She got in the car and drove away, exiting through the gate located a couple hundred feet from the main building. On the way out, she passed several more diesel-powered locomotives and freight cars, probably from the 1950s from the looks of them. Once out on the main street, she veered right and drove four blocks before making a right turn to loop back around to the area where Allyson had parked.
Out of sight from the train graveyard, Adriana finally spoke. “I have no idea who that was in the hangar, but it wasn’t the Belgian. It was a new voice, someone who hasn’t contacted me yet.”
“He’s covering his tracks,” Allyson echoed what Adriana already knew. “Still no sign of anyone going in or out. You’re sure this is the only entrance or exit?”
“Pretty sure. But it doesn’t mean this guy doesn’t have another way out or some kind of contingency plan. I’ll be there in a few minutes.”
Adriana drove the car around until she passed Allyson’s vehicle parked along a vacant sidewalk. Old foundries and warehouses, empty husks of places that used to employ hundreds of people during a time when the world revolved around industry and not technology, surrounded her. Pulling off to the side of the road, she stopped the car and removed the keys. As she jogged down the sidewalk toward the warehouse where Allyson was keeping watch, Adriana kept her eyes peeled for signs of anyone who could report back to the Belgian, but just like in the hangar, she saw no one, which didn’t exactly fill her with confidence.
She arrived at the rear entrance to the warehouse and made her way inside, ascending a rickety staircase to the second floor and down the musty hallways lined by cracked, peeling walls and busted fluorescent lights. The tiled floor was like one she’d seen in a nursing home as a child. It was chipped away in several places, and she feared the structural integrity of the flooring might be weakened enough to collapse under her weight. The building held up, and a minute later she had arrived at the office where Allyson was carefully peeking through a dusty set of blinds.
Adriana made no attempt to approach quietly, not wanting to startle the other.
Allyson didn’t turn around but spoke to let her know she heard her coming. “Still nothing. I don’t know what their game is, but they’re not stupid. They are being extremely careful.”
“I would be, too, if I was dealing with us.” Normally, a comment like that would come with a smirk, but Adriana was in no mood. She was locked in on finding the man behind all this.
She stepped over to the window next to Allyson and gently pulled one of the blinds down. The overcast sky helped keep a barrage of passing shadows across the building, which aided in concealing their vantage point.
“It could be hours before anyone leaves,” Adriana whispered, as if someone outside the building could hear her. “Assuming this is the way they come out.”
The two stood by the window for another forty minutes, waiting patiently for their prey to appear. Finally, there was movement beyond the fence. At first, it was difficult to make out what was happening. As the seconds ticked by, the two women realized that their plan would fail.
Four men in white button-up shirts and black ties and pants marched toward the gate. They all wore the same Wayfarer sunglasses and had the same brown, comb-over haircut. If the women didn’t know any better, they’d have sworn the men were all related. From their vantage point, the cluster of men was identical. And tucked under each man’s arm was a cardboard cylinder, an exact match of the one Adriana left in the hangar.
“Which one is the one you left?” Allyson asked with a hint of panic in her voice.
Adriana shook her head. “There’s no way to know. They all look the same.”
Allyson’s demeanor turned drastically frustrated in a matter of seconds. “What should we do?” she huffed.
“I have no idea,” Adriana sighed. She stared closely as the men approached the gate. “They’re going to split up.”
“Obviously.”
“So we need to know which one has the painting.”
“Again, thanks.” Her sarcasm was mirrored by the derisive expression on her face.
Adriana left the window and stepped over to the dusty desk, where a camera sat. It had a decent enough long-range lens to hopefully capture some useful detail from this distance.
She picked it up and hurried over to the window, flipped open the blinds, and quickly snapped a few photos. Then she pulled away from the glass and checked the images as fast as she could swipe them on the touch screen.
Allyson’s urgency heightened. “What are you doing? They’re getting away.”
Adriana didn’t answer immediately. She squinted hard, analyzing each image carefully. “The short-sleeve, button-up shirts those men are wearing show off their muscles. I’m trying to see which one’s forearms are straining the hardest.”
She’d immediately eliminated two of the prospects, but the remaining two were difficult to narrow down. Both men had strong arms, and both had bulging veins as if they carried more weight than the other men.
Allyson listened but kept watching the street below. Two men walked straight ahead, almost directly toward the warehouse. They would pass it in moments. Once they did, it was anyone’s guess where they would go. The other two were going in opposite directions, east and west.
“Two of them are about to come down the street next to this building,” Allyson said.
Adriana’s mind spun. If two of the men were walking together, she could eliminate them — or was that the case? It would make more sense to divide up and send them all in opposite directions. If the Belgian were worried someone would be followed, allowing the tail to pursue two at once would be counterproductive. Then again, if he knew the follower would assume that sort of logic, he would have done exactly that, sending two together while the tail chased one of the others in the wrong direction.
She shook her head to clear it.
“About to lose visual on the two going east and west.” Allyson’s voice snapped Adriana to a decision.
“The guy going to the left. He’s the one.”
Allyson questioned her with desperate eyes. “Are you sure?”
“Positive.”
“All right. What are we waiting for?”
Adriana grabbed her rucksack, stuffing the camera inside as she moved through the office door and out into the corridor. She hurried down the dark hallway, the only light coming from intermittently placed windows along the exterior wall. She knew there would probably be a staircase at the other end. They would need to reach that before the guy with the painting disappeared. He would most likely be picked up by a car and driven away.
“What’s your plan once we catch up to him?” Allyson hissed as she ran along behind Adriana. “Take the painting back? I don’t think that will work.”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know? I thought you had something in mind.”
“We’ll follow him.”
Allyson let out a fake laugh as she jumped over a fallen filing cabinet. “And if he gets in a car?”
“We note the license plate and figure out who owns it.”
It was a good plan. Or so she thought. She took Allyson’s silence as agreement. On the other hand, her staying quiet could mean that she was deciding to keep her doubts to herself.
The two neared the stairwell when they heard the roar of a car motor outside. It was distinct in the otherwise silent quarter of the city. A sense of dread ripped through Adriana’s body. She turned right and plowed her shoulder into the closed door at the end of the passage, twisting the doorknob as she did so.