The driver’s gaze roved across the card and he nodded, once. “Certainly Mr. White.”
He offered John neither a card nor a name.
John returned to his car. This time, they didn’t call out.
***
Caitlin watched the waves crash against the bay’s retaining wall and nervously eyed her watch. John had been gone nearly two hours, and she hadn’t heard from him. She couldn’t sit still much longer. As long as she sat there, she thought of Scott and of the cab driver. Scott must have been involved in something that had brought this trouble on her. Unless she could find out what it was, she would never know peace.
She turned away from the blue waters, opened her purse, and took out her computer. She set it on the writing desk and woke it up, then called up their schedule and went over each appointment Scott had kept over the last month. Only three entries made her curious. The three were all with the same man, a Richard Curtis of Curtis Associates in Santa Fe. Scott had never mentioned Curtis Associates to her. That was strange because they always kept each other informed of prospective clients. She cross-referenced the appointments with Scott’s log of business meetings and found that he hadn’t made any entries regarding Curtis Associates. If he was seeing Curtis professionally, then he should have logged the minutes of each meeting.
Caitlin checked the records of company expenses and looked for Scott’s expense vouchers for the trips to Santa Fe. There were none. Maybe he just hadn’t had a chance to file them, but the first trip was nearly a month ago, and her files were up to date. It was out of character for Scott to leave paperwork incomplete. They had been audited on more than one occasion, and Scott was meticulous in his record keeping.
Was this his illicit business? She needed to get on the Web and find out just what Curtis Associates was involved in.
***
Alain Dewatre sipped his coffee on his apartment’s balcony and watched the morning mist evaporate off the dark waters of the bay. Dewatre was a tall man with overly handsome features that had attracted teasing when he was a boy, but the attention of many women as he matured.
His phone chirped. He glanced at the display, then rose from his chair, and went inside.
He had occupied this apartment for three years and had spent a small part of his salary and bonuses on decorating it with fine, but inexpensive art. His taste was traditionalist and there wasn’t an impressionist or cubist painting anywhere.
Sitting in front of the computer terminal, he ordered up the new message and read it while finishing his coffee.
He was smiling by the end of the message.
They had a hit on the Maxwell search.
The John Blalock Security Agency had filed a personal security contract for Ms. Caitlin Maxwell with the California Bodyguard License Board this morning. That she would seek protection had been anticipated, but that she would seek it from John Blalock was an unexpected plus.
He had come across Blalock several times over the last three years. They had lost five excellent sources thanks to Blalock, including the recent loss of the late Mr. Blevins. Blalock had done more to hurt their operations in the Bay Area than the twenty-person operation that NCIX, the National Counterintelligence Executive, maintained in northern California.
Dewatre spent a few minutes considering his options for acquiring Maxwell or Blalock, and then composed a short message, had the computer encrypt it with a one-time key and transmitted it to his boss.
CHAPTER 13
John pulled away from the Japanese. They didn’t follow. He made a couple of turns, just to make sure. There was no sign of them.
The Japanese businessmen were going to be a problem. For one thing, they were carrying weapons. The Japanese didn’t carry weapons often, at least not handguns. Firearms were restricted in their country, and it wasn’t a simple matter for them to get a concealed weapon permit in San Francisco. But money and connections have a way of bending the law.
It was the type of businessmen who carried firearms that concerned John.
So far, he had at least three separate organizations after Caitlin, assuming the killers and the government agents didn’t work for the same group.
John was also concerned that the Japanese hadn’t known the name he’d used at the hotel unless they were very good at keeping a straight face. You could never be absolutely positive. It might mean that someone set them on him at the hotel. The person must not have heard his name mentioned, but he was sure that everyone he’d come in contact with had heard it. They could have been listening in with a bug or maybe a parabolic microphone and picked up his mentioning Caitlin, but why wouldn’t they have heard his name? And why hadn’t they followed him all the way from the hotel? He was willing to bet they hadn’t been following him until after he left the overlook.
This was becoming an interesting case. Much more so than he had originally thought.
He continued to work the possibilities around in his head while he drove to the police substation that handled the hotel’s call. Once there, he parked behind the three-story brick building in the public parking lot.
The station was busy, about the normal for a workday in the Bay Area. He’d been here before, but he didn’t know anyone well enough to be on a first name basis.
A desk sergeant, on the downslope from fifty, looked up from a
