listed under private investigators. Buchanan almost laughed out loud
now at what he had done. But unlike Thornhill, he didn’t have an army
at his beck and call. For all he knew, Adams hadn’t reported in
because he was dead.
He paused for a moment. Should he just flee to the ticket counter,
book the first flight available to anywhere remote and then lose
himself? Easy to fantasize about, quite another thing to implement. He
envisioned trying to escape: Thornhill’s heretofore invisible army
would suddenly materialize and descend upon him from the shadows,
displaying official-looking badges to anyone bold enough to intervene.
Then Buchanan would be taken to a quiet room in the bowels of the
Philadelphia airport. There Robert Thornhill would be calmly waiting
with his pipe and his three-piece suit and his casual arrogance. He
would calmly ask Buchanan, did he want to die right this very minute?
Because Thornhill would certainly accommodate him if he did. And
Buchanan would have absolutely no response.
Finally Danny Buchanan did the only thing he could do. He left the
airport, climbed in his waiting car and drove to see his friend the
senator, to put another nail in the man’s coffin with his smiling,
disarming manner and the listening device he was wearing, which looked
exactly like skin and hair follicles and was so advanced that it
wouldn’t set off the most sophisticated of metal detectors. A
surveillance van would follow him to his destination and record every
word said by Buchanan and the senator.
As a backup, in case the transmission from his listening device was
somehow interfered with, Buchanan’s briefcase had a tape recorder built
into its frame. A slight twist on the briefcase handle activated the
recorder. It too was undetectable by even the most sophisticated
airport security. Thornhill really had thought of everything. Damn
the man.
On the drive over, Buchanan comforted himself with a deliriously
inspiring fantasy involving a pleading, broken Thornhill, an assortment
of poisonous snakes, boiling oil and a rusted machete.
If only dreams could come true.
The person sitting in the airport was clean-cut, mid-thirties, dressed
in a dark, conservatively cut suit and working on a laptop
computer-meaning he mirrored about a thousand other business travelers
all around him. He seemed busy and focused, even talking to himself at
times. He gave the appearance, to the casual passersby, of a man
preparing for a sales pitch or compiling a marketing report. He was
actually quietly talking into the tiny microphone embedded in his
necktie. What looked like infrared data ports on the backside of his
computer were really sensors. One was designed to capture electronic
signals. The other was a sound wand that collected words and posted
them onto the screen. The first sensor quite easily snagged the phone
number Buchanan had just called and automatically transmitted it to the
screen. The voice sensor had been a little garbled, what with so many
conversations going on at the airport; but enough had come through to
make the man excited. The words “Where is Faith Lockhart?” stared
back at him from the screen.
The man conveyed the telephone number and other information to his
colleagues back in Washington. Within seconds a computer at Langley
had produced the account holder of the phone and the address to which
the phone number was registered. Within minutes a very experienced
team of professionals completely in allegiance to Robert Thornhill-who
had been waiting for just such a mission-was dispatched to Lee Adams’s
apartment.
Thornhill’s instructions were simple. If Faith Lockhart was there,
they were to “terminate” her, as it was so benignly termed in official
espionage parlance, as though she would simply be fired and asked to
collect her personal belongings and leave the building, instead of
having a bullet fired into her head. Anyone with her would suffer the
same fate. For the good of the country.
CHAPTER 15
“YOU SCARED THE HELL OUT OF ME.” Faith couldn’t stop trembling.
Lee moved into the room and looked around. “What are you doing in my
office?”
“Nothing! I was just wandering. I didn’t even know you had your
office here.”
“That’s because you didn’t need to know that.”