“Later, Tim.”
“See you around, Ding.”
Many people can’t do it, but some people simply remember faces. It’s a particularly useful skill for bartenders, because people will come back to establishments where the guy at the bar remembers your favorite drink. This was true at New York’s Turtle Inn Bar and Lounge, on Columbus Avenue. The foot patrolman came in just after the bar opened at noon and called, “Hey, Bob.”
“Hi, Jeff, coffee?”
“Yeah,” the young cop said, watching the bartender get some Starbuck’s from the urn. Unusually for a bar, this place served good coffee, since that was the yuppie thing in this part of town. One sugar and some cream, and he passed the cup over.
Jeff had been on this beat for just under two years, long enough that he knew most of the business owners, and most of them knew him and his habits. He was an honest cop, but never one to turn down free food or drink, especially good donuts, the American cop’s favorite food.
“So, what’s shakin’?” Bob asked.
“Looking for a missin’ girl,” Jeff replied. “Know this face?” He handed the printed flyer over.
“Yeah, Annie something, likes Kendall Jackson Reserve Chardonnay. Used to be a regular. Haven’t seen her in a while, though.”
“How about this one?” The second flyer went across the bar. Bob looked at it for a second or two.” Mary . . . Mary Bannister. I remember that, ‘cuz it’s like the thing on a set of steps, like you know? Haven’t seen her in a while, either.”
The patrolman could hardly believe his luck. “What do you know about them?”
“Wait a minute, you said they’re missing, like kidnapped or something?”
That’s right, man.” Jeff sipped his coffee. “FBI is on his one.” He tapped the Bannister photo. “The other one we turned.”
“Well, I’ll be damned. Don’t know much about them. I used to see ’em both here couple days a week, they dance and stuff, you know, like single girls do, trolling for guys.”
“Okay, tell you what, some people will be in here to talk to you about ’em. Think about it, will ya?” The cop had to consider the possibility that Bob was the one who’d made them disappear, but there were chances you had to take in an investigation, and that likelihood was pretty damned slim. Like many New York waiters and bartenders, this guy was an aspiring actor, which probably explained his memory.
“Yeah, sure, Jeff. Damn, kidnapped, eh? Don’t hear very much about that stuff anymore. Shit,” he concluded. “Eight million stories in the Naked City, man. Later,” the patrolman said, heading for the door. He felt as though he’d done a major portion of his day’s work, and as soon as he got outside, he used his epaulet-mounted radio microphone to call the newly developed information into his precinct house.
Grady’s face was known in the U.K., but not the red beard and glasses, which, he hoped, would obscure his visage enough to reduce the chance of being spotted by an alert police constable. In any case, the police presence wasn’t as heavy here as in London. The gate into the base at Hereford was just as he’d remembered it. and from there it wasn’t a long drive to the community hospital, where he examined the roads, shoulders, and parking areas and found them to his liking, as he shot six rolls of film with his Nikon. The plan that started building in his mind was simple, as all good plans were. The roads seemed to work in his favor, as did the open ground. As always, surprise would be his primary weapon. He’d need that, since the operation was so close to the U.K.’s best and most dangerous military organization, but the distances told him the time factor. Probably forty minutes on the outside, thirty on the inside to make the plan work. Fifteen men, but he could get fifteen good men. The other resources money could purchase, Grady thought, as he sat in the hospital parking lot. Yes, this could and would work. The only question was daylight or nighttime. The latter was the usual answer, but he’d learned the hard way that counterterror teams loved the night, because their night-vision equipment made the time of day indistinguishable in a tactical sense-and people like Grady were not trained to operate as well in the dark. It had given the police an enormous advantage recently at Vienna, Bern, and Worldpark. So, why not try it in broad daylight? he wondered. It was something to discuss with his friends, Grady concluded, as he restarted the car and headed back toward Gatwick.
“Yeah, I’ve been thinking about it since Jeff showed me the pictures,” the bartender said. His name was Bob Johnson. He was now dressed for the evening, in a white tuxedo shirt, black cummerbund, and bowtie.
“You know this woman?”
“Yeah.” He nodded positively. “Mary Bannister. The other one is Anne Pretloe. They used to be regulars here. Seemed nice enough. They danced and flirted with the men. This place gets pretty busy at night, ‘specially on weekends. They used to come in around eight or so, then leave at eleven or eleven-thirty.”
“Alone?”
“When they left? Most of the time, but not always. Annie had a guy she liked. His name’s Hank, don’t know the last name. White, brown hair, brown eyes, about my size, growing a gut, but not really overweight. I think he’s a lawyer. He’ll probably be in tonight. He’s pretty regular here. Then there was another guy . . . maybe the last time I saw her here . . . what the hell’s his name . . . ?” Johnson looked down at the bar. “Kurt, Kirk, something like that. Now that I think of it, I saw Mary dancing with him. too, once or twice. White guy, tall, good-lookin’, haven’t seen him in a while, liked whiskey sours made with Jim Beam, good tipper.” A bartender always remembered good and bad tippers. “He was a hunter.”
“Huh?” Agent Sullivan asked.
“Huntin’ for babes, man. That’s why guys come to a place like this, you know?”
This guy was a godsend, Sullivan and Chatham thought. “But you haven’t seen him in a while?”
“The guy Kurt? No, couple of weeks at least, maybe more.”
“Any chance that you could help us put a picture together?”
“You mean the artists’ sketch thing, like in the papers?” Johnson asked them.
“That’s right,” Chatham confirmed.
“I suppose I can try. Some of the gals who come in here might know him, too. I think Marissa knew him. She’s a regular, in here nearly every night, shows up around seven, seven-thirty.”
“I guess we’re going to be here awhile,” Sullivan thought aloud, checking his watch.
It was midnight at RAF Mildenhall. Malloy lifted the Night Hawk off the ramp and set off west for Hereford. The controls felt just as tight and crisp as ever, and the new widget worked. It turned out to be a fuel-gauge widget, digitized to tell him with numbers rather than a needle how much fuel he had. The switch also toggled back and forth between gallons (U.S., not Imperial) and pounds. Not a bad idea, he thought. The night was relatively clear, which was unusual for this part of the world, but there was no moon, and he had opted to use his night-vision goggles. These turned darkness into greenish twilight, and though they reduced his visual acuity from 20/20 down to about 20/40, that was still a major improvement on being totally blind in the dark. He kept the aircraft at three hundred feet, to avoid power lines, which scared the hell out of him, as they did all experienced helicopter pilots. There were no troops in the back, only Sergeant Nance, who still wore his pistol in order to feel more warrior-like sidearms were authorized for special-operations troops, even those who had little likelihood of ever using them. Malloy kept his Beretta M9 in his flight bag rather than a shoulder holster, which he found melodramatic, especially for a Marine.
“Chopper down there at the hospital pad,” Lieutenant Harrison said, seeing it as they angled past for the base. “Turnin’ and blinkin’.”
“Got it,” Malloy confirmed. They’d pass well clear even if the guy lifted off right now. “Nothing else at our level,” he added, checking aloft for the blinking lights of airliners heading in and out of Heathrow and Luton. You never stopped scanning if you wanted to live. If he got command of VHM-1 at Anacostia Naval Air Station in D.C., the traffic at Reagan National Airport meant that he’d be flying routinely through very crowded air space, and though he respected commercial airline pilots, he trusted them less than he trusted his own abilities-which, he knew, was exactly how they viewed him and everybody in green flight suits. To be a pilot for a living, you had to think of yourself as the very best, though in Malloy’s case he knew this to be true. And this kid Harrison showed some real promise, if he stayed in uniform instead of ending up a traffic reporter in West Bumfuck, Wherever. Finally, the landing pad at Hereford came into view, and Malloy headed for it. Five minutes and he’d be on the ground, cooling the turboshaft engines down, and twenty minutes after that, in his bed.