by Tom Wood
He sat a while longer. They couldn’t see him watching via the wing mirror any easier than he could see them. He waited because if they were shadows he wanted to make them nervous. And if not nervous, anxious. The longer he waited, the more questions would be conjured up in their minds. Had they been spotted? What was he going to do? Where was he going to go?
Once he pulled away, they would fall into shadow thinking. They would be concentrated on following him and staying hidden. The questions would fade away from priority, but the effect would still be felt. They might be less patient or more obvious.
They were. Exhaust gases were condensing from the Ford before Victor had pulled out all of the way from his space. Too soon. Too eager. Nervous or anxious.
Which was good, because it answered his own question without further need to confirm what he had suspected, but bad because he had picked up a tail. At this time, he had no idea who they were. Wallinger and Guerrero or colleagues of theirs seemed most obvious, but he couldn’t afford to assume.
He was suspicious of Halleck too, of course. The man had wanted his own people to assist and Victor had turned down the offer. Not that it had been an offer. Halleck had made it clear he didn’t trust Victor, and he was right not to. So it made sense that he would put his own people in the field too. But Victor didn’t know their greater intentions. Were they on his tail only to observe, or did they have other orders?
The panel van stayed back the textbook distance of two car lengths. Victor drove around for fifteen minutes, turning at random and changing lanes when the mood took him. The Ford stayed with him the whole time. He pulled into a parking garage to test their orders. It would have made as good a place as any to make a move on him as they were going to get, but they didn’t follow him in there. They waited until he drove out again and continued following. Just watchers then. For the time being, at least.
He did nothing to indicate he had made them, and if they were Halleck’s people, they would think he was performing routine counter surveillance.
But he couldn’t be sure Halleck had sent them. Halleck had been right when he baited Victor about his past. There were numerous individuals and organisations out there that wanted his head. He was never surprised when someone tracked him down. He was as hard to corner as anyone, but unless he lived off the land in some faraway corner of nowhere, then there was always the risk of exposure. And he wasn’t prepared to give up everything just to stay vertical.
He ditched the Impala a few blocks later. He didn’t like confining himself in a vehicle unless he had to. Besides, he wanted to know more about his shadows. Were the two in the van the sum total, or were they part of a larger team?
He set off north, because he needed to head south. The panel van passed him by and disappeared into the distance. He had walked for a couple of blocks when it began to rain. It came down straight and hard. Buses passed by on the street before him, sending waves through the flooded road that crashed against the kerb. Cars followed, some with lights on, all with wipers struggling to cope with the downpour. Pedestrians without umbrellas hunched and hurried, dodging around those that had planned ahead and could walk with a smug slowness. A taxi, too close to the kerb, sent up a spray that showered unfortunate passers-by.
Victor walked at a slow pace. The rain darkened his overcoat and flattened his hair. He liked the weather. He liked rain. He always had. Rain helped him stay alive. It helped identify watchers and shadows. People walked faster in the rain or didn’t walk at all or stayed indoors. Streets were less busy as a result, creating fewer potential threats to evaluate. Almost no one loitered in the rain, even if waiting for someone special. People sought cover, not the best vantage points. Anyone who did not huddle under awnings or in doorways stood out, and a watcher who wanted to stay dry himself, or at least wanted to appear as someone who did, limited his ability to watch and follow in doing so.
Victor walked at a slow pace despite the rainstorm, because if someone else matched his pace it was as good as signposting his or her intentions. An umbrella would have kept the rain away, but only at the expense of tying up one hand and limiting his vision. Soaked with rainwater was always preferable to being soaked with his own blood.
Some tourists had been caught out and were a comical spectacle, underdressed and unprepared. Victor would have felt sorry for them but they were smiling and laughing at their own misfortune and how ridiculous they looked and Victor remembered when he was a boy and rain was nothing but fun.
As a child puddles had begged him to splash through them. Soaked to the skin had been something to achieve, not avoid. Watching the wisps of steam rising when indoors had inspired his imagination to thoughts of wizards and spells.
A lorry rumbled past and Victor slammed the door in his mind shut. If he could, he would erase any memory of his young life. Memories of that time were a distraction he had to fight against. Thinking about the past meant not paying attention to the present. He had too many enemies to ever risk indulging in nostalgia.
Thousands of raindrops pelted the road surface and pavements every second. He wondered if there was a pattern to it, some formula, some rhythm – algorithm – known only to nature. The intermittent wind swept patterns through the rain. Headlights glowed on the road surface.
A young woman used a plastic carrier bag as a rain shield as she ran along the pavement. She wore a dress, thin and white. To be courteous, he looked away until she had passed.
When he looked back, a man was standing on the pavement opposite, positioned near to the kerb, not under the shelter of any awning or doorway, hair flattened by the downpour.
TWENTY-NINE
The man was Hispanic. Short, with a neat black beard. He wore a thigh-length leather jacket and beanie hat. About thirty-five. The man was turning away as Victor’s gaze reached him. Then the man walked a few paces as he fished a phone from a pocket of his leather jacket and thumbed the screen.
He looked familiar. Victor had to work on the assumption there were no coincidences, that every familiar face was a shadow or watcher or killer. He could not afford to think otherwise. He would not allow himself to believe otherwise.
Maybe he had seen the man at the airport and been followed here, or maybe Victor had seen a similar-looking man in a leather jacket and beanie hat. Victor’s memory was superb, but it was impossible to remember every face. No one had a genuine photographic memory.
Victor moved on. He walked until the end of the block, slowing to make sure he didn’t reach the kerb while the crossing light was shining, so that when he stopped he had an excuse to wait and look around. The Hispanic man hadn’t followed. Victor couldn’t see him at all.
Which could prove he was a no one. No threat. Or he had backed off to avoid suspicion.
Victor headed into a coffee shop and stood in line to order an Americano. The coffee came in a fine china cup sat on a saucer. Both had decorative glaze. He sipped from the cup. The coffee was a delight, near espresso strength, yet almost sweet. The best he had tasted in recent memory.
The coffee shop labelled itself as a modern bakery, but the styling was old and rustic and more European than American. It was called Clayton & Bale. A made-up name, he was sure – one that sounded quaint and authentic and not like some soulless corporation. It was staffed only by young white women. The ones he heard speak were from Australia. Maybe they all were. There was a padded bench opposite the door and plate-glass windows. He picked a spot next to two old guys who were complaining to each other about the price of the coffee while ogling the staff. Neither looked at Victor as he sat down.
To his left was a long serving counter where a barista worked the coffee machine and customers salivated as they perused the selection of cakes, muffins and other treats. A quick glance told him there were no threats inside. The clientele were either below working age or beyond it. The only people in the right age bracket for watchers were a couple of men who had been sitting down before Victor had entered. As he hadn’t known where he had be
en heading until he had walked through the door, there was no way his enemies could have headed him off.
They wouldn’t wait long. They knew he was a hard target. They couldn’t be sure why he had entered the coffee shop. If he had done so only to exit through the back, they would lose him. They wouldn’t allow that to happen.
If the Hispanic man was no one, then this precautionary measure would prove a pointless exercise and a waste of Victor’s limited time to get to the Met. But there was no such thing as being too careful. He suspected Halleck had sent men to babysit him, but that didn’t mean Homeland Security weren’t keeping an eye on him or even a third party had tracked him down. There was no point rushing to deal with the threat posed by Raven if it left him exposed to another.
After a minute, a man he hadn’t seen before entered, but he looked like he was one of Halleck’s men. This one had the same kind of look as the ones Victor had seen in Dublin: same square build, same style-less attire, same cropped hair. It wasn’t a uniform, and it wasn’t anything deliberate. At least, not deliberate in a conscious sense. It was because the team had been together a long time. The men had started to dress like each other, acting like a tribe, forming their own subconscious identity.
There had been a time when SAS soldiers had favoured moustaches outside of the fashion of the wider populace. People who respected and relied on one another had a tendency to homogenise their behaviour. Which helped Victor. It would make them easier to spot, but of more use was the fact these guys were a close-knit unit. If they became his enemies, they would grow emotional when he started killing them. They would want revenge. They would make mistakes.
But only if it came to that. Victor didn’t trust Halleck, but he wasn’t going to start executing his men on the off chance. Even as a preventative measure, which Victor was a fan of, he wasn’t going to kill this guy. At least, not in a crowded coffee shop in broad daylight. For one, he didn’t need to. And two, Victor liked the guy. He did everything so wrong he couldn’t help but feel sorry for him. He paused in the entranceway to look around the room. He fidgeted while he pretended to look at the food available. He didn’t know what to order when one of the Australians asked him what he wanted. He sat in the wrong place – near to Victor and not near to the door. He didn’t touch his drink. He did everything he could not to look in Victor’s direction.
He may have been with his teammates a long time, but he wasn’t one of their best. He might be an exceptional shot or tactician, but his shadowing skills were non-existent. This guy was closer to a civilian than a professional. It would be bordering on cruel to kill someone so clueless. Victor was no sadist.
He finished his coffee and headed back outside. He had seen four so far in total, counting the two in the van and the man on the phone. He needed to find out if there were more.
The rain had stopped by the time he left again.
Ahead lay a bus stop with a waiting bus and line of people boarding. To his right, across the street lay the entrance to a subway station. Either were viable options to create distance. He crossed the street because a taxi pulled up in front of him and the passenger climbed out of the right back door.
The station was old and hot and smelled of sweat and pollution. For someone of Victor’s height, the arched ceilings of the passageway seemed low and almost claustrophobic.
He reached the platform and headed left to the end, so when the train arrived he boarded the first door, behind the driver. There were several seats available, but he stood with his back to the driver’s door, giving himself a clear view of the entire car and everyone travelling with him – in particular, those who had boarded the car with him. He watched people through his peripheral vision, checking for tells in age, clothing, body composition and behaviour for potential shadows or threats.
Age was the first indicator, and he dismissed anyone too old to keep up with the physical demands of the role and anyone too young to have acquired enough training and experience to actually do it. People of the right age, but too out of shape to have the requisite stamina and agility were then dismissed. Impractical clothing was the next tell; anything too tight and restrictive or too eye-catching would not be worn. Two people, a man and a woman, met the criteria, but the man was drunk; he had a red face, wide staring eyes, and kept swallowing. The woman – neither young nor old, slim and toned, wearing loose clothes and flat shoes – was playing with her hair and trying to meet Victor’s eye.
He ignored her attempts to catch his attention and remained vigilant as the train pulled away and accelerated. He stood with his feet a little further apart than shoulder width and used his left hand to brace against the forces trying to push him off balance.
So far, it seemed he had escaped unnoticed, but he could not shake the feeling that he was being followed still. The nagging doubt could be his unconscious’s way of communicating some sight or sound or smell that Victor had not noticed, but that been detected and processed nonetheless. In his experience, if something felt wrong, more often than not it was wrong. He had to spend his life assuming and preparing for the worst-case scenario. For him, optimism was wilful ignorance.
If he had been followed into the station, the shadow would have boarded the same train as him, but even after he’d established that there were no threats in the car he continued to evaluate anyone who boarded when it stopped at the next station and the ones that followed. A good shadow never let their mark out of sight, but a good one never sought to get closer than necessary. Boarding the same car presented a huge increase in the chances of Victor identifying that person.
A better tactic would be to board a different car, and then change into the same car at one of the other stations.
In a similar situation Victor would not change cars until the second or third station to be as inconspicuous as possible whilst not leaving the mark out of sight for too long.
No shadow boarded at the second station.
One did at the third.
THIRTY
It took Victor almost a minute to be sure because the shadow was a lot better than the one in the coffee shop. Five people boarded: two women and three men. One of the men and one of the women were together: a retirement-age couple. Victor ignored them. One of the men was so overweight he required two seats. Victor discounted him too. The remaining man and woman were in the right age bracket and wore the correct kind of clothes.
The man entered through the door right next to Victor and came as close to Victor as he allowed anyone to get without maiming that person, saying, ‘Excuse me,’ as he did. Then he sat in the closest available seat to Victor and began playing a game on a phone. Everything the man did was wrong for a shadow, choosing to board near the mark when other doors were available, then speaking to the mark, sitting closer than necessary and drawing avoidable attention to himself by playing the game.
Which left the woman.
She did everything right: she chose the furthest door from Victor, entering behind the old couple, and sitting a good distance from him.
Victor absorbed every detail of the shadow, searching for where weapons might be concealed or weaknesses that he could exploit. At this moment, he didn’t know her motives – whether only to follow, or to engage. The other guys he’d seen had been there to observe, but orders could change or this woman was the designated trigger-person.
But now she had lost the advantage of surprise. If she made a move, Victor would be ready.
It was at the next stop that he realised he had made a mistake.
The overweight guy alighted and a trio of young women boarded through the middle doors. They wore smart business attire, but were dishevelled from boozy lunch drinks. They stood near the doors, hanging and swaying from the support bars. They were as loud and they were attractive, laughing and joking with one another. Everyone in the car glanced their way at least once, whether amused by them or annoyed. Every man looked several times.
Every man except Victor and the man playing a game on his phone.
Victor noticed this in his peripheral vision and realised he had been wrong to dismiss the man in favour of the woman sitting further away.
The man playing the game was bold. He did everything against the book. He had boarded at the closest door, spoken to Victor, and had sat nearby, attracting attention with the game. That behaviour had been all wrong, and in acting that way he had removed himself from suspicion. Victor was impressed. The shadow was good. But he wasn’t exceptional because he had not looked at the three young women because it was all he could handle playing the game and keeping watch on Victor at the same time.
The three young women alighted at the next stop and the car became quiet again.
Victor looked at the man, now assessing the threat. The man had no height or bulk of note, but speed and technique were more dangerous. He wore hiking boots and loose cargo trousers. His cheap nylon jacket had the zip unfastened. The vest beneath was tight. Good attire for combat: boots, to provide support for the ankles and deliver extra force through kicks and stomps, hiking boots for grip; loose cargo trousers for manoeuvrability. The nylon jacket was light and unrestrictive, unzipped so it could be taken off with speed, whether before a fight or slipped out of it clutched by an opponent. Cheap, so it would rip without much effort if an enemy grabbed it and the wearer could not slip out of it. The tight vest would be difficult to grab hold of too, whilst not restricting movements as much as a tight T-shirt would.
So he wasn’t just a watcher.
He had no gun, else Victor would have noticed, but a small knife could be hidden on his person in any number of places.
Victor made no disguise of his evaluating look. The man detected it fast. He tried to ignore it, hoping he was mistaken, but then it became pointless. They both knew.
