Tom Clancy's Net Force 6-10 (157 page)
The light changed to green. Instead of turning, Natadze pulled across the intersection straight ahead, then switched his blinker off. The car between them followed. Kent did too, dropping back a little.
His quarry was being careful, and obviously looking for a tail. If he spotted him, Kent would be burned, and the game would change. It wouldn’t be a sub-rosa surveillance any longer, it would be a chase, and that made it real iffy.
Of course, Kent had his virgil, and he could call the local police at any time. If Natadze spotted him and ran, he’d have to do that, since the van wasn’t the best car to be drag-racing through the streets of San Francisco. He didn’t want to, but his pride wasn’t as important as catching this guy.
Natadze made a right turn at the next intersection—another one-way street. As soon as he was out of sight, Kent reached down, grabbed a Giants baseball cap, and put it on. He took a pair of sunglasses from over the visor and slipped those on. He couldn’t change the look of his vehicle, but he could alter his own a little, in case he had to get closer.
Kent made the turn.
Natadze was a hundred feet ahead. He pulled the Toyota over to the curb into a loading zone.
Smart.
Kent drove past, along with five or six other cars.
Natadze would be looking for people stopping behind him, so that was Kent’s only real choice.
Half a block ahead was a big truck with a piano on a hydraulic lift parked in front of a music store. Kent pulled in behind it.
He saw Natadze edge back out into traffic. Kent slouched in his seat, then lay on his side as Natadze’s car approached.
Kent pulled away from the curb, four cars behind Natadze. Too many. If his quarry got through a light turning yellow ahead of him, he’d be screwed.
Kent moved over one lane and sped up.
He passed Natadze on the man’s left, got a couple cars ahead, and then pulled over in front of him.
A front-tail was risky, but at this point, it was all risky.
He picked his virgil and thumbed a programmed button. That got him into Net Force’s secure database.
“ID Colonel Abraham Kent confirmed,” a woman said. “Query, sir?”
“I need information on an automobile license number,” he said. He rattled off the plate number. “It’s probably a rental car. Renter ID and local residence, please.”
“One moment, please.”
As Kent approached the next intersection, he watched Natadze in the outside rearview mirror. Kent went through the green light.
Natadze stopped, even though the light was still green.
Drivers behind Natadze honked their horns. Probably called him some foul names, too, though Kent couldn’t hear that.
Kent watched the traffic signal and Natadze’s car in his mirror. The light turned yellow. Just as it turned to red, Natadze stomped on the gas and burned rubber through the intersection.
Anther smart move. Anybody following him would also have to run the red light and Natadze would be watching for that.
Nobody did, because nobody else was following him.
“The car is an Avis rental, checked out at the San Francisco airport this morning at 6:16 A.M. The driver’s license says that his name is Fernando Sor, a Spanish national, and the local address on the rental agreement is the Hotel Alhambra in Lucas Valley. However, a cross-check of the address given shows that there is no such hotel there—or anywhere else in Lucas Valley.”
“Thank you.” Kent recognized the phony name—a classical guitarist, one whose works had been featured in the concert he’d attended just before Natadze had broken into his room that night.
Not that it was any help.
“Does it say where and when he is supposed to return the rental car?”
A beat, then, “Yes, sir. At the San Francisco airport, tomorrow morning.”
“Can you check and see if Fernando Sor is booked on any flight leaving San Francisco tomorrow?”
Kent couldn’t stay where he was. Sooner or later, Natadze would turn, and by the time Kent made it around the block to catch up to him, he could be gone. He slowed, and as he did, swapped the Giants baseball cap for a Seattle Mariners cap and a different pair of shades.
Behind him, Natadze had moved into the center lane.
“Sir, Fernando Sor is booked on a Left Coast shuttle to Los Angeles at 9:40 A.M. tomorrow.”
Kent nodded. “Thanks again. I appreciate it.”
He clicked the virgil off and dropped it onto the seat. Well. That was something. If he lost Natadze, he had a place to look later. Of course, that flight information could be bogus, but it was what he had. If Natadze didn’t think anybody was following him, then maybe it was valid.
Natadze passed Kent on the left.
Kent pretended he was a delivery man with a stack of books and magazines in the back of the van, just a guy doing his job. The intel op who had taught him how to follow and spy on people had told him that such an attitude made a difference. If you looked at your subject—or didn’t look at him—as an operative following him, a wary man might detect something in your posture. People in the game had a sixth sense, some of them, and by the act of pretending you weren’t watching them, they might pick up a subliminal clue that you were doing just that. If you were just a guy on your way home, then you weren’t ignoring the quarry or concentrating on him—he was nothing to you one way or the other, and he might believe that.
It had seemed weird to Kent at the time, but the few times he had tried it in practice sessions, it had worked, so he followed that advice every chance he could.
Natadze drove past.
It went that way for fifteen more long and nerve-wracking minutes. A couple of times, Kent was sure Natadze had spotted him, but apparently not, because eventually, Natadze wound up at a Night’s End Motel, where he pulled into the parking lot.
Kent parked his van just past the motel’s entrance, got out, and quickly walked to where he saw Natadze park and alight from his car. Natadze took the guitar out of the back, then walked to a room, where he let himself in with a key card.
Gotcha!
22
In the Air over Southern New Jersey
The business jet was fairly quiet for a craft its size, and the air was still, so flight was smooth. It was also still daylight, and, this time of summer, probably would be for another hour or so.
It was just the two of them, plus the pilots. Thorn had thought about having an attendant, but thought that might be too much. They could walk to the plane’s bar and get their own drinks.
Marissa shook her head. “I still can’t believe you did this.”
“You said surprise you.”
“Well, I was surprised, I confess. Do you do this a lot?”
“Only once before, after I heard the Elvis story, just to see how it felt.”
“The Elvis story?”
Thorn nodded. “Supposedly, Elvis and his crew were sitting around at Graceland and one of them started talking about this place in Denver that made these great sandwiches. So Elvis says, ‘Let’s go!’ They warmed up his private jet, and flew from Memphis to Denver just to get supper.”
“Really?”
“That’s not the best part. When they got there? They had the sandwiches delivered to the plane. Never got off. Ate, cranked it back up, and flew home.”
She shook her head again. “Sounds just odd enough to be true. So, what is this little trip going to set you back?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. Not enough so the accountants will worry.”
She said, “Ah. The old Cornelius Vanderbilt line about yachts—if you have to ask how much one costs, you can’t afford it?”
He frowned. “Marissa, are you really going to bust my chops for having money? I was lucky enough to come up with some software that people found useful, and it paid real well. I’m not in the same class with Arab sheiks or major rock stars or basketball team owners, but I can live high and not run out in my lifetime. What Sophie Tucker said is true—‘I’ve been rich and I’ve been poor. Rich is better.’ ”
She grinned at him. “Relax, Tommy. I’m just pulling your chain.”
He smiled back. “And I’m defensive about sitting on a fat wallet.”
“Most self-made men are, at least the ones I’ve met. They feel as if they lucked into it, and on some level don’t deserve it.”
“Date a lot of rich guys, do you?”
“A few. Rich, poor, you all look alike in the dark.”
He laughed.
“So, what’s this restaurant you’re taking me to, Mr. Moneybags?”
“Ah, that’s part of the surprise.”
“Okay. You want to get me a beer while you’re up?”
“While I’m up?”
“Have to get up to get me a beer, won’t you?”
He laughed again. “Not much incentive there.”
“Want to join the Mile High Club?”
He stood up quickly. “I’m getting that beer now,” he said.
Macao, China
Locke tapped on the door, smiled at the camera, and waited for Leigh to answer. It was good to be back.
China was not the United States. Locke doubted that there would ever be the degree of personal freedom here as there. Still, it was his home, and he was more comfortable here than anywhere else. Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t. . . .
To look at, this house he was visiting was nothing special. A middle-class bungalow, built in the 1970s or ’80s, on a street with two dozen others just like it. If you knew how to look, though, you’d spot some differences.
The entrance, which looked like imitation wood, was actually a steel fire door in a steel frame, and probably weighed a hundred kilograms. Locke knew that there were three dead-bolt locks, plus a police brace-bar on the inside. You could ram a truck into the door and it wouldn’t go down. The back door was much the same.
The outside walls were brick. The roof was heavy ceramic tile, and there were banks of solar cells that fed enough juice into a dozen heavy-duty marine batteries to run everything in the house for days. The phone antenna on the roof looked like a television satellite dish. There was a gasoline-powered electrical generator in an armored shed in the back, inside a chain-link fence topped with razor wire. Locke also knew that the building’s interior walls were wood slats over steel posts and expanded metal sheets, and you’d have trouble driving a truck through them, too.
Not that you could get a truck up the short but steep hill that was the yard, and past the heavy cast-iron furniture—benches, chairs, a table—all of which were bolted into concrete pilings.
The windows looked innocuous, but hidden behind the shades were hardened steel grills that would resist any casual attempts at burglary—or even a would-be thief with hammers, saws, and determination.
The house’s power supply and phone landline arrived via a buried cable inside a steel conduit, and the electric meter was locked inside a steel box. The water meter’s valve box was welded shut, and the meter reader had been bribed to ignore it.
There were state-of-the-art alarms and automatic CO
2
fire extinguishers installed in every room.
2
fire extinguishers installed in every room.
It was about as secure a place as one could have in this city.
The door opened, and Bruce Leigh stuck his head out, looked right and left to make certain Locke was alone, and said, “Come in.”
Locke did. Leigh shut the door behind him and relocked it, clicking the wrist-thick police bar into place. One end of the bar slid into a plate on the floor, the other angled into a second plate welded to the middle of the door. Such a setup would hold the door in place even without locks or hinges. The bar had to weigh ten kilos, but Leigh, a fitness freak, handled it easily.
Leigh, an ex-pat Brit, was short, broad, muscular, and an expert on security computer systems. And also seriously paranoid, if not to the extent of clinical schizophrenia.
Locke doubted that anybody ever gave him any grief about his name.
“You changed cabs?”
“Three times.” Three was the magic number. Not two, not four, but three.
Leigh nodded. He turned and walked away. Locke followed him.
The house was filled with computers, at least thirty of them, ranging from some ten or fifteen years old to those still warm from the maker.
Leigh led him through the gym, wherein he had installed a treadmill, a rowing machine, a stair climber, a mini-tramp, a stationary bike, and two Bowflex machines, along with half a ton of free weights on various barbells and dumbbells. Locke had never asked Leigh how often he worked out—you didn’t ask the man personal questions—but there was a computer in the room whose screen showed a schedule, and a passing glance once had told Locke that Leigh spent three hours every day in here.
The man worked, and he worked out, and that seemed to be it. If he had women, they came here, as did all his groceries and other supplies. As far as Locke knew, Leigh never went out. He was a serious introvert. And one of the best computer geeks in the world, much less China.
Other books
Checkpoint by Nicholson Baker
Warrior's Heart: Iron Portal Series (Paranormal Romance) by Laurie London
No One Left to Tell by Karen Rose
Trouble Comes Knocking (Entangled Embrace) by Duncanson, Mary
July 1914: Countdown to War by Sean McMeekin
The Charm School by Susan Wiggs
Weddings Can Be Murder by Christie Craig
Shoeshine Girl by Clyde Robert Bulla
Jimmy by Robert Whitlow
