“This was as far as I got, so hang on,” Wallace told the others. Switching from camera to camera, the security officer tracked footage showing Li-Roo Kohb being led around the periphery of the playing floor and past the registration desk, where a clot of people were lined up waiting to check into their rooms. At one point Li-Roo made a feeble attempt to break away from his abductors, but he was quickly hemmed in and brusquely shoved toward the doors leading outside.
“Why the hell didn’t he just shout for help?” Bahn wondered out loud.
“Beats me,” Wallace said, pointing to the edge of the screen. “There’s one of our guys standing right over there. If Li-Roo had gotten his attention, we might’ve been able to do something.”
“Like what?” Scanlon said. “Start a shootout in the casino?”
“He was probably scared out of his wits,” Bolan said. “It’s hard to think straight when somebody’s got a gun planted in your ribs.”
Once he saw the footage of Li-Roo Kohb being escorted out of the casino, Wallace switched to footage from the outside cameras. It took three tries before he could get an angle on Li-Roo and the REDI agents. They were standing curbside in the dropoff zone. Moments later, a dust-covered Ford Explorer pulled up to the curb. One of the abductors opened the rear door and held it open as the others guided the man into the vehicle. The man stayed on the curb afterward, exchanging a few words with his colleagues, then closing the door and stepping back. Seconds later, the SUV disappeared offscreen.
“Doggone.” Wallace toggled switches to get footage from the other outside SUR-CAM. “We don’t have any cameras trained on the exit, so I can’t tell which way they went.”
“Never mind that right now,” Bolan said. “Stay on that guy they left behind.”
“Good point,” Wallace said.
“I don’t get it,” Bahn said. “They’ve got their man. Why would they have somebody stick around here?”
“You got me,” Wallace said, “but it looks like you guys have cut yourself a break.”
Reversing the sequence he’d just called up, Wallace tracked the Korean who’d remained behind. The man returned to the casino and made his way across the playing floor to a corner bar overlooking the river. There, he slid on a bar stool next to a tall, slender brunette wearing a tailored pantsuit that accentuated her voluptuous figure. The man signaled the bartender and gestured that he wanted to buy the woman a drink, then turned to the woman.
“Philly,” Wallace muttered. “I should’ve guessed.”
“What’s that?” Jayne asked.
“The woman,” Wallace explained, pointing to the monitor. “She calls herself Philly. Works this end of the strip.”
“Prostitute?” Bolan said.
Harmon grinned darkly. “She likes to call herself a ‘goodwill ambassador.’”
The security officer sped up the footage, skipping past the banter between the REDI agent and the prostitute. Finally the Korean paid for the drinks, then helped Philly off her bar stool. Wallace had to switch camera views a few times more before catching a final glimpse of the couple as they boarded the South Tower elevator.
“I take it she has a room here,” Bolan said.
“Officially, no,” Wallace said. “Off the record, though, I think I know where you’ll find your guy.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Cho Il-Tok had been a field agent for North Korea’s Research Department for External Intelligence for nearly twenty years, and during those twenty years he’d been shot at more times than he could remember. He could count the number of bullets he’d caught in the line of duty just by counting his scars: six in the chest area, two on his right thigh and one on his neck, where doctors had left the slug because it was lodged less than a quarter inch from his spinal cord. All things considered, Cho’s feeling was that if he decided to take time out from a mission to get laid, he figured he’d damn well earned and deserved it. And as far as he was concerned, he’d done his share on this assignment already.
After all, he’d been the one who’d raided Li-Roo Kohb’s home and figured out the defector was a regular at the Shores poker room, and he’d been the one who’d kept Li-Roo in line when he’d tried to make a run for it when they’d apprehended him in the casino. Bryn Ban-Ho, the team leader, was the one who handled interrogations; getting Li-Roo to talk before they hauled him back to the homeland was his problem, not Cho’s.
Cho continued to justify his daytime tryst with Philly Lambrosia as he stood in front of the window of her hotel room on the third story of the Laughlin Shores South Tower. He’d stripped down to his boxer shorts and was nursing bourbon from a thumb-size bottle he’d taken from the minifridge. He had a view of the river, and he watched with interest the parade of Jet Skiers and speedboat enthusiasts out on the gleaming waters.