The Short Forever (Stone Barrington 8)

“What’s happening?” Carpenter said to one of the men. “Oh, this is Barrington and Bacchetti; they’re with me. Gentlemen, this is Plumber.”

“We’re just about set up,” Plumber said. “We’re expecting satellite contact any moment, and we’ve got great weather for it.”

“What have you done with the two subjects’ homes?”

“We couldn’t get anything decent with sonic equipment,” Plumber said. “They both live in official housing, and double glazing was installed a few months ago, so we can’t get anything off the glass. We’ve tapped both phones from the exchange, but since they’re both at work, we’re not getting anything.”

“Eyeball surveillance?”

“Nothing within five miles,” Plumber replied. “We figure that when Cabot arrives in the area he’ll canvass the neighborhood, looking for anything that might be surveillance, so we’re going to rely on satellite, until dark. After that, we’ll have taxis with local numbers painted on, but we’ll keep our distance. We’re going to place satellite tracker marks on both subjects’ cars, so we needn’t stay within sight.”

“Where’s Mason?”

“He’s running the on-ground operation; he’ll be in touch when something happens.”

“Anything else?”

“Bad news; Portsmouth let us down.”

“What?”

“Something about a suspect merchant ship in the harbor; they’ve put all their people and equipment on that.”

“Do we have enough resources on the ground here to cover both subjects?”

“Maybe; that’s the best I can tell you.”

“Isn’t there anything else we can draw on?”

“No. Another team is on its way to Scotland, looking for a suspected terrorist who is supposed to be arriving in the Clyde on a tanker.”

“Shit,” she muttered.

“Satellite’s up,” a young man at a computer station said.

Everyone gathered around him. The image on the big monitor was of a building and a carpark. “Eastover internal security gave us the position of the two subjects’ cars.” He moved the cursor to a small car and clicked on it: an A appeared on the car’s roof. He moved the cursor to another, larger car and clicked again. A B appeared on the car. “A is Morgan, our male subject; B is Carroll, our female. The equipment will move the ID letter with the cars, so we won’t lose them in traffic.”

“How about the houses?” Carpenter asked.

The tech tapped some more keys, and the screen divided into thirds. “Now you can see both Eastover and the two houses,” he said. “Neato, huh?”

“Stop speaking American,” Carpenter said.

Plumber spoke up. “Internal security at Eastover is tracking both Morgan and Carroll inside the building. They’ll know if either tries to take something out.”

“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.