The hangar door was open, and the interior was dark except for several flashing yellow lights. A tugboat sat at the mouth of the dock. He tapped twice on his tank and Cahil surfaced beside him. “We’re too late,” Tanner whispered and passed him the binoculars.
“They’re rigging the tow lines. I count three… no, four crew on the forecastle. Can’t see the bridge. They’ve got it pretty damned dark in there.”
“All the better to skulk away. How long before she’s at the gate?”
“Twenty minutes at most,” Cahil said. “Unless you want to hitch a ride…”
“I know. Let’s go.”
Swimming hard against a crosscurrent, they reached the shore eighteen minutes later and climbed out just as Tsumago was reaching the fence. Once through the gate, the tugboat disengaged its towlines and peeled away. Almost immediately, Tsumago’s wake broadened, white against the dark water.
“She’s moving fast,” Cahil said.
Tanner nodded. “How long since you’ve done a five-minute mile?”
“Oh, shit.”
“Once she makes the turn around the headland, we’ll lose her. We have to know which direction she’s headed.”
“I’m right behind you.”
It was almost two miles to the end of the peninsula. For the first mile, Tanner caught glimpses of Tsumago as she steered for open water, but soon the forest thickened and they lost sight of her.
The path they chose was a hiker’s trail, and they made good time despite falling several times in the darkness. By the time they reached the headland, their shins were bruised and bloody. Panting hard, they scrambled up the rocks at the water’s edge.
“You see her?” Tanner asked.
“No. Wait… there.” Cahil pointed at a pair of lights in the distance.
“Give me a fix.”
Cahil pulled out their map, picked out a couple landmarks, and did a quick calculation. “She’s at one-five-zero.”
“I see green running lights.”
“That makes her starboard side to us. She’s heading south; make it one-eight-five.”
Across the cove they heard the thumping of the helicopter rotors, followed a moment later by a strobe light streaking across the water. Five minutes later, the strobe merged with the Tsumago’s outline and blinked out.
“Bad news,” Tanner told Oaken an hour later, then explained.
“You’re sure she was heading south?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, I might have something. It’s not gonna be as accurate as data from the helm, but I’ve got a guess where she’s headed.”
“Oaks, I’m certainly not one to complain, but it would’ve been nice if you’d thought of this a few hours ago,” said Cahil.
“I know, sorry. There’s just so much information—”
“I’m kidding, Walt.”
Tanner asked, “How long until you can give us a guess?”
“Tomorrow. In the meantime, we’re getting you out. Got a map?”
“Yep. Go ahead.”
“There’s a small airstrip outside Iyo on Shikoku’s northwestern shore.”
“I see it.”
“Go there. A charter will be waiting.”
35
Vorsalov was gone. Latham and his team were angry and demoralized. He did his best to rally them, but in his heart he wasn’t hopeful. The odds were against them and getting worse with each passing hour.
The repercussions of Vorsalov’s escape would not be long in coming. This operation was under scrutiny by not only the FBI and the CIA, but by Senator Hostetler and his allies on Capitol Hill as well. Hostetler wanted the man who’d almost killed his little girl, and the nation — when and if it found out about this operation — would want the man who’d visited terror on its shores. Once the ax started falling, Latham knew his head would be on the short list.
He forced himself to focus on their next step. There was only one, really: interviewing and canvassing. So while his agents discreetly beat the bushes, Latham waited.
Sixteen hours after Vorsalov escaped, they struck gold in the form of a xenophobic deli owner.
According to Paul Randal, the deli owner claimed to have seen a pair of “Eye-rabs” parked in a minivan two blocks from Brown’s Boat Center around the time of Vorsalov’s escape. Suspicious of Middle Easterners and their well-known fondness of wanton destruction, the deli owner not only remembered the license plate but also the movements of the occupants, one of whom left the van for ten minutes, then returned. This in itself was not significant until Randal questioned an employee at Brown’s, who confirmed that Vorsalov’s canoe had been reserved and paid for by an Arab. The time frame fit, as did the general description.
“Why didn’t they just rent it over the phone?” Latham asked Randal.
“They tried, probably. Last year during homecoming a bunch of high school kids reserved a dozen paddle boats by phone, then took them out and played a little demolition derby. Since then, they only take reservations face-to-face… credit card, waivers, all that.”
“What else?”
“This is where it gets good. The deli guy says the van sat there for about twenty minutes. Just sitting there. He’s getting nervous; the Arabs look nervous. Then all of a sudden a white guy, walking fast from the direction of Brown’s, climbs in, and they pull away.”
“I’ll be damned. And the van?”
Randall handed him the report. “Rented by a Henry Awad, a naturalized citizen. He’s a cook at a diner in Hyattsville. Wife, no children. The van goes for three hundred a week. He pulls down four.”
“Henry must really love minivans,” Latham said. “Okay, put him under the microscope.”
Within twenty-four hours they knew more about Henry Awad than did his closest neighbors. Most of the information was trivial, but several things caught Latham’s eye.
According to INS, Awad had come to the U.S. from Egypt six years before. Ever the skeptic, Latham called in a favor from the FBI’s Linguistics Department and had a Near East expert visit the diner for lunch. While eating her cheeseburger and fries, she listened closely to the voice in the kitchen.
“Wherever he’s from,” she later told Latham, “it isn’t Egypt.” Her best guess was Syria or Iraq. Latham knew this proved nothing, but it piqued his interest.
The second curiosity was that the Awad family’s Wind-star — the one costing Henry three-quarters of his weekly income — was nowhere to be seen. Awad drove a brown Dodge Aries K, and his wife never left the house aside from walking trips to the grocery store.
During the second day of surveillance, Randal called Latham. Charlie could hear the excitement in his partner’s voice. “Remember that load of groceries Henry’s wife bought yesterday?”
“Yeah.”
“He’s loading them into the trunk of his car.”
“Picnic, maybe?”
“Doubt it. It’s just him, no basket, no blanket.. just him.”
Latham had worked enough cases to know the majority of them are exercises in tedium, broken by occasional moments of excitement. Seemingly dead cases can turn 180 degrees in a matter of hours. This is exactly what happened when Randal tailed Henry Awad.
Without so much as a glance over his shoulder, Awad drove straight to a strip mall in Greenbelt and parked. Five minutes later, the blue Windstar pulled up beside him.
“Charlie, you’re not going to believe this.”
“Try me.”
“Henry’s loading groceries into our wayward minivan. He’s being helped by a pair of Arabs that look a whole lot like the ones our deli owner described.”