An irrational impulse to start grabbing people and shaking them, one by one, and shouting, "Why are you doing this to me!" washed over him and almost immediately passed. That would be really stupid. Get him caught right now, probably. A bad idea. Yet at the same time, the urge to confront the person who was doing this to him, just by looking at him or her, would not go away.
Crazy idea.
Nonetheless, for lack of anything better to do, in the face of that DELAYED sign and the thought of his last few hours of freedom, Burt started to do it. He decided that he was not going to be obvious about it. But he was going to look every single passenger on this flight in the eye, and let them know that he knew what they were doing, what was going to happen to him. One of them would have to get the message. If the other two hundred or however many of them thought he was a little crazy, so be it. But he was going to have this last small satisfaction.
Burt started moving gently around the departure lounge with the overnight bag slung nonchalantly over his shoulder, positioning himself in one spot or another, and looking at people, systematically, starting near the door through which they would all board their plane, and working his way toward the door through which people entered from the main concourse. That was so he would be able to look at all the people inside, and when he'd looked into the eyes of every one of them, he could do the last ones in by standing at the entry door as they came in.
Burt made a game of it, working not to be obvious about it. Mostly people looked at him, bored, and let their eyes drift away. A few stared back, then lost interest. It went on that way for about fifteen minutes, as Burt moved as unobtrusively as he could from one spot to another, meeting the eyes of his fellow passengers, studying them all for signs that this person was the one who was going to betray him.
And then, maybe a hundred and fifty people along, he noticed something odd. There was a man in a long leather trench coat, a piece of clothing that Burt immediately envied, so that his glance at the man lasted longer than it might have otherwise. But as the man turned, he avoided Burt's eyes. And as Burt tried to make eye contact with him again, not being obvious about it, but just persisting, it slowly became obvious to Burt that this man would not meet his eyes under any circumstances. He would not even look in Burt's general direction.
It got to be more than a coincidence, as Burt casually drifted around the lounge, positioning himself here and there, and watched what happened. There was just no way to get the man to look at him at all. No matter where Burt might stand, the man in the brown leather trench coat, the man carrying the brown leather briefcase, the dark-haired man with a very ordinary face, simply was always looking somewhere else. Trying to get this guy to see him was like trying to look at the back of your own head without a mirror.
The uncertainty started to become certainty, and the certainty started to become triumph. That's him, Burt thought. This is the one. No one else. Somehow he just knew he was right.
The certainty made him almost giddy with relief. All right, he thought to himself, severely. It was almost his father's tone of voice, but newly made his own. Let's think this through. Don't get all excited too soon. Fine. So this is the guy. What are you going to do about it?
Burt withdrew behind a nearby pillar and looked at the man, while trying to seem as if he had his attention bent elsewhere. The guy had a briefcase, pretty much like anybody else's. Fine, but there could be all kinds of things inside a case like that. Burt thought of the diamond he had seen being weighed for that young guy back at the stall. That gem alone could have been worth tens of thousands of dollars. Five or six of those, tucked away in a briefcase full of important-looking papers, or hidden in some part of the briefcase less obvious-that could be very, very serious money.
But whatever he was carrying, he wanted nothing to do with Burt. That was all that mattered. Now all Burt had to do was figure out what to do with the information
"Figuring out" isn't your strongest suit, my boy, he heard that old familiar voice saying, amused, triumphant. Burt frowned. We911 see about that…
Chapter 10
Shortly thereafter, Megan flagged her system as "busy" to all callers and got ready to lie in wait. It had taken some doing. "This is my operation," she said. "It's my friend. I want to be in at the end!"
"There's nothing for you to do, Megan," Winters had said. "Leif is going to handle it."
"If I don't get to watch it go down," Megan said, "I'm going to-" Then she stopped, for she didn't know what she was "going to." And it was foolish to try to threaten this man. For one thing, she intended to be working with him some day, and for another, it made her sound juvenile.
Megan shut up and just looked at him.
Winters just looked back for a moment. "Oh, all right," he said at last. "There's a place you can sit and watch… with a few hundred other people."
"A few hundred?
"This case calls for an unusual amount of oversight/' Winters said. "As you'll see. Come on, I'll drop you where you need to be. Once you're put there, stay put! I'll be off making sure the surveillance is all in the right places, with the supervisory personnel from Breathing Space and the other jurisdictions all in place. And, by God, after all this they'd better be-"
Megan went with him, her heart racing.
Leif was sitting in the plaza in the same spot he had been in yesterday, drinking an orange juice and twitching. And without any particular fanfare, the man came walking across the sunny plaza, past the big bear sculpted out of blond wood that stood down at that end of the plaza, and stepped into the shade of the umbrella that sheltered Leif's table. Vaud just stood there for a moment, looking down at him thoughtfully. Then, "Prompt," he said "This is good to see. Will you follow me?"
He headed toward the restaurant, as he had done before. Leif got up, leaving his drink, and followed him. A moment later they were in the swirling "default blue" space again. Once again there was a chair set on one side of the table, but this time there were three chairs set on the other side. Vaud sat down in one. A moment later a couple of other men entered the space as Leif and Vaud had, and seated themselves.
"My associates," Vaud said. "Mr. Tessin, Mr. Grau."
They didn't give Leif the slightest sign of personal acknowledgement. They simply looked him over as if he was merchandise. One of them was a small man, round, balding a little on top, dressed in a more modern business suit than Vaud's; he had extremely blue eyes, and a face that had a fair number of smile lines in it, none of which were being used at the moment. The other man, tall and slender, seemed somehow to have his face in shadow even though the lighting in here was even enough. Part of his seeming, Leif thought. This gave him the shivers, for some reason. There was no reason the man couldn't have manifested a face that was normal, but just not his… That's the point, then. It's meant to give me the shivers. Very cute.
"I would like to pick up where we left off yesterday," said Mr. Vaud, looking at the man whose face was in shadow. "There was some question about fluency."
"Whose, mineV Leif said, genuinely outraged.
"Who else's?" said the slender man, Mr. Grau, in Moscow-accented Russian. "I am interested in your technical vocabulary."
Why, for courier work? Leif thought instantly… Unless this isn't about courier work at all, now.
They suspect something. They think maybe I'm a plant. The idea assaulted him, all at once, and suddenly simply seemed true.
Great. Which way do I play this?
Leif's mind raced. There were two possibilities. Hide some of his own acuity, make it seem like he wasn't so strong on the tech side. Or let it shine-for technical vocabulary in all his "primary" languages was a matter of pride for Leif. No way to tell which will work better… not by myself not right this minute. Let it shine.