They would only have one watcher here, and not one of Burt’s regulars. Whoever it was would be watching 3079.
She stepped down a broad, brightly lit corridor, not looking ahead, only noting the numbers on the boxes at the sides. She began to slow when the numbers descended below 4000. Then she stopped purposefully by 3090 and rummaged in a pocket for a key. What she brought out was a small lock pick she’d made the day before in the apartment.
Fitting the bent piece of metal into the keyhole, she agitated it from side to side. It was just large enough, but not as good as it should be. She’d had to guess at the size of the locks. The box opened after nearly thirty seconds, too long, and she rummaged inside with her other hand, finding some mail, three letters. She looked at them, saw a name, the logo of the New York Electrical Company on the envelope, and pushed them back. The box was in use.
She locked the box and stepped over to 3082. Anyone watching her would probably make his move now. It might be seen as suspect to be opening two boxes.
She fitted the key again. It seemed to take an interminable length of time. She expected at any moment a shout, a hand on the shoulder, the click of a readied weapon. But the door finally opened unwillingly, and she reached inside to find a single sheet. She looked at it and knew it was from him. She wrote an X on the floor of the box and shut the door. Then she locked it again carefully.
Larry saw Logan weaving down a street that ran perpendicular to the four lanes they had crossed. He called into the radio to two of the others and gave them the location, ordering them to turn off Broadway and head west.
They would keep Logan flanked on either side, while he would stay on the target. Logan was around fifty yards ahead of him, moving fast, not looking back, only to the sides when he reached a street. He was running fast, and Larry ran after him in fury.
Then he saw Logan descend some subway steps into the subterranean depths of the Twenty-third Street station. Larry ran forward, simultaneously ordering the two watchers to pick up a cab each and wait for him for instructions. As he descended the steps two at a time, there was a call from the three watchers at the theatre.
“She’s away,” was all the man said.
“Fucking find her!” Larry shouted.
He saw Logan running now, towards the corridor that led to the downtown trains. He hurled himself after him, jumping the stile, and as he did so, he ordered the men in the two cabs somewhere above him to head downtown and wait at the exits from the Fourteenth and Eighth Street stations for further instructions.
Anna stepped back into the cab and gave the Mercer Hotel as her destination. She opened the folded paper again and read. There were four lines, each a place, a time, and a date. All were places she had never heard of, somewhere in New York—one main venue to aim for and three fallback meetings.
She memorised the information, and screwed the paper up in one hand as the cab turned into Mercer Street, where the hotel jutted out onto the sidewalk.
“Drive past it, please,” she instructed the driver. A hundred yards beyond the hotel, she told him to pull up. She gave him the fare and added a hundred-dollar bill.
Outside the cab, she watched the hotel entrance in the distance, then bent down and dropped the paper into a drain. She stood up and walked towards the hotel.
On the platform at Twenty-third Street, Larry caught sight of Logan at the far end as he stepped onto the train. He just had time himself to force a set of doors open to let him in.
If he’s getting in at the bottom of the train, he thought, then the station he’s disembarking from must have an exit at that end of the train. But it seemed unlikely that Logan would know that, unless this whole exercise had been planned long in advance—and it seemed improvised.
He began to make his way down the train. It was crowded, and he moved slowly. He’d travelled three, four cars by the time the train pulled in to the next station. He waited in the train, and when the door was clear of people getting out, he risked a look. Logan was just twenty yards away, walking down the platform. Larry withdrew.
“He’s getting out on Fourteenth Street,” he barked into the radio. “You have two minutes.”
Then he sat down with his back to the platform and almost felt Logan walking by behind him. Without glancing for more than a few seconds through the window, Larry watched the stairs at the end of the platform as the train pulled out. Logan was nowhere in the stream of people walking along or turning for the exit. Somewhere, he thought, Logan had moved back onto the train, and it must be within a few cars of where he was sitting.
He radioed again with orders to both watchers to move on to the next station, if Logan didn’t emerge.
At the Spring Street station, he saw Logan again, stepping out a second time, from two cars away, and heading with his back to Larry towards an exit. Larry stepped out. He was sure now.
“He’s coming out on Spring,” he said. “Hit him hard.”
He would stay behind Logan in case he made a run back.
Anna walked into the lobby and looked around her. She checked her watch. She’d taken thirty-five minutes, but she couldn’t see Logan. She walked over to a sitting area and checked the bar. He had not arrived. Not that it mattered now. She would sit and wait in the most prominent part of the lobby and see who showed up.
It was Larry who walked in. He looked the wrong way, then turned in her direction. She was looking straight at him, and she saw that his face was set with infuriated calm. So they’d found Logan. She stood up and walked over to him.
“Sorry, Larry,” she said.
“Are you coming quietly?”
“Oh, yes,” she replied.
Chapter 25
VLADIMIR STOOD IN FRONT of Villamil’s painting The Bullfight in Washington’s National Gallery and admired the chaotic scene of capes that swirled like smoke, men hidden beneath them, and the tall wooden pole that drew the viewer’s eyes into the centre of the painting and down to the scene below.
It was more like a battle scene, he thought, than the formal execution of the corrida.
He was aware of the man who had stepped up to another picture three to the right of him, a Goya. The man was slightly closer to the picture and seemed equally absorbed.
Neither of them glanced in the other’s direction, but Vladimir knew just from his field of vision when he took his attention away from the painting that it was the man he had come to meet. He was on time as always, eager to give, pulsing almost visibly with some need to divulge classified information that would have put him in prison for the rest of his life if he were caught.
Why? Vladimir wondered, as he always did. But Erosion was his best source. He gave to Vladimir what he gave for reasons the Russian didn’t really understand.
Erosion sat on a special committee, which was privy to information of high value to the Russians. He was paid well by the American government, he had a pleasant house in the suburb of Chevy Chase, a wife he seemed to appreciate, two kids in decent schools. It couldn’t be the money, Vladimir thought, as he often did when he was trying to comprehend the motives of his agents.
Thanks to Vladimir, Erosion also had a healthy and growing bank account in Mexico City. But all this cash in return for secrets was money the man dared not openly reveal. To spend it on luxuries, to be richer than his perfectly respectable salary permitted, would ultimately have drawn the attention of the CIA or one of the other government intelligence agencies who might take an interest in individuals like Erosion. He held valuable secrets of state, and could ultimately draw down all the wrath in the world. What was the money for?