Requiem for an Assassin (12 page)

I headed toward Jannick’s building. As I got closer to the entrance, I saw that the windows next to the entrance doors were coated with some reflective material. There was a sign stuck to the window. It was too far for me to read from this distance, but I had a feeling it warned of CCTV monitoring. A security camera there, rather than in the parking lot, made sense. It was the building and what was inside it they’d want to secure. They didn’t care about employees’ cars.

I turned and walked away, considering. With a camera, I couldn’t get to him in or directly in front of the building. That still left the parking lot. The problem was, to make a death look natural, you need some temporary control over the environment. If all that was required was walking up to Jannick and shooting him, I could have done it almost anywhere, the only real concern being escape. But I was going to need a few minutes alone with him. The parking lot wasn’t great for that.

I kept walking. The light was fading from the sky, and it wasn’t yet five o’clock. At this time of year, almost no one left work before nightfall. In the dark, I might be able to drag him behind his car, depending on where he was parked. But unless it were especially late and deserted, there was a worrisome chance that the person whose car was parked next to us might choose just that moment to head home, too. Plus, even the relatively clueless tend to be somewhat vigilant in parking lots at night. I could overcome that with Jannick, but if there were other people in the area, they’d likely be more watchful than I wanted.

Morning offered the opposite range of risks and benefits. On the one hand, people arriving at work are distracted by thoughts of the morning meeting, the day’s tasks, what messages might be waiting for them. And parking lots aren’t threatening in the morning, so no one pays any attention to their surroundings in them, anyway. But unless Jannick showed up for work very early indeed, it was hard to see how I could count on the privacy I needed. And then there were all the windows of all the buildings…even aside from the possibility of one of Hilger’s men lurking behind one of them, if just one person happened to be looking out at the parking lot at the wrong moment, there would be an eyewitness to the decidedly unnatural manner of Jannick’s demise. Hilger and I hadn’t discussed what would happen if Jannick’s death was a success but its manner a failure. It didn’t matter. I wasn’t going to take the chance.

I walked another mile or so down East Bayshore, getting a feel for the area, its rhythms and rituals, what fit in and what might seem subtly out of place. My sense was that the neighborhood was transitional—office buildings on the south end, a new IKEA and shopping mall at the other, a trailer park and long-term storage facilities in between. Blending wasn’t the problem here. The problem was access, and control.

I thought about using light disguise to enter Jannick’s building. There might be opportunities inside—a restroom, a fitness facility, a closet. Somewhere Jannick’s guard would be down and I could hold him long enough to do things the way they needed to be done. But I hated to create a connection between myself and the place where he worked, especially if that’s where he was going to die.

I walked back to the Mercedes, cutting once again through the parking lot on the way. Jannick’s car still wasn’t there. It was dark now, but there was a lot of light from streetlamps. I was going to have to find a better place.

I drove back to Jannick’s house. Still no car. Then back and forth again. I used slightly different routes each time, and after five such trips, I started to feel I had a reasonably good feel for the layout of the streets, the patterns of traffic. Within that layout and those patterns, there would be possibilities. There always were. Sometimes I recognized them immediately; sometimes I had to sleep on it first, and let my subconscious work the problem.

Sleep. I needed to get up early tomorrow to make sure I could catch Jannick before he left for work. And the time zone shifts were getting to me. It was time to call it a day.

I stopped at a phone booth in a gas station and checked the Yellow Pages, where I found a hotel called the Stanford Park. Menlo Park, the next town over. I called and was glad to hear they had a vacancy, a king room with a fireplace. No smoking, the clerk said apologetically, perhaps in response to the Japanese accent I was using. No problem, I assured him. No smoking was fine. It was only available for two nights? That would be fine, too. I didn’t plan to be in town any longer than that.

I purged the car nav system before checking into the hotel, then had an excellent dinner at a place called Café Borrone, about a mile down the road: salad, lasagna, and a wonderful Napa Valley Cabernet called Emilio’s Terrace, which, as globalization would have it, I had discovered a year earlier in Bangkok. The restaurant itself was a lively place, a bigger, smoke-free, California version of some of the Left Bank cafés I liked. There was a huge independent bookstore next to it, Kepler’s, and after dinner I strolled among its offerings for a while, watching the people, absorbing details. Everyone looked so prosperous and satisfied and well intentioned. I felt like some secret foreign matter among them, a virus in the system, a germ in an operating room.

I asked one of the employees, a pretty woman named Cynthia, about Internet access. She directed me to the public library, less than a quarter mile away. I strolled over and checked the bulletin boards. Nothing.

The last thing I did before falling into an exhausted sleep was fire up my old cell phone and check its voice-mail account. There was a message from Delilah. “Don’t push me away like this,” she said. “Call me, please.”

I didn’t. I couldn’t. I had to stay focused. I had to be who I always was.

I
GOT UP
at five o’clock the next morning, showered, shaved, fueled up on eggs and coffee in the hotel’s restaurant, and went out. Unlikely that Jannick, or anyone else, would get to work this early, but still I drove past his parking lot to start with. It was deserted. Next, I stopped at a Starbucks in the shopping center at the other end of East Bayshore. I ordered a Venti Latte, wondering why they couldn’t just call the damn thing a large, and dumped the contents in a drain a little ways from the store. It was the cup I needed: first, because I’d noticed that just about everyone in Palo Alto walked around attached to a Starbucks coffee, and carrying one of my own would make me look natural. Second, and more important, I didn’t know how long I might have to wait for Jannick, and although no one was likely to pay attention to a quietly parked Mercedes, they might be discomfited by the sight of a man repeatedly stepping out of it to urinate on the curb.

I drove by Jannick’s house. There was still no car in front, but my guess was that it was in the garage. The sun was just coming up, and the house was dark. I drove down to OPM and parked in my spot. I couldn’t see his house from here, but I’d catch him when he pulled onto Page Mill.

While I waited, listening to a woman named Alisa Clancy on a radio show called
Morning Cup of Jazz,
I wondered who Jannick really was. A guy with an aptitude for technology? And where did his ambition come from? Did he miss his home in the Netherlands, or was this place, with its yoga-supple people and clean and prosperous streets, his home now?

One thing I didn’t ask, though nor could I deny it, was whether he had a family. Of course he did. The house was too big, and too suburban, for anyone to live in it alone. And his car, a Volvo S80, had kids written all over it. But the less I knew about all that, the better. It’s one thing to recognize something intellectually. It’s quite another to see it—no, watch it—with your own eyes. The last time I’d gotten too close to the family of a target, in Manila, I’d frozen and damn near died. In unguarded moments, I still thought of the little boy whose father I’d taken. I wasn’t going to go through that again.

I waited. No one disturbed me. I had to leave the engine off because if the car were running it might have attracted attention. The interior got cold, but the parka helped. The Venti cup proved handy.

At just past seven-thirty, someone on a bicycle came down Christopher and made a left onto OPM. He was wearing a white helmet and a fluorescent-yellow windbreaker, something designed both for warmth and to be visible to cars. I eased down in the seat a bit and watched through the windshield, thinking it was someone out for his morning exercise. But as he got closer, I realized
Christ, that might be him.
I’d been so fixated on the Volvo I was waiting for that it took me a moment to adjust. He passed me, not even giving the Mercedes a second look. I was going only on a bunch of out-of-date photos, but the shape of the face, the glasses…I was pretty sure it was Jannick.

Shit, the bike changed everything. Was this just exercise, or was it his commute? If the latter, I didn’t know what route he might take, and I couldn’t tail him effectively in a car even if I did.

I thought for a moment. Follow him down OPM? I didn’t like the idea. The road was really nothing but an old jug handle to Page Mill. It wasn’t closed to cars, but there was no reason a car would use it. Following him directly would be too conspicuous.

I fired up the Mercedes and cut left on Page Mill, paralleling OPM. I pushed it up to fifty, wanting to go faster but holding back because of the risk of a cop. Up ahead was a turnoff on Deer Creek Road; the light was red and I had to wait for it.
Come on, come on,
I thought. I wanted to get ahead of him before he came out on Page Mill so I could get another look.

The light changed and I shot forward. I got to the other end of the jug handle just in time to see the bicyclist pull out onto a bike lane on the other side of Page Mill. A hundred yards ahead was another intersection and another traffic light.
Good,
I thought.
We’ll both have to stop and I’ll get another look.

I was half right. While I was stopped at the light, the bicyclist made a left onto the bike path on Junípero Serra.
Shit.

It was a painfully long light. When the left turn signal finally changed to green, I cut into the turning lane and made a left onto Junípero Serra. A minute later, I’d caught up to him. I glanced over as I passed, but again I couldn’t be totally sure.

I pulled ahead of him, wondering whether he was going to the Stanford campus. But instead, he made a right.
Damn.
I did a U-turn and backtracked to where he’d turned off, a road called Stanford Avenue. I made a left and drove forward but didn’t see him. There were a number of smaller, residential streets snaking off on both sides. Unless I got lucky, for the moment I had probably lost him.

I thought for a moment. Maybe he was on his way to work. He avoided Page Mill because it was a busy road and farther north it had no bike lane. He was taking a more roundabout route, both for safety and for the exercise.

It felt right. I got back onto Junípero Serra, then Page Mill, and went straight to his office. There were a few cars in the parking lot now—enough to find concealment, not so many that I had to worry about too many people seeing and possibly remembering the Mercedes. I pulled in next to a Lexus SUV, putting it between me and the parking lot entrance, cut the engine, and waited.

Ten minutes later, the bicyclist pulled into the parking lot and rode straight to Jannick’s building. Bingo.

I watched him carry the bike inside, then I drove down to the shopping center at the other end of East Bayshore. Now was the time for a call. From a pay phone, I dialed his office. One ring, two, then a voice: “Jan Jannick.”

“Ah, sorry…wrong number,” I mumbled, and hung up. I wiped down the pay phone and went back to the car.

I drove slowly back in the direction of his house, thinking. The office was no good. The house would be difficult at best. But he was on a bike…. That would create opportunities I hadn’t considered before.

I thought about what I knew. Two locations, home and work, neither of them suitable. An unknown route in between. I considered buying a bicycle so I could follow him more closely and see what opportunities developed, but it felt too improvised, too uncertain. What I needed was a choke point. A place I could anticipate him, a place I could prepare and control.

I thought about OPM again. In a car you wouldn’t bother; it would just be a slower alternative to the four lanes of Page Mill right next to it. But on a bike it would represent a shortcut. And not just theoretically: Jannick had used it this morning. There was at least a decent chance he would use it again on the way home.

I went back to OPM. I’d been on it earlier, of course, but I wanted to look again, this time through the prism of newly acquired information about how Jannick commuted to work.

I liked what I saw. The road consisted of two narrow lanes, and was obviously in disuse. Grass on either side had grown onto the shoulder, and scattered leaves that would ordinarily be swept aside by passing automobile traffic covered much of the surface. The trees crowding both sides had been pruned back to prevent dead branches from falling into the road, and the branches were now piled up here and there in large deadfalls. On the east side were trees and scrub that grew denser as the road curved away from Page Mill, until after about a half-mile the big artery was impossible to see and even the sounds of its automobile traffic had faded almost entirely. On the west side, there was a chain-link fence with signs warning,
STANFORD UNIVERSITY ACADEMIC RESERVE
,
NO TRESPASSING
. Beyond the chain-link fence, a series of empty, rolling hills, apparently the property upon which Stanford didn’t want passersby to intrude.

Where the road connected with Page Mill, cars could go right, but were prohibited from turning left at rush hour—yet another reason a driver would be unlikely to bother coming this way. But the west side of the road tapered smoothly off into a bike trail that ran along Page Mill and then curved left onto Junípero Serra. Jannick’s route. I looked up, and as if to prove my point, two women on bicycles came down the Page Mill bike path and rode past me. I nodded to myself. The place felt right. Now I just had to find a way to make it work.

I walked back in the direction I’d come from, dead leaves crunching beneath my feet. There was a construction site between OPM and Page Mill, accessible by a short bridge. I walked over and saw that the bridge ran over a creek that curved away under OPM and into the Stanford lands beyond. I walked down the embankment and looked back, and damned if I wasn’t invisible from the road. Very nice indeed.

Under the bridge, there was a concrete wall marred with graffiti. The paint looked old, though, and in some places was only a few inches above the water line. I gathered this place was used by kids in the summer, when the nights would be warmer, the water lower or nonexistent, the area more inviting for a shared joint and adolescent fumblings or a bit of juvenile vandalism.

I walked back up to the bridge and then to the construction site. It was surrounded by a chain-link fence and full of equipment, but there were no workers and the site felt as disused as the road itself. A series of signs on the fence warned,
CAUTION
:
GAS PIPELINE STATION
3,
CITY OF PALO ALTO
. In the shadows of the trees and the utter quiet, the sign and the station felt like relics, future artifacts to be encountered and puzzled over by whatever generations might discover this place long after today’s drama was done.

I spent another hour walking the road, logging details, identifying backup routes, refining the plan. Then I went back to the car. It was time to go shopping.

At a place called the International Spy Shop in San Francisco, I bought a pair of Yukon Viking Pro 2x24 night-vision binoculars. At an REI sporting goods store in Mountain View, I picked up head-to-toe black Under Armour running gear—jacket, leggings, gloves; a black fleece cap; a large black fanny pack; and a roll of black photographer’s tape. At a gun range called Reed’s in Santa Clara, I acquired a SureFire M6 Guardian flashlight—less than eight inches long, 2.5 inches in diameter, and five hundred lumens. Finally, at a Nordstrom in a Palo Alto shopping center, I purchased a pair of Nike running shoes.

I finished at a little past three in the afternoon and, after a quick soup and sandwich at a restaurant in the shopping center, went back to the Stanford Park. I closed the drapes, turned off the lights, and checked the equipment. The night-vision binoculars illuminated everything. And the SureFire was absolutely blinding. Its light was so white and bright that even when the beam was pointed away from me, I had to squint to look at it.

I put black photographer’s tape over the reflective surfaces of the Under Armour gear and the running shoes, checking it all by laying it on the bed in the dark and hitting it with the flashlight from various angles. No reflections. Then I suited up, putting the binoculars and the flashlight into the fanny pack and slipping the parka over the whole ensemble.

I drove back to Jannick’s office and parked in the Ming’s parking lot so I was facing Embarcadero and East Bayshore. Unless Jannick made a right on East Bayshore, which would take him in the opposite direction of his house and which was a different route than the one he’d arrived by this morning, he would pass me on his way home. But if I missed him tonight, I could always get a little more aggressive tomorrow. In fact, it was possible I’d missed him already, that he had already headed home. But I doubted it. It was only four o’clock, earlier than regular people could get off work. As for people like Jannick, with the drive and passion to start their own companies, they tend not to quit until much later. I was less concerned that he’d gone home early than I was that he might keep me waiting past midnight. But either way, again, if things didn’t work today, there was always tomorrow.

Just before dark, it started to rain. That might have been good news or it might have been bad. Good, because it would make the road slippery. Bad, because maybe Jannick’s wife would pick him up, or he’d get a ride home from a colleague, or otherwise leave his bike at the office. But my guess was, the weather worked to my favor. There was the windbreaker he was wearing against the cold this morning, for one thing; it would do the trick in the rain, too. And there was the determination in the personality type of an entrepreneur, for another. Yeah, something told me Jannick wasn’t someone to be dissuaded by a little precipitation. The rain felt like a good omen.

It was. At just past seven-thirty, the end of a twelve-hour day, I saw the fluorescent-yellow windbreaker and white helmet coming toward me. I checked through the night-vision binoculars to confirm. No question, it was him.

He made a right on Embarcadero. By the time I got out of the parking lot and through the light, he was too far ahead of me to see. But it was a safe bet he had stayed on Embarcadero, the same route he had used this morning. I peeled off onto the exit ramp to 101 and Page Mill. Between the car and the shorter route, I estimated I’d get to OPM ten minutes ahead of him.

I parked in an office park just north of the corner of Page Mill and Junípero Serra. I pulled on the hat and the gloves, strapped on the fanny pack, and got out. I walked for a minute, but as soon as I was clear of the car, and anyone who might have seen me leave it, I started jogging. The rain on my face was cold, and my breath fogged in the chill air, but I felt warm and insulated in the Under Armour. My heart was beating hard, not from exertion.

I got to the construction site and was pleased to find the area exceptionally dark. I could hear the patter of the rain on the road and in the creek, the white noise of it quieting the area, masking noises and reducing the distance sound could travel. I used the night-vision binoculars to scope out the road, the site, and the underside of the bridge. I was alone. I still had to be careful about an evening dog walker, or a determined jogger, or another commuting bicyclist, but overall the chances that I would have this little stretch of road to myself for the necessary moments, and that I would remain unobserved even if someone happened along, were as good as I could hope.