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“How’m I lookin’?” asked Flash.
“You’re good. Looks like there’s somebody in the second story of the house,” Da
The glasses couldn’t see inside the building, but they were powerful enough to catch heat signatures close to the walls and windows. Da
“Car coming,” he said. “Mercedes up that street on your right.”
“OK.”
Flash slowed his pace as the car came to the intersection and turned past, then crossed the street and stopped near the fence of a yard diagonally across from the rear of the doctor’s house. Da
MY-PID sounded a tone over the radio system, telling them that the bug was working.
“Next,” said Flash, hopping back on his bike.
Da
“You hear that?” Da
“Yeah. I’m just up the block.”
A Mercedes came out of the garage.
“Where do you think he’s going at this hour?” asked Flash.
“I’m going to find out,” Da
“Piece of cake.”
Da
The Mercedes went six blocks on the main road, then turned in the direction of the city. But just as Da
He went a block, then took a parallel street, hoping to circle back. The road ran for nearly a quarter mile before he found an intersection. He turned left when he reached the street the Mercedes had taken, calculating that the doctor had continued in that direction. But he ran into a dead end; he made a U-turn and headed back to the main road.
The Mercedes was nowhere to be found. Possibly it had pulled into one of the estates that flanked the road; Da
“Flash, how’s it going?” he asked.
“On the last one.”
“I lost him, but I want to run down some of these roads for a second and see if he turned in somewhere. I’ll meet you at that little gas station we passed on the way up.”
“Sounds good.”
Da
“MY-PID, identify property owners for the street I’m driving down,” he ordered.
The computer had already accessed and downloaded the city property records, and within moments was reading off a list of owners.
Da
“Is that the ambassador’s residence?” he asked.
“Negative.”
“Who lives there?”
“Not listed. Correlating with other data… residence appears to be occupied by the assistant ambassador for business. Possible link to GRU.”
In other words—the spymaster for the Russian military lived there.
Or might.
Was that where the doctor had gone?
The house was undoubtedly under surveillance, and Da
By the time Da
He showed Da
“First thing in the morning,” said Nuri, “we get a look at their security cameras. We’ll review the video and find out who went in there.”
“You think they’ll just hand it over?” asked Flash.
“Sure—if we’re there to fix it.”
“How do you get around not speaking the language?” asked Da
“I have a hearing aid,” said Nuri. “I pretend I’m hard of hearing, and I use MY-PID. Used to do it in Africa all the time. Plus my Romanian is getting better. Same language.”
The computer continued to churn through various bank records, first looking for obvious co
“They probably use other banks,” said Nuri. “This just happens to be the one account we found.”
“Or this is all the money they get.”
“Maybe,” admitted Nuri. “But Moreno paid a hell of a lot more than this.”
“Maybe their agent takes a cut.”
“Hefty cut.”
“Subject Mercedes sighted,” reported MY-PID.
Nuri hit the keys on the laptop and pulled up the image, which was beamed from the fire hydrant. The car turned left instead of right—away from the house.
“Love to bug the car,” said Nuri.
“Oughta bug the Russian spymaster’s house instead,” said Da
“Probably already is.”
Nuri looked up at Da
“Shit,” he said. Then he grabbed his sat phone to see if he was right.
21
Washington, D.C.
“I didn’t mean to have an argument with you,” Zen told Brea
“It’s OK,” said Brea
“You’re under a lot of pressure at work. I know. It’s gotta be—it’s a difficult assignment.”
“Mmmmm.” She picked up a magazine and began leafing through it.
Zen recognized her mood. It was as if she was bruised all over, and touching her anywhere would hurt. Yet he felt compelled to do something, to reach across the distance between them.