Behind him sat a couple who looked to be in their early. seventies. Retirees from some colder climate moved to Florida, she figured.
Not that exciting a group, and nobody who looked like what she thought an international computer terrorist ought to look like.
Well, what did you expect? Geeky-looking guys with pocket protectors and horn-rimmed glasses, their fingers glued to Palm Pilots or flatscreens?
She grinned at herself. Figuring out who might be a heavyweight Bulgarian weight lifter was something you maybe could do by looking, but computer wizards came in all sizes and shapes. It was a fallacy to think they all looked like classic movie nerds. She of all people ought to know that-here she was pretending to be a tourist when she was, in fact, a spy.
Well. She’d be at the ship in a few minutes, she’d get checked in, find her cabin, then take her camera and wander around, snapping perfectly innocent pictures of whatever was open to public view. She had the picture Jay had
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sent late last night, she’d strained it from the covering JPEG of her mythical aunt. It was a college yearbook image of this guy Keller, and Jay had added ten years to it with a plastic surgery art program. The hair might have changed length or color, contacts could change eye color, too, but the shape of the ears and head would be die same. Even crooks having their faces remodeled seldom did their ears.
She had memorized the picture, then wiped it from the flatscreen’s drive, overwriting the file so it couldn’t be recovered. Like Alex said, she was just supposed to gather small bits of information they could use, but it would be embarrassing at the least if her flatscreen got lost and wound up being scanned by some curious tech-head who found something he shouldn’t find.
So far, so good.
As the commuter helicopter approached the gambling ship, she saw that the actual landing site was a huge flat- topped barge anchored a few hundred yards away, with several long passenger boats shuttling people back and forth from it to the floating casino. She counted six helipads on the barge. There were three craft similar to the one she was in on the deck of the barge, with another one taking off, and a fifth one circling for a landing. That made sense-all those copters taking off and landing on the ship itself would be a windy, noisy commotion better left elsewhere. Smart.
On the Bon Chance
Santos watched the dark-haired woman walk away from the shuttle boat toward the cabin check-in queue, and nodded to himself. She moved well, inside her balance, something most people did not do. Something in her stance, her carriage, it indicated some kind of physical training. A dancer, maybe, or a gymnast, she had the hip swing
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and that muscular roll to her walk. She wore a T-shirt and shorts, running shoes, no socks, and pulled a carry-on bag behind her, a big purse slung on a shoulder strap. Very sleek in the butt and legs. She was alone, wore no rings, a tourist from the States. Were he not so busy with all the things he needed to do right now, she would be a pleasure he would like to try. Missy would love that, wouldn’t she? To see him with another woman? She was so sure of herself in that way, she would not believe a man could prefer somebody else to her, it was a major part of her power. And she had reason to believe in it, she was most adept in those ways.
Hmm. Maybe he was not as busy as he thought. When you could kill two birds with one stone, was that not a rock worth throwing? And how long did it take to slip out of your clothes and into a good-looking woman anyway? He could skip a workout in the gym, trade that for one in the bedroom, yes?
He grinned at the thought. Missy would steam like turtle soup …
“Hello, ‘Berto.”
Speak of the devil.
Without further planning, Santos allowed his gaze to linger on the woman from the helicopter as she walked toward the registration area. Missy could not help but notice he was looking at something other than her. He held his stare long enough for her to be sure of it, and for her to turn to see what held his attention. He caught the flash of anger as it lit her face. She turned back to look at him. It was there only for a moment before she hid it, the irritation, but it was there. Ah, good. Already he felt a warm satisfaction.
“Your trip was successful?”
“My trips are always successful.”
“Made some new friends, did you?”
He shrugged, slow and lazy, gave her a small lopsided grin, but said nothing. Not yet, but if she wished to think so, why shouldn’t she? It would serve his interests.
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Her smile didn’t change to look at, but it grew chilly; could almost feel it. “We have a lot of things to diss. Why don’t you meet me in my office in an hour.” that, she turned and walked away, and he could see anger in her steps. Ah, better and better!
Now, of course, he more or less had to follow up on attractive brunette with the dancer’s stroll. He would to the clerk at the room check-in and ask about her. ad out who she was, which cabin she was in. It was a ship, but not so large as all that. He could find a way run into the woman on deck or in the casino, maybe ven the gym, since it was obvious she worked out. He pad access to the ship’s security cams, and could find out fwhere she was easily enough. A chance meeting, a little Iconversation, perhaps a drink, and they would go on from phere.
A man had to do what he had to do, but, he had to | admit, some jobs were more fun than others …
endorf Forest erlin, Germany er!959
f Jay was in tracking mode, a skill Saji had taught him I when he’d been recovering from his stroke. He walked [carefully along the dirt road, cutting sign, looking for the | smallest indication that his quarry had come this way.
The road was easy. It was dusty, and upon it, the pas| sages of somebody in a vehicle or on foot were simple to Ispot, no problem. Somebody looking to hide his trail f? could brush the tracks away with little effort, but because l.the dust was so fine, it showed every tiny detail, and erasing something itself left a sign that was more interesting “than the. tracks. A man trying to avoid pursuit could | change his mode of transportation, from a car to a bike
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to a pogo stick; he could change his shoes, and with a little bit of misdirection, lose a pursuer who was following combat boots when they turned into running shoes. But wiping away all tracks? That might seem smart on first thought, but really wasn’t if you knew anything about how to follow a trail.
Sometimes, as Sherlock Holmes was wont to say, it was the absence of the dog barking in the night that was important.
The lack of impressions on a dirt road were more telling than any bootprint.
Carpet-walkers would sometimes glue carpet to the bottoms of their shoes, so as not to leave impressions, but that worked on sand or rocky soil, not on a red-dirt road with baby-powder-fine dust; instead, it would leave distinct patches of relatively smooth tracks. And somebody dragging a branch or burlap sack behind them would likewise wipe out the tracks, but leave drag lines that would last through a dry and moderately windy day, even though rain would eventually patter them down.
No, a smart runner would get off the road entirely, head for the rocks or streams where any tracks either wouldn’t show, or would be swirled away in a few minutes or even seconds. And he would double-back, angle off in false starts, and head in the wrong direction long enough to gull a so-so tracker before he circled around for his true destination.
But if somebody was taking only the barest precautions, and they didn’t really think they were going to be noticed or tailed, they weren’t likely to be as cautious. You didn’t go into full alert and stealth mode every time you went out to collect the mail from your box, or the paper from your front lawn-what was the point?
Keller wore carpet shoes, and for most people, most of the time, his basic moves would have done the job. Nobody driving along the road would notice any tracks. Anybody walking but not looking wouldn’t notice the smooth patches. Even somebody looking for tracks of a particular