Stone Barrington: The Short Forever Part 40

"That bloke is a b.l.o.o.d.y legend," she said, wonder in her voice.

"I knew he had a lot of connections, but I didn't know he qualified as a legend."

"He was offered the directorship of central intelligence at one time; turned it down and went to NYU, but word is, he kept his hand in. Once you've been at that level in the agency, you don't just get put out to pasture." She whipped off the motorway, made a left, drove another half a mile, and turned onto a smaller road, keeping her speed at what Stone figured was about twenty miles an hour more than the car was capable of on that road.

Stone hung onto the door handle and tried not to look at the winding black tarmac rushing at him. Dino, on the other hand, seemed perfectly awake.

"Looks like everybody knows what's going on here except you, Stone," he said.

"Oh, I think you've explained it to him very well, Dino," Carpenter said, whipping around a hairpin turn. "You missed your calling; you're wasted as a policeman."

"Don't you believe it," Dino replied. "I wouldn't get mixed up in your business for anything. You can never trust anybody."

"Not a bad policy," she replied. "Is it any better on the NYPD?"

"Marginally," Dino said.

"Where are we going?" Stone asked.

"Right up there," Carpenter replied. They had emerged from a stand of trees onto an open, rolling plain with few trees. Ahead of them a mile or so, at a crossroads, was a three-story stone building, which got larger fast. Carpenter skidded into the parking lot, which was nearly full, and got out of the car. "Come on," she said.

Stone saw two men on a ladder stringing a cable from a utility pole on the road to a corner of the building. He looked at the sign: THE BREWER'S ARMS, it read. He followed Carpenter inside.

53.

THEY WALKED UP TO THE THIRD FLOOR of the country inn, past a guard, and into a roomy, two-bedroom suite, which contained half a dozen men, most in their shirtsleeves, and several pieces of electronic equipment-radios, computers, and two large, flat-screen monitors. Thick wires ran from the equipment out a window, where Stone had seen the two men stringing wire, and he could see a small satellite dish mounted to the windowsill.

"What's happening?" Carpenter said to one of the men. "Oh, this is Barrington and Bacchetti; they're with me. Gentlemen, this is Plumber."

"We're just about set up," Plumber said. "We're expecting satellite contact any moment, and we've got great weather for it."

"What have you done with the two subjects' homes?"

"We couldn't get anything decent with sonic equipment," Plumber said. "They both live in official housing, and double glazing was installed a few months ago, so we can't get anything off the gla.s.s. We've tapped both phones from the exchange, but since they're both at work, we're not getting anything."

"Eyeball surveillance?"

"Nothing within five miles," Plumber replied. "We figure that when Cabot arrives in the area he'll canva.s.s the neighborhood, looking for anything that might be surveillance, so we're going to rely on satellite, until dark. After that, we'll have taxis with local numbers painted on, but we'll keep our distance. We're going to place satellite tracker marks on both subjects' cars, so we needn't stay within sight."

"Where's Mason?"

"He's running the on-ground operation; he'll be in touch when something happens."

"Anything else?"

"Bad news; Portsmouth let us down."

"What?"

"Something about a suspect merchant ship in the harbor; they've put all their people and equipment on that."

"Do we have enough resources on the ground here to cover both subjects?"

"Maybe; that's the best I can tell you."

"Isn't there anything else we can draw on?"

"No. Another team is on its way to Scotland, looking for a suspected terrorist who is supposed to be arriving in the Clyde on a tanker."

"s.h.i.t," she muttered.

"Satellite's up," a young man at a computer station said.

Everyone gathered around him. The image on the big monitor was of a building and a carpark. "Eastover internal security gave us the position of the two subjects' cars." He moved the cursor to a small car and clicked on it: an A appeared on the car's roof. He moved the cursor to another, larger car and clicked again. A B appeared on the car. "A is Morgan, our male subject; B is Carroll, our female. The equipment will move the ID letter with the cars, so we won't lose them in traffic."

"How about the houses?" Carpenter asked.

The tech tapped some more keys, and the screen divided into thirds. "Now you can see both Eastover and the two houses," he said. "Neato, huh?"

"Stop speaking American," Carpenter said.

Plumber spoke up. "Internal security at Eastover is tracking both Morgan and Carroll inside the building. They'll know if either tries to take something out."

"Tell them not to stop either one," Carpenter said. "I want to bag Cabot and find out from him who his buyer is."

"Righto."

"Well," Carpenter said, "we've nothing to do until the end of the workday, when our two subjects will leave the building. We might as well order some lunch." She went to a desk and found a room-service menu.

By half-past five, they were ready for some action. Stone was reading an elderly copy of Country Life, and Dino was in one of the bedrooms, glued to a cricket match. Carpenter merely paced.

"We've got movement," Plumber said. It was one minute past five-thirty, and people were streaming out of the Eastover building.

"Typical civil servants," Carpenter said. "Leaving on the stroke of quitting time."

"We can't identify individuals by satellite, but look, A's car is on the move. There-so is B's." The cars pulled out of the carpark and turned in opposite directions.

A cellphone rang, and Plumber answered it. "Righto," he said, then hung up. "We've got word from internal security that both subjects have left the building."

"Were they carrying anything?" Carpenter asked.

"A wore a loose raincoat, and B had a bakery box, looked like a cake."

"Did they search them on the way out?"

"I asked them not to, as per your instructions."

Carpenter watched the screen as it divided in two, each displaying a car with a letter on top.

Five minutes pa.s.sed. "They're home," Plumber said. "Both cars are garaged. The houses are virtually identical."

"Government-issue," Carpenter said.

"Right, but they're on opposite sides of the village; both back up onto Salisbury Plain."

"What now?" Stone asked.

"We wait," Carpenter replied.

They did not have long to wait. "We've got movement on A, Morgan," Plumber said. "He's backed his car out of the garage, now he's loading something, can't tell what."

Everybody gathered around the screen to see the man putting several items into the back of what seemed like a small station wagon.

"What kind of car is that?" Stone asked.

"Morris Minor Estate," Plumber replied. "It's from the fifties, and Morgan has carefully restored it himself; looks new."

Across the room a man wearing headphones shouted, "B's getting a phone call!" He flipped a switch, and, over a speaker, they could all hear the phone ringing.

There was a click, and a woman's voice said, "h.e.l.lo?"

From the other end of the connection came not a voice, but a whistle. The whistler performed a few bars of "Rule Brittania," then hung up. The woman hung up, too.

"That's a signal," Plumber said. "Everybody alert; she's going to move now."

On the split screen they watched Morgan back his Morris Minor out of his driveway and head off down the street, his car still marked with an A.

"Oh, s.h.i.t," Plumber said, pointing at the other side of the screen. B was coming out of the garage, too, but not in her car; she was pushing a bicycle. On the back, a large pair of saddlebags could be seen. "We can't put a tracker mark on her bicycle-not enough area showing to the satellite. This is going to be dicey."

"Don't you lose that bicycle," Carpenter warned.

"I'll do my best," the tech said, "but with the marked car, the tracking would have been automatic. With the bike, I'm going to have to do it manually, and it's the toughest computer game you ever saw."

"Cabot is very smart," Carpenter said. "But we knew that; we should have suspected something like this. Where's Morgan going?"

"I'll put him on the other screen," the tech said. "It'll be easier to track B if we devote a whole screen to her." He tapped in a command, and the second screen came to life.

"He's leaving the village," Plumber said. "We've got fewer houses, now. He's headed west, toward the Plain. Wait a minute, he's turning into some woods. s.h.i.t, we won't be able to see him under trees."

Then the Morris Minor emerged from the trees and stopped. Morgan got out of the car, opened the rear doors, and began unloading.

"What's he doing?" Carpenter asked.

"Equipment of some sort," Plumber replied.

"It's an easel," Stone said. "Look, he's setting it up."

"He's going to paint?" Plumber asked.

"Looks like it," Carpenter replied.

Morgan set up a camp stool, opened what looked like a toolbox, and placed a canvas on the easel.

"He's going to paint the sunset," Plumber said.

"I've got trouble here," the tech said suddenly, pointing to the screen before him. "Carroll is approaching a roundabout, and so are some other bikes." They watched as B moved into the roundabout, merging with half a dozen other bicycles. Then they began exiting.

"Which one is she?" Carpenter demanded.

"You got me," the tech replied. "There are two roads off the roundabout, and we've got two bikes on one and four on the other. We can't track them all."

"It's B, Carroll," Carpenter said. "Use both views to track the cyclists, until we can identify her. Morgan's going to be there awhile; we'll let him be. It's Carroll, I know it."

Stone watched as both screens began displaying cyclists on country roads. His last view of Morgan was of the man painting away.

54.

THEY SPLIT INTO TWO GROUPS, EACH watching the cyclists. "There," Stone said. "The saddlebags; there's only one bike with large saddlebags."

"You're right," Carpenter said. "And none of the other bikes has saddlebags at all. That's Carroll!"

Then the bicycle with the large saddlebags split off from the other three and turned onto a dirt lane.

"Okay," Carpenter said to the tech, "follow her, ignore the others, and let's get Morgan back on the other screen."

The tech got the bicycle in his sights. "It's going to be easier now, since she's on that little lane."

"Show me Morgan," Carpenter said.

The tech tapped more keys, and the image popped back onto the second screen.

"Where is he?" Carpenter asked.

"Let me pan around," the tech replied.

"It's the same spot," Stone said, "but Morgan's car isn't there; he's gone."