them.'
He would rather have been in the baggage hall himself instead of staring at the gray screens. The figures grouped by the baggage carousel looked about as remote and unfocused as the pictures of the first moon landing. True, he could just about make out enough to distinguish one individual from another.
'If you think you spot them, we have a zoom facility,' Wharton explained, taking the phone away from his ear for a moment 'We can take a closer look.'
'Thanks.' But he hadn't spotted them, and the possible explanations were depressingly simple to supply. They may have collected their luggage and gone. Or the woman may have owned a U.S. passport, in which case they would have passed through at least half an hour ago. Or they'd carried everything as hand luggage.
Then Wharton started talking earnestly on the phone. He told Diamond, 'Okay, they just passed through Immigration. The woman's name is Tanaka-get that?-Mrs. Minori Tanaka, Japanese passport holder. The kid is traveling on her passport, name of Emi.'
'Amy?'
Wharton spelled it. 'Mrs. Tanaka put down the Sheraton, Park Avenue, as her address. We can check with the hotel whether they have a reservation.'
Diamond's eyes hadn't left the monitors and a moment later he was rewarded by the image of two grainy figures of a woman and small girl approaching the carousel with a cart. The child appeared to have Naomi's fringe and black hair.
He pointed. 'That one. Second from the end. The child.' Wharton reached for a remote control and pressed a button to operate the zoom. The child's face increased in size until it filled the screen, placid in expression, gazing nowhere in particular, as if preoccupied in thought.
Naomi, without question.
'Let me see the woman with her,' Diamond requested.
'In close-up?'
The screen blurred momentarily, then he had his first sight of Minori Tanaka, a keen-eyed, intelligent face with prominent cheekbones and a small nose. The mouth, defined with an intense lipstick, was wider than usual in a Japanese, giving a suggestion of waywardness, or sexiness, according to interpretation. She was probably in her thirties.
'Attractive,' was Arthur Wharton's opinion.
Unexpectedly, the face slid out of shot.
'Can you pull back?' Diamond asked, and as the camera was being adjusted to give the longer view, even before it was complete, he saw that the woman was stooping over the carousel. 'Christ, she's collecting her suitcase! She'll be gone.'
Watching the screen, they had been lulled into a near- disastrous passivity. In seconds, Mrs. Tanaka could wheel her cart through customs to the cab area and be driven away with Naomi.
'How do we get to them?' Diamond demanded.
'You need a stamp on your passport first,' Wharton told him.
'Oh, for crying out loud! That child has been abducted.'
'Passport.'
He handed it across. Wharton opened it, selected a rubber stamp from the drawer of his desk, adjusted the date and made the imprint in the passport. 'Now that you're legal we can go find them, Peter.'
Diamond was speechless. Speechless, then breathless, as Wharton led him at a jog along a moving walkway and down two sets of stairs. Through a door and they emerged into the main concourse of the air terminal, opposite the arrivals gate. It was busy with friends and relatives crowding the barrier for«a first glimpse as the passengers wheeled their carts through.
They were in time to see Mrs. Tanaka emerge, pushing one large blue suitcase on a cart. At her side-and there could be no doubt anymore-was Naomi.
The little girl appeared uninterested in the new scene unfolding in front of her, the mass of faces turned their way. She walked mechanically at Mrs. Tanaka's side. They passed the point where the drivers stood with notices displaying people's names.
'You gonna stop them?' asked Wharton, giving him a shove. 'You'd better go now, man.'
Diamond started forward, and it was brought home to him forcibly-for the second time-that he wasn't in shape for dodging and weaving. A man in a wheelchair skidded to a stop and yelled at him to watch where he was going. He didn't have time to point out that he was doing exactly mat-it was the stretch between that he'd ignored.
Just as he found a clear way through, he hesitated.
Someone had moved in to speak to Mrs. Tanaka, a white man, tall, with cropped, dark hair and a distinctive nose that made Diamond think of Charlton Heston, though the resemblance ended there. He was in a black leather jacket and white jeans. He spoke to Mrs. Tanaka and she nodded and frowned, apparently startled by the approach.
Naomi was looking past the man, straight at Diamond. But it was the stone-faced autistic stare that he knew so well. Nothing to suggest she recognized him, no reaction of surprise, or pleasure, or dislike, come to that. She simply let her eyes focus on him for a moment and then she was distracted by the electronic chime that signaled an announcement on the public address. She turned her face upwards towards the source of die sound.
A decision born of professional experience trailing suspects had made Diamond stop that split second before going up to them. The man might be some predator muscling in to 'help' with the luggage for an exorbitant fee-easy bucks when the victims were women with children in tow. Yet his presence could be more significant So the right move was to go straight past them, veering off to the left, and stand close to the queue at an information desk and keep tabs on what happened next.
Mrs. Tanaka's body language suggested she was agreeing to whatever the man was proposing, yet not without some reluctance. After some head-shaking and spreading of the arms, she twice took a step away from him. Finally she allowed him to take over the cart and wheel it towards the nearest exit, so quickly that Naomi had to trot to keep up.
Diamond followed closely, secure in the knowledge that neither of the adults knew him and Naomi was unlikely to react. Allowing them to get this far without being challenged was something of a risk, yet he reckoned their movements were going to be limited by the cart, whatever they did next.
They were heading towards the taxi area. If necessary, Diamond decided, he would let them get into a cab and drive off, and he'd follow in the next vehicle. If the man in the leather jacket traveled with Mrs. Tanaka, one question would be answered: he'd be involved in this business.
Outside was the line of yellow cabs, superintended by a man with a whistle in his mouth. But Leather-jacket wheeled the cart straight past and across the road. The air-shuttle buses, then? Apparently not. They were going into the short-stay parking lot, which was a possibility Diamond hadn't considered, and he clapped his hand to his face in self-rebuke. He wasn't thinking sharply at all since arriving here; he put it down to the flying.
He had to cross the road quickly, zigzagging through traffic, following them into the ground floor of the parking lot, where his problems increased. Leather-jacket and Mrs. Tanaka weren't more than twenty-five yards ahead with Naomi when they turned right and entered the elevator. The doors had closed before he got to them.
What now?
There were stairs close by. He had no idea whether to go down to the basement or up to the decks above. There was no indicator to tell him which floor the elevator had reached.
He'd have to plump for one and hope they were still in sight when he got there. One direction was as likely as any other, so he went down, taking die stairs two at a time and bursting through the swinging doors at the bottom.
No one was in sight among the ranks of cars.
Behind him, the elevator doors opened. Nobody was inside. He was certain now that he should have tried one of the upper levels. He got in and pressed the second-floor button, cursing the delay before the doors slid across.
He'd be fortunate if he hadn't lost them completely. The cage moved upwards, the doors opened and he stepped out and started running. No point in stalking the quarry now. If they stepped into a car and drove away, he hadn't the slightest chance of pursuing them. There were no taxis up here. But he