There was a small park across from Frieda’s apartment building with a handful of benches. They parked on the other side of the park from the building just so they weren’t sitting directly in front of it, starring and sat on a bench with the most unobstructed view.
The key to a stakeout is one person is always focused on the target. This sounds easy enough for most people, but the act of just staying at one space for long periods is both tedious and exhausting. Things can happen fast, so the person watching the target can’t look away to read or do something else, intermittently watching. It requires the watchers' complete attention. The real hard part, though, is keeping your mind from wandering. Taylor knew some law enforcement listened to music or audiobooks while on a stakeout, but he’d found that it made his mind wandering worse.
The focus and monotony is why it’s usually best to have two people on a stakeout. Besides being available to give the other person a chance to use the restroom, the watchers could switch out frequently, resting their eyes and resting for the next go.
Even with a partner, though, Taylor hated it. More so now that he was with Whitaker. There was a tension that still hung in the air between them, despite their reconciliation the night before. They’d forgiven each other and even bent to try and see the other side, but the issue wasn’t resolved. He still believed he’d done the right thing, and she still believed he hadn’t. That wasn’t something that was going to change, but it was something they were going to need to deal with.
Ever since they’d started working together, it had been a problem looming in the background, waiting to rear its head. Taylor was pretty sure that, if they didn’t deal with it, then they wouldn’t last. The hard part was, he wasn’t sure what the compromise was. While he and Whitaker got along well, this would always be an area they completely disagreed on, and one they both thought was critical.
He knew Whitaker could feel the tension too, but he also knew that she was too professional to let something like that interfere with what they needed to do. So for now, it would just be sitting there, hanging above their heads, waiting.
It turned out they didn’t have to wait too long for the manager to show, at least as far as stakeouts go. After three hours of sitting on the hard park bench, Whitaker spotted the man leaving the front door of the building, walking away from it to the west.
Taylor hadn’t met him, but Whitaker had, and her description turned out to be really accurate. He was middle-aged, probably in his late forties, rotund with thinning black hair. Large glasses sat somewhat crookedly on his face as he walked down the sidewalk away from them.
Taylor and Whitaker got up at the same time, moving in opposite directions. This part they had discussed extensively the night before and again this morning. The hardest part of this would be actually making the snatch. If they had a car, it wouldn’t have been so bad. They could have just pulled alongside him and pushed him into the back seat. Taylor had been involved in a few snatches over the years when he was in the service, and it was always surprising how fast it could happen.
On a motorcycle, though, they didn’t have that choice. The area wasn’t particularly busy, but it also wasn’t empty. It was broad daylight, which meant that no matter what they did, they’d be visible. They’d eventually settled on the plan that Taylor would follow him on foot, and Whitaker would follow further behind on the motorcycle, ready to swoop in and retrieve Taylor if things went sideways.
Taylor fell in step behind the man, about twenty or so feet back. This section of Berlin wasn’t like Manhattan, with its near-constant wall of people, but it wasn’t empty either. There were maybe a dozen people on their side of the street that Taylor could see. He’d timed it so that there were two other pedestrians between them, making it less obvious that Taylor was following the man.
The hardest part in tailing someone is watching them while not being obvious about it. You didn’t want to be caught staring at your target for long stretches or running into objects because you were too focused on who you were following.
On the flip side, you didn’t want to be obviously not looking at your target either. Furtive movements looking this way, and that would also make the tail stand out. The key was looking bored. Most people do not enjoy trudging along the sidewalk on a warm summer morning, seeing it at best as a tedious activity required to get from point A to point B.
Taylor was doing more than observing his target, though. He was looking for a place where he and the manager could have a quiet conversation. The volume of people wasn’t the only way this section of Berlin differed from Manhattan. There wasn’t long rows of buildings with the occasional alley. There were gaps between the buildings, but the gaps were larger and more obvious than the dark alley’s someone might imagine with picturing an urban metropolis. These areas were too open to be secluded, but narrow enough to make it strange that two pedestrians would turn and walk down one.
The habits Taylor once formed in the service helped him once again. The Special Forces made it a point that planning was
