Such a location — a busy hotel with several entrances and exits — was a surveillance problem for an operative alone. You couldn’t cover all the ways in and out, and if you picked the wrong one, you would lose your subject.
Not that it was of major concern. Seurat was not much of a threat. And whatever his reasons were for being here, they could hardly affect what Shing was doing to CyberNation, if indeed that was why Seurat had come. Still, Locke prided himself on being thorough, and if you went somewhere to shadow a subject, it was better to stay with him than not.
Fortunately, Locke was experienced enough in these matters to have dealt with such problems more than once. This was one of the easier ones: Seurat wasn’t aware he was being followed, nor did he have reason to suspect that he was. He had rented a car at the airport, and that vehicle was now parked in the hotel’s lot. Under the rear end of Seurat’s car — a high-end Porsche — was quick-glued a powerful, on-demand radio transmitter the size of a match-book. Untriggered, the bug did nothing — anybody looking for it using broadband field-strength meters would not find anything. Even a casual visual inspection would miss it, since it was colored to match a car’s undercarriage and tended to blend in. But if Locke sent a coded signal to it, the device would begin narrowcasting a GPS signal that would pinpoint its location — if you had the proper receiver.
The device was live now, and it told Locke that the car was in the hotel’s parking garage.
It was not foolproof, of course. Seurat could leave by a side or back door on foot, catch a taxi, or be picked up by a limo, and Locke would not know. Still, Seurat liked to drive, and he had not rented a Porsche to let it sit in a parking lot while he took a cab.
It probably wasn’t important to any of Locke’s plans what the French computer guru did while here, but it was better to know than not.
As it happened, Seurat must have left the building via another exit, for the coded sig from the Porsche began emitting a higher-pitched tone, sending an alert that indicated a change in position.
Locke started his car’s engine, and lit the tracker. A map of the city appeared on the screen, and a tiny red light showing the position of Seurat’s car blinked on and began to pulse.
Wu might not like technology, but Locke was certainly happy with this little toy. As long as he stayed within fifteen miles of the transmitter, and as long as the battery held out — at least six hours of continuous ’casting — the map would show Locke exactly where the Porsche went, and give him the best route to get to it.
When John Howard called to confirm lunch, Abe Kent suggested they go where a lot of military business had been conducted over the years: a local bar — or, in this case, a brew pub.
Both were dressed in civilian clothes, with one of the pub’s own beers, made right there on the premises, in frosty mugs on the table in front of them. Kent and Howard were just two old friends relaxing at the pub. They were trying the new house beer, Heavy Lifting, a dark ale fizzed with nitrogen instead of carbon dioxide — the bubbles fell rather than rose. It was mildly bitter, with a chocolaty, smooth finish. Good stuff.
“How’s work going?” John asked.
“Slow,” Colonel Kent replied, taking a sip of his beer. “There’s really nothing for me to do but training at the moment.”
“Something will come up.”
Kent nodded. “I expect so. How about you?”
“It’s a lot different. Money is better, and Nadine is a lot happier, though there are times when I want to smack some of the people I’m trying to educate. You wouldn’t think a man who was head of a major corporation could get there by being stupid, but apparently that’s not the case.”
Kent laughed. “The old joke about the chain of command only being as bright as the dumbest link.”
Howard nodded. “So, how does it feel to be back in harness with the Corps?”
“Honestly? Better than I would have thought. I never really felt as if I had left the Corps as much as it had moved away from where I was standing.”
Howard took a drink of his ale and nodded. “Yeah, politics. You have to play if you want to stay. I guess it’s always been that way. I’ve heard stories worse than yours.”
“Me, too.”
“You think Rog will cover your back?”
“Maybe. But if they boot me out, it won’t be so bad. You can only lose your virginity once.”
Howard chuckled. “You ought to come by the house now and then, Abe. Nadine would love to cook a meal for you. And she’s got a lot of single women friends who wouldn’t mind an old boot like you. Come on a Sunday, you can go to church with us, have roast beef for lunch, hang out.”
Abe looked at his friend. “I might just do that.” He paused a moment. “Can’t say I am much of a churchgoer, though.”
Howard looked at his beer, then at Kent. “Not proselytizing here, Abe, but didn’t you ever feel the need for prayer out there when the bullets were whistling past and calling your name?”
Kent smiled. “Every time. Prayer and pucker-factor go together better than peanut butter and jelly. You know what they say, John: There are no atheists in foxholes.”
“So you are a believer.”
Kent nodded. “Oh, yes. I believe in God. And I’ve got no arguments with Jesus being the Son and prophet. I don’t even have problems with Allah or Mohammed or Harry Rama, if it comes to that. Everybody has to be someplace. Not my job to tell ’em where.”
“I hear a ‘but’ there.”
Kent looked at his old friend, debating whether or not to tell him the story. It didn’t come up too often these days, but it wasn’t as if it was a big secret — he had told a few people along the way. And here they were, drinking good beer, shooting the bull. Why not?
He paused for another sip, then said, “Well. It goes back a long way. My maternal grandmother used to live down in Lafayette, Louisiana. Every other summer when my brother and I were kids — he was eight years older than I — my folks would ship us to Grandma’s for a few weeks to visit. After my brother turned into a teenager, he stopped going, but I still went. And he did wind up going to college down that way later.”
He sipped again, then pushed his glass a little ways away from him. “The summer I was ten, I stayed with Grandma. She lived on the bank of a bayou. I think it was the Vermilion River. Water came almost up to her back fence when it rained hard. She had a little dog, a Pomeranian named Dolly, and a parakeet named Pancho. I used to take my BB gun down to the banks of the muddy bayou and shoot at snakes and snapping turtles. For a while, my great-grandfather lived there. He was ninety-something, and he used to sit on the bank with me, fishing with a cane pole. We caught catfish, bream, even a gar, now and then. Had to throw them back. Grandma wouldn’t scale and cook them and she wouldn’t let me and Great-Grampa in her kitchen to try.”
Kent grinned, remembering those days. Great-Grampa Johnson smoked a pack of unfiltered Camels a day, and took nips from a bottle of Old Crow he kept hidden under the bathroom sink. He was a small man, compact, and had served in France in the Great War.
The cigarettes and liquor never did kill him — he died from pneumonia he picked up in the hospital after he fell and broke his hip, at age ninety-three.
Kent pulled his memories back to the present. “Grandma was a bridge player and a churchgoer. Grampa worked on the oil rigs out in the Gulf, he was an engineer, and mostly gone. They were Methodists, which is about as benign a Christian group as ever there was. The main difference between them and the Baptists, my grandfather used to say, was that the Methodists sprinkled, but the Baptists had to dunk, since their congregations needed more water to keep cool during the hellfire and brimstone preaching.”