She ate on the road, and four hours later stopped at a small motel off U.S. 30. There was a vague metallic tang to the air, the familiar smell of sand momentarily made strange and alien by the absence of Charleston’s salt and muggy heat, and some odd bushy trees with silver foliage that she’d seen off and on since Kentucky. More bushy than treeish, out here. She checked in and set the alarm on her PDA to wake her early enough to get into Chicago and in place for initial surveillance the next morning.
It was four in the morning when she e-paid her toll, which was, oddly enough, more anonymous than being photographed paying cash at one of the booths — where her face would have gone straight into the net — and pulled onto 80/94 for Chicago. She’d heard once that prewar Chicago had had freeways. All the major arteries in were toll roads, now, unless your car had government or diplomatic plates.
Even at this hour the traffic was there, though moving freely. The dawn was flattened and grayed out by the overcast sky. She could smell the dampness of Lake Michigan, though the noise barriers and accident walls tended to screen out most views of the surroundings except for the road itself and the swaying stands of reeds and heather.
The profile had her setting up on the corner of Delaware and Michigan, at the Fleet Strike Tower. Most shops hadn’t opened yet, even downtown, but an all-night grocery had Art Institute of Chicago notebooks, a sharpener, and a pack of pencils. It only took about fifteen minutes in the parking lot to rough the notebook up and make it look reasonably used. All the textbooks came on download now, anyway, and her sketchbook was a national brand — a suitable prop for anyplace with an art school. It barely even took a hack to get the current art history textbook, one of the small touches that made Marilyn’s transfer to the Art Institute all the more real. By six she had stashed the car in a self-parking garage and was sitting over a cup of coffee at a table in the courtyard across from the Tower main entrance, watching the people going in and out, occasionally rendering one in cubist drawings. What safer way to watch people than as an artist. We’re expected to watch people. Who would’ve thought that Sister Theodosia’s hobby would’ve come in so handy over the years?
For security reasons, the plaza entrance on the north face of the Tower was the only one open for daily use. Early as she was, the plaza was nearly empty, except for a Fleet Strike sergeant enjoying a cup of coffee and a smoke while his AID was sitting up on the table in front of him, apparently displaying the morning paper. Occasionally he told it to turn the page or find another article.
The smell of fresh coffee and pastries mingled with car exhaust, cold concrete and asphalt, and the early morning chill. The white noise of the fountain covered the traffic sounds, but in the still of the morning it was quiet enough that she could hear the scritching of her pencil as her hands automatically filled in the lines and shadings. Iridescent gray pigeons fluttered around hopefully on the granite tiles in front of the café, dodging the occasional pedestrian and waiting for the inevitable dropped crumbs that would come with the morning breakfast rush. A handful of sparrows flitted in among the herbs that spilled over the edges of beds built into the stairs around the fountain, occasionally flitting between the sidewalk tables to peck at a crumb before flitting back to hide in the greenery.
When he came down the stairs he was easy to identify despite the distance, his U.S. Army uniform making him stand out from all the Fleet Strike personnel entering the building. She was careful not to look directly at him. Petane was in early. Six-fifteen, which she had wondered about when she reviewed his morning travel patterns, until he reappeared out the door in sweats and climbed the staircase next to the cheesecake restaurant across the plaza. She tried to not look hurried as she picked up her trash from the table, having paid inside, and climbed the nearer staircase, shoving her sketchbook in her backpack and emerging onto the street on the Drake hotel side before reaching into each shoe and clicking down the wheels. Roller sneakers had been something of a fad before the war. She hadn’t had a pair, but she remembered them — barely. Cheesy, badly made things with slow wheels. The remake of the fad was better — these wheels were as good as those on any standard four-wheelers in the stores.
She moved fast enough to follow him around the corner at the end of the block from not too close, not too far. He couldn’t be heading for the beach along the lake shore. It just couldn’t be that easy. A jogger. Go figure. He really was. Right past a small baseball and tennis park, down another bit, up the stairs and across the pedestrian overpass. Since the lake effectively limited his options, she took the opportunity to stay on the opposite side of the street. As she went, she pulled out a helmet and shades. Instant anonymity. A bit of bubble gum from a pouch in the backpack made a nice prop. Ear buds and her PDA clipped to her belt created an instant illusion of a skate babe lost in her own little musical world.
About a half a mile down, he crossed back on another pedestrian overpass and began to work his way back through the streets towards the tower.
She shadowed his route through the warren of narrow streets and small blocks, memorizing. Surely he’ll vary his pattern every day… but maybe not. Jogging is for idiots. Jogging when one has deadly enemies is for extreme idiots. This would be an ideal place for a heart attack if I just needed to kill him. Unfortunately, the only way to verify Robertson’s assessment of his lack of serious value is to interrogate him first. He’ll be missed too soon if I drop him on the street. Need something better.
She breezed past him going backwards, leading his probable route. Odd, but people never thought you were a tail if you were in front of them. Whenever she got too far ahead she slowed next to a boutique window to look at the display, popping her gum as she gave him some time to catch up a bit. One of the places they passed was a valet park deck that had a line of cars with government plates and a few Fleet Strike uniforms walking out of it. Subject’s probable parking location found.
By seven he had made a circuit through the city streets and back to the north face of the Tower. She let him get past her and got lost in the crowds behind him, locking up the wheels, shoving the helmet and shades back into the pack, changing the posture and walk a bit, ear buds into a pocket, PDA to the front pocket, swallow the gum. No more skate babe.
The coffee shop was more than happy to let her buy a large cranberry juice and an apple strudel and go back to her sketching. She made light conversation about art with the busboy who occasionally came out to pick up any trash left on the tables by other customers, but only when she couldn’t avoid him by looking busy. The target didn’t leave the building for lunch. Either they had a sandwich shop or something in the building, or he skipped it, or snacked out of machines. Something. Not that she minded sitting and watching the other uniforms come and go. Fleet Strike either believed in a good PT program for its headquarters staff or their doctors were doing some good metabolic work to cope with the desk jobs. Quite a few of those young — well, okay, young-looking — men had some seriously tight buns.
Around two she moved her car to the self-park deck that adjoined Fleet Strike’s valet deck. If it hadn’t been a Friday afternoon she would have had no hope of getting a spot close to the stairwell and the exit, but on a Friday somebody always knocked off early. Fortunately, the place was basically empty, but she still watched carefully as she cut her way through the fence separating the two decks and climbed over the low concrete wall. It would be impossible for a single agent to tail a car by eye through Chicago streets. If you didn’t stay close enough to be readily spotted, the subject would lose you in two blocks without even trying. She had to hide from passing valet employees three times before she finally found the car the Illinois DMV so obligingly revealed was registered to her target.