Downtown
Serge and Coleman continued west on Flagler.
It was slow going from perpetual stops; Ted Savage constantly twirled on the sidewalk and crisscrossed the street. Everywhere he looked, every face, every vehicle, every office window, suspicion lurked. That man at the cash machine? The woman selling roses on the corner? The mother with the baby stroller? Two teenage boys in white T-shirts running past him with a purse? The screaming restaurant owner chasing them? That plump guy a block back pointing at Ted…
“Put your arm down!” Serge snapped at Coleman. “He’ll see you pointing.”
“He started running.”
“He saw you. Move!”
Coleman was soon a distant second to Serge. Two streets later, he caught up and fell back panting against a sandwich shop window. “Why are you stopping?”
Serge fed quarters in a slot. “To buy newspapers.”
“But he’s getting away.”
“No, he’s taking the stairs to the Metro Mover. The last one just left, so we have time.”
“To read newspapers?”
“Not read.” Serge let the spring door on the box slam shut. “We’ve been spotted, which means we need to take surveillance to the next level. We’re going to employ one of the most sophisticated Cold War techniques…”
Serge explained the procedure as they climbed the public transit platform and reached the top just as another automated monorail car slid up on the tracks.
Ted was too focused on getting inside the sanctuary of the car to notice anyone else. He waited at the front of the platform, inches from the closed doors- “Come onnnnnnn!” — until they hissed open. Ted jumped into the futuristic pod, plopped down on a seat, and let his head fall back with a big exhale.
Others stepped in from the platform and filled the rest of the car. Business commuters, students, tourists, street urchins, fishermen. The car lurched, then quietly glided out of the station on twin elevated rails.
Multilingual conversations.
The tram swung south, sailing through an architecturally funky square cut in the middle of a condo tower.
“I took too many pills,” said Coleman. “We just went through a building.”
“That was real.” Serge worked with his newspaper. “Just don’t forget our stealth technique.”
The route curved around Bayfront and north by Miami-Dade College. Stop after stop, people on and off. A black SUV following as best it could from streets below. Ted pulled another miniature from his pocket, waiting to use the distraction of the upcoming stop at Freedom Tower Station. He checked oncoming passengers and those already seated, then sucked the tiny bottle in his fist. Tension sheeted off Ted as his eyes wandered until they reached the bench seat at the opposite end of the car, where a couple of riders sat obscured by the newspapers they were holding up.
Ted suddenly choked on saliva and pounded his chest.
Staring back at him were two sets of eyes, each peering through a pair of circles cut in the newspapers. Ted jumped to his feet and ran to the front doors, trying to pry them open before the car had come to a stop at the next platform.
“He’s on the move again,” said Serge.
Newspapers flew. A race down the station stairs.
“Is this the chase part?” asked Coleman.
They ran diagonally through honking traffic on Biscayne. Under the overpass with I-395. Scrambling up the embankment, Serge closing in, Savage perpetually glancing over his shoulder. “Who are you guys?”
“Pay no attention to us,” yelled Serge. “Just keep doing what you’re doing.”
“Get away from me!”
Serge reached the top of the overpass. “I remember now!” He stopped and cupped hands to his mouth.
A chain-link retaining fence ran along the highway. Savage leaped up onto it like a house cat hearing a garbage disposal.
From the rear. “Ted!.. Ted Savage!”
Chapter Nineteen
Interstate 395
“Leave me alone!” yelled Savage, clinging to the highway fence.
“Ted!” shouted Serge. “I’m on your side!”
“Go away!” Ted yelled back. “You’re… Wait, how do you know my name?”
“I’m a big fan.”
“Bullshit! You’re with the Company!” His fingertips went red to purple. “I know how this ends. You’re walking along on a spring day, and a car pulls up. Maybe it’s someone you know, someone you trust, and they ask if you want a ride…”
“This ain’t that movie, Ted. Come on down.” Serge took a step back to defuse the standoff. “You’ve been through a lot.”
Coleman struggled up the rest of the embankment and lay down in the dirt. “I don’t like the chase part.”
Ted really wasn’t looking forward to climbing the fence. He dropped and fell to his knees. Serge helped him up.
“Thanks,” said Savage. “So if you’re not in the trade, how do you know my name?”
“I didn’t say I wasn’t in the trade, just not with the Company.”
“Then who are you?”
Serge clicked the heels of his sneakers together and gave a quick salute. “Serge A. Storms, patriot-in-waiting.”
Coleman pushed himself up from the ground and walked toward Ted. “You need to mellow out. I have some coke.”
“You do?”
Coleman poured a generous bump on the back of his hand and Savage vacuumed. He snorted deep with zooming eyes.
“Dammit.” Serge steadied Ted. “He was spastic enough before.”
“It’s what he needed,” said Coleman. “I know this territory.”
Ted nodded. “Right, Miami. Should have known. World capital of ex-spook, paramilitary, soldier-of-fortune, dummy-front-corporation, back-channel, plausible-deniability, invisible-ink, yabba-dabba-doo…”
Serge smiled patiently. “Why don’t I buy you a drink and bring you back down?”
“Now you’re talking!”
“Me, too?” asked Coleman.
Serge seized his collar. “No more rocket dust for him.”
“But he likes it.”
“That’s the problem.” Serge straightened out his pal’s shirt. “I’ve got a rare chance to pick the brain of a famous spy, and I can’t have you turning it to hamburger.”
Ted walked over. “So where are we going?”
“I know the perfect place.” Serge led them back to Biscayne Boulevard and hailed a cab. “Just a mile or so down the road, but another world away.”
“Where?” asked Ted.
“Churchill’s,” said Serge. “Heard of it?”
“Heard of it? I could have bought the place with my tabs.”
A taxi pulled over.
“Churchill’s?” said Coleman. “What’s that?”
Serge and Ted looked at each other and laughed as they all got in.
The pastel Paradise taxi sped north. A small plastic palm tree stood on the roof. The driver jabbered nonstop on a cell phone in Swahili. A pine-tree air freshener on the rearview battled the jerk-chicken upholstery. The radio on “Classic Mo-Bastic Reggae! 107.5 FM, Miami!”
“So where do you know me from?” asked Ted.
“The news. I watch it all the time. Even when I don’t watch it. I leave CNN on at night for white noise, but you know how you hear something in your sleep and it infiltrates your dream? And then Larry King is chasing me through a misty forest while Tori Spelling reveals all. ” Serge shook with the willies. “I can’t leave it on anymore. Anyway, that’s when I heard about your case. How you were ‘outed.’ ”
“They betrayed me.”
Coleman raised his hand. “I don’t know what’s going on again.”
“You gave them your whole life,” said Serge.
They turned left off Biscayne onto Fifty-fourth. Jimmy Cliff from the radio:
“… The harder they come…”
“Then they got that TV prick to disclose my classified status.”
“… The harder they fall…”
Serge swayed to the music. “You’re with friends now.”
“… One and all…”
“Serge.” Coleman nervously tapped his shoulder. “Where are we?”
“Little Haiti. We’re putting another distinct Miami district into play.” Serge leaned over the front seat and handed the hack a twenty. “Let us out here.”