Ricci had read the intelligence workups on Hasul Benazir, learned all about his genetic condition and habitual night hours. He’d also gotten a related short from an outside source. Information Noriko Cousins either didn’t know or was intent on holding back from him. He had no idea which it was. No idea if she might be the only one at UpLink, and by extension Sword, who was keeping secrets. Whatever the score, he found it hard to be that concerned about it. Not with a secret or two of his own tucked away in his pocket.
He steadied the camera on the tall man, clicked again. Couldn’t get too many photos of him. It was a safe guess that the others were Kiran personnel. Coatless, wearing uniform dark suits, they carried swipe cards that gave access to the service gate, a motor operated rolldown that would automatically close behind them after each of their trips in and out of the building. Their distinctive South Asian features had made Ricci remember something in the Kiran files about a core group of veteran employees — executives, advisors, and techs, or so it described them — that Benazir had brought over from Pakistan on H1Bs: specialized work visas.
Tall Man was another story. The obvious outside man. And an impatient one waiting near the conspicuous U-Haul parked in a secondary parking area around the corner from the building’s main entrance. The only other vehicles, a small fleet of Mercedes sedans Ricci figured for company cars used by the dark-suits, were in the regular employee parking lot in front of the entrance.
No, Ricci thought, the van didn’t fit any more than Tall Man. Even granting Benazir’s late schedule, its presence was very suspect. A business like Kiran would ship in freight trucks, not cheap daily or weekly rental vans. But why else would it be here? Somebody in the building choosing this time of night to clean out his desk, maybe cart his old files or office equipment off to a warehouse? A ridiculous thought. Crazier to imagine corporate professionals wheeling those things out in handcarts when they could hire other people to do the lugging for them. No explanation came close to making sense — unless it involved a transport of goods that was meant to be covered up. But what would be the point in unpacking those boxes while they were still aboard the van? Before they had gone anywhere?
Now Ricci watched the three dark-suits jump from the rear of the van again, and raised an eyebrow. This time instead of returning directly to the service entrance, they locked the cargo section from the outside with a key, and then went over to where Tall Man stood by its driver’s door.
It seemed their loading was finished.
Ricci pulled back on the zoom for a wide angle shot of the bunch and took his picture, a vision of himself with the Boston police department briefly and inexplicably coming into his head. Five years ago, Detective First-Grade Tom Ricci would have found a way to stomach the whole checklist of authorizations needed for a surveillance warrant. Persuaded his bosses to give him their go-aheads. Met the legal threshold that would support reasonable cause. Filled out endless forms and case reports in duplicate and triplicate, while wishing he could have stood before the court and explained that he’d learned to trust his eye and follow its lead when it started paying close attention to somebody… the way it was paying attention to Tall Man and friends tonight.
Five years since the BPD, Ricci thought. Five years since one of the same judges he might have asked for legal approvals had been bought by a millionaire whose son he’d nailed for murder. Five years since the kid had walked out of jail on a courtroom fix, and Ricci had walked away from a badge tarnished by bogus charges that he’d mishandled evidence.
There were scars that healed with time and experience, and scars that only got thicker.
Ricci had ceased to want or need anyone’s nod of approval. For anything.
He lowered his camera, switched to the binocs strapped around his neck — these also Gen-4 NVs — and watched the four men outside the U-Haul. The dark-suits appeared to be giving Tall Man instructions, one in particular doing most of the talking as Tall Man listened, nodded his stalky neck, and every so often said something in response. After a little while their huddle broke up — Tall Man hopping into the driver’s side of the van, two of the dark-suits turning to reenter the service gate, the third going back around to the rear of the van and tugging at the handles of the cargo doors, apparently checking that they were securely locked before he joined the others.
Ricci considered his next move. The approach to Kiran’s parking area extended up the mountain from the same local route he’d taken coming here off Interstate 87. It was the only nearby juncture with the highway, with nothing branching from it for many miles but Rainer Lane and a couple of other dead-end stretches. Which meant the U-Haul driver would have to return to that route no matter where he might be headed afterward.
If he scrambled, Ricci thought there was a better than fair chance of catching the van’s tail.
A few minutes later he was doubling back along Rainer Lane in the Grand Prix. Glancing down the slope to his right, he spotted the U-Haul through frequent gaps in the trees, already out of the parking area and coasting toward the opposite end of the approach.
He tightened his fingers around the steering wheel and put on some speed.
It was a looping quarter-mile descent to the lane’s intersection with the county road. Ricci angled onto it, pushing the accelerator as he bore northeast, the direction he’d seen the van take after his last glimpse of its progress.
And then he saw its taillights ahead of him in the darkness. He estimated the van’s lead at ten car lengths and eased off his gas pedal, wanting to stay close, but not so close he risked being picked up by its driver. With only a smattering of other vehicles on the road — he counted three besides his car and the van, all in his rearview — Ricci could afford to give the van some space and still keep it in sight.
Ricci followed it past the entry ramp to the southbound interstate that would have taken him back to New York City, heading farther upstate into the mountains. There were patches of woods, agricultural farms on modest plots of winter-bare earth, darkened and locked-up convenience stores that must have closed for the night hours earlier. Then a commercial railyard and crossing, and what appeared to be town lights beyond.
The U-Haul bounced over the tracks, Ricci trailing it by a steady distance. He crossed the tracks, discovered the lights were actually from a small service area — a Texaco gas station on his side of the road, a McDonald’s just past it, another filling station on the other side of the road farther ahead. Opposite the fast-food restaurant was a Super 8 Motel posting special discount rates for truckers and rail workers.
Ricci saw the van hook left into the Super 8’s parking lot; he reached the service area and turned right to enter the Mc-Donald’s lot, positioning the car so its driver’s side faced the motel.
Ricci doused his headlamps, then looked sideways out his window. The motel was two stories of rooms in an elongated L-shaped structure set back from a turnaround spacious enough to accommodate large vehicles. He saw a tractor trailer in front making ample use of that space, a couple of six-wheel flatbeds, a single automobile. Tall Man had pulled the van straight up to the deck of the farthest ground-floor unit from the check-in office and gotten out. He took a step toward the office, paused, reached into his coat pocket for something.
Then a passing car momentarily blocked Ricci’s line of sight on its way toward the second filling station, where it swung up to a self-service pump and stopped. He studied it only long enough to confirm that it was one of the three vehicles he’d observed behind him on the country route… and to watch its driver, a man in a mackinaw and baseball cap, get out and unhook the gas nozzle. After that, Ricci returned his full attention to the Super 8’s turnaround.