“Roger that.”
“You’re armed?”
Ben nodded. “Same Glock you set me up with when I was Dan Froomkin, FBI. It was on the jet where I left it.”
“Good. We can’t have Larison thinking we’re fucking with him again. The connection you uncovered in Costa Rica gives us a lot of leverage, and that’s important, that’s our insurance that if we let him walk away happy, he won’t release the tapes. But no sense antagonizing him, either. If another team from Blackwater shows up and tries to take him again, he might just decide the hell with it, we’re never going to give him what he wants, he might as well just release the tapes and the hell with the rest. We don’t want him in that frame of mind.”
His phone buzzed. He glanced down, saw the caller’s number was blocked. He looked at Hort.
Hort said, “Anyone else have this number?”
“No. Just you, as far as I know.”
“It’s him, then. Calling early again to keep us jumping. Go ahead.”
Ben accepted the call. “Hello.”
“Is this the courier?”
The same low, raspy voice Ben had heard on the conference call. The same confident tone. It was him. Larison.
Ben looked at Hort and nodded. “Yes.” After all the circling around, the listening in on other people’s calls, it was strangely satisfying to be engaging Larison directly.
“You’re going to start off by driving.”
“I thought I was flying somewhere.”
“Maybe you are. But first, you’re going to drive. Do you have a navigation system?”
“On my phone.”
“Good. Head west on Interstate 66. I’ll call you again in a little while and tell you what to do next. Now, listen. I’m going to be watching you. I might be tailing you, I might be having you drive past static checkpoints. I might have video installed on the route to monitor you that way. If you’re being followed, if you’re not alone, I’ll put a bullet in your brain and pick up the diamonds that way. Understood?”
The threat made Ben want to answer in kind, but he caught the reaction and suppressed it. “Understood.”
The line went dead. Ben repeated the conversation for Hort.
“Shit,” Hort said. “Should have seen that coming. We don’t have a car ready. All right, take mine. The driver’s outside.”
They left the station and walked over to a dark gray Crown Victoria parked at the curb. Hort told the driver, a crew-cut Asian too young to be part of the unit, that they’d be taking the Metro. The guy got out and Ben got in. He put the backpack on the floor of the passenger side and made sure the door was locked.
Hort held open the driver-side door and leaned in. “Remember,” he said. “It’s just you. And be damned careful with Larison. He killed twelve operators in Costa Rica. One more isn’t going to make a difference to him.”
35. Mirror
Ben slipped in the Bluetooth earpiece, opened the iPhone navigation function, and followed Route 1 north to I-66. He checked his mirrors, but in the late afternoon rush hour traffic, there was no way to spot surveillance. It was entirely possible Larison could have ghosted up behind or alongside him and snuck a peek in the car. But Ben had a feeling he hadn’t. No, if Ben had been Larison, he’d have planned a route involving increasingly quiet streets and residential neighborhoods with multiple points of ingress and egress-the kind of route that reveals a tail by winnowing him out of traffic and forcing him to stay close-and set up there. A standard surveillance detection route, in fact, the only difference being that this time, the person trying to spot the tail would be not the driver, but someone running countersurveillance from a static location.
On the other hand, he’d thought he knew what Larison would do in Los Yoses. And hadn’t even been close.
The iPhone buzzed. Ben accepted the call through the earpiece. “Yeah.”
“Go north on Glebe Road. Then west on Sixteenth Street North, past the hospital. Then right on George Mason.”
Ben input George Mason into the phone. A map came up. It was what he expected: the street cut through a residential area and offered multiple outlets leading to a half dozen major arteries. If someone were following him, they’d have to reveal themselves there. Probably Larison was set up nearby, watching.
“I’m turning onto Glebe now.”
“Just keep going.”
Several cars took the exit behind him. He marked the makes and colors as he drove past several blocks of brick and stone houses and well-kept lawns. The hospital came up on his right, multiple buildings along an entire block, surrounded by parking lots. He made a right on George Mason and continued past the west side of the hospital. Two of the cars that had followed him off the highway turned with him-a black Cadillac and a blue Toyota behind it. Nothing definitive-Glebe and George Mason were both busy streets, and it would have been surprising if no one else had turned off onto them from 66. As for Larison, he could have been watching from anywhere inside. Or from one of the cars parked along the street. Or from behind a tree. There was no way to know.
“Okay, I’m on George Mason now.”
“Make a left on Twentieth Street. Then zigzag over to Nineteenth. Left, right, left, right.”
“Doing it now.”
The Cadillac continued straight on George Mason. The Toyota made a left behind Ben. Still nothing definitive-the western sun was reflecting off the Toyota’s window and Ben couldn’t see inside, but someone who lived in this neighborhood might have followed the same route. Still, suspicious enough to warrant some simple countermeasures.
“Got a possible problem here,” Ben said. “I’m alone, per your instructions. But if that’s not you in the blue Toyota, I think someone’s following me.”
“It’s not me.”
“Okay, I’ll go around the block and see what he does.”
Ben made a right on Greenbrier, then a right on Patrick Henry. The Toyota stayed with him. He could make out a driver and a passenger, both in shades. He made a right again, back onto George Mason. The Toyota stayed with him.
“Okay, it’s official,” he said. “The blue Toyota is a tail. Looks like two men in the car. I’m telling you so you’ll know I didn’t put them there. Also, from the route I just drove, they know I’m aware of them now.”
“How did they follow you?”
Ben wished he knew. He thought of Hort again, but it just didn’t make sense. A tracking device in the car, then? Satellites? And who were the guys behind him, anyway? Blackwater? Ground Branch?
“I have no idea,” he said. “I’m just the courier. I was told to follow your instructions and that’s what I’m doing.”
There was a pause. Larison said, “Is your navigation system up?”
“Yes.”
“Head west again. You see the high school at Washington Boulevard and McKinley?”
Ben dragged the phone’s touch screen to the right. “I see it.”
“The parking lot behind it?”
“Yes.”
“Turn into the parking lot from Madison and circle around it.”
“All right.”
Ben drove and the Toyota stayed with him. Even if he’d known who was behind him, and he didn’t, he wouldn’t have liked the idea of the parking lot. There was no way to know where Larison might be waiting inside or along the way, and the man seemed to have a penchant for high-caliber, armor-piercing ammunition. Overall, though, Ben judged it unlikely that Larison would try to greet him with a bullet. He’d want to first confirm that the courier actually had the diamonds. It was post-confirmation when things were maximally likely to become unpleasant.
As for the occupants of the Toyota, of course, that was a little harder to say. He patted the Glock in the shoulder holster and drove.