End of Days (Pike Logan #16)(25)
In a perfect world, we’d have the forces to cover all avenues of approach, but we were a little light, so we did some analytical work and decided where to position. If we were wrong, and he went east, away from the city center, we’d just re-cock and try again, this time positioning ourselves to box him going that way.
Surveillance in and of itself is a shadow game. You don’t want to force the issue with aggressive actions to find the target, because he or she will invariably find you from those same actions. Patience is the name of the game, and missed opportunities help to build the pattern of life we needed to know.
Our job, outside of eating ice cream, was to keep Qassim in sight while Aaron and Shoshana penetrated his apartment. Basically, we were to be the early warning to let them know if they had to abort. An easy assignment—especially since I got to sit in Zurich’s old town with my wife, licking a frozen treat.
Jennifer wrapped another napkin around her cone in a losing battle to keep it from melting before she could finish. She said, “What if she’s right? What if there’s something going on here? Do you think we can get the Taskforce to engage?”
I chuckled and said, “You mean beyond letting us take the Rock Star bird? No. They’d better find the diabolical plan to start World War Three before Wolffe will engage. He’s got enough political bullshit to deal with besides telling them he let us freelance using Israeli passports. It would have to be pretty big.”
Jennifer glanced at me, and I could see she wanted to say something. I said, “What? Can’t we just sit here and enjoy this?”
She said, “You’re always asking for a fight, and now you’re just wanting to eat ice cream.”
That sort of ticked me off. I said, “I didn’t ask to come here. They interrupted our wedding, for God’s sake. We were supposed to spend a week in Charleston with our friends.”
She grinned and took my hand, letting the ice cream run down her other arm. She said, “You are so full of crap. You wanted this to happen. I saw you at the rehearsal.”
I reached up and wiped her arm with a napkin, saying, “I didn’t want this to happen, but you have to admit it’s pretty cool.”
She laughed and said, “I knew it. I knew it.”
I grinned and said, “Come on. This is nothing. No shots fired, no danger. We get to spend a weekend in Zurich and we don’t even have to pay for it. Tell me you don’t think this is cool, too.”
She said, “Yeah, right up until it’s not.”
And then my phone buzzed with a text.
He’s on the move. Headed south.
Which meant toward our location. I looked up from the phone to see her reading the same text. I said, “Looks like vacation time is over.”
Chapter 16
We went across the promenade so we’d be facing in the direction of his approach, both of us pulling up the target’s picture on our phone for a final memorization of what he looked like.
He was an older guy, about sixty-five, with salt-and-pepper hair. Truthfully, he looked a lot like the Iranian general Qasem Soleimani—the guy we’d eliminated in a drone strike. Bushy black eyebrows and a neatly trimmed gray beard. He could have been a university professor. Or Doctor Evil.
Time would tell.
We finished our cones sitting right next to the river, waiting on him to appear.
He did not.
On my earpiece I heard someone whisper, “We’re breaching. We’re breaching. Status.”
I said, “I don’t have him. No breach. No breach.”
Jennifer slid her hand down my arm and I looked at her. She flicked her eyes, and there he was, walking down the promenade like he was just another tourist.
Shoshana said, “Pike, find him. He’s there.”
I said, “I have him. I say again, I have him. Clear to breach.”
We stood up after he passed, falling in behind him as he crossed the river.
His pace was a little bit less than someone with a place to be and a little bit more than a person just enjoying a stroll, but with the small crowd on the promenade, it didn’t really matter. We could stay behind him with little difficulty and keep him in sight.
I called Knuckles, gave him our location, and told him to close in on the far side of the river to give us some options to keep an eye on him.
The target wound around, eventually walking by the famed Saint Peter’s Church, the large clock in the bell tower shadowing his moves, before heading again toward the river, back the way he had come.
Which was strange.
He threaded through the streets until he hit an avenue called Schipfe, right along the water, passing by the promenade we’d just crossed over.
Stranger still.
He picked up his pace along the river’s edge and then took a left in a narrow alley. Before he turned, he did a brief glance behind, surveying the river walk, which gave me some concern. I pulled Jennifer next to me on the water’s edge, pretending to watch the spectacular view. I gave him thirty seconds, then went to the entrance of the alley, seeing a cascade of stairs, the buildings so close it wasn’t even an alley. It looked more like an indoor fire escape in a New York apartment. It was a choke point that would advertise anyone who entered behind him, the ancient stairwell so narrow any target above would see who was behind. I saw his back rising up the stairs at a trot and immediately retreated before he turned around and saw me.