.”

“It means ‘fuck.’”

“I am mortified.”

“It’s me who should be mortified, being tagged and not even aware of it. Jhav!”

A horn blared behind them. The light had changed.

Vikram again pointed at the roof with one finger. “The light has changed.”

“No shit?” she said as she took her foot off the brake.

“I sense you’re perturbed at me.”

“No shit?”

“Why are you perturbed at me?”

“You played me. I don’t like being played.”

“The math said it was necessary.”

“Math isn’t everything. Trust is important.”

“I trust the math.”

“I remembered you as a sweet man. I forgot the annoying part.”

Vikram grinned. “Is that really true?”

“Yes. You can be über-annoying.”

“I meant the ‘sweet man’ part.”

Rather than encourage him, she said, “So you knew what motel I was staying in.”

“Yes. But I expected you to return there in the red Honda, not on the motorcycle. Nevertheless, it worked out.”

“How the jhav did you find me in the first place?”

“Just so you know, I am not one who is turned on by women talking dirty.”

“Don’t make me have to shoot you, Vikram. How did you find me?”

“Now that,” he said, “is quite a story.”