DeMarco looked at Dillon for a long moment, then nodded his head.
“I think I’m starting to see the big picture now,” he said.
DeMarco was glad that Dillon’s people had been kind enough to move Perry Wallace’s old pickup from the parking garage at the Days Inn in Crystal City to the safe house in Maryland. Had they not done this, Perry’s truck would have been towed away. As things stood now, DeMarco was not looking forward to seeing Perry when he returned the truck, considering how Perry had most likely been grilled by Dillon’s agents.
DeMarco turned the key in the ignition, shifted the ancient transmission into first, and took off. He knew that far above his head a satellite was possibly watching him. And somewhere behind him was stone-faced Alice or somebody just like her. And Perry’s beat-up Mazda was most likely fitted with a tracking device, and he was almost certain he was wearing listening and tracking devices as well.
He felt like a dog infested with fleas.
He drove a little farther, thoughts buzzing inside his head.
Finally he said to himself, Fuck the big picture.
44
“Why’s he stopping, Alice?” Claire said.
“He’s at that liquor store, the one he went to after he met with Bradford at the Pentagon.”
“It would appear that Mr. DeMarco has a drinking problem,” Claire said.
“I don’t know,” Alice said. “He likes his booze, but he doesn’t look like an alky to me.”
Claire listened to DeMarco’s voice through the speaker in the operations room. Alice, parked half a block from the liquor store, was also listening to him via her headset.
Hey. How you doin’ today? How ’bout another bottle of Stoli?
Uh, yes, sir.
A couple of minutes passed then: That’ll be twenty-two fifty.
There you go. And thanks.
And thank you, sir.
“What was that ‘and thank you, sir’ stuff?” Claire said. “It sounded like DeMarco gave the clerk a big tip or something.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” Alice said.
“I mean that sounded funny. It sounded off,” Claire said.
“You want me to do something?”
“No. Just watch his ass. I don’t know why, but he’s making me nervous. Dillon had better be right about him.”
Fifteen minutes elapsed.
“He’s stopping again,” Alice said.
“Where’s he going this time?” Claire said.
“I don’t know yet,” Alice said. “He just parked the truck. Okay, he’s going into an auto parts store.”
“What the hell for?” Claire said.
Hey, I need some oil.
The oil’s right over there, sir.
Thanks.
Five minutes later.
That’ll be twenty-eight fifteen, sir.
“He’s heading back to the truck,” Alice said.
“Twenty-eight bucks for oil? Does that sound right to you?” Claire said.
“No,” Alice said, “but maybe he bought something else.”
“What’s he doing now?”
“He tossed a bag into the truck and now he’s adding oil to the engine. That truck’s a piece of shit. It leaked oil all over the garage at the safe house.”
Claire didn’t say anything.
“He’s taking off again,” Alice said.
Fifteen minutes later, Alice said, “He’s stopped again. He pulled into a loading zone in front of a Starbucks. I guess he wants a latte for the drive home.”
Two minutes later, Claire said, “Can you see him?”
“No.”
“Get in there, Alice, and see what he’s doing. The GPS shows he’s not moving, but we can’t hear him.”
It was five long minutes before Alice reported back.
“Claire, the Starbucks has a back exit that leads to a shopping mall, and I found his clothes in one of the men’s rooms. Everything except for his shoes. And there’s an empty plastic bag that used to hold a set of coveralls. It looks like he bought the coveralls at that auto shop.”
“Son of a bitch!” Claire said. “So we have no devices on him?”
“No,” Alice said. She hesitated, then said, “Claire, the Gallery Place metro station is one floor below the mall level. He could be on the metro.”
Claire called out to the techs in the operations room. “I want live feed from all of metro’s surveillance cameras. Look for a man in coveralls. Start at Gallery Place and expand out from there.”
“If he’s underground,” Alice said, “we can’t follow him by satellite until he surfaces again.”
“I know that,” Claire snapped. “What color were those coveralls?”
“The bag didn’t say. Just coveralls.”
Shit.
“He’s going to be hard to spot in the crowds coming off the subway,” Alice said.
“Goddammit, quit telling me things I already know!” Claire screamed.
Claire paced the op room, hovering over her technicians. Ten of them were now looking at surveillance camera images from metro stations trying to spot a man in coveralls. The problem was that from the Gallery Place metro station DeMarco could have gotten on either the Green, Red, or Yellow lines. And one station away was Metro Center, where he could switch to the Orange or Blue lines. He could be headed in any direction, to any place in the District, Virginia, or Maryland-and he could get off at any one of eighty-six metro stations.
But what the hell was he doing? Claire wondered. Where was he running to? Or who was he running to?
“Alice,” she said.
“Yes?”
“Go back to that liquor store and question the clerk. There was something funny about DeMarco going there.”
“Roger that,” Alice said.
Fifteen minutes later, Alice called back. “We got a problem,” she said. “The clerk at the liquor store is the son of a guy DeMarco works with at the Capitol. When DeMarco went to the store after seeing Bradford, he had the clerk copy the digital recordings to a flash drive.”
“Aw, Jesus. Did the clerk listen to the recordings?”
“No.”
“Do you believe him?”
“Yeah. He told me the truth.”
Claire wondered what Alice had done to the clerk.
“And today,” Claire said, “DeMarco went back to the store and got the copy, didn’t he?”
“Yes. He’s taking the recordings to somebody. Maybe you should focus on the metro stops near the Post, and I’ll head on over there now. But what do I do if I find him?”
“Tackle him. Taser him. Hit him with your damn car. I don’t care. Just get that flash drive.”
DeMarco waited as the train approached the next station. He’d switched trains a couple of times to see if he could spot anyone following him, and he thought his tail was clear. They couldn’t hear him and they couldn’t see him underground with their damn satellites, but he bet they could monitor the surveillance cameras in the stations. Nothing he could do about that.
The station he wanted was coming up next, and once he left the station it was gonna be a foot race.
The metro driver announced the next stop: Union Station.
He put the Nationals baseball cap on his head. He’d paid a kid, one of the metro riders, thirty bucks for the cap. Goddamn thief. The kid could tell he was desperate for the cap.
The train pulled into Union Station. He walked calmly toward the exit, keeping his head down, the bill of the ball cap-he hoped-hiding his face.
“Claire,” a tech said, “I think I’ve got him.”
Claire ran over to the tech’s monitor. “Where is he?”
“You see that guy?” the tech said. “Coveralls. Ball cap.”
“Blow up the picture,” Claire said.
The technician did. Claire couldn’t see the man’s entire face because of the bill of the cap, but she could see his chin. Yeah, that was DeMarco’s stubborn chin.
“That’s him,” she said. “Where is he?”
“Union Station.”