Springboard

He unclipped his virgil from his belt. “Call Marissa,” he said.

He held the little device to his ear with one hand, the dark rose in the other.

“Hey, Tommy.”

“Hey, Marissa. Thank you.”

“For what?”

He held the virgil so that its cam pointed at the flower.

“Very nice,” she said. “What’s that got to do with me?”

“It was on my kitchen counter.”

“And you think I put it there? That would mean I’d have to drive way the hell and gone to God’s country, then rascal a thumbprint reader lock and house alarm with a security cam, to leave that flower in your kitchen, just to make you smile when you saw it. You think you’re worth all that trouble?”

“I hope you think so.”

There was a pause. Then she said, “Maybe. We’ll just have to see. Where are you taking me to dinner tomorrow?”

“Anywhere you want to go,” he said.

“Try and surprise me.”

“Oh, I expect I can manage that.”

“Want to bet?”

“I’ll send a car for you,” he said. “Seven o’clock okay?”

“What’s the wager?”

“Tell you after I win,” he said.

“You’re on.”

She discommed, and he just stood there smiling at the rose.

San Francisco, California

As it happened, Kent saw Natadze go into the shop. It was just after ten A.M., and while he had camped in worse places than a sleeping bag in the back of a van, it hadn’t been the most comfortable night’s sleep he’d ever had. It was easier to be a twenty-year-old stoic about such things than it was to be a man his age…

He smiled at the memory that brought up. About the time he’d turned fifty, he had hurt his right knee running an obstacle course. He’d come down off a swinging rope over a mud hole, let go, and hit crooked. Wasn’t the first time he’d ever hurt a joint, and he limped through the rest of the course, went home, and RICE’d the injury — rest, ice, compression, and elevation — along with some ibuprofen every few hours, SOP.

After a couple weeks, when the knee was still bothering him more than he thought it should, he went to see one of the base doctors.

The doc, a kid of maybe thirty and a captain, had started his exam, and while he was poking and prodding, asked, “So, how’d you do this, Major?”

Kent told him.

The kid had frowned. “Major, a man your age ought not to be running the obstacle course.”

“A man my age? Son, I’m not a man my age!”

It had been funny. But in the decade since, he’d noticed that the aches and pains he’d shrugged off even at fifty took longer to get better. Some of them hung around for months. Some of them were still with him for years — that knee injury tended to throb when it got cold and rainy even now.

But that was the name of the game, he knew, and while growing old was the pits, it sure beat the alternative…

Natadze, wearing a leather jacket over what looked like khaki slacks and some kind of soft-soled loafers, was twenty-some years younger than Kent, and a professional assassin. It would be stupid to ignore that. He wasn’t going to challenge him mano a mano, straight up. They didn’t like handguns in San Francisco, but somehow Kent didn’t think that meant much to his quarry. He’d be armed — wearing a jacket like that in this heat — and he’d be wary.

Five minutes later, Kent’s virgil beeped, but as he reached to shut it off, he heard Cyrus’s voice: “Colonel?”

“Here.”

“He’s gone out the back door. Said his car was parked back there, asked if it was okay.”

Kent frowned. More wary even than Kent had figured, and still a step ahead. He reached for the van’s ignition, cranked the key.

“The alley is one-way, running east. If his car is there, he’ll be coming out on the street next to the dentist’s office, unless he goes against the traffic.”

Kent was already pulling out of the parking lot by then. “Thanks, son. I’ll let you know how it goes.”

Kent hurried to the corner, made the turn, and saw the sign for the dentist’s. He pulled in behind a bus and past the mouth of the alley.

There was a double-axle truck parked a hundred feet in, the doors open. No sign of a car — wait, there was Natadze—

He was on foot, half a block away, and going in the other direction—!

Kent mashed the gas pedal, lurched around the bus, and sped for the next corner, a one-way street, which, fortunately, was going west. He careened through the turn and roared down the street. Ran a red light and pulled another right turn. The mouth of the alley was just ahead. He passed it, pulled into a loading zone, and stopped, a hundred feet away—

Natadze, carrying a black guitar case, emerged from the alley and looked in both directions. Kent saw him in the rearview mirror. Natadze couldn’t see him enough to ID him, he was sure.

Natadze crossed the street, dodging traffic, and went to a late-model gray Toyota parked in a no-parking zone. He opened the car with a remote, put the guitar in the back seat on the floor, and climbed in.

Kent grabbed a notepad and the mechanical pencil on the seat next to him and wrote down the car’s license number. California plate, probably a rental. He’d once had a digital recorder for such quick notes, but the battery had died in that at a bad time, and he’d gone back to the old-fashioned way. Not once had the battery run down on a sheet of paper, and he had four extra pencils in case one ran out of lead.

Kent was no expert at surveillance. He had been taught the basics as part of a two-week class in investigative procedures given by Marine Intel a few years back. His and Natadze’s noses were pointed in different directions, and that was bad. When Natadze pulled out, Kent would have to hang a U-turn to follow him. Anybody looking for a tail would spot that and mark the vehicle, so you’d start out with a strike against you. The only way around that if you were alone was to wait until the subject was far enough away that he might not notice, and if you did that, you risked losing him. Without an electronic tag on the subject’s vehicle, you were restricted to line of sight, and if he got too far out of that, you would almost surely lose him.

But God smiled on Kent this time. It was Natadze who pulled out and made a sharp U-turn, passing Kent’s van. Kent dropped in his seat, waited a few seconds, then edged back upright.

Natadze made it to the corner, stopped at the red light, and signaled for a right turn.

Kent let one car get between them, then pulled out.

The light changed to green. Instead of turning, Natadze pulled across the intersection straight ahead, then switched his blinker off. The car between them followed. Kent did too, dropping back a little.

His quarry was being careful, and obviously looking for a tail. If he spotted him, Kent would be burned, and the game would change. It wouldn’t be a sub-rosa surveillance any longer, it would be a chase, and that made it real iffy.

Of course, Kent had his virgil, and he could call the local police at any time. If Natadze spotted him and ran, he’d have to do that, since the van wasn’t the best car to be drag-racing through the streets of San Francisco. He didn’t want to, but his pride wasn’t as important as catching this guy.

Natadze made a right turn at the next intersection — another one-way street. As soon as he was out of sight, Kent reached down, grabbed a Giants baseball cap, and put it on. He took a pair of sunglasses from over the visor and slipped those on. He couldn’t change the look of his vehicle, but he could alter his own a little, in case he had to get closer.

Kent made the turn.

Natadze was a hundred feet ahead. He pulled the Toyota over to the curb into a loading zone.