The Short Forever (Stone Barrington 8)

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 se

e 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.