Springboard

21

The guitar store wasn’t in downtown San Francisco, but in a little upscale pocket neighborhood on the way toward Oakland. This was an area that had been bought up and renewed, old buildings remodeled or torn down and new ones built that looked like those they had replaced. There were shops and businesses within easy walking distance of housing — small apartments, row houses of condos, and even single-family homes. Very nice and, Kent knew, very spendy. Real estate in the Bay Area had always been some of the most expensive in the country, and it still was.

It was late in the afternoon before he arrived at the shop, which was identified simply as “Cyrus Guitars.” There was a parking lot across the street next to a deli, and Kent pulled his rented and outfitted van into that. He had food, water, a little portable potty, and assorted other knick-knacks that would make a long surveillance bearable.

He went into the deli and talked to the guy running the place about letting him park there for the next couple of days. His Net Force ID and a few words about Homeland Security — along with a single fifty-dollar bill — were enough to settle the deal.

With the van situated, Kent walked across the street to the guitar place.

It wasn’t particularly impressive from the sidewalk. The sign was low-key, there was one small window with a single guitar on display, and without those to identify it, the shop could have been any small-business storefront.

Inside, it was more interesting. There was a wooden counter, covered with what looked like a sheet of black velvet. Behind the counter, hung on the wall inside a series of rectangular glass or Plexiglas cases, were ten guitars. They were mostly classical models — Kent had become passingly familiar with the design — a couple of steel-string acoustics, and he quickly spotted the one made by Stansell — the color on the sides was unique.

The man behind the counter sat on a stool with one foot propped on the cross-supports, playing an acoustic guitar that appeared to have a stainless-steel clamp on the neck several frets up from the tuning pegs. He wore sweatpants and a T-shirt and what looked like moccasins. His right arm was covered with a long black sleeve. It took Kent a second to realize what the sleeve was for: to keep his bare skin from touching the guitar.

The instrument had a rich, warm tone. As Kent watched, the player squeezed the metal clamp and removed it from the guitar.

“G7th capo,” the player said. “Great design. Locking cam, doesn’t detune the strings if you’re careful, one-handed operation, imported out of the U.K. by John Pearse Strings. Plus the looks-cool factor is still very high even after ten years.” He extended the clamp toward Kent, who walked over and took it. He didn’t know capos from capons, but the little device did feel very solid and well-made. He said so as he handed it back.

“The euro is down again,” the man said, “so they are running about fifty bucks American. I’m Cyrus, what can I do for you?”

Cyrus stood, and was tall — six-five, six-six, maybe, with a one-cut cropped-short red orange crewcut. He wore three or four earrings in each ear, wire-rimmed glasses, and had what looked like some kind of tribal tattoos on the arm Kent could see.

There were several ways to play this, and they usually depended on the guy you were dealing with. His instinct was that Cyrus was a solid citizen. Something seemed familiar about him, Kent couldn’t put his finger on exactly what it was. He decided to go for it straight on: “I’m Abraham Kent,” he said, “I work for Net Force.”

“The net query, yeah. Nancy told me about that. She’s my manager — she’s the one who does all the Internet/web stuff.”

Kent nodded. “You sold a guitar to somebody who’s supposed to come in tomorrow to pick up.”

“Actually, I have five or six folks dropping by to collect instruments in the next few days.”

“You’d remember this one. The guitar went for ten thousand dollars.”

Cyrus smiled. “You say that number as if it’s amazing. I’ve got almost two hundred thousand dollars worth of guitars on display here, couple of ’em cost three times that much.” He waved an arm at the wall. “But I know the one you mean — the Stansell White Tiger, right?”

“Yes.”

He nodded. “Some guy bought it from Nancy, and paid for it up front, a bank transfer. Most of our customers I know personally, or by reputation. Some are referrals. I don’t know this one.”

“I’m not certain he’s the guy I’m looking for, but if he is, he’s a bad man, and we need to have a chat.”

“What’d he do?”

“Killed some people, among other things.”

“Really? Not something serious classical guitar players are usually into.”

“He’s not your usual player.”

Cyrus looked at Kent. He nodded slightly. “Okay. So what do you want me to do?”

The man didn’t seem particularly disturbed at the idea that he’d be dealing with a murderer. Kent looked at him with the unspoken question: Why so cool?

Cyrus rolled the protective sleeve down his arm, grinning. The Marine Corps logo was tattooed in blue on his upper arm. “Semper fi, sir,” Cyrus said.

Kent shook his head, and returned the grin. “Do I know you?”

“Not personally, but I was in First Expeditionary in Second Iraq — I saw you around a couple of times, Major.”

“Colonel, now,” Kent said. “Hell of an operation, that.”

“Yes, sir, it was. Glad I survived it. What’s the deal?”

“This guy shows up, you fill out forms or whatever you usually do and send him on his way. But if sometime during that procedure you could get to this”—Kent pulled a small cell phone from his pocket and put it on the counter—“and just push the ‘send’ button, right here, I’d appreciate it.”

Cyrus looked at the phone. “Yes, sir, I can do that. Then what?”

“Nothing happens in the store. I’ll know the guy if I see him. He leaves, I follow him, and somewhere, we get together.”

“No problem, Colonel.”

Once a Marine, always a Marine.

“Thanks.”

“You’ll let me know how it turns out?”

“That’s the least I can do.”

They both smiled.

The driver dropped Thorn off at his house and left. It was only one o’clock, but Thorn had some old business to deal with, business he would rather not do at the office.

He walked to the front door. It was a quiet neighborhood, not far from the University of Maryland. There were a number of college professors and even a dean or two living on his street. The tree-lined roads — mostly pin oak, but some elms and pear trees, too — were shady, the houses big and built mostly in the early part of the last century.

He thumbed the print-reader on the new lock he’d had installed, and stepped inside to do the same to the alarm system control panel, which went from red to green as it disarmed.

He set his case down next to the half-round table against the hall wall, and headed for the kitchen.

Lying on the kitchen counter was a single, long-stemmed rose. The petals were such a dark red that they seemed almost black.

Thorn smiled at the flower as he picked it up and sniffed it.

The rose smelled as good as it looked.

Who did he know who could get past a thumbprint reader lock and alarm system? And who would leave a black rose on his kitchen counter?

His smile got bigger. Oh, this was too much.

He unclipped his virgil from his belt. “Call Marissa,” he said.

He held the little device to his ear with one hand, the dark rose in the other.

“Hey, Tommy.”

“Hey, Marissa. Thank you.”

“For what?”

He held the virgil so that its cam pointed at the flower.

“Very nice,” she said. “What’s that got to do with me?”

“It was on my kitchen counter.”

“And you think I put it there? That would mean I’d have to drive way the hell and gone to God’s country, then rascal a thumbprint reader lock and house alarm with a security cam, to leave that flower in your kitchen, just to make you smile when you saw it. You think you’re worth all that trouble?”

“I hope you think so.”

There was a pause. Then she said, “Maybe. We’ll just have to see. Where are you taking me to dinner tomorrow?”

“Anywhere you want to go,” he said.

“Try and surprise me.”

“Oh, I expect I can manage that.”

“Want to bet?”

“I’ll send a car for you,” he said. “Seven o’clock okay?”

“What’s the wager?”

“Tell you after I win,” he said.

“You’re on.”

She discommed, and he just stood there smiling at the rose.

As it happened, Kent saw Natadze go into the shop. It was just after ten A.M., and while he had camped in worse places than a sleeping bag in the back of a van, it hadn’t been the most comfortable night’s sleep he’d ever had. It was easier to be a twenty-year-old stoic about such things than it was to be a man his age…

He smiled at the memory that brought up. About the time he’d turned fifty, he had hurt his right knee running an obstacle course. He’d come down off a swinging rope over a mud hole, let go, and hit crooked. Wasn’t the first time he’d ever hurt a joint, and he limped through the rest of the course, went home, and RICE’d the injury — rest, ice, compression, and elevation — along with some ibuprofen every few hours, SOP.

After a couple weeks, when the knee was still bothering him more than he thought it should, he went to see one of the base doctors.

The doc, a kid of maybe thirty and a captain, had started his exam, and while he was poking and prodding, asked, “So, how’d you do this, Major?”

Kent told him.

The kid had frowned. “Major, a man your age ought not to be running the obstacle course.”

“A man my age? Son, I’m not a man my age!”

It had been funny. But in the decade since, he’d noticed that the aches and pains he’d shrugged off even at fifty took longer to get better. Some of them hung around for months. Some of them were still with him for years — that knee injury tended to throb when it got cold and rainy even now.

But that was the name of the game, he knew, and while growing old was the pits, it sure beat the alternative…

Natadze, wearing a leather jacket over what looked like khaki slacks and some kind of soft-soled loafers, was twenty-some years younger than Kent, and a professional assassin. It would be stupid to ignore that. He wasn’t going to challenge him mano a mano, straight up. They didn’t like handguns in San Francisco, but somehow Kent didn’t think that meant much to his quarry. He’d be armed — wearing a jacket like that in this heat — and he’d be wary.

Five minutes later, Kent’s virgil beeped, but as he reached to shut it off, he heard Cyrus’s voice: “Colonel?”

“Here.”

“He’s gone out the back door. Said his car was parked back there, asked if it was okay.”

Kent frowned. More wary even than Kent had figured, and still a step ahead. He reached for the van’s ignition, cranked the key.

“The alley is one-way, running east. If his car is there, he’ll be coming out on the street next to the dentist’s office, unless he goes against the traffic.”

Kent was already pulling out of the parking lot by then. “Thanks, son. I’ll let you know how it goes.”

Kent hurried to the corner, made the turn, and saw the sign for the dentist’s. He pulled in behind a bus and past the mouth of the alley.

There was a double-axle truck parked a hundred feet in, the doors open. No sign of a car — wait, there was Natadze—

He was on foot, half a block away, and going in the other direction—!

Kent mashed the gas pedal, lurched around the bus, and sped for the next corner, a one-way street, which, fortunately, was going west. He careened through the turn and roared down the street. Ran a red light and pulled another right turn. The mouth of the alley was just ahead. He passed it, pulled into a loading zone, and stopped, a hundred feet away—

Natadze, carrying a black guitar case, emerged from the alley and looked in both directions. Kent saw him in the rearview mirror. Natadze couldn’t see him enough to ID him, he was sure.

Natadze crossed the street, dodging traffic, and went to a late-model gray Toyota parked in a no-parking zone. He opened the car with a remote, put the guitar in the back seat on the floor, and climbed in.

Kent grabbed a notepad and the mechanical pencil on the seat next to him and wrote down the car’s license number. California plate, probably a rental. He’d once had a digital recorder for such quick notes, but the battery had died in that at a bad time, and he’d gone back to the old-fashioned way. Not once had the battery run down on a sheet of paper, and he had four extra pencils in case one ran out of lead.

Kent was no expert at surveillance. He had been taught the basics as part of a two-week class in investigative procedures given by Marine Intel a few years back. His and Natadze’s noses were pointed in different directions, and that was bad. When Natadze pulled out, Kent would have to hang a U-turn to follow him. Anybody looking for a tail would spot that and mark the vehicle, so you’d start out with a strike against you. The only way around that if you were alone was to wait until the subject was far enough away that he might not notice, and if you did that, you risked losing him. Without an electronic tag on the subject’s vehicle, you were restricted to line of sight, and if he got too far out of that, you would almost surely lose him.

But God smiled on Kent this time. It was Natadze who pulled out and made a sharp U-turn, passing Kent’s van. Kent dropped in his seat, waited a few seconds, then edged back upright.

Natadze made it to the corner, stopped at the red light, and signaled for a right turn.

Kent let one car get between them, then pulled out.

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!