The road was easy. It was dusty, and upon it, the passages of somebody in a vehicle or on foot were simple to spot, no problem. Somebody looking to hide his trail could brush the tracks away with little effort, but because the dust was so fine, it showed every tiny detail, and erasing something itself left a sign that was more interesting than the tracks. A man trying to avoid pursuit could change his mode of transportation, from a car to a bike to a pogo stick; he could change his shoes, and with a little bit of misdirection, lose a pursuer who was following combat boots when they turned into running shoes. But wiping away all tracks? That might seem smart on first thought, but really wasn’t if you knew anything about how to follow a trail.
Sometimes, as Sherlock Holmes was wont to say, it was the absence of the dog barking in the night that was important.
The lack of impressions on a dirt road were more telling than any bootprint.
Carpet-walkers would sometimes glue carpet to the bottoms of their shoes, so as not to leave impressions, but that worked on sand or rocky soil, not on a red-dirt road with baby-powder-fine dust; instead, it would leave distinct patches of relatively smooth tracks. And somebody dragging a branch or burlap sack behind them would likewise wipe out the tracks, but leave drag lines that would last through a dry and moderately windy day, even though rain would eventually patter them down.
No, a smart runner would get off the road entirely, head for the rocks or streams where any tracks either wouldn’t show, or would be swirled away in a few minutes or even seconds. And he would double-back, angle off in false starts, and head in the wrong direction long enough to gull a so-so tracker before he circled around for his true destination.
But if somebody was taking only the barest precautions, and they didn’t really think they were going to be noticed or tailed, they weren’t likely to be as cautious. You didn’t go into full alert and stealth mode every time you went out to collect the mail from your box, or the paper from your front lawn — what was the point?
Keller wore carpet shoes, and for most people, most of the time, his basic moves would have done the job. Nobody driving along the road would notice any tracks. Anybody walking but not looking wouldn’t notice the smooth patches. Even somebody looking for tracks of a particular kind of shoe would probably miss ’em. But Smokin’ Jay Gridley wasn’t just anybody, was he?
It was a nice day for a walk. Greenery everywhere, flowers in bloom, the smell of pollen and dust in the summery, early evening air…
Ahead, on the right, was a weathered wooden building. It had a caduceus painted on the side, the winged staff with two snakes twined around it, indicating a doctor’s office, the paint weather-worn and faded from black to a light gray. Yes, this must be the place.
Jay walked to the front door. The office was closed for the day, and the door was locked, but the latch was an old-style spring lock, and it took all of ten seconds for Jay to open it with a skeleton key he pulled from his pocket.
It was dark and quiet inside. Jay looked around, didn’t see any alarms. He flipped a light switch up. There was a four-drawer steel file cabinet full of patient files next to a big wooden desk. The drawers were locked, but he opened them with a couple of bent paper clips. So easy when you knew how.
He found the file quickly enough, too. Keller hadn’t even bothered to use a phony name, and had paid for the office visit and medication with his corporate credit card — which is how Jay had tracked him here so quickly.
He read the report. “Fell down stairs” was what had been written on the new patient form. The physical examination showed multiple contusions and abrasions, no broken bones or torn ligaments. In one corner, in tiny, neat lettering was a note: “Altercation c jealous boyfriend over woman,” it said. The letter “c” had a line over it, and the words were underlined twice. Apparently the good doctor, one Willem Konig, M.D., had gotten a different cause for the injuries than had his receptionist.
So. Whaddya know. Keller had gotten his butt kicked for fooling around with somebody else’s girlfriend. That was interesting. Keller had never been a ladies’ man in school, but you never could tell. Jay himself hadn’t been that much of a lover back then, either. Things changed.
He put the report back into the drawer, closed and re-locked it, looked out the window to make sure nobody was around, then exited the building, locking it behind him. Technically, he was bending the law here. While he had a legal warrant to do an electronic search, that permission only extended to the U.S. borders. While Net Force did have reciprocity agreements with dozens of countries, including Germany, and the U.S. federal warrant would eventually have gotten a counterpart here, he didn’t have time to wait. He wasn’t planning to use this information in court, so it didn’t have to have all the i’s dotted and the t’s crossed, as long as it helped him find his quarry.
Outside, behind the doctor’s office, was a small hill. Jay climbed to the top and looked around. Krumme Lake was to the west, a short distance away, on the edge of the Berlin Forest. The Grunewald area was right over there. There were roads, a train track, and what was still West Berlin, deep in the eastern heart of a divided Germany, that wouldn’t be reunited for decades. The Cold War was still cranking up in this era.
So, Keller was in Germany, or at least he had been yesterday, and a routine request from State to the German government for any use of Keller’s U.S. passport had come back negative, so if he was gone, he must have done it illegally. Given his current status, Jay couldn’t say Keller wouldn’t do that, but since he didn’t know anybody was looking for him, there wouldn’t be any compelling reason for him to sneak out of the country.
Why Germany? Who was the jealous boyfriend who must live here who clobbered Keller? Where had he gone?
That was the problem with searching for information. Sometimes you came up with more questions than answers…
“Hold on a second,” Jay said aloud. Wasn’t there something else about Germany he had come across recently? Something about a barge…? No, that was Japan. It was a train. CyberNation ran a tourist train or somesuch here. And there were the iron horse’s tracks, right there. Maybe it was a sign.
And maybe not. But it gave him something he could check. Train schedules were public information. Find all those that had passed on this track down there for the last couple of days, run them down, find out where they went. Find out if the one owned by CyberNation was around. If it was, that would certainly be a big coincidence, wouldn’t it? And a great place to go and look…
31
Toni played the tourist, mindful of what she had come to the ship to do. She carried a cheap electronic camera, and she took pictures of her room, the exterior decks, the swimming pool, and the helicopter barge. She bought a gambling credit card for two hundred dollars and played the slot machines. She lost eighty dollars over a period of four hours, then hit a three-cherry payout for a hundred dollars. She had lunch in one of the cafeterias, a club sandwich and iced tea, with a slice of very good banana cream pie for dessert, and that cost her half what it would in most D.C. restaurants.
In the early afternoon, she slathered herself with coconut-scented sunblock and lay in one of the deck chairs near the swimming pool. It was hot, but a nice breeze off the water kept things bearable.
A steward came by and asked her if she wanted a drink. She ordered a margarita, and when it came, it looked like a big green snow cone.
She went to her cabin, showered, put on shorts and a T-shirt, then took her camera to the ship’s stern, where passengers tossed bits of food to a flock of hovering sea-gulls. She took pictures of the birds, and more views of the ship from that angle.