He extended the case across the seat without turning from the windshield.
This time, Palardy took it.
In a rental van on the opposite side of the parking aisle, Lathrop began to pack his remote laser voice monitoring system into its black hardshell camera case. From the rear window panel of the van, the invisible beam of the device’s near-infrared semiconductor laser diode had been aimed at a ninety-degree angle through the back windshield at the Fiat’s rearview mirror.
It is a basic rule of optics that the angle of incidence is equal to the angle of reflection. What this means in practical application is that a beam of coherent light — that is, a beam in which all light waves are in phase, the defining and essential quality of a laser transmission — will bounce back to its source at the same angle at which it strikes a reflecting surface, unless that surface creates some sort of modulation, or interference, to throw the waves out of phase, causing some to bounce back at different angles than others. Vibrating infinitesimally from the conversation inside the Fiat — perhaps a thousandth of an inch or less with each utterance — the window glass had caused corresponding fluctuations in the optical beam reflecting off it, which were then converted into electronic pulses by the eavesdropping unit’s receiver, filtered from background noise, enhanced, and digitally recorded.
Lathrop had gotten every word spoken inside the car. And though he wasn’t yet certain what they all meant, one thing was eminently clear to him.
After days of following Enrique Quiros in a succession of rentals and disguises, days of following his instincts, his patience finally had been rewarded with a deeper and richer load of pay dirt than he could have imagined.
TWELVE
The instant Palardy entered Roger Gordian’s office, a strange feeling came over him. Everything seemed the same yet different, like in one of those dreams that was so close to real life you awoke confused about whether its events had actually occurred. The setting of the dream might be the place you grew up, the home you lived in, the park across the street, it didn’t matter. You knew you were somewhere familiar, but things weren’t quite the way they should be. Both inside and outside yourself.
It was like that for him this morning. The same yet different.
He tried to shake that floaty, disoriented sensation as he strode across the carpet toward Gordian’s desk.
“You’ll do what you have to do, ” Quiros had insisted. And Palardy thought now that he could.
He could do it.
Because this was only a day after his regular countersurveillance sweep, Palardy was not carrying the Big Sniffer or any of its accompanying equipment, which made him a bit more conspicuous than he otherwise might be. But once Enrique Quiros had forced this thing upon him, he’d known he would want to get it done right away. That zippered case he took from Quiros, it had felt so heavy in his hand, so heavy in his pocket. Like some superdense piece of lead being drawn toward the earth’s magnetic core, pulling him down with it. Every minute he held onto it, that downward pull grew harder to resist. Palardy needed to get the thing over with before he sank into the ground.
He’d arrived at work a little before seven o’clock, the usual time for countersurveillance personnel — their sweeps were always conducted before the corporate workday began so as not to interfere with business — and then had gone straight up to Gordian’s office suite, prepared with an excuse, should anybody be around. And it had turned out someone was. Though the boss almost never came in before seven-thirty, a quarter of eight, Palardy knew his administrative assistant, Norma, would often arrive much earlier to get a jump on her filing, scheduling, whatever other duties admins performed. And sure enough, she’d been at her desk in the outer office today when Palardy stepped out of the elevator.
Damn good thing he’d had that story ready.
“Morning, Norma,” he said, amazed that he could stand there and smile while feeling like he was about to plunge through a hole in the ground. “How goes?”
She’d looked up at him from her computer screen with mild surprise.
“Hi, Don,” she said. “Don’t tell me it was your twin brother I saw here yesterday with that fancy bag of tricks?”
“Nope, sorry to report there’s just one of me to go around,” he said.
“I’m crushed on behalf of all womankind,” she said with a mock frown. “So what brings you back to us?”
“Actually, I think I must’ve misplaced one of the fancy little gizmos that go in my bag when I made the rounds.” Palardy’s words seemed to reach his ears from a far corner of the room. “Maintenance tells me it isn’t in the lost and found, so I’m retracing my steps.”
Part of his mind had expected Norma to be suspicious. To sit there with her eyes boring into him, discerning something was amiss. Though the rest of him had known that was irrational. Known the reason he’d given for his encore appearance would sound perfectly ordinary and believable.
And, of course, it did. She had waved him toward the door to the inner office.
“Be my guest,” she said.
Now Palardy stood over Gordian’s big mahogany desk, his back to the door, and hurriedly put on the white cotton gloves he’d brought in his pocket. Just to the right of the blotter was a can of rolled wafers. A month or so before, Palardy had been running behind schedule with his sweep, and the boss had come in and waited at the desk as it was completed. Swirling a wafer in the cup of coffee he’d poured for himself, Gordian had complained in a kind of lighthearted way about having to swear off flavored coffee, and the two-per-day wafer stick allowance his wife had insisted upon instead.
Palardy had clearly remembered that instance in Quiros’s car the other night. And was remembering it again as he reached for the can of wafers, pulled off its plastic lid, and set it down on the desktop. The can was more than three-quarters empty. Maybe ten wafers left inside. He got the flat leather case out of his coverall pocket, unzipped it, produced the disposable syringe, and laid it beside the can lid. He’d already drawn the solution from the ampule and tossed it. This should take him sixty seconds, ninety max.
Get it over with, he thought. Get it done.
With his right hand, he fished one of the wafers out of the can. With his left he inserted the syringe’s needle deep into the opening at one end of the rolled wafer and depressed the plunger about a millimeter. Colorless, odorless, tasteless, the contents of the ampule would in-discernibly permeate the wafer’s cream-filled center.
Removing the needle, Palardy put the wafer back in the can, and injected a second, a third, and a fourth wafer.
That would be enough. Would have to be. There was more of the suspension in the hypo, but he couldn’t bear staying in the office any longer. His stomach felt like a brick of ice.
Palardy closed the can, returned the syringe to the case, and slipped the case back into his pocket.
He was taking off his gloves when he heard the doorknob turning behind him.
His heart tripped.
“Any luck?”
Norma’s voice. From the doorway.
It was the worst moment of his life to that point. Worse, even, than his last terrible meeting with Quiros. Balanced equally between guilt and terror, he went numb everywhere, the blood seeming to flush from his veins.
Somehow Palardy managed to stand perfectly still, managed to keep his body between his hands and the doorway until he’d finished peeling the gloves from his fingers and stuffed them into a patch pocket on his thigh.
He turned toward Norma. She was leaning into the room through the open door.