“Tell them not to stop either one,” Carpenter said. “I want to bag Cabot and find out from him who his buyer is.”
“Righto.”
“Well,” Carpenter said, “we’ve nothing to do until the end of the workday, when our two subjects will leave the building. We might as well order some lunch.” She went to a desk and found a room-service menu.
By half-past five, they were ready for some action. Stone was reading an elderly copy of Country Life, and Dino was in one of the bedrooms, glued to a cricket match. Carpenter merely paced.
“We’ve got movement,” Plumber said. It was one minute past five-thirty, and people were streaming out of the Eastover building.
“Typical civil servants,” Carpenter said. “Leaving on the stroke of quitting time.”
“We can’t identify individuals by satellite, but look, A’s car is on the move. There—so is B’s.” The cars pulled out of the carpark and turned in opposite directions.
A cellphone rang, and Plumber answered it. “Righto,” he said, then hung up. “We’ve got word from internal security that both subjects have left the building.”
“Were they carrying anything?” Carpenter asked.
“A wore a loose raincoat, and B had a bakery box, looked like a cake.”
“Did they search them on the way out?”
“I asked them not to, as per your instructions.”
Carpenter watched the screen as it divided in two, each displaying a car with a letter on top.
Five minutes passed. “They’re home,” Plumber said. “Both cars are garaged. The houses are virtually identical.”
“Government-issue,” Carpenter said.
“Right, but they’re on opposite sides of the village; both back up onto Salisbury Plain.”
“What now?” Stone asked.
“We wait,” Carpenter replied.
They did not have long to wait. “We’ve got movement on A, Morgan,” Plumber said. “He’s backed his car out of the garage, now he’s loading something, can’t tell what.”
Everybody gathered around the screen to see the man putting several items into the back of what seemed like a small station wagon.
“What kind of car is that?” Stone asked.
“Morris Minor Estate,” Plumber replied. “It’s from the fifties, and Morgan has carefully restored it himself; looks new.”
Across the room a man wearing headphones shouted, “B’s getting a phone call!” He flipped a switch, and, over a speaker, they could all hear the phone ringing.
There was a click, and a woman’s voice said, “Hello?”
From the other end of the connection came not a voice, but a whistle. The whistler performed a few bars of “Rule Brittania,” then hung up. The woman hung up, too.
“That’s a signal,” Plumber said. “Everybody alert; she’s going to move now.”
On the split screen they watched Morgan back his Morris Minor out of his driveway and head off down the street, his car still marked with an A.
“Oh, shit,” Plumber said, pointing at the other side of the screen. B was coming out of the garage, too, but not in her car; she was pushing a bicycle. On the back, a large pair of saddlebags could be seen. “We can’t put a tracker mark on her bicycle—not enough area showing to the satellite. This is going to be dicey.”
“Don’t you lose that bicycle,” Carpenter warned.
“I’ll do my best,” the tech said, “but with the marked car, the tracking would have been automatic. With the bike, I’m going to have to do it manually, and it’s the toughest computer game you ever saw.”
“Cabot is very smart,” Carpenter said. “But we knew that; we should have suspected something like this. Where’s Morgan going?”
“I’ll put him on the other screen,” the tech said. “It’ll be easier to track B if we devote a whole screen to her.” He tapped in a command, and the second screen came to life.
“He’s leaving the village,” Plumber said. “We’ve got fewer houses, now. He’s headed west, toward the Plain. Wait a minute, he’s turning into some woods. Shit, we won’t be able to see him under trees.”
Then the Morris Minor emerged from the trees and stopped. Morgan got out of the car, opened the rear doors, and began unloading.
“What’s he doing?” Carpenter asked.
“Equipment of some sort,” Plumber replied.
“It’s an easel,” Stone said. “Look, he’s setting it up.”
“He’s going to paint?” Plumber asked.
“Looks like it,” Carpenter replied.
Morgan set up a camp stool, opened what looked like a toolbox, and placed a canvas on the easel.
“He’s going to paint the sunset,” Plumber said.
“I’ve got trouble here,” the tech said suddenly, pointing to the screen before him. “Carroll is approaching a roundabout, and so are some other bikes.” They watched as B moved into the roundabout, merging with half a dozen other bicycles. Then they began exiting.
“Which one is she?” Carpenter demanded.
“You got me,” the tech replied. “There are two roads off the roundabout, and we’ve got two bikes on one and four on the other. We can’t track them all.”
“It’s B, Carroll,” Carpenter said. “Use both views to track the cyclists, until we can identify her. Morgan’s going to be there awhile; we’ll let him be. It’s Carroll, I know it.”
Stone watched as both screens began displaying cyclists on country roads. His last view of Morgan was of the man painting away.
Chapter 54
THEY SPLIT INTO TWO GROUPS, EACH watching the cyclists. “There,” Stone said. “The saddlebags; there’s only one bike with large saddlebags.”