Zack stayed tight on her ass until she pulled into the parking lot of an Au Bon Pain for breakfast. He parked just out front and watched her eat a muffin and sip coffee while talking on her phone, occasionally stealing glances outside at Zack’s car.
At nine a.m. she threw away her trash, put down her phone, and then stood there, hands on her hips, staring at Hightower. He stared back through his Oakleys unfazed, enjoying exerting sanctioned pressure, even though he had not a clue if this woman had done anything to warrant this stress.
He got the feeling something was wrong in the pit of his stomach about thirty seconds before the flashing lights broke his staring contest with Palumbo. He looked in his rearview and saw three blue-and-white squad cars from the Fairfax County Police Department pulling up. They blocked him in expertly. He figured Palumbo had called CIA security and told them about the tail, and they alerted the local yokels.
Zack sighed, pulled out a set of fake credentials from the folio given to him by Suzanne Brewer, and rolled down his window.
Palumbo drove off while Zack got a talking-to. He had a legend and a story ready; he thought this woman had sideswiped his wife’s vehicle outside their kid’s high school the day before, and he was just trying to get a look all the way around her car to see if there was evidence.
It was good enough for Fairfax County PD, and within fifteen minutes he was driving off, heading towards his next target.
Palumbo was a bust. There was no way, Zack thought, that anyone could be so cool as to quickly call in an unknown contact to CIA security if they were, in fact, spying for a foreign entity.
He’d mentally scratch her name off the list, and then move on to the next in line: Assistant Deputy Director of Support, Marty Wheeler.
* * *
• • •
At lunch Zack Hightower stood in line at Whole Foods on P Street in central D.C., holding a plastic bottle of some sort of green sludge that he had no plans to consume. The woman in front of him was hot enough for Zack, for a mom, anyway, and he was stealing glances at her ass as she leaned over her baby in the shopping cart to hand him a toy. But Hightower was on duty, so he broke his gaze off her backside and returned it to the man in front of her.
Marty Wheeler paid for his salad and his can of cold green tea, and he headed over to the dining area in the front of the store. Zack watched him intently while the woman checked out, and then Zack bought his green shit and walked over next to Wheeler. The CIA assistant deputy director of Support sat alone at a long table with four chairs on each side, and although there were plenty of other tables around, Zack plopped down across from him at the far end.
Wheeler looked up, smiled and nodded to the fit and intense-looking man in the beard, and then returned to his salad.
Zack opened his drink and, despite himself, he took a sip.
“For fuck’s sake,” he said, then sealed the bottle back up.
Wheeler glanced up at him again and cracked a smile, but soon he was looking at his phone.
Zack followed the fifty-one-year-old out to his car after lunch, walking just fifty feet or so behind him, then climbed into his Suburban, parked two down from Wheeler’s Mercedes C-Class in the garage. Wheeler pulled out onto P Street and turned left, and Zack stayed on his bumper.
This continued until Wheeler pulled into a parking lot a block from the U.S. Capitol. Zack parked nearby, in sight of his car, then followed the man on foot towards the Capitol building.
Zack sighed. He got nothing out of Wheeler, not even a recognition he had a tail.
This dude was either as pure as the driven snow, completely oblivious, or incredibly well trained at countersurveillance. Zack knew he couldn’t write him off like he had with Palumbo. He’d need more intel on Wheeler before deeming him clean, but he wasn’t going into the Capitol building to get it.
Zack headed back to his car. There were two more on the list. Alf Karlsson, who he’d been told had already flown to London in advance of the Five Eyes meeting in Scotland in a few days, and Lucas Renfro, the deputy director of Support and the highest ranking of the four on the list.
Renfro had been at Langley all morning, where Zack couldn’t touch him, but he told himself he’d go position himself to follow the DDS when he left work. He’d lean on Renfro for a while to see if he crapped his pants, because his first two tails of the day had been wholly unsatisfactory, particularly for a man who enjoyed scaring people.
CHAPTER 27
A steady rain pelted the canvas painter’s tarp lying over Court Gentry’s body, creating a soft relaxing sound that made him want to take a nap. But he kept his eye in the sight of his rifle and ignored the moisture from the wet flat rooftop that soaked his clothes.
He was as close to invisible as one could be in cloudy daylight in the center of one of the leading capital cities in the world. On this fifth-floor roof he was just slightly above the other buildings, all but shielding him from below and through the windows of their lower floors, and the tarp was close enough in color to the roof itself—both were covered with white paint—that someone would have to come up here and walk around for a while with the intention of spotting him to do so.
Court fought his desire to nod off and looked through the four-power scope above his suppressed rifle, centering it on a window in the building across the street. This was Terry Cassidy’s private office. Court watched the man as he sat at his desk, alternating phone calls with typing on his computer and chatting with assistants.
It was only noon, but Court had been in position since before the man arrived for work that morning, and while doing so he’d been getting a feel for the security of the location. There were guards in the lobby, cameras all around, the windows looked secure, and there was no adjoining rooftop access.
The only way over that Court saw was either to infiltrate with a stolen ID or to somehow get across the street with a cable and access the roof.
Alternatively, he could scale the outside, perhaps, and make entry far away from the guards and hardest access points.
It wouldn’t be easy.
As he slowly scanned the two windows of Cassidy’s office, his earpiece buzzed. He tapped it to open the call.
“Yep?” he said softly.
As expected—as always, in fact—it was Suzanne Brewer. “You weren’t supposed to take the Volvo. London station is pissed.”
“That’s what I like about you, Brewer. You’ve always got your mind centered on the important stuff.” When Brewer said nothing he sighed. “I’ll return it when I’m done.”
Brewer snorted out an angry laugh. “The last car you misappropriated is probably still on fire up in the East Midlands.”
Court smiled at this. “I’ll be super careful with this one. Government property and all. Look, I see where your priorities lie, but I’m out here tryin’ not to get a bullet up my ass, so if you could help me out a little instead of busting my balls, I’d appreciate it.”