“I’ll just wait for you to get the truck fixed, then. I can help. I’m pretty good mechanically.”
“No. I want you out of here. They’ll probably be looking for three people. The sooner we’re two, the better. But one thing, son, and I’m not kidding about this. Don’t go anywhere near your apartment. That’s dead to you. Stay away. Do you understand? Because the odds are good they’ll be watching it. Waiting for you to make a rookie mistake. So don’t do it.”
“There’s nothing I can’t replace.”
“Exactly. Grab the cash and your passport, and either fly, or hitch, or take a bus to Tijuana. Once you’re out of the U.S. system, I’ll have a lot more confidence.”
“Fine. What else?”
“Buy a disposable cell phone. Don’t call anyone you know with it. Use it only to call ours.”
Drake’s eyes narrowed. “You still have one?”
“Not yet. But that’s going to be our first purchase while you’re still here, so we have each other’s numbers — two phones. Once you call us, toss it. Buy another phone somewhere else before you call. Give us that new phone number and lose the one you called on.”
“Okay.”
Jack studied his face. “When was your passport issued?”
“Two years ago.”
“So it won’t be expiring any time soon. That’s good.” Jack took another sip of coffee. “Now to timing. The sooner we get to South America, the more of a jump we get on the Russians. It’s only a matter of time until they figure out our end game. I’d propose hooking up in Brazil in five days. Think you can manage that?” Jack asked.
“I don’t see why not. I’ll call you when I’ve gotten my passport to confirm.”
Allie exchanged a glance with her father and pushed her coffee cup aside.
“Now let’s pay and get phones. Then you’re on the first bus to San Antonio after buying a jacket somewhere.” Jack waved for the check.
Drake caught Allie’s eye, then looked back at Jack.
“Where in Brazil are we going to rendezvous?”
Jack pulled his wallet from his back pocket, wincing slightly as he did so, the wound still tender.
“Rio.”
Chapter Seventeen
Drake verified his bank balance from a computer at one of the Internet cafés in the arrival area at San Jose International Airport and was relieved to see a deposit the day before for seventy thousand dollars. Which only left getting in and out of the bank without being killed to contend with. Sitting in the busy airport, that seemed easy; but the memory of his nocturnal gun battle was still fresh, as were Jack’s warnings.
He’d been forced to check his backpack due to the big knife in it, and waiting for the carousel to deliver the luggage had eaten a solid half hour of his time. He checked his wristwatch and did a fast calculation — it would take him forty-five minutes to make it to the bank if traffic cooperated, and the branch closed in two hours. That posed no problem, but the niggling detail he’d left out of his discussion with Jack did — he couldn’t get into his safe deposit box without the key, and the key was in his apartment.
Drake hadn’t remembered the key until he’d been buckled into his plane seat with the journal in hand, ready for several hours of in-depth study. With the combination of sleep deprivation and anxiety, he hadn’t been thinking clearly. Now it was too late. Before checking his bank balance he’d researched emergency passport issuance within twenty-four hours, but it wasn’t practical due to all the documentation required. He’d tried to figure a way around it, but nothing seemed reasonable, so now he would have to risk doing exactly what Jack had warned against — trying to sneak into his apartment.
The taxi line was short, and he was speeding north toward Menlo Park in less than five minutes. Rush hour hadn’t gotten ugly yet, and the cab took the car-pool lane once they were on the freeway, trimming valuable time off the trip.
He had the driver drop him off a block and a half away from his place. After shouldering his backpack, he donned his sunglasses and the baseball hat he’d bought at the airport and began strolling along the sidewalk to his complex. The units were built around a courtyard with a pool, with a driveway along the outside of the L-shaped building and parking for one car beneath each unit. His was a ground-floor apartment. He’d never met his upstairs neighbor, preferring to avoid contact with anyone in favor of privacy, and had actually dodged him several times by dawdling when he’d seen someone going upstairs in his section.
Drake’s nerves were close to the surface, tingling, but he sensed nothing out of the ordinary. The street was a busy one, and there were no suspicious black vans with antennas announcing surveillance, no sedans with crusty PIs sipping coffee. Nothing.
He passed the entry gate to the complex and kept walking, doing his best impersonation of an uninterested pedestrian. When he reached the driveway, after a quick scan of the surroundings, he ducked down the side of the building and moved along the empty stalls until he reached the stairway that led to his unit from the parking level. Drake paused at the bottom of the steps and listened for anything unusual, but only heard the peals of delighted children laughing from the pool area, accompanied by muted splashing.
As he mounted the stairs, his anxiety gave way to relief. There was nobody waiting for him, no watcher with a sniper rifle, no figures in the shadows. Just Jack’s overly cautious paranoia, even if well founded, and the contagious fear it bred.
At his door he stopped a final time, fished his key out, and ducked inside, feeling foolish for the elaborate approach and unnecessary subterfuge. He made a mental note to not allow Jack’s flights of fancy to color his view of the world too much, but still twisted the deadbolt closed behind him, just in case.
Across the courtyard on the other side of the centrally located pool, a new tenant raised his cell phone to his ear and made a call from his position on a poolside chaise longue, the temperature still moderate enough for sunbathing even in the fall.
“The target just appeared at his apartment. What action should I take?”
The voice on the phone cursed in Russian, and then after a hurried discussion with someone in the background, issued instructions. “It will take us at least six hours to get there. Do whatever is required to contain him. But do not kill him. Do you understand? He is of no use to us dead.”
“Da. You’re the boss,” Anatoly Radisov said, hanging up. As a member of the Russian mafia, he was more accustomed to shaking down shop owners in East Palo Alto or collecting gambling debts from yuppies with a taste for the wild side than conducting surveillance, but his latest duty had been the easiest cash he’d ever made. Two shifts, round the clock, five hundred dollars per man for a twelve-hour shift, and all he’d had to do was worry about getting fat from inactivity.
He stood and collected his towel before ambling back to his unit, newly rented by his organization from one of the numerous available in the complex, and hastily donned trousers and a shirt. He slipped his pistol into the pocket of his windbreaker and pulled it on, all the while watching the unit across the way through the window, and then made for his front door, an expression on his face that would have stopped traffic.
Drake quickly found the safe deposit box key and took the opportunity to pack some more clothes that would be appropriate for tropical climes, including a set of sturdy hiking boots and lightweight shirts. He had no idea whether he’d ever see any of his belongings again, but realized that the sum total of his life’s acquisitions hadn’t amounted to anything he would really miss, which made him both sad and relieved. As he was preparing to leave, his eye caught the red of his mountain bike, and he made an impulsive decision to ride it to the bank. He shouldered it, and with a final glance around the apartment, he opened the door and stepped out, pausing to make sure he relocked it before toting his bike and backpack down the stairs to the parking level.