Dead or Alive (57 page)

“Bingo,” he whispered to himself. To Chavez: “Link up with the brothers and watch the flanks. I’m taking a walk. Jack, you’re with me.”

They headed down the concourse.

“See something I didn’t?” Jack asked.

“His name isn’t Klein. I’d bet the wad on that.”

No trip to the head, Clark saw. So much for that idea. They followed forty yards back. The subject, they saw, didn’t seem to speak with his pickup man.
Too disciplined, or did they know each other?

“Got a camera?” John asked.

“Yeah, digital one. Ready to run. I might have a shot of our friend, but I haven’t checked yet.”

“If he gets into a car, let’s make sure—”

“Yep. Make, model, and tag. How’re we doing?”

I don’t think he’s seen us—damned sure didn’t look at where we were, either side. Either he’s one very cool customer or he’s as pure as the driven snow. Take your pick.”

“Looks kinda Jewish,” Jack said.

“There’s an old joke in Israel. If he looks Jewish, and he’s selling bagels, he’s an Arab. Not always true, but good enough for a joke.”

“Except for the hair, I can see him in a cowboy hat and long black coat, on Forty-seventh Street in New York, handling diamonds. Not a bad disguise. But he’s about as Jewish as I am.”

Past the magazine stands, past the beer bar, past the one-way exit by the metal detectors, out to the main concourse. Not down the escalator to baggage recovery, but he’d already done that, of course. Toward the main door in the glass wall, and out into the cool air of a Canadian autumn. Past the taxi traffic for arrivals, across the street to the parking lots. Whoever the greeter was, he’d parked in the hourly lot, not the daylong-or-later lot. Okay, this was a scheduled pickup, all right. And not one called ahead for from the plane phone. Into the lot, and then Clark had to slow his tailing routine . . . and right to a parked car.

“Camera,” Clark said sharply, hoping that Jack knew how to flash a photo covertly.

Actually, he did it pretty well, with the lens telescoped out to 2- or 3X zoom. It was a new-model black Ford Crown Victoria, of the sort used by a low-end car service. Everything was nominal to profile, Clark thought, as they started to close the gap.

 

 

 

H
ere’s your ticket from Chicago west,” the driver said, handing the ticket folder back over the bench seat.

Hadi opened the folder and studied the ticket. He was surprised to see the destination. He checked his watch. The timing was almost perfect. It had helped that first-class passengers were quicker to get to immigration.

“How long to the other terminal?”

“Just a couple of minutes,” the driver answered.

“Good.” And Hadi lit a cigarette.

 

 

T
he car pulled out. Clark noted this but kept walking. Until the car was a hundred yards away, then he doubled back to the arrival traffic and hailed a cab.

“Where to?” the driver asked.

“I’ll tell you in a minute. Jack: Eyeballs?”

“Got it,” Jack assured him. The Crown Vic had pulled into a line to pay the parking toll. He took two more shots to catch the tag number, which he already had memorized. Just to be sure, he scribbled it down on the notepad he always kept in his coat pocket.

“Okay,” Clark told the driver. “See that black Ford up there?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Follow it.”

“Is this a movie?” the driver asked lightheartedly.

“Yeah, and I’m the star.”

“I’ve done that, you know? Real movies. They pay pretty well for driving a car.”

Clark took the hint, fished out his wallet, and handed the driver a pair of twenties. “Fair enough?”

“Yes, sir. I’ll bet he’s going to Terminal Three.”

“Let’s see,” Clark responded. Now he had eyes on the Crown Vic, which did the usual rigmarole common to airports, whose roadways were doubtless designed by the same soulless idiot who did the architecture for the terminals. Clark had been in enough airports to be fairly certain all the architects went to the same school.

The taxi driver was right. The Crown Vic pulled to a stop at the UNITED AIRLINES sign and angled right to the curb. The driver’s door opened, and the driver climbed out and moved to the passenger door.

“Good call—what’s your name?” Clark asked.

“Tony.”

“Thank you, Tony. You have a good one.” Clark and Jack hopped out. In Jack’s hand was the camera, well concealed but ready for action.

“He smokes,” Clark observed. More to the point, he also posed pretty well. Sometimes luck worked in your favor. “Okay, shoot me,” Clark said, posing. This Jack duly did, and afterward Clark came over to say something innocuous, followed by, “Got him?”

“Dead on. Now what?”

“Now I try to get a ticket to Chicago. You follow him to the gate and call me when you ID the flight.”

“Think you can get a ticket fast enough?”

“Well, if I fail, we’re no worse off than we are now.”

“Gotcha,” Jack agreed. “I got your number.” And he hopped to it, taking position fifty yards from their friend Hadi, who enjoyed every possible puff from his smoke before turning to walk into the terminal. He had a good photo of the mutt, Jack realized, checking the preview screen.

 

 

 

C
lark walked toward the United desk, pleased that there wasn’t much of a line to fight through.

Hadi finished his smoke and flipped the butt onto the curb, took one deep breath of non-airliner air, and walked inside. Dominic followed at a discreet distance, holding his secure cell phone in his left hand. Hadi walked directly toward the proper concourse and checked a monitor for the right jetway. He walked out just like any normal person trying to catch a flight. It took under ten minutes, and then he took his seat at D-28. Brian made his call.

“Clark,” the voice said on the other end.

“Jack here. Gate D-Twenty-eight, flight one-one-zero-eight.”

“Got it. Does it look crowded?”

“No, but the bird’s pulled up to the jetway, and the posted departure time is in twenty-five minutes. Better get a move on.”

“On my way.” John walked to the desk, had to wait for one business puke to get his ticket, then smiled at the desk clerk. “Flight one-one-zero-eight to Chicago, please. First-class, if possible, but I’ll take coach.” He handed over his gold MasterCard.

“Yes, sir,” the clerk said politely. She proved to be wonderfully efficient, and the computer printer spat out the cardstock ticket in just three minutes.

“Thank you, ma’am.”

“To the right.” She pointed in case he didn’t know where right was. John walked evenly. Twenty minutes to make the flight.
No problem.
That came at the metal detector. It pinged, rather to John’s surprise. Then a uniformed rent-a-cop waved the magic wand over him and it pinged at his coat pocket. John reached in and found that his U.S. marshal’s badge had tripped it. This metal detector was really turned up.

“Oh, okay, sir.”

“I’m not even here on official business,” Clark said, with a shy smile. “Is that it?”

“Yes, sir. Thank you.”

“Right.” Next time he’d toss it on the conveyor, John thought, and let the whole world think he was a cop. It had
not
pinged on the pen in his pocket. Wasn’t that interesting, or could be, if he had the Magic Pen. But he didn’t. Too bad.

It was a Boeing 737. Seattle must have sold a lot of them, Clark thought, looking around the uncomfortable lounge. Same architect, same crummy chairs.
The same company who did the airliner seats?
he wondered.
Was that a conflict of interest, maybe?

There was Hadi, sitting in the nonsmoking sitting area. Not trying to call attention to himself? If so, good fieldcraft. Just sitting there reading a magazine,
Newsweek,
with cursory attention. Ten more minutes and they called the flight. Clark had lucked out and gotten a first-class seat, 4C. On the aisle, which was useful. He thought back to a recent commercial flight, but he’d had a pistol back then, unbeknownst to the British Airways cabin crew; would have alarmed them about as much as a carry-on bag full of dynamite sticks. Well, flight attendants were pretty girls for the most part, and it wouldn’t do to annoy them in any way. They worked hard for their lowly salaries. Hadi walked aboard with three people ahead of him, John saw, and ended up in 1A, the most forward window seat on the left side, maybe fifteen feet ahead of Clark and to the left. Three steps and he could snap the guy’s neck like a twig. He hadn’t done that, exactly, since Vietnam, where the men often had scrawny little necks. But that had been a long time ago, and even back then, he’d nearly blown it. Memories of old days. More to the point, fifteen feet to the forward head. The older he got, the more he needed to keep track of that kind of thing.

The usual safety briefing. The seat belt is just like the one on your car, dummy, and if you really need it, Mommy will come buckle it up for you—but no booze for you!
The bathrooms are fore and aft, and they’re marked with pictures if you’re too dumb to read. Dumbing down society was happening in Canada, too.
A pity,
John thought. Unless United flew only American citizens.

The flight was grossly ordinary, with nary a bump, taking hardly an hour before they touched down at O’Hare, named for a World War Two naval aviator who’d won the Medal of Honor before getting splashed, probably by friendly fire, which could kill you just as dead as the other sort. Clark wondered how hard it was for the pilot to find the right jetway, but then he’d probably made this flight before, maybe a hundred times. Now came the hard part, John realized. Where was Hadi going, and could he bag a seat on the same flight? A pity he couldn’t just ask the bastard. He had to go through immigration, because America had gotten serious about controlling who came into the country. Really that meant tough enough that the bad guys had to devote maybe a whole minute of thought before sneaking in, but maybe it was something to stop the really dumb ones. But the dumb ones weren’t much of a threat, were they?

That was far above his pay grade, however, and those who made such decisions rarely consulted the worker bees who live out where one’s ass was on the betting line. That fact had started for Clark in Vietnam, when his name had been Kelly. So maybe stuff like that never changed. That was a frightening thought, but frightening things came with the territory, and he’d signed on to that more than thirty years earlier. The entry procedures were not even perfunctory. His passport wasn’t even stamped, a considerable surprise. Another procedure change? Keep the ink from staining the clerk’s hand, maybe?

 

 

 

O
kay, what’s happening?” Granger asked over the secure line.

“Clark took the same flight as our friend,” Jack replied. “We got a couple photos of him. With luck, he’ll shadow him to where he’s going.”

Not likely,
the operations boss at the other end thought.
Not enough troops, not enough resources.
Well, you couldn’t do everything as a private corporation, and it kept the overhead down. “Okay, keep me posted. When will you guys be back?”

“We’re booked on a flight into D.C. National; leaves in thirty minutes. Be back in the building about five-thirty or six, probably.” Which amounted to a complete wasted day, unless you counted a couple of photos as a success, Jack thought. What the hell, it was more than what they’d had.

C
LARK WAS in the subterranean walkway from one terminal complex to another. Mostly moving walkways, like conveyor belts; it certainly looked long enough. He’d watched Hadi step out into the open air and have another smoke before coming back in, running through the metal detectors—miraculously, his marshal’s badge did not trip it here—down into this lengthy tunnel, and then up the escalator to the outboard terminal, where it was time to go to work. Hadi turned left at the top. He’d gotten his gate assignment from an information monitor—without checking his ticket for the flight number. Did that make him a trained pro or just a guy with a good memory or a surfeit of confidence? Clark wondered. You pays your money and you takes your choice. At the top, Hadi turned left onto Concourse F. He was walking briskly.
Maybe in a hurry?
Clark wondered. If so, bad news for him. Sure enough, the subject turned to check a monitor, oriented himself, and angled to the left for Gate F-5, where he took a seat, looking as though he needed to relax. F-5 was a flight for . . . Las Vegas? McCarran International was a sizable airport with a huge number of connecting flights to Christ knew how many other destinations. Just one cutout for Hadi? Was that prudent? John wondered.
Hmm.
Who, if anyone, had trained this bird? A KGB type, or someone internal to his organization? Whatever the answer, the flight was leaving in fifteen minutes, not enough time for John to get back to the desk at Terminal 1 and get a ticket to allow him to follow. The tracking exercise would end at this point.
Damn.
He couldn’t even make the effort to eyeball the guy too obviously, even to observe very closely. Hadi may have looked around, and might, therefore, recognize his face. He might have been trained by a pro, and he might have the ability Clark had for remembering faces that appeared and disappeared in the course of life. For a field spook, that was a survival skill of considerable importance. Clark walked to a gift shop and bought a PayDay candy bar, along with a Diet Coke, just allowing his eyes to trace around the concourse. Hadi was sitting, not even looking around for a smoking booth where people could indulge their bad habit behind glass. Maybe he could control his passions, John thought. Such people could be dangerous. But the flight was called then, first-class tickets first, and Hadi stood, walked to the jetway gate, and showed his ticket. He even smiled at the male clerk, who checked his ticket and waved him aboard the elderly DC-9 for a wide leather seat and free booze for his trip to Vegas, where people could indulge in all manner of bad habits to their hearts’ content. John finished his candy bar and walked back to the tunnel entrance. As before, the down escalator seemed to go halfway to hell, and he blessed whatever architect had specified the moving walkways. Clark was old enough to appreciate it. He remembered not to frown at what he thought of as a blown mission. Partially blown, anyway. They knew things about this subject that they hadn’t known before, including a photo. He liked to travel under a Jewish cover, almost clever but a little obvious. Jews and Arabs were genetic cousins, after all, and their religious beliefs were not all that disparate—furious as both were even to consider such a thought, of course. Christians, too, all People of the Book, so his Saudi friends had explained it to him once upon a time. But religious people generally did not commit murder. God might not agree. In any case, his current job was to fly back to The Campus. He waited for the jetway door to be closed and watched the twin-engine airliner back away from the terminal, then turn under its own power for the taxi out to the runway. Three hours to Vegas? Maybe a little less, over Iowa, Nebraska, and Wyoming, to the city that celebrated sin.
And on from there to where?
John wondered. Wherever it was, he wouldn’t be finding out anytime soon. Well, this whole mission had been on the iffy side, and he couldn’t be too disappointed that it had turned into a washout. And what the hell, they had some photos of the mutt. He found a counter that offered him a ticket back to BWI in ninety minutes. He called ahead to make sure someone would be waiting with a car.