took a few turns through the side streets, but they were clogged as well.
Downtown, the doctor pulled into a lot near one of the larger buildings in the business district. Danny saw him get out of the car as he passed.
He was short and fat, bald — he didn’t have time to see the doctor’s face.
“Car’s in the big lot you’ll see on your left,” he told Flash, who was about a block behind him. “Get the tracker on it.”
“On my way.”
Danny went down the block, then turned down the side street. There was plenty of parking, so he pulled in. He got out of the car and trotted back to the building.
There were half a dozen people inside, waiting for the elevator. Danny glanced around — there was a man very close to the button panel, short and fat, bald. He was wearing brown pants.
Was it him?
He thought so, and yet he wasn’t positive. Several minutes had passed — the doctor could be upstairs already.
The doors opened. Danny had to push himself in, squeezing against a pair of middle-aged women who looked at him as if he were the devil. They said something in Moldovan that he didn’t understand. He smiled as if it were a compliment, though he guessed it was anything but.
The elevator stopped on the fifth floor. A man got out. The two women got out on the seventh. Danny stepped to the side, watching the man he thought might be the doctor. The man stared at the doors, studiously avoiding his gaze.
It might be because I’m black, Danny realized. In America, the fact that he was black would hardly be noticeable, in most contexts anyway. But in Moldova, as in most Eastern European countries, people of African descent were relatively rare.
He took out the control unit for the MY-PID, looking at it as if setting up an app. He tilted it slightly, then pressed the button to activate the video camera. Turning to his right, he held the camera up, getting a good view of the man’s profile.
Most of the occupants emptied on the twelfth floor. Only he and the fat man remained as it continued upward. Danny realized he hadn’t pushed the button. He glanced at the panel; they were heading toward the twentieth floor.
He reached over and hit 23. Leaning back, he smiled at the man. He didn’t smile back.
The doors opened on the twentieth floor. Danny stepped back, watching the man leave.
“He got out on the twentieth floor,” he told the others, pulling the earphone back up and turning the MY-PID back onto active coms. “I have an image on the video.”
“All right. You sure that’s him?” asked Nuri.
“No.”
“No?”
“It took me too long to get into the building.”
“You want us inside?” asked Flash.
“Hang back,” said Danny, stepping out into the hallway as the elevator stopped. He found the stairs a few paces away and descended to the twentieth floor.
There was only one door in the hall, plain and brown. There was a list of names on a sign next to it.
Danny took out the MY-PID control unit and pointed the camera at the sign.
“What’s that say?” he asked.
“Dr. Acevda, Dr. Bolinski, Dr. Kulsch, Dr. Nudstrumov, Dr. Zvederick.”
“No Ivanski?”
“Rephrase question.”
“Is there an Ivanski?”
“Negative.”
“Check to see if there is any correlation between Ivanski and any of those doctors,” Danny told MY-PID. “In the meantime, tell me how to ask to make an appointment.”
The computer gave him the words. He repeated it twice but couldn’t get the pronunciation right.
“Danny, I can do it,” said Nuri from outside. “I’m almost there.”
“It’s all right,” said Danny. “I just want to see if we can get images of the doctors. There’s no sense you coming in, too. The fewer of us he sees right now, the better.”
The door opened into a reception room. Several men and women were scattered among a dozen and a half chairs lining the walls. A television sat in the corner but it was off. The receptionist’s desk was next to a closed door that led to the interior offices.
The woman asked in Moldovan if she could help him.
Danny started to ask for an appointment, but midway through the words failed him; he switched to English.
“I wanted to make a doctor’s appointment,” he said. “My throat.”
The woman asked him if he could speak any Moldovan. Danny pointed to his throat. She pointed at a seat, then picked up the phone and called someone inside.
The patients were middle-aged and older, most a lot older. Danny wondered if he could fake a sore throat. He tried a cough, wincing.
A few minutes later a nurse came through the door and walked over to him. Danny rose.
“You speak English, yes?” she said. Her accent was thick but the words understandable. She was in her early twenties, with an expression somewhere between concern and light annoyance. “How can we help you?”
“Yes, my throat hurts,” said Danny. “I was hoping—”
“This is a specialist clinic, for diseases of endocrines.”
“Endocrines?”
“Glands. Disorders with the metabolism,” said the nurse. “Diabetes, and things more complicated. I’m sorry, but for a sore throat we could only recommend cough drops.”
“I see.”
She put her hand to his forehead. She had to stretch to do it. Danny caught a slight scent of sweat.
“No fever,” she said.
“It’s just my throat.”
She frowned. “I can send you to another clinic. These doctors. Very good.”
“OK, thank you,” he said.
She went over to the desk and asked the receptionist for a card. Danny sat back in his seat, realizing he’d forgotten to plant a bug.
He was being watched. It wasn’t necessary to plant it here — he could do it in the hall where it would be less conspicuous.
“Go to these doctors,” said the nurse, returning. “There is a nurse who speaks English.”
“Thank you very much,” he said, taking the card.
25
The Black Wolf had considered this job many times. He hadn’t wished for it but sensed that someday it would come. And now it had.
He didn’t like Nudstrumov at all. In the beginning he was neutral, but over the years he had come to despise him. He had a certain haughty way of acting. Like the other day, when he kept him waiting. He had made it seem as if it was nothing, undeliberate, but the Black Wolf knew better. He knew.
He would take him leaving his office, going from the door to the car. It was easier than the house, where there would be some inconvenience getting in. The office, though, was all routine. Nudstrumov parked in the same
