“Or no one is going to call anyone, and we’re wasting time.”
“Like I said, I’m open to other suggestions, but I think I’m right.”
“Then what’s Graf waiting on?”
“Best guess, he put things on hold when it looked like they were going to grab us near the college. It would be easier for him to let us get caught legally and then have a prisoner off us than have us disappeared. You guys take it seriously personal when someone tries to keep someone in law enforcement. If that person then vanished off the face of the earth, someone would wonder why. If we were captured and then killed by a violent prisoner, that’s just one of the hazards of the system.”
“So, tomorrow?”
“I think so.”
“If nothing happens tomorrow?”
“I don’t know. We can either try and go public with what we have, which I don’t think will be enough, or put our sights on the trust itself. Honestly, I don’t have a lot of hope that either of those is going to work.”
“So, we just wait.”
“Yep, we just wait.”
Neither slept well that night, both too keyed up, waiting for something to happen. Neither wanted to leave the room, both to keep anyone from recognizing them and to make sure they could move as soon as her friend called in. Whitaker had called her friend the night before and given her the number of the satellite phone, so they were able to dump the burner she’d been using, just in case.
Lunchtime came and went, without much happening. Taylor sat quietly, working everything they’d learned so far over in his head, trying to see if he’d made a mistake or missed something. Whitaker paced to the point Taylor wondered if she was going to wear herself out. She was a ball of nervous energy. She refrained from pointing out, again, how much of a long shot their current plan was, but it wasn’t hard to guess that was what she was thinking.
They were both in their own heads that when the phone rang just before two in the afternoon, it startled both of them. Whitaker answered, listened for a moment, and hung up.
“Your first guess paid off. The ‘banker’ just retrieved a call from Graf that he didn’t answer.”
“We have five minutes, let’s go.”
Walking quickly out of the hotel, they rounded the corner and walked partway up the block. The day they’d rented the room, Whitaker had gone out and scouted a spot for the two of them to observe the cafe.
The spot turned out to be a thin alley one building down from the cafe. Whitaker stepped partway into the ally and turned her back towards the cafe. She then told Taylor to stand in front of her, turned slightly so that his body mostly blocked hers, allowing her to hold the satellite phone at chest level unseen by anyone that wasn’t practically on top of the two of them.
While this meant that only Taylor could look for their subject, it allowed Whitaker to call her contact, using the phone on speaker with the volume turned low, without being easily seen. It had the benefit of cover since they looked like a couple stopping to talk. If the conversation got more intense or if Whitaker couldn’t hear her friend well, she could step into the alley, out of sight.
Taylor leaned on the wall next to the alley, trying to look casual, positioning himself so it would be hard to tell if he was looking at the cafe or Whitaker. From this spot, Taylor had a good view of the patio seating in front of the cafe. They’d discussed it the day before and agreed the banker would choose to sit outside, where he could keep his voice down and be covered up by the noises of the neighborhood, rather than inside where he could be overheard arranging illegal payments. It was a gamble, but Taylor was reasonably sure it was a safe one.
Taylor looked at his watch. Four minutes and thirty seconds had passed since the first call. There were two people on the patio: a woman in a stylish but understated dress, and a man in a suit. Both had been seated before Taylor and Whitaker got there. Taylor alternated between looking at the man and his wrist, watching the seconds tick away.
The five minutes passed, and Taylor looked back up at the man, who was still looking at papers in front of him, sipping a coffee. Taylor’s eyes slipped over to the woman, who was now on the phone.
“Call your friend. See if the banker is on the phone with Graf.”
Whitaker sidestepped into the alley, out of view of the cafe, and dialed the satellite phone. A sentence and two single word responses later, she hung up and moved back in front of Taylor, leaning close.
“Yes, exactly five minutes from the first call. They are on the phone now.”
“Huh,” Taylor grunted.
“What?”
“Our banker's a woman.”
“What, women can’t be criminals?”
“No, I was just picturing a middle-aged man in my mind.”
They were too far away to actually hear anything, and the woman was seated facing away from them, so all Taylor could do was watch her back as she talked on the phone. The call lasted under two minutes. As soon as she pulled the phone away from her ear, the woman downed her coffee, stood up, and walked away from them.
“On the move,” Taylor said.
Whitaker moved to Taylor’s side as he started walking forward, her
