“You don’t need me there to lobby London. Let’s face it, I’d just make things worse. So I’m heading out to Gary, Indiana.”
“You are? Why? It’s no place for sightseeing, you know.”
“We need proper intelligence, if we’re going to get this wrapped up. The guy from the suite gave me everything he had, but that wasn’t a great deal. Not much more than how to get there and sketchy details of the outside of the building where they’re holding McIntyre. We need to know how to get in, for a start.”
“David, you shouldn’t be doing this on your own. It’s too dangerous.”
“I’ll just need my Beretta back, and I’ll be out of your hair.”
Fothergill took hold of the steering wheel, then let go again and sighed.
“All right, you stubborn mule,” he said. “I’ll give you your gun. Just don’t ask me to drive you all the way out there.”
“I won’t,” I said. “You’re more use sitting on the phone, rounding up reinforcements.”
The only other thing I wanted Fothergill’s help with before he dropped me off was to pull strings at the motor pool. The disguised Crown Vic was unbeatable in Chicago, but as Fothergill had pointed out, it was no use in other states. I didn’t want to be hanging around in Indiana using a taxi with Illinois plates any more than he had. Little details like that stand out a mile to people who are naturally suspicious. Or who are trained to look for them. The British Army found that out the hard way, in Northern Ireland. And because I’d likely be spending plenty of time in the car, I wanted something that would give me a high degree of cover. Panel trucks are too obvious. So are minivans, especially when they have tinted windows. I needed something different. Something we’d developed with this particular kind of job in mind. A CURVE—a Covert Urban Reconnaissance VEhicle. Navy engineers take a station wagon—pretty much any sort you like, as long as it’s large enough—and conceal a ventilated compartment under a false tonneau cover where the luggage area would usually be. Snipers have their own version where the rear license plate folds down, giving them an aperture to fire through. With ours, the tailgate is made from a special type of plastic. It acts as a one-way mirror so that we can see out across the full width of the car. Some of the newer ones have built-in cameras for recording, or enabling remote surveillance. But whether video equipment is fitted or not, CURVEs are hard to get hold of. Most consulates only have one. And because they’re converted to local specifications, the mechanics tend to be a little touchy about anyone using them.
Fothergill came up trumps, and a disgruntled consulate technical officer met me outside the Tribune Tower to hand over the car. It was a modified Chrysler 300C with hemi badges, black metallic paint, and huge chrome wheels. Not the most discreet vehicle I’d ever seen, but he assured me it would blend in, where I was going. It had taken him an hour and a half to get there, which meant I’d had a chance to eat and stock up on Starbucks stakeout specials—coffee blended strong and served in a small cup. That was essential if I was going to be up all night and still be comfortable. Not even CURVEs have bathrooms.
The built-in satellite navigation guided me as if I were heading to Midway Airport for the third time in three days. Then it changed its mind and sent me toward the Indiana Skyway instead. That sounded exciting, but it turned out to just be a large bridge that led to another freeway. The road itself was completely ordinary, but the view to the left was like a scene from some industrialized version of hell. I passed major railroad junctions. A nuclear power station. Chemical works, with miles of complex elevated pipe work spewing out dense clouds of evil-looking steam. Refineries, shooting jets of burning gas high into the darkening sky. There was no respite, anywhere. Any one of the places could trigger a major environmental catastrophe. Or provide the ingredients for one to be created somewhere else. It was a dirty-bomber’s paradise. And somewhere in the middle of it I had to find a bunch of murderous kidnappers armed with biological weapons. I just hoped London’s reluctance to involve the U.S. authorities wouldn’t end up biting thousands of people in the backside.
I came to the junction the guy from the Vivaldi Suite had described after forty minutes, just as he’d told me to expect. The off-ramp dropped down sharply to the right, then swung around and doubled back under the highway. I followed it through to the other side and continued toward a line of warehouses. They were a quarter of a mile away, built of brick, and as I drew nearer I could see they were in bad shape. Most of their windows were broken and large patches of roof tiles were missing. Their perimeter fences were swathed with razor wire, stranding the half-dozen burned-out vehicles that had been left behind on the wrong side.
A patch of waste ground two hundred feet wide separated the derelict buildings from a line of newer ones that were still in use. Small manufacturing units I’d say, judging by the shape and the materials used to construct them. But I wasn’t too interested in what they made. Just that people were there. People with cars I could park next to. Because the place I needed to watch was on the next street.
I wanted to get a sense of the place before stopping the car, but couldn’t risk more than one drive-by. Even if the man and woman who’d left the Commissariat together were there without reinforcements, they’d be insane not to keep a lookout. And there probably would be more of them to contend with, somewhere inside. Fortunately, though, the street was well lit. That made the building easy to observe. It was a hundred and twenty yards long. The roof was a single, continuous span, but below that the structure was divided into two sections. The left-hand part, two-thirds of the total width, was built of unfinished cinder block. There was a tall roll-up door at each end, big enough for medium-sized trucks to drive through. The right-hand section was made of brick. It had two stories, with evenly spaced, barred windows and a dark green personnel door in the center. The side walls at both ends were blank. The rear was completely obscured by a twenty-foot fence, topped with razor wire. There was no way to determine the number of inhabitants. But on a positive note—no sign of surveillance cameras, either.
I looped around past the disused warehouses, found my way back to the line of factories, and began looking for a suitable place to position the car. Several spaces were available on the street side of the parking lot, so I picked one at the far end, next to a pair of old, rusting flatbed trucks. It was pushing 10:00 P.M.—a little late for making deliveries—and I figured there was a good chance they’d be there for the rest of the night. That would be useful. A vehicle is always less conspicuous when it’s not on its own. That just left me with the problem of sliding into the back without being spotted. Normally, you’d stop a couple of miles from your target, climb in through the tailgate, and have someone else drive you the rest of the way. I didn’t have that luxury, so I had to switch to plan B: recline my seat as far as it would go, drop the backseat to leave a narrow triangle of space, and worm my way through into the rear compartment.
The amount of space in the observation area was limited, but if you were on your own, and you didn’t wriggle around too much, it was tolerably comfortable. The floor was well padded, the side walls were cushioned, and the full-width view from the bottom of the tailgate took away any sense of confinement. And if I hadn’t been alone—if I’d been with, say, Tanya—being confined could even have been a major benefit. But I knew that could never happen, now, so I pushed the thought aside and tuned back to the job in hand.
The first area to focus on was the space surrounding the building. I wanted to be sure no one unfriendly was on the loose, in a position to spot me. Once I was satisfied I unclipped the binoculars from their mounting in the equipment bin and studied the front of the place in more detail. That revealed nothing new or significant, so I settled down into the main grind of the surveillance. Waiting for someone to move. In, or out. I needed a picture of how many people I was contending with. What kind of vehicles they used. What kind of weapons they carried. What kind of routine they followed on entry and exit. And what kind of loopholes they’d left for me to exploit.