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I slipped inside and reached for the light switch And stopped when I saw that there was soht It was a variation on an old Henny Youngo to the bathroouest in your room

How had it happened? Well, maybe they put him in Room 9 and he held the key upside down Maybe the clerk, on his rounds, checked ht he could fit in an extra off-the-books rental Maybe Katya, with a nod and a wink, had told hi her ayet piu run that I’d be upstairs in her room

Didn’t matter He was there, and the bed was far too narrow for two people, even if they loved each other The night was almost over – there had been a lot of rich detail in Katya’s story, and the hours had flown during the telling of it It was al… well, whatever I was going to be doing I could leave now, or, if I wanted to wait another hour or two, I could go back upstairs and perch on a chair in Katya’s room

I opened the door to let myself out Then I remembered the backpack I’d put it on the chair, but Katya had moved it so that she could sit down And there it was, on the floor where she’d placed it

So I slipped inside again and went over to get the pack And that brought ht filtered in through the , I could have a look at the so in my bed

It wasn’t Goldilocks This sleeper’s hair was dark All except the patch of white at the teeon, asleep inhard at hi I leaned in, listening, and still couldn’t hear anything I reached out a hand and touched him His forehead was still warm – it takes a while for a body to lose heat, especially in the tropics – but I could tell I was touching a deadon his stomach, the side of his face pressed to the pillow I rolled hi on a second count as well Not only wasn’t he sleeping, but he also wasn’t Harry Spurgeon

I got aroo and eon, and he didn’t even come close This man was Asian, for openers, and he was shorter and slimmer and darker than the hearty felloho’d picked me up at the airport In fact, the only similarity between the two men was the white hair at the temple

And that was a fake A close look with the help of the flashlight showed the hair had been bleached, with the effect heightened by the application of what looked like white shoe polish

Who was this faux Spurgeon? And as he doing here? And how had he died?

The last question was the easiest to answer Whoever had stuck the knife in hied between his ribs The wound must have been instantly fatal, as there was hardly any blood

I patted hi for ID His pockets were ele orn forty-five-kyat note Soain, onto his face, and when I ran e in the sed his shirt free fro dark Western trousers, this Spurgeon imitator – and found an oilskin packet fastened to his skin with plastic-coated tape

I ripped it free, stuffed it into my own pocket And heard a car draw up so And , their boots slapping on wooden stairs, their voices loud and angry in the lobby

Tiet the hell out

I heard the the key and sliding the brass bolt across as well While they ha it all the way open, and tossedat the door, and they were fiddling with the lock, trying to get a key in while the key I’d left there blocked the way In a minute or two they’d lose patience, I knew, and they’d kick the door in, and that would be about as difficult as shoving in the side of a cardboard box

I sat on the sill, rip on the sill and lower o My shoulder ached, and when ht, the ache inyanked out of its socket

Could I just stay there? Maybe they’d confine their search to the room, maybe it wouldn’t occur to theht I heard the at the door – more forcefully, it seeo

Chapter 11

One of the things that had struckup with the news of the world was an experio So dealers ements via public telephones So the city ordered the re-infested areas

That struck an because mosquitoes breed in it And of course it didn’t inconvenience the dealers for longer than it took theet cellular phones But it certainly made it a lot more difficult for the rest of the public to place a call

I wondered if the saoon If there was a phone booth anywhere in town, I couldn’t find it New York has pay phones at almost every corner Three-quarters of the to use them, but at least they’re there

And I wanted to oon, and I even knehere he was staying He was all mixed up in whatever it was that I was mixed up in, and I’d been followed earlier by someone as either him or his double, and I knew he had a double because that’s who I’d just found in e New York pay phone I wasn’t sure what I was going to say to Harry Spurgeon, but I couldn’t think of a better place to start

The one-story drop hadn’t done any further dah it certainly didn’t do ed to stay upright, and I grabbed h the straps The pack felt a little heavier than I reured that was inning of the evening

I liured there ht be some cops out front – I could only assu onaround to test the hypothesis Nor did I want to h backyards instead and wound up on a different street And decided I ought to call Spurgeon, and went looking for a phone

I don’t knohat I could have done if I’d found one The sle kyat, was in the form of paper money, and you couldn’t stuff it in a telephone Maybe they had tokens, or plastic phone cards Then again, what did they need them for if they didn’t have phones?

Of course I could just turn up at the Strand and ask for hiht about it, the less I liked the idea I didn’t knohat his agenda was or how I fit into it, but he damn well had one I wanted to talk to hiht some sticky rice and a couple of stealish and my Burmese didn’t include the word for telephone, so I askedan invisible receiver tomotions

"Hotay," he said

That meant hotel, and I tried the first one I cauessed – and his English was fine Yes, he said, they had a telephone available to the public There was only one proble

"Phone system very bad in Myanh to Mandalay Other towns, forget it"